Despite a resolution to spend Passover in Berlin this year, a decline in my mother’s health caused us to schlep the kids across the Atlantic for a family vacation in Los Angeles. We missed celebrating our freedom with Ohel Hachidusch, but enjoyed the community seder at my mom’s current residence, Sunrise Senior Living in Studio City. When Rabbi Mitzi asked if any of the residents wanted to share a personal liberation story, there was no response. I’m not sure if the residents felt too enslaved by their circumstances to think of one or if they just wanted to move on to the beef brisket that was about to be served. During the long silence, my kids all looked at me, waiting to see if their mom would seize yet another opportunity to talk of reclaiming our Jewish roots in Germany. To the family’s relief, I decided to keep quiet.
But while I’m here I do have a chance to tell people of my frustration with the chorus of Jewish American voices calling for the Jews to flee Europe just as they fled from Egypt long ago. These pundits have such an easy fix for the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, never mind the fact that the Anti-Defamation League found a 21 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents across the U.S. in 2014. I hope European Jews will support efforts to combat anti-Semitism in the U.S. instead of urging American Jews to run away from it.
I just picked up a copy of the Jewish Journal and was surprised to see publisher and editor-in-chief Rob Eshman proclaim “Let my people stay”! Based in L.A., Eshman was writing about the Jews of Europe and argued that we need to overcome our narrative of flight and instead ask the question: “What do European Jews need to do to stay?” Eshman’s more thoughtful perspective emphasizes using the tools we have to build alliances within and beyond our Jewish communities to fight all forms of extremism. I can’t think of a better message to advance the freedom that we celebrate on Passover.
Donna Swarthout 
Jews lived in Gaul before the invention of Christianity. So Judaism is the oldest European religion in existence. The problem of Judaism in Europe originated in the Middle East, so fleeing back there is counter-intuitive. Americans tend to find everything worse in Europe than it really is. It makes them feel better.
Thank you for this comment!
You are welcome. I was just telling a few truths which are generally either unknown, or deliberately ignored. Revealing that, in various ways, including antiquity, Judaism is more European than Christianism itself, is sure to ruffle a few feathers! Yet, it is the truth. And it means, practically, that to be anti-Jewish is to be fundamentally anti-European.