The defining value of many American Jews is "Tikkun Olam."
That it is the purpose of Jews to "repair the world" is taken from a once obscure passage in the Talmud.
Our role, as found in the Torah, is only superficially similar. In the Book of Isaiah 49:6, we are to be "a light unto the nations."
In a key sense, these are 180 degrees opposite. "A light onto the nations" is leading by example. "Repair the world" is fixing the world — by litigation, by legislation, by force.
The kibbutz and communism are fundamentally identical other than for the above distinction.
The Torah is remarkably careful in its choice of words and use of language. The Talmud not always. Many think Tikkun Olam our greatest virtue. A few think it our greatest flaw.
It can be noble, of course, to repair the world. Wilberforce, for instance — the British ended slavery in 1833.
With a moral certitude similar to that of Wilberforce, over the past hundred years, organized American Jewry has been involved in Tikkun Olam. Prime among these was the push to liberalize immigration policy. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 established the national origins quota system, placing severe limitations on immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.
In August 1953, Congressman Emmanuel Celler and Senator Herbert Lehman simultaneously introduced bills to repeal the policy. By this point, however, repeal would be of nil practical benefit to the Jewish community. It was at once too little and too late. Most of European Jewry were lost in the Holocaust; the remainder were trapped behind the iron curtain. Language in the bills revealed a purpose more ambitious than the parochial. It would replace the national origins quotas with a system that would have put immigration from all parts of the world under a unified non-discriminatory basis. The bills would remove the stigma of racism from American immigration.
The bills had no hope of passage. They did not make it out of committee.
Independent of these efforts, Senator John F. Kennedy identified immigration liberalization as his key policy item. On June 29, 1955, JFK sent a letter to then–Senate majority leader Lyndon Baines Johnson that the Democrat party must pursue immigration reform if it was to have any appeal in the large cities of the North.
Seeing a common interest, in 1958, the ADL approached Kennedy to write a book outlining his views. He produced A Nation of Immigrants, which, like the Celler and Lehman bills, called for the elimination of the National Origins quota system.
Kennedy made immigration reform a high-priority issue in his 1960 presidential campaign, pledging that a Democrat administration would act to eliminate discrimination based on national origin. The bill was shepherded through the Senate by Edward Kennedy and, following John Kennedy's assassination, signed by Johnson.
Thomas Sowell argues that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. When the British ended slavery, it was by compensating slave owners. The cost was 40 percent of the government's expenditure that year. The debt was not retired until 2015.
What of Hart-Celler? What were the tradeoffs?
First, on the American standard of living. Between 1965 and 2024, there have been 76 million immigrants. This number does not include descendants.
Quantity has a quality all its own. An unrecognized effect of mass immigration has been on housing. The cost of a home, adjusted for inflation, has nearly doubled, placing homeownership outside the reach of most Americans.
In 1960, by the age 30, 52 percent of Americans had married and owned a home. By 2025, it was just 12 percent.
Second, millions of good people have come to America under Hart-Celler, but the numbers don't lie. The electorate that voted for Zohran Mamdani in New York is largely Hart-Celler — American citizens, but with a Hamas tinge. America, in the very near future, will have a foreign policy hostile to Israel.
Third regards antisemitism. Prominent elements of the American Jewish political class were responsible for promoting immigration reform. Their efforts, however, were stillborn.
The passage of the Hart-Celler was overwhelmingly Kennedy and his entourage. But to much of the American public, it is Jews who are responsible for white replacement.
The Jewish establishment wasn't being sinister and malevolent. Within its liberal "Tikkun Olam" mindset, it believed it was taking a stand on behalf of America against racism. National origins, however, are not immoral. The Kibbutz restricted itself to Jews, as does Israel's immigration policy. To do otherwise would be suicide.
When the British Parliament abolished slavery, the solution was opposed by not a few abolitionists, who out of high principles considered it unconscionable to compensate slaveholders yet not compensate the enslaved. Wiser heads prevailed.
They did not prevail here.
Theodore White was the most respected contemporary historian and journalist of the Kennedy era. He called Hart-Celler "noble, revolutionary, and probably the most thoughtless of the many acts of the Great Society."
Between 1880 and 1929, more than 22 million people with a work ethic came to America, but lifelong subsidies and welfare may attract a different quality of immigrant.
Occam's razor holds that the simplest explanation is usually the best. The quality and quantity of immigrants is a function of political interests. George H.W. Bush championed the Immigration Act of 1990, expanding legal immigrants to 700,000 per year. This works for Corporate America. So too does the H-1B visa program. The Democrat party encourages illegal immigration in the millions. This cements their demographic future.
But many, in white replacement, see an ongoing Jewish conspiracy. Nick Fuentes sees us engaged in payback for destruction of the Second Temple. Europeans (whites) are Rome, and revenge is a dish best served cold.
Tikkun Olam continues.
Organized by HIAS in 2025, 1,100 rabbis signed on to a letter to Congress to reject any curtailment of immigration rights. "Do not oppress the stranger." But 3,000 did not. We may not be as far left as we are labeled.
Nonetheless, our communal institutions and organizations have put us front and center. We are perceived as the arrowhead, the tip of the spear, of mass migration.
Barbara Lerner Spectre epitomizes the attitudes of much of our institutional elite. She openly accepts the tradeoff — "Jews will be resented because of our leading role." She is being optimistic. A people being speared may be more than merely resentful.
"Stab in the back" is a canard from another time, another place. It is conceivable that we are living on borrowed time. Our national debt ($40 trillion) on a comparative basis exceeds that of Germany in the 1920s. There is a meme widespread on the internet: Weimar conditions bring Weimar solutions.
From the Jewish perspective, there is no substantive difference between a Nazi and a Nazi sympathizer. The Nazi celebrates the Holocaust; the sympathizer is indifferent. From the perspective of many Americans, there is no substantive difference between the leftist and the liberal. The left celebrates white replacement. The liberal is indifferent.
Catholic Charities and the Lutheran and Episcopalian churches are far more involved than us in enabling immigration. But our community leaders have made us the face.
This is not our country to give away. There are other people here. People with names like Laken Riley. Tikkun Olam.
Image: hendricjabs via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
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