<html>
<font size=3>Thought you might find this article by the Chief Rabbi of
the UK to be of interest.<br><br>
Holly Snyder<br>
Social Science<br><br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 11:50:34
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From: Avi Bass <abass@niu.edu><br>
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Subject: [HF] new anti-Semitism [long]<br>
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An analysis of anti-Semitism recommended by several HFers.<br><br>
---- HF: HILLEL-FACULTY ----<br><br>
The new anti-Semitism <br><br>
By Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain <br><br>
The new anti-Semitism is coming simultaneously from three different<br>
directions: first, a radicalized Islamic youth inflamed by
extremist<br>
rhetoric; second, a left-wing anti-American cognitive elite with
strong<br>
representation in the European media; third, a resurgent far right,
as<br>
anti-Muslim as it is anti-Jewish. <br><br>
It is being fed by the instability of globalization, the insecurity
of<br>
the post-Cold War international arena, and the still-undischarged
trauma<br>
of September 11. It has been allowed to grow unchecked because of a<br>
general unwillingness among Europe's political leadership to
confront<br>
the problem head on ("For evil to triumph," said Burke,
"it is necessary<br>
only for the good man to do nothing"). <br><br>
It has been aggravated by the breakdown of a morality of right and
wrong<br>
acts in favor of a therapeutic ethic which "feels the pain" of
the<br>
perpetrators of violence. Taken in combination, these are powerful<br>
forces, to which the countervailing influences of reason,
responsibility<br>
and restraint are as unequal now as they have been at any other time
of<br>
populist ferment and generalized fear. <br><br>
Anti-Semitism exists and is dangerous whenever two contradictory
factors<br>
appear in combination - the belief that Jews are so powerful that
they<br>
are responsible for the evils of the world, and the knowledge that
they<br>
are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity. Those two<br>
factors are in abundant evidence today in many parts of the world.
<br><br>
That this has happened with such speed and so little protest, less
than<br>
60 years after the Holocaust, is profoundly shocking. No one - not
Jews,<br>
not Muslims, not Christians, no one - should suffer this kind of
hate,<br>
and the moral credibility of more than one civilization is at stake.
On<br>
February 28, I thought it was sufficient to sound a warning. Now I
think<br>
more is needed: a call to all those with a sense of history and
humanity<br>
to say: Stop. <br><br>
No problem was ever solved by hate, falsehood, racism, religiously<br>
inspired terror, and the willingness to deflect attention from real<br>
abuses of power, human rights and moral responsibility. Now is the
time<br>
for good men and women to do something: to say "never again,"
and mean<br>
just that: Never again.... <br><br>
Let me state the point as simply as I can: anti-Semitism is alive,<br>
active and virulent in the year 2002, after more than half a century
of<br>
Holocaust education, interfaith dialogue, United Nations
declarations,<br>
dozens of museums and memorials, hundreds of films, thousands of<br>
courses, and tens of thousands of books dedicated to exposing its
evils;<br>
after the Stockholm Conference, January 27, 2000, after the creation
of<br>
a National Holocaust Memorial Day, after 2,000 religious leaders
came<br>
together in the United Nations in August 2000 to commit themselves
to<br>
fight hatred and engender mutual respect. After all this.
<br><br>
What more could have been done? What more could and can we do to
fight<br>
anti-Semitism? Yet it exists today in many parts of the world: in
the<br>
Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and yes, in Europe, in more
virulent<br>
forms than at any time since the Holocaust. There can be little
doubt<br>
that it has been the most successful ideology of modern times.
Fascism<br>
came and went. Soviet communism came and went. Anti-Semitism came
and<br>
stayed. <br><br>
Like a virus <br><br>
How does anti-Semitism survive? Sadly, the answer is this:
Anti-Semitism<br>
is not a belief system, a coherent set of ideas. In the 19th and
early<br>
20th centuries, Jews were hated because they were rich and because
they<br>
were poor; because they were capitalists and because they were<br>
communists; because they kept to themselves and because they got<br>
everywhere; because they were superstitious believers and because
they<br>
were rootless cosmopolitans who believed nothing. <br><br>
Anti-Semitism is not a belief. It is a virus - and like a virus, it<br>
mutates. The human body has the most sophisticated of mechanisms -
the<br>
immune system - to defend itself against viruses. It develops<br>
antibodies. Viruses defeat the immune system because they mutate.
They<br>
are then able to get past the body's defenses, in effect by
persuading<br>
them that they are friends, not foes. The immune system, alert to
last<br>
year's virus, fails to recognize this year's. <br><br>
The classic case of mutation happened in Europe in the 19th
century.<br>
There was a belief that in an age of enlightenment - emancipation,
the<br>
French Revolution, the secular nation state - prejudice would die,
not<br>
least the age-old Christian prejudice against Judaism and Jews.
What<br>
happened instead was that religious anti-Judaism mutated into
racial<br>
anti-Semitism. <br><br>
The word `anti-Semitism' itself was coined in 1879. What made
racial<br>
anti-Semitism so much worse than its religious precursors was that
now<br>
Jews were hated not because of what they believed, not because of
how<br>
they lived, but because of who they were. <br><br>
You can eliminate a religion by forcibly converting all its
followers.<br>
You can eliminate a race only by genocide. As Raul Hilberg put it:<br>
"There is a straight line from `You have no right to live among us
as<br>
Jews,' to `You have no right to live among us' to `You have no right
to<br>
live.'" <br><br>
What we are witnessing today is the second great mutation of<br>
anti-Semitism in modern times, from racial anti-Semitism to
religious<br>
anti-Zionism (with the added premise that all Jews are Zionists).
<br><br>
It uses all the medieval myths - the blood libel, poisoning of
wells,<br>
killers of the Lord's anointed, incarnation of evil - transposed into
a<br>
new key and context. This could not have succeeded, however, without
one<br>
mutation - a mutation so ingenious, demonic and evil that it
paralyzes<br>
the immune systems the West built up over the past half-century.
<br><br>
The mutation is this: that the worst crimes of anti-Semites in the
past<br>
- racism, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide, crimes against
humanity<br>
- are now attributed to Jews and the State of Israel, so that if you
are<br>
against Nazism, you must ipso facto be utterly opposed to Jews. I
regard<br>
this as one of the most blasphemous inversions in the history of
the<br>
world's oldest hate. I am shocked that so few non-Jews in Europe
have<br>
recognized it and denounced it. <br><br>
What then shall we do? I have three messages - one to Jews; a second
to<br>
antiSemites; the third to us, to humanity as a whole. <br><br>
My first message is to the Jewish community in this country and<br>
throughout the world. We must not internalize this hate. The great<br>
mistake Jews made in the 19th century - and it was a mistake made
by<br>
good and serious people - was that to believe that since Jews are
the<br>
object of anti-Semitism, they must therefore be the cause of<br>
anti-Semitism. <br><br>
That is untrue. We now have copious evidence that there can be
fierce<br>
anti-Semitism in countries where there are no Jews at all. The moment
we<br>
internalize anti-Semitism, the result is that tortured psychology -
from<br>
ambivalence to self-hatred - against which my last book, "Radical
Then,<br>
Radical Now" [in America, "A Letter in the Scroll"] was
directed.<br>
Ambivalence and self-hatred have injured Jewish life for a century,
and<br>
we still suffer its after-effects today. <br><br>
Some years ago, in the early years of Russian Glasnost, the
following<br>
episode occurred (I heard it from one of my rabbinical colleagues).<br>
Glasnost allowed Jews in the Soviet Union to live freely and openly
as<br>
Jews for the first time in 70 years. Unfortunately, it also brought
to<br>
the surface a degree of anti-Semitism that had been suppressed
before. <br><br>
A British rabbi went out to Russia in the late 1980s to help
reconstruct<br>
Jewish life. One day he had a visit from a young woman. She said,<br>
"Rabbi, all my life I have hidden the fact that I was a Jew. No one
ever<br>
commented on it. Now, though, when I walk in the street, people
shout<br>
out, Zhid, Zhid [Jew, Jew]. What shall I do?" <br><br>
The rabbi said, "You don't look Jewish. If you hadn't told me, I
would<br>
never have known that you were a Jew. Look at me. With my black hat
and<br>
my black yarmulka and my beard, people probably know that I'm a Jew.
Yet<br>
in all these months that I have been here, no one has ever shouted
out<br>
to me Zhid. Why do you think that is?" <br><br>
The girl was silent for a minute, and then replied, "Because they
know<br>
that if they shout `Jew' at you, you will take it as a compliment.
If<br>
they shout `Jew' at me, they know I will take it as an insult." The
best<br>
way for Jews to combat anti- Semitism, beyond eternal vigilance, is
to<br>
wear our identity with pride. <br><br>
Hate destroys <br><br>
I turn now to the anti-Semite. I say to him or her: Forgive me, but
I<br>
cannot return hate with hate. I fight my hatreds. You must fight
yours.<br>
You cannot fight my battles and I cannot fight yours. But this I
can<br>
tell you: When bad things happen to any of us, there are two
different<br>
questions we can ask - and which we ask defines what kind of person
we<br>
are. We can ask, "How can I put it right?" Or we can ask,
"Who did this<br>
to me?" <br><br>
The first question - "How can I put it right?" - defines me as
a<br>
subject, a moral agent, a person with free will. The second question
-<br>
"Who did this to me?" - defines me as an object, a victim who,
being a<br>
victim, can only experience resentment and rage. If there is
anything<br>
that paralyzes human freedom and destroys human responsibility, it
is<br>
resentment and rage. <br><br>
Throughout history, anti-Semitism has been the weapon of choice of<br>
tyrants, dictators and rulers of totalitarian states because, more<br>
effectively than anything else, it deflects all justified complaints
-<br>
of the hungry, the poor, the uneducated, the sick, the repressed,
those<br>
denied the most basic human freedoms - away from those responsible,
and<br>
projects them on a mythical enemy elsewhere. <br><br>
That is why those who care for freedom, democracy and human rights
must<br>
realize that anti-Semitism or mythic anti-Zionism will not liberate
the<br>
supposed victims of Jews but the opposite: It will perpetuate their<br>
self-definition as victims and thus perpetuate their victimhood. It
will<br>
gain them sympathy but deprive them of all responsibility. It will
allow<br>
them to embark on policies that, in more than one sense, are
suicidal.<br>
The link between self-defined victims and their sympathizers (whose<br>
intentions are nothing if not noble) is what in therapeutic terms
is<br>
called co-dependency, and its effect is profoundly
self-destructive.<br>
More than hate destroys the hated, hate destroys the hater.
<br><br>
Finally I turn to us, all of us in our shared humanity. There is<br>
something I must say in its full depth and gravity. Since the<br>
destruction of the First Temple, nearly 2,600 years ago, Jews have
known<br>
the bread of affliction. Think of the words that Jewish history has<br>
added to our vocabulary - expulsion, inquisition, ghetto, pogrom,<br>
Holocaust. I do not want to dwell on that history. It is too
painful,<br>
and besides, I do not think it defines who and what we are. Judaism
is<br>
about sanctifying life, not remembering death. <br><br>
However, during those 26 centuries Jews adopted three strategies in<br>
order to survive. The first was initiated by the prophet Jeremiah at
the<br>
beginning of Israel's history of exile. He sent a letter to the Jews
who<br>
had been forcibly taken from Israel, or who had fled. He told them<br>
(Jeremiah 29): "Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which
you<br>
were exiled, and pray to God for it, for in its peace, you will
find<br>
peace." That is an idea that was ancient even in Jeremiah's day.
<br><br>
It goes back to the opening words of Jewish history (Genesis 12) and
to<br>
God's first call to Abraham, in which He tells him to act so that<br>
"through you, all the families of earth will be blessed." That
was, and<br>
remains, the Jewish vocation: to be true to our faith while being a<br>
blessing to others. <br><br>
That is what Jews sought to do for some 25 centuries: to contribute
to<br>
the countries in which they lived by developing businesses,
enlarging<br>
trade, adding to the arts and sciences, to poetry and philosophy,
and<br>
above all, to the spiritual heritage of mankind. <br><br>
That was the first strategy. It failed. It failed because, until
the<br>
19th century, Jews had no civil rights. They lacked the protection
of<br>
the law. They were dependent on the favor of the ruler, and when it
was<br>
no longer in his interest to keep Jews, they were expelled: from
England<br>
in 1290, and then, in the course of the next two centuries, from<br>
virtually every country in Europe, culminating in 101 years of<br>
anti-Jewish persecution in Spain and finally the expulsion, in
1492.<br>
Thus, the first solution failed. <br><br>
What was the second? It arose in 19th century Europe, and came about
as<br>
a result of enlightenment, emancipation and the birth of the
secular<br>
nation-state. For the first time in history, Jews were offered
equal<br>
rights as citizens. The promise was that the rule of reason would
dispel<br>
the ancient mists of prejudice. <br><br>
The failure of that dream is one of the most devastating chapters
in<br>
European history. The depth of its failure is measured by this:
that<br>
virtually all the great philosophers of modernity - Voltaire,
Fichte,<br>
Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Frege - made sharply anti-
Semitic<br>
statements in the course of their work (these are documented in my
book<br>
"The Politics of Hope"). The greatest German philosopher of the
20th<br>
century, Martin Heidegger, was an enthusiastic member of the Nazi
Party<br>
who never, in the postwar years, recanted, atoned or apologized for
his<br>
acts. Thus the Europe of reason, enlightenment and philosophy became
the<br>
Europe of the Holocaust. (I speak, of course, not of Britain, one of
the<br>
honorable exceptions). The second solution failed. <br><br>
No safety in Europe <br><br>
Zionism was born in the consciousness of that failure. It began in
1862<br>
with Moses Hess, friend of Karl Marx, and the first person to
diagnose<br>
the emerging German anti-Semitism. It was followed in 1882 by the<br>
assimilated Russian Jewish doctor, Leon Pinsker, after the great
Russian<br>
pogroms of 1881. <br><br>
Then, in 1895, Theodor Herzl, a Viennese journalist covering the
Dreyfus<br>
trial in Paris, heard the crowds cry "A mort les Juifs"
("Death to the<br>
Jews"). France at that time was widely regarded as the most
civilized<br>
nation in Europe, the home of the revolution, the birthplace of the<br>
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. When he heard that
cry<br>
on the Parisian streets, Herzl knew that Europe was no longer safe
for<br>
Jews. This is what he wrote a year later. It sums up the experience of
a<br>
century of Jewish life in Western Europe: <br><br>
"We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national<br>
communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of
our<br>
fathers. It is not permitted to us. In vain are we loyal patriots,<br>
sometimes super-loyal. In vain do we make the same sacrifices of
life<br>
and property as our fellow citizens. In vain do we strive to enhance
the<br>
fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by<br>
trade and commerce. In our native lands, where we have lived for<br>
centuries, we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose
ancestors<br>
had not yet come, at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in
the<br>
country." <br><br>
He added: "I think we shall not be left in peace."
<br><br>
The idea of Hess, Pinsker and Herzl was simple. If the nation-states
of<br>
Europe had no place for Jews, then Jews must have a nation-state of<br>
their own. Sadly, it took the murder of two-thirds of Europe's Jews<br>
before the state was born. <br><br>
That solution must not fail. For the only fourth solution is the one
the<br>
Nazis called "the final solution." That is why Jews must have a
safe<br>
collective home, in the sense defined by the poet Robert Frost, who<br>
wrote "home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have
to<br>
let you in." <br><br>
>From here on, we must stand and fight our ground. There is no other.
We<br>
must fight it with courage, integrity, honesty, cogency, with
neither<br>
animus nor hate nor desire for revenge, but we must fight it - and
Jews<br>
must not be left, yet again, to fight it alone. <br><br>
Why have Jews been persecuted and hated throughout the ages? Not
because<br>
they were better than anyone else, not because they were worse than<br>
anyone else, but because they were different and because there is a<br>
natural human tendency to dislike the unlike, to fear the stranger
and<br>
hate what we fear. <br><br>
But surely, every nation, each faith, every culture is different.
That<br>
is so. What made Jews singular is that, with more tenacity than
anyone<br>
else, they insisted on the right to be different, the duty to be<br>
different, the dignity of difference. In the days of the
Alexandrian<br>
Empire they refused to be Hellenized, so they were persecuted. In
the<br>
days of Rome, they fought for the right to practice their faith,
and<br>
they were persecuted. <br><br>
In Christian Europe they resisted conversion, and they were
persecuted.<br>
Today, in an Islamic Middle East, they are not Muslims; and so they
are<br>
persecuted. Had the majority of Jews capitulated under any of these<br>
dispensations, they would have spared themselves and their children
much<br>
suffering and grief, and today there would be no Judaism and no
Jews. <br><br>
Our ancestors believed - I dare still to believe - that no one should
be<br>
forced to abandon his faith, traditions, history and loyalties to
have<br>
the right to be free, to walk down a street without fear of being<br>
attacked, to build a place of worship without fear of it being
burned<br>
down. I was a student at Cambridge. The synagogue in Cambridge, built
in<br>
the 1930s, has no windows in the walls that face the street, because
of<br>
the fear then that if there were, they would be broken. That fear
has<br>
now returned, if not in Cambridge, then in Paris, Marseilles,
Brussels,<br>
Berlin. <br><br>
Anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity - not because Jews are
human<br>
beings (I hope that much will be conceded) but because human beings
are<br>
Jews, by which I mean difference is the essence of our humanity.
There<br>
is a fine rabbinic saying, 2,000 years old, that "When a human
being<br>
makes many coins in the same mint, they are all the same. God makes<br>
every person in the same image - His image - and they are each<br>
different." The miracle of creation is that unity in heaven
creates<br>
diversity on earth. Or, as I have put it elsewhere, the fundamental<br>
challenge is to see God's image in one who is not in our image.
<br><br>
A world that has no room for Jews, has no space for difference; and
a<br>
world that lacks space for difference has no room for humanity. That
is<br>
why anti-Semitism is not a, but the, paradigm of a crime against<br>
humanity. <br><br>
The unfolding tragedy in Israel will not be solved by demonization,<br>
myth, blood libels, reiterations of medieval fantasies, modern
forgeries<br>
like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, attacks on Jews and
synagogues<br>
throughout the world, evasions, lies, and conspiracy theories.
Political<br>
problems have political solutions, and they require nothing less
than<br>
truth, fact, relentless honesty, self-criticism, the capacity to<br>
compromise, and a willingness to prefer an imperfect peace to the<br>
perfect purity of holy war, sacred suicide, and murderous martyrdom.
<br><br>
Anti-Semitism begins with Jews but never ends with Jews. Now is the
time<br>
for those who care about humanity to join in the defense of humanity,
by<br>
protesting this newest mutation of the world's oldest hate. <br><br>
(Ha’Aretz, Sept. 8, 2002)<br><br>
<br>
HF:
HILLEL-FACULTY Commentary and discussion<br>
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