The Dawn of Locked and Loaded Jews

If things continue the way they have been going — shooting deaths outside the Jewish Museum in the nation’s capital; elderly Jews set on fire in Boulder — don’t be surprised if the National Rifle Association starts signing up thousands of newly locked and loaded Jews.

A new feature film, “Guns & Moses,” starring Mark Feuerstein as a black-hatted rabbi uncovering the mystery behind the murder of one of his congregants, opens on July 18. It makes the case that Talmud is good, but sometimes packing a Taurus Millenium semiautomatic pistol is even better. The film takes place in the high desert of California, where Jewish life is scarce and the west is still wild — sometimes with neo-Nazis standing in for the more conventional villains of cowboy westerns. 

The movie was influenced by the mass shooting in a synagogue on Passover in Poway, California in 2019. It served as a cautionary tale. In this revisionist western shoot-out, a rabbi is forced to become handy with a gun in order to take the law into his own hands.

As an allegory for antisemitism in today’s America, Jews might just pull the trigger on what was once inconceivable: widespread gun ownership and self-defense preparedness.

Such are the natural, survivalist consequences of living at a time when students are chased on college campuses by cheerleaders for Hamas, a young couple is murdered for exiting a Jewish museum and elderly Jews risk being torched for calling attention to Israeli and American hostages still in Gaza. 

Recognizing this murderous landscape, the actor Michael Rapaport took to his podcast to warn his fellow American Jews: “The cavalry ain’t coming.”

He’s right. As we have seen on college campuses and in sanctuary cities, protecting Jews is not a priority. It’s worse than that: punishing their tormentors is downright racist! 

What is to be done? It calls to mind John Ford’s classic western, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” with its starkly desolate message: law books are useless where lawlessness reigns. Sometimes, in the absence of civilizational constraints, one must possess both a gun, and the nerve to use it.

The People of the Book transformed into the People of Smith and Wesson — making vigilantism kosher. Revenge movies all have the same plot conceit: the law is given the first chance to punish those owed payback. If it fails to do so — or worse, if it is complicit in the crime — then the moral universe deputizes an avenger to settle the score.

After witnessing the Signs and Wonders of all those plagues, don’t be so sure Moses would have objected to arming the Twelve Tribes.

That would be quite a reversal for American Jewry, who always favored the First Amendment to the Second. Gun rights have never been a preoccupation of Blue State, coastal, cosmopolitan Jews who faithfully believed in resolving disputes in either courtrooms, or through spirited, mutually respectful debate.

See any antisemitic debaters out there these days? How about Ivy League presidents, or district attorneys in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco, willing to enforce laws to protect Jews?

The Constitution, with its emphasis on equal protection, is failing American Jewry. President Trump is testing whether the Civil Rights Act, which Jews played a key role in enacting, covers yet another minority in the United States — Jews!  

The Constitution, with its emphasis on equal protection, is failing American Jewry. President Trump is testing whether the Civil Rights Act, which Jews played a key role in enacting, covers yet another minority in the United States — Jews! 

If not, Jews may need to look to the Second Amendment to assure their own survival. Recent Supreme Court precedent establishes the right of American citizens to possess and carry firearms for the purposes of self-defense. 

“Guns & Moses” aside, this would surely be a new look for American Jews.

The First Amendment allowed them to practice Judaism freely; serve as free speech icons—Lenny Bruce, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Floyd Abrams; place their imprint on the press as publishers of the New York Times and founders of the Pulitzer Prize; and even test the limits of freedom of association — Emma Goldman’s anarchy, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s  communist proclivities, were excessively punished.

But that was then. This is a different America where it is, apparently, legally permissible to cry out for the death of Jews. The only people paying attention are the intended victims, and those who believe they have the freedom to act on impulse. European Jewry has experienced the violence of the Arab Street writ large in Western capitals. The United States had, thus far, mercifully been spared this rampant feature of Muslim migration.

Until the war in Gaza. Suddenly, keffiyeh masks became the new jackboot. “From the River to the Sea” the new “Deutschland Uber Alles.” Speaking out loud of killing Jews disgracefully became commonly expressed — permissive, “context”-driven fact. 

The custodians of law and order allowed the lighting of a match and licenses granted to chant: “Globalize the Intifada!” and “There is Only One Solution: Intifada Revolution!” The recent crimes against Jews in Washington, D.C. and Boulder, Colorado prove that slogans are not harmless. Both assailants celebrated with calls to “Free, free Palestine!” Far from fleeing the crime scene, they confessed instantly: “I did this for Gaza.”

The recent crimes against Jews in Washington, D.C. and Boulder, Colorado prove that slogans are not harmless.

In their movie, they were the good guys. They half expected knighthood by the President of Harvard.

We’ve been here before. Anticipating the Holocaust, European Jews joined Betar as a post-biblical Jewish fighting force. By displaying the will to defend the Jewish people, they set the course for other militia — the Irgun and the Stern Group — to recapture their ancestral homeland. 

Responding to increased dangers for Jews in crime-ridden urban areas — especially New York in the 1960s — a Jewish Defense League was mobilized with as many as 15,000 who made occasional use, when necessary to defend Jews, of baseball bats and martial arts.

Nowadays, some Jews rightly feel that if her IDF training with Krav Maga led Gal Gadot to become Wonder Woman, it might be a more worthy physical fitness regimen than spin classes.

Self-reliance is far better than what passes for Jewish leadership these days. Spineless elected officials. Self-appointed guardians of gates flung wide open by the “leaders” of weak and insecure institutions. Each has left incriminating fingerprints on woke ideologies that incubated the revival of all this anti-Jewish hate.

Rank and file Jews fared no better. Deluded and foolishly working up a sweat, pushing to the front of the line, chanting and pumping fists in Pride Parades, the Women’s March, and Black Lives Matter protests. Desperately seeking inclusion in the mythical Social Activists Hall of Fame. Do they now finally realize that they marched in solidarity with people who would never stoop to stand for Jews?

It’s high noon, which means it’s high time to surrender the feel-good fairy dust of tikkun olam and embrace the hard-bitten historical reality of the O.K. Corral. 

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His latest book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”