West Hempstead author sees anti-semitism in our future

The increasing pressure to delegitimize Israel, including this week’s move for Palestinian statehood at the UN and the Durban III conference have raised concerns about renewed anti-Semitism in the mainstream.
Taking a historical approach to a fictional place in the future, West Hempstead resident Michael Stein penned Decision 2030, a book about a future generation of Jews suffering from physical and political attacks.
The novel was published at the end of July. “[Anti-Semitic events] have been happening all over the US, and even in Norway,” Stein said. “In San Francisco they had on the ballot that they wanted to outlaw circumcision.”
In Decision 2030, the fictional suburban community of Grayvelt is torn in two different directions.
On the one hand, some individuals choose to remain in the United States and to fight with the help of civilian soldiers. Others decide to part with America moving to a new community of olim in northern Israel.
“The seeds of hate for the Jew could never be completely eradicated,” wrote Stein. “America, land of the most expansive constitution to guarantee every freedom possible, land of thirty amendments to promise every citizen that their rights would not be withdrawn, was now a place where one group was experiencing a serious curtailing of its right to live in peace, dignity, and freedom. Its Jewish people didn’t want to believe it.”
Stein had begun writing a similar book 40 years ago, and had nearly 350 pages completed before putting the project away.
He returned to it a couple of years ago and put it through roughly 15 revisions, mostly in response to news events that resonated with his story.
“I feel that reading the book will find that many of the familiar problems with anti-Semitism will still take place in the year 2030,” Stein said.