JRV1294

Dershowitz was Right: “Sha Shtil Never Served Us.”  Grassroots U.S. Jews, Now, With Even Trump Deriding Our Judea-Samaria Homeland Claim, We Have To Speak Up

#1294 November 2, 2025

There’s one front in defending our Jewish people’s homeland in which we American Jews, not Israelis, must be in the forefront in claiming it’s ours, when our American President disses our claim to a core part, like calling applying sovereignty to Judea-Samaria “Israel annexing the West Bank.” 

Unaccustomed as I am to commencing my weekly diatribe with approvingly citing a Democrat, I begin this week by conveying to you Google’s reply when I asked it about “Prof. Dershowitz” and  “sha shtil”:

“Sha shtil” (or “sha’a shtil”) is a Yiddish phrase meaning “be quiet” or “remain silent”

Alan Dershowitz has famously referenced this phrase in his work, particularly in his best-selling 1991 book Chutzpah, to criticize what he perceived as a prevailing attitude among American Jews of remaining quiet, deferential, and apologetic in the face of anti-Semitism and discrimination.

Dershowitz argued that this “sha shtil” mentality had never served the Jewish community well and advocated instead for an assertive approach – which he termed “chutzpah” – in demanding fairness, standing up for oneself, and fighting back against injustice. His work encouraged a shift from a policy of quiet accommodation to one of proud, vocal self-assertion.

Prof. Dershowitz is not alone. Last Sunday, October 26, The Jewish Majority sent out an email, More Than 1,000 Rabbis Draw a Line in the Sand:

Something extraordinary happened last week. More than 1,000 rabbis from across the United States, representing the full spectrum of Jewish religious practice, joined together in a national rabbinic sign-on letter to affirm a simple but profound message: the Jewish people will not stand silently by as the type of anti-Zionism espoused by public figures like Zohran Mamdani becomes normalized in American politics….

For those who believe that erasing Jewish self-determination is a legitimate political demand, know this: you will meet a countervailing will. America’s rabbis have reminded the nation that standing for Israel’s legitimacy is not a march into war, it is a stand for the possibility of peace. They conveyed another message as well: if calls for our disappearance are normalized, the American Jewish community will respond — firmly and united.

But the threat to our Jewish homeland comes not only from its avowed enemies, but sometimes from friends inadequately appreciative of the security and Jewish significance of historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria. The land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan, is indivisibly ours. We have to have it, secure and Jewishly meaningful, not a nine-miles-wide-in-the-lowland-middle Jewish national ghetto.

And so I wrote President Trump an open letter last Monday seeking his understanding.

Hon. Donald J. Trump, President of the United States
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington DC 20500

October 27, 2025

Dear Mr. President:

I’m a MAGA Republican grassroots American Jew who just mustered the chutzpah to write a letter of complaint to the President.

I began by hoping he didn’t fully grasp the unjust double damage done by his statement “Israel will not annex the West Bank,” in one stroke denying us our homeland’s heartland in the most delegitimizing pejorative terms. I asked him to view the DVD, Route 60: The Biblical Highway, by Mike Pompeo [his first-term Secretary of State], and David Friedman [his first-term Ambassador to Israel]. I wrote that Judea and Samaria are replete with Christian and Jewish revered sites, make Israel defensible, and as Speaker Johnson just put it “belong to Israel.” I wrote that Israel is historically, legally and equitably ours, that “West Bank” was coined to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews, that Israel is applying sovereignty over what’s ours, not “annexing” another country’s lands.  I ended by hoping, after all he’d done for us, that in now denying our homeland heartland claim using these “West Bank” and “annex” pejoratives, he didn’t appreciate that he was not just stabbing us in the back but twisting the knife, and asked him to reconsider.

Now here’s where you come in, at least invited by me to come in. We grassroots U.S. Jews need a forum, independent of any organization, where we can openly debate political issues strongly affecting us, like “the two-state solution” and whether Israel applying sovereignty in Judea-Samara is “annexing the West Bank,” and where we can manifest our pride in our homeland and peoplehood through photos and text showing us proudly living our American Jewish lifestyle – celebrating holidays, bar mitzvahs, trips with Jewish themes, etc.

I’ve started such a lively illustrated forum on my website
in pages under the heading “Our Grassroots American Jewish Street.”

You live on this street, whether you promenade on it or suffer sha shtil. So email me photos & text to post of your family proudly celebrating Jewish events. Go on the site and comment, pro or con, on these weekly emails and blogging by others. My letter last week to the President is in my blog posts as #1293. Comment upon it. Or write yourself to the President. Consider becoming one of our “grassroots street” bloggers.  Now more than ever we have to stand up for Israel and us.