From the New York Times:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Jews, Be Wary of Trump

Bernard-Henri Lévy

THE STONE JAN. 19, 2017

… There is a law that governs the relations between the Jews and the rest of the world. That law was articulated in one form at the time of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, when the great Jewish thinker Gershom Scholem faulted Hannah Arendt for falling short of “ahavat Israel” — for showing insufficient “love of the Jewish people.”

This love is precisely what is required of an American president in dealings affecting Israel. …

I cannot claim any knowledge of Donald Trump’s “heart” or of the sincerity of his commitment to the Jewish state. But there have been indications going back decades.

One was provided by John O’Donnell, a former chief operating officer of Trump’s Atlantic City casino, who, in his 1991 book “Trumped!” quoted Trump as saying: “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

More recently, there was a 2013 tweet storm in which, desperate to show that he was “smarter” than the “overrated” Jon Stewart, Trump saw fit to rip off the mask behind which stood Jonathan Leibowitz, the Jewish name Stewart was born with.

And then, in mid-campaign, there was the meeting in which Trump told donors from the Republican Jewish Coalition: “I know why you’re not going to support me! It’s because I don’t want your money.”

These statements suggest, to say the least, a certain contempt.

More precisely, they reflect that well-known variety of contempt that, according to Freud, serves to anticipate and defend the ego against the presumed contempt of the other.

Whether the original disdain is real or imaginary matters little.

Whether Jon Stewart or the Jewish Republican donors disdained the kitschy builder with his flamboyant hair, his money, his bling and his properties, including the now world-famous Trump Tower, is obviously not the question.

The essential thing is that President Trump thinks they did, that he seems to see Jews as the caricature of the New York establishment that, for decades, took him for an agreeable but vulgar showman.

This is a perfect example of the self-defensive contempt that has so often fed anti-Semitism, with the Jews appearing, once again, as representatives of an elite that patronized him and against whom he can, now that he is in power, quietly take his revenge.

It reminds me of a story from the Talmud that illustrates this logic well.

It is the story — part history and part “aggadic” embellishment — of Rabbi Yehudah Nessia, one of the foremost figures of Jewish thought of the third century.

Rabbi Yehudah ran a school that a young Roman swineherd would pass by nearly every day. The students at the school, their heads full of knowledge and a sense of their own superiority, never missed a chance to mock and beat the pig farmer.

Years later, Rabbi Yehudah was summoned to the distant city of Caesarea Philippi, to appear before Roman Emperor Diocletian. It seemed that the emperor was full of consideration for his guest. He sent to him one of his most distinguished ambassadors and ordered that a sumptuous bath be provided to allow his guest to cleanse himself after his dusty voyage.

But Diocletian also sent his ambassador on a Friday, so that Rabbi Yehudah would be forced to travel on the Sabbath, violating the most important of commandments.

The emperor also heated the baths to such a degree that the rabbi would have been boiled to death — a fate from which the rabbi was saved by the last-minute intervention of an angel, who cooled the waters.

When the rabbi appeared before Diocletian, he recognized the former swineherd, who said to him with spite, “Just because your god performs miracles, you think you can scorn the emperor?”

I cite this story because it provides a good metaphor for the West today, where, as in ancient Rome, the triumph of nihilism can enable a pig farmer — anybody — to become emperor.

It is a good example, too, of Jewish wisdom, which responds to the situation as follows: “We had contempt for Diocletian the swineherd, but we are ready to honor Diocletian the emperor provided he, like Saul — who, before becoming king had tended donkeys — heeds the prophecy, rises to his office, and becomes a new man.” …

And they should be aware, finally, that in this period that has been labeled, for lack of a better word, populist, and of which the American election is but an outsize symptom; in a time when thought is attacked from all sides and when lies are flourished with unparalleled arrogance and aplomb; in this new political culture that has now encircled the earth, one in which, from the American plutocrats to their Russian oligarch cousins, the swineherds slap their pedigree shamelessly on imperial palaces, the little Jewish nation has no part to play. …

Bernard-Henri Lévy is the author of, most recently, “The Genius of Judaism.”