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Two Jews walk into a bar.
One of them, citing The Jerusalem Post, is in despair, lamenting the latest onslaught of attacks on Israel, and a consequential spike in anti-Jewish violence across hundreds of Western cities.
The other Jew, referencing the Iranian press, is delighted by tales of Jewish power, as he reads aloud that the Zionists control Washington, Wall Street, Hollywood, global financial markets, and the media. “Hah! If only we were that powerful,” he proclaims.
Now, in actuality, and unfortunately, this is not a joke. Antisemitism is real, and it comes nicely packed in various shapes and sizes. There are three major strains of antisemitism circulating, different in kind and virulence, and requiring different responses.1
To use antisemitism against antisemites, first we ought to understand the three main types of antisemitism. They are:
1) ‘A Response to Alienation’
In Europe, antisemitism looks like a response to alienation, and is particularly high where unemployment is rampant; for example, roughly half of all Spaniards and Greeks express unfavorable opinions about Jews.
Such was the German precursor for the Holocaust. During 1929 and 1932, unemployment in Germany rose from just under 1.3 million to over six million, corresponding to a rise in the unemployment rate from 4.5 percent to 24 percent.2
Nowadays, the plague of violence in Europe “is fueled by young Islamic men with no respect and no place to go,” as New York Times columnist David Brooks put it.
2) Paranoia and Victimhood
In the United States, the problem is the number of people who cannot fathom what antisemitism is or who think Jews are being paranoid or excessively playing the victim, adding that there are others who see antisemitism as merely another form of bigotry.
“While all prejudices stem from ‘us’-versus-‘them’ thinking, antisemitism differs in its emotional basis,” as columnist Bret Stephens described it. “Racism and ethnic bigotry emerge from feelings of superiority, contempt, and fear. Antisemites are also driven by feelings of envy and (paradoxically) inferiority.”3
For example, to what other minority group is the word “clever” presented as slander? Who else is charged with the crimes of extraordinary wealth, control of media and finance, access to weird technologies, and deceptive power over the world’s governments?
“The racist and ethnic bigot thinks the objects of his bigotry are deservedly beneath him,” wrote Stephens. “The antisemite thinks the object of his bigotry is undeservedly above him.”
“Most bigotry is an assertion of inferiority and speaks the language of oppression,” he added. “Antisemitism is an assertion of impurity and speaks the language of extermination. Antisemitism’s logical endpoint is violence.”
3) The Jew as an Idea, Not a Person
Across the Middle East, antisemitism has the feel of a deranged theological system for making sense of a world gone wrong.
“The Jew is not a person but an idea,” wrote Brooks, “a unique carrier of transcendent evil: a pollution, a stain, a dark force responsible for the failures of others, the unconscious shame and primeval urges they feel in themselves, and everything that needs explaining. This is a form of derangement, a flight from reality even in otherwise sophisticated people.”
Now that we understand the three main types of antisemitism, here are five ways to use antisemitism against antisemites:
1) Playing the ‘How Many Jews’ Game
One of my favorite questions to ask other people is:
“How many Jews do you think are living in the world right now?
Obviously, it is a trick question, because on one hand, the Jews are a tiny group: almost 15.7 million worldwide, or about 0.2 percent of the global population. There are approximately 6.9 million Israeli Jews, compared with an Iranian population of more than 80 million, more than 420 million Arabs, and almost two billion Muslims. In sheer numbers, Jews are clearly outmatched.
On the other hand, many people presume that there are hundreds of millions of Jews living across the world, because we are disproportionately represented in a variety of public and popular arenas, such as Nobel laureates, arts and entertainment, business and commerce, the medical community, and so forth. The only arena in which Jews seem proportionate is that of athletics.
When antisemites realize just how many — that is, how few — Jews there are in the world, their antisemitism tends to deflate. Because, when push comes to shove, how much power and influence can 15.7 million people worldwide realistically have?
2) ‘Relational Judaism’
In 2008, Dr. Yehonatan Turner and his colleagues at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem noticed improved performance of radiologists reading test results from hi-tech medical scanners.4
Why?
The radiologists where shown photos of each patient, who agreed to be photographed prior to the exam. And these images were added to the patients’ computer files, appearing automatically when the file was opened. In a questionnaire, all of the radiologists said that viewing the photos made them feel more empathy for the patients.
Can we take the same approach with antisemitism? I believe so. As much as Judaism is a relationship between God and his People (i.e. the Israelites, the Hebrews, the Jews) — at least for those religiously inclined — Judaism is also a relationship between Jews among themselves, and between the Jewish People and the greater world.
When we make Judaism about people, we create a relational opportunity to play with the emotional heartstrings of our neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances. After all, it is easier to hate the idea of people than people themselves.
Side note: The term “relational Judaism” was coined by Dr. Ron Wolfson, a professor at American Jewish University who wrote a book aptly titled, “Relational Judaism.”
3) Leveraging the Perception of Power
In 1991, after Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam lost his Soviet patron, he approached the State of Israel as a conduit to Washington, D.C. — with the idea that Israeli influence in Washington would be enough to rescue him. The approach was antisemitic, but it still helped Mariam get a seat at the negotiation table and led to the rescue of Ethiopian Jews in Operation Solomon.
“Especially in a democracy, the perception of power is power, at least in the hands of those who know how to use it judiciously,” according to Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the nonpartisan think tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “From biblical times onward, Jews have often proved adept at this, not for nefarious reasons but because we appreciate how necessary that perception can be to our own survival.”5
Sometimes — not all the time, to be sure — leveraging the perception of power can be a point of attraction. Better to be with us than against us, so to speak. At the end of the day, every regime that has tried to annihilate us ultimately disappeared into the ether, and the sample size is plenty.
“Attraction” is the keyword here, though, since many Jews, in talking about their Judaism and Jewishness, try to attract “bees” with vinegar, whereas we know bees are attracted by honey. In this case, “honey” means conversations that invoke positivity (e.g. unique Jewish stories, Jewish wisdom, interesting Jewish people) as opposed to “vinegar” or negativity (e.g. victimhood, reasons to feel bad for us Jews).
4) Explaining Jewish History
Jewish history is made up of stories that have often been about what happens to a powerless people who continuously face the harshest geopolitical realities, from bigotry and legal discrimination, to expulsion and genocide.
Yet, there are also stories of how Jews have used power, whether real or reputed, to flourish against considerable odds (e.g. the founding of the State of Israel). A people without power are, too often, a people without a future, a fact that those who doubt or undermine the necessity for a Jewish state must fundamentally understand.
The challenge is to find a way to speak about Jewish power that does not give into antisemites and conspiracists. We must also contend with different manifestations of people’s unease with power, particularly progressives whose response to so-called Jewish power is “anti-Zionism,” while echoing antisemitic allegations of Israel as a malignant, illegitimate, and even genocidal state.
Jewish communal leaders should also explain that Israel and its Jewish supporters around the world do not wield what power they have (or are perceived to have) indiscriminately. As Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the United States, observed:
“The IDF is generally regarded as one of the strongest and most sophisticated armies in the world, yet it does not use even a fraction of its potential strength against the people who, if they held such power, would hesitate not a moment to direct it at Israel’s destruction. … Israelis fight, asking themselves at every stage whether in fact they are doing the right thing, the moral thing, the Jewish thing.”6
5) Not Fighting Antisemitism
Turns out, “fighting antisemitism” is a losing proposition. In other words, trying to “fight antisemitism” sets us up for failure in dealing with it.
A Canadian Jewish donor told me, in a private conversation: “You can’t fight antisemitism. You can’t cure it. You can’t fix it. You need to have a very strong Jewish identity and a very strong Zionist identity. If you don’t have that, all of the fighting against antisemitism doesn’t matter.”
This is why the focus of conversations about antisemitism ought to be on sound, effective arguments, which naturally emerge from having strong Jewish and Zionist identities.
“Good arguments help us recognize complexity where we once saw simplicity,” said Adam Grant, an international bestselling author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “The ultimate purpose of debate is not to produce consensus. It’s to promote critical thinking.”
Part of this critical thinking ought to originate from us Jews ourselves, to find “new and better approaches” to having conversations about antisemitism, according to Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate.
“It is much easier to describe how antisemitism works than what works against it,” wrote Stern. “The first of the usual bromides is Holocaust education. Surely it’s important that people know about the Holocaust. But how is teaching about the Wannsee Conference and Kristallnacht going to change people whose antisemitism is connected to seeing Jews with guns lording over their Muslim brethren in the West Bank?”7
“Keeping our focus on finding new and better approaches, rather than assuming the usual answers like Holocaust education and hate crime prosecutions will suffice,” added Stern, “the better we’ll be able to control antisemitism in the decades to come.”
“How to Fight Anti-Semitism.” The New York Times. March 24, 2015.
“Unemployment in Interwar Germany: An Analysis of the Labor Market, 1927-1936.” The Journal of Economic History. Cambridge University Press.
“Patient photos boost radiologists' performance.” Reuters.
“How to Fight Anti-Semitism.” My Jewish Learning.
I think of Einat Wilf's contention that the conspiracy theory that is antisemitism is largely the projection of a society's unresolved issues onto the scapegoat, hence South Africa accuses Israel of apartheid, progressives in the US accuse Israel of colonialism (excuse me? every single non-Native American is by definition a colonialist) and racism (because we're lily-white, no we're only white-presenting, no half the Jews in Israel are brown or black, no they're all whiter than white), the list goes on and on. Facts don't matter if they contradict the narrative.
As to "the Jew is an idea not a person," no, I've had a few close ex-friends, people who knew me well and who said repeatedly that they loved me, say straight to my face, looking in my eyes with this daring expression as if they're being heroic by finally — FINALLY — telling the Real Truth, that Israel or the Jews are the source of all evil, once someone they respect (e.g., Chris Hedges or some fundamentalist pastor or the UN) tells them all their problems are due to the Jooz. And this of course is worse if they then quote an As a Jew to prove that oh no, *they're* not antisemitic, a Real Jew said these things. Giving The Jew a face doesn't deflect antisemitism, I've encountered this since I was a child.
I think you're onto something when you talk about people needing to explain to themselves why they have had difficulties in life, and offloading personal responsibility onto a scapegoat can be such a relief. Offloading collective responsibility for unresolved societal ills plays the same role; Wilf notes that having the Jooz around to accuse allows a society to continue to avoid addressing their problems. It all comes down to a kind of cowardice and refusal to do what is necessary to change the problem.
There is also the historical pattern that a leader will blame the Jooz to deflect hostility and maintain his own hegemony when he's hated for something he's done or not done. Perhaps he has the added incentive of reneging on paying debts owed to Jews, or collecting the assets of the Jews he eliminated when he has inflamed the situation to a flashpoint of violence, see Edward I of England but it's happened so many times. Right now in the US, both far left and far right are constructing different narratives to offload personal responsibility for personal and societal ills, and these two groups that abhor each other meet with agreement that hey all of your problems must be due to the all-powerful Jews. This has happened pretty much every 50 years for 2500 years and we haven't figured out a strategy to stop it yet. I think that's because anything we say interferes with the nice pat worldview that clears people of the necessity to change things or accept that they caused their own problems, so we're not heard.
The look on people's faces change when they are told how small the world Jewish population actually is.
It really is quite extraordinary to watch the wheels in people's heads turn when this statistic is brought up.
Try it.