Yesterday, Haley Strack reported that California governor Gavin Newsom would “conduct the Christmas tree–lighting at California’s state capitol virtually, amid threats from pro-Palestinian protesters.” Retreating from public life in the wake of threats is cowardly behavior in itself. The vitriol against Jews and Israel that has been awakened, even in this country, in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel requires firm public pushback, not acquiescence.

There’s an additional offense to Newsom’s decision, though. I wrote yesterday about how certain aspects of the now-distant Covid regime have had effects that linger with us still, disrupting patterns of life for children and for the religious. Well, here’s another example. Before Covid, would anyone have thought that doing something “virtually” was an acceptable substitute for the real thing? And yet, here we are.

This is, unfortunately, not the first time threats to Jews in America have supposedly required responses straight out of the foolish lockdown playbook. In October, on the “Day of Jihad,” some Jewish schools in New York closed out of fear. The city rightly dedicated significant resources to the protection of those that remained open. But even that decision found justification in a Covid-era phrase: “an abundance of caution.” (Beyond this particular area, I’ve noticed anecdotally that the threshold for canceling public events has lowered significantly post-Covid, as many have come falsely to believe that experiences tied to the real world don’t matter, or that the virtual is a decent substitute for the real.)

In 1790, George Washington, speaking to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, R.I., expressed this wish: “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” We’re a long way from fulfilling that wish if American Jews must live in fear, and if we respond to threats not with forceful pushback but with virtual accommodation.