The doldrums of December took on new meaning this year—most especially for ultra-Orthodox Jews. Holiday cheer was replaced by holiday fear, and the Festival of Lights was thrown into total darkness.

The biblical Jews who were in bondage in Egypt would have been surprised to hear the commotion—by both non-Jews, and more astoundingly, by Jews themselves—in the immediate response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order that makes the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VI consistent with the State Department’s working definition of anti-Semitism, which itself was adopted by 31 countries. And that definition includes, among other things, “denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination” and claiming that the “State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

Regardless of how Jewish Americans feel about U.S. President Donald Trump—whether they view him as a menace to democracy (I do), or whether they feel deep gratitude to him as a defender of the Jewish state (I do)—one thing is certain: Tiny though Jews may be in number, their undying loyalty to the Democratic Party, coupled with the disproportionate imprint they are having on these impeachment proceedings, is both a perfect storm and a winning recruiting pitch for anti-Semites everywhere.

With the alt-right’s nighttime, torchlit march on Charlottesville, where chants of “Jews will not replace us!” could be heard, and the disruption of European soccer matches by neo-Nazis thriving across the continent, Nazis — the original brownshirts, not the modern-day wannabes — have reentered the public imagination. And with that, so, too, has the idea of vigilante justice.