i have seen surrounding the the tree of life shooting that the he was the puppet master the globalist who secretly controlling world affairs that of course not new or not unique to the united states but absolutely i think in the age of trump in particular the way in which white nationalists and white supremacists in this country more generally have allied with themselves with anti-semitism alongside other forms of racism of alongside other forms of nativism is very much tied into this particular cultural moment and i don't think we can talk about the anti-semitism in the united states without talking about the way in which trump has consistently legitimized anti-semitic sources narratives and ideas for example give us one. around the time of the confirmation hearings of brett kavanaugh the supreme court nominee who was accused of sexual a number of instances of sexual assault. trump suggested that those who were

protesting the nomination had been given money by george soros in order to protest and basically destabilize the democratic process and by doing that trump very much dog whistle very unsubtly as it happened and narrative that we've seen many times before in history that a mysterious jewish billionaire is somehow using his money to destabilize democracy and that is something that goes back at least to the late eighteenth century if not earlier so very much i think trump is sort of plugging into centuries old conspiracy narratives and. with me i wouldn't say quite what rushing about but removing them from context and then allowing them to enter and reenter the public sphere where in turn they trickle down into the ears of listeners like robert bowers now terry you mentioned trump and you also mention the billionaire philanthropist george soros and you are on the same wavelength at several bar

community members so i want to play a comment we got from rabbi donny rutenberg a rabbi and author who says just as you did that this is not new and this idea of using jews as a target for people people's rage and anger is something we've seen time and time again here's what she told the stream the trumpet ministration has been using this method to great effect spinning conspiracy theories about how soros is paying for everything globalists again and again it's more of a fog on the dog whistle and so then people both on the right and the left have their attention focused and sometimes on jews and a story about jews rather than. who's holding power which is. premised. on this is men in this country. so tell you just to make it clear for all of our audience make the link for us between white

supremacy and anti-semitism because clearly there are several people online who are already making that link yes to this is something i definitely. i think the important point to emphasize is that what's coming to see in the united states and damages are not. there intermittently interconnected and if you look at what's. dating you know that nine hundred thirty s. to the present day. the general gist of it is not. while minorities and people of color are to be thier and should be shunned and attacked. the white supremacist narrative is that it is jews who organize and finance and sort of nefariously orchestrate. the activities of minorities and people of color and receiving that as the motivation for weights

premises violence those in the case of robber powers who felt that jews were seeking to the white race with quote unquote invaders. and you know we've seen that in the seventy's in the eighty's in the thirty's and forty's when. whites premises in the south were segregationist. jewish communists for finding the end of a lacy p.c. in order to promote race mixing and miseducation. the same. theories led a group called the order or the silent brotherhood to murder jewish talk radio host alan berg in one thousand nine hundred four so again these are these are old theories it's just. i just want to just there's a theory there's a theory

a conspiracy theory called. white genocide. which is incredibly popular on the far right internet. and across the world which posits directly that jews are orchestrating the dilution of the way places purity by encouraging immigration. and again and that's something that. openly nationalist openly anti immigrant trumpet ministry shines on courage in many different ways including breaking references to their rhetoric and not making. ok. go ahead that thinking about to say. thank you i think that point was really interesting in that it brings up a larger conversation that jews often have with each other which is whether we are

white or whether we are jews and what the difference is between that and i think raises this interesting point that because she is sometimes affiliated aligned with communities of color and immigrant communities sometimes there are some raw. white nationalist or people on the far right who prefer this country be. either exclusively white or. keep its. population exactly the way it is right now since almost everybody except the native americans came to this country somehow but on the other hand we as predominately white skinned individuals as jews are in america predominately we can pass and we can fly by and if i'm not wearing this then i can get by as nothing else when i was up in my car a vision and yeah this past weekend i wore my baseball cap when i was out and the

reason was twofold one is that i'm a little nervous there is that city which doesn't have a very large jewish population might react negatively to a jew but also because i live in pittsburgh and when people ask oh you've got a little money out are you jewish where are you from to say i'm from pittsburgh it's a whole conversation about trauma and struggle right now that i may not want to dump on toenails. there's also and guess you can correct me if i'm wrong here but there's also if we're looking at the sort of far right white supremacy theories here about jewish people that they don't even consider them to be white not just the asian with people of color and assisting people color being allies but they actually don't think. i don't think the jewish people are white so this is a conspiracy theory that i have trouble getting my head around help me out.

here and. so i think one. the fact that white supremacists don't consider choose white is through to really popular whites from assists and extremist slogans so there's one thing or something . kind of putting the names of jews in three parentheses you might have you know some twitter or facebook. and then there's a extremist slogan called name that you mean that you which. refers to pointing out nefarious jewish influence. and also pointing out who it organizations are jewish so you'll see these graphic so you know c.n.n. and. the new york times that point out. you know put a picture of what is of jewish stars over

a jewish border. and i think this points to a well known white truth the idea that jews are. agents whose goal is to destroy whiteness from with it. are even more of a threat because we are way past. i hope i just wanted you to say that while the me just to share that with know some selling the background behind this is quite jarring because i want to look at people who went to synagogue a couple of weeks ago and and didn't and the only. because we're talking about how do we get in the united states with the jewish community jewish community. rabbi into connecting it to. pittsburgh and to the synagogue as you explained to us a little bit. and then this happened so we can have a one of a very scary interesting why there is

a rising anti-semitism but then how do you deal with a massacre like this. you know you're going to make me cry i was in senegal last week with my six year old daughter we went on the full lockdown and we interrupted the traditional jewish service by. praying for what was happening. we opened up the book of songs and we went through a number of songs that are in our liturgy that are meant to kind of be there in times of strife and trouble and we weren't allowed to leave synagogue until the police could tell us that we were all safe to go and then you know we kind of learned the horrible truth and then a few days later i was asked because the rabbinic community the jewish community here in pittsburgh it's very small and. there's only so many people who are able to cover for a massive tragedy like this. there are eleven funerals and eleven what are called

shivah which is a seven day mourning period and there were literally not enough rabbis to go around and they asked me to cover. for one of the families and the sense of trauma in the room i mean first of all you've lost. a beloved uncle grandfather spouse brother. but on top of that. it's a normal death because you lost someone and it's an honorable death because it's tragic and traumatic it's public it's national and it's motivated entirely by hate and that's i think was we didn't talk about it you know i don't think they are ready to deal with the fact that this isn't a series of deaths this isn't a series of even murders this is a series of murders based on what our identity is who we are and in a place of extremes and i guess

a place where people come to pray and the last thing i'll add to this is these were . the best of all these were not just people who are jews but and are of just observant jews and jews to come to synagogue with the said i god service starts at ten o'clock in the morning the murderer broke into ten o'clock in the morning these are the people who come early to set up to put out coffee to leave the service to know all the songs to know all the words and. these are the best of us these were the people who are the warmest and most giving of their time and energy and they reach out to face communities all over the world and all over the country and to lose those holy souls those spirits. it breaks your heart it breaks your heart every time you see someone else and in squirrel hill in the neighborhood i live in where you know everybody knows somebody who was killed everybody knows somebody who goes to synagogue or somebody was killed everybody themselves was

a synagogue and feeling threatened just stepping back into the synagogue on saturday was hard for a lot of us rabbi thank you for sharing your experiences with us and of course our condolences to you and your community i want to share a few reflections from others in your community because as you said everyone knows someone because it's such a small community so a.j. irwin here on twitter says i worked at a coffee shop a few blocks away from the tree of life and i thought this morning we received a call from families in newtown connecticut who were affected by the sandy hook school shooting donating money to our coffee shop to give free drinks to the squirrel hill community and that was november third she goes on to say telling the stream that i honestly never felt as if anti-semitism was a national issue maybe because i've been isolated within the safety of this community that is so overwhelmingly accepting of all religions if anything i believe this event has shown how easily hate can be masked and so it is on that note masking hate and that is like to live in

a community that is so welcoming and then to be reminded that the outside community is not and i want to share this video comment from dr abigail. or and she's a writer and historian and pittsburgh and this is what she had to say. as it was that eleven of my fellow pittsburgh jews have been murdered in anti-semitic attack i sobbed yes for my community which is so close knit that these losses touched most everyone but for another loss to the loss of my belief that jews in the united states were not till vulnerable i'm historian of twentieth century american jewry and i've devoted years to studying the way is the jews have built relationships with other threatened communities to support civil rights and social justice movements they've also been really critical of moments when jews have chosen to protect their own interests rather than support racism and other social justice causes. where it's buying a house voting or interacting with the police what you know not all jews are why.

jews with later skin have benefited. in ways that their neighbors of color are not. so tired i want to wreck that you because she mentions what some points that we've already discussed but you can hear the emotion in her voice of course and i know this is something that anyone who's listening with half a heart can relate to and bill the sadness that she feels and that the rabbi feels what's your take on this. well i think i can see since i am actually from a mixed jewish and christian family and so absolutely i'd say that i grew up somewhat insulated i grew up in new york city a very liberal place with a passing for non jewish i don't have a jewish name but grew up very much. in a family that celebrated jewish holidays together and then separately with another side of my family christian holidays so i think it is absolutely true that for some

of us who did grow up in particular. particularly sheltered pockets of america this was not perhaps immediately apparent but i don't think that i think that just goes to show a how insidious and perdition of anti-semitism is that it can buy below the surface but also that in our current moment technology from. social media for both mainstream sites like twitter and far right sites like the gab allow a lot of this hatred that is perhaps bubbling under the surface to proliferate become public and to find other adherents and increase. and increase the number of people being radicalized and i know tallia has a lot of research on this i just want to share his view because this happened from the department of justice in the u.s. today soft as a mosque at the chief of life synagogue and i have

a little my laptop here at the department of justice and now it's a new high crimes web site is easy it's not a coincidence obviously rob i just pop in of justice thinking ok we we need to do something what else is happening off to these tragic deaths. well synagogues are rethinking security and then the broader conversation america course has to do with guns and and who should be armed and how armed they should be and when they should be armed and who should be disarmed and that's a really difficult conversation to have because it actually it's one of the areas where the jewish community is split i think there are not not down the middle. i think most jews are in favor increased gun control and the government recognizing that there are people who are too dangerous to own guns and they really shouldn't have them. but there are always those people in our communities who think that we as a synagogue community or we as

a organized jewish community need to be able to protect ourselves better and that means arming ourselves that makes me really uncomfortable one of my colleagues said it really well the other day which is that i got a socially welcoming places but the places where we want people to come and we want people to feel comfortable we want people to feel our love and we don't want a series of blast doors and metal detectors and armed guards in order to come in and pray so that's that's the the bigger more difficult conversation i would just like it if our government could connect the dots between the hate speech folks and the gun people if you if you are someone who is posting dangerous violent anti semitic anti-black anti-gay rhetoric online and you are known to own a dozen gun shows you should have a giant red flag over your head for no brainer i'm going to run conversation on the website of the chain of life synagogue and police the funerals to have been at

a coming up in just one line here that really stuck out of me the support shown rule of law and love to be stronger than what an amazing sentiment because after this comes sweeney hawt. to think like that with that's what the website of the synagogue where eleven of their congregation was actually killed has this conversation going down online people are pointing a finger at the head of the country mike says it's quite difficult to buy anti-semitism when it's being propagated from the highest offices in the country most of the time we have for today show guest thank you very much.