Numbers: In 1939 of 2.1 billion people in the world, 16.8 million were Jews.
At the end of WWII in Europe in May 1945 there were 11 million Jews in the world. The Germans and their henchmen had killed 5.8+ million of them (not wanting to raise particular national origin hackles, I refrain from identifying the worst of those henchmen nations – there are seven).
Today, Jewish population has recovered to about 14.8 million in a total worldwide population exceeding 7 billion people.
That is two hundredths of 1 percent of all the people in the world.
If all us Jews stayed up 24 hours a day, all our lives, we could not do all the things we are forever accused of doing, not if we had 14 days in a week instead of the seven we get –the seven days prescribed on the first page of Genesis:
Genesis, the formulation of god and the universe given to the world by? By who? By us Jews of course. We, with some assistance from the Earth’s orbit of the sun, gave you Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the last being the day Jews rest, their sabbath, their Shabbat.
No, there just aren’t enough or us Jews and there just isn’t enough time for us to do all the harm we are accused of doing by the ignorant, by the haters.
We don’t do that stuff, it’s done to us (in the broadest sense, not in the specific fact right now of Gaza). Always, it has been and is done to us.
We are a complicated,disputatious people. We count among us the most orthodox, indeed primitive in belief, tradition and superstition. We count also a plurality with beliefs modified to fit a secular world and, yes, in this country, a Christian world. We count also always a significant slice of us who are entirely secular and even agnostics and atheists. Why then are even the atheists among us still Jews, why am I still a Jew? Because –
Because there is no point denying and every reason for embracing that for which someone else will mark me. And there are traditions other than the religious, including traditions of secular humanism, liberalism and reverence for learning held by Jews that we can value no matter whether we have a close relationship with God, or no relationship at all with god.
At long last if all the world will not give up hate, at least stop hating us. We are not responsible for someone’s failures in life, for the fact that he has failed in life. We are not the explanation for whatever is his greatest complaint, fear and/or ignorant belief.
But we know, we know that no matter who else they come for, always they have come for us. We know them when we see them. Two thousand years of being on guard makes you acutely aware of who to be aware and wary of.
You think we look at the Trump rally crowds and don’t know who is coming for us next? Who those people are? Of course we do. We know and have known them everywhere in every age. We know that among them are many who would do the worst that has been done to us. It’s life if you are a Jew just as it is life if you are a Muslim (Rohingyan) in Myanmar.
Every time Trump does one of those rallies we know this can happen. We know it becomes more and more likely. Now it has.
Tom Lehrer, Harvard math professor/songwriter/singer of humorous songs of his own writing had this sardonic one titled “Brotherhood”, in honor, he said, of National Brotherhood Week.
It has this lyric:
“Oh the white folks hate the black folks and the black folks hate the white folks, all of my folks hate all of your folks — and everybody hates the Jews.”
To the haters, find someone else to hate out there. We Jews are fed up with it.
Peeling the Onion 
Heavy stuff.
Susan
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