Scripture tells us that all the righteous of the world have a share in the time to come.

With Israel under constant rocket attack from terrorists and their sponsors, it sometimes feels to a Jew like we are alone in the world. Bob Dylan in his classic, Neighborhood Bully, wrote an ode to the Jews of Israel which is as current today as when it was written. The second verse of the song reads:

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive

He’s criticized and condemned for being alive

He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin

He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in

He’s the neighborhood bully.

With American streets and universities filled with sympathizers and enablers of terrorists who drink at the trough of Jewish blood, it is easy to forget one’s perspective and even to become paranoid. “Even paranoids have enemies” is the reply that Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir is said to have made to Henry Kissinger during the 1973 Sinai talks when he accused Israel’s leader of being paranoid. Kissinger trusted the arabs who days later prepared to launch their war of annihilation against Israel.

A related story about the meeting between the Jewish Prime Minister and the assimilated Jewish Secretary of State Henry Kissinger occurred when President Nixon first met Prime Minister Meir. The President bragged to Meir, “We also have a Jewish foreign minister.” At the time, Israel’s foreign minister was the eloquent and literate former South African Abba Eban. Meir quipped to Nixon, “Yes, but the only difference is that ours can speak English.”

Perhaps most worrisome to American Jews are seeing roads blocked, campuses shut down and weak American leadership in opposition to attacks on the Jewish people here and abroad. Wearing a kippah in public, or tzitzit, that dangle from the garb of an observant Jewish man, can be dangerous.

The American Jewish community, around 2% of the total national population, is particularly vulnerable in those parts of the country where there are very small Jewish populations. Statistics, well documented by law enforcement demonstrate that the American Jew is by far the greatest target of discrimination, including acts of violence against the Jewish community.

Thank goodness no one targets the Chinese community because of China’s attempt to annihilate the Muslim population in Western China. No one attacks, to any significant degree, Muslims for the incredible and ongoing 10-year Muslim genocide against Black Christians and Animists in Central Africa. Yet somehow, Israel’s attempt to survive as a nation in a sea of raw sewage is met with billboards, denial of job opportunities, verbal assaults, and violence. Today a Jewish individual in this country has to be well educated and knowledgeable to refute the frequent assaults coming from a variety of sources, sometimes even distorted alleged Jewish people like Bernie Sanders and George Soros.

One could easily become depressed at the state of what it means to be Jewish in the United States, and particularly Europe, not to mention the Middle East. Of course, Jews have been driven out of the Middle East and North Africa entirely. Almost a million Jews have had to flee of variety of Arab countries, including Iran, for Israel or any country that would take them in as a result of racist and genocidal policies lodged against the Jewish people.

At times the scenario for the Jewish community, far less than one-tenth of the world’s population, is so bleak that it seems there is no hope. Several times in history the leaders of Judaism have considered closing down the Jewish community entirely. When the Romans under Titus and Hadrian killed more than a million Jews, the first true Holocaust, there were rabbinical authorities that convened on the question as to whether there was just too much suffering involved in being a Jew. This occurred again during the Christian Crusades, the expulsion from Spain, and the European Holocaust fomented by Nazi, Germany. Those threats as to whether to shutdown the practice of Judaism fortunately were repudiated.

There are bright spots among this terrible history, however. At Yad Vashem, there is the Boulevard of the Righteous Gentiles. Along that avenue leading to the memorial buildings, are the names of holy and pure members of other faiths who rose up to save Jewish lives, sometimes at a great risk to their own lives.

In the last year since Black Saturday, October 7, 2023, I have been surprised, impressed, and greatly moved by the many phone calls, emails, and statements made directly to me by people who understand and appreciate the plight of the Jewish people and Israel in general. Strangers have come up to me in the grocery store, at Lowe’s, in the streets, or have called me on the phone or sent handwritten messages showing a great deal of understanding concerning what is really going on in the war to exterminate Israel and the difficulty that causes the Jewish community worldwide.

One of the people who cleans our offices stopped me on several occasions to talk to me about how my family is doing in Israel. He has shown incredible and immense knowledge of the geopolitics concerning Israel’s plight. He obviously has read, listened, and learned to a greater extent than many of our political leaders. Not too long ago I was stopped on the street by a former city official who likewise demonstrated a great deal of knowledge and sensitivity. The list of people is too numerous to mention. I have given a number of talks at colleges, universities, and high schools about my life as a Jewish trial lawyer and what the First Amendment’s freedom of expression really means. In all of those venues, I have been well received, listened to patiently, and treated with respect.

What most impresses me is that anyone who makes even a mild attempt to read or to listen to well balanced and fair media, soon arrives at the conclusion that Israel is being attacked by an overwhelming force of terrorists, has a right to defend itself, and that the Jewish people in general have taken a beating on the world stage which they do not deserve. People who inform themselves get it.

This is my attempt to thank all of those good people of our community, our state, the nation, and the world who are not duped by those who speak for terrorists and support the annihilation of the Jewish people here and abroad. Thank you to those friends and people I do not even know who speak up for what is right, decent, and proper. May G-d bless you and your families in this Jewish New Year with health, happiness, and peace.

Clifford A. Rieders is a board-certified trial advocate in Williamsport.