Two Rallies

Shortly prior to the third Reagan-Gorbachev summit, scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., in December 1987, Natan Sharansky, newly released from the Soviet Gulag, came to organize a mass gathering of American Jews. The message of the proposed rally would be that America was demanding the release of all Soviet Jews who wanted to leave.

Over 250,000 American Jews came to the capital for that rally. And their message was heard. At the outset of their summit, President Reagan asked Premier Gorbachev whether he had heard about the huge rally on the Mall the preceding Sunday. Gorbachev sought to turn the conversation to the topics important to him — e.g., arms control — but Reagan would not let go. He kept speaking about the size of the turnout and the importance of Jewish emigration to the American people.

Two weeks ago, prominent American Jewish organizations announced a D.C. rally against anti-Semitism. According to the Washington Post and a number of other news organizations, several hundred American Jews showed up. And that, at a time when physical attacks on Jews have reached, in the words of former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile, “pandemic proportions.”

The slogan of the latter gathering was “No Fear,” which the organizers belied by distributing hats with no Jewish symbols or anything to indicate a connection to a Jewish event.