Is There a Difference Between Burning and Canceling Jewish Books?

Kristallnacht 1938 has gone down as one of the most infamous days in Jewish (and German) history – and rightfully so. Grabbing as many books as they could from Jewish private homes and libraries, the Nazis lit them ablaze in huge bonfires – as if to foreground the coming European conflagration and Holocaust.

America circa 2024 is not Nazi Germany, yet it harbors a growing frenzy of book “cancelling” (and not just books) – against “Zionists” (read “proud Jews” who support Israel) and others whose ideas and philosophy are considered repugnant and therefore illegitimate (a few days ago, Booker prize-winning Margaret Atwood had several books cancelled in the Utah school system). The question, then, must be asked: are book burning and book canceling much the same thing? My answer: no, but…

First the “no”. Actually, several “nos”. First, America today is suffering from widespread book canceling. In some cases, these are government-initiated or approved; in others, private citizen projects; and then there are the hybrids. For example, Florida governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 signed a law that increased public participation in the review of materials being used in schools, enabling unlimited challenges to books in school libraries across the state. It soon got out of hand, so that he later had to partly backtrack with legislation in 2023 restricting non-parental complaints on how information about sex, gender, and other “woke” topics are taught in schools – but parents of school children could continue to fire away at their libraries’ selections.

However, we should note that it is not the government itself that is “canceling” here, but rather the public (Kristallnacht was clearly fomented and led by government lackies). America’s First Amendment still stands – or shall I say “totters”. Whether it falls completely to the book-canceling mob is a matter for the present hyper-conservative Supreme Court to work out.

A second distinction between back then and today is the source – or should I say sources – of such anti-book attacks. If in Nazi Germany it came exclusively from the extreme Right, in America 2024 it is coming from both ideological extremes. The Right tries to stifle “woke” topics (anti-racism, diversity, multi-culturalism, even equality!); the Left tries to prevent books from being published or sold – and speakers being given a microphone – if perceived to be Zionist, racist, homophobic, etc. etc.

The latest egregious example of the latter: Gabrielle Zevin is a bestselling author whose book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a novel about video game designers, has been on the bestseller list for two years. Indeed, it was recently selected by The New York Times as one of the “best hundred books of the 21st century.” Zevin is of Jewish and Korean descent – you can’t get more multicultural than that! – but is now being accused by U.S. pro-Palestinians in the literary world of being a “Zionist” and therefore her works (she has nine other published books) should be boycotted. The kicker in this? She has never published or spoken any opinion on Israel! The far Left has obviously gone off the rails as much as the far Right.

And again, this in the land that cherishes freedom of speech as a supreme value (the reason it’s found in the Constitution’s FIRST Amendment). In a sense, the fact that such a cardinal right is being attacked from both sides is arguably even more dangerous than the government being officially involved in censorship, given how it reflects a very deep cleavage in American society. And when one adds to this some government involvement (at the states’ level), it becomes even more concerning.
Compare this to Israel sans any fully written Constitution. There is no Cancel Culture in the Jewish State, perhaps because the People of the Book still hold all literature in the highest regard, if not sacred. True, the present government has been trying indirectly (but not so subtly) to control the press. PM Netanyahu’s “File 2000” indictment is the most egregious example, but not the only one (check out the government-supported background of Channel 14’s emergence, or the recent Raviv Drucker removal form his investigative program on Channel 13). Nevertheless, Israel’s press is free and biting, as any reader of the Times of Israel (and Haaretz, Yediot Ahronot) is well aware.

It’s not that ideologically Israel is Switzerland, the country of extreme moderation and compromise (the oxymoron is purposeful) – far from it. Ideological divergence, discord, and disputation is endemic in the Jewish State. Despite all that, the Talmudic ethos is still alive and well: elu v’elu divrei elohim cha’yim (loosely translated: this opinion and that opinion are both correct in their own way).
America supposedly adheres to the Judeo-Christian heritage. Whether or not there is such an animal, it wouldn’t hurt Uncle Sam to revert back to some of its ostensible “Judeo” roots. Otherwise, although it might not be on the way to another kristallnacht, still, continuing to cancel books and people will render it just another close-minded country instead of the leader of the free world to which it aspires.