What is Antisemitism?

Antisemitism is walking down the streets of the city where you were born and raised and always felt safe, and now suddenly feeling threatened when wearing a kippa. Antisemitism is seeing the campus of the university that you attended and loved “occupied” by haters making demands on the university administration, all the while trespassing on private property with impunity.

Antisemitism is being an academic of language and literature, and witnessing a literary prize ceremony disrupted by agitators calling out the sponsor of the event for investing in an Israeli arms company, and prominent writers withdrawing from the event in sympathy.

Antisemitism is a majority of UN members who are Christian, and delegates from 57 Islamic nations considering the one Jewish state in the world a subject for intense and constant scrutiny and condemnation—one Jewish state too many.

I am the quintessential Canadian—born of immigrants, ethnic, bilingual in a country of two official languages and multicultural. Until now, Canada was perhaps the only successful multicultural society in the world.

But this is no longer my Canada.

I grew up here and never experienced antisemitism. Quite the opposite: As a professor at Waterloo, I was asked by a Christian dean to establish a Chair of Jewish Studies and was supported by an all-Christian administration, including the president of the Catholic college who asked that all special events take place in his college.

What has happened to my country? Politicians mouth platitudes and police stand by and do not enforce the law.

Antisemitism has existed for centuries but the term itself is recent. It was coined in 1860 by an Austrian Jewish scholar, Noritz Steinschneider, to refute the French Jew-hater, Ernest Renan. It was the German, Wilhelm Marr, who popularized the term in his 1879 publication, “The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism.”

The Enlightenment had given Jews opportunities never before possible and, in spite of their small numbers, Jews rose to prominence and drew attention as power brokers. This irrational fear was consolidated institutionally in political parties, the media and learned journals: “the modern world was engaged in a race war, a war that could not have a peaceful end.”

Eliezer Berkovits, in “Fossil Ferment,” saw Nazism as a “rebellion against the principle of unity,” aiming to establish a world of rulers and ruled, masters and slaves. It turned against Christians and communists, too, but its principal target was “the original protagonist of the concept of Oneness as fundamental value and the basic ideal,” the Jew, who sees every person created in the image of God.

Antisemitism is a failure of the imagination to overcome scapegoating, jealousy and tribalism. It is a form of the irrational, even insanity, as it cruelly demonizes and hurts others for no discernable benefit for the perpetrators. The Nazis poured innumerable resources into killing Jews in the last months of the war when they could have been deployed to fight the Allies. Their hatred took control of their reason, much as it did in Spain and Portugal, where Jews were expelled in the 15th century and never regained their stature and wealth as world powers.

Antisemitism is a failure of the imagination to overcome scapegoating, jealousy and tribalism.

Jews had the audacity to say “No” three times in history. I call it the three “Nos.” We said “No” to the followers of Jesus and were smeared as devilish Christ killers; we said “No” to Martin Luther and his reform Protestantism, and Luther’s venomous writing fueled Hitler’s hatred; and we said “No” to Mohammed, which made us foreigners in our own land in the eyes of radical Islamists. Three “Nos” that sealed our fate.

Stephen Dailey of The Spectator points out that the problem is not ours alone. This venom does not just threaten Jews: We live in a strange world “in which Hamas are the peace-seeking moderates and Israelis the genocidal extremists” and this propaganda has gone mainstream in the West: “What should worry us is the violent inversion of the West’s moral compass.” He sees this kind of corruption of values as corrosive to the health of Western society and a threat to its survival.

So where does this lead and what can be done?

After a thousand years of incessant wars and slaughter, it finally dawned on European countries to put down their arms and work for the betterment of all. Thus was formed the EU (European Union), a victory of cooperation over barbarism. After decades of war, Israel has a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, admittedly not a loving embrace, but peace. After rejectionism, the Gulf States and Israel are now partners in the Abraham Accords. Peace is elusive but it is not a complete fantasy.

Antisemitism is a mutating virus, but viruses can be contained. However, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, we cannot contain it by ourselves: “Jews cannot fight antisemitism alone. The victim cannot cure the crime. The hatred cannot cure the hate … a country that has no room for Jews has no room for difference. It therefore has no room for humanity.” We need other faiths, governments, the media, police and all decent people to recognize that the threat is not only against the Jews but also against the foundation of Western society.

When that happens, perhaps I will be able to walk the streets of my city and the campus of my alma mater with pride and confidence in the future of my country and all humanity.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.