A Boston Synagogue Compares Trump to Hitler

Imagine the juxtaposition.

On Saturday, November 21, the New York Times published a half-page article titled “For Netanyahu and Israel, Trump’s Gifts Kept on Coming.” Its subtitle was even more specific: “Allowing the convicted spy Jonathan Pollard the ability to emigrate to Israel was just the latest in a long list of prizes for America’s closest ally in the Middle East.”

The article went on to detail all the things that President Trump has done for Israel over the past four years. By now, it’s a well-known and long list. The New York Times cited the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the moving of the embassy to the holy city; the recognition of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory; the defunding of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA because of their “pay to slay” policy; the staunch defense of Israel at the United Nations through Nikki Haley and others; and Trump trashing Obama’s Iran deal. What sparked the article was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to the Psagot winery in Israel, which is in Judea and Samaria. Said the Times, “the Trump administration has increasingly equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, both domestically and internationally. Building on that, Mr. Pompeo this week announced that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel would be deemed anti-Semitic, and that its adherents would no longer be eligible for federal government support.”

Lest you think that the New York Times had suddenly taken leave of its senses and published the article to praise Trump, the article’s intent was the opposite. It was to complain about how one-sided Trump has been toward the Jews and how Biden might, hopefully, be more even-handed. As the Times wrote, “Mr. Trump broke sharply with his predecessors’ approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, taking Israel’s side on the status of Jerusalem, West Bank settlements and other occupied territory.”

Now, contrast that criticism of President Trump as being way too nice to the Jews and Israel with an astonishing and mystifying attack by Temple Emanuel — a Conservative synagogue in Newton, Massachusetts — which put out a statement comparing Trump to Hitler.

In a newsletter sent out to its congregants last week, signed by senior clergy and Cantors, Temple Emanuel said, “The attack on democracy happening now is literally unprecedented. In the history of our nation, no presidential candidate who lost the election has refused to concede or to assist in the orderly transition of power… We Jews of all people, all of us, should be alarmed. On this week when we mark the 82^nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, we Jews know that when assertions are made by authoritarians that go unchallenged, when ordinary citizens shrug and do nothing, or worse, are co-opted by those looking to undo democracy, the gravest harm ensues.”

The authoritarian in question is, of course, President Trump, and Kristallnacht was the beginning of Hitler’s Holocaust.

Here you have a shul telling its members that Trump challenging the election in the American courts and refusing to concede can be likened to a night when hundreds of synagogues were burned to the ground in Germany and scores of Jews were brutally attacked and murdered — with thousands more sent to concentration camps — in the most infamous and widespread pogrom of the modern era.

No one is saying that the synagogue should not have called upon Trump to concede the election. But Hitler? One would have thought that Temple Emanuel’s comparison might apply more to the murderous Mullahs of Iran who post on social media calling for the annihilation of Israel’s six million Jews, and whose regime Trump is crushing with unprecedented sanctions. But no, the president whom even the New York Times scolds as being too much in league with the Jews is on the precipice of starting a holocaust and becoming Hitler.

The “Trump is Hitler” crowd have been mystifyingly vocal for the past four years, particularly and shockingly in the Jewish community. I myself was condemned by Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner — of a Temple Emanu-El in Closter, New Jersey — in the Jewish Standard in March 2016 for chastising those who compare Donald Trump to Hitler. Kirshner responded, “When exactly is the moment of worry which officially allows us to sound the alarm bells? Must one first kill 6 Million Jewish souls to be categorized as ‘Hitler?’”

In other words, saying thank you to a man who moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the Golan Heights, changed the tenor toward Israel at the U.N. and, most importantly, took us out of the Iran deal is too much. Yet demonizing him as a monster is still too little.

Let’s be clear. Even the Jews who despise Trump and refuse to offer any gratitude for all he has done for Israel should at least show some respect to the six million and stop engaging in this rancid and disgusting trivialization of the Holocaust.

It is time for Jews who are Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, to push back against those who abase themselves by comparing Trump to Hitler.

I shouldn’t even have to say this, but the vile comparison of Trump to Hitler belittles the Holocaust and all genocides. I just completed a three-year project of writing a book called “Holocaust Holiday: One Family’s Descent into Genocide Memory Hell.” It details how I took my children to the killing fields of Europe in an effort to confront the sheer horror and brutality of the largest mass murder in world history. The book is filled with painful stories of episodes like my daughter Cheftizba begging me and my wife Debbie not to make her spend her eighth birthday, on July 3, at Auschwitz (we took her to the Lodz ghetto instead). The Holocaust is unknowable, and yet I know it. As a Jew, it is seared into my soul. And it’s time that as a global community, we call on rabbis and Jewish leaders to stop depreciating its horrors by comparing Trump’s legal challenges about the vote in court to the Einsatzgruppen and the SS.

The vile comparison of Trump to Hitler belittles the Holocaust and all genocides.

What the “Trump as Hitler” attacks by the leadership of Temple Emanuel and others really expose is a willingness to demonize Trump even at the expense of the six million. So I say, You hate Trump? Fine. That’s democracy. By all means, oppose him with every breath and heartbeat. That is your right. But what in God’s name does this have to do with Jews being turned into soap and lampshades?

Jews who voted for Biden can still, as influential thinker Rabbi Yitz Greenberg said, show thankfulness and gratitude for all that Trump has done for Israel and the Jewish people.

Jews who voted for Trump can still acknowledge Biden’s decades of friendship with Israel and the Jewish community.

And Jews who voted for Biden can still make it clear to him that he better maintain his independence and not be co-opted by some on the Democratic far left, such as the unrepentant Israel and Jew bashers like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Jews on the left and the right can all agree that for four years, it’s been inspiring to see a president with a Jewish daughter and son-in-law who observe the Sabbath, light the Chanukah candles, read the Purim Megillah and push their father to protect a people, and their nation-state, who just seventy years ago were murdered at a rate of 10,000 per day by a man, to whom no human ought to ever be compared — Hitler.

Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” whom The Washington Post calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” is the international best-selling author of 33 books. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @RabbiShmuley.