By Andrew Malekoff

One spring afternoon during my freshman year in college I was changing into my uniform for lacrosse practice. I was one of three team members left in the locker room, having arrived on a late bus from main campus to the athletic facility.

I overheard my two teammates laughing on the other side of the locker room. One told the other this joke, loud enough for me to overhear: “How many Jews can you fit in a car? Two in the front seat, three in the back and a thousand in the ashtray.”

It was an old joke. I had to wonder, how many thousands of times has it been told and how many millions laughed at it? Coming from my teammates in close proximity, though, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I walked over to my two teammates and said, “I’m Jewish. You think that’s funny?” One of them responded, “We didn’t know you were Jewish.” To which I asked, “What difference does that make?”

I didn’t know what more to say to my teammates except, “Watch your backs boys.” I knew I could, and would, dish out physical pain on the practice field.

This was not a new experience in my life, nor would it be the last of its kind. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, an adult neighbor threatened to hang me – “that little Jew bastard,” when I was 10-years-old.

But these were my teammates. Perhaps I was naïve.

Fast forward: I just read a message issued by Donald Trump on his social media website Truth Social, in which he said: “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — before it is too late!”

Before it is too late? I know you like to speak in riddles Mr. Trump, but what does that mean?

He’ll never say. Straight answers have never been his forte.

Noted presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted Trump’s words: “Before it is too late!” which generated a number of responses.

One tweeted: “The menace in this rhetoric is unmistakable and chilling.” Another tweeted: “And yet people still scoff at Hitler comparisons.” And, one more wrote: “I don’t know about you, but a deep ancestral chill ran up my Jewish spine when I read that.”

Trump added: “No President has done more for Israel than I have…however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”

Anti-Defamation League President Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted: “We don’t need the former president, who curries favor with extremists and antisemites, to lecture us about the US-Israel relationship. It is not about a quid pro quo; it rests on shared values and security interests…”

Trump once told his then chief of staff John Kelly that “he wished he had generals like the ones who had reported to Adolf Hitler, stating they were “totally loyal” to the leader of the Nazi regime,” according to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in their new book The Divider.

In this interchange, which occurred years before the Jan. 6, 2021 terrorist attack on our Capitol, General Kelly told Mr. Trump that Germany’s generals had “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.”

“Mr. Trump was dismissive,” Baker and Glasser wrote, “apparently unaware of the World War II history that Kelly, a retired four-star general, knew all too well.” Trump’s response, during the 2018 encounter with General Kelly, was, “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”

Is Donald Trump an antisemite?

According to Michael Cohen (not Trump’s former attorney), reporting for the Daily Beast on Oct. 17, Trump “regularly employs antisemitic tropes, essentializes Jews as a monolithic group, and entertains base stereotypes of Jews.”

His defenders insist he cannot be antisemitic because he has a Jewish son-in-law, a daughter that converted to Judaism and three Jewish grandchildren. He once said that he is so popular in Israel the he could be elected Prime Minister.

Although none of this disqualifies him from being antisemitic, one would think it might lead him to more carefully choose his words, if for no other reason than for the sake of his grandchildren. During his presidency, he hosted a White House Hanukkah party in which he invited evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress, who said Jews are going to hell.

But, Donald Trump carefully choosing his words is an oxymoron.

Or is it?

“Before it’s too late” seems more calculated than careless or clueless. Trump is a master at dog whistles, indirect messaging, disinformation and plausible deniability.

The facts are that 2.4 percent of the American population is Jewish and we are the most targeted religious minority in the U.S. Thus far, Trump’s fellow Republicans have said nothing about his statement.

White supremacy is a global threat and it is not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends that we have most to fear.

Trump’s latest (g)utterance brought me right back to my freshman locker room. I would have loved a crack at him on the playing field.

I’ll have to settle for the voting booth.

Before it’s too late.