Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
I just don't get it about the Jews
By Tom Smith

Maimon's post below and its links to columns in the UK press is very much worth reading, including the links. I have not been to Europe in 20 years, Philistine that I am. I read this stuff, and frankly, find it hard to believe. But then, probably so did many Americans when they read about what was going on in Germany in the 1930's.

I grew up as a Roman Catholic in Boise, Idaho in the 1960's and '70's. I never met a Jew until my junior year in high school, unless you count the Jew who came to my comparative religions class and told us about such things as keeping kosher.

Then I went to Cornell, where most of my friends were Jews. Maybe if I had been excluded, or beaten up by Jews I could understand what is going through the heads of anti-Semites in the UK, but that was not my experience. (Not that that happens in the UK--quite the opposite apparently.) For many years in my life, not only were some of my best friends were Jews. My only friends were Jews.

It's not that I am so anxious to understand how an anti-Semite thinks. But it is uncomfortable to find unfolding events so mystifying. It is like that recent (pretty darn scary) movie 28 Days Later, in which normal people are infected by a virus that turns them into bloodthirsty zombies. It is as if anti-Semitism is a disease that inexplicably turns people insane and spreads according to some horrifying logic of its own. Communism you can understand as an intellectual delusion, prompted by resentment of the rich, exploitation by your boss, and misunderstanding of economics, which isn't that intuitive to begin with. It's evil, but it's comprehensible. But hatred of the Jews? It gives me a genuine shiver of American isolationism. It makes me think unhealthy things grow in the dark cracks of Europe that I want no part of.

posted by thomas at 12/02/2003 09:37:00 AM