'Anti-Semitism Is Like a Contagious Disease': Could America Become Too Dangerous for Jews?

BRUSSELS, Belgium – America was once considered a safe haven for refugees fleeing from anti-Semitism around the globe, especially in Europe. That may be changing.

The Anti-Defamation League says the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the US rose nearly 60 percent last year alone. And Saturday's synagogue massacre must have American Jews wondering if it is becoming too dangerous for them in the US.

It's been said that when Nazi persecution of the Jews began, Jews who were pessimists went to New York. Jews who were optimists went to Auschwitz,  meaning that Jews who thought the persecution would stop, paid with their lives. One of lessons of the Holocaust for Jews has been this – when persecution begins, don't wait to leave.  

Alan Hoffman, head of The Jewish Agency, which helps Jews return to Israel, says Jews today are no longer waiting to be attacked. Simply the fear that a nation has become unsafe is enough for them to pick up and leave.

"The family says, 'If this is what the future is going to look like, I don't think that this is what I would like to see for my children,' and we see many, many young people making a decision to leave,'" Hoffman said.

Jews who are old enough to have lived through the Holocaust, like Belgian Professor Julien Klener, are asking, why is this happening to me again?

"How come the Shoah was not able to quiet down people about Jews," Klener asked. "Why didn't it disappear into the oblivion of history? Why is it still there? What have I done to deserve that?"

Anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic attacks have been a much bigger problem recently in Europe because of Muslim immigration, and because anti-Semitism has infected the European Left.

Budapest Rabbi Shlomo Koves told CBN News that Jews remain the world's chief scapegoat for blame. "There's a joke in Hungary," Koves told us. "Someone comes to a village and he asks, 'Is there anti-Semitism here?' And the other guy answers, 'No, but there's a great need for it.'"

But why did an anti-Semitic massacre like Pittsburgh happen in America?

Dr. Michael Rydelnik, professor of Jewish Studies at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and the son of Holocaust survivors, says, "Anti-Semitism is like a contagious disease that's always under the surface, and sometimes it rises up to epidemic proportions."   

Rydelnik says anti-Semitism is a global problem because the real source of it is Satan and those who hate God.

"They hate the God of Israel and so, therefore, they want to hurt him by hurting his people," Rydelnik said. "Those who love the God of Israel need to be the loudest voices in opposing it."