I'm crushed to see my American orthodox Jew community supporting Trump

In college, I once read an airline magazine featuring business advice from Donald Trump. He advised always wearing a tie to work, reasoning that those beneath you in the office will think you're important and those above you will consider you a go-getter.

I took this advice to heart when I started graduate school, deciding that sartorial seriousness might counterbalance my penchant for outrageous comments. It didn't work quite as intended.

I fooled no one, likely cause I typically wore ties I'd inherited from my pediatrician father, and recreations of children drawings on your ties is not exactly impressive. 

I look back at Trump's advice now, and it seems the lesson is quintessentially Trump: It’s complete artifice, style lacking substance. The lesson is to get people to value you for your looks, rather than your behaviour. 

I can't help but think of falsehood and artifice when I think about how the majority of American orthodox Jews support Trump. While I no longer am a part of that world, it's where I come from, and where my family is. Emotionally, it still feels like home, so it crushes me that an August poll of Florida showed orthodox Jews willing to vote for Trump over Hillary by a three to one margin.

When I first saw that poll, I was flabbergasted. I thought Trump was in direct opposition to many of the fundamental lessons I had been raised with. The most over-taught lesson of my childhood was the Holocaust. "Never again" came up over and over, in different community and education settings.

We were taught Martin Niemöller’s poem about Nazis coming for other groups and remaining silent, powerfully ending with, "Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me," and the message was that when a politician comes out and publicly demonises other groups, it’s a threat to all minorities.

Yet, at the moment of truth, when a major party nominee broadly stereotypes and scapegoats, calling Mexicans "rapists" and casting aspersion on the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, the orthodox world (with some notable exceptions) remains mostly silent.

I have never felt so personally estranged from my home community, and many friends express the same sentiment.

Perhaps most incredibly, in July, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, one of the people running his campaign, defended Trump against accusations of prejudice by citing his own family’s experience with the Holocaust as a reason we should trust his judgment that Trump is not anti-Semitic.

When the Holocaust is used to defend the most racist major party candidate in decades, when Jews openly feel comfortable aligning with a candidate who tacitly accepts the support of white supremacy, I cannot help but feel like so much of my past was a lie. 

One of Trump’s few virtues, in my mind, is his unique ability to expose the emptiness lying underneath those who shroud themselves in principle. It bring to mind Yeats’ line that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."

Ted Cruz denounced Trump in the harshest terms, refusing to even endorse him at the Republican convention, and yet ultimately, worried about re-election in 2018, he endorsed him. Jerry Falwell Jr, one of the leaders of the Christian right, admits on TV he would vote for Trump even if allegations of sexual assault are true. 

Likewise, it now appears the strict morality the rabbis of my childhood imparted was purely situational, something that is important in most occasions but fungible if it means defeating Hillary Clinton, and thinking of that brings a deep sadness, a personal dislocation. It means a deep reconsideration of my own past and a deep alienation I honestly had never thought I’d encounter.

It’s not just his language getting a pass that bothers me, but his content also runs counter to the ideals I was taught as a child.

Yet another lesson given to me ad nauseam in my education was the importance of refuge. On July 4, at the camp I attended, the rabbi would proudly speak of his love of America for giving Jews a shelter when needed in the 20th century.

Yet, when I return to the community of my youth, I typically hear Muslims smeared at large, making them obviously unworthy of refuge, and I rarely hear sympathy for the economic and safety considerations that lead millions of people to cross.

Instead, I typically hear how things are different this time, the speakers blissfully ignorant that Jews who entered the country in the early 20th century were smeared as unassimilable, foreigners who will bring with them a dangerous ideology, in this case socialism, and therefore cannot be given entry. Indeed, rather than using our history as a source of empathy, it is ignored on the altar of politics. 

This past summer, I visited a family who works in a Jewish summer camp. While spending time with my nephews' bunk, one of the campers began spontaneously singing a ditty entitled, "Build that wall," repeating with glee the Trump words I am guessing he heard adult role models discuss approvingly. I am sure the kid did not appreciate the historical irony of what he was singing, but I do not give the same light judgment to those old enough to know better.

The odd part about all of this is Trump is not "good for the Jews". His campaign has received strong support from white supremacists, and when I hear Trump complain about international bankers, it scares me to know many people hear that and assume he’s talking about Jews.

Similarly, during the second debate, when he twice, unnecessarily brought up Sydney Blumenthal, it sounded to me like obviously dog-whistling to his anti-Semitic supporters, and while I don’t know if it was, I do know it was the first time I have ever felt like a major American politician was calling out Jews.

It was unsettling to say the least, and it gave me greater sympathy for the other groups he has racistly attacked throughout his campaign. It seems as if Niemöller’s message is no less true today than it was 70 years ago.

Also read: Donald Trump's locker-room talk is uncomfortably familiar in India