"The German antisemites have a much deeper hatred against the Jew than the Russians, but the German antisemites do not pogrom the Jew. They write articles and books to prove that the Jew has no right to live, that he is wicked, that he is dishonest, and that he should not enjoy any rights and privileges but it would not enter his mind to embark upon a policy of murder, loot and rape."
Dr. S. M. Melamed, the Jewish Criterion, 10/25/1929
Less than four years later, the Nazis rose to power.
THE ILLUSION OF ASSIMILATION
In her book People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn describes two kinds of antisemitism: Purim antisemitism, or the antisemitism that seeks to physically exterminate Jews, and Hanukkah antisemitism, or the antisemitism that seeks to strip away layers of – or fully eradicate – Jewish identity.
Century after century, Jews have accepted Hanukkah antisemitism in exchange for the illusion of safety. They’ve thought that if they just change one thing, or that if they blend in better to their host societies, antisemitism would go away. The problem is that antisemitism, as I’ve elaborated fully in recent posts, actually has nothing to do with Jewish behavior. Jews can peel away as many parts of their identities as they want, but so long as antisemites use Jews as a surface from which to project their own fears, hatreds, guilts, and problems, Jewish safety will remain fragile.
Conditional safety is not safety. The promise that we will be safe if we were to only give up the one thing about us that’s unfavorable at the moment — maybe we need to Hellenize, or we need to give up our identity as a “nation,” or we need to disavow Zionism — is only an illusion. It’s time we stop falling for it.
MORE GERMAN THAN THE GERMANS
There are no shortage of examples that illustrate the historical fragility of Jewish safety: the Spanish Inquisition, which immediately followed the Golden Age of Sephardic Jewry, and the poverty, oppression, and genocidal pogroms in the Pale of Settlement, which followed the Golden Age of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, both come to mind. But arguably the most glaring example is the catastrophe that befell the Jews in Western Europe, and in Germany in particular.
In the 19th century, countries across Western Europe began emancipating their Jewish communities, affording them full citizenship status after many centuries of degradation. Many Jews, eager to leave the segregation and humiliation of the ghettos behind, eagerly chose to assimilate into their societies, shedding important parts of their Jewish identities and reducing their Jewishness to a matter of practicing a slightly different religion.
German Jews even looked down on Eastern European Jewry, whom they derogatorily called “Ostjuden,” for their supposedly backwards, uncivilized, insular ways. Meanwhile, other Jews shot back, accusing German Jews of being “more German than the Germans.”
By World War I, Jews in Germany were the most assimilated and well-integrated in continental Europe. Most were middle class, and many practiced prestigious careers, such as medicine and law. Despite their small numbers, they made outsized contributions to German culture and the arts. One out of every four or five German Jews fought for Germany in the First World War. They felt, for all intents and purposes, just as German as anybody else.
Obviously, it didn’t last. After German society fell into upheaval after World War I, virulent antisemitism of the worst kind reared its ugly head once again. Germany was suffering, and the country needed a scapegoat. It didn’t matter how “German” the Jews felt. Old habits, apparently, die hard.
In 1933, the German Jewish population stood at about half a million. By the eve of World War II, over half of them had emigrated, having suffered from the Nazis’ discriminatory policies for years. Some 160,000 to 180,000 were murdered in the Holocaust. In May 1943, the Nazis declared Germany “Judenrein” (Jew-free).
THE AMERICAN JEWISH EXPERIENCE
There is no question that the American Jewish experience has, historically, been unique, which is why the state of antisemitism in recent years, and especially in the aftermath of October 7th, feels especially jarring.
- The United States is a unique experiment, which has succeeded in some ways and not so much in others. Unlike arguably most other countries in the world, American identity is not generally congruent with a particular ethnic or national identity.* Instead, the country calls itself a melting pot. This bodes well for Jews, who’ve historically been regarded as untrustworthy outsiders, prone to dual loyalties. And though there is no question that Christian hegemony is present across virtually every aspect of American culture, the United States does not itself have a history of royalty assigned divine mandates. This bodes well for Jews as a religious minority, especially as one which has been persecuted relentlessly on false charges of murdering the predominant culture’s God.
*In this context, a nation is not a nation-state but rather, a group of people whose collective identity includes shared language, history, ethnicity, territory, and/or culture.
- The vast majority of American Jews can trace their ancestry to the Jews who migrated from Eastern Europe to the United States between 1880 and 1924, fleeing pogroms ravaging the Russian Empire. This means that most American Jews are four to six generations removed from the virulent persecutions endured by their ancestors. This stands in sharp contrast to Jews who’ve immigrated to other countries more recently, or Jews who still live in countries where Jews are systematically targeted by those in power. Naturally, someone who is further removed from their worst familial traumas will usually have a very different sense of safety — and of the fragility of any perceived safety — than someone who grew up immersed in them.
ECHOING OLD DEBATES
The (predominantly) American anti-Zionist Jews that speak today of “collective liberation” as the key to Jewish safety remind me rather painfully of the Jewish Zionist vs. anti-Zionist debates of the early 20th century, before World War II.*
Back then, the predominant debate between Jewish Zionists and anti-Zionists was not “do Jews have a historic right to sovereignty in the Land of Israel?” but rather, “will Jewish sovereignty or Jewish assimilation and/or integration make us safer?”
In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the virtually universal Jewish sentiment was that the Zionists had won that debate. Now, decades later, I can’t help but notice the many American Jews that preach that the key to Jewish safety is collective liberation, for which they will sacrifice elements of their Jewish identity – and 50% of the world’s Jewish population – at the altar of groups who’ve never had Jewish safety in mind. Here’s a thought: what will make Jews safe is for others to start treating us as human beings.
*In general, though, today’s Jewish anti-Zionism bears barely any resemblance to the Jewish anti-Zionism of the early 20th century. For more on that, see my post Early Jewish Anti-Zionism.
SO IS ANTISEMITISM INEVITABLE?
No, of course not. Antisemitism is not an inevitable, inexplicable force of nature. Jews are not doomed to suffer for all of eternity. Human beings are not naturally born antisemitic.
But so long as antisemitism remains embedded in the languages we speak, in the religious texts we preach, in the literature that we read, and in the vernacular of so-called justice, violent, destructive antisemitism will keep rearing its ugly head. It will return whenever societies are in upheaval. It will show up when people need somebody else to blame for the problems that they see in the mirror. It will keep happening over and over and over again, shattering any illusion of integration, assimilation, or idea that we’ve “finally” made it.
You cannot decisively cure the symptoms without treating the infection that causes them. Unfortunately I don’t believe that most people are ready to or willing to do that, as it will take painful self, cultural, political, and even religious reflection.
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