Opinions The myth that Jews are all-powerful is the biggest threat to Jewish lives
During Shabbat morning prayer services at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Tex., Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker let in a man who was asking for help. The man soon turned a gun on the rabbi, holding him and three other congregants hostage in a harrowing 11-hour ordeal. He ordered the rabbi to call the leader of Central Synagogue in New York City, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, and demand that she free a convicted terrorist serving an 86-year sentence.
The idea that a rabbi could overturn a criminal conviction at the drop of a hat is such a stereotype of a stereotype that it’s almost comical. And yet it is precisely this type of absurd conspiratorial thinking that presents the greatest threat to Jewish lives.
“This was somebody who literally thought that Jews control the world,” Cytron-Walker told a reporter at the Forward. “He thought he could come into a synagogue, and we could get on the phone with the ‘Chief Rabbi of America’ and he would get what he needed.”
This weekend’s Texas hostage situation highlights the deadliest threat to Jews today: the myth of Jewish power. The conspiracy theory that Jews are uniquely evil and influential has led to the spilling of Jewish blood since at least the Middle Ages and heavily influenced the Nazi ideology that left 11 million dead, including 6 million Jews. But it isn’t just systematic use of the trope for political ends, on the level of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” that Jews should fear. Even the sort of casual “jokes” that spread online in extremist circles can be deadly.
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