The Trump presidential rally of hatred at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, October 27, 2024 was a literal revival of the famed capacity assemblage of the American Nazi Party at the previous Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. The leaders of each rally, Trump’s Gauleiter of ethnic hatred and deportation, Stephen Miller, and the chair of the American Nazi Party in 1939, Fritz Kuhn spoke different words.  Kuhn uttered the language of antisemitism, while Miller’s appeal was intended to arouse hatred of Muslims and people of color.

Yet the hateful tones of the words of Kuhn and Miller were identical.  As noted by the three leading academic experts on fascism over the past century, Carl Friedrich, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Jason Stanley, a principal component of fascism is the demonization of ethnic minorities as “the other.” Trump and Miller more than meet the fascist test of ethnic demonization, just as Hitler, Kuhn, and Mussolini did in 1939.

I have been criticized for defining Donald Trump as a fascist, since he never committed or intended to commit a genocide against any ethnic group.  Genocide, however, is not an essential component of fascism:  ethnic demonization is.  And Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are the ultimate avatars of ethnic demonization of modern American history.

Trump has preached the goal of deportation of immigrants, whom he claims “poison the blood” of America.  His minister of deportation will be Stephen Miller, Trump’s hero on account of his cruel separation of migrant children from their families.  Hitler’s minister of deportation was Adolf Eichmann.  And as affirmed recently by officials who worked for him, Trump had the vile ignorance and immorality to claim that “Hitler did some good things.”

I have taken Miller to task in a previous column I authored for InsiderNJ.   He is, however, the scion of a hallowed American Jewish family, the Glossers of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, whose forebears first arrived in America as Jewish refugees from pogroms in Belarus and established a chain of department stores and supermarkets.

I grew up in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, located on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.  My beloved late father, Melvin “Moshe” Steinberg was a clothing manufacturer’s representative who travelled often to Johnstown, selling his lines of clothing to the Glosser family stores.

It can be accurately said that my father venerated the Glossers.  Accordingly, even after the renowned psychotherapist, Dr. David Glosser authored a column in POLITICO repudiating his nephew for his betrayal of the Glosser family immigration heritage, I was more restrained in my criticism of Stephen Miller than I should have been.

I abandoned all restraints on my condemnation of Stephen Miller, however, after he uttered the following extremist xenophobic words at the recent Trump hate rally at Madison Square Garden:

America is for Americans – and Americans only!

These words had a jarring impact on me.   They constituted exactly the antisemitic anti-immigration policy enacted into law by Congress as the Immigration Act of 1924.  This policy was further implemented viciously by FDR’s Assistant Secretary of State, the virulent antisemite Breckinridge Long to block the entry into America of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust.  This policy consigned millions of European Jews to their deaths, including my aunt in Pultusk, Poland, Shprintze Gurman Melnik, her husband, Itcha, and their four children.  Her story bears retelling here.  Stephen Miller and I react much differently to our immigration heritages.

Shprintze was the youngest sister of the matriarch of my paternal American Jewish family of Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh, my Bubbe (Yiddish for “grandmother”), Bryna Gurman Malovany.  She and her sisters, Sarah and Mayta, made their way to America at the advent of the 20th Century.

Bryna, Sarah, and Mayta made extensive plans to bring Shprintze to America.  Tragically, the enactment of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the inhumane administration of Breckinridge Long intervened.  In 1941, the death squads of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen in Pultusk murdered Aunt Shprintze and her entire family.

I was close to my Bubbe Bryna.  I had the blessing of her companionship until she passed away around my seventh birthday in 1956.   To keep faith with Bubbe Bryna, I have said special prayers for Aunt Shprintze and family at the Western Wall in Jerusalem every time I visit Israel.  And I have made it a core principle of my politics that America never again has an inhumane immigration policy.

In this regard, I have been inspired by the teaching of my greatest rabbinical hero in American Jewish history, the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.  I have often referred to him as the “double rabbinical ambassador.”  He was the ambassador from Judaism itself, the Jewish religion, to the American Jewish community, communicating most effectively the beautiful teachings of Torah and tradition at a time when faith had been shattered in the wake of the Holocaust.

Rabbi Heschel himself was also an ideal representative from the American Jewish community to the rest of America.  As noted by his daughter the noted academic Susannah Heschel, he marched for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, demanded freedom for Soviet Jews, spoke movingly about the importance of Israel, cultivated our piety and awareness of God’s presence, and worked to improve relations between Jews and Christians, including his historic work with the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council.

The close bond Heschel formed with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was of landmark significance.  His work with Dr. King in the anti – Vietnam War movement already is looked upon by Jewish historians as attributable to the principles of traditional Judaism to which Heschel was so deeply and passionately dedicated.  When Rabbi Heschel was asked to participate in Dr. King’s funeral, it was an honor for the entire American Jewish community.

As a refugee from the Holocaust, Heschel was always mindful of the opportunity America gave him to begin a new life.   Accordingly, he worked tirelessly for the rights and privileges of all other immigrants as well.

Next Tuesday, Election Day 2024, the American Jewish community will have the opportunity to end its flirtation with Trump fascism once and for all.  In doing so, the American Jewish community will be following in the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and embracing his prophetic vision.

Alan J. Steinberg of Highland Park served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. He graduated from Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin Law School.