I call it the “absent paradox” – the hatred of Jews where no Jews exist.
Common explanations for antisemitism and Jew-hatred are pathetically humdrum. Jews are the scapegoat when problems arise. Other societies are jealous of Jews. There is religious hatred of Jews in Christianity and Islam. There are the conspiracy theories that Jews control the world. Economic factors are often used to explain the unexplainable. And antisemitism has been used as a political tool to unite other peoples.
The Jew is an easy target – a target inspired by other communities, people, religions’ fear, anxiety, failure, and resentment. Jew-hatred offers a convenient simplicity, an easy solution, to crises. Whether it be economic crisis, social changes, globalization, wars, revolutions, shifts in cultural norms, financial instability, immigration, modernization and modernity, “the Jews did it” becomes the rallying cry.
For the Jew-hater, most of life’s unexplainables, fears, and trauma can magically be reduced by intoning four little words: “the Jews did it.” And as the intonations become louder and louder, and as more voices join in, the conviction strengthens.
None of this, however, explains Jew-hatred in places where Jews have never existed, or in places where Jews are no longer there. The fact that even in these places, and within these communities, “the Jews did it” is still a rallying cry, throws a wrench into truly understanding Jew-hatred. And it certainly hinders any effort to educate the world why global Jew-hatred is not merely evil, but so irrational.
Most prejudice requires proximity and a history of interaction. Jew-hatred did not.
Anyone who knew anything about Jews would know that it is impossible to imagine, let alone suggest, that Jews would use blood – any blood, not just the blood of Christian children – to bake matzah. And Jews would not have reenacted the killing of Jesus and snuck into churches and stabbed the host cracker, called the “Host” in Christianity, because no Jew would ever enter a church. And if they ever did see a Host cracker, it would look to them like a standard piece of matzah.
Persistence of antisemitic myths
Anyone who knew Jews would know that Jews did not poison the wells of Christian Europe and cause the Bubonic plague. While body hygiene during this period was a rarity in Christianity, in Judaism it was a common way of life. Fewer Jews died during the Black Plague because Jews washed their hands often, especially before eating. Christians did not.
And yet they created these myths. And the myths persist.
The Nazis taught that if they got rid of the Jews, it would solve the problems of Germany, and also the world. And yet even when Germany was Judenrein, the tide of the war changed and they were the war’s losers.
Jews were almost totally murdered, annihilated, and removed from Europe. The survivors were in ghettos or in camps. The Nazi “solution” – their “Final Solution” – produced neither prosperity nor victory. The Nazi situation got worse.
Myths about the Jews are often contradictory. Ultimately, their purpose is just a reason to hate. How else explain hatred of not one end of the economic spectrum, but both ends of the spectrum? How can the same person hate the capitalist Rothschild family, and Karl Marx, the communist?
Difficult as it may be to believe, to the Jew-hater, the contradiction does not disprove the myth; rather, it reinforces the myth. Jew-haters assert that the Jew is so powerful that all Jews are united, despite being opposites, because they all have the same agenda. They all want to conquer the world.
Jews are a visible minority. And from time immemorial until today, societies have invented excuses and manufactured reasons for their failings. Jews were, and still are, an easy excuse.
In stressful times, it is satisfying to place blame and give reasons for failures. Creating a common enemy, an insider vs outsider who plots to contaminate or destroy the host society, deflects blame from its real source.
Here is where the “absent paradox” becomes so dramatic.
When there is Jew-hatred where there are no Jews, or hardly any Jews, the Jew is transformed from a human to a myth or an idea.
There were no Jews in China, Japan, or Africa. And yet, there are significant anti-Jewish tropes that have, over time, emerged even in these countries. The tropes were imported, and over time they became integrated into the myths and literature of the societies.
Thirty years ago, I was convinced that Jew-hatred had disappeared. I was convinced that it was socially unacceptable to, at least publicly, display a hatred of Jews. I thought that education, and new liberal cultures, had defeated this awful hate. I spoke about it. I wrote about it. Unfortunately, I was so wrong.
We sustain unimaginable disasters, and we carry on. We do not lose hope or our sense of optimism. Every generation imagines that it has finally outgrown antisemitism, only to rediscover that the impulse and the hate remain, even when hibernating beneath the surface.
Right now, that impulse is emerging with great strength. But we are survivors, and we will, unquestionably, survive. About that, I am not wrong.
The writer is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Watch his TV show, Thinking Out Loud, on the Jewish Broadcasting Syndicate.