The Riverdale Press is a local paper from the Riverdale section of the Bronx which is a well to do community nestled between Yonkers and upper Manhattan. Riverdale has long had a large Jewish community and an upper class liberal sensibility, but in the last decade or so The Riverdale Press has been a battleground where Jewish and liberal interests, suddenly separated by liberal Islamaphilia and anti-Zionist pretensions, are pitted against each other. In a recent letter to the editor by a man going by the name Jim Block, the new reality of how Jews and Judaism are viewed by the Left was presented starkly:

I don’t think I have ever been as annoyed by a letter to the editor as I was by the one written by Steven Littwin (Riverdale Press, Feb. 18). I grew up on the Lower East Side and we had our share of restaurants — Ratner’s, Rappaport’s, Moskowitz and Lupowitz, Bernstein’s, Katz’s, the Garden Cafeteria, Sammy’s — none of which were closed on Saturday. In its last gasp, Ratner’s got a rabbinic designation and closed on Saturday, but the hordes of Orthodox did not beat a path to their door and they soon closed. If one would take a look at the various permutations of the restaurant on Riverdale Avenue and West 259th Street, which seems to be going through yet another transformation, a kosher certificate or closing on the Sabbath does not guarantee success.

What I really object to is the imposition of rules by one group on all the rest of us.

There is another factor. Paying extra for the kosher designation is objectionable, especially to those of us who feel that the costs of this designation goes to groups that we disagree with philosophically, morally, spiritually, religiously, politically, etc.

If one read about the kosher slaughterhouses in the Midwest that were raided by the government, these were not examples of humane treatment of animals, nor of hygiene, and perhaps most importantly, the humane treatment of the Latin American workers who suffered constant abuse at the hands of these wonderful rabbinic overseers.

I think there are enough options for the Orthodox community to purchase kosher food in Riverdale. For the rest of us that would like a broad range of cheeses and other delicacies, we look forward to the success of Jay-Bar’s and Mr. Nadler. May he live a long life and be well.

This was a letter entitled “Riverdale’s Deliciousness is in its Diversity” but as you can clearly read for yourself there is little interest by “Jim Block” in being confronted by true diversity, especially the age old tradition of Kosher foods being served in Jewish stores. But more telling were Block’s outrageous claims of the “cruelty” of Kosher slaughter and the “Rabbinic overseers” torturing poor helpless Latino slaves.

His first point is in fact stolen from White Nationalists. The “cruelty” of Kosher slaughter was much complained about by neo-Nazis a few years ago when they began recycling a P.E.T.A. video of a non-Kosher slaughterhouse on their forums. The last person I saw crying over the supposed cruelty of Kosher slaughter was wife-killing degenerate “Yankee James” Leshkavich, a neo-Nazi so vile be beat and strangled his estranged spouse to death before killing himself.

Block doesn’t just plumb the depths of White Nationalism to attack Riverdale’s Jews however. He also uses propaganda from the M.E.C.H.A.-affiliated Reconquista site La Voz de Aztlan. When not calling for an “American Union” based on the now crumbling European Union, the site evenly splits its time between calling for the expulsion of non-Hispanics from the American southwest and supporting the expulsion of Jews from Israel. They have frequently run anti-Semitic pieces including this little gem called The “Kosher Nostra” Scam which makes the claim that Jews are secretly blackmailing every food company in the world into only giving us Kosher goods. They also frequently claim Jews are enslaving Latinos.

The fact that The Riverdale Press would publish a letter so full of anti-Jewish animus and conspiracy mongering isn’t shocking for anyone who has lived in the area. I lived in Riverdale for a couple of years and that paper was known to support wild anti-American and anti-Jewish causes including in one case 9/11 “truth.”

What always shocked me was the acceptance of the rest of the community of increasingly overt anti-Semitism and the comfort of lefty New Yorkers in throwing off their cloak of tolerance to attack Jews. Leftist political support for Palestinians has blossomed into full blown anti-Semitism as the left adopts the Islamist view of Jews as a perfidious race given to moral bankruptcy. It’s time Jewish Americans realized where the winds of leftism are blowing and I hope they recognize the scent of Zyklon that wind carries before it’s too late.