Amritas takes on Cynthia Ozick’s article about the new anti-Semitism: The Modern ‘Hep! Hep! Hep!’. I’m impressed by his stamina; it is something of a mystery to me why someone so unconnected to the subject should nevertheless take it on. I, much closer to the subject, thoroughly share his reaction:
I honestly didn't want to read this article. My reaction to it was like my early reaction to Little Green Footballs. Too much anti-Semitism concentrated in one place.
I have a long list of should-reads and should-sees on the subject, which I never seem to get around to. I have never read Diary of Anne Frank, for example, nor have I seen Schindler’s List. (Though I did see Life is Beautiful, one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. I saw it in Italian with Hebrew subtitles.) Although three generations removed from relatives who perished in the Holocaust, I still have trouble approaching the subject.
Among other things, Cynthia Ozick asks the eternal question: Why the Jews? I know the answer to that question, but before I answer it we should ask a related question: Is there anything unique about anti-Semitism?
The Holocaust was unique. Not that genocide is unique, by any means, but never before or since has one people taken as its existential mission the extermination of another. Nor has one people ever taken such pains to document its inhumanity toward another, or pursued its homicidal mission with such methodical efficiency. The number of Jews murdered by the Nazis was more than the current Jewish population of Israel.
You could argue that the Holocaust is a unique case, as indeed it is, which says more about the Nazis than it does about anti-Semitism. You could say that bigotry and prejudice are more than common, they are universal – the world is full of oppressed peoples. Not just oppressed peoples, but the bones of extinct and dying peoples – the Caribs, the Tasmanians, the Cornish, etc., etc. We Jews have no monopoly on suffering, but there is something unique about anti-Semitism. The Jews are persecuted not as loathsome underclass, but as a rival power – despite the fact that our numbers are microscopic, and our power is tiny.
Why is that? I do not like to dwell on our history as a persecuted people. I do not believe that it is good for us to define our identity negatively. We Jews were not put on Earth to be oppressed, but to play a positive role in the world. What makes anti-Semitism unique, and the answer to the question, “Why the Jews?” is that despite the odds, throughout history, Jews have picked themselves up after burying their dead, and not only survived, but thrived.
UPDATE: The name of this post has been attributed variously to Ogden Nash, and William Norman Ewer.
Posted by David Boxenhorn at June 28, 2004 12:56 AM