Putting the “Serve” Back in "Deserve"
Originally published on ReformJudaism.org on November 1, 2024
A man, running late to an important meeting, desperately sought a parking spot. After circling repeatedly, he turned to prayer. "God, if you grant me a parking spot, I promise to devote myself to Torah and good deeds." No sooner had he finished than he spotted an open space. "Never mind, God, I found one."
Beneath the joke's humor lies a profound question for us on this Veterans Day: Do we believe good things happen because we deserve them, or due to unseen intervention? As the Jewish community grapples with fears of our eroding security in post-October 7th America, the question that nobody wants to consider is whether we have enjoyed relative security by right or by debt.
Growing up in the 1990s, I assumed the American Jewish community’s safety was simply the natural fulfillment of the vision articulated by the founding fathers. As George Washington famously promised in his 1790 letter to the Jewish community of Newport, RI, the government of the United States would give "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Jewish security wasn't supposed to be something we had to bargain for or earn. We were entitled to it, as were all Americans (despite how slowly that was recognized for minorities of gender, color, or religion throughout our history), because our country had declared it as an inherent, natural right.
This explanation of security as an American birthright has echoed throughout the communal discussion about our recent sense of vulnerability. Franklin Foer's article in the Atlantic, "The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending," credits America's liberal spirit for inoculating the country against antisemitism. Articles in Tablet Magazine and The Times of Israel similarly attribute Jewish acceptance to Anglo-American Protestantism and post-Holocaust societal shifts. This narrative reflects the comfortable belief that by landing in a country where liberal values inevitably led towards social inclusion, American Jews essentially found the perfect parking spot themselves.
But this interpretation overlooks the antisemitism that did exist in America prior to my childhood. Universities and residential areas restricted Jewish applications, and signs reading "No Jews or Dogs Allowed" were commonplace. General Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jewish soldiers from his military district during the Civil War, and a U.S. Army manual in World War I asserted that Jews were more likely than other soldiers to try to get out of duty by pretending to be ill or incapacitated. Steven Spielberg's autobiographical movie, “The Fabelmans,” depicts the violent bullying he endured as a Jewish student, and the faculty's reluctance to intervene. The list of examples could go on and on.
What changed? According to Deborah Dash Moore’s book, “GI Jews: How WWII Changed a Generation,” the key factor that finally aligned the vision expressed in George Washington’s letter with the experience of American Jews was their military service in World War II. "Today, educated Americans assume the Judeo-Christian tradition is a real tradition... but it was largely a creation of the American military in World War II," she writes. “When Jewish veterans returned home… they had become agents of a shift in the legitimization of American Jewish identity.” Thus, Moore argues, the Jewish security we have enjoyed over the last 50 years neither materialized from the inevitability of American values nor unalienable rights but was earned by the sacrifices of American Jewish service members fighting and dying alongside their Christian comrades in a collective effort to defend American freedom.
The implications of Moore’s argument are deeply unsettling, but they reflect a fundamental truth about human behavior. As tribal creatures, we gravitate towards homogeneity for security. Though we conceptually understand ideas like natural rights and mutual respect, such values are easily overridden by more primal instincts when we are animated by fear. One of the most reliable antidotes to this reaction is sharing risk and overcoming hardship together. “Humans evolved to survive in extremely harsh environments, [through] our capacity for cooperation and sharing,” observes Sebastian Junger. “Structurally, a band of hunter-gatherers and a platoon in combat are almost exactly the same... they are completely reliant on one another for support, comfort, and defense.”
If antisemitism is an extreme rejection of commonality, our opposition to it through education, engagement, or social action will only go so far unless we also embrace an equally extreme experience that reinforces commonality -- American Jewish military service. There are many American Jews who already serve in uniform, and still more who are unable to serve due to health conditions or moral objections. But the largest number of all are those who fall in neither category; if American Jewish military service can indeed stem this rising tide of antisemitism, it is these people's help we need most.
As much as we want to believe that George Washington’s promise should have been enough to end bigotry and persecution of Jews on its own, he himself foretold that it would demand something from members of the Jewish community as well. In our rush to embrace our inherent rights as the sole source of Jewish security, we don’t pay as much attention to the end of Washington’s famous phrase as we do the beginning. This new American government, which Washington promised would end bigotry and persecution against Jews, would also require that they “demean themselves as good citizens in giving it, on all occasions, their effectual support." Though we’ll never know exactly what support Washington was referring to, he had witnessed how the shared adversity of military service had bonded colonists into a nation despite their prejudices and fears. His words are as much a call to action as a guarantee.
Liberal American values have provided conditions for Jews to flourish, but military service has provided the equally important antidote to the venom of antisemitism. The American Jewish security I experienced in my childhood was paid for by my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, but the bill is coming due again. We can't take our future security for granted or assume we’re entitled to it. We must earn it, just as our predecessors did. On this Veterans Day, let’s remember that we’re going to need a little help finding that parking spot after all.
Cantor David Frommer was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion's Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music in New York and is the first cantor to serve as a chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces. He currently supports Jewish personnel and their families stationed at Fort Bliss, TX.