(JNS) — A year ago, Jews looked back on 5779 and wondered, after the Pittsburgh and Poway synagogue shootings and a resurgence of anti-Semitism on the right as well as the left, how things in the United States could get any worse. As I do every year, I cautioned that such a turn of events is always a possibility. But 5780 proved me more right on that score than I could have ever imagined.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have a worldwide deadly coronavirus pandemic that would send a thriving global economy into a near-depression as one of my predictions for the year. Nor did I ima...