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| "Defend and protect your children from all harm, physical, emotional and spiritual." |
I grew up in the shadow of a man I never had the privilege to meet, but whose name and fire were spoken about in my home with a reverence normally reserved for prophets. I carry his name with the fear that I have not done enough to carry his legacy forward. My grandfather, Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, was not merely a builder of institutions—though he built the most consequential Torah structures in American history. He was not merely a teacher—though he taught a generation of future leaders who would shape the spiritual destiny of American Jewry. He was not merely a visionary—though his vision reached decades beyond his lifetime. What he truly was—and what many people still fail to grasp—is that he was a survivor of one world who came to save another.
His eyes were European eyes, forged in a Hungary that sleepwalked into antisemitic catastrophe. His mind was a Mussar mind, trained to see danger not at the moment it erupts, but at the moment it germinates. His heart was a Chassidic heart, filled with fierce love for every Jew, especially those drifting dangerously far from their own heritage. And his mission—his entire earthly task—was to prevent America from repeating Europe’s mistakes.
Today, as the political and ideological currents in America turn ominous, as antisemitism rises with a speed that should terrify anyone with historical memory, and as figures like Zohran Mamdani ascend to public office by running explicitly on anti-Jewish narratives, I find my grandfather’s teachings not quaint, not old-world, not outdated—but frighteningly current. I can feel his warnings pulsing beneath today’s headlines. I can hear the echo of his storm-sensing instincts vibrating beneath today’s political rhetoric. And I know, with absolute certainty, what he would say to us now.
What follows is not a fantasy reconstruction. It is not a fictional monologue. It is not an attempt to put words into his mouth. It is a synthesis—based strictly on documented statements preserved by my illustrious family, Torah Vodaath archives, oral traditions recorded by his talmidim, testimonies from Gedolim who knew him, and the worldview he articulated in the Mussar discourses and strategic decisions that shaped Jewish life in America.
This is the essay my grandfather would demand be written.
If my grandfather were alive today, his voice would not be soft. It would not be gentle. It would not be approving. It would be a thunderstorm breaking over a generation too complacent to recognize the smell of rain.
He would begin, as he often did, by reminding us that the Jew who forgets history is the Jew who repeats it.
“I have seen this before,” he would say. “And I fear I am seeing it again. I was born into a world that believed itself immune to catastrophe. A world that believed progress was irreversible, that stability was woven into the fabric of modern life. A world where Jews walked proudly, confidently, even arrogantly, believing themselves secure. And that world collapsed with a speed that left entire communities gasping for breath. You think America is different. Every Jew in Europe once said the same.”
He would speak not as a pessimist but as a realist—one who understood that history does not announce itself politely. When he declared, many times, “Golus America iz oich golus—America is also exile,” he was not speaking poetically; he was issuing a strategic warning. When he insisted that without a vast network of Torah schools, America’s Jews would spiritually dissolve, he was not theorizing; he was diagnosing. And when he said that if Torah does not grow here, the Jew will not survive here, he was not speaking about metaphysics; he was speaking about sociology, politics, history, and the raw instincts of a man who had seen the ground shift beneath Jewish feet before.
His Mussar was not theoretical. It was geopolitical. His warnings were not abstract. They were precise. His urgency was not emotional. It was prophetic.
And if he were standing here today, witnessing the ideological radicalization of American universities, the normalization of anti-Jewish rhetoric in politics, the demonization of Israel, the re-emergence of blood-libel-style narratives in progressive discourse, and the rise of openly anti-Jewish politicians like Zohran Mamdani, he would not hesitate.
He would say: “The signs are all the same. The danger is already here. The storm has already begun.”
To understand the severity of the moment, we must first abandon the comforting myth that America is immune to the diseases of Europe. My grandfather understood that the American experiment—while miraculous—was not metaphysically guaranteed. He appreciated its blessings while remaining alert to its potential dangers. He believed in America, but he never worshiped it. He loved its freedoms, but he did not trust its permanence. He built Torah institutions knowing full well that nations, like individuals, often lose their moral balance long before they fall.
What we see today in America is not a new phenomenon. It is old hatred wearing new clothing. The intellectual frameworks that now justify antisemitism—anti-Zionism, anti-colonial discourse, intersectional ideology—are simply modernized versions of the same narratives that fueled hatred in Europe.
In the 1920s and 1930s, European antisemitism did not begin with violence. It began with rhetoric, with professors, with journalists, with cultural elites who believed themselves morally enlightened as they demonized Jews. It began with radicals who accused Jews of controlling institutions, exploiting the economy, and corrupting society. It began with politicians who discovered that blaming Jews brought easy applause.
Today’s America is repeating those patterns with startling fidelity.
When university students chant for the destruction of the Jewish state, they are reenacting the student mobs of pre-war Europe. When activists rewrite Jewish history to transform Jews into colonial oppressors, they are re-performing the political theater that preceded catastrophe in Poland and Germany. When newspapers give sympathetic platforms to Hamas justifications for murder, they are playing the same role their European counterparts played in the 1930s—providing ideological legitimacy to violence.
And when a man like Zohran Mamdani is elected to public office despite (and sometimes because of) his explicit anti-Jewish rhetoric, America has crossed into historically recognizable territory.
Let us speak plainly. My grandfather would have.
Zohran Mamdani is not unique. He is not new. He is not surprising. He is a familiar figure in Jewish history—the ideological purist who views Jews not as individuals but as symbols of everything he opposes. His worldview is not organic; it is inherited from earlier revolutionary movements that saw the Jew as an obstacle to utopia. In the 1920s, his counterparts raged in Hungary. In the 1930s, in Poland. In the 1940s, in Egypt and Iraq. In each case, they used moralistic language to justify political extremism. In each case, Jews became the convenient target.
This is not conjecture. It is historical pattern.
My grandfather would identify Mamdani instantly: a man intoxicated by ideology, incapable of nuance, uninterested in truth, and drawn to the dangerous thrill of simplistic political narratives. He would say that such men do not need to be majority figures to be dangerous; they simply need to be tolerated. They are accelerants—political kerosene waiting for a spark.
And he would say, without hesitation: “History does not begin with men like him, but it often ends with them.”
TORAH VODAATH — THE MODEL AMERICA FAILED TO FOLLOW
My grandfather did not build Torah Vodaath to be merely another yeshiva. He built it to be the spine of American Torah life. He believed that a weak Torah community produces a confused Jewish community, and a confused Jewish community becomes politically vulnerable.
Torah Vodaath taught its talmidim to think historically, morally, and strategically. It produced leaders like Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, Rav Shlomo Heiman, Rav Avraham Pam, Rav Yitzchak Sheiner, and others who carried within them a clarity that America desperately needed. Secular education was an important tool to understand and navigate the troubled world. Science, mathematics, history...all were desperately vital to see the entirety of the world Hashem created.
But America, even as it benefited from their leadership, did not absorb the lesson fully: Torah is not simply a religious practice; it is a shield against societal collapse. When the nation around you loses its moral compass, Torah becomes the only compass left.
Today, America has descended into ideological hysteria. It has lost the sense of objective truth, stable social norms, and moral seriousness. This is not a political problem—it is a civilizational one. And Jews who depend on the stability of their host society should be terrified by this.
My grandfather understood this better than anyone of his generation.
The founding of Torah Umesorah is one of his boldest acts of Jewish statesmanship in modern history. It was not merely an educational project. It was a response to catastrophe. My grandfather saw Europe collapse not because Jews lacked synagogues or yeshivas but because millions of Jewish children were educated by systems hostile to their identity. The naysayers ridiculed him, the idea of every Jewish child a Jewish education was folly they said. Orthodox Judaism exists in America because hundreds of thousands of Jewish children received a full undiluted Jewish education.
He vowed that America would not repeat that mistake.
He believed, with an intensity that shaped his entire life, that a Jewish child raised without Torah is a Jewish child raised without defenses. He said repeatedly that every Torah school is a fortress, every rebbe is a guardian, every classroom is a bulwark against spiritual assimilation and societal madness.
Today, as American public schools become conduits for anti-Jewish ideology—through curricula shaped by activists, teachers who demonize Israel, students encouraged to view Jews as oppressors—the correctness of his vision is no longer theoretical. It is observable.
He built Torah Umesorah for this exact moment.
And many Jews still refuse to see it.The Rambam understood political and spiritual collapse with acuity few thinkers have ever matched.His writings constitute not only halachic texts but guides for national survival.
In Hilchos Teshuvah, Perek 7, the Rambam warns that the Jew in times of turmoil must be awake, courageous, and immune to the seductions of the majority. Confusion, he teaches, is the tool of evil. The one who succumbs to it becomes a participant in his own downfall.
In Iggeres Teiman, the Rambam describes the psychological condition of a society overtaken by false ideologies, where self-righteous movements weaponize moral language to justify hatred. He warns that Jews must resist not only physical persecution but intellectual seduction. The parallels to our moment are painful in their precision.
In Hilchos Melachim, the Rambam outlines the conditions before redemption: nations rising and falling quickly, ideological extremism, moral confusion, the collapse of institutions, and global instability. We are not obligated to assign prophetic meaning to current events—but we are obligated to recognize when history is behaving in familiar patterns.
My grandfather lived in the Rambam’s world. He interpreted America through the Rambam’s lens.
My grandfather saw the rise of radicals who used moral rhetoric to justify hatred. He watched educated elites support antisemitic policies because they believed Jews represented the wrong side of progress. He saw university students become foot soldiers of extremist movements. And he watched Jews reassure themselves that assimilation, patriotism, or economic success would protect them.
Today’s America replicates Hungary’s ideological climate with chilling precision. The anti-Jewish campus activism, the intellectualization of hatred, the political rewards for scapegoating Jews—these are the exact early steps that preceded catastrophe.
Poland’s antisemitism did not begin with violence; it began with narratives. It began with the accusation that Jews were privileged, powerful, foreign, exploitative. It began with the claim that Jews controlled institutions and corrupted national identity.
The modern American progressive movement has adopted these same narratives verbatim, merely replacing old terminology with “privilege,” “colonialism,” “whiteness,” and “systems of oppression.”
Germany teaches the most important lesson of all: the speed at which a society can collapse. Civilized people, cultured people, intellectual people can transform into barbarians with shocking speed once ideology outpaces morality.
America is not exempt from this pattern. No nation in history has been.
If my grandfather were alive today, he would not mince words. He would say:
“You are living in a society losing its moral stability. You must not assume safety. You must not depend on political parties. You must not place your trust in the goodwill of ideologues. You must strengthen your Torah schools. You must fortify your communities with clarity, courage, and unity. You must read the times correctly. You must not be naïve.”
He would warn that American Jews are repeating the mistakes of European Jews: internal division, overconfidence in political alliances, dependence on unstable institutions, and failure to recognize ideological danger early.
He would say that without Torah, American Jews will drift into confusion; and once a community becomes confused, it becomes easy to scapegoat, easy to marginalize, easy to target.
My grandfather would not address Mamdani as a politician but as a moral actor. He would say:
“You are dangerous not because you are strong, but because you are reckless. Not because you hate Jews, but because you have sanctified hatred. Not because you lead, but because you blind. If you lived in my Europe, you would have been the warm-up act for catastrophe.” And he would add: “History will judge you. And so will Heaven.”
His final message would be the same one he carried from Europe to America:
“Do not say it cannot happen here. Every nation is different—until the moment it is the same. Build schools. Strengthen Torah. Unite your people. Defend and protect your children from all harm, physical, emotional and spiritual. Recognize danger while it is still early. And remember that the only true protection of the Jewish people is their own strength, their own Torah, and their own unity."
I write this not as a historian, not as a political commentator, and not as an alarmist. I write as a grandson speaking from inherited memory. I grew up surrounded by the echoes of my grandfather’s warnings, his vision, his urgency. And I look at America today and see, with painful clarity, that we have entered the exact type of moment he feared most.
This essay is not just a tribute. It is a call. A call to alertness. A call to moral clarity.
The night is growing dangerous. The shadows are long. But my grandfather believed—always—that Torah values and wisdom can bring the dawn.
May we be worthy of that dawn.
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