Not your grandfather’s anti-Semitism

When we think of anti-Semitism, we tend to think of direct assaults on Jews — Inquisition, Chmielnicki, Holocaust. We tend to think of murder and of absurd rationalizations for murder, from Christ killing to well poisoning to dilution of racial purity. Think again. The anti-Semitism creeping up around us will, yes, certainly include threats of mass murder (think Ahmadinejad of Iran), but will also include a “soft” component, an insidious, seemingly innocent and even comforting component.

Today the anti-Semites cloak themselves in respectability, in humanity, in animal rights and human rights. Today’s anti-Semites deny they are anti-Semites. They project themselves, rather, as protectors of higher and indeed universal values. They claim the moral high ground.

Example: In New Zealand, a serious effort is afoot to ban shechitah, ritual Jewish slaughter. To be sure, the Nazis did this, too. But the Nazi goal was blatantly malicious — to hurt and harm Jews. Not so in New Zealand. There, the stated goal is kindness to animals. No one is against Jews, the claim is made. It is — so it is claimed — kinder to animals to stun them before slaughtering them. To stun an animal in advance of slaughter violates the laws of kashrut and, in any case, puts kashrut ridiculously on the defensive. We say “ridiculously” because the entire goal of kosher slaughter is to minimize the pain to the animal.

But animal rights activists have a horse-blinder agenda. However kindly it is put or couched, it amounts to anti-Semitism. It says: Kosher slaughter is cruel and is to be banned. Jewish ritual will just have to die.

Don’t think this is a limited problem in some far-off part of the world. Many countries around the world are watching what happens in New Zealand. The  government decree is in the courts there. Should the Jewish community lose and shechitah be banned in New Zealand, many other countries will, at a minimum, attempt the same — all the while telling the Jews they love them. That’s the new anti-Semitism: a spurious love, not a malicious hate. Call it love or call it hate; either way, a Jewish community without legal access to shechitah is an endangered community, the very small minority of Jewish vegetarians notwithstanding.

It might seem, especially at this time of Chanukah, that the new anti-Semitism isn’t really new. After all, the ancient Greeks who tried to destroy Judaism focused on circumcision, Shabbat and rosh chodesh (the marking of the first day of the Hebrew month). Back then, however, the assault on Judaism was open and forthright. The goal was to destroy Judaism, candidly acknowledged. That was your grandfather’s anti-Semitism.

Under the new anti-Semitism — in the same spirit as the New Zealand attempt to ban shechitah,  — comes the attempt in San Francisco to ban brit milah, ritual circumcision. Again, anti-Judaism is not the stated goal. Rather, personal autonomy and human rights are. It is wrong, so the opponents of circumcision claim, for anyone under the age of 18 to be circumcised. Personal consent is required.

Even if this measure is defeated, the new anti-Semitism gets a foothold. The idea is planted: circumcision is against human rights.

This is not your grandfather’s anti-Semitism, but it is no less dangerous. Just as Israel, for its very existence, is subject to a campaign of delegitimation around the world, so too, in a growing way, is Judaism. Call yourself the biggest anti-Zionist in the world, if you like; distance yourself from Israel all you might want, it will avail you not one whit. Merely for advocating traditional Jewish practices like kashrut and circumcision, you, too, will likely find yourself delegitimated.

In other words, the delegitimation effort against Israel is sticking. Contagious. Its pernicious quality, also couched in the language of (pro-Palestinian) human rights, is spreading.

It is a time for vigilance. Any attack on any Jewish commitment — from Israel to circumcision — is arising from the same seedbed, or, perhaps the better metaphor is, the same cesspool. Either way, it is a time for vigilance, not just for professional organizations like the ADL, but for all Jews. Jews and

Judaism are under threat in a new, soft, perversely idealistic, illusorily comforting way.

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