Today’s Hep! Hep!

Israel haters typically rationalize their indulgence in antisemitic tropes by uncritically accepting narratives of Israel as a Satanic oppressor of the Palestinian people.  But is Israel also a sadistic oppressor of the people of Iran—a country that does not share a border with Israel but whose current regime nevertheless is actively threatening to “punish” and ultimately destroy Israel? (These Israel-destroying plans have been long time in the making, well before the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.  Also, “threatening” is true during the tense time of submitting this blog post; there is no knowing what the situation will be at the time of publication).

While the future is unknown, those people who have been manipulated into Israel hate but who are nevertheless honest might at some point have to hear their own voices echoing with the historical cry of the Hep! Hep!

The Jewish Virtual Library defines Hep! Hep! As “a derogatory rallying cry against the Jews, common in Germany; also the name given to a series of anti-Jewish riots that broke out in August 1819 in Germany and spread to several neighboring countries. Opinions differ as to the origin of the slogan. Some believe that it was the crusaders’ rallying cry, derived from the initials of Hierosolyma est perdita (“Jerusalem is lost”). However, more likely it was originally an exhortatory cry for driving domestic animals, particularly goats, in Franconia.”

In “The Modern ‘Hep! Hep! Hep!” George Eliot, author of the proto-Zionist novel Daniel Deronda, identified the success of the Jews as the problem: “And here it is that we find the ground for the obvious jealousy which is now stimulating the revived expression of old antipathies. ‘The Jews,’ it is felt, ‘have a dangerous tendency to get the uppermost places not only in commerce but in political life. Their monetary hold on governments is tending to perpetuate in leading Jews a spirit of universal alienism (euphemistically called cosmopolitanism), even where the West has given them a full share in civil and political rights. A people with oriental sunlight in their blood, yet capable of being everywhere acclimatised, they have a force and toughness which enables them to carry off the best prizes; and their wealth is likely to put half the seats in Parliament at their disposal.’”

Could it be that success—rather than any evil doing—remains the reason for today’s Hep! Hep! war cry?  Could it be that it is not Israel’s oppressive behavior but rather its mere existence in the Middle East that stands as the deep reason to punish?

In Aaron Appelfeld’s novel Katerina, Katerina, a young domestic worker who works in Jewish homes and ultimately turns her back on antisemitism, describes Jew hunts in her late nineteenth-century village as a sport:

“Sometimes I used to go into the tavern, sip a drink or two, but I didn’t sit for a long time. Life in my native village fell further behind me. I continued going to church, but only on holidays. The Jews are evil, the Jews are corrupt, they must be rooted out, I would hear on every corner. That muttering reminded me of winter in the village. The young men in the village used to organize to hunt Jews. For many days they would talk about it and laugh. The hunt included horses, dogs, and scarecrows, and in the end they used to haul an old Jew into the village, torment him, and threaten to put him to death because he had killed Jesus. The old man would beg for his life, and finally, he would have to pay his own ransom in cash, standing in shock for a long time after the ordeal” (47).

Perhaps one might best explain why the Jews must be punished in middle English, “Oure firste foo, the serpent Sathanas/That hath in Jues herte his easpes nest.”  What the Prioress in Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales is trying to say here is that our first foe, the serpent Satan, has built his wasp’s nest inside the hearts of Jews.

It is hard to see a wasp’s nest in the heart of Ariel Bibas, who is still hostage in Gaza, alive or dead:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13708125/Grandmother-Ariel-Bibas-held-captive-Gaza-Hamas-pens-poignant-letter-grandson-fifth-birthday.html

But perhaps to the Jew hater, Ariel Bibas is not in essence fundamentally different from Fagin in Dickens’s Oliver Twist, who is sitting in a “back-room” at the top of “dark and broken stairs,” eager to entrap children for exploitation:

“The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and dirt. There was a deal table before the fire: upon which were a candle, stuck in a ginger-beer bottle, two or three pewter pots, a loaf and butter, and a plate. In a frying-pan, which was on the fire, and which was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were cooking; and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair.”

Abused though the ages with degrading tropes, Jews in response have tried to plead against the accusations thrown at them—which sometimes they had internalized as self-hate.  Leonard Cohen’s “The Genius” is haunting in its apparent “taking on” of antisemitic libels:

For you
I will be a ghetto jew
and dance
and put white stockings
on my twisted limbs
and poison wells
across the town

For you
I will be an apostate jew
and tell the Spanish priest
of the blood vow
in the Talmud
and where the bones
of the child are hid

For you
I will be a banker jew
and bring to ruin
a proud old hunting king
and end his line

For you
I will be a Broadway jew
and cry in theatres
for my mother
and sell bargain goods
beneath the counter

For you
I will be a doctor jew
and search
in all the garbage cans for foreskins
to sew back again

For you
I will be a Dachau jew
and lie down in lime
with twisted limbs
and bloated pain
no mind can understand

Even though the “you” seems to be in the positing of dominating and calling the shots, the Jew does have the power to call out the absurdity of Jew hate. An omission in Cohen’s catalogue is what might have been “for you I would be a Zionist Jew.” Is Cohen implicitly optimistic that the Zionist is not subjugated to the same unjust patterns as the ghetto jew, the apostate jew, the banker jew, the Broadway jew, the doctor jew and the Dachau jew?

Today, as the Hep! Hep! pierces the tense air, it does not seem that Zionism has quieted the “we are going on a Jew hunt” impulse.  The children’s book We Are Going on a Bear Hunt concludes with an adorable reminder of the safety of home.  It remains to be seen whether Israel’s enemies will find a way to choose peace, safety and stability for their own people over the Hep! Hep! war cry to destroy the safety of Israel.

References

Aharon Appelfeld’s Katerina: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Michael Rosen performs “We are Going on a Bear Hunt.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gyI6ykDwds

Leonard Cohen’s “The Genius” < https://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/poem.html>

Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/730/730-h/730-h.htm#chap13>

Hep! Hep! < https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hep-hep>

George Eliot’s “The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!” https://www.online-literature.com/george_eliot/theophrastus-such/18/

Source for image: iStock; Frazao Studio Latino