THE DINNER PARTY ANTISEMITE

Dear Deborah:

Thanks for sharing your exchange with the students in the pub. Now that I have a better understanding of antisemitic enablers, there is another type of antisemite that doesn’t seem to fall into that category.

I’m not sure I ever told you that I grew up in a small American town that was populated by many “good ol’ boys” who were open about their white supremacism, racism, and antisemitism. I knew them but didn’t interact with them all that much because I lived on the “other” side of town. They hated anyone—Jew, black, Latino, gay—who did not fit their image of what America should be. Some of them were angry about their difficult personal circumstances and were looking for someone to blame. Others were just ordinary bigots. There were only a few Jews in our town. Most owned small retail establishments, many of which had been in their families’ hands for generations. They were successful but not particularly wealthy. These Jews were good neighbors—even to the bigots. Some of the store owners among them extended credit to the same folks who engaged in overt expressions of antisemitism. A man who did some electrical work for my parents once told my mother how much he hated Jews. But in the same conversation he also told her how decent the Jewish owner of one of the local dry goods stores had been to his family when they got into a financial bind. He never acknowledged the contradiction in his statements. I’ll bet that if my mother had pointed it out, he would have said something like “Well, the owner of the store was a ‘good Jew,’ not like the rest of them.” I have no doubt that some of the townsfolk whom I am describing would find resonance in the antisemitism of the right-wing extremists whose bigotry you have depicted.

I also encountered another form of bigotry. My parents were members of the local country club, and while none of the “nice folks” there ever said or did anything overtly antisemitic—and would loudly condemn blatant expressions of antisemitism—there was an unmistakable undercurrent of it throughout the place. I suppose it’s possible that the reason the club had no Jewish members was that none had ever applied, but I doubt that was the case. If a member ever invited a Jewish guest to play golf or dine, while no one ever said, “You can’t bring someone like him in,” through body language and mumbled asides (“looks like we’re letting everyone in nowadays”) it was communicated that Jews were not welcome on the premises. Even members who boasted of their connections to Jews did it with a tinge of antisemitism. I remember someone telling my parents that he had invested money with a particular stockbroker, who was a Jew. “He’ll certainly make some money for me,” he said. “Not sure precisely how, but I am sure he will. They do have that knack, you know.” What do you make of people like these?

Yours,

Joe

Dear Joe and Abigail:

Joe, you are describing what I would call the dinner party, or polite, antisemite. He’s got Jewish business associates, perhaps even a Jewish friend or two, was horrified by Charlottesville, and has donated to the local Holocaust museum. But when the town council is considering a zoning variance to allow for the construction of another synagogue in his neighborhood, this fellow is at the head of the opposition. “Let’s just think for a minute about what this will do to the character of the neighborhood,” he’ll say. “I mean, things are fine just the way they are, aren’t they? Let’s consider the long-term ramifications, in terms of population balance.” He will mention that he has hired a new associate, casually mention that she is a Jew, but assure those listening to him that she’s not a “typical Jew.” When told that what he has just said is antisemitic, he will reply with considerable indignation. “That’s ridiculous. You know that some of my best friends are Jews.” That may well be, but he is still an antisemite. Someone who feels the need to boast that he has Jewish (or African American) friends is more often than not someone who has problems with Jews (or blacks) who aren’t his friends.

A corollary to the “some of my best friends” assertion is the increasingly familiar, “How can I be antisemitic? My son [daughter, brother, grandchild, etc.] is married to a Jew [or is Jewish].” Others will cite the Jewish employee whom they always treated fairly and even let leave early on Fridays for Shabbat. This “defense by relative (or employee)” rings hollow. If you make bigoted statements about Jews, you are antisemitic, regardless of how many Jews you are related to or provide with kosher food in your company’s commissary.

We may think dinner party antisemites are a dying breed—who would be so stupid as to say such things in public nowadays?—but they are still very much out there. They generally know better than to make their sentiments public, but sometimes they slip up. Consider what happened in 1996, during the divorce negotiations between the lawyers representing Prince Charles and the Princess of Wales. Charles had chosen Fiona Shackleton, a partner at the royal family’s law firm, to represent him. Diana chose Anthony Julius, a Jewish intellectual from a decidedly middle-class background. (He also represented me when I was sued for libel by David Irving.) Many British publications, obsessed with this royal divorce case, wrote profile pieces on the two lawyers. According to Julius, they “tended to be uncertain how to assess the significance of my Jewish identity, save that they all took it to be of immense significance.”1 But on the day after the divorce settlement was announced by Buckingham Palace, the Telegraph, a decidedly conservative newspaper, made perfectly clear why they thought Julius’s religious background was significant.

It became clear almost immediately that the incompatibility of the Prince and the Princess of Wales stretched even to the solicitors they had employed. The Prince, as expected, had chosen the bridge-playing Fiona Shackleton, 39, of Farrer and Co., who had also represented the Duke of York in his separation agreement. One of the country’s most respected family law specialists, much of Shackleton’s career has been geared to arranging favorable divorce settlements for her clients. She adopts a conciliatory approach.

Unfortunately, her softly-softly approach is at odds with the more bullish attitude of the Princess’s solicitor. Anthony “Genius” Julius, 39, is not a divorce lawyer but a specialist in media law, acting for Robert Maxwell and once employed by the Daily Mail. His background could not be further from the upper-class world inhabited by his opposite number. He is a Jewish intellectual and Labour supporter, and less likely to feel constrained by considerations of fair play. “I’d be very worried if I were the Royal Family,” says a Cambridge don who taught him. “He’ll get lots of money out of them.”2 [Emphasis added.]

Pretty impressive. In a few sentences, the Telegraph managed to slur Jews, members of the middle class, and people with liberal political views—all of whom seemed to have no scruples at all. Beset by criticism, the paper tried to explain away what it had done. The Telegraph’s legal director called Julius to explain that the reporter had originally written “outmoded considerations of fair play” and a copy editor had mistakenly eliminated the “outmoded.” It remains unclear precisely why the legal director thought the inclusion of “outmoded” would have made the article less offensive. Maybe he meant that, nowadays, when the rules of fair play no longer apply, Jews—who have a long history of not playing fair—have a decided advantage over non-Jews, who are still getting used to not having to play fair. The legal director then hastened to add that the editor of the Telegraph was herself Jewish, possibly implying that, therefore, nothing that appeared in the newspaper could be considered antisemitic or, if somehow this was indeed antisemitic, it was her fault. The Cambridge don’s comment, that Julius’s Jewishness makes him particularly qualified to wring a lot of money out of the royal family, did not seem to trouble the legal director. When he asked Julius what he wanted the paper to do, Julius told him they could do whatever they wished and ended the conversation.3

Calling a prejudice “polite” does not in any way lessen its significance. In fact, in some respects the polite form of prejudice—irrespective of whom it is directed at—is more insidious than the overt, unapologetic, easily identifiable kind. Polite antisemitism is easily camouflaged; it’s subtle and allusive. And when it’s exposed for what it is, people who are not clued in to these types of slurs may be appeased by the polite antisemite’s very polite—and, more often than not, highly unsatisfactory—“apology.” A case in point is the apology that the Telegraph ran a few days later. Though ostensibly an apology, it revealed that the newspaper didn’t really think there was anything wrong with how Julius had been described.

Our royal divorce coverage last Saturday included profiles of the legal principals involved. Anthony Julius, of Mishcon de Reya, for the Princess of Wales, and Fiona Shackleton, of Farrer and Co., for Prince Charles.

Intended to compare and contrast their styles but without in any way seeking to question his professional integrity, we referred to Mr. Julius’s background as a Jewish intellectual in a context, which we now recognize, to our profound regret, to have appeared pejorative. [Emphasis added.]

Many of our readers have taken the strongest exception to this paragraph, making clear that they regard it as a racial slur. In acknowledging the force of this criticism, we offer our sincere apologies to Mr. Julius and to all those who took offense.4

Not good enough. Linking Julius’s Jewish background to his lack of concern for the principles of fair play and his inborn ability to get a big financial settlement from the royal family did not appear to be pejorative. It was pejorative. The Telegraph was simply unwilling to flat-out admit it. And if many readers had not taken the strongest exception to the paragraph, would the newspaper have in fact recognized that what they said was pejorative?

I recently heard a story that further illustrates this kind of “polite” antisemitism. I was in Aspen leading a seminar for a group of Jewish communal leaders about my research on antisemitism. At the end of the session a participant whom I’ll call Marie shyly approached me and asked if she could share with me the story of her personal encounter with antisemitism. Marie told me that she came from a Catholic, French Canadian family in Quebec and had never heard expressions of antisemitism in her parents’ home. After a divorce and a bout with cancer, she came home to tell her mother that she had met a wonderful Jewish man who made her happy and whom she was planning to marry. Marie assumed her mom would be thrilled, and so she was completely flummoxed when her mom responded by saying, “But my father said never to shop at Steinberg’s.” (Steinberg’s, Marie explained, was a large, family-owned supermarket chain in Canada.)

In the years since her conversion to Judaism and marriage, Marie and her mom have reached a cautious truce. “But,” she said, “I will never forget her first response.” When I thanked her for sharing with me what was obviously a painful memory, she again mentioned that she had never noticed any antisemitism in her parents’ home. “But,” she concluded wistfully, speaking more to herself than to me, “it probably was there.”

Joe, it’s doubtful that your parents’ friends at the club, Marie’s mom, or the Telegraph editors would ever personally threaten anyone. But these kinds of “polite” antisemites sow the seeds of contempt among those who can do real harm. And they do it in a way that makes their antisemitism especially hard to call out and combat.

Yours,

DEL