American Jewish Rage

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

I recently had the odd experience of being accused (somewhat indirectly) of having a “pathological absence of rage.”

As part of an evening of study for the holiday Shavuot, I found myself among a small group of people listening to a dialogue-cum-diatribe by two American Jews, under the title “The Denial of Hatred and The Hatred of Denial.” The two speakers (whose names I feel no need to reveal here) were addressing what turned into a conflated and conflicted bunch of points. They tried to include some “facts,” such as the claim that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the World War II era, an unprovable assertion that they tied to a Pew study. They both seemed to believe that American Jews (as exemplified by those of Manhattan’s Upper West Side) are deluded in not seeing or believing the imminent threat of anti-Semitism. They refute any notion that anti-Semitism might be rooted in anything other than the utterly irrational, in no way a response to (perceived) actions by Jews themselves. And at the same time, they suggested that too many Jews walk around fearful of expressing their Jewishness—a ludicrous claim in general, and certainly in New York City!

First, on the so-called fact of the scope of worldwide anti-Semitism: the presenters quoted a study by the Pew Research Center to bolster their claim that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the holocaust. They were presumably referring to a 2008 study by Pew Research Center that showed that anti-Semitism was on the rise, in some cases strongly (see “Xenophobia on the Continent,” by Andrew Kohut and Richard Wike). Without ignoring the impact of those findings, there is still nothing to support the presenters’ hyperbolic claims, or the implicit sense that Jews everywhere should be on alert. As Kohut and Wike wrote in their article: “While there has been a rise in anti-Semitic opinion in Europe, the percentages holding negative opinions toward Jews in most countries studied remain relatively small.” Moreover, the data collected and presented by Pew explicitly draws connections between anti-Semitism and perceptions about Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians, as well as about the role and (perceived) power of Jews in America.

The speakers also revealed what I would call (to use their own terms) a pathological naivete: a denial of the obvious fact that powerful (or perceived powerful) minority groups have always been targets of one kind or another (e.g., Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Ismaili Shia in many Sunni Muslim countries). Similarly, small states with (again, perceived) out-sized power have also been targets, particularly when they have engaged in the kinds of conflict with their neighbors that trigger reflexive feelings about minority populations and their political or social agendas.

Let me be clear: I am not making excuses for anti-Semitism. But I also believe it’s irrational to think that a minority group that makes up 2-4% of the total United States population, yet controls wealth equal to three or four times those numbers, and which has very, very prominent group members represented in high places in government, finance, etc., isn’t going to face some animosity. Nor am I the only one who thinks this is the case, or that this is a reality that Jews must confront. To go back to additional Pew-funded research, in 2006 the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life co-sponsored a talk with Josef Joffe, author of “Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America,” on anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. While rejecting what he describes as “the perception that Jews have ‘conquered’ America and have the most powerful country in the world at their beck and call,” Joffe nonetheless goes on to say “that Jews and Americans have always acted as forces of rampant change that has [sic] rolled over ancient traditions and dispensations and thus threatened traditional status and power structures. If you represent the forces of an anonymous market, you are bound to anger those players who profit from privilege and entrenched position.” In other words: duh. Without making excuses for a kind of murderous, irrationally rooted anti-Semitism, one must nonetheless accept the reality that one’s actions in the world have consequences. Jews, whether in America or Israel, aren’t exempt from this construct any more than anyone else.

Yet none of this makes me fearful. Politically engaged and morally concerned, and desirous of living righteously (and not just to and towards Jews)? Yes. But fearful? No. The presenters’ argument that American Jews are too afraid of being publicly Jewish ran smack into their argument that there is this massive tsunami of hatred coming to get us and that we should, essentially, be afraid to be publicly Jewish. And that, for me, is where it all fell apart: the idea that I suffer from a “pathological absence of rage” about the existence of anti-Semitism, that I should get over my denial, and that in overcoming my denial I will be free—finally free to be afraid.

Lest these two gentlemen be unfairly called out for their views, it is worth noting that they are hardly the only ones to hold this classic mixture of bigoted, fear-mongering views. For example, currently making its way around the internet is an offensive screed by Rabbi Dr. Morton H. Pomerantz, the absurd claims of which can be summarized just from the first sentence: “Our new president did not tell a virulent anti-Semite to travel to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to kill Jews, but he is most certainly creating a climate of hate against us.” That’s a heavy charge—and one that falls flat, because it rests on both the misrepresentation of what President Obama said, and, more importantly, on that classic American Jewish Fundamentalist perspective that there is no such thing as legitimate criticism of Israel. For those with this worldview, President Obama is damned for eternity because he dared to say openly what is so obviously true: that past wrongs against Jews do not excuse current wrongs inflicted by Israelis—and that the forty-plus year Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people must, finally, end.

In retrospect, the tipoff that this Shavuot presentation would be problematic might have come at the very beginning, when one speaker began with a second-hand holocaust story, about his mother’s experiences in the camps and after the war. The purpose, clearly, was to engage the audience and provoke an emotional reaction that would bind the listeners to the presenter, credentialize him as an authority, and simultaneously remind us of that greatest of all acts of murderous anti-Semitism. Such tactics tend to work with Jews; we have been well conditioned. But if my description sounds cynical, it is not nearly as bad as the act of the presenter himself, which reminded me of a character from Tova Reich’s novel “My Holocaust,” in which she so effectively caricatures the second-generation survivors, whose devotion to the cause of the holocaust has often surpassed that of the survivors themselves.

We sat in rapt attention, listening to this compelling story—only to discover yet another Jew sadly abusing the memory of the murdered (and those few who survived), in order to justify the rights and reactions of Jews everywhere at the expense of other humans. To my mind, such “me first” righteousness is counter to the morality, the humanity, that rests at the core of Judaism, and there is no denying that it must be resisted.