Forgetting that slavery was the justification for the Confederacy, the cause of the lost cause that wreaked death and destruction upon this nation. Forgetting that slavery was the reason for secession. Lee might be removed from a town square.Īnd yet, as Rabbi David Stern teaches, Confederate monuments are not about remembering. The protesters faced a threat: The glorious history of the Confederacy might be erased. The Charlottesville uprising began as an alleged act of remembrance. We Jewish people are not, of course, alone in our claim on memory. An attack on immigrants is an assault upon the Jewish people. A battle cry against people of color is a call to war on us. 'You will not replace us' and 'Jews will not replace us' are one and the same. To the tiki-torch marchers, Jews are strangers in the land of America. The greatest commandment of the five Books of Moses is repeated 36 times: 'Remember the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.' Charlottesville reminded us: When any group is attacked as 'strangers,' the Jewish people are under attack.

To anybody who isn't white, Christian, and native-born. To women with the temerity to seek power or authority. Even the anti-Semitic chant began its life as, 'You will not replace us!' 'You' did not refer to Jews, but to people of color. Jews, of course, weren't the main target of that malevolent march. Lest we forget, remembrance is thrust upon us: 'Jews will not replace us!' We know that anti-Semitism could rear its ugly, violent head once again. Nazis made sure: 'Jews will not replace us.' The century that fabricated these Protocols also produced the Holocaust. spell out the alleged secret plans of Jewish leaders seeking to attain world domination.' The Anti-Defamation League explains: An early 20th century forgery by the 'Czarist secret police, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The allegation is repeated in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 'Jews,' Pharaoh exclaims, 'will not replace us.' Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise up from the ground.' The accusation is Pharaoh's, who says 'Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Gun-toting, tiki-torch-bearing white supremacists repeated a lie that Jews remember well: Jews control the world, or may soon. That vile anti-Semitic slur was chanted on the streets of Charlottesville.

N.y. slur seek root out racism