When Worldviews Crumble
Searching for a “logical” explanation for Antisemitism is a futile endeavor. To the preceding generations of America’s liberal Jews that saw the successes of the Civil Rights movement, the elimination of Jew quotas in college admissions, the rise of “Jewish” law firms and financial services institutions that were founded out of the necessity of exclusion but became household names, and the educational and financial achievements of those that had their start in the CUNY system, that is a very uncomfortable thought. Their worldview depends on clear delineations, on every group having an assigned box and every bigotry having a cause that can be named, addressed, and retired. Antisemitism does not cooperate. It is a never-ending game of Whack-a-Mole.
Uncomfortable with the explosion of rabid Antisemitism in their lifetime, which they believed was overcome and which their achievements symbolize, their search for an explanation has led to a malignant line of thought that “liberal” American Jews are being lumped together with Israel’s “conservative” Jewry and are being scapegoated for its “excesses” and the “good” American liberal Jew is but mere victims of this unfortunate blowback.
To say that Israel brought Antisemitism back from it demise is to say that Antisemitism is a response, that it is caused by something Jews do, and that if Jews would only do otherwise they would be left alone. It makes Jewish safety conditional on Jewish conduct and their ability to satisfy the expectations of others. The Hasan Pikers of this world would rather the Jews shut up about calling out the anti-Zionism-is-not-Antisemitism canard and label those who do not remain quiet as “hysterical” and as responsible for the increasing Jew hate on the Left. His ilk would rather the Jews remain cowed and silent.
Further, this type of apologetic narrative has a long and unpromising history. It is the narrative that the Jews of Spain made when they accepted the baptismal font and discovered that limpieza de sangre had been invented to follow them through it. It is the narrative of the “cultured” German Jew who insists that his civilized Mosaic faith bears no resemblance to that of the Yiddish-speaking unwashed masses of Eastern European Jews stepping off the train from Galicia, and that whatever the resentment was about, it was not about him. And it is a concession after concession by the State of Israel to its neighbors that only results in further blood libels. Each generation locates the specific feature that it believes provoked the hatred, and each generation offers to surrender that feature in exchange for peace. The offer is always accepted. The peace is never delivered.
Antisemitism was never a thing of the past. It was just existing in the shadows and the in-between spaces. October 7th was the catalyst that gave permission for it to emerge into light. The curated anti-Israel propaganda on social and mainstream media raised the salience of Jewishness in American public life to a degree unseen in decades, and lowered the social cost of saying out loud what had previously been confined to private company. The post-WWII decades saw a temporary hiatus during which expressing outright Jew hatred became an expensive proposition. The quotas came down, industries and firms were built, the college graduates prospered, and underneath all of it the thing itself sat waiting for the price to fall. And the price crashed rather quickly in the wake of October 7. All of the things that where previously dismissed by the liberal American Jews as the rantings of either the Far Right, fly-over country thinking or otherwise as anomalies in the matrix, has become the daily battle cry of the “laptop class.”, steeped in the narratives of “new and improved” history that glorifies previously rejected socioeconomic theories and brands the opposition as oppressors, bloodthirsty capitalists, landlords, or, in the parlance of yesteryear, kulaks and bourgeoisie – with the Jew being the perfect stand-in for all of these exploitative archetypes.
The politicians, on whom these liberal Jews relied to represent their interests and defend their identity, folded in the face of this opposition and speak mealy-mouthed banalities in order to avoid incurring the keyboard wrath of the Twitterati. These political leaders now bend the knee and deceive themselves into believing that meeting this not-so-new ideology half-way is going to help them hold on to political power for a little while longer. Worse yet, these same political leaders who have ad nauseum declared themselves as guardians of the Jewish people, now throw their support behind some of the worst representations of the Democratic Party’s Antisemitism.
So, the liberal American Jew is now essentially confronted with a loaded question about their self-identity, similar, to the famous question: “When did you stop beating your wife?” Their hard-earned successes are now denied to them as not rightfully theirs. Their Jewish identity – whether religious or cultural or ethnic – again needs to be defended in the face of inversionary epithets, blood libels, and accusations of world domination.
I do not have an answer for this problem and don’t believe anyone who says he does. However, the search for the blame within is a toxic proposition. The impulse maybe somewhat understandable, especially coming from those American Jews whose personal identities are inextricably intertwined their political and demographic selves. If the cause is internal, the solution is available and within reach, and a people that has spent its history unable to control what is done to it will reach for any narrative under which it retains some semblance of control. But, the Jews are the only people who are expected to accept external definitions of self-identity and collective responsibility. Self-flagellation has never once purchased enduring safety, and it has cost every generation dearly.
