{"id":104684,"date":"2016-08-29T08:25:32","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T16:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=104684"},"modified":"2016-08-29T08:25:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T16:25:32","slug":"oped-quit-your-liberal-condescension-toward-jews-who-love-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=104684","title":{"rendered":"Op\/Ed: Quit Your Liberal Condescension Toward Jews Who Love Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forward.com<\/a>: As a Jewish immigrant from the Former Soviet Union whose family came to the United States in 1980, I\u2019ve been dismayed to see so many liberals looking down their noses at Russian Jews who support Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Writing in the Forward, Margarita Gokun Silver recently asked, \u201cHow Can Russian Jews Be So Naively in Love With Donald Trump?\u201d She suggests that we\u2019re na\u00efve, but her own view is ill-informed. Worse, it\u2019s condescending.<\/p>\n

In her essay, Gokun Silver asks this question about Russian Jewish supporters of Trump: \u201cHow can people who left their homeland to escape anti-Semitism \u2014 and whose families include victims of both the Holocaust and the Gulag \u2014 not see the signs?\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe I can provide some answers.<\/p>\n

It was because my family stuck to our Jewish roots and followed our traditions while we lived in the FSU that, in 1949, my maternal grandfather was sentenced to 10 years of Gulag camps. Later, in the mid-1950s, he was released with \u201cfull rehabilitation.\u201d But in the \u201960\u2019s and \u201970s, my father received repeated rebukes for hiring Jewish professionals, my uncle received continuous pressure from the KGB (he was a computer scientist and they wanted him to become an informer), my sister received a rejection letter from university (despite stellar grades), and my cousins and I received several physical assaults over our ethnicity. All this prompted my family to seek a better life in the U.S.<\/p>\n

And what happened when Jews from the Soviet Union arrived in the U.S.? They received an immense amount of invaluable help from the members of the American Jewish community \u2014 and faced a major cultural misunderstanding. The majority of immigrants from the FSU were not, as many American Jews expected, the simpleton Tevyes and backward Goldes who needed to be shown how to turn on the lights or how to use toilet paper. The people who immigrated were mostly professionals, with college degrees and good (although skewed) knowledge of history, arts, geography and politics. We were, and are, educated Jews.<\/p>\n

Most important, we had \u2014 and have \u2014 enough reason and good sense to evaluate political options and make informed choices out of our own preferences. Expecting us to follow a liberal agenda that\u2019s been highlighted for us is as absurd as expecting us to follow Lenin\u2019s raised hand toward the glorious Communist future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forward.com: As a Jewish immigrant from the Former Soviet Union whose family came to the United States in 1980, I\u2019ve been dismayed to see so many liberals looking down their noses at Russian Jews who support Republican presidential nominee Donald … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-right"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t