Antisemitism, pt. 1

This was originally intended to be a short jotting down of some off-the-cuff thoughts about antisemitism. I don’t know what possessed me to think I was capable of posting something short or off-the-cuff, but in any case, we’re going to be spending a little more time on the topic than I originally intended. This is part one of a series, and there are loose strings that will only be tied up in later installments, so bear with me as we work through this.

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The Twitter pundit Michael Tracey posted a video created by the American Jewish Committee which included an assertion that Jews could not be safe in any country in the world (except Israel). A strange line coming from the American Jewish Committee, and Tracey asked the obvious question:

Everyone has heard the saying, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” True enough, but fewer have heard the equally true flip side of that quip: “Just because they are out to get you doesn’t mean you’re not paranoid.” Paranoia is a neurotic complex that is toxic to the personality whether or not it’s based on something real. In fact, traumatic experiences of betrayal or attack form the basis of most paranoid complexes. The paranoiac insists that experience has proven their attitude is necessary to survive in a world full of enemies. One psychologist has referred to the paranoid complex as the “warfare personality,” because it places a person in a hostile relationship to the rest of the world. Such a belief has a tendency to become self-fulfilling.

In a recent debate over the Israeli assault on Gaza, an interesting exchange took place between comedian and political commentator Dave Smith, and conservative radio host Dennis Prager. Prager is a prototype of a certain kind of conservative Jewish Zionist: a good-natured, sober-minded man who is simply a lunatic on the Israel-Palestine question. His opponents on the debate panel were hitting a brick wall trying to talk to Prager about the history or politics of the conflict, because to him Gaza is merely the latest flare-up of mankind’s eternal war against the Jewish people.

Prager: “Jew hatred is different from all other hatred because it’s exterminationist. In every generation, someone rises to annihilate us!”

Smith: “Why? Just because people are possessed with evil Jew hatred?”

Prager: “Yes, it does seem that way.”

This is a shocking statement on its face, but it approximates the perspective of many Jews and has been the basis of Zionist ideology since its inception. In a 2021 Pew Poll, American Jews were asked what they thought was the most “essential part of being Jewish.” Among the answers provided were “being part of a Jewish community,” and “caring about Israel,” but the most common response (given by 76% of all respondents) was “remembering the Holocaust.” The answer could have been stated more generally as, “remembering what they did to us,” - “they” referring not only to the Germans, but to all mankind.

The actress Winona Ryder told the Daily Mirror about the trauma she suffered as a child, as a result of hearing stories about the Holocaust. She said she would sleep by her parents’ bedroom door, because she was consumed by fear that, at any time, there might be a knock at the door and her family would be dragged off and murdered. It would be traumatic and damaging for any child to go through a period like that, but how much worse when the delusion is constantly validated by parents, community leaders, and the culture in general? Ryder eventually learned to sleep in her own bedroom, but the old paranoia still haunts her. Discussing her role in The Plot Against America, a TV series portraying the terror and persecution faced by a Jewish-American family in an alternate timeline where America sides with Germany in World War 2, she commented that the show is “a taste of what we’re living in now, and what we might possibly be heading into in the future…” It is a terrible tragedy that a wealthy, famous woman who has never experienced persecution or oppression in her entire life, has been beset since childhood with a life-defining fear that her neighbors will one day, almost inevitably, turn on her with brutal suddenness and finality.

One of the more puzzling aspects of the paranoid complex is that the sufferer will typically fight tooth-and-nail against any attempt to dissuade them from a worldview that psychologically terrorizes them. It is so common for hospitalized paranoiacs to collapse into depression and disillusionment after successful treatment that doctors plan for it. The patient finds it more tolerable to imagine himself as the object of everyone’s hostility, than to give up his sense of imagined centrality - or, chosenness, if you prefer. “They hate me because I am special. I am special because they hate me.” To test this in the wild, simply try to persuade someone like Winona Ryder that she doesn’t have to worry, that America is safe and will remain safe for Jews, that antisemitism, while it persists in pockets, has no purchase in our society or institutions. Like the paranoid patient, she will fight to defend the idea that there is an overwhelming conspiracy against her, and the very fact that you doubt it suggests that you might secretly be one of them.

This is captured neatly in the rabbinic tradition regarding the etymology of “Sinai.” Mount Sinai was the place where God revealed Himself to the Israelites and provided Moses with the Ten Commandments, the place where the Israelites were consecrated as a people. According to this rabbinic tradition, “Sinai” derives from “sin-neh,” which means “hatred,” because the nations’ hatred of the Jews was aroused by jealousy that the Jews alone were favored by the one and only God of the universe. Hatred of the Jews, then, is an eternal disease in the Gentile soul, and, though it may be treated, it can never be cured. Beneath the smiles of neighbors, coworkers, and supposed friends lurks a concentration camp guard waiting for the right circumstances to be unleashed. This is not a mere religious feeling, either. I was once told by a secular Jewish acquaintance, whom I knew to be basically sane and reasonable, that antisemitism slept even in the hearts of the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians. I replied, “What about the tribes in Papua New Guinea or the Amazon?” He said, I kid you not, “Even them.” 

So, to Tracey’s question of whether the American Jewish Committee would really have people believe that Jews are in mortal danger in Santa Barbara, CA or Bergen County, New Jersey, the answer is yes, and this sense of mortal danger has - at times, not without reason - been a defining feature of Jewish social psychology for as long as the Jews themselves have been keeping records of it.

Is Antisemitism Unique?