If not now, when? If not you, who?
This is a small gesture, but one I believed needed to be made.
When Jews around the world were threatened on the “Day of Jihad” October 13, the famous 1946 statement by Pastor Martin Niemoller came to mind. It’s a powerful statement about guilt, responsibility, passivity, and indifference:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
In the midst of resurgent anti-Semitism on America’s campuses, with Jewish students, staff, and faculty threatened at places like Columbia, Harvard, and Penn. At a time when tearing down posters of kidnapped children is considered expression of a valid political position, and physical threats are considered legitimate, Niemoller’s verse seems unfortunately as relevant today as when it was penned.
I visited our Hillel Center on that day to express my support for threatened Jewish students, staff, and faculty. As a non-Jew, I asked the rabbi about the propriety of sharing the burden of threat by wearing a yarmulke, a quite visible expression of support. He said it was and is appropriate. He gave me one, and thus I wear it proudly.
I encourage friends of liberty and of civilizational values everywhere to express support for Israel in its battle for survival.