For years, the Anti-Defamation League has called its annual surveys of anti-Semitism audits, borrowing a term more appropriately applied to the precise science of accounting.
Our question is, can a measurement of anti-Semitism really be precise? Measuring anti-Semitism, it seems to us, is more akin to herding cats than auditing columns of figures.
This was driven home recently when the ADL announced that it was downgrading the swastika symbol, meaning that the organization will no longer consider its use to be an automatic indicator of anti-Semitism.
Younger hatemongers, it seems, dont know much about the swastikas history, and apply it in all sorts of expressions of bigotry, many of which have nothing to do with Jews.
Is there anything new about this? In recent decades, everyone from the American Nazi Party to the Ku Klux Klan to various bands of skinheads have utilized the potent symbolism of the swastika, but none of those groups limited its hatred to Jews.
Even Nazi Germany, which co-opted the ancient symbol for its own genocidal agenda, didnt limit its violence or hatred to Jews. Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, political opponents, the handicapped and others were also targeted for death.
For that matter, other symbols of hatred and they are many and varied are no more reliable as indicators of Jew-hatred or any other specific variety of bigotry.
The ADL, to its credit, is striving to project a more accurate measure of anti-Semitism in current and future audits. It says it is collecting crime data differently now, taking more time to study potentially anti-Semitic incidents with the goal of classifying them more accurately.
A swastika placed on a park bench in a predominantly non-Jewish neighborhood, for example, will no longer automatically be called anti-Semitic. A swastika placed in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, on the other hand, will likely be called an anti-Semitic incident.
As a result of such new auditing methods, the ADL expects that indicators of anti-Semitism will change.
To illustrate: A recent article in the New York Jewish Week noted that there were 1,352 anti-Semitic incidents reported in the US in 2008 and 1,211 anti-Semitic incidents in 2009, suggesting a modest decline.
However, the 2008 figures were amassed the old way, while the 2009 figures were amassed the new way. Had the old method been used in both years, 2009 would have showed a 10% increase over the 2008 figure, instead of a modest decline.
Such convoluted equations force us to ask, once again: Can anti-Semitism really be measured?
Adding to the complexity is this significant intangible: How many anti-Semitic incidents are never reported and never enter the police-based data stream upon which the ADL relies for its audits?
In a recent documentary, Defamation, Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir asked a number of questions: If somebody becomes an activist against Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, is he or she motivated by anti-Semitism or human rights concerns?
Or, if police statistics from Crown Heights indicate that Jewish residents are disproportionately likely to be victims of muggings and robberies, is this because of anti-Semitism or because they happen to be, for various reasons, easier victims than other people?
The filmmakers point seems to be that such questions are ultimately unanswerable and that appearances can often be deceiving all of which points to the same concerns raised by the recent downgrading of the swastika.
We dont agree with critics who allege that the ADL exploits audits of anti-Semitism as fundraising mechanisms (read, scare tactics). Michael Berenbaum, a former project director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, recently pointed out that the ADL has reported declines when it would have been in its self-interest to show rises.
We believe in the ADLs good intentions in reporting annual audits. We have reported on them for years, in fact, because we believe that many of our readers have come to expect them and because there is no remotely reliable alternative.
Still, we urge caution in putting too much credence into such yardsticks. Anti-Semitism, at least in the United States, is a restless and fickle phenomenon that resists being measured like atmospheric pressure by a barometer.
Wed do just as well to stay alert to the very real presence of anti-Semitism, regardless of its relative level, and to trust our own judgment of our observations.
After all, as Bob Dylan once wrote, you dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
