The question many Jews seem to be asking these days is “can anti-Semitism be combatted?”
“And if so, how?”
At the otherwise unremarkable “Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism” recently hosted by Israel’s ministry of Diaspora affairs in Jerusalem, prominent Israeli-American political theorist Yoram Hazony made waves by blasting Jewish and Zionist activists and organizations (who he called “the anti-Semitism industrial complex”) for their “extreme incompetence” in advocating for the exclusion of anti-Semites from the Republican party and US President Donald Trump’s coalition.
Former Hazony ally, Orit Arfa, turned to Tablet Magazine with a highly critical piece, claiming that he himself consistently holds back critiques of anti-Semitism on the right in order to bolster his international coalition of national-conservatives.
But Arfa’s criticism missed the central thread of Hazony’s argument.
Recalling a 1999 lecture by Irving Kristol titled, “The Political Stupidity of the Jews,” in which he argued that in the absence of a political tradition and political experience, modern Jews cope by moralizing – “as if pronouncing moral judgements in an agitated way was going to win us friends in high places,” Hazony claimed that the “anti-Semitism industrial complex” today is guilty of the same folly.
He further called on the audience (who he identified with this same industrial complex) to get smart politically by actually understanding the New Right in America and appealing to their interests, rather than conceptions of morality, to build bridges and strengthen the coalition against anti-Semitism.
The problem is that Hazony and Kristol’s argument is grossly ahistorical.
While it’s true that the Jewish people as a collective didn’t have a state or hegemonic power during the exile, Jewish leaders across the ages in every corner of the Diaspora expertly wielded their political prowess to advance the interests of their people.
In the pre-modern era, the Rashei Galuta in Sassanian Persia, the Nagidim in Spain, and the Nasi and Abarbanel families around the time of the expulsion expertly wielded political power, and were succeeded in modernity by dynasties like the Sassons and Rothschilds, and individual power-brokers like Haim Farhi, Leon Bloom, Benjamin Disraeli, and Henry Kissinger.
As a collective, and especially when focusing on wealthy or well-connected individuals outside the organs of Israel’s state power, Jews do not lack political tradition or experience.
So, if “political stupidity” can’t explain the abject failure of Jewish leaders and institutions to combat anti-Semitism, what can?
In his “State of World Jewry” address on February 1, journalist Bret Stephens argued that combatting anti-Semitism is a waste of the Jewish community’s resources.
“For as long as there have been Jews, there have been Jew haters… Constantly seeking to prove ourselves worthy in order to earn the world’s love is a fool’s errand… we need to take this as an opportunity to stop caring.”
Stephens further stated that pro-Israel hasbara seems futile and argued that rather than fighting our haters and trying to educate the anti-Semitism out of them, we should lean more boldly into Jewish identity and pride by investing in communal institutions that serve that end.
What his point ultimately came down to was that “the goal of Jewish life is Jewish thriving,” not as individuals but as a thriving community that centers its Jewishness.
While the usual suspects – representatives and beneficiaries of the organizations he criticized – protested against his calls to defund them, many – especially younger Jews – felt deeply affirmed by his words.
So less than a week later, when Robert Kraft released the anti-anti-Semitism commercial he’d reportedly spent 15 millions dollars to air at the Super Bowl, the public Jewish scorn was deep.
Young Jews who had found hope and inspiration in Stephens’s speech received a rude reminder that institutional change doesn’t come so easily.
So is Stephens right? Is the fight against anti-Semitism helpless? Or is Hazony’s appeal to fighting more effectively (even if historically unfounded) the way to go?
The truth is that they’re both right, but on a deeper lever than either is aware.
Hazony’s appeal to Jewish powerlessness, when examined more historically, sheds light on the conditionality of Jewish power in the Diaspora, and the unique Jewish role as the middle-agent oppressor, especially in medieval Europe.
While Jews were able to wield some limited power, despite their statelessness, that power was always in service of the most powerful elements of society and at the expense of those they controlled, placing Jews in an uncomfortable bind between the disdain of their superiors and the resentment of those below them.
That ongoing historical reality, and not “Jewish stupidity,” is the core reason for the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism today. This is why leaning into Jewish education, Jewish identity, and Jewish pride is essential to moving beyond anti-Semitism. Not because we should be turning inward in order to minimize how much anti-Semitism affects us, as some critics believe Stephens meant. But because by leaning into the revolutionary, counter-cultural, iconoclastic tradition that Stephens celebrated (and identified as a root cause of anti-Semitism), Jews can step out of the disdain and resentment-inducing role assigned to them by the dominant power structure and into the rage-inducing role of “saying no” to all the false gods of foreign civilizations.
By coming to terms with the necessity to move from the anti-Semitism of Jewish weakness to the anti-Semitism of Jewish strength, while accepting that “combatting anti-Semitism” in and of itself is a futile effort, we can realize Hazony’s dream of Jewish political awareness and intentionality while manifesting Stephens’s vision of communal Jewish thriving.
