Currently Browsing: Antisemitism 37 articles
A left response to left antisemitism: Is it too late for education?
Two recently-published books try and educate the left against antisemitism. Will they succeed?
Ambivalent Jewishness
As antisemitism is on the rise again, Gloria Tessler asks if some of us feel a certain ambivalence about our Jewishness. My parents, both European refugees, had a deep-rooted belief in God and the values of Judaism; they were not religious – we rarely went to shul – but they were not secular either. Like […]
Tempering Jewish Fear & Anger
Dan Jacobs argues that diaspora Jews are letting their fear and anger determine their reactions to recent events. During the recent Israel/Palestinian fighting, Jews have been targeted by antisemites around the world. In the UK Jews were verbally attacked by pro-Palestinian protestors waving flags and shouting ‘death to Jews’, ‘rape their daughters’. These types of […]
Keeping the show on the road
The May 2021 conflagration in Israel/Palestine has raised painful issues of resilience in the UK Jewish community.
Defining antisemitism – again, and again…
A couple of new antisemitism definitions have ridden into town. Keith Kahn-Harris girds his loins.
Sexual Fantasy and Antisemitism
In a continuation of our series on Jews & Sex, Aidan Joseph Beatty argues how antisemitism is often a deeply pleasurable, even erotic, experience for the antisemite. In January 1904, a relatively young Irish Catholic priest named John Creagh began a campaign of intimidation against the small Jewish community in Limerick. Using his religious pulpit, […]
How Ben Franklin Was Turned Into an Antisemite
Shai Afsai discusses how the American Founding Father has been used to spread hate. The myth that American founding father Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was antisemitic first emerged 87 years ago – 144 years after his passing – with the publication of a fraudulent and since then repeatedly discredited text […]
Into the flatlands with Professor David Miller
Why rejecting David Miller’s antisemitism also requires rejecting the flatland he inhabits.
Shylock
Gloria Tessler shows how Shakespeare turned antisemitism on its head. I have often thought the Bard was the most enlightened philosemite of them all. And the reason? His controversial play, The Merchant of Venice. Many Jews applaud Michael Morpurgo’s decision not to include The Merchant in his forthcoming children’s book, Tales from Shakespeare, but I […]
Discounted Jews
Nathan Abrams finds flaws in David Baddiel’s new book about antisemitism Jews Don’t Count. I finally got my copy of Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel’s new book about antisemitism. Despite being a longtime fan and bearing more than a passing physical resemblance to him, I desperately didn’t want to like this book. Maybe it’s because the media only seems to pay attention to these issues when it’s a celebrity like Baddiel, Simon Schama or Anthony Julius. As he puts it himself in the book, ‘I am, […]