Yom Kippur and 9/11, each year twinned like towers of grief and mourning, give the Days of Awe a special awesomeness, especially in New York — where the Twin Towers once stood, and where 1.8 million Jews live, the largest number in the United States, comprising nearly 25% of American Jewry.

Colleges and universities are back for the Fall semester, but when it comes to the rising swells of antisemitism that has overtaken the campus green as of late, it’s never too early to issue report cards. Failing grades are nearly everywhere, with some of the top schools managing to attract the most fashionable Jew-haters.

I don’t know about you, but if I hear one more person, politician, or legal analyst (I am one such person) say the word “indictment,” I am going to file a lawsuit. I am not sure who I’m suing yet, but be prepared to receive a cease-and-desist letter from my attorney.

Finally, a movie about two Jews facing off in a war of ambitions, petty rivalries and contrasting moral absolutes—with actual wars in the background! (“Schindler’s List,” after all, is a film about two Nazis.)

Pick your brand of antisemitism. Go ahead. Nowadays there are plenty of varieties from which to choose. Jew-hatred comes in many sizes, shapes, and colors—a vast cornucopia of contempt. It’s positively dizzying.

If you despise Jews, this must be your heyday.

Here’s a joke: “A Jew, a Black and a Hispanic walk into a bar . . . association . . . ”

It’s not really a joke, but rather a colorful way of describing the composition of liberal Justices on the Supreme Court, as embodied by Madame Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in order of seniority.zT

There is a stealth civil war taking place within the American Jewish community. Don’t worry. Most American Jews don’t know about it and have no intention taking sides or firing a shot. Hearts and minds aren’t involved either. It’s more like a cold war of complacency.

REMEMBER those saner, less divisive and demonizing days when the word “bi-partisan” didn’t suggest something sexual?

You probably can’t. If you’re a Democrat, and favor the party’s far left “Occupy Wall Street” fringe, with its ideological fixations on sexual identity and gender fluidity—where all the world’s problems disappear if we simply did a better job mastering pronoun usage and embracing a more expansive definition of reproductive freedom (not only abortion rights, but the liberation of the male womb)—you would be forgiven for mistakenly assuming that bi-partisan has something to do with political accommodation and compromise.

The poker table of American politics now officially has no limits. Anything goes. Bet whatever you wish. It won’t matter: The house never loses, unless it’s the White House.

We’re having yet another crisis in American confidence. The dashboard of our democracy always seems to be flashing red. Do our institutions actually work? We’re long out of warranty, so some reassurance would be nice.

Don’t bet on it.

In the languid Deep South in the year 1913, an energetically nervous, former Brooklyn Jew, Leo Frank, skipped out on the Confederate Memorial Day Parade and went to work at the pencil factory he managed, instead. Among Atlantans, a mere 50 years after the War of Northern Aggression, even relocated Yankees were expected to mark the solemn day with respect.

New York City has always been a metropolis of menace. The Irish gangs of Five Points, the Italian and Odessa Mafioso, the Chinese Triads, the Son of Sam.

Those of a certain age can still recall that blighted urban era of 1960s and 1970s. Entering Central Park—at specific times, and at several entry points—was a high-risk venture. Neighborhoods and areas that would one day become fashionably hip—SoHo, Alphabet City, Tribeca, the East Village, the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, even Times Square—were unfailingly avoided at all cost.

Israel just celebrated its jubilee anniversary — 75 years of modern statehood. Yet, not unlike the way near octogenarians are shamefully neglected, few paid much attention to Israel’s special birthday — including many Jews. 

The party atmosphere was manifestly absent. Perhaps no one wanted to risk being photobombed while Zionists blew out candles. Indeed, with such sparse well-wishers, even “Happy Birthday” went unsung. A conflicted diamond anniversary was very much a dud.

Whether under some illusion of tribal invincibility, or perhaps simply obtuse to the realities around them, it doesn’t require any special clairvoyance to realize that the world is burning and too many American Jews are standing around fiddling with violins — and I mean the bouncy, and not mournful kind.

Another year lacking in levity, and soon another unleavened Passover will be behind us, too. The calendar has become a cruel joke of anti-climactic moments.

Three years ago, Passover coincided with the early days of a pandemic. Millenia later, a new plague had made a laughingstock out of locusts. This modern-day outbreak was especially harsh. The Angel of Death visited not first-born Egyptians, but people of all religions and nationalities, especially the elderly and those with co-morbidities and pulmonary problems. The bread of affliction became an omen of far more severe deprivations. (Ironically, there was a matzo shortage.)

There’s a lot of talk these days about progressive prosecutors who seem to be acting like defense attorneys in refusing to indict certain criminals in the name of racial equity. They’ve decided to give marginalized racial groups a pass, which I suppose is preferable to indiscriminately arresting and incarcerating Jews, Asians, Indians and white people in order to achieve a prison population more representative of America.

IF a marketplace of ideas truly exists with rational actors serving as discerning consumers, then, as we have been assured by free speech absolutists, good ideas will cancel out bad ones. If that’s true of how this marketplace works in practice, then how can the resurgence of Nazism be explained? These ideas should have been flushed away with the Fuhrer. And yet pernicious attitudes about racial superiority and Jewish sub-humanity are still being peddled in far too many circles.

The Academy Awards is soon upon us. One film that will not be walking away with a large Oscar haul is Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon.” (It is nominated for three awards, none in major categories.) That came as a surprise, given the box office and critical success of his last film, “La La Land,” the size of “Babylon’s” budget, and the attractiveness and appeal of its cast, which included Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.

It’s President’s Day in America, which, for reasons having perhaps something to do with slumbering patriotism, has long been associated with mattress sales. This year, however, there’s a real fear that America’s friend, Israel, is in danger of putting its democracy to bed.

WE are living in an age of widespread agitation and an all-encompassing aversion to rise above it all. Nothing can be let go—especially bygones. Olive branches must be burned. Meeting adversaries half-way is too far to travel. And living to fight another day is no better than abject surrender. Living to fight, in fact, is all there ever is.

Okay, by a show of hands: Who doesn’t have classified documents in his or her garage or sock drawer? Come on. Be honest. Surely someone reading this is hoarding a keepsake from the Eisenhower administration, stashed away in the attic. Better check, because you might be in violation of the Espionage Act. It seems that anyone who is anyone, and even a few nobodies, possibly have state secrets with classified markings and fuzzy provenance.