A DEFINITION

Dear Professor Lipstadt:

Thanks for the response. Your focus on the delusional, irrational, and conspiratorial aspects of antisemitism was very helpful. What you seem to be saying is that antisemitism is illogical and, therefore, cannot be explained. I accept that. But if we can’t explain it, can we at least define it? Is every negative thing that is written or uttered about Jews an expression of antisemitism? I know that not everything negative written or said about Israel is necessarily antisemitic, but where does one draw the line? Is antisemitism always intentional? Can someone be an unintentional antisemite? I am a bit embarrassed to ask this. My roommate, who is reading this over my shoulder, insists that, given that I have taken your courses and am Jewish, I should know the answers to these questions. She’s right. I feel as though I should know. But I don’t.

I do remember your recounting in class that old joke that an antisemite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary. But now I’m looking for a more substantive answer.

Yours,

Abigail

Dear Deborah:

As you had predicted, I’m already learning from Abigail, who may be surprised to know that, despite all of my writings about prejudice, I’ve never systematically thought about how to best define antisemitism. It would seem that I should be able to define something about which I am so perturbed. Is it simply hatred of Jews? I believe it’s more complex than that. “Someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary” is certainly an intriguing place to start the conversation.

Yours,

Joe

Dear Abigail and Joe:

Let me reassure both of you that you need not be the least bit uncomfortable or frustrated by the fact that you can’t quite define antisemitism. You are hardly alone. Much of the general public can’t define it. Even scholars in the field can’t agree on a precise definition. In fact, there are people, particularly Jews, who eschew definitions and argue that Jews can feel antisemitism in their bones, the same way that African Americans recognize racism and gays recognize homophobia. Their position is best articulated by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous comment about hard-core pornography as set forth in the Court’s 1964 decision on whether Louis Malle’s film The Lovers fit that category and, according to the law at the time, could therefore be banned because it was not considered “protected speech.” In his opinion that the film should be considered protected speech, Stewart set down one of the most quoted phrases in Supreme Court history:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.1 [Emphasis added.]

We should be grateful to Justice Stewart not only for expanding the boundaries of artistic expression but also for giving us this highly utilitarian concept. We may at times find it hard to precisely define antisemitism, but we certainly know it when we see or hear it.

Equally useful, though slightly less elegant than Justice Stewart’s formulation, is the term “Click!” which was introduced by Jane O’Reilly in an article in the inaugural issue of Ms. magazine, in December 1971. In her groundbreaking essay, O’Reilly described those moments in the workplace when a woman realizes that her opinion is being ignored, a man is being credited for her ideas, or she is expected to do something—serve refreshments or watch the boss’s child—that no man is ever asked to do. If she complained to her male colleagues, they would be completely befuddled. Oblivious to the obvious gender discrimination, they might declare her oversensitive, if not a bit paranoid. O’Reilly dubbed that moment of her recognition “Click!”2

Abigail, I am glad you remember my aside that “an antisemite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary.” It makes us laugh, but it should also make us think. This pithy observation, which is often attributed to the late philosopher and intellectual giant Isaiah Berlin, provides a simple and useful tool for identifying prejudice.3 Imagine that someone has done something you find objectionable. You may legitimately resent the person because of his or her actions or attitudes. But if you resent him even an iota more because this person is Jewish, that is antisemitism. Let’s concretize this by considering a hypothetical example. Imagine a driver who has been deliberately forced off the road by an erratic driver who happens to be black. The person who has almost been hit can legitimately complain to the other people in the car about the dangerous driver. But if he decries “that black guy” who has done this, he has crossed the line into racism. The driver’s race is unrelated to his driving skills. Mentioning it can be considered a racist “dog whistle” that subliminally telegraphs the speaker’s contempt for black people in general. (However, including the driver’s race in your description of him to a police officer is of course not racist; it is simply one of the ways the driver can be physically identified by the cops who are trying to apprehend him.)

Now imagine someone telling his friend about a person whom he feels has cheated him in a business transaction. Complaining about that “crooked real-estate developer” is one thing. Complaining about that “crooked Jewish real-estate developer” is—Click!—antisemitism. But this example of the need to distinguish between a justifiable private grievance and a group-defaming prejudice may not take us far enough. I think it’s important to recognize it as a Jewish joke complete with its implicit derogation of Jews in the midst of its defense of them. “Absolutely necessary” in Jewish hands means “Of course we are annoying but don’t get carried away and try to kill us.”

But “knowing it when you see it” and “Click” work only if we can identify antisemitism’s essential elements, its building blocks. We need to unpack the contents of this hatred. Once it’s identifiable, we can allow our instincts to check in. If you cannot define something, you cannot address it or fight it. So let’s move on to more formal definitions. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s descriptor, which has now been adopted by the European Parliament, identifies it as:

A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.4 [Emphasis added.]

Non-Jews, too? Yes, indeed. In Arthur Miller’s 1945 novel Focus, a man, who himself is passively antisemitic, develops blurred vision and must start wearing glasses. His boss and his neighbors decide that, based on his new look, he must be Jewish, and they subject him to prejudice and, eventually, physical violence.5 Though not a Jew, he is, ironically, the object of antisemitism.

The historical sociologist Helen Fein includes in her definition some additional important elements:

A persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collectivity manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore, and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews.6 [Emphasis in original.]

Note the operative word here: persisting. It doesn’t go away; it’s not a onetime event. Though its outer form may evolve over time, its essence remains the same. It is not unlike a stubborn infection. Medication may alleviate the symptoms, but the infection itself lies dormant and may reemerge at an opportune moment in a new incarnation, a different “outer shell.” While the shape of the hatred may be adapted and massaged, the basic ideas or illusions that are at its core remain constant. In ancient and medieval times antisemitism was religious in nature. Jews were hated because they refused to accept Christianity and, later, Islam. In the eighteenth century, racial and political rationales were added to the religious one. Voltaire was contemptuous of the Church’s hierarchical structure, but he was equally contemptuous of Jews. (“You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny.”7)

By the nineteenth century, those on the political right were accusing all Jews of being Socialists, Communists, and revolutionaries. Those on the political left were accusing all Jews of being wealth-obsessed capitalists who were opposed to the social and economic betterment of the poor and working classes. Further complicating the matter, the pseudoscience of the eugenics movement posited that Jews were inferior in their genetic makeup. Some of those who subscribed to this pseudoscientific claim simultaneously argued that Jews possessed not just these inferior traits but superior ones as well. Jews were maliciously intelligent, and because they were able to easily mix with non-Jews, they used those traits to wreak havoc with non-Jews’ lives. That this was a contradiction in terms—simultaneously superior and inferior—presented no problem for the antisemite. This toxic brew of race, religion, politics, and pseudoscience became the cornerstone of Nazi antisemitism and is today a cornerstone of the white power movement and white supremacist antisemitism.^*^,8

The structure of antisemitism means that it’s not just a bunch of haphazard ideas, but it can result in, as Fein notes, “actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization…and collective or state violence.” It also has an internal coherence. This coherence might be delusional and absurd—just like the Communist who was sure Jews had all the luck because they were kicked off the line first and did not have to wait hours in the freezing cold—but it makes perfect sense to the antisemite. Irrespective of whether the antisemitic manifestations were religious, political, social, racial, or some amalgam of them all, the same themes or tropes remain embedded in them. We know them well: Jews may be small in number, but they have the ability to compel far more powerful entities to do their bidding. That bidding invariably involves aiding Jews at the expense of non-Jews. Jews, over the course of millennia, irrespective of whether they lived in close proximity to one another or were separated by continents, have honed a cosmopolitan alliance that facilitates their evil deeds. The historical template for these charges is to be found in the New Testament’s depictions of the death of Jesus. Irrespective of the fact that everyone involved in the story was Jewish—except for the Romans who did the actual crucifixion—the way the story has been told by generations of Church leaders is that “the Jews” killed Jesus, thereby depriving humanity of his wisdom, goodness, and glory. They did so because he demanded that the money changers be evicted from the Temple area, which would have threatened the income of the Temple hierarchy. According to Christian doctrine as it was taught for millennia, Jesus was crucified because, among other things, he threatened Jews’ power and financial well-being.

The Church had an institutional motivation in blaming and castigating the Jew. Judaism and Christianity were competing faiths. Christianity was Judaism’s “offspring,” and its success was threatened by the fact that there were Jews who refused to accept the new “truth.” A related historical building block in the evolution of this animus was the declaration by the apostle Paul that a “man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” and that for Jesus “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything.” In other words, belief in Jesus and his teachings replaced Jewish law and tradition. Supersessionism, or replacement theology—the declaration by Paul that Christianity is the one true faith and therefore supersedes or replaces Judaism, both in belief and in deed—became an essential tenet of the new faith. Pauline doctrine marginalized Jews, particularly those who continued to practice Jewish traditions, and depicted them as blind to the truth. Jews, Paulists argued, repudiated this new faith because of their inherent maliciousness. This formulation rendered Judaism more than just a competing religion. It became a source of evil. It is this that makes antisemitism different from other prejudices. Antisemitism is not simply the hatred of something “foreign,” but the hatred of a perpetual evil in the world. Jews are not an enemy but the ultimate enemy.9 This hatred is ubiquitous. It has persisted through the millennia, through different cultures. It has been present in many geographic areas—including those with no Jews in residence. It has permeated an array of ideologies, even the resolutely atheistic Marxism.

It’s important for you to understand that antisemitism, as is the case with any prejudice, exists independently of any action by Jews. Sometimes, an accusation against a particular Jew, or even a group of Jews, may be correct. There are some Jews who are obsessed with money or who mistreat their employees. But the same can be said about certain non-Jews. Saying that “of course X is obsessed with money; he’s a Jew, isn’t he?” is antisemitic. Antisemitism is not the hatred of people who happen to be Jews. It is hatred of them because they are Jews.10

Given the absurdity of antisemitic accusations, why do they gain any traction? One explanation may be that, having been embedded in society for millennia, they have gained a staying power that is hard to eradicate. Antisemitism also became a means of explaining otherwise inexplicable situations. For example, when the bubonic plague raged across Europe in the fourteenth century, Jews were accused of poisoning the wells and spreading the disease. For people schooled in millennia of Church-based antisemitism, it provided an easy, straightforward, and logical explanation for a seemingly inexplicable disease. Economic downturns, political tensions, unsuccessful military actions, and a myriad of other crises were explained away by attributing them to the interference of Jews. This blaming of the Jews for the suffering of others served only to further reinforce the power of antisemitism.

Some, however, argue that there is no internal coherence to antisemitism. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, insisted that antisemitism is a “passion” and rejected the notion that it was an empirical idea. Antisemitism, according to Sartre, made no intellectual sense and thus should not be dignified by being called an “idea.”11 Sartre’s notion of the irrational seems to discount the historical and religious origins of Jew-hatred. Echoing and expanding on Sartre is Anthony Julius who, while fully cognizant of the historical lineage of this hatred, argues that antisemitism must ultimately be seen as a “discontinuous, contingent aspect of a number of distinct mentalities and milieus….It is a heterogeneous phenomenon, the site of collective hatreds, and of cultural anxieties and resentments.”12 By rejecting the notion that antisemitism possesses an intellectually credible framework or unified field theory, Sartre and Julius call attention to both the irrational nature of this animus and the reason it’s so hard to fight.13 Julius adds something else to our discussion. He refuses to elevate the antisemite in stature and importance. Consider the exchange I had with Julius, who was my lawyer when I was sued for libel by David Irving for calling him a Holocaust denier, an antisemite, and a racist. Shortly before the trial was to begin, upset at the personal burden of this legal battle, I told Julius that I was intent on decimating Irving. “He’s not that important,” Julius replied. I was flabbergasted. He and his firm had worked on my case pro bono for close to two years. He despised the way Irving fabricated history and spread antisemitism. How could he say he was unimportant? Sensing my confusion, he explained what he meant. It’s not antisemitism that is inconsequential, it’s the antisemite himself. “Think of fighting Irving as the equivalent of what you must do when you step in dirt left by a dog on the street,” he said—except he used a far more graphic term than “dirt.” “The dirt has no intrinsic value. There is nothing interesting about it. Nonetheless, one must carefully clean it off one’s feet prior to entering one’s home. If you fail to do so and track it into the house, then you face a serious and long-term problem. So, too, with the antisemite.” Julius was right. He knew the lies and prejudice Irving spewed had to be relentlessly fought. Our challenge was and continues to be to fight the antisemite without elevating him or her in stature.14 Antisemites must be fought, especially if there is a chance that their passion or ideology stands a chance of becoming part of a national policy, but they are people of no consequence.

Can something have a coherent structure while at the same time be a heterogeneous passion? I would argue that it can. This is part of its “elastic” quality. Sometimes it may present itself as a passion. In other instances, it may present itself as normative. But whatever form it takes, we must always insist that antisemitism has never made sense and never will. Fight it. But don’t elevate it or its purveyors in importance.

Yours,

DEL