In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and the vile antisemitism that has since surfaced in our beloved American diaspora and elsewhere, many Jewish individuals—my wife included—feel the call to get a gun as a means of self-defense. You hear about it in shuls, and read about it in Jewish magazines and newspapers. Even in the hallowed precincts of Torah-towns like Lakewood and Passaic, New Jersey, and Monsey, New York, one can hear just above a whisper: We need to get a gun.
Even those who won’t actually get a gun license or ever shoot a pistol—Jewish urbanites, the high-rise dwellers of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Miami Beach, or Lincolnwood, Illinois—feel somehow, somewhere in that (often disavowed) place where human aggression resides: I’d sure like to feel the cool comfort of a 9 mm Glock right now. Some have even advocated for a new Jewish armed-defense organization.
All this talk reminds me of a lesson I learned in high school in the late 1970s. At that time, the Jewish Defense League was ascendant, along with its slogan: “Never Again.” The group’s logo is still instantly recognizable: a meaty, masculine fist against a background of the Star of David.
