TURNING OUT OUR POCKETS
If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Antisemitic conspiracies need libels to work. These libels are not based in reality and instead reflect the fears, hatreds, guilts, and insecurities of the accuser. Because these libels are not rooted in anything we’ve actually done, said, or think, crafting a defense for our actions, words, and intentions is an exercise in futility. Anything we say or do to appease the antisemite will in turn be weaponized against us. That’s the nature of antisemitism.
Never believe that antisemites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The antisemites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Jean-Paul Sartre
ANTISEMITISM IS ABOUT THE ANTISEMITE
I will stress this until I’m blue in the face: antisemitism has nothing to do with the Jew and everything to do with the antisemite.
Antisemitism, above all, is a conspiratorial form of thinking about how the world works. At the very core of it is the perception that Jews as a collective – or groups perceived as Jewish – are all in cahoots with each other, plotting together to manipulate others and advance their nefarious Jewish interests. Unsurprisingly, a comprehensive April 2023 study published in Nature’s Humanities and Social Sciences Communications journal found that those with conspiratorial patterns of thinking are most likely to be antisemites.
So it really doesn’t matter if we bend over backwards to show others that we value inclusivity. It doesn’t matter if we say the things that antisemites want us to say or do the things that antisemites want us to do. It doesn’t matter if we stretch ourselves too thin trying to demonstrate that we are good people, or that we are not the “bad” kind of Jew. It just doesn’t matter because antisemitism has never been about what we do or don’t do, say or don’t say, or think or don’t think. Antisemites will project their conspiratorial fantasies onto us regardless.
APPEASEMENT BACKFIRES
Distorting, stretching, or bending the truth to appease the people that hate us does not work. In fact, historically, doing so has only fueled more antisemitism. I can think of two prime examples:
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In the early-to-mid 19th century, European orientalists hypothesized that Ashkenazi and Karaite Jewry could be traced back to the Khazars, a then long-extinct Turkic ethnic group. Basic historical record — and today, genetic and linguistic evidence — should’ve thoroughly debunked that theory.
And yet — Jews entertained it. Not because they necessarily believed it — they reportedly didn’t — but because they thought that in claiming Khazar ethnic origin, they would be spared from Europe’s antisemitic persecutions, which were usually justified on the basis of deicide, or the antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Jews in Roman Judea were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
In 1839, the Russian Empire appointed a Karaite Jewish scholar, Abraham Firkovich, to research the origins of the Jewish people. One of Firkovich’s colleagues, a non-Jewish orientalist, posited the Khazar Theory. Though Firkovich rejected it, he also believed that in declaring Karaite Jews of Turkic origin, the Karaites could be exempt from Russia’s antisemitic legislation.
Likewise, in the late 19th century, in response to Hungary’s “Magyarization” policies of assimilation, the Hungarian Jewish community also began entertaining the Khazar Theory, arguing that Hungarian Jews, like Hungarian Christians, claimed descent from intermarriages between Magyars and Khazars (“See? Jews are just like us!”).
All of this backfired spectacularly. Today, the Khazar Theory is a conspiracy theory that will not die. It is used relentlessly by bad faith actors to invalidate the Jewish people’s historic claim to the Land of Israel.
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“Six million Jews and five million others.” I’m sure you’ve heard this figure in relation to the Holocaust. It’s not real.
So where did it come from? In the 1970s, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal felt deeply frustrated about the world’s lack of interest in the Holocaust. He thought that, if he de-emphasized the antisemitic nature of the Nazis’ atrocities, he could get people to care.
Historians who knew him say that he chose the figure carefully: 5 million was a large number, but not a number large enough to obscure the 6 million Jewish victims.
Tens of millions of people died in World War II as a result of Nazi aggression. That said, no more than half a million non-Jews were exterminated in death camps. Unfortunately, the fictitious 11 million figure is now used by antisemites to minimize the Jewish-specific nature of the Holocaust, normalizing soft Holocaust denial.
YOU CAN PUT YOUR OWN OXYGEN MASK ON FIRST
It’s actually perfectly okay for us to put our own oxygen masks on first. It’s normal to first look out for your own tribe. It’s not “supremacist.” It doesn’t make us bad people just because the antisemites say so. If a building is on fire, most people would prioritize the safety of their own family first, wouldn’t they? That doesn’t mean they don’t care about other people.
Anyone that portrays the Jewish people’s natural self-preservation instincts as “supremacist” is doing so maliciously.
There is nothing in Judaism that dictates that we must prioritize everyone else to the point of our self-destruction. Anyone that weaponizes the Tanakh or the Talmud to our detriment is wrong. Yes, the Torah says, “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” but the second half of that sentence is “so that you may thrive and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” And yes, Hillel the Elder said, “If I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” but the first half of that passage is, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”
This was posted by a self-identified anti-Zionist Jew on October 11, 2023, four days after the October 7 massacre. This is a vile weaponization of the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam.
Jews do not seek death. Martyrdom (“Kiddush Hashem,” meaning “Sanctification of the Name”) does exist in Judaism, but what this refers to is sacrificing one’s life to resist forced conversion or for the sake of God. There is no such thing as martyrdom in Judaism where one chooses death over self-defense or retaliation after an attack. In fact, self-defense is actually a duty and a core value in Judaism.
SO WHAT DO I SUGGEST?
I do not know how to fix antisemitism, this 2000-year-old force that poisons everything it touches. I do not have the answers, nor do I believe that I can do this alone. What I do know, however, is that antisemitism is not and has never been a consequence of Jewish behavior. Anything Jews do, individually or as a collective — good, bad, or somewhere in between — is later weaponized to fuel bigotry against us.
So while I don’t know what to do about this catch-22 of antisemitism— we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t — what I do know is that people have been lying about us for a very, very long time. It’s once we internalize those lies, once we accept them and propagate them, that we are truly lost.
So let’s tell our story truthfully, without twisting ourselves into knots to try to appease people that will never be appeased. We owe it to ourselves, to our ancestors, and to future generations of Jews.
SOME CONCLUSIONS
As Jews and as human beings, we absolutely should care about the human rights and safety of non-Jewish people, because it’s the right thing to do. That said, we must understand three things:
- Antisemites do not dislike us because we don’t care enough about others. That’s not what antisemitism is. Historically, Jews – including Zionist Jews! – have shown up loudly and proudly for just about every progressive human rights cause, from feminism to civil rights to LGBTQ+ rights to climate justice and more. To an antisemite, the facts just don’t matter.
- Appeasing antisemites by twisting our history or Judaism into knots won’t work. Instead, that appeasement will be weaponized against us.
- There is absolutely nothing in Judaism that demands that we prioritize others to the point of our self-destruction.
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