President Trump’s Cogent Advice to Us, and One Way We Can Heed It
#1301 December 21, 2025
What’s our strongest response to current murderous attacks upon us as Jews? Australia’s own Jews and President Trump are showing us the way – proudly openly manifest our lifestyle as American Jews. I invite you to consider doing so including through participating in my website’s Grassroots American Jewish Street.
Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent ran an ambiguous poll question this week:
“Do you believe the Chanukah shooting in Australia will impact how you display your Judaism in public moving forward?”
When I voted, the count was 73% no, 27% yes. But did that poll question ask whether we’d henceforth be less publicly open in our Jewish observances, commencing this week with hiding the light of our Hanukkah candles under a bushel, or whether we as grassroots American Jews, taking Bondi Beach and other attacks on us as Jews as a thrown down gauntlet, would now still more openly manifest our Jewishness? Sidestepping that poll question’s ambiguity, I voted “no” in the sense that I’d continue unchanged the course that I’m following.
Whether we consciously acknowledge it or not, we live, all of us, on our grassroots American Jewish street, and that’s where Americans and others view us. There’s a grassroots Australian Jewish street too, and here’s how The Jewish Voice Wednesday (12/17/25, After Sydney Massacre, How Australian Jews Are Celebrating Chanukah) reported on it in the wake of shootings that murdered 15, including rabbis, a 10-year-old girl and 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, and wounded 40 at a gathering commemorating a two-millennia-old Jewish holiday:
“More than 1,000 people gathered at the Bondi Beach Pavilion in Sydney on Monday evening, the dawn of the second night of Chanukah, telegraphing to one and all that darkness would never be allowed to drown out the light.”
A pride-inspiring message from ground zero to the world and to us, but the message addressed specifically to us grassroots American Jews this week was President Trump’s. After Sydney Massacre, Trump Urges Jews to ‘Celebrate Chanukah Proudly,’ ran World Israel News’ headline Monday, followed by this sub-head:
“President Trump tells US Jews to be proud following deadly mass shooting attack on a Chanukah celebration in Sydney, Australia”
“Celebrate proudly – be proud of who you are,” the President told us.
One Way To Go About Doing This
Study this screenshot of a webpage – ok, mine:
Celebrate Our Jewish Street links to pages offering places for me to you’re your annotated photos of us grassroots U.S. Jews commemorating American and Jewish holidays, milestone events like bar and bat mitzvahs, and celebrating vacations with Jewish twists. For a couple of months now I’ve invited you to join me by emailing me photos and text to post in your name, if you will, on our “street.” So far you can see Israeli Steve & Michal Kramer’s moving account of their during-the-Gaza-war Passover Seder, my own kids’ long-ago bar mitzahs, and a photo-strewn recollection of my half-century fishing trips to Quebec on which I’ve done a little Jewish engineering. Email me photos and stuff!
Blogs, Debates, Events, Action Now link to four pages. Independent of the policies and positions of any organization, Blogs gives us a place where we just plain grassroots American Jews can opine on any side [open to comments, which I moderate for abuses] of what my website’s name – confrontingjewishissues.com – professes. “Any side” is exemplified by the first of posted Debates – between me and a journalist friend who sees inevitability of “two-states.” Events starts with an award presentation at this year’s inspiring Philly ZOA gala. Room for more. Action Now links to sites offering pro bono aid to grassroots U.S. Jews, so far including encountering of antisemitism in education and sharpening of pro-Israel advocacy skills. We’ve got five bloggers so far. If blogging’s in you, come join us. When the spirit moves you, you’d just email me text or Word docs I’ll post in your name. And if blogging’s not in your grassroots Jewish blood, commenting on blogging is. Fill out the comment box below blog and other posts, and subject to my moderating (for abuse, not point-of-view) they’ll appear on the site and initiate threads.
Israel for Us Grassroots links first to Israelis Steve & Michal Kramer’s hikings and grassroots tours all over Israel, mixing nature, history and archeology, modern site-seeing and current events, movingly told. And then there’s samples from my obsession that if those of us indifferent (or worse) toward our Jewish people’s homeland would just sample inspiring Israel books (the parrot’s and my private library has over a thousand), they’d start feeling more deeply supportive.
And finally Places on Our Grassroots Street has, among other stuff (go see) pages for organizations relating to our grassroots, with links to their sites. Are you a macher in such an organization? Email me about doing a page for it. Each week hundreds (sometimes through forwarding many more) of grassroots Jewish families receive this newsletter with links to our site. Let us help your organization reach them.
Bottom Line
President Trump and the Jewish grassroots of Australia are right. We have to openly proudly manifest our lifestyle as American Jews. One way among many is to come out and parade a little on our Grassroots American Jewish Street – being part of a grassroots-driven website, confrontingjewishissues.com.
A message to Jerry’s grassroots followers:
Jerry is sensitizing us to the subtle language of those who are either stupid, ignorant, or intentionally in their disdain of Jews or Israel. I must admit that it is not my strength, but we can practice.
Last week, I heard a BBC report concerning Israel. Regarding Hebron, the presenter stated, “Jews claim God gave them the land.” Even those with a passing knowledge of the Torah agree. However, many others schooled in a secular, liberal, post-modern, Nietzschean universe, this is heard as a negative. However, if the presenter said, “Both the Torah and the Koran connect Jews to the (Holy) Land.” Then their complaint is not particularized. The presenter continued to state regarding Jerusalem, “It is where Mohammed ascended to Heaven.” The intent was to indicate a claim. If the presenter said instead, “This is where Mohammed flew from Mecca on a winged horse to the farthest mosque (Al Quds) before ascending Heaven”. The phasmagoric nature of the Muslim claim to the land is exposed. btw: Umer conquered Jerusalem five years after Mohammed died. His comment about what he saw of what was the ‘Temple” was that it was a garbage dump.
We must first educate ourselves, then be sensitive to the words of others, and then we can respond.
Historian Parkes on pp. 167-168 of “Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine” compared the historical foundations of Jewish, Christian and Muslim religiously-based relationships to what he termed “The Land.” Parkes wrote that the association of Jews with The Land is a historical fact, whether one believes that association to be the result of a divine decision or not, that David and his long line had dwelt in Jerusalem, indelibly branding upon it “City of David,” and that Jesus had prayed, preached, suffered and died in Jerusalem, that these are historical facts, not Jewish and Christian faith-based beliefs. But the association of Muhammed with the country rests on willingness to believe in the night journey on the winged horse to Jerusalem and his ascent from there to heaven. And the different versions of Omar’s post-Muhammed encounter with Sophronius concur that he asked to be shown the site of Solomon’s Temple, which he himself helped clean of the refuse that had been heaped upon it and on which was erected the Mosque of Omar.