Anti-Semitism is like a chameleon. It changes colors, but does not go away.
There was nothing overtly anti-Semitic about the inhumane, Islamic-based decapitation of a high school teacher in France. Yet, when hatred secures a foothold, it usually ends up targeting Jews as well. If it is true that hatred which begins against the Jews does not end with the Jews, it is also true that hatred which begins with others does not stop with them. When hatred is rampant, Jews need to be on guard. Indeed, as the longtime, retired head of the ADL Abe Foxman says, anti-Semitism does not come from a single source. Islamic terrorism (Paris, 2015). White Supremacism (Pittsburgh, 2018; Pueblo, 2019). Racism (Jersey City, 2019). Mental illness (Monsey, NY, 2019). Nationalism (Israel, 2019).
It may seem that one or another stripe of anti-Semitism diminishes or disappears, but it is rarely more than temporary. We are informed by the Dept. of Homeland Security that white supremacism is the greatest threat in the US right now. Not, however, in France, in which a teacher trying to convey the nature of free speech in a free society was cut down, gruesomely, literally, for doing what we expect teachers in a free society to do: explain freedom.
Nor, when terrorism subsides in one time period, as it did in Israel in the Hebrew year 5780, may we assume that the decline is permanent. If the decline is to be attributed to an outside factor, such as COVID-19, anti-Israel hatred may await only an amelioration of this factor to come to the fore once again.
When any form of anti-Semitism subsides, its contradictions do not. The white supremacist who shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh almost two years ago fulminated against both immigrants and President Trump, whose policies are hard on immigrants. The Islamic killers in Paris in 2015 resented the shaming of Muhammad in a cartoon, yet they shamed their own religion by killing in its name Jews and non-Jews alike. The person of color who murdered Jews in Jersey City in 2019 stood up, in his perverse way, for people of color, yet the Jews he murdered enjoyed friendship and a mutually beneficial business relationship with people of color in the neighborhood. Vicious, non-violent expressions of anti-Semitism on campus would legitimate the destruction of the national liberation movement of the Jewish people while upholding the national liberation of other peoples. Do not look for logic in anti-Semitism.
If, on a purely legal basis, a killer of a rabbi in a home on Chanukah in Monsey in 2019 is adjudicated to be mentally unfit to stand trial, this hardly removes the question: Why did this mentally ill person choose a Jew to attack on Chanukah? Why did he not choose to attack a Christian on Christmas? Or a Muslim during Ramadan? Even mental illness cannot mask the reality of anti-Semitism. It finds its outlet, one way or the other. Anti-Semitism does not go away.
Nor does the illusion that it has gone away. “It can’t happen here” may be true in the United States, but even if a Nazi-like eruption could never overwhelm the laws and mores of freedom in the US, lesser yet lethal forms of anti-Semitism do erupt. It is the most thinly identified Jews, feeling they have assimilated to the point of having shed all signs of Jewishness, who are the most surprised.
Leaders in France can no longer afford to be surprised. The head of state and of the opposition both named this recent, horrifying decapitation for what it is: Islamic terrorism. One person at a massive demonstration of mourning and protest over the decapitation held up a sign saying, “I am a Muslim. I am against violence. I am for free expression.” Here are two faces of Islam, one peaceful, one violent. We wonder whether France’s rigid enforcement of secularism to the exclusion of public expressions of religion, such as Muslim women wearing the hijab, has a boomerang effect, diminishing the allure of the peaceful face of Islam by radicalizing Muslims who feel marginalized or oppressed.
The peaceful Islam of the protester and the violent Islam of the murderer of the teacher must both be named, the former so that it can be fought, the latter so that it can be encouraged, embraced and blessed.
Up, then down. In, then out. Here, then silent. Horrific, then hidden. Direct, then indirect. Anti-Semitism in its stripes and varieties comes and goes. Only at our peril do we, during a time of the ascendance of one type of anti-Semitism, let down our guard against all of the other types.
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
