Aside first blush there would not seem to be a strong connection between the seemingly abstract question of the nature of American democracy and the very practical issue of the ability of Jews to live as Jews inAmerica. And certainly not between those two and this year’s election. Yet in a bracing piece in Mosaic magazine history professor Richard Samuelson argues that the first two issues are closely related which I believe raises the stakes for the 2016 contest as well. He begins this way:
Not so long ago doubts about the ability of Jews to live and practice Judaism freely in theUnited Stateswould have been dismissed as positively paranoid…. And yet… the return of anti-Semitism… is making itself felt in historically unfamiliar ways in the land of the free.
But there is another danger equally grave though as yet less open and less remarked upon. It is connected with longer-term shifts in Americans’ fundamental understanding of themselves and of their liberty… in particular the laws enshriningAmerica’s commitment to religious liberty….
Coming to the fore… most saliently in relation to [same-gender and alternative-gender] rights it has resulted in a legal battle in which the radioactive charge of “discrimination” borrowed from the civil-rights movement of the 1960s is wielded as a weapon to isolate impugn and penalize dissenting views held by Americans of faith…. [T]he threat to… the practice of Judaism especially by Orthodox Jews is very real. Unlike in the past the threat comes not from private initiatives; it comes from government.
