“Does This Swastika Clash With My Yarmulke?” — The Jared Kushner Story
Money and power don’t matter as much to me as they matter to others. They still matter, don’t get me wrong. But I’m pretty unlikely to make a major life decision based primarily on money or power. I am not going to take a job I don’t want to do just because it pays really well or gives me influence.
I am less rash than I was when I was young. When I was a younger man, I would not hesitate to invoke the sacred words of the Most Reverend Doctor Johnny Paycheck, “Take This Job And Shove It.” To be fair, I’ve worked for numerous line bosses who got themselves a brand new flat top haircut who really thought they were cool.* But as I’ve aged, I’ve realized that silly habits like “eating” and “not being homeless” are worth a little bit of sticking through a bad situation at work.
Luckily, I’ve never worked for a Nazi sympathizer. At least not a blatant one — I guess some of my bosses could have been attending Nazi rallies on the weekends, dressed in their best Rush Week ’98 attire, toting Polynesian patio accessories for some reason.
I doubt it, though. People who are foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Semites and racists tend to have a hard time keeping it a secret. They’ll slip and say something seemingly innocuous, but a good peek into their inner workings. Something like, “Jew York,” or “Why isn’t there a white history month?” or “I don’t enjoy watching Seinfeld.”
I would like to think that if I did find myself in the employ of a Nazi, I would quit the job schnell. I wouldn’t worry about the money, the power, or much else, other than moving on post haste. Easy hypothetical decision, because I’m not a walking, talking sack of excrement.
Let’s say that I’m not me. I say that I’m not me a lot, but the Authorities rarely believe me. But let’s pretend that instead of being a middle class dude, I’m rich beyond belief. Like I’ve got hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and real estate assets.
I think that if I had limitless wealth, to be totally honest, I would probably just buy a plot of land and adopt a few hundred dogs. That doesn’t have much to do with this, to be fair, but I thought you should know in case I ever hit the Powerball. But whether I use my riches for a live-in dog park or not, my tolerance for shenazigans** would be zero.
So we’ve established that irrespective of pay, I don’t want to work for a Nazi. And while I wouldn’t work for a Nazi even if quitting meant being poor for a while, I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to bounce if I was Mansa Musa in a sports coat with a Kevlar vest over it.
Now, let’s tack on some more layers. Let’s say that not only am I independently wealthy, but I’m also Jewish. And my wife converted to Judaism when she married me. And we attend temple each Shabbat, and we certainly do not roll on Shabbos. And our children are being raised Jewish.
In other words, a major part of my identity and that of my family is wrapped in being the scapegoat of the Nazis. We all would have been likely victims of the Holocaust had we been born 80 years earlier.
Starting to look like kind of a no-brainer, eh? But wait, there’s more!
What if on top of all of that — I’m very rich and my family and I are observant Jews — I am also the grandson of a Holocaust survivor who was the only member of her family to survive World War II?
This has gone from “Yeah, I don’t really want to work for a Nazi sympathizer,” to “where’s my effin’ Louisville Slugger, I’m about to go Bear Jew on my piece of shit Nazi boss.”
Well, boys and girls, we don’t have to imagine that situation. You might have figured it out by now, because I put it in the title of the article, and you’re smarter than you look. But I’ve just described the life of White House Senior Adviser and Presidential Son-In-Law Jared “Self-Hating Jew” Kushner.
Jared owns a multi-million dollar real estate company in New York, and his family is rich independently of his fortune (though his dad is in prison for white collar crimes). He’s married to Ivanka Trump, who is quite wealthy as well. Ivanka converted to Judaism when she married Jared. Their children are Jewish. The family is observant.
Jared Kushner’s grandmother, Rae Kushner, was the only member of her family to survive World War II. The Nazis seized her hometown in Poland. She was once forced by Nazi soldiers to clean up after a mass execution of intellectuals in the town square, scrubbing the blood off of the street and loading dead bodies into a truck. Eventually, she fled via train and then on foot, until she made her way to Italy. Rae Kushner stayed in an Italian refugee camp for three and a half years awaiting permission to immigrate to America.
It’s not as though “the Holocaust” is just something a young Methodist named Jared learned about as a section in a chapter in a book in 6thgrade Social Studies in Iowa, where he never met a Jew. No, Jared is about as connected to the actual horror of the Holocaust as a 36-year-old native-born American could be.
So far, Jared has placed his desire for power and access ahead of his faith and family. He is actively making a choice each day when he comes to work to further the work of Donald Trump. Donald Trump isn’t just a blowhard or a TV star who is out of his element. He’s both of those things, but worse, he’s a Nazi sympathizer.
Jared is actively choosing to advance the work of a Nazi sympathizer over the memory of his grandmother’s tragic story, over his faith and the faith of his people, over his wife, and over his children.
He doesn’t need the money or the power — he’ll still have both once he leaves.
So Jared, the souls of six million men, women, and children, and the soul of your very grandmother would like to know:
Why in God’s name is this a hard decision for you?
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Footnotes
* For those of you who aren’t fortunate enough to have working knowledge of the solid country gold that was coming out of the AM radio circa 1970–1985, that’s a reference to a lyric in the 1978 smash hit, “Take This Job And Shove It.”
** Shenazigans was the name of a hit sitcom in West Germany between 1972 and 1981 that followed the friendship of three Nazi waiters — Dieter, Karl, and Helmut — at a casual dining grill and bar in Baden-Baden during the Second World War. It was ahead of its time — full of sexual innuendo and double entendres.
Originally published at hittingthetrifecta.com on August 16, 2017.
