Rising Anti-Semitism is Becoming Too Common

 

The best means of starting such an article is to quote some well-known and respected Rabbi, so we are going to quote Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, who is the President of the Conference of European Rabbis, who says that terrorist attacks on Jews in Europe and “attacks on religious practice” show that “anti-Semitism is back in vogue.” His entire talk on the subject can be heard at the end of this article. He refers to a number of surveyed Jews with one of the more troubling ones being taken by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency, published in December, which found that forty percent were considering leaving their home countries because they no longer felt safe. We have been on this bandwagon having recognized the rising anti-Semitism; well, to be honest, before we even started writing at Beyond the Cusp. Myself in particular used to try and call people’s attention to the rise in levels of hostilities against Jews and the people who most ridiculed me as imagining things or seeking the bogey man where none existed and a plethora of other equally insulting references back in the late 1960’s and through well into the mid to late 1990’s, until I simply gave up and buried my efforts in writing here. Now I find that the majority who get the message are the non-Jews. I often wonder if my fellow Jews are supposed to be so smart, why will they so often not listen to reason and instead attempt to pass any unwanted information off by attempting to belittle the messenger. I seem to remember a similar reference by Shakespeare with something in Hamlet where he changed the note calling for his own death replacing it with a note calling for the execution of the bearers of the letter, which happened to be two fools named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I always felt sorry for those two as they were the classic innocents who die all too often in plays, novels, stories and even, on occasion, in the real world.

 

President of the Conference of European Rabbis Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt

 

While most of what we can reference about the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe comes from cold statistics, studies, news reports and other means by which the facts have been related; this is simply cold empirical evidence which lacks any real feelings beyond being upset at the return of this hatred to Europe so soon after the end of the Nazi reign of death which should have had a more lasting effect on the people, but apparently it did not. On the other side of the pond, what many British call the Atlantic Ocean, I have had more interplay with the numerous and varied forms of anti-Semitism. Growing up I resided in a community which was heavily Catholic and the majority of the Catholic kids went to the local Catholic school system. This made the period around Easter particularly difficult for the Jewish kids, especially the boys, as there would be numerous fights where the Jews were accused of murdering Jesus. My earliest run-in with this was when I was five and I came home and asked my mother who was Jesus and when did I kill him. To this day, I do not remember what her answer was, but I seem to remember that she got upset and it was not until later that I began to understand why. She was not upset with me as much as she was that I had to go through something such as this unnecessary hatred. But I learned that Easter was a time to wear my running shoes as there were four times as many Catholics as there were Jews in my neighborhood.

 

This ratio remained fairly consistent, if not optimistic, as many places I have resided across the United States I may have been the only Jewish family for many miles with the longest distance likely when I lived in north-central Wyoming. These varied living conditions and locations allowed me to meet quite a number of very colorful people and also more anti-Semites than I care to admit. I also met something which still makes me ponder why it is such that people who admittedly had never met a Jew could hate them and hold them responsible for so much of the evil they see in the world. Such a conclusion is senseless simply if one takes the numbers. Jews are approximately 2% of Americans and 0.2% of the world population and yet so many believe that the Jews control the world, are responsible for all the conflicts, control the media, banks, businesses from retail to stock market to manufacturing to almost anything you could imagine, and believe that they have some special power which allows the Jews to hypnotize people into assisting them even against their will. There are many who believe that all Jews are wealthy, and not just a little wealthy, but exorbitantly to the point of avarice wealthy, something I was able to disabuse them of rather quickly when informing them I was a Jew and obviously not wealthy. If Jews had so much power, I would always ask, then why have we found ourselves at the wrong end of so many events throughout history. That was never answered; I just got this deer in the headlight stare as they mulled that over. There simply is no means just due to the degree that the raw numbers spell out for the Jews to do one-thousandth, or is it one-hundred-thousandth of the numerous things they have been accused throughout history. The Nazis claimed the Jews were the Communists while the Communists claimed the Jews were the bourgeoisie and behind the Nazis and both agreed that the Jews required being exterminated. Fortunately, the anti-Semitism I have witnessed in my life has largely not been of the life threatening variety, at least not my life, though there have been a few closer brushes than I care to remember.

 

What is distressing about the latest anti-Semitism is that it comes from different sources and yet they appear to be complimenting one another each making the other more virulent. This is of an extreme case in much of Europe as reported often by Giulio Meotti including in his most recent article. The combined anti-Semitism displayed and conveyed by many of the recent immigrants from the Islamic world has found fertile ground in Europe and has amplified the return of anti-Semitism by the native Europeans. One will never know whether the native rebirth of anti-Semitism would have been so virulent had it not been for the Islamic hate-fest against Israel and their spreading of their vile hatred of the Jewish People into Europe where it apparently is being all too eagerly absorbed and regurgitated by many on both ends of the political spectrum. That is one thing which must be stated about Europe, they almost always manage to get the most disparate groups religiously, politically, socially and even across the financial spectrum from the wealthy to the poor, anti-Semitism appears throughout European society when it surfaces. The most disgusting anti-Semitism which is rearing its ugly head both in Europe and across in the Americas is the hatred by people who are in academia and are presumably intelligent people educated to a high degree and yet falling to the most base hatred known to exist, which is probably why it is the oldest, anti-Semitism. When you hear of college professors teaching anti-Semitic propaganda one is left shaking their head and wondering whether these people actually bother to listen to their lies and do they really believe them or is their some reward which we Jews are never told of with an awards ceremony and big paychecks given for the most ridiculous reason to hate the Jews. Yet, there is one form of anti-Semitism which hurts more than any other, that is the self-hatred shown by many Jews against their own people and often for the most shallow of reasons. That is the one form of anti-Semitism which can never be excused as it is the most damaging as it gives fuel to all of the rest of the world’s anti-Semites.

 

Beyond the Cusp