Final week Melanie Phillips wrote a thought-provoking article for the Jewish Information Syndicate on the pressing want for Jewish management in face of each assimilation and the collapse of Judaism from inside, which she describes as Jews turning in opposition to the Jewish individuals of their anxiousness ‘to erase that uniqueness from their identification and join as an alternative to the prevailing consensus’.
Her considerations resonated with two of TCW’s Jewish writers, Donna Rachel Edmunds and Karen Harradine, who each reply in these pages at this time. Right here’s what Donna Rachel has to say …
IMAGINE you have been requested to show a gaggle of 12 months 8 pupils concerning the Holocaust. How would possibly you method the lesson? Maybe you’d talk about the yellow badges, otherwise you would possibly talk about the lengthy historical past of anti-Semitism that existed earlier than the Nazis got here to energy, and the way this was harnessed by the Nazis of their quest for world domination.
To make the human connection, you would possibly train the scholars a few lady named Anne Frank, who was solely a 12 months older than they’re when she died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen focus camp. Particularly in case you work for an organisation named the Anne Frank Belief.
In Might, a gaggle of scholars got a category on the Holocaust by a consultant from the Anne Frank Belief, however they realized not one of the above. As an alternative, they produced posters detailing how, within the Nineteen Twenties, Germany had a thriving membership scene wherein homosexuality was de rigueur, however when the Nazis got here to energy they pressured members of the LGBT neighborhood to put on pink triangles earlier than sending them to their deaths.
From the posters the kids made, which have been tweeted publicly, it seems that no point out was manufactured from the Jews in any respect. A whole class of 12 months 8 pupils in a college in Liverpool could nicely have completely no concept that the Holocaust was at the start a scientific try to annihilate the Jewish individuals as soon as and for all.
For the very best a part of a century, anti-Semites have had an issue. Find out how to peddle their irrational hatred whereas the Holocaust burned so brightly in individuals’s recollections? It has taken them lower than a century to determine a chic answer to this thorny subject. They’ve merely recast the Holocaust as one thing that it by no means was.
Removed from being a racial genocide, we at the moment are instructed that the Holocaust was ‘not about race,’ as Whoopie Goldberg opined on The View speak present within the US in January. She defined: ‘It’s about man’s inhumanity to different man.’ When a co-host identified that it was concerning the Germans killing Jews, Goldberg countered: ‘However these are two white teams of individuals.’
See? No racism! No downside. And because it wasn’t about anti-Semitism, no point out want be manufactured from the Jews when educating concerning the Holocaust. Eight many years after being bodily murdered by the Nazis, the Jewish victims of the Holocaust are being memory-holed by the progressives.
I wrote to the Neighborhood Safety Belief – a British charity with a mandate to guard Jews from anti-Semitism – to report the college incident. Its preliminary response was to disregard me.
After I pressed, a consultant replied: ‘We might be very reluctant to publicly condemn an organisation concerned in Holocaust schooling.’
However the Anne Frank Belief isn’t engaged in Holocaust schooling. It types itself an anti-prejudice organisation, proclaiming on the entrance web page of its web site that its mission is ‘empowering younger individuals to problem prejudice,’ and alluring lecturers to guide the organisation for a ‘vary of anti-prejudice workshops’.
It has been mentioned that anti-Semitism is an out of date time period. We have already got a wonderfully serviceable phrase for race-based hatred – racism. Why do Jews deserve their very own particular phrase? Why is anti-Semitism not racism?
The reply is certain up in Whoopie Goldberg’s ‘these are two teams of white individuals,’ and the Anne Frank Belief’s ‘the pink triangle they wore within the focus camps symbolised that they have been homosexual’.
The progressive faith holds that anti-prejudice is the best type of good. Commenting on a hijab or on somebody’s frizzy hair (even admiringly!) is a micro-aggression, damning proof of a deeply-held racist beliefs. And but, within the midst of this, writing Jews out of their very own historical past is completely acceptable, even commendable.
When societies guarantee themselves of their very own enlightened superiority, to the purpose of spiritual zeal, anti-Semitism – anti-Semitism particularly – prospers.
This was true in the course of the Spanish Inquisition, it was true in the course of the Nazi period, and it’s true inside our personal time. And when anti-Semitism prospers, different permissible hatreds aren’t far behind. In our occasions, these permissible hatreds embrace misandry and heterophobia, however the starkest of all is anti-caucasianism – that’s, anti-white racism.
Melanie Phillips has this week written concerning the risk anti-Semitism poses to diaspora Jews, and its causes. The state of affairs is especially dangerous in America, the place Jews have wholeheartedly embraced the progressive faith that seeks their destruction.
Drawing on a dialog with Rabbi Cary Kozberg, an American Reform rabbi who has cut up from Reform Judaism over its embrace of ‘woke’, Phillips suggests the issue has arisen partially as a result of younger Jews aren’t taught concerning the wealthy historical past and tradition that Judaism carries, together with the contributions Judaism made to Western thought, together with the valuing of rationalism, compassion, and freedom.
‘Two issues want to vary if the Jewish individuals is correctly to defend itself,’ she says. ‘Jews must be taught higher about their very own individuals, tradition and historical past. And there must be a more practical technique to combat their enemies by getting off the defensive again foot and on to a pro-active and aggressive entrance foot,’ Phillips provides: ‘Valuable little of that is accomplished at current as a result of the diaspora management is woefully insufficient: timid, servile and anxious to slot in.’
Oh, how acquainted these phrases ring to British Conservatives! Who amongst us has not mentioned the exact same factor about British tradition and the sorry state of our personal ‘conservative’ management!
Phillips factors to a ten-point motion plan drawn up by the Jewish Management Challenge to fight this new wave of anti-Semitism head-on. The factors embrace rethinking Holocaust schooling, educating the general public on anti-Semitism, and restructuring Jewish schooling to show younger Jews concerning the joys of Judaism and their cultural inheritance.
These are all great and sorely wanted – as is the Jewish Management Challenge’s willingness to name out ostensibly Jewish organisations that are, actually, little greater than fronts for progressive activism.
However Jews are only a tiny phase of society. Within the UK, there are simply 200,000 Jews in a inhabitants topping 70million (together with 3.4million Muslims). In America, they quantity round 7.5million, of a complete inhabitants of 330million. Which is why I’d add a 3rd to Phillips’s two issues that want to vary if Jews are to be correctly defended: White westerners want to grasp that the Jews are merely the proverbial canary within the coalmine. If we fall, you’ll be subsequent.
Younger Jews actually do must be taught about their individuals, tradition and historical past; Jewish leaders do must get off the defensive, cease making an attempt to slot in, and begin to be proactive in defending their individuals – and I’d add, Jewish individuals want to raised maintain their leaders to account.
However we’re merely the entrance line. We’d like backup. Which is why conservatives should draw up their very own ten-point plan to show British youth about their individuals, historical past and tradition, cease being well mannered, and maintain their leaders absolutely to account. Earlier than it’s too late for all of us.
