In recent years it has become increasingly acceptable, in our politics and in our philosophy, to proclaim the end of the Enlightenment, or to dream of it. The spectacle of contemporary anti-Semitism, the extraordinary durability of the antipathy toward the Jews, should embarrass this idea, even if the Enlightenment was itself shot through with the intolerance that it brilliantly denounced.
If there is still any question that the human world, including the Western parts of it, does not yet suffer from a surfeit of reason and decency, the resymbolization of the Jew in our time should answer it. “Very few phenomena of human history have a history of approximately 2000 years,” Victor Tcherikover once remarked. “Anti-Semitism is one of them.”
And so we now have a whole array of Judeophobias to consider. The taxonomy of present-day anti-Semitism is ominously large. There are religious varieties and secular varieties; theological varieties and ideological varieties; political varieties and cultural varieties; old varieties and new varieties.
There is the anti-Semitism of Christians, which comes in many forms, and the anti-Semitism of Muslims, which comes in many forms. There is the anti-Semitism of the Right, in Europe and in the United States, still stubbornly blaming the Jews for modernity and there is the anti-Semitism of the Left, most recently seeking shelter (and finding it) in the anti-globalization movement, which has presided over a revival of the New Left’s dogmas about capitalism and liberalism and Americanism.
And there is the anti-Semitism that manifests itself as anti-Zionism. This is, I think, the most dangerous anti-Semitism of them all. It is not the case, of course, that every criticism of the Jewish state is an instance of anti-Semitism; but it is certainly the case that every instance of anti-Semitism is a criticism of the Jewish state, a fundamental criticism, since it denies the legitimacy of the ideal of a normal life for Jews, who are consigned by anti-Semites of one kind or another to an endless abnormality of one kind or another.
If Israel cannot be above criticism, neither can Israel’s critics be above criticism; and the anxiety that many critics of Israeli policy are at bottom critics of Israeli reality — that the opposition to Israeli actions in Jenin or Gaza is sometimes motivated by a prior historical or religious dogma — is not an outlandish anxiety.
Anti-Semitism should be the occasion for an international conference at a center for non-Jewish history. Let me explain. The hatred of the Jews is a matter of urgent concern to Jews because of the injury that they may suffer as a result of it. The Jewish investigation of anti-Semitism is plainly a requirement of self-interest, and also a requirement of dignity, because defending oneself against one’s enemy is an ethical duty of the most elementary sort. The search for security has a foundation in morality.
Still, the solution to the problem of anti-Semitism is not to be sought in the Jewish struggle against it. It is indecent to ask the victims to make themselves responsible for an end to their victimization. After all, they are not doing this to themselves. This is being done to them.
If anti-Semitism will ever vanish from the earth, it will be the consequence of a transformation not in the mentality of Jews, but in the mentality of non-Jews. In this sense, anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem at all. I have two reasons for insisting upon such a paradoxical formulation. The first reason has to do with the nature of prejudice. The second reason has to do with the course of modern Jewish history.
Perhaps the most significant fact for the proper comprehension of prejudice is that its object is not its cause. If you wish to understand racism, study whites, not blacks. If you wish to understand misogyny, study men, not women. If you wish to understand anti-Semitism, study non-Jews, not Jews. Indeed, the view that the explanation of prejudice is to be sought in its object is itself an expression of prejudice. It justifies prejudice, insofar as it attributes to it a basis in reality.
