#shaul magid

[ofpd]

How can we forget our liturgical selves so quickly and claim to stand for morality and justice? How can we sit and mourn Jerusalem and truly think that Gaza is not also our (un)doing? How can we be in one moment so contrite, and in another so arrogant and self-righteous? This should not sound dissonant, or blasphemous; caution of our own hubris is precisely the lesson of the prophets. They loved their people passionately and endlessly. But they also knew our flaws. In one moment, we can be full of love and in another moment full of hate. The danger is when hatred of one becomes justified by love of another.

How can we stand before the Creator as our best selves, and then confront the world as our worst selves, and not see the difference? How can we wake up the next morning, and the next morning, and still say, "Turn from Your blazing anger and renounce the plan to punish Your people," and then turn to the world and say, "We have done nothing wrong?" I do not know. But I do know one thing. The vertigo is crushing me. Every single day.

–Shaul Magid, "On Humility and Arrogance"

[palestinegenocide]

At Passover, the Jewish community must break up over genocide

Blind Israel support in AIPAC funding appeal sent to Phil Weiss’s mother’s house. April 2024.

It’s a beautiful day in my town and I am going to go out for a walk with full awareness of my blessings. I don’t live in Gaza where the innocent are murdered day in and day out with U.S. weaponry and Joe Biden’s imprimatur (and that of many running dogs such as Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks on PBS News Hour). I don’t live in Israel, where I would have been indoctrinated in a supremacist ideology from a young age, and made to hate and fear Palestinians and to cheer genocide— and where I would have struggled to ever understand myself as a Jew. No, I live in the most privileged country in the world where there are wonderful freedoms for someone of my class.

Tomorrow is Passover so this is a message to my Jewish community. We must break up over Zionism. We must break up over genocide. Too many innocent people (on all sides) have died for this false and bigoted ideology to go on.

The good news is that some in the Jewish community are at last awaking from sleep over this. We will see more and more allies come forward in the Peter Beinart tradition—Jews who once drank the Koolaid – Beinart used to do events for AIPAC, and supported the Iraq war for Marty Peretz — and who have walked a path of independence.

Many of those Jews will come to have solidarity with the victims and the martyrs and the persecuted: the indigenous Palestinian population, driven from their homes to make way for the alleged liberation of the Jewish people.

“In my view, the Zionist narrative, even in its more liberal forms, cultivates an exclusivity and proprietary ethos that too easily slides into ethnonational chauvinism,” Shaul Magid of Indiana University writes in his new book. “

A simple, truer message to Jews was never spoken– by a former liberal Zionist. I urge my community to open its eyes to the grotesque armored thing that is modern Israel, and denounce its actions if only in order to save ourselves. (Because as the great rabbi said, If you are not for yourself who will be.) And yes it’s true: Palestinians who denounce Israel are pleasing their grandparents and parents; and we are not; but as Scott Roth used to say, that is the lamest fucking excuse for a thoughtful person in America.

Yesterday many progressives voted against more bombs for Israel (among others Bowman, Balint, Bush, Carson, Frost, Jayapal, Khanna, Summer Lee, McGovern, Omar, Pingree, Pocan and Pressley); and in a notable break Jamie Raskin voted against. So let us celebrate the memory of his son Tommy a great Jewish idealist and anti-Zionist who left us three years ago.

Zionism is today a danger to Jews. It is destroying free speech in our country (in the name of the Jews). It is destabilizing the Middle East (in the name of the Jews). Israel is wantonly attacking a foreign consulate in a neighboring country (in the name of the Jews). And so this Jewish identity, promulgated by Zionists, will only hurt Jews.

In the Forward last week, Jodi Rudoren, who has carried the water for Israel for years, wrote that Israel must stop killing Palestinians for the sake of “world Jewry.” And in a further heresy, she said, “antisemitism… is not an explanation for everything.”

She means that people are protesting Israel’s actions, not Jews. I believe she sees what I see, People will turn on our community for its blind support for genocide. Because what keeps Israel going in its violations of international law? The blind backing of the Israel lobby, the organized American Jewish community, never called out by the media for such, but everyone knows. As Obama said in 2015, there is only one country against the Iran deal; and today there is one country that wants the genocide to continue (and compels progressive politicians in the U.S. to violate their creed to ship more weapons).

There is another Jewish story. The brave Jewish students who are demonstrating at Columbia. The IfNotNow protesters at Biden rallies. The Jewish presence in the broad antiwar movement in the United States. They are moved by human rights and opposing the endless slaughter of children and women. They are “not hate-filled and bigoted… fringes,” as David Brooks, a longtime Zionist said of the protests on the PBS News Hour.

The Jewish protesters are today the leaders of our religious community. They are bringing an uncomfortable truth to a huddled, fearful, self-involved congregation. They are the heroes of Jewish history. They will save the world, and maybe too the lost Jewish tabernacle in the deserts of militarism.

Happy holidays,

[thatstormygeek]

The diaspora provided a vision of peoplehood that was not chained to either ethnicity or land, but to beliefs, learning, dispersion, intermingling. Jewish life was antifascist.

Israel, we’re often told, is the good thing that came out of unimaginable evil; it’s the real world analog of all those Holocaust movies in which the genocide allows gentiles to demonstrate their virtue. The Holocaust is not actually a feel good story for the movies, though. Hitler did make Israel possible, but not in a good way. Prior to World War II, Zionism was strongly contested within the Jewish community. The socialist Bund movement, for example, saw diaspora as a potential metaphor for and a potential spur to an international politics built on equality and acceptance of difference. Some religious Jews saw Zionism as elevating the state above God; Zionists, in this view, abandoned an individual ethical life for a genuflection before nationalist violence.  Shaul Magid in his book The Necessity of Exile notes that Isaac Bashevitz Singer “thought exile was necessary to perpetuate a longing that produces Jewish genius.” You can agree with these various stances or not (I rolled my eyes at Singer’s formulation). But the point is that diaspora, before the Holocaust, was seen as a possibility which could carry ideological weight within Jewish life. Jewish people could and did argue that exile, diaspora, living in many place among many people, had a value in politics, in religion, in art. Zionists insisted that Jews in the diaspora were weak, assimilated, and a betrayal of ethnonationalist destiny. But their insistence did not sway all, or even most Jews. The genocide changed that. Hitler did not completely wipe out European Jewry, but he came close. He didn’t wipe out the idea of diaspora’s value either. But again, he went a long way towards it.

Though the Nazis were defeated, they largely won the argument about Jewish life. Hitler had insisted that Jewish people could not and should not live in the diaspora. And after the death camps, a preponderance of Jews and non-Jews reluctantly (or sometimes enthusiastically) agreed with him. Israel from this perspective is not a validation of justice and repair. It’s a monument to the failure of the dream of diaspora. For centuries, Jewish life was an iconic, if not unique, example of shared values and identity across great distance and great difference. Jews faced great adversity and violence, but they also found neighbors, allies, and achievements. The diaspora provided a vision of peoplehood that was not chained to either ethnicity or land, but to beliefs, learning, dispersion, intermingling. Jewish life was antifascist. And then the fascists won, and the idea of an antifascist people became untenable. Ethnonationalism became the core of Jewish identity in Israel, and to a large extent in the American diaspora as well. That ethnonationalism was violent and intolerant, as all ethnonationalism is, and could not exist without displacement and violence directed at the Palestinians. Fascism reduced the possibilities for Jewish life, and that in turn led to a Zionism inseparable from fear, violent assertion, and colonial atrocities.

[juregim]

things i've watched/read and liked in January '24

Articles/Essays

Approaching The Infopocalypse by Nathan Gardels

Being A Girl: A Brief Personal History of Violence by Anne Thériault (reread)

home for the holidays by Rayne Fisher-Quann

It’s Not a Child’s Job to Heal Their Wounded Mother by Arah Iloabugichukwu

Joan Didion on Keeping a Notebook

The Idea That Won't Go Away by Anu Alturu

Time After Capitalism by Miya Tokumitsu

No one is bored, everything is boring by Mark Fischer

When Did Humans First Start Wearing Clothes? by Sarah Zhang

Zionism’s History Is Also a History of Jewish Anti-Zionism, Shaul Magid interviewed by Daniel Denvir (note: while it is interesting to learn more about the history of the initially not very popular movement of Zionism, Magid is somehow anti-zionist without an anti-Israel position)

Youtube

A series of 4 lectures on Albert Camus by Eric Dodson Lectures

Colour In Storytelling by Cinema Cartography

Eastern Promises: A Study of Bodies by Nerdwriter1

Happy Poor People: Our Conception of Happiness is Messed Up by Cheyenne Lin

How Red Bull makes money selling nothing by Slidebean

The Meaning of Red in Movies by Now You See It

The Metaphysical Mirror by Cinema Cartography

Why the FBI Wants This TikToker by CHUPPL

i also watched a lot of Rosie Paw before sleeping but this video Art Museum 🖼️ | Relaxing Scrapbooking is my favourite from what i've seen

Books

Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang

Issey Miyake: Making Things by Art V.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Films

A Streetcar Named Desire dir. Elia Kazan

Black Orpheus dir. Marcel Camus

Eastern Promises dir. David Cronenberg

Paprika dir. Satoshi Kon

The Princess Bride dir. Rob Reiner

my letterboxd

[luminous-licid]

This shabbat, I read Shaul Magid's The Necessity of Exile.

I would rate it a pretty good essay collection. It's, I think, best conceived of as a survey of the different ways one might work to construct a post-Zionist (or as he says, counter-Zionist) Jewish identity. As such, the book is aimed squarely at liberal Zionist Jews, who are upset at Israel's slide into fascism but for whom the State of Israel remains central to their identity and self-conception, and doesn't really dig into why Zionism is bad, only what could replace it ideologically for the Jewish people.

Magid does a lot of thinking about other people's ideas, their strengths and weaknesses, rather than putting forward a manifesto of his own, is both the book's greatest strength and biggest weakness. There's a thinker here for everyone: if you're a committed secularist, there's Peter Beinart and Judith Butler, and if you're frum, there's Rav Shagar and the Satmer Rebbe.

Chapter 5 (about BDS) is just bad, poorly argued, and you should skip it; Chapter 7 (about antisemitism) is also not very good IMO but is worth reading regardless.

If you think this book might be talking about you, either for good or for bad: it probably is and you should read it.

[pozechka]

a monthly digest of jewish events, focused on the grassroots, politically progressive, inclusive, queer and trans-positive, and anti-racist. canadian events will be primary, but virtual things & international retreats open to canadian jews will also be included.

the 18th issue (september 2024) of shtetl crier will be the last, at least for now. some highlights:

Radical Yiddish Games Night (Rad Yiddish and Queer Yiddish Camp). Play Zoom games in Yiddish, or in English about Yiddish culture, like Yiddish Randomizer; Yiddish Cards for Humanity; & Yiddish Karaoke! September 12, 7:30-9pm ET / 4:30-6pm PT.

Jewish Currents Live: A Day of Politics & Culture (Jewish Currents). Sessions will include discussion on the possibilities and limits of international law with Rob Malley and Diala Shamas, performance art and dance from Fargo Tbakhi, Hadar Ahuvia and Alex Tatarsky, reflection on the future of the Palestinian liberation movement with Fadi Quran and Noura Erakat, conversation on Judaism beyond Zionism with Shaul Magid, Alissa Wise, and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay – and much, much more. September 15, 10:30am-7:30pm ET / 7:30am-4:30pm PT.

Judaism Beyond Zionism (Reform Jews for Human Rights, Reform Jews for Justice). Over the last 100 years, mainstream Zionism has become deeply embedded in Jewish life. Yet 20th century Zionism departs from traditional Jewish religious belief and ethical commitments in many ways. Join Matthew Gindin in this lecture on the tensions that continue to exist between Zionism and traditional Judaism. September 15, 8pm ET / 5pm PT.

Omar Monsour: My Life In Gaza, & What Jews Can Do To Help (Reform Jews For Human Rights, Reform Jews For Justice, IJV Guelph). Reform Jews 4 Human Rights is going to be hosting a webinar by Omar Monsour (Vancouver) about his experiences growing up in Gaza through three IDF invasions of Gaza among other experiences, organizing for Palestinian liberation (from Canada), and what Jews can do to help the struggle for Palestinian liberation. September 29, 8-9:30pm ET / 5-6:30pm PT.

[breha]

[T]hose maligning [Jewish] non- or anti-Zionists are not saying they are not Jews; it’s even worse than that. These critics argue that those who diverge from the Zionist platform are essentially anti-Jews, or counter-Jews, because for these enforcers, Zionism – meaning support for the state of Israel as a Jewish state – has become a more essential marker of Jewish identity than Jewish practice, or any other criteria.  [...]

[W]hat happens if we take the argument that anti-Zionism is antithetical to Jewishness seriously – in fact, more seriously than some of these Zionist or pro-Israel enforcers do? The problem with this argument is that it’s easily contradicted by Zionist history itself. Some well-known early Zionists would have enthusiastically agreed that they themselves were out of step with any notion of normative Jewishness.  Take, for example, the radical Zionist Mikhah Yosef Berdyczewski who identified himself as the “last Jew and the first Hebrew.” Or the Canaanites, a small but influential artistic and ideological movement in Palestine and then Israel in the 1940s and ’50s, founded by poet Yonatan Ratosh, who openly repudiated Judaism and Jewishness in favor of a new Hebrew nation – one that was explicitly not “Jewish.” To those familiar with the history of Zionism, it is well-known that many of these early Zionist ideologues viewed Zionism as the replacement for Judaism – not a complement or extension of it, nor a faction within it. Zionism as a political movement was, in effect, Judaism’s fulfillment, in the sense of completion; returning to the land of Israel was meant to make the Jewish religion superfluous. Even the most conventional Zionists of that era were devoted to the creation of a Hebrew – not necessarily Jewish – nation. Debates about Judaism as a religion, and Jewishness as an identity, were central to early Zionist thought. For example, the foundational Zionist thinker Ahad Ha’Am argued for cultural Zionism, the idea that Israel should become a “spiritual center” for world Jewry, in parallel with the continued Jewish diaspora. On the other hand, one of the tenets of early Zionism, exemplified in its extreme by Berdyczewski and the Canaanite movement, but present in most Zionist ideology, was the “negation of exile” (or the “negation of the diaspora”) – the erasure of exilic existence (and its supposed ills) through the foundation of a state in the Jewish homeland. As one can see, the relationship of early Zionists to Judaism was often quite tortured and complex. Today’s “heresy hunting” ignores, dismisses, or perhaps is simply unaware of the utterly radical, and revolutionary, nature of Zionism itself. It elides how Zionism often claimed to replace Judaism, which some viewed derisively as essentially a product of exile. It ignores recent Jewish history and culture, before most of American Jewry had become Zionist, and before statist Zionism was the dominant form of the Jewish national project. These simplistic thinkers who attack non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews don’t realize that the Zionism they take as coextensive with Judaism today was, for many of its architects, meant to be the alternative to Judaism. 

On Jews, un-Jews, and anti-Jews from The Necessity of Exile: Essays From A Distance by Shaul Magid

[protoslacker]

Jews will sit down to a Seder this year with many mixed feelings. The trauma of October 7; the humiliation, the anger, the desire for retribution, and justifications for the horrific violence in Gaza to innocent victims. And there may be added enthusiasm to utter, toward the Haggadah’s finale, just before the door is opened to welcome Elijah the Prophet: “Pour out Your wrath to the nations who do not know You.” But Tamares’ teaching should also be present: “Do not become like Pharaoh.” Dissonant as it may sound, in Tamares’ view, it’s the gift that Jews as inheritors of Torah are meant to bring to the world.

Shaul Magid in Religion Dispatches. To One Early 20th Century Anti-Zionist Rabbi Passover Isn't Simply A Celebration Of Freedom--It's a warning

[sataniccapitalist]

Zionism EXPLAINED (w/ Shaul Magid)

[oodlenoodleroodle]

A couple comments caught my eye especially because they are making the same observation as Xiang Biao does, about "the liberal order" freaking out:

Shaul Magid, who teaches modern Judaism at Harvard Divinity School, says the increasing trend of Jewish institutions effectively purging dissent since October 7 resembles ​“a state of crisis.”

“More than an exercise in pro-Israel muscle, this is a bit of an act of desperation. The liberal Zionist center is collapsing,” Magid says. ​“It is in a kind of panic.”

And

Stefanie Fox, JVP executive director, says Jewish institutions supporting the Israeli government are ​“feeling threatened and are lashing out.”

[chansonsinternationales]

Le contre-sionisme : une controverse - K. Les Juifs, l’Europe, le XXIe siècle

[mariacallous]

Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, declaring that Jews must protect themselves by any means necessary. He immigrated to Israel in 1971, where he founded KACH, an ultranationalist and racist political party. He would die by assassination in 1990. Shaul Magid provides an in-depth look at this controversial figure, showing how the postwar American experience shaped his life and political thought.

Magid sheds new light on Kahane’s radical political views, his critique of liberalism, and his use of the “grammar of race” as a tool to promote Jewish pride. He discusses Kahane’s theory of violence as a mechanism to assure Jewish safety, and traces how his Zionism evolved from a fervent support of Israel to a belief that the Zionist project had failed. Magid examines how tradition and classical Jewish texts profoundly influenced Kahane’s thought later in life, and argues that Kahane’s enduring legacy lies not in his Israeli career but in the challenge he posed to the liberalism and assimilatory project of the postwar American Jewish establishment.

This incisive book shows how Kahane was a quintessentially American figure, one who adopted the radicalism of the militant Left as a tenet of Jewish survival.

[fspgrad]

Zionism EXPLAINED (w/ Shaul Magid)

[sethshead]

Reading the headline, I was prepared for semantics and sophistry or ahistorical nostalgia and privilege, but not both at the same time.

First, Magid seeks to redefine the complex history and present of Zionism and all its movements into one thing: the comparatively recent nation-state law, something many Zionists opposed vehemently. Even the nation-state law was originally written to preserve Jewish self-determination in Israel, not to deny it as a state to all its citizens. It was designed to counter Palestinian demands that, in addition to a Judenrein Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, "right of return" repatriations should also make Israel majority-Palestinian. The hope was that a nation-state law would be an opportunity for both parties to save face by reinforcing the principle of two states for two peoples in any agreement with Israel. Nonetheless, the greatest practical effect the nation-state law has had on Israel has been that Arabic was downgraded from an official language to one with special status - and even then it has changed nothing in regards to the use of Arab in government communications or education. What the law symbolized was indeed worse: that Israel's Jewishness is more important than its democracy, but that issue is unlikely ever to be put to the test. Unfortunately, contemporary academics are more concerned with symbolism rather than with practical considerations, so it tracks that Magid would fixate on this to the exclusion of everything else Zionism means on the ground regarding Jewish liberation, security, and self-respect.

It is because of Israel that Jews in the MENA, in the DP camps, in the Soviet Union, had a place to go to escape persecution and forced assimilation. It's Israel that aids Jews in diaspora in advocating for ourselves in a way we couldn't were we a scattered people with no metropole, no homeland, eternally wandering. Nonetheless, many scholars have an seedy nostalgia for our time of dispossession and subjectitude. Judith Butler famously believes we are only authentic to ourselves when we are dispersed, homeless, and miserable, absorbing blows on behalf of the rest of the world's sins. Of course, Butler uses their own proprietary jargon to espouse this romantic essentialism, for which they are a regular contestant for worst academic writing awards. It should not go unremarked that Butler comes from a very well-to-do background, so they can always find a new do for their doykayt, something the rest of us have not the privilege to do.

Magid falls down this hole, imagining it proper that Jews return to the weakness and vulnerability we enjoyed for most of the past two millennia. He wonders if we are really meant to have a country of our own, unlike, you know, everyone else, including the Palestinians. And let's not pretend the Palestinians have any interest in a single binational state. Some Arab Israeli and Western academics and activists, but no one outside that left wing bubble Magid inhabits. Polls show that an overwhelming number of Palestinians approve of Hamas's actions October 7. Even before, a single, binational state consistently polled as the least popular option among both Palestinians and Israelis in the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research's famously creditable and credible surveys. Those on both sides who desire a one-state solution want exclusivity. The only democratic option that has any following is a two-state solution. Magid can ignore these facts all he wants to live among the ideals in his head, but facts do matter. A two state solution remains the only practicable option for those who wish to curtail the bloodshed, whether that of Gaza wars, or a return to the 1947 civil war in British Palestine.

All of Shaul Magid's theorizing, equivocating, and tortured logic will not change this. A Zionism that better embraces the non-Jews of Israel is still Zionism; it need not be "dismantled" metaphysically for Israel to become a more just country. Conversely, forcing two peoples who do not wish to live together to do so is a classic, destabilizing parting gift of imperialism, not a gesture towards future justice. The problem isn't Zionism; it's armed motherfuckers like Hamas or hilltop youths acting outside state authority. Quit the philosophizing and start doing some good on the ground for once, Shaul.

[arcticdementor]

The discourse about antisemitism on US college campuses has arrived at an unlikely place. As Jewish students speak out about a rise in antisemitic sentiment amid Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Republicans have placed the blame on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs.  According to conservative lawmakers, who have now held several hearings on antisemitism, these initiatives — meant to create welcoming learning environments for students from marginalized communities — are one reason some Jewish students feel fearful and unprotected on campus.

…

The peculiar connection being drawn between DEI and antisemitism is concerning, Jewish studies and DEI experts told Vox — although some agreed that DEI could do more to address the needs of Jewish students. “There’s been a very strong simmering war of attrition against DEI for some time in universities. And somehow these two things started to merge together to the point where we got these congressional hearings,” said Rabbi Shaul Magid, who teaches Jewish studies at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. “It seemed to me that the issue [at the December 5 hearing] was antisemitism and also not antisemitism. It seemed like it was about DEI and [Rep.] Elise Stefanik’s interest in attacking it, rather than the rise of antisemitism on campus.”

…

Many Republicans want every institution stripped of DEI, in a fashion that would risk squandering the opportunity to thoughtfully reexamine it. “DEI has its problems,” said Eddie S. Glaude Jr., the McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. He cites the need for institutions to return to the value of diversity itself instead of focusing on checking off a diversity compliance list. “They’ve made a caricature of DEI in this context, and DEI is not the issue here.”  But addressing antisemitism should require more attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion — not less. “There’s no question that DEI programs have not included Jewish community concerns. It’s been evident for a long time and needs to be addressed,” said Stacy Burdett, an independent antisemitism expert who works with the Cohen Institute for Leadership and Public Service at the University of Maine and testified at a recent hearing on antisemitism. “But dismantling a system that protects marginalized minorities has nothing to do with the interest or fears of Jews who want to just live without harassment and antisemitism.”

…

Much like the conservative arguments against affirmative action and critical race theory, Republicans have argued that DEI amounts to “reverse discrimination” against white people. Conservative think tanks such as the Claremont Instituteand the Manhattan Institute and conservative culture warriors such as Chris Rufoargue that DEI should be abolished because it is “radical” and only makes students “see racism where none exists.” As a result, these groups see aspirational “colorblind” policies, which have been proven to hurt diversity, and an imagined meritocracy, which has never existed in America, as the way forward.

…

Now right-wing lawmakers and pundits say DEI should be abolished because it breeds antisemitism on campuses by refusing to see Jewish students as an “oppressed group.” The turn has brought new life to a movement that lumps together “critical race theory, cultural Marxism, identity politics, and multiculturalism” as threats to “the Enlightenment ideal of knowledge.”

(@mitigatedchaos)

[merrikstryfe]

But our moral panic is at once born of this trauma and making it worse. It has caused Jews to become even more terrified and tribalistic. It has undermined our solidarity with other vulnerable groups at precisely the time at which we are threatened by the nationalist right. And it has fed the illiberal campaigns of right-wing culture warriors, who have preyed on American Jewish fears to further their own agendas. We are being fed a diet of hyperbole and misinformation, and we are reacting out of fear. To be sure, some progressives responded abominably to Oct. 7, and continue to use irresponsible, incendiary rhetoric about Israel. There are outrageous things happening on some college campuses. But let’s not lose the thread here. The real crisis is not leftists on campus but white nationalists, insurrectionists, election deniers, science deniers and conspiracy theorists seizing two if not three branches of the federal government. That is the Titanic. College activists are the string quartet playing on the deck. Finally, the consequences of this fatalistic view that antisemitism is everywhere, and that it can never be eradicated, are dark indeed. Professor Shaul Magid has called it “Judeo-Pessimism,” taking a cue from “Afro-Pessimism,” a view that holds that racism can never be eradicated. For Judeo-Pessimists, antisemitism is a kind of immortal, recurring hatred that simply is part of Western culture; again, Foer describes it as a “mental habit, deeply embedded in Christian and Muslim thinking.” As such, antisemitism can be fought but never destroyed. The natural endpoint of such a view is perpetual paranoia, together with an extreme form of right-wing Zionism. It tells us that we cannot trust the international community, and can only trust Jewish strength. It dismisses human rights concerns, since the oppression of our enemies is the regrettable price of Jewish survival. Because if we are always and everywhere oppressed, then the Jewish future lies not in engagement with wider society, but in our strength in opposition to it.

[...]As if this is the first time in history that a war or catastrophe has provoked bigotry. But this is always the case. Just as Islamophobia rose after 9/11, and just as anti-Asian hate rose with the onset of the pandemic, so antisemitism is rising now. One could even say the same about anti-German and anti-Japanese stereotypes in the 1940s.  None of this is to excuse these spikes in bigotry, or to deny that the bigotry exists and is dangerous. It is only to note that the most obvious explanation for the current eruption is not a grand meta-narrative of American or European history, but rage at an ongoing war in which Israel’s conduct has received widespread international condemnation.

I really appreciate this disambiguation between "there is more antisemitism showing after October 7" and "there is an ancient conspiracy of hatred against the Jews that is reemerging". Yes, racism; no, grand organized principle of jew-hate.