8 March 14 • 2019
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Yiddish Limerick

Purim

Mir hern Haman’
s name, and noisily we jeer 
Ahashverosh der kenig un Esther zahynen here.
Mir kenen trinken un zahyn shiker
Farbalt nisht mein liqueur.
A fraylikher yontef far mir un far dir.

Mir hern- we hear
Der kenig- the king
Zahynen- are
Mir kenen trinken- we can drink
Un zahyn shiker- And be drunk
Falbalt nisht- don’
t hide
Mein- my
A fraylikher yontef- a happy holiday 
Sar mir un far dir- for me and for you

By Rachel Kapen

W

hen Rep. Ilhan Omar uses classic 
anti-Jewish tropes — when she denounc-
es Jews and Zionists as disloyal, mon-
ey-grubbing hypnotists who control U.S. policy — 
she tramples the line between criticizing Israel and 
anti-Semitism. 
She denounces Israel advocacy 
as dual loyalty — but only when 
Israel is involved. She ignores the 
support other Americans have 
for other countries — such as 
Pakistini-Americans for Pakistan, 
Indian-Americans for India, Irish-
Americans for Ireland.
She appeared to apologize for 
only having “unknowingly used” a bad choice of 
words, which she purportedly only now understood 
amounted to “an anti-semitic[sic] trope … which 
is unfortunate and offensive.
” On Feb. 27, Rep. 
Omar candidly stated that she had not apologized 
for her tweet being anti-Semitic, either wittingly or 
unwittingly, merely for “for the way that my words 
made people feel.
” 
Omar’
s words and deeds are clearly anti-Semitic 
as defined in the State Department definition of 
anti-Semitism, particularly with regard to viewing 
the Jews as “conspiring to harm humanity” and feed-
ing “the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of 
Jews controlling the media, economy, government or 
other societal institutions.
” 
Also, in Omar’
s gutter criticism of Israel as an 
“apartheid regime,
” she is clearly “denying the Jewish 
people their right to self determination, e.g., by 
claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a 
racist endeavor.
” 
The fight against anti-Semitism and racism cannot 
be won if Congress indulges, ignores and finesses 
Rep. Omar’
s anti-Semitism and anti-Israel extrem-
ism.
The March 7 House Resolution condemning all 
types of hatred is a watered-down resolution that 
ignores Omar’
s virulent and reprehensible anti-Se-
mitic statements and her association with terrorist 
organizations that promote the murder of Jews.
Congress should compel Omar to resign from 
the House Foreign Relations Committee and from 
Congress. ■

Sheldon L. Freilich is president, Zionist Organization of America - 
Michigan Region

A Shameful 
Record

commentary

Sheldon L. 
Freilich

T

his has been the era of 
the anti-Semitic “trope,” 
with the word popping 
up in hundreds of news stories 
since the 2016 campaign. In 
short, tropes are 
phrases or images 
that evoke classic 
anti-Semitic ideas 
rather than state 
them explicitly. 
It’
s a long list: the 
dual loyalty trope, 
the blood libel, 
the clannishness 
charge, the global conspiracy 
motif and the control-the-media 
mantras (to name a few).
When Donald Trump’
s closing 
argument at the end of the 2016 
campaign invoked “the global 
special interests” that “don’
t have 
your good in mind” — and then 
featured images of a financier, 
a banker and the chair of the 
Federal Reserve, all Jews — he 
was accused of employing the 

“trope” of Jewish global control.
When Hungary’
s government 
ran a campaign against the 
pro-democracy philanthropist 
George Soros featuring his smil-
ing face and the slogan “don’
t 
let him get the last laugh,” some 
said it recalled the Nazi-era 
trope of the “laughing Jew.”
When freshman Rep. Ilhan 
Omar complained that U.S. pol-
icy toward Israel is “all about 
the Benjamins, baby,” politicians 
and observers insisted that 
the Minnesota Democrat had 
invoked age-old stereotypes of 
Jewish power and control. Her 
recent comment about those 
with influence having “alle-
giance to a foreign country” is 
a well-worn anti-Semitic trope 
about Jewish attachments to 
Israel making them disloyal to 
the United States.
Anti-Semites usually make 
it pretty easy for us to identify 
them. They scrawl swastikas on 

Jewish gravestones. They bluntly 
describe Jewish conspiracies and 
quote the classics of anti-Sem-
itism like Mein Kampf or The 
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 
They make it clear that “no Jews 
are allowed.”
But “tropes” are anti-Semi-
tism once (at least) removed. 
Intentional users employ a 
trope as code hoping to avoid 
the anti-Semitism charge while 
dog-whistling their audiences. 
(The Hebrew expression for 
such circumlocution is hamevin 
yavin — literally “those who 
understand will understand.”) 
 
Tropes are often easy to 
identify because they can be 
deployed unknowingly by those 
who couldn’
t accidentally, say, 
deface a synagogue. As a result, 
tropes allow those charged with 
anti-Semitism a degree of deni-
ability. ■

Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor of JTA.org.

Andrew Silow-
Carroll

commentary

An Idiot’s Guide to Anti-Semitic Tropes

CORRECTION:
In “Being Me” (page 10, March 7), the story 
stated that Azriel Reuven Apap was born female. 
The story should have said he was assigned 
female at birth.

