4 | JUNE 13 • 2024
J
N
essay
Antisemitism — What Do We Do Now?
I
f you want to learn about
modern antisemitism,
it would make sense to
interview a Jewish person
who grew up
among non-
Jews, who
has had many
careers with
gentiles of all
economic and
social classes,
who studies
history and who discusses
antisemitism with everybody.
You could ask someone like
Gilbert Sniderman of Troy,
Michigan.
Sniderman grew up in
changing — and already
changed — Detroit
neighborhoods. His personal
circle was heterogeneous,
including friends from
different races, religions,
economic, social, sexual,
cultural backgrounds, both
U.S. and foreign. He’s still
friends with many of them
decades later.
He earned degrees in
history, comparative religion,
music, mathematics and
other subjects. He was active
in politics, campaigning for
Democratic, independent
and non-partisan candidates
and issues for many years. He
marched and worked for civil
rights. During the Vietnam
War, he served with the
Military Police.
Since those days, he has
taught history, music and
classical literature in public,
charter, private and parochial
(Christian, Jewish and other)
schools across the country.
He has sought out people who
share his interest in classical
music, grand opera, Japanese
art, and sophisticated
cooking, history and politics.
This incomplete list only
suggests his wide variety of
friends and interests.
Sniderman has a long
history of opposition to
antisemitism. At Wayne
State University in 1972,
when the campus paper,
The South End, published
cartoons from Nazi sources
and called for violence against
Jews, Sniderman worked
with other students in an ad
hoc committee to protest.
Eventually, the university
took action to limit editorial
staff of the paper.
On the topic of current
antisemitism, Sniderman
has three points to make,
two observations and one
quandary.
HIS THREE POINTS
First observation: We
American Jews love to debate
about whether antisemitism
has become dangerous
here. America has long
been the exception, the one
country without the virulent
outbreaks of hatred against
Jews that appear periodically
in Europe, North Africa
and the Muslim world.
Sniderman says that the
debate has ended: America
has become dangerous. It
no longer surprises us when
a gunman walks into a
synagogue or a kosher store
and opens fire. It should not
surprise us if worse may be to
come.
Second observation:
Antisemitism comes from
all sides. For decades after
the Holocaust, explicit
hatred against Jews declined.
Apparently, the hatred never
went away; people just
suppressed it. Though many,
perhaps most, Americans
have no feelings against Jews,
antisemitic roots go deep in
separate parts of American
politics.
Sniderman, fascinated by
history, identifies distant
sources of modern hatred:
ancient Phoenicians and
Greeks who expressed rivalry
with Israel, early Christian
writers and theologians
who proselytized Hellenist
gentiles, more modern
proponents of eugenics who
thought up racist plans to
improve human breeding
stock, conservationists
who wanted to eradicate
invasive species like Jews,
aristocrats who sought to
exclude undeserving others,
universalists who wanted
to end tribalism, socialists
who opposed commerce,
bankers and industrialists
who did business with Nazis,
and investors who needed to
appease oil producers.
But, he says, all that
does not matter so much,
compared with who
hates Jews now. How the
hatred started is, in this
circumstance, no longer
relevant. The reality is that
there exists hatred of Jews,
and this is what we must deal
with.
Many have tried to
determine a cause, some
believing that if a cause is
found then a “cure” may
be had. This “cure” may be
through logic, reasoning,
demonstrating we are the
same as they, getting involved
with their problems and
forming alliances.
Much of these attempts to
thwart, reduce or eliminate
antisemitism are doomed to
failure. Many look on us as
fools to be used and be a help
when needed, but still looked
on with disdain and hatred.
Antisemitism is so rooted
in society that it has never
gone away and only waits
for the climate to be right to
openly express it; and that is
now. Though many people do
not hate Jews, antisemitism
comes from all sides.
It comes from those
Louis
Finkelman
QUINN DOMBROWSKI
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