Rabbi Shai Cherry
Especially in the Jewish community, comparisons to Nazis are the gold standard. Once you go for the rhetorical jugular, you’ll have nothing more lethal in your arsenal. So, my advice is, increase your knowledge of history, and while you’re at it, beef up your vocabulary.
In 2018, Israel passed the nation-state law recognizing the obvious — that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. No problem. But the gratuitous demotion of Arabic from an official language to one with special status raised the issue of Arab rights in general, about which the nation-state law is silent (unlike Israel’s Declaration of Independence).
Moreover, on the surface, it seems that Diaspora Jews are accorded more consideration by the nation-state law than Israeli Arabs.
It reminds me of the 1935 Nazi Nuremberg Laws that legally marginalized German Jews and stripped them of citizenship. Are the Nuremberg Laws what we are talking about when we talk about Nazis?
Of late, masked American agents have arrested legal immigrants and deported them with no due process. “Four of the six Bhutanese refugees who were taken into custody by ICE despite living legally in Pennsylvania have now been deported, a Dauphin County official said late Friday,” reported the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 29, 2025.
It reminds me of what happened to my teacher’s teacher when, in 1938, the Gestapo barged into his Frankfurt flat, arrested him and then deported him back to his native Poland. Fortunately, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was able to reconstruct the nearly completed manuscript he was forced to abandon in his Frankfurt flat. Are illegal arrests and deportations what we are talking about when we talk about Nazis?
The Nuremberg Laws, alas, were modeled on the Jim Crow system of racial segregation in the American south. Not all racial or ethnic supremacists should be labeled as Nazis even though Nazis were proud to identify themselves as Aryan supremacists.
The United States does deport the greatest number of people, but deportations are commonplace in Europe. What is so distressing about recent deportations is that these individuals were in the country legally, and they were essentially kidnapped by government agents because they were suspected of being involved in legal activities that our current administration finds objectionable. Their visas were revoked without due process, they were spirited away and there are questions about the administration ignoring judicial orders concerning deportation. But that’s still not what we’re talking about when we talk about Nazis.
The Nazis invaded Soviet-occupied Poland in June 1941. Those are the Nazis we’re talking about. It’s true that the Wannsee Conference didn’t take place until January 1942, but that conference was about planning, logistics and efficiency. The goal of exterminating every single Jew in Europe began in earnest with mobile killing units, Einsatzgruppen, prowling their newly invaded territory for Jews. They were to be shot, or asphyxiated, or burned, or bludgeoned, or buried alive. Only later were they to be gassed. Those are the Nazis we’re talking about.
When one uses the label “Nazi” to describe a generic autocrat or fascist, it cheapens the coin of the realm. It’s not wrong to say that Nazi tactics are being used by the Trump administration in their flagrant disregard of due process. But such tactics are not unique to the Nazis. Stifling dissent from media, academics, attorneys and public protests — that’s a fascist tactic. Piping auto exhaust into a van filled with Jews, setting ablaze a synagogue filled with Jews, marching Jews into the gas chambers — those are Nazi tactics.
Jews have not fared well under fascist regimes. Many American Jews still support the present administration because they believe it’s good for the Jews. One problem with autocrats is that their actions are based on their perceived self-interest. When it was no longer in Nazi Germany’s interest to abide by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that divvied up Poland in 1939, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Allies share abiding values; parties have only interests.
Judaism has long emphasized the importance of the presumption of innocence and due process. Both are bedrock principles of Jewish jurisprudence. The Book of Deuteronomy insists that to convict anyone of a wrongdoing requires two witnesses (19:16). An anonymous legal text from the 13th century, the Book of Education, explains that sometimes passion overcomes a normally righteous person, and he falsely accuses his fellow. “Even if the accused is a total evildoer and the most common of commoners and the one accusing is the greatest sage in Israel,” there must be two witnesses. (Book of Education, Mitzvah 523).
It is true that the Nazis of 1935 and 1938 became the Nazis of 1941. But preserving the presumption of innocence and due process, as enshrined in American jurisprudence and anchored in Jewish law, regardless of anyone’s alleged offenses, will help us keep today’s fascists in the ’30s.
Shai Cherry is the rabbi of Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park.
