Drash for Shabbat Chukat

Is Anti-Semitism Dead?

A lifetime ago, I was contemplating studying to be a rabbi.  I read the book A Certain People, by the sociologist Charles Silberman, about the Jewish experience in America.  I was a young man who had then been serving in my country’s uniform some 13 years.  I could therefore certainly relate to Silberman’s analysis of how easily and completely so many Jews had assimilated into American society.  Not that we were successful:  Jews are often successful wherever we live, and whether we feel especially welcome or not.  Silberman’s point was that Jews in the USA, more than any Jews in the world of the Jewish diaspora, identified closely with their country of habitation.

I went to Hebrew Union College for my rabbinic program admissions interview.  Dr Gary Zola, one of the members of the committee, looking over my application, noted that I claimed to have read Silberman’s book. “What was the big controversy about this book?” he asked me.

Oh, pooh!  I thought.  I’d read it, but hadn’t been involved in any discussions where it was considered controversial.  And I’d been able to relate to its message completely; I had no idea why it would be controversial.  So like many when cornered, I reverted to the dictum:  if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with B.S.

I grasped for one message in the book that might have been construed as controversial. “If there were something I’d have to call controversial in the book, I guess it would be his statement that new converts to Judaism make up for born Jews drifting away.  Not that I would challenge this demographic reality, but that we shouldn’t feel complacent about our demographics and the challenges of keeping Jews engaged just because we’ve managed to welcome thousands of seekers.”

After I gave my answer, there was a silence in the room.  Following this awkward moment, Dr Zola piped up again. “Actually, the controversy was Silberman’s thesis that anti-Semitism is dead.”

Of course, I’d recognised this meta-message in the book, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it should be controversial.  Silberman supported it by documenting how Jew-hatred had essentially been forced to the fringes in the America of the late 1980’s.  How one only heard fulminations against ‘The Jews’ from the most marginal reaches of society.  How Jews in every other sector participated and succeeded.  And while some Jews – irrationally, in my own opinion at the time – hid their Jewishness, legions of proud and affirming Jews, religious and secular, managed to perfectly integrate their Jewish and American selves, day in and day out.  In all my years of military service, nobody could have identified me as other than a Jew.  And yet, I was never made to feel marginalised or oppressed in any way because of that fact.

I was thinking about this long-ago conversation this week after a more recent conversation about anti-Semitism with some of our members here.  Anti-Semitism is a topic that evokes strong feelings, as of course it should.  How can Jews, in the wake of the Shoah, be entirely complacent about the spectre of anti-Semitism?  Of course, we should expose it and speak out forcefully about it whenever it rears its ugly head.  But at the same time, I believe we should much more sparingly identify incidents as indicative of the presence of anti-Semitism.

A good example of what I mean is the Australian national election coming up.  Several of you have pointed out to me that the upcoming Election Day, 14 September, is Yom Kippur.  And you have suggested that this is a manifestation of anti-Semitism on the part of the government.  Now I’m not in the position to either agree with, or dispute this appraisal of the Gillard government.  But to consider the scheduling of the national elections on Yom Kippur as affirmation of this notion is, well…a bit over the top.  After all, according to the Frequently Asked Questions on the Australian Election Commission website:

What do I do if I can't vote on Election Day, 14 September 2013?

Early voting is available for electors who are unable to vote on Election Day. This includes electors who for religious reasons are unable to vote on Saturday 14 September 2013. The dates for early voting are to be confirmed but commence soon after the declaration of nominations for candidates standing in the election during the election period.

The site then goes on to explain that postal voting is also possible.  So the idea that the scheduling of the election on Yom Kippur manifests anti-Semitism is far-fetched to me.  Especially so, when your elections are always on Saturdays.  So, any election will interfere with Shabbat!  But all you have to do is declare that you cannot vote that day for religious reasons, and vote on an alternative day.  Rather than seeing the scheduling of the election as a manifestation of anti-Semitism, I advise seeing yourselves as privileged that you get to vote without waiting in long, Election Day lines to do so!  But that would require making a mental shift:  from thinking of oneself as a member of an oppressed minority, to thinking of oneself as being privileged to claim the title, Jew.  And depending on the degree of your emotional investment in thinking yourself oppressed, that might be a very great shift to manage.

I guess you can start to intuit where I’m going with this.  Often our biggest, most reliable source of our oppression is within ourselves.  Even when others fail to oppress us, we will see their actions as doing so.  That comes from within, not from without.

Is anti-Semitism dead?  No, it’s not.  I feel more strongly about this today, in the year 2013 than I did in 1991.  Twenty-two years makes a big difference!  And Australia is a little different from the USA.  But my advice remains steadfast.  Celebrate the degree, to which your non-Jewish neighbours think of your Jewishness as irrelevant, or even a positive, when they assess you.  Don’t look for anti-Semitism in incidents that carry no malevolence toward Jews.  Like scheduling elections on Yom Kippur.  My fear is that, if we continue to be so quick to see anti-Semitism where none exists, then we will anesthetise our countrymen against real anti-Semitism when it appears.  And that would be a tragedy, since real anti-Semitism is not dead…yet.

So 22 years ago, I was admitted to rabbinical school even if I didn’t come up with the answer that Dr Zola was looking for.  Obviously, my not recognising the controversial nature of Silberman’s thesis was not a ‘fatal’ mistake where the admissions committee was concerned.  Many years have passed, the world has changed markedly, and I have a much fuller view now.

Yes, why feel oppressed for being a Jew when you can feel privileged!  And no, I don’t mean because you get to avoid Election Day lines.  I mean because you are an heir to a faith-tradition that has brought so much good into the world.  That you identify with the people privileged to present the Torah to the nations.  To model life in the Image of God.  To show the world a better way and to live out that way.

  When I look at the lives that you live here in Australia, I maintain that anti-Semitism is not a force that has any kind of significant impact on your lives.  No more than it was for me in America of 1991.  Some of you are not convinced.  May you find it from within yourselves to allow yourselves the ‘luxury’ of life without oppression.  Shabbat shalom.