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Summary
Summary
In the wake of Donald Trump's election and the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, (((Semitism))) is a powerful book that examines how we can fight anti-Semitism in America
A San Francisco Chronicle Reader Recommendation
The Washington Post : "Timely...[A] passionate call to arms."
Jewish Book Council: "Could not be more important or timely."
Bernard-Henri Lévy: "It would be wonderful if anti-Semitism was a European specialty and stopped at the border with the United States. Alas, this is not the case. Jonathan Weisman's new book (((Semitism))) shows why..."
Michael Eric Dyson: "With eloquence and poignancy Weisman shows how hatred can slowly and quietly chew away at the moral fabric of society. We now live in an age where more than ever bigotry and oppression no longer need to hide in fear of reproach. The floodgates have opened. This is much more than a personal response to the bigotry he experienced because of his Jewishness; Weisman has written a manifesto that outlines the dangers of marginalizing and demonizing all minority groups. This powerful book is for all of us."
Anti-Semitism has always been present in American culture, but with the rise of the Alt Right and an uptick of threats to Jewish communities since Trump took office, including the the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman has produced a book that could not be more important or timely. When Weisman was attacked on Twitter by a wave of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, witnessing tropes such as the Jew as a leftist anarchist; as a rapacious, Wall Street profiteer; and as a money-bags financier orchestrating war for Israel, he stopped to wonder: How has the Jewish experience changed, especially under a leader like Donald Trump?
In (((Semitism))) , Weisman explores the disconnect between his own sense of Jewish identity and the expectations of his detractors and supporters. He delves into the rise of the Alt Right, their roots in older anti-Semitic organizations, the odd ancientness of their grievances--cloaked as they are in contemporary, techy hipsterism--and their aims--to spread hate in a palatable way through a political structure that has so suddenly become tolerant of their views.
He concludes with what we should do next, realizing that vicious as it is, anti-Semitism must be seen through the lens of more pressing threats. He proposes a unification of American Judaism around the defense of self and of others even more vulnerable: the undocumented immigrants, refugees, Muslim Americans, and black activists who have been directly targeted, not just by the tolerated Alt Right, but by the Trump White House itself.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Weisman (No. 4 Imperial Lane), the New York Times' deputy Washington editor, offers a chilling look at resurgent anti-Semitism in America in the wake of Donald Trump's political ascendancy. Despite feeling only minimally connected to his Jewish heritage, Weisman found himself the target of "alt-right" Trump supporters in 2016 after tweeting an excerpt from an editorial about the rise of fascist tendencies in the U.S.; within minutes, he received a response addressed to "(((Weisman)))," punctuation that he learned was "wrapped around Jewish-sounding names on social media" by online harassers. That response was the precursor to a torrent of online hate he received, which shook Weisman out of his complacency and forced him to face the reality of persistent anti-Jewish bias. He provides a thoughtful and deeply personal account of his struggle to understand what was happening. The hostility Weisman encountered was so overwhelming that his daughter sought reassurance that she didn't "look Jewish," which she feared would put her at risk of being targeted as well. Despite that close-to-home evidence of the effectiveness of the bigots, Weisman concludes forcefully, leaving readers with the message that the best way for Jewish Americans to resist bigotry is to champion "liberal internationalism in the oldest, least partisan sense of that phrase." Agent: Rayhane Sanders, Massie & McQuilkin. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
After becoming a victim of unhinged anti-Semitic hatred, trolled and cyberstalked by fringe-right bigots, a journalist delivers his forceful response.Weisman (No. 4 Imperial Lane, 2015), the deputy Washington editor of the New York Times, once reported on the activities of a neoconservative, journalism that provoked alt-right activists on social media. Under the cover of "free speech," they openly expressed their prejudice against Jews in general and the author in particular. Certainly, the author notes, anti-Semitism in the U.S. is hardly new. He recalls the lynching of Leo Frank, the bile spewed by Charles Lindbergh, and other examples. Erstwhile good feelings engendered during the civil rights movement eventually collapsed, and Judaism and its adherents became conflated with the State of Israel. Now, anti-Semitism is flourishing in the Trump era, and what was unacceptable once now swims in the mainstream. With reportorial skill, the author brings us up to date on activities of current hate groups and their leaders. The titular memethree parentheses ("echoes") around a proper nounis a dog whistle signaling, for those attuned to it, "Jew." Today, marchers in Nazi regalia parade, and swastikas and graffiti abound; harassment, trolling, and cyberstalking are essential tools in the alt-right kit. So what can be done? What should American Jews do? Weisman issues a call to arms in defense of truth. We must organize and fight, he urges, using the internet and social media. Jews, the "Other," must ally with other Others like African-Americans and immigrants. The author also recommends toning down the obsession with Israel and supporting organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The moral response is imperative," writes Weisman. "Morality can inform tactics." For now, though, the value of his brief text remains the light he shines on the current state of bigotry.An urgent and compelling report on the clear and present danger of proto-fascism in the U.S. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
COME NOVEMBER'S MIDTERM elections, the Republican candidate for the Third Congressional District of Illinois will be a Nazi. There is nothing neo about Arthur Jones. Not just a white supremacist, not merely a foot soldier of the alt-right, Jones is the sort of full-on, unreconstructed, Holocaust-denying ("the blackest lie in history"), Hitier-worshiping, blood-andsoil warrior for whom the Jews are the root of all evil. Don't panic. He will lose the election in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, but it is precisely that assumed outcome which seemed to have persuaded local Republicans not to bother opposing him in the March 20 primary. Waking up to the result of their indifference they belatedly repudiated Jones. But it might have occurred to them that the mere fact of his appearance on the ballot as the Republican candidate is itself a shocking affront not just to Jews but to all the norms of American political decency. Then again, those norms right now are shifting sand. The sick joke of Jones's candidacy doesn't feature in Jonathan Weisman's "(((Semitism)))," but every other kind of monstrously reawakened zombie-Nazi madness does, especially those swarming and multiplying in the digital dung heap. His book is largely a report from consternation nation, and its longest chapter chronicles the rise of white supremacist aggression, on and off the web. He has been on the sharp end of trolling storms and knows what it feels like (as do I) to have yourself photoshopped with concentration camp stripes or with your head in an oven. But in the end Weisman is unsure how much of an actual and immediate danger this online abuse represents. For all of the website bile and the tiki-torch marches, "the threat of violence against Jews," he writes, "has not materialized into actual violence," especially in comparison with hate crimes committed against AfricanAmericans and Muslims. He quotes the Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblatt saying that "the number of Americans that hold anti-Semitic beliefs has decreased dramatically." But of course it is the advent of Trumpian politics - its nonstop carnival of paranoia; its scapegoating of Hispanics and African-Americans; its anti-immigrant phobia - that has rung Weisman's alarm bells, which accounts for his subtitle : "Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump." More sinister for him than the foaming lunacies of the neo-Nazis is the alt-right's embrace of conspiracy theorists; the routine mutation of fantasy into fact; the appetite for seeing secret hands (George Soros for instance) at work in plots to undermine America - all of which have a whiff of late Weimar about them, not to mention the long history of populist anti-Semitism in the United States. Better, Weisman believes, to be fretfully vigilant than torpidly complacent. In one of the 1940s movie-poster homilies he favors ("the world is watching," "the nation gasped"), he warns that while "unheard thunder" was rumbling, "the Jews slept." But this reduction of "being Jewish" to a state of hair-tearing anxiety about the surge of anti-Semitism means Weisman never quite delivers on his subtitle's promise. A richly researched and nuanced account of Jewish life in stressed-out, polarized America would be timely, but this isn't it. Instead, Weisman takes a chapter to complain about what he considers the major distraction preventing American Jews from being fully alert to the perils of the time - but this, a little surprisingly, turns out to be "Israel, Israel, Israel." It is not clear whether he thinks the AIPAC herd mentality, so elated at gestures like the embassy move to Jerusalem, blinkers Jews to the threat that Trump and Trumpism represent to the liberal culture he champions. Or whether he believes that increasingly abrasive debates dividing the Jewish community about the occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of settlements are the greater problem. Weisman reports with understandable pain his demonization by hard-liners as a self-hating Jewish traitor for daring to point out, in a Times infographic, which opponents of the Iranian nuclear deal were Jewish. But such bitter arguments have gone on for a while and it seems odd to suppose that engagement with the trials and tribulations of Israel somehow precludes engaging with diaspora anti-Semitism, as if Jews of all people have a finite capacity for attentiveness. Anti-Semitism and the existence of Israel are hardly historically disconnected. The second malaise Weisman identifies as blunting Jewish alertness to the peril of the times is the hollowing out of a Jewish identity that is neither uncritically Zionist nor devoutly religious. "The Jews who are most interested in a liberal, internationalist future, who wish to live progressive, assimilated existences free of threat," he warns, "are disappearing." But his sense of the tradition he believes is being lost is romantically wishful. In a hasty drive through Jewish history he nominates Moses Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn as embodying this outward-looking nontribal Judaism. But the two Moseses were intensely devout and at times darkly pessimistic about the prospects of a Jewish life in a non-Jewish world. It is true nonetheless, as Weisman points out, that a considerable majority of Americans identifying as Jews do so by way of remembering the Holocaust or being engaged with the fate of Israel rather than anything much rooted in Judaism and Jewish history. Weisman confesses he isn't "much into davening" and reckons that even efforts to introduce more Hebrew into the Reform liturgy is a matter of simply "going through the motions," ultimately more impediment than inspiration. But if "being Jewish" means nothing more than an ethically attuned solidarity with kindred disadvantaged at home and abroad, then the reawakening he wants will just evaporate in a cloud of airy good will. Being Jewish is knowing Jewish history in some depth; being Jewish is engaging with the incomparable treasury of disputation that is the Talmud; being Jewish is immersion in the boundless glories of Jewish literature, poetry, philosophy and art. IT'S this broad-minded debate-conscious kind of Jewish life that Weisman worries is moribund. But it may be too soon to write its obituary. Annual Limmud retreats, which offer a festival of learning and discussion on all things truly or even notionally Jewish, are thriving in Britain and increasingly in America. Jewish journalism in magazines like Moment and Tablet alongside reinvigorated institutions like The Forward and The British Jewish Quarterly Review seems to be entering something of a golden age. In London, JW3 - since its opening in a spankingly smart modern building - has become a magnet of cultural energy, and Jewish Book Week (also in London) draws packed houses (and not exclusively Jewish audiences) to its offerings in early March. And if it is acts of solidarity Weisman wants (those have never really gone away) he might note that the home page of the American Jewish World Service for Purim featured a photograph of a Rohingya refugee. None of this is to make light of the sinister anti-Semitic strain in the ascendancy of alt-right ideology. There are plenty of signs that Jew-hatred is pushing through the soft walls of ultraright politics and poisoning its bloodstream. There is nothing wrong, as Weisman counsels, with Jews standing shoulder to shoulder with those most damaged and threatened by tribalist populism, as Jews like Abraham Joshua Heschel did in the heyday of the civil rights movement. Ultimately, though, what is needed is an aggressive defense of those things that not so long ago could be taken for granted in America, and under which Jewish life has prospered to a degree unique in the world: the integrity of the democratic process, the protections of the Constitution and the preservation of the ideal of a "nation of immigrants," a phrase just deleted from the Immigration Service's mission statement. And a little davening now and then wouldn't do any harm.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| 1 Complacency | p. 33 |
| 2 The Israel Deception | p. 69 |
| 3 The Unheard Thunder | p. 97 |
| 4 Stand Up or Ignore | p. 164 |
| 5 Toward a Collective Response | p. 191 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 225 |
| Notes | p. 227 |