Dissecting anti-Semitism

A monumental resource for building a much-needed strategic assessment of the threat of the blind hatred of Jews.

By WINSTON PICKETT
wistrich (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
wistrich
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
REVIEWING A BOOK THE size and depth of Robert Wistrich’s monumental “A Lethal Obsession” brings with it a unique set of challenges. As if the 941 pages of text, the 174 pages of footnotes, and a bibliography with which one could start a university department were not enough, there is the depth of the author’s half-century engagement with the field. Any attempt at comprehensiveness would either lead to a review of intimidating length or run the risk of superficiality.
There is also anti-Semitism itself. Currently there are endless analyses, essays, blogs, surveys, opinions, debates and attendant controversies as to what does – and doesn’t – constitute anti-Semitism. Regrettably in the last decade the public attitude to the subject has been too frequently debated along the lines of the old cassette-tape commercial: ‘Is it real – or is it Memorex?’ In other words, is this something new, or is it the same age-old hatred in different guises, amplified by the post- Holocaust trauma-induced hypersensitivities of a certain ethnic minority with allegiances to a country caught up in a geopolitical struggle?
Robert S. Wistrich is the Neuberger Professor of Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the university’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism. For decades he has been researching and advancing the cause of a serious, objective and academic study of anti-Semitism and is the preeminent authority on the subject.
Wistrich’s extensive treatment of the historical origins of anti-Semitism – especially those emerging with the emergence of Christianity and the expanding Greco-Roman empire can be found in his previous works, particularly his 1991 publication “The Longest Hatred.” Here, given the subsequent proliferation of material on the subject, he concentrates on its mutations during the past seven decades. He recognizes the need for a comprehensive treatment of the topic, which, as a form of group hatred, has its own peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, logic, utility, and hard-to-pin-down quality of morphing from place to place and generation to generation. Therefore, he chooses a phenomenological approach, engaging with anti-Semitism as a history of ideas evolving over time in differing historical, political and social contexts.
A sampler of chapter headings offers a glimpse of this approach: “From Deicide to Genocide,” “The Soviet War Against Zion,” “The Postcommunist Trauma,” “German Guilt,” “Jewish Angst,” “Liberté Egalité Antisemitisme,” “The Anti-Zionist Masquerade,” “Shylock Meets Uncle Sam,” “Multiculturalism and its Discontents,” “Toward the Muslim Apocalypse” and “Ahmadinejad: The Last Jihad.”
This approach allows Wistrich to differentiate between various types and recensions of anti-Semitism, unpack their origins and lay bare their compelling, if contradictory, logic. The effect is a far-reaching intellectual history that effectively ‘connects the dots’ – between such phenomena as anti-Zionism and anti- Americanism, biblical concepts of chosenness and exclusiveness/apartness and world domination, dual loyalties and double standards, rightwing and left-wing anti-Semitism, Islamist and Nazi anti-Semitism, fringe and mainstream, multiculturalism and its totalitarian response.
“Each new stage in the history of anti- Semitism has been able to build on a prior legacy of negative stereotypes, adapting them to a novel domestic, and international, context” writes Wistrich, thus explaining its singular status as ‘probably the most adaptable of all group hatreds.’ In taking this approach, Wistrich bequeaths the possibility of multiple eureka moments to readers with the time and fortitude to go the distance with his meticulously researched and lucidly detailed study. At any given juncture, in chapters that are self-contained monographs in themselves, an overarching Gestalt of anti- Semitism begins to take shape: a vast matrix of hatreds with every node bundled like a nerve fibre of thought-structures connecting the past to the present. In its unparalleled reach, A Lethal Obsession reveals a veritable family tree of anti-Jewish malice, allowing the reader to both differentiate and detect its underlying patterns and taxonomies.
WHILE THE BOOK’S SUBTITLE could easily be “the varieties of anti- Semitism,” making it resistant to attempts to construct a unified field theory about it, one leitmotif nevertheless pulses through this multifaceted work. With every tightly worded paragraph Wistrich inductively and conclusively drives home the message that it is the conceptual frameworks of anti- Semitism that must be grappled with and comprehended – not merely its florid manifestations. Nowhere is this clearer than in Wistrich’s evaluation of the Islamist threat, noting that “Western Europe has barely begun to deal seriously at the level of ideas with the existential threat that Islamism now poses to human rights, to its democratic values, to its own cultural identity and to the future of its minorities.”
If there is a message here, it is this: Only when we see the coherence, attraction and socio-political usefulness of recurring anti- Semitic components at work and in different milieus, languages, cultures and historical circumstances, can we begin to decode its DNA and ultimately devise effective antidotes to counteract it.
As erudite and scholarly as A Lethal Obsession is, it is refreshingly free of didacticism and polemic, even when it draws conclusions or breaks new ground. The chapter “Multiculturalism and Its Discontents” is a case in point. Wistrich’s initial exploration of the subject appeared as a lecture published by the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew University, which he directs. In it he drew disquieting parallels between reactionary forces at work in the fin de siècle, post-Hapsburg Europe of the late 1890s/early 20th centuries, and the eviscerated national identities that currently plague Western democracies. Buttressed by the latest research taken from original sources in various languages, the reader is given the intellectual tools, which enable him or her to understand the paradox of an anti-Semitism that forges red-green alliances and is so malevolently at play in today’s Europe.
Yet the ultimate value of A Lethal Obsession is not simply as an indispensible guide for decoding every conceivable form of anti-Semitic discourse across political, historical and linguistic landscapes. Lucidly written and capaciously referenced, Wistrich’s work is a foundation stone upon which a thorough, objective, systematic treatment of anti- Semitism as an academic subject – one living up to the highest standards of scientific scrutiny – can ultimately be built.
It is true that several academic centers engaged with anti-Semitism have been established of late. The Sassoon Center at Hebrew University and the Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research opened in 1985, while the new Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at the University of London, Birkbeck aims to award degrees in the study. However, the field as a stand-alone academic discipline has taken a back seat over the last 50 years to such topics as racism and even Holocaust studies. The resources contained in A Lethal Obsession should help fill this gap, as well as promoting the importance of the topic in higher education in the US and Europe.
Finally – and this may be potentially its most far-reaching utility – is the book’s use as resource for building a much-needed strategic assessment of the threat of anti-Semitism and its capacity for undermining the structures of civil society. As such, the book is must reading for policy makers, think tanks, advocacy organizations and communal leaders alike – if only for the reason that A Lethal Obsession both expands our knowledge of the deepest and most complex of hatreds while potentially serving as a catalyst for devising new ways to bring it under control.