The riddle of anti-Semitism—why always the Jews?— survives as an apparently eternal irritant. The German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, writing in 1916 (in italics) of “hatred of the Jews,” remarked to a friend, “You know as well as I do that all its realistic arguments are only fashionable cloaks.” The state of Israel is our era’s fashionable cloak—mainly on the Left in the West, and centrally and endemically among the populations of the Muslim despotisms. But if one cannot account for the tenacity of anti-Semitism, one can readily identify it. It wears its chic disguises. It breeds on the tongues of liars. The lies may be noisy and primitive and preposterous, like the widespread Islamist charge (doggerelized by New Jersey’s poet laureate) that a Jewish conspiracy leveled the Twin Towers. Or the lies may take the form of skilled patter in a respectable timbre, while retailing sleight-of-hand trickeries—such as the hallucinatory notion that the defensive measures of a perennially beleaguered people constitute colonization and victimization; or that the Jewish state is to blame for the aggressions committed against it. Lies shoot up from the rioters in Gaza and Ramallah. Insinuations ripple out of the high tables of Oxbridge. And steadily, whether from the street or the salon, one hears the enduring old cry: Hep! Hep! Hep!
October 2003
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
PART ONE: AWAKENINGS
JONATHAN ROSEN is the author of the novel Eve’s Apple and of The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds. His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The American Scholar. His new novel, Joy Comes in the Morning, will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the fall of 2004. He is editorial director of Nextbook, where he is creating a series of short books on Jewish subjects, in partnership with Schocken Books.
PAUL BERMAN writes on literature and politics for The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review and Magazine, Dissent, and other journals. He is the author of Terror and Liberalism, The Passionof Joschka Fischer, and A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968.
DAVID BROOKS was a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a commentator on PBS’s News Hour, and is now an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. He is the author of Bobos in Paradise.
BARBARA AMIEL is a columnist for the London Telegraph.
HAROLD EVANS is the former editor of the London Sunday Times, and the author of The American Century.
LAWRENCE SUMMERS was secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration and is currently president of Harvard University.
PART TWO: SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW
BEREL LANG, professor of humanities at Trinity College, is the author of Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, Heidegger’s Silence, and Holocaust Representation, among other books.
ROBERT S. WISTRICH holds the Neuberger Chair for Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is head of its International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He is the author and editor of twenty-three books, several of which have won international awards. These include Socialism and the Jews (Oxford University Press, 1982); The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (Oxford, 1989), which won the Austrian State Prize for Danubian History; and Anti-Semitism, the Longest Hatred (Pantheon, 1992), which received the H. H. Wingate Prize for nonfiction in the U.K. It was also the basis for the PBS film documentary, which Professor Wistrich scripted and co-edited. His most recent books are: Hitler and the Holocaust (Random House, 2001) and the edited volume Nietzsche: Godfather of Fascism? (Princeton, 2002).
GABRIEL SCHOENFELD is the senior editor of Commentary and the author of The Return of Anti-Semitism.
PART THREE: ONE DEATH, ONE LIE
JUDEA PEARL is the father of the late Daniel Pearl and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation (www.danielpearl.org).
THANE ROSENBAUM, the former literary editor of Tikkun, is the author of Second Hand Smoke, The Golems of Gotham, and The Myth of Moral Justice. His articles appear in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author most recently of Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry.
TOM GROSS is former Middle East reporter for the London Sunday Telegraph and the New York Daily News. Gross maintains a weblist that reports on anti-Semitism in the media and politics.
DR. DAVID ZANGEN, head of the Pediatric Endocrine Service at Mt. Scopus Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, was chief medical officer of a brigade in the Jenin area during Operation Defensive Shield.
PART FOUR: THE ULTIMATE STAKES: THE SECOND-HOLOCAUST DEBATE
PHILIP ROTH is one of America’s most honored novelists. He is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in fiction in addition to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.
RON ROSENBAUM see “About the Editor.”
LEON WIESELTIER is literary editor of The New Republic, author of Kaddish, and editor of The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, a selection of Lionel Trilling’s essays.
RUTH R. WISSE, the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, is the author most recently of The Modern Jewish Canon (Free Press) and contributes to many journals.
PART FIVE: THE FACTS ON THE GROUND IN FRANCE
MARIE BRENNER is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of five books. Her piece on the Abner Louima incident won a Front Page Award and her report on tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wiegand was made into the film The Insider.
PART SIX: THE SHIFT FROM RIGHT TO LEFT
MELANIE PHILLIPS has been a columnist for the London Times and the London Daily Mail. She was awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996; her most recent book is The Ascent of Women.
DR. LAURIE ZOLOTH was director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Francisco State University when she wrote this e-mail. She now teaches at Northwestern University.
TODD GITLIN is a professor of journalism, culture, and sociology at New York University and the author of many books on media and society, including Media Unlimited.
ELI MULLER was a senior at Yale University when he wrote this column.
MARK STRAUSS is a senior editor at Foreign Policy.
BARRY ORINGER is a screen and television writer whose best-known works include Ben Casey, I Spy, and The Fugitive.
FIAMMA NIRENSTEIN is the Jerusalem correspondent for the leading Italian newspaper La Stampa as well as for the Italian magazine Panorama . Her work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including Commentary and The New York Sun. An author of several books about the Arab-Israeli conflict, she teaches history of the Middle East at the LUISS University in Rome, as a visiting professor. This article, which was posted on the Jewish World Review website, was first delivered as a speech at the YIVO Institute conference “Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-Semitism in the West,” May 11–14, 2003.
PART SEVEN: THE DEICIDE ACCUSATION
NAT HENTOFF is a columnist for The Village Voice and The Progressive and the author most recently of The War Against the Bill of Rights, among many other books. His work also appears in Editor and Publisher and the United Media Newspaper syndicate.
PETER J. BOYER has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. His stories have been included in the anthologies Best AmericanCrime Writing and Best American Science Writing. As correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline, he has earned a Peabody Award and an Emmy. Boyer is currently at work on a nonfiction book for Random House.
FRANK RICH is a columnist at The New York Times and the author of the memoir Ghost Light.
PART EIGHT: SOME NEW FORMS OF ANTI-SEMITISM
SIMON SCHAMA, professor of art history at Columbia University, is the author of Citizens, A History of Britain, Landscape and Memory, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culturein the Golden Age, and, most recently, Rembrandt’s Eyes.
JOSHUA MURAVCHIK, a resident scholar
at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author, most recently, of Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism.
ROBERT JAN VAN PELT is a professor of architecture at the University of Waterloo, Canada. In addition to The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial, he is the co-author, with Debórah Dwork, of Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present.
JUDITH SHULEVITZ was editor of Lingua Franca and has been a columnist for Slate and The New York Times Book Review.
PART NINE: ANTI-ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM
JEFFREY TOOBIN is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the legal analyst for CNN. His books include Too Close to Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election; A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President; and The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson.
MARTIN PERETZ is the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, and teaches at Harvard.
JONATHAN FREEDLAND has been a columnist at The Guardian (U.K.) since 1997, having served for four years as the paper’s Washington correspondent. In 2002 he was named Columnist of the Year in the What the Papers Say Awards. Freedland is also the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s history series The Long View and BBC 4’s The Talk Show. He has written extensively on Israeli and Middle Eastern affairs. He also writes a monthly column for The Jewish Chronicle and is now at work on a book about identity, Jewishness, and the Middle East.
JUDITH BUTLER is Maxine Elliot Professor in Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book Precarious Life will be published by Verso in the spring of 2004.
PART TEN: ISRAEL
DAVID MAMET is one of America’s leading playwrights and screen-writers and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award, among many others.
PHILIP GREENSPUN teaches at MIT, has authored textbooks on software and Web applications, and maintains a website on politics and economics at http://philip.greenspun.com/.
SHALOM LAPPIN is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at King’s College London and a longtime supporter of the Israeli peace movement.
EDWARD SAID was a scholar and author who taught at Columbia University and wrote the influential study Orientalism. In addition, he was a leading advocate of the Palestinian cause. He died of leukemia in September 2003.
DANIEL GORDIS (www.danielgordis.org) is director of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows and the author, most recently, of If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State (Crown).
PART ELEVEN: MUSLIMS
JEFFREY GOLDBERG is a staff writer and Middle East correspondent of The New Yorker. Before joining The New Yorker, he was a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, and also served as the New York bureau chief of The Forward and as a columnist for The Jerusalem Post. He began his career as a crime reporter for The Washington Post. Goldberg is the recipient of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting and the National Magazine Award for Reporting, for his coverage of terrorism.
BERNARD LEWIS is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University and the author of The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; The Emergence of Modern Turkey; The Arabs in History; and What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, among other books. Lewis is internationally recognized as one of our era’s greatest historians of the Middle East.
TARIQ RAMADAN is a Geneva-based scholar and lecturer and the author of Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford University Press).
AMOS OZ is the internationally acclaimed author of numerous novels and essays, which have been translated into over thirty languages. He is also one of the founders of Peace Now, and lives in Arad, Israel.
AFTERWORD
CYNTHIA OZICK is one of America’s most admired novelists, essayists, and short story writers. Her most recent collection of essays, Quarrel & Quandary, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her new novel will appear in the fall of 2004.
SOURCE LIST
Jonathan Rosen, The New York Times Magazine, November 4, 2001
Paul Berman, The Forward, May 24, 2002
David Brooks, The Weekly Standard, February 2, 2003
Barbara Amiel, The Telegraph, December 17, 2002
Harold Evans, The Index Lecture (Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival), June 2, 2002
Lawrence Summers, Address at Memorial Church, Harvard University, September 17, 2002
Berel Lang (1), Midstream, May/June 2003
Robert S. Wistrich, The National Interest, Summer 2003
Berel Lang (2), Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Annual Report, 1999
Gabriel Schoenfeld, Commentary, June 2002
Judea Pearl, The Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2003
Thane Rosenbaum, Tikkun, November/December 2002
Samuel G. Freedman, Salon.com, June 12, 2002
Tom Gross (1), National Review Online, May 13, 2002
Dr. David Zangen, Ma’ariv, November 8, 2002
Tom Gross (2), Weblist, August 5, 2002
Philip Roth, from Operation Shylock, published by Simon & Schuster, 1993
Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer, April 15, 2002
Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic, May 27, 2002
Ruth R. Wisse, Commentary, October 2002
Marie Brenner, Vanity Fair, June 2003
Melanie Phillips, The Spectator, March 22, 2003
Dr. Laurie Zoloth, aish.com, May 9, 2002
Todd Gitlin, motherjones.com, June 27, 2002
Eli Muller, yaledailynews.com, March 1, 2003
Mark Strauss, Foreign Policy, November/December 2003
Barry Oringer, Pacific News Service, May 9, 2002
Fiamma Nirenstein, talk at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Conference on “Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-Semitism in the West,” May 11–14, 2003
Nat Hentoff, The Village Voice, June 22, 2001
Peter J. Boyer, The New Yorker, September 15, 2003
Frank Rich, The New York Times, September 21, 2003
Simon Schama, talk at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Conference on “Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-Semitism in the West,” May 11–14, 2003
Joshua Muravchik, Commentary, September 1, 2003
Robert Jan van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial, Indiana University Press, 2002
Judith Shulevitz, Slate.com, January 24, 2000
Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, January 27, 2003
Martin Peretz, The New Republic, April 29, 2002
Jonathan Freedland, first published in A New Anti-Semitism?: Debating Judeophobia in 21st-Century Britain, Profile Books, October 2003
Judith Butler, London Review of Books, August 21, 2003
David Mamet, The Forward, December 27, 2002
Philip Greenspun, http://www.philip.greenspun.com
Shalom Lappin, Dissent, Spring 2003
Edward Said, Al-Ahram Weekly (online), June 25–July 1, 1998 Daniel Gordis, Midstream, May/June 2003
Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, October 8, 2001
Bernard Lewis (1), The Middle East Quarterly, June 1998
Bernard Lewis (2), The Middle East Quarterly, September 1998 and December 1998
Tariq Ramadan, from Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Oxford University Press, October 2003
Amos Oz, The Nation, April 22, 2002
Cynthia Ozick, written for this volume, Sept.–Oct. 2003
PERMISSION CREDITS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Al-ahram: “A Desolation, and They Called It Peace” by Edward Said (June 25–July, 1998, issue #383). Reprinted by permission of Al-ahram.
Barbara Amiel: “Islamists Overplay Their Hand” by Barbara Amiel (The Telegraph, December 17, 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Barbara Amiel. Reprint
ed by permission of the author.
Paul Berman: “Something’s Changed” by Paul Berman. This article was originally published in the The Forward. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Peter J. Boyer: “The Jesus War” by Peter J. Boyer (The New Yorker, September 15, 2003), copyright © 2003 by Peter J. Boyer. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Judith Butler: “The Charge of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel, and the Risks of Public Critique” by Judith Butler (London Review of Books, August 21, 2003). Reprinted by permission of the author.
Commentary: “Israel and the Anti-Semites” by Gabriel Schoenfeld (Commentary, June 2002). Reprinted by permission of Commentary.
Harry Evans & Associates: Speech entitled “Hay-on-Wye Speech” by Harry Evans. Reprinted by permission of Harry Evans.
Foreign Policy: “Antiglobalism’s Jewish Problem” by Mark Strauss. Reprinted by permission of Foreign Policy (www.foreignpolicy.com).
Samuel G. Freedman: “Don’t Look Away” by Samuel G. Freedman (Salon.com, June 12, 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Samuel G. Freedman. Reprinted by permission of the author.
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