tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/jewish-27219/articlesJewish – The Conversation2024-03-27T12:37:57Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2259652024-03-27T12:37:57Z2024-03-27T12:37:57ZEaster 2024 in the Holy Land: a holiday marked by Palestinian Christian sorrow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584385/original/file-20240326-22-4jhbih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C51%2C5604%2C3699&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A procession at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed by many Christians to be the site of the crucifixion and burial place of Jesus Christ.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IsraelPalestiniansEaster/d33a91bd48b94dd7b7cae10a29bdeef0/photo?Query=%20Church%20of%20the%20Holy%20Sepulchre%20easter&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=901&digitizationType=Digitized&currentItemNo=29&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every year, Christians from across the world visit Jerusalem for Easter week, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/following-jesuss-steps-millions-christians-via-dolorosa-walking-wrong-way">walking the Via Dolorosa</a>, the path Jesus is said to have walked on the way to his crucifixion over 2,000 years ago. Easter is the holiest of days, and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Holy-Sepulchre">Church of the Holy Sepulchre</a>, the site where Jesus is believed to have died, is one of the most sacred sites for Christians.</p>
<p>But not all Christians have equal access to these sites. If you are a Christian Palestinian living in the city of Bethlehem or Ramallah hoping to celebrate Easter in Jerusalem, you have to <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240325-israel-bans-palestinian-christians-from-jerusalem-on-palm-sunday/">request permission from Israeli authorities</a> well before Christmas – without guarantee that it will be granted. Those were the rules even before Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-latest-02-28-2024-5fb126981031984395a228598fa9e4a9">launched an attack on southern Israel</a>. The Israeli response to the Hamas attack has resulted in even more <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/11/middleeast/west-bank-restrictions-violence-intl-cmd/index.html">severe restrictions on freedom of movement</a> for Palestinians in the West Bank.</p>
<p>The site where the Bible says Jesus was born, in Bethlehem, and the place he died, in Jerusalem, are only about six miles apart. Google Maps indicates the drive takes about 20 minutes but carries a warning: “<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Church+of+the+Nativity,+P635%2BP2C,+Bethlehem+Territory/Church+of+the+Holy+Sepulchre,+Jerusalem/@31.7444436,35.1267403,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x1502d87be687c8f9:0xd060c37bd524261c!2m2!1d35.2075288!2d31.7043034!1m5!1m1!1s0x150329cf1c246db5:0x2d04a75cfc390360!2m2!1d35.2296002!2d31.7784813!3e0?entry=ttu">This route may cross country borders</a>.” That is because Bethlehem is located in the West Bank, which is under Israeli military occupation, whereas <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/22/how-does-israels-occupation-of-palestine-work#:%7E:text=Israel%20occupied%20the%20West%20Bank,were%20the%20capital%20of%20Israel">Jerusalem is under direct Israeli control</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.sjsu.edu/justicestudies/about-us/directory/abusaad-roni.php">human rights scholar</a> and Christian Palestinian who grew up in Bethlehem, I have many fond memories of Easter, which is a special time of gathering and celebration for Christian Palestinians. But I also saw firsthand how the military occupation has denied Palestinians basic human rights, including religious rights.</p>
<h2>A season of celebration</h2>
<p>Traditionally, Palestinian families and friends exchange visits, offering coffee, tea and a cookie stuffed with dates called “<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/04/11/522771745/maamoul-an-ancient-cookie-that-ushers-in-easter-and-eid-in-the-middle-east">maamoul</a>,” which is made only at Easter. A favorite tradition, especially for children, is taking a colorfully dyed hard-boiled egg in one hand and cracking it against an egg held by a friend. The breaking of the egg symbolizes the rise of Jesus from the tomb, the end of sorrow and the ultimate defeat of death itself and purification of human sins.</p>
<p>For Orthodox Christians, one of the most sacred rites of the year is the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Holy-Fire">Holy Fire</a>. On the day before Orthodox Easter, thousands of pilgrims and local Christian Palestinians of all denominations gather in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Greek and Armenian patriarchs enter the enclosure of the tomb in which Jesus was said to have been buried and pray inside. Those inside have <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IpyPCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT285&lpg=PT285&dq=%22From+the+core+of+the+very+stone+on+which+Jesus+lay+an+indefinable+light+pours+forth.+It+usually+has+a+blue+tint,+but+the+color+may+change+and+take+many+different+hues.+It+cannot+be+described+in+human+terms.+The+light+rises+out+of+the+stone+as+mist+may+rise+out+of+a+lake+%E2%80%94+it+almost+looks+as+if+the+stone+is+covered+by+a+moist+cloud,+but+it+is+light.&source=bl&ots=l47MXGss14&sig=ACfU3U3c3GuHU35fJ_j6Uxpnf8zITGO9gA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiW4d74n5KFAxVGCTQIHUNrAgsQ6AF6BAhKEAM#v=onepage&q&f=false">reported</a> that a blue light rises from the stone where Jesus lay, and forms into a flame. The patriarch lights candles from the flame, passing the fire from candle to candle among the thousands assembled in the church. </p>
<p>That same day, delegations representing Eastern Orthodox countries carry the flame in lanterns to their home countries via <a href="https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/aircraft-fleet-brings-easter-holy-fire-to-orthodox-communities">chartered planes</a> to be presented in cathedrals in time for the Easter service. Palestinians also carry the flame using lanterns to homes and churches in the West Bank.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Christians celebrate the Holy Fire under Israeli restrictions in 2023.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Deep roots in the Holy Land</h2>
<p>Palestinian Christians <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/Sociology-of-early-Palestinian-Christianity/oclc/3609025">trace their ancestry</a> to the time of Jesus and Christianity’s founding in the region. Many <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/9781">churches and monasteries</a> flourished in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and other Palestinian towns under Byzantine and Roman rule. Throughout this period and into the modern day, Christians, Muslims and Jews <a href="https://www.iis.ac.uk/learning-centre/scholarly-contributions/academic-articles/muslim-jews-and-christians-relations-and-interactions/">lived side by side in the region</a>. </p>
<p>With the Islamic conquest in the seventh century, the <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/decline-of-eastern-christianity-under-islam-from-jihad-to-dhimmitude-seventh-twentieth-century/oclc/33276531">majority of Christians gradually converted to Islam</a>. However, the remaining Christian minority persisted in practicing their religion and traditions, including through the rule of the Ottoman empire, from 1516 to 1922, and to the present day.</p>
<p>The establishment of Israel in 1948 led to the expulsion of <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=17079">750,000 Palestinians, over 80% of the population</a>, which is referred to by Palestinians as the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nakba-at-75-palestinians-struggle-to-get-recognition-for-their-catastrophe-204782">nakba,” or the catastrophe</a>. Hundreds of thousands became refugees throughout the world, including many Christians.</p>
<p>Christians accounted for about <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-204267/">10% of the population in 1920</a> but <a href="https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/west-bank/#people-and-society">constitute just 1% to 2.5%</a> of Palestinians in the West Bank as of 2024, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep25112">because of emigration</a>. Christians in the West Bank belong to multiple denominations, including Greek Orthodox, Catholic and various Protestant denominations.</p>
<p>Thousands of Palestinians rely on the pilgrims and tourists who come to Bethlehem every year for their livelihoods. Two million people visit Bethlehem annually, and more than <a href="https://www.bethlehem-city.org/en/the-city-economy">20% of local workers are employed in tourism</a>. Another important local industry is carved olive wood handicrafts. In 2004, the mayor of Beit Jala, which borders the city of Bethlehem, estimated <a href="https://unispal.un.org/pdfs/Beth_Rep_Dec04.pdf">200 families in the area</a> made their living from carving olive wood. Christians around the world have <a href="https://sg.news.yahoo.com/christmas-journey-olive-orchard-nativity-180326957.html">olive wood nativity sets</a> or crosses carved by Palestinian artisans, a tradition that has been passed down through generations.</p>
<h2>Impact of the occupation</h2>
<p>The neighborhoods of the occupied West Bank have been fragmented by the building of over 145 illegal Israeli settlements. Both Christian and Muslim Palestinians face huge barriers to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jsa.2019.0003">accessing holy sites in Jerusalem</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men wearing long green garbs walk in a procession and one in the center holds a tall crucifix." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584391/original/file-20240326-22-le7r64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584391/original/file-20240326-22-le7r64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584391/original/file-20240326-22-le7r64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584391/original/file-20240326-22-le7r64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584391/original/file-20240326-22-le7r64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584391/original/file-20240326-22-le7r64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584391/original/file-20240326-22-le7r64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An Israeli policeman stands guard during a March 1997 procession of Franciscan monks led by traditionally dressed guards coming out of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MIDEASTJERUSALEMEASTER/95dacad9cce0da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo?Query=%20bethlehem%20holy%20week%20guards&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=733&digitizationType=Digitized&currentItemNo=0&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo/Peter Dejong</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bethlehem is encircled by several Jewish-only settlements, as well as the <a href="https://pij.org/articles/1042/the-impact-of-the-separation-wall-on-jerusalem">separation wall</a> built in the 2000s, which snakes around and across the city. Across the West Bank, over 500 checkpoints and bypass roads designed to connect settlements have been built on Palestinian lands for the exclusive use of settlers. As of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-02-02/israeli-settler-population-west-bank-surpasses-500000">Jan. 1, 2023</a>, there were over half a million settlers in the West Bank and another 200,000 in East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The highways and bypass roads cut through the middle of towns and separate families. It is a system that former <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2007.tb01647.x">President Jimmy Carter</a> and numerous human rights groups have described as “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-jerusalem-israel-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-83b44a2f6b2b3581d857f57fb6960115">apartheid</a>.” This system severely restricts freedom of movement and separates students from schools, patients from hospitals, farmers from their lands and worshipers from their churches or mosques. </p>
<p>Additionally, Palestinians have a different license plate color on their cars. They can’t use their vehicles to access <a href="https://apnews.com/article/a0c47ad493fb4b31a444bfe432194f2e">private roads</a>, which restricts their access to Jerusalem or Israel.</p>
<p>Going far beyond separate roads, Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to a separate legal system – a military judicial system – whereas Israeli settlers living in the West Bank have a civilian court system. This <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/chapter-3-israeli-settlements-and-international-law/">system</a> allows indefinite detention of Palestinians without charge or trial based on secret evidence. All of these restrictions on freedom of movement disrupt the ability of Palestinians of all faiths to visit holy sites and gather for religious observances.</p>
<h2>Prayers for peace</h2>
<p>The barriers to celebrating Easter, especially this year, are not just physical but emotional and spiritual. </p>
<p>As of March 25, 2024, the number of <a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/health-ministry-in-hamas-run-gaza-says-war-death-toll-at-32-333-fd31aa61">Gazans killed in the war had surpassed 32,000</a> – <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war">70% of them women and children</a>, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/3/22/israel-arrested-over-7350-west-bank-palestinians-since-war-on-gaza-began">arrested 7,350 people in the West Bank</a>, with over 9,000 currently in detention, up from 5,200 who were in Israeli prisons before Oct. 7, 2023. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/palestinian-christians-and-muslims-have-lived-together-in-the-region-for-centuries-and-several-were-killed-recently-while-sheltering-in-the-historic-church-of-saint-porphyrius-216335">Israel bombed the world’s third oldest church</a>, St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church, in Gaza in October 2023, killing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/20/gaza-church-strike-saint-porphyrius/">18 of the more than 400 people</a> sheltering there.</p>
<p>Christian Palestinians in the West Bank <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/11/15/bethlehem-cancels-christmas-display-martyrs-israel-hamas/">suspended celebrations</a> for Christmas in 2023 in hopes of bringing more attention to the death and suffering in Gaza. But the situation has only worsened. An estimated <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/unrwa-situation-report-82-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem-all-information-22-24-february-2024-valid-24-february-2024-2230-enar">1.7 million Gazans</a> – over 75% of the population – had been displaced as of March 2024, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/19/middleeast/famine-northern-gaza-starvation-ipc-report-intl-hnk/index.html">half of them on the verge of famine</a>.</p>
<p>Many Palestinians have long turned to their faith to endure the occupation and have found <a href="https://doi.org/10.30664/ar.70464">solace in prayer</a>. That faith has allowed many to hold on to the hope that the occupation will end and the Holy Land will be the place of peace and coexistence that it once was. Perhaps that is when, for many, Easter celebrations will be truly joyful again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roni Abusaad, PhD does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Christian Palestinian human rights scholar who grew up in Bethlehem writes about the special time of Easter, but also about the restrictions on Palestinian Christians.Roni Abusaad, PhD, Lecturer, San José State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2196822023-12-14T23:53:02Z2023-12-14T23:53:02ZThe Israeli-Palestinian conflict is putting Canadian multiculturalism to the test<p>In popular thinking, and according to its general image, Canada is considered to be open and welcoming to ethnocultural and religious diversity. </p>
<p>Immigration is perceived as an <a href="https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/af/index.php/af/article/view/29376">asset for Canada</a>, and over the decades, multiculturalism has come to be considered a value to be protected and cherished. This can be seen in <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.htm">the 2020 General Social Survey</a>, where 92 per cent of the population endorsed multiculturalism. <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-18.7/page-1.html">The Canadian Multiculturalism Act</a> states that multiculturalism is a “fundamental characteristic of the Canadian heritage and identity and that it provides an invaluable resource in the shaping of Canada’s future.” </p>
<p>However, since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the demonstrations that have followed — both in favour of, and against Israel or in support of Palestine — have revealed many tensions linked to immigration. Hate crimes are also on the rise; in Toronto alone, there are reports of a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/hate-crime-rise-israel-gaza-1.7001288">132 per cent increase since the start of the conflict</a>.</p>
<p>So it is imperative to consider the potential for conflict within Canada’s various communities. The issue is particularly concerning for those who are simultaneously facing racism and the repercussions of ongoing conflicts in their countries of origin. For example, the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/sikh-separtist-movement-punjab-1.6981041">historical conflict between Hindus and Sikhs</a> is raising concern among Sikhs in Canada, particularly since one of their leaders was murdered in British Columbia.</p>
<p>As a sociologist who specializes in inclusive education, I quickly observed that racism and discrimination are significant issues in our society. I recently wrote an article entitled <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/trema/6042#:%7E:text=L'%C3%A9ducation%20inclusive%20englobe%20et,n%C3%A9gliger%20for%20all%20the%20worst">“Thinking about inclusive education in a context of discrimination and diversity in Canada,”</a> which explains, among other things, the limits of Canadian multiculturalism in the fight against discrimination. In line with the perspective <a href="https://www.ehess.fr/fr/personne/serge-paugam">of French sociologist Serge Paugam</a>, who maintains that the sociologist’s role includes speaking out <a href="https://www.puf.com/content/La_pratique_de_la_sociologie">“against all forms of domination,”</a> I will analyze how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is undermining this multiculturalism.</p>
<h2>Increase in hate crimes</h2>
<p>Statistics on hate crimes show that tensions do exist, in spite of the results of the 2020 survey. For example, from <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230322/cg-a004-eng.htm">2019 to 2021</a>, the Jewish community was the group most frequently targeted by hate crimes, and there was a significant increase in reports made to the police. In 2019, 306 antisemitic crimes were reported nationally. A year later this figure rose to 331 and by 2021, it had risen significantly to 492. <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/victim/rd16-rr16/p1.html">A further rise was recorded in 2022, with 502 incidents reported</a>. </p>
<p>Muslim communities have also been heavily affected by hate crime: in 2019, 182 incidents were reported. In 2020, this number fell to 84, but increased to 144 in 2021. Finally, Catholics have also been the target of hate crimes, with a significant increase in reports: in 2019, 51 cases were recorded compared with 43 in 2020 and 155 in 2021.</p>
<p>Ontario, the province with the highest number of immigrants in Canada, seems to have the highest percentage of hate crimes per capita. According to Statistics Canada data for 2021, Ottawa is the city with the highest rate of hate crime. <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510019101">Among the top 10 Canadian cities most affected by the phenomenon, there are more than eight Ontario cities</a>.</p>
<h2>A switch in public opinion</h2>
<p>To put it bluntly, not all Canadians see multiculturalism as an asset, and this change is exacerbated by the ongoing conflict between two of the country’s most discriminated communities. All this is taking place in a context where Canada’s capacity to welcome immigrant populations is being questioned.</p>
<p>According to an <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/there-s-going-to-be-friction-two-thirds-of-canadians-say-immigration-target-is-too/article_7740ecbd-0aed-5d36-b5da-b67bda4a13c5.html">Abacus poll published on Nov. 29</a>, more than 67 per cent of the population believes that there will be tensions between communities, principally because of the federal government’s immigration threshold, which is considered excessive. The government is still aiming to welcome <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-immigration-500000-2025-1.6636661">more than 500,000 immigrants a year over the next few years</a>. On the other hand, Ottawa rejected the Century Initiative, led by a former McKinsey executive, which aimed to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-immigration-public-opinion/">increase Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100</a>. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canada-diversity-poll">another poll</a>, by Leger-Postmedia, more than 78 per cent of Canadians express concern about the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the country. With respect to pro-Palestine demonstrations, more than three-quarters of those polled believe that the government should expel non-citizens who are guilty of hate speech or who have demonstrated support for Hamas from the country. </p>
<p>These figures show a major shift in public opinion about the value of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is no longer seen simply as making citizens aware of the richness of the country’s ethnocultural and religious diversity. It is also seen as supporting the various communities that live in, or want to immigrate to Canada. <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canada-diversity-poll">According to the same survey</a>, more than half say that the Canadian government should do more to ensure that newcomers accept Canadian values, and more than 55 per cent think that Canada’s immigration policy should encourage newcomers to adopt these values, in particular by abandoning any beliefs that are incompatible with Canada.</p>
<h2>An increasingly complex world</h2>
<p>The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to have shaken the foundations of multiculturalism. </p>
<p>It is striking to note how a value once considered fundamental — one that in 2020 was supported by more than 92 per cent of the population — can be questioned to this extent just three years later. On the other hand, it is important to remember that hate crimes existed before this conflict and that indicated multiculturalism was not as much of a “Canadian value” as it was believed to be. </p>
<p>Sociologist Edgar Morin maintains that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095715589700802401?download=true&journalCode=frca">“diversity creates complexity and complexity creates richness</a>.” Of course, Canadian multiculturalism rightly relies upon the richness of diversity, but it’s now being called upon to renew itself in an increasingly complex society and world. </p>
<p>At times, Canadian multiculturalism gives the impression that communities are living side by side, tolerant of ‘the Other,’ without actually co-constructing a society in which everyone belongs. The social situation must not be allowed to deteriorate, because we do not want to live in a state of confrontation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219682/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian J. Y. Bergeron ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The recent conflict between Israel and Hamas has exacerbated hate crimes in Canada and put Canadian multiculturalism to the test.Christian J. Y. Bergeron, Professeur en sociologie de l’éducation, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2177882023-12-10T19:07:59Z2023-12-10T19:07:59ZIsrael-Hamas war: What is Zionism? A history of the political movement that created Israel as we know it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563170/original/file-20231204-18-7z6q3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C24%2C5439%2C3612&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/jewish-community-marches-support-israel-conflict-2375353631">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the Israel-Hamas war continues, there’s been a lot of discussion around Zionism.</p>
<p>Put simply, Zionism is a nationalist movement that advocates for a homeland for the Jewish people in the <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/old-testament-student-manual-genesis-2-samuel/joshua-1-24-the-entry-into-the-promised-land?lang=eng">Biblical Land of Israel</a>. It is the organisation of ideas that actively sought and achieved the existence of the Israeli state in 1948. </p>
<p>Basically, political Zionism underpins the country we today call Israel. </p>
<p>It’s a movement that encompasses a broad spectrum of political beliefs with common objectives at its centre. But perhaps more than other political movements, Zionism has evolved over time.</p>
<p>So what is the history of Zionism, and what has that evolution looked like?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/on-its-75th-birthday-israel-still-cant-agree-on-what-it-means-to-be-a-jewish-state-and-a-democracy-204770">On its 75th birthday, Israel still can't agree on what it means to be a Jewish state and a democracy</a>
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<h2>Where did Zionism come from?</h2>
<p>There are biblical underpinnings to Zionism, as religious Zionists often reference God promising the <a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/111/GEN.12.niv">Land of Canaan to Abraham</a> and his descendants – the Israelites – and renaming it the Land of Israel. </p>
<p>For various reasons, Jews decided to relocate to Ottoman Palestine towards the end of the 19th century. The first mass migration (known as the <em>First Aliyah</em>) occurred between 1882 and 1903. Between 15,000 and 25,000 Jews migrated, essentially doubling the region’s Jewish population at the time.</p>
<p>However, the beginnings of modern Zionism are secular and constructed through political philosophy.</p>
<p>Although many Zionist ideas predate his works, Theodore Herzl is considered the father of modern Zionism as he was the first to set out its political aims clearly. </p>
<p>Herzl was raised in a secular Jewish household in Hungary. In Vienna, he had a brief career as a lawyer before becoming a journalist and writer of plays and literature. Initially, he firmly believed European Jews should assimilate into European culture, and he held this view for much of his early life. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563173/original/file-20231204-28-axssf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white illustration of a bearded man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563173/original/file-20231204-28-axssf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563173/original/file-20231204-28-axssf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563173/original/file-20231204-28-axssf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563173/original/file-20231204-28-axssf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563173/original/file-20231204-28-axssf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563173/original/file-20231204-28-axssf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563173/original/file-20231204-28-axssf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Theodore Herzl is considered to be the father of Zionism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/theodor-herzl-portrait-israeli-banknotes-1340277164">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>But his views changed after witnessing <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Dreyfus-affair">antisemitic riots in Paris</a> in 1895. He decided antisemitism was not something that could ever be defeated. Instead, he encouraged European Jews to abandon the continent and create their own national home.</p>
<p>In his 1896 work <a href="https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_iyxWAAAAYAAJ">Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage</a> (The Jewish State: Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question), he argues Jews possess a national identity that should be embraced. </p>
<p>However, he said, they would never be safe from antisemitism unless they lived in a community in which they were the majority. </p>
<h2>A Jewish state in the Middle East</h2>
<p>In his diaries, Herzl mused about many places a Jewish state could take shape. This homeland would be outside Europe, potentially in Latin America. But by 1904, Herzl began to focus on the Promised Land (<em>Eretz Yisrael</em>) in the Middle East “<a href="https://ia903407.us.archive.org/2/items/the-complete-diaries-of-theodor-herzl/The%20Complete%20Diaries%20of%20Theodor%20Herzl.pdf">from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates (in Iraq)</a>”.</p>
<p>In the early 1900s, this area was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and Herzl met with Ottoman dignitaries multiple times to lobby the Zionist cause. </p>
<p>Herzl’s vision is considered by many as <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/actually-herzl-was-a-colonialist/#:%7E:text=But%20the%20truth%20is%20quite%20the%20opposite.%20Herzl%E2%80%99s,%E2%80%93%20whose%20land%20he%20claimed%20and%20renamed%20Rhodesia.">eurocentric and colonial</a> with regard to the to the native Palestinian population.</p>
<p>But given that Jews are also originally native to this land, <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/allegation-israel-settler-colonialist-enterprise">the Anti Defamation League (ADL)</a> argues that the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel is not a form of settler colonialism.</p>
<p>It can be argued that political Zionism exhibits <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article-abstract/134/569/1049/5475933">both anticolonial and colonial aspirations</a>. </p>
<p>On one hand, it seeks to give self-determination to the Jewish people in a land to which they were once native. On the other, given early Zionists were trying to convince European colonial powers to create the Jewish national home, it adopted some colonial rationalisations and often saw the existing population, <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-arab-and-jewish-questions/9780231199216">both Arabs and native Jews</a>, as inferior.</p>
<p>Herzl rarely wrote about Arabs or other native populations, and when he did, he mused about how much their <a href="https://archive.org/details/the-complete-diaries-of-theodor-herzl">lives would be improved</a> by the best of European and Jewish culture. </p>
<h2>A growing political force</h2>
<p>As Jewish migration began to gather steam, Zionism became more politically influential internationally. </p>
<p>But as the first world war drew to a close, there were large geopolitical shifts in the region. The Ottoman Empire’s power was waning, and the British would eventually end up in control of Jordan and Palestine in 1919. </p>
<p>In 1917, in an effort to undermine Ottoman control, the British implicitly supported the existence of a Jewish homeland in the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/balfour-declaration-1778163">Balfour Declaration</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.</p>
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<p>The British would later renege on the declaration in 1939, saying it was no longer British government policy to support a Jewish homeland.</p>
<p>As British colonial rule continued, not all Zionist action was peaceful. Paramilitary organisations such as Ze'ev Jabotinsky’s <em>Irgun</em> and the <em>Lehi</em> (also known as the “Stern Gang”) conducted bombings and attacks against the <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163448">colonial British</a>.</p>
<p>These groups would perpetrate the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/9/the-deir-yassin-massacre-why-it-still-matters-75-years-later">Deir Yassin massacre</a> in 1948, killing more than 100 Palestinians near Jerusalem.</p>
<p>But it was the rise of Nazism in Europe and the Holocaust that solidified Zionism as a movement globally. </p>
<p>Jews fleeing Europe to settlements in Palestine (then under British rule) led to the Jewish population rising from 50,000 in the early 1900s to an estimated <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/aliyah-bet-1939-1948">650,000 by 1948</a>. </p>
<p>Jewish calls for a “national home” turned into <a href="https://nes.princeton.edu/publications/power-faith-and-fantasy-america-middle-east-1776-present">calls for a Jewish Commonwealth</a> with full sovereign authority over its lands.</p>
<p>The central goal of Zionism was achieved on May 14 1948, with new Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declaring the establishment of the state of Israel. </p>
<p>The war of independence followed within hours. Some 700,000 Palestinians fled to the West Bank (then belonging to Jordan), Gaza (a part of Egypt) and the neighbouring Arab states. This is known among Palestinians as the <em>Nakba</em>; the Arabic word for “catastrophe”, and the point at which Palestinians lost the potential for self-determination. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-us-israel-special-relationship-shows-how-connections-have-shifted-since-long-before-the-1948-founding-of-the-jewish-state-215781">A brief history of the US-Israel 'special relationship' shows how connections have shifted since long before the 1948 founding of the Jewish state</a>
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<h2>Zionism in the current world</h2>
<p>Over the decades, Zionism has changed considerably as new political questions raised themselves. With the state of Israel established, what should the state look like and how should it protect itself from its foreign adversaries?</p>
<p>One of these questions is: how should Zionism respond to Palestinian self-determination? </p>
<p>The annexation of the West Bank by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt after the war of independence seemed to answer this question in the short term. Israel offered citizenship to some Palestinians, who make up just under 20% of Israel’s population today. They are Israel’s largest minority and have often struggled with <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel">political representation and socio-economic outcomes</a>. </p>
<p>But Israel’s swift defeat of Jordan, Syria and Egypt in the 1967 <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39960461">Six Day War</a> changed political realities again. Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza, along with the millions of Palestinians living there - but they were not offered citizenship. This has left the Palestinians stateless.</p>
<p>This raised a question that has still not been adequately answered today: does an effective application of Zionism mean statelessness for Palestinians?</p>
<p>There are different schools of thought on this.</p>
<p>For liberal and modern Labor Zionists, factions that include members of the Yesh Atid party and the late former Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, the answer is no. They implicitly reject the idea that Palestinian and Jewish self-determination are at odds with one another. </p>
<p>For them, a political solution to the conflict is essential. For a long time they advocated for a two-state solution - the creation of a state of Palestine completely independent from Israel. The Palestinian Authority would transition into a state government with sovereignty over its land.</p>
<p>But some liberal Zionists have abandoned this idea, stating the only sustainable option is to offer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/opinion/israel-annexation-two-state-solution.html">Palestinians equal rights and citizenship in Israel</a>, challenging the idea that the home of the Jewish people must be a Jewish state. </p>
<p>This is because of a combination of the failure to transition the West Bank and Gaza into a Palestinian state, and the contradiction of freedom for Israelis and statelessness for Palestinians.</p>
<p>Although the political power of liberal and Labor Zionism in the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) has waned, it is certainly alive and well in Israeli civil society. For example, <a href="https://www.btselem.org/about_btselem">B'Tselem</a>, the legacy of left wing Zionist Yossi Sarid, has been very active in documenting instances of apartheid and settler violence in the West Bank.</p>
<p>In short, Zionism does not preclude someone from being critical of the policies of the Israeli government.</p>
<p>However, for many nationalist, conservative religious and revisionist Zionists, Palestinian self-determination anywhere west of the River Jordan is a direct threat to the Jewish state. They, therefore, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/opinion/benjamin-netanyahu-israel.html">do not support Palestinian independence</a>. </p>
<p>This form of Zionism has become the dominant form in Israeli politics today.</p>
<p>Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this approach has transcended rhetoric and become legislation in <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/final-text-of-jewish-nation-state-bill-set-to-become-law/">Israel’s Nation State Law</a> of 2018, which legally enshrines unique Jewish sovereignty in the state of Israel and settlement as a “national value”. </p>
<p>It is this kind of Zionism that has informed Israel’s response to Palestinian action - both political and violent - for decades. </p>
<p>It has attempted to justify the blockade of Gaza, the forcible transfer of Palestinians in the West Bank, bans on political speech, mandatory detention without trial, and disproportionate violence as policy solutions to Israeli-Palestinian tensions.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/10-books-to-help-you-understand-israel-and-palestine-recommended-by-experts-217783">10 books to help you understand Israel and Palestine, recommended by experts</a>
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<p>After the Hamas attacks on October 7, ultra-nationalist ministers have become loud and influential voices. With the help of the prime minister, their brand of Zionism has ensured that a political solution with the Palestinians is out of reach.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding his colonial aspirations and attitudes toward Palestinian natives, Herzl made at least some attempts to reconcile his views with liberal values and democracy. In his novel <em><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41447384-altneuland">Altneuland</a></em> (The Old New Land) he envisaged that non-Jews would have the same rights as Jews in a democracy. </p>
<p>Contrast that with today, where the most powerful Zionist voices see liberal democracy – and the Palestinians – as an obstacle to security of the Israeli state. </p>
<p><em>Correction: this article has been amended to say the First Aliyah ended in 1903. It previously said the First Aliyah ended in 1901.The article has also been amended to reflect that Palestinians have never historically had self-determination.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217788/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Political Zionism underpins the country we today call Israel. It’s a political movement that’s evolved over time. So what is the history of Zionism, and what has that evolution looked like?Andrew Thomas, Lecturer in Middle East Studies, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2177612023-12-10T14:30:46Z2023-12-10T14:30:46Z‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ speaks to the meaningful impact of religious rituals for Jewish girls<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/you-are-so-not-invited-to-my-bat-mitzvah-speaks-to-the-meaningful-impact-of-religious-rituals-for-jewish-girls" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Adam Sandler’s newest movie, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21276878/"><em>You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah</em></a>, an <a href="https://www.heyalma.com/the-author-of-you-are-so-not-invited-to-my-bat-mitzvah-has-a-secret/">adaptation of</a> Fiona Rosenbloom’s 2005 eponymous <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/You_Are_SO_Not_Invited_to_My_Bat_Mitzvah.html?id=E99g4AoHI4wC&redir_esc=y">young adult novel</a>, is out in time for winter vacation and Netflix binging. </p>
<p>It is no surprise that this teen-themed film is a comedy, alternating between cringe-y and sweet scenes. </p>
<p>Yet the film also offers opportunities to consider how different genres of Jewish-themed films explore the potential of religious ritual to empower young Jewish women. </p>
<h2>Girls’ relationships and futures</h2>
<p>In the movie, Stacy (<a href="https://people.com/parents/all-about-adam-sandler-kids">Sandler’s real-life daughter Sunny</a>) and her best friend Lydia (Samantha Lorraine) have been planning their dreamy, over-the-top, conspicuous consumption Bat Mitzvah parties — <a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/you-are-so-not-invited-to-my-bat-mitzvah-movie-soundtrack">New York City</a> and Candyland themed, respectively — together since childhood. </p>
<p>Their friendship, however, is tested and, temporarily, broken by jealousy over a boy. This is followed by Stacy’s spread of untrue rumours on social media about Lydia. Most devastating of all, Stacy’s embarrassing videos of Lydia are mistakenly shown at Lydia’s Bat Mitzvah party which is consequently ruined. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>When Stacy finds herself standing on <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/bimah/">the bima</a> for her own Bat Mitzvah ritual, she is facing Lydia’s family’s empty seats, her own family, the congregation and the open <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-torah-scroll-judaic-treasures">Torah scroll</a>. </p>
<p>It is then and there that Stacy admits her wrongdoings, expresses her real remorse for her actions and recognizes the importance of her Jewish community. When Lydia attends Stacy’s party (under parental duress), she discovers Stacy cancelled her own party plans so that Lydia could have the party she always dreamed of. </p>
<h2>Reform-style American Judaism</h2>
<p><em>You Are So</em> presents viewers with a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/#:%7E:text=Pew%20Research%20Center%20estimates%20that,were%20Jews%20of%20no%20religion.">liberal, Reform-style congregation</a>: the Rabbi is a woman, men and women sit together, the service is mostly in English and congregants are completely and unself-consciously integrated into secular American life. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1696319251890790911"}"></div></p>
<p>A hundred and one years before <em>You Are So</em> was released, <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-first-bat-mitzvah-in-the-united-states">the first American Bat Mitzvah</a> took place. Judith Kaplan, daughter of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, read the blessings for, and a passage from, the Torah from her personal prayer book, not the Torah scroll itself. </p>
<p>This happened in Rabbi Kaplan’s sanctuary in the brownstone home of the <a href="https://saj.nyc/connect/history-of-saj/">Society for the Advancement of Judaism</a>, a synagogue which would evolve over time into <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/reconstructionist-judaism-today/">Reconstructionist Judaism</a>. Influenced by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23605610">American second wave feminism</a>, <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-jewish-denominations/">Conservative synagogues</a> widely adopted the Bat Mitzvah ritual by the 1960s. Reform synagogues did so by the 1970s. Jewish communities <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253356932/today-i-am-a-woman/">around the world now celebrate Bat Mitzvahs</a>.</p>
<h2>Women don’t traditionally read from the Torah</h2>
<p>In non-Orthodox synagogue rituals today, girls read directly and in front of the whole congregation from the Torah scrolls. Traditional Orthodox Judaism, <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-state-of-orthodox-judaism-today">however, does not allow women to read publicly from the Torah scrolls</a>. Orthodox congregations may call upon a young woman to speak about the meaning of the day’s Torah reading, or allow her to read from the Torah in a women’s-only service. </p>
<p>Today in Israel, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/reform-rabbis-assailed-as-they-try-to-bring-torah-scrolls-to-women-at-western-wall/">clashes led by</a> the ultra-Orthodox over the appropriateness of women reading from Torah scrolls at the Western Wall continue to erupt. At times, these <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-725748">have been violent</a>.</p>
<p>Women’s performances of traditionally male rituals are largely rejected in Orthodox congregations, although some <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/defining-open-orthodoxy">groups of Orthodox Jews</a> continue to debate and ponder various acceptable possibilities for women. </p>
<h2>‘By and for’ Orthodox women’s films</h2>
<p>I watched <em>You Are So</em> while thinking about this ongoing theological divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities, as well as the growth and appeal of <a href="https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol25/iss1/58">“by and for women only” films</a> produced by Orthodox Jewish women. These films feature only modestly dressed and “appropriately behaved” Jewish girls and women, and are intended to be viewed only by girls and women. </p>
<p>Among the most well-known producers of the genre is <a href="https://www.artsandtorah.org/garbosero/">Robin Garbose</a>. In 2000, she founded <a href="https://kolneshama.wordpress.com/about/">Kol Neshama</a>, a Los Angeles-based performing arts conservatory “dedicated to providing professional artistic training and performance opportunities for girls and women in a Torah-observant setting and … the creation of distinctly Jewish film and stage productions.” </p>
<p>During Garbose’s female-only productions, unrelated men and women are not on set together. No production takes <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/what-is-shabbat-jewish-sabbath">place on Shabbat</a> or other Jewish festivals. </p>
<h2>Gender-specific lessons</h2>
<p>The films communicate gender-specific lessons for girls and women from an Orthodox point of view. <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/women-only-movie-sparks-debate-understanding">Garbose, arguing for the importance of the by and for genre</a>, wrote in the <em>Jerusalem Post</em>: “Our Biblical tradition teaches that the Jewish People and all humanity were not annihilated following the sin of the <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/golden-calf">golden calf</a> in the merit of the <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hebrew-women-in-wilderness-midrash-and-aggadah">faithful women</a> who did not participate in the event.” </p>
<p>This refers to the story related in <em>Exodus</em> 32. Aaron asked for gold jewelry from men and women in order to create a golden calf to be worshipped by the Israelites who demanded a god. It was the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/judaism/kol-isha-when-the-women-refused-to-strip-off-their-finery">women who refused to give up their gold</a> for the creation of the idol. </p>
<h2>Interpretations of modesty</h2>
<p>For Garbose, the sin of the golden calf today includes Jewish women both acting in and viewing inappropriate films, actions in contradiction with Jewish laws of modesty. Her films, including both their production and intended female-only audiences, are appropriate for all women to take part in, without risking their fidelity to Jewish law. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for ‘Operation Candlelight.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>While Garbose would not portray Jewish women reading from the Torah publicly in her films, viewers of <em>You Are So</em> see Stacy do so. In fact, Stacy’s Torah reading is <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ki-tissa-a-summary-of-the-parashah/">Ki Tissa</a>, the story of the golden calf. </p>
<p>Garbose’s Kol Neshama films include <a href="https://mostlymusic.com/en-ca/products/robin-garbose-operation-candelight"><em>Operation: Candlelight</em></a> (2014), an “action adventure film for women and girls.” </p>
<p>In this film, girls at a religious Jewish school in California uncover a <a href="https://yuobserver.org/2013/10/film-talk-operation-candlelight/">local criminal plot</a>. They not only foil the plot, but also find that their truest selves are expressed when <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/festivals-and-holy-days">lighting Shabbat candles</a>, the quintessential Jewish woman’s ritual responsibility. </p>
<h2>Portraying Jewish women’s worlds</h2>
<p><em>You Are So</em> and <em>Operation</em> are seemingly worlds apart, despite being both filmed in California. </p>
<p>It seems clear that Sandler and Garbose are unlikely to agree on a variety of theological issues, including an interpretation of the golden calf. Yet they both find themselves in and portraying Jewish women’s worlds — Garbose in her work at Kol Neshama and <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-moms/pictures/meet-adam-sandlers-family-jackie-sadie-sunny-and-more/#">Sandler, at least as I imagine him, the sole man at home with his two daughters and wife</a>. </p>
<p>Garbose and Sandler share a focus on the potential of Jewish ritual, the Bat Mitzvah and Shabbat candlelighting respectively, to change and empower young Jewish women. Sandler and Garbose, remarkably, are in agreement, at least on this point.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Celia E. Rothenberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ may seem worlds apart from the growth and appeal of ‘by and for women only’ films produced by Orthodox Jewish women, but all these films share a focus on the potential of Jewish ritual.Celia E. Rothenberg, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2175132023-11-16T15:01:05Z2023-11-16T15:01:05ZHow colonialist depictions of Palestinians feed western ideas of eastern ‘barbarism’<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-colonialist-depictions-of-palestinians-feed-western-ideas-of-eastern-barbarism" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Like so many <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/universitypress/subjects/history/middle-east-history/1967-arab-israeli-war-origins-and-consequences?format=PB">other Palestinians,</a> my friend Abeer Salah (not her real name) lives in exile. For Salah, home is <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/jordan/baqaa-camp">Baqa’a refugee camp</a> 20 kilometres north of Jordan’s capital of Amman. But she has family and friends trapped in Gaza. Since the horrific Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 and Israel’s catastrophic military action in Gaza, she has been watching the news and social media closely. </p>
<p>Recently, Salah shared a video clip of Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, <a href="https://x.com/incontextmedia/status/1721163059111112819?s=61">holding up a brick</a> to show how “terrorist” Palestinians throw them at soldiers and settlers. The clip, recorded last year, has been circulating again. </p>
<p>To my friend, this clip illustrates how western governments and media have long tended to depict Palestinians as backward and prone to violence.</p>
<p>“This man is trying to show that Palestinians are a barbaric people,” Salah said. “They defend their land and their people with stones. They’re backward. Meanwhile, Israelis have tanks.”</p>
<p>As a historian who studies colonial pasts I understand what Salah is saying. The dismissal of Palestinians as “barbaric” or somehow <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/decapitated-babies-claim-intent-dehumanization.html">less human</a> is rooted in a long history of colonizing narratives, including views of Indigenous lands and peoples as “uncivilized.”</p>
<p>For the past five years, I have been working on an <a href="https://www.uvic.ca/news/topics/2023+vibert-palestinian-food+news">oral history research project</a> and documentary film with Palestinian refugees in Baqa’a Camp. The film, made by a team including consulting producer Salam Barakat Guenette, explores how families and communities keep their food culture alive in exile. It offers a striking counter narrative to the stereotypes often levelled at Palestinians. </p>
<p></p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/761281959" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A teaser of the film Elizabeth Vibert is working on with Salam Barakat Guenette, Chen Wang, and a mainly Palestinian crew.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Colonial claims: ‘savage’ and ‘barbaric’</h2>
<p>In his classic 1978 book <a href="https://theconversation.com/orientalism-edward-saids-groundbreaking-book-explained-197429"><em>Orientalism</em></a>, Palestinian-American literary scholar Edward Said explained how British colonizers wielded the “power to narrate” as they cast their eyes, administrators and armies across the lands of “the East.”</p>
<p>Said, whose study focused on depictions of West Asia and North Africa (Europe’s “Middle East”), showed how the “absolute demarcation between East and West” was centuries in the making. By the 18th century, the binary of East versus West or “us” versus “them” had grown into a vast archive of western-produced “knowledge.” The relationship was cemented in the West as “superior” versus “inferior,” “civilized” versus “uncivilized,” “rational” versus “depraved” in all arenas of life: politics, culture, religion. </p>
<p><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393334777">Psychologists</a> and <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-our-brains-see-the-world-as-us-versus-them/">biologists</a> have shown that “us” versus “them” binaries may be a nearly universal human impulse. Such binaries become consequential when they harden into pernicious and violent racism, and are used to justify the taking of land, homes, food systems, water and lives.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-islamophobia-and-anti-palestinian-racism-are-manufactured-through-disinformation-216119">How Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism are manufactured through disinformation</a>
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<h2>Classifying societies by ‘stages’ of civilization</h2>
<p>By the mid-1700s, the great thinkers of the Enlightenment in Scotland, England and France were fine-tuning <a href="https://voltairefoundation.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/the-scottish-enlightenment-four-stages-theory-a-re-introduction/">“four stages” theories</a> to classify human societies according to imagined “stages of civilization.”</p>
<p>In most such schemes, hunting-gathering was placed at the bottom (“savage”) stage, followed by pastoralism (shepherding etc., often labeled “barbarism”), agriculture (emerging “civilization”), and at the apex, European commercial society. Unsurprisingly, Enlightenment writers placed themselves at the “apex.” </p>
<p>People inhabiting lands sought for colonization were often described as “wasting” land, having “backward” food production practices and being in need of “civilization” — all according to western definitions.</p>
<p>Beginning in the late 19th century, Zionists who initiated the nationalist project for Israel, in a land both peoples considered their ancestral home, gave little thought to the Palestinians. Zionists were deeply informed by <a href="https://www.historiaagraria.com/FILE/articulos/48leah.pdf">scornful views</a> of small-scale farming and sheep-herding societies. And British administrators during the <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627798556/thehundredyearswaronpalestin">Mandate period</a> (1920-1948) took a similarly dim view of much Arab agriculture.</p>
<h2>‘A land without a people’</h2>
<p>Palestinians were resisting colonial designs on their lands even before the British issued the infamous <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/tmr.2022.0025">Balfour Declaration of 1917</a> — a document that in a short paragraph promised Jewish people a “national home” in Palestine, so long as they did nothing to “prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” </p>
<p>This was breathtakingly dehumanizing language for the “existing non-Jewish communities” — the Palestinian Muslims and Christians who were then more than 90 per cent of the population. <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Lecture-by-Prof.-Rashid-Khalidi-100-years-since-Balfour-Decl-UN-2Nov2017.pdf">Historian Rashid Khalidi</a> argues that Palestinians viewed the Balfour Declaration as “a proclamation of war on them.” It marked the start of “a century-long colonial conflict in Palestine,” a conflict in which Britain, the United States and other outside powers have played key roles. </p>
<p>Zionist leaders’ claims about <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-204960/">“a land without a people for a people without a land”</a>, then, fit within a larger narrative that erased Palestinians and dismissed traditional Palestinian stewardship of the land.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-a-un-resolution-to-commemorate-the-expulsion-of-palestinians-from-their-lands-change-the-narrative-listen-204799">Will a UN resolution to commemorate the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands change the narrative? — Listen</a>
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<p>The Zionist project to <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/38553">“make the desert bloom”</a> was based, in part, on damaging misunderstandings of Arab dryland wheat and <a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2018.1537324"><em>baʿlī</em></a> farming systems. <em>Baʿlī</em> planting, tillage and plant protection methods, as demonstrated by <a href="https://palestine.mei.columbia.edu/visiting-scholars-bios/2017/2/23/omar-imseeh-tesdell">Palestinian geographer Omar Tesdell</a>, facilitate growing crops without irrigation. These agro-ecological practices are at once resilient and dynamic, and have much to teach farmers in increasingly drought-prone regions. </p>
<h2>Intense threats to land</h2>
<p>For years, farmers in the Palestinian territories have faced intense threats to their land and livelihoods. For instance, farms and gardens in Gaza, adapted across generations to challenging local conditions, were <a href="https://theconversation.com/gazas-food-system-has-been-stretched-to-breaking-point-by-israel-188556">often targeted</a> in military operations. In the midst of Israel’s catastrophic air and ground war on Gaza’s people, it is hard to conceive of a future for their local food systems.</p>
<p>In the West Bank, Israel’s eight-metre-high separation wall and encroaching Jewish settlements have systematically cut off many Palestinian farmers from their <a href="https://www.972mag.com/west-bank-olive-harvest-war-settler-attacks/">olive groves</a> and other lands. With all eyes now on Gaza, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hamas-west-bank-palestine-1.7025163">settler violence on Palestinian lands has intensified</a>.</p>
<p>As we have seen throughout history, dehumanization can have tragic and devastating impacts on people and land. Nearly half a century ago Edward Said asked a poignant question: Can we continue to divide humans into stark categories of “us” versus “them” and survive the consequences humanely? </p>
<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/0ba10cf2-be56-4b6e-8598-96c6fb5197b7?dark=true"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Vibert receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is completing a documentary film with the working title 'Aisha's Story,' about a Palestinian miller in Baqa'a Camp. </span></em></p>The dismissal of Palestinians as “barbaric” or somehow less human is rooted in a long history of colonizing narratives, including how the land and people were first viewed as “uncivilized.”Elizabeth Vibert, Professor of Colonial History, University of VictoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2177652023-11-16T15:00:56Z2023-11-16T15:00:56ZPalestine was never a ‘land without a people’<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/0ba10cf2-be56-4b6e-8598-96c6fb5197b7?dark=true"></iframe>
<p><em>Modern settlers to Palestine viewed the desert as something they needed to “make bloom.” But it already was, thanks to the long history of Palestinian agricultural systems.</em></p>
<p>As violence continues to erupt in Gaza, and more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 remain missing, many of us are seeking to better understand the context of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/topics/israeli-palestinian-conflict-140823">Israeli-Palestinian conflict</a> that has been raging for decades. </p>
<p>Some of us assume that the violence between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians — a majority of whom are Muslim — is a religious conflict, but a closer look at the history of the last century reveals that the root of the tension between the two communities is more complicated than that.</p>
<p>At its root, it’s a conflict between two communities that claim the right to the same land. For millions of Palestinians, it’s about displacement from that land. </p>
<p>Land has so much meaning. It’s more than territory; it represents home, your ancestral connection and culture — but also the means to feed yourself and your country. </p>
<p>One of the things that colonizers are famous for is the idea of <em>terra nullius</em> – that the land is empty of people before they come to occupy it. </p>
<p>In the case of Palestine, the Jewish settlers in 1948, and the British before that, viewed the desert as empty — something they needed to <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/38553">“make bloom.”</a> </p>
<p>But the land was already blooming. There is a long history of Palestinian connection to the land, including through agricultural systems and a rich food culture that is often overlooked by colonial powers.</p>
<p>Our guests on <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/palestine-was-never-a-land-without-people">this week’s episode of <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a> have been working on a film about the importance of preserving Palestinian agriculture and food in exile.</p>
<p>Elizabeth Vibert is a professor of colonial history at University of Victoria. She has been doing oral history research to examine historical and contemporary causes of food crises in various settings, including Palestinian refugees in Jordan.</p>
<p>Salam Guenette is the consulting producer and cultural and language translator for their documentary project. She holds a master’s degree in history.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The relationship with agriculture and the land is the original colonizing relationship. The colonizers came in, viewed Indigenous peoples worldwide as not moving and living appropriately and productively enough on the land.
- Elizabeth Vibert, professor of colonial history</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Read more in The Conversation</h2>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-colonialist-depictions-of-palestinians-feed-western-ideas-of-eastern-barbarism-217513">How colonialist depictions of Palestinians feed western ideas of eastern 'barbarism'</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-women-in-israel-and-palestine-are-pushing-for-peace-together-215783">How women in Israel and Palestine are pushing for peace — together</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-palestine-conflict-how-sharing-the-waters-of-the-jordan-river-could-be-a-pathway-to-peace-216044">Israel-Palestine conflict: How sharing the waters of the Jordan River could be a pathway to peace</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/recognition-versus-reality-lessons-from-30-years-of-talking-about-a-palestinian-state-212648">Recognition versus reality: Lessons from 30 years of talking about a Palestinian state</a>
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<h2>Resources</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29038"><em>Dear Palestine</em> by Shay Hazkani</a></p>
<p><a href="https://handmadepalestine.com/en-ca/blogs/free-educational-resources/palestinian-wild-food-plants"><em>A Guide to Palestinian Wild Food Plants</em></a>
by Omar Tesdell (and collective) </p>
<p><em><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250291530/adayinthelifeofabedsalama">A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy</a></em> by Nathan Thrall </p>
<p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/159783/orientalism-by-edward-w-said/9780394740676"><em>Orientalism</em> by Edward Said</a></p>
<h2>Listen and follow</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_mJBLBznANz6ID9rBCUk7gv_ZRC4Og9-">YouTube</a> or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts. </p>
<p><a href="mailto:DCMR@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/dontcallmeresilientpodcast/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-572" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/572/661898416fdc21fc4fdef6a5379efd7cac19d9d5/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Modern settlers to Palestine viewed the desert as something they needed to “make bloom.” But it already was, thanks to the long history of Palestinian agricultural systems.Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientAteqah Khaki, Associate Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173432023-11-14T22:54:44Z2023-11-14T22:54:44ZUniversity equity and racial justice strategies urgently need to address antisemitism<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/university-equity-and-racial-justice-strategies-urgently-need-to-address-antisemitism" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Many Jewish students are worried to go to campus in view <a href="https://thecjn.ca/news/jewish-students-at-canadian-universities-say-theres-a-new-level-of-worry-on-campus">of threatening and hateful messages</a> <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-lecturer-filmed-at-concordia-clash-over-israel-hamas-war-has-been-suspended-1.6639774">and even open hostilities at</a> some Canadian campuses. These are taking place within a wider context of <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/trudeau-humanitarian-pause-gaza">antisemitic incidents</a> in the wake of the eruption of the Hamas-Israel war.</p>
<p>The silence of some Canadian universities in addressing <a href="https://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2802895">antisemitism</a>, in particular when considered alongside otherwise active approaches toward equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization (EDID) and <a href="https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2020/06/04/canadian-universities-racism-diversity/">racial justice</a> <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-universities-need-to-do-more-to-fight-antisemitism-on-campus">needs to be explicitly addressed</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://torontosun.com/news/national/national-class-action-lawsuit-filed-against-three-canadian-universities">Legal action has recently been filed against some Canadian universities</a> for <a href="https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/ubc-students-lawsuit-antisemitism">failing to address antisemitism</a>. </p>
<h2>Anti-Palestinian racism, antisemitism</h2>
<p>I’m an education scholar <a href="https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/6071">whose work</a> centres on equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2018.1468748">and anti-racism</a>.</p>
<p>My engagement in this work has been shaped by my own background migrating to Canada from Israel 12 years ago. My graduate studies in Jewish history, with focus on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/20203518/_On_Guilt_and_Atonement_Aktion_S%C3%BChnezeichen_Friedensdienste_and_Its_Activity_in_Israel">Holocaust memory</a>, made me attuned to injustice. </p>
<p>My migration was informed by concern my children wouldn’t be able to grow up without absorbing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701692583">the racism against Palestinians</a> that is <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/05/25/most-israeli-jews-do-not-see-a-lot-of-discrimination-in-their-society">pervasive in Israeli society</a>. I now fear that my children, and students, will be absorbing antisemitism. </p>
<h2>Antisemitism in society at large, on campus</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/antisemitism-how-the-origins-of-historys-oldest-hatred-still-hold-sway-today-87878">Antisemitism</a> — the <a href="https://jerusalemdeclaration.org">prejudice</a>, hatred, and oppression of Jews <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108381710">and one of the oldest</a> forms of racism — is an <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/antisemitism-jews-victims-hate-1.6677276">ongoing concern in Canada</a>. </p>
<p>There has been work at some post-secondary institutions to consider how EDID frameworks need <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/provost/initiative-against-islamophobia-and-antisemitism">to address antisemitism and also Islamophobia</a> and anti-Palestinian racism both in the context of Israel and Palestinian issues and in the everyday. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://vpfo.ubc.ca/edi/edi-resources/edi-glossary/#a">many EDID frameworks</a> — both of specific institutions, and larger guiding frameworks — do not explicitly address these problems. For example, the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences’ 2021 “Charter on EDID,” which states the need for “<a href="https://fhss.swoogo.com/edid-charter">a more resolute effort to achieve</a> [EDID] in our disciplines [and] fields of inquiry,” mentions categories of race, ethnicity and does not name antisemitism. </p>
<h2>Addressing covert and explicit discrimination</h2>
<p>Because racism and discrimination are often covert in higher education institutions, EDID initiatives focus on creating systemic and institutional changes in all levels and aspects of institutions, including through policies, leadership, hiring, curriculum and student experiences. But this frame is also applied <a href="https://ischool.utoronto.ca/about-us/about-the-equity-diversity-and-inclusion-office/31976-2">to specific discrimination cases and complaints in higher education</a>.</p>
<p>Universities’ equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonization initiatives are emerging and should rightfully comprehensively respond to specific forms of racism and discrimination. For example, <a href="https://www.univcan.ca/media-room/media-releases/scarborough-charter-on-anti-black-racism-and-black-inclusion/">in 2020</a>, work on the <a href="https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/principal/sites/utsc.utoronto.ca.principal/files/docs/Scarborough_Charter_EN_Nov2022.pdf">Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education</a> was launched <a href="https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/principal/signatories-scarborough-charter">and multiple universities have since signed it</a>, pledging “shared recognition of the realities of anti-Black racism.” </p>
<h2>Focus on decolonization</h2>
<p>Inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its <a href="https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf">94 Calls to Action</a>, <a href="https://canadianscholars.ca/book/decolonizing-and-indigenizing-education-in-canada/#">decolonization and Indigenization</a> of Canadian higher education plans have become central for conceiving EDID work. </p>
<p>For example, the second part of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s <em>Igniting Change</em> 2021 report, from the Advisory Committee on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization, focuses on “<a href="https://www.federationhss.ca/sites/default/files/2022-10/Igniting-Change-Final-Report-and-Recommendations-en-part2.pdf">Principles, Guidelines, and Promising Practices of Decolonization</a>.” </p>
<p>In Canadian universities, an EDID <a href="https://www.univcan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Equity-diversity-and-inclusion-at-Canadian-universities-report-on-the-2019-national-survey-Nov-2019-1.pdf">focus on issues of decolonization and racism</a> is important, given histories and legacies of colonial oppression, racism, exclusion and marginalization affecting Black, Indigenous and people of colour in Canada.</p>
<p>Yet this focus, in specific <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/content/sfu/edi/reports/_jcr_content/main_content/download/file.res/Equity_compass.pdf">institutional approaches to EDID</a>, fails to address and at times downplays <a href="https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/A/A-History-of-Antisemitism-in-Canada">the history of antisemitism</a> and its <a href="https://museeholocauste.ca/app/uploads/2018/10/brief_history_antisemitism_canada.pdf">ongoing reality in</a> Canada. </p>
<h2>Whiteness and Jews’ ambivalent racialized status</h2>
<p>Several factors have contributed to this. The majority of North American Jews <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2020.1718342">self-identify as white</a>. “Whitening” allowed white-passing Jews <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691136318/the-price-of-whiteness">to become part of a white</a> Christian mainstream in ambivalent ways.</p>
<p>This process has reduced Jewish heritage to simply a religious/faith affiliation, even while Jews remain vulnerable to pernicious <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/david-baddiel-whoopi-goldberg-antisemitism-holocaust-the-view-b980696.html">white supremacist and antisemitic beliefs about Jewishness being “in the blood</a>.” </p>
<p>No doubt, it is complex to identify Jews as a category under “race,” since such a categorization is reminiscent of Nazi ideology. On the other hand, if we understand race as a social <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-discrimination-based-creed/3-background">construct</a>, the absence of naming antisemitism in EDID frameworks is deeply problematic. </p>
<h2>Tools to acknowledge antisemitism</h2>
<p>This prevents scholars and educators from acknowledging the <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487528775/the-ever-dying-people/#">historical</a>, <a href="https://dialogue.cpso.on.ca/2022/09/a-dark-history-a-persistent-fear/">institutional</a>, <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism/why-the-jews-history-of-antisemitism">ideological</a> and <a href="https://antisemitism.adl.org/?_gl=1%2A18xq8dt%2A_ga%2AMTcwMzQ0NzkyMS4xNjYxODA4MjU4%2A_ga_S9QB0F2PB5%2AMTY2ODcxNTM2Mi45LjEuMTY2ODcxNTk2Ny4wLjAuMA..">cultural</a> underpinnings of antisemitism. </p>
<p>Academics working on anti-racism issues trying to bring up antisemitism are often told this is <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-anti-jewish-bias-has-deeply-permeated-university-culture">not part of the EDID agenda</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cmej/article/view/76086/56314">report</a> by a senior adviser on antisemitism at the University of Toronto’s medical school described how instances of antisemitism were dismissed as political activism against Israel, protected under academic freedom even while this activism was rife with antisemitic dog whistles (such as seeing Jews as “controlling the media” or “owning the university.”) </p>
<p>This conflation points to EDID <a href="https://medium.com/amor-mundi/an-open-letter-to-my-friends-who-signed-philosophy-for-palestine-0440ebd665d8">settler-colonial</a> discourses that position Jews as white colonial forces. </p>
<p>This framing fails to acknowledge the historical, cultural, and spiritual ties of <a href="https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/article/view/40013/36218">Jews to the land</a> of Israel and also erases the reality that Jews both in Israel and in diasporic communities globally are not a uniform <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12470">ethnic group</a>. For example, about half of the Jewish population of Israel are <a href="https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/noah/files/2018/07/Ethnic-origin-and-identity-in-Israel-JEMS-2018.pdf">“Mizrachi”</a>, descendants of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.</p>
<h2>Not about shielding Israel from critique</h2>
<p>Addressing <a href="https://thirdnarrative.org/does-zionismsettler-colonialism/">the complexity</a> of Jewish identities doesn’t mean justifying Israeli state politics or shielding Israel from critique. </p>
<p>Critiquing Israel is not antisemitism. Many Jewish and Israeli scholars have strong criticisms toward Israeli politics, just as many Jews object to the killing of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/israel-gaza-vivian-silver-1.7027333">civilians in Gaza</a>, and support “free <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/27/manela-two-state-solution/">Palestine</a>.” </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mz32lKvls6Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">CBC news video announcing the death of Canadian Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver who was killed in the Hamas attacks.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/DalrympleWill/status/1640556214907195392">Unpacking history</a> and <a href="https://archive.md/mRIFf">current events</a> is important for EDID work. </p>
<p>But portraying Jewish peoples as the embodiment of colonial oppression is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/antisemitism-has-moved-from-the-right-to-the-left-in-the-us-and-falls-back-on-long-standing-stereotypes-215760">antisemitic trope</a> that legitimizes hate and violence.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-women-in-israel-and-palestine-are-pushing-for-peace-together-215783">How women in Israel and Palestine are pushing for peace — together</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Antisemitic tones, slogans in political calls</h2>
<p>Antisemitism was seen after Oct. 7 when some academics <a href="https://bc.ctvnews.ca/jewish-federation-urges-vancouver-college-to-fire-instructor-who-praised-hamas-attacks-1.6624099">publicly celebrated</a> the Hamas massacre as a form of decolonizing and liberation, while victim-blaming those murdered and kidnapped. </p>
<p>Colleagues shared video with me of people at <a href="https://ubyssey.ca/news/ubc-community-members-march-in-nationwide-walkout-for-palestine/">University of British Columbia</a> marching and chanting “there is only one solution: Intifada revolution.” For many Jews, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/final-solution-overview">this chillingly evokes the “final solution.”</a></p>
<p>In other protests, <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/anti-israel-march-dc-explicit-expressions-support-terror-and-antisemitism">demonstrators have</a> carried signs saying: “<a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/global-antisemitic-incidents-wake-hamas-war-israel">Keep the world clean</a>,” <a href="https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-771890">portraying a trash can</a> with a Star of David in it. </p>
<h2>Including all experiences</h2>
<p>The failure of EDID to address antisemitism makes <a href="https://montreal.citynews.ca/2023/11/08/altercation-two-groups-concordia/#">Jewish students targets</a> of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/jewish-students-at-western-university-react-after-posters-of-hostages-pulled-down-1.7009266">microaggression</a> and <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/adl-records-dramatic-increase-us-antisemitic-incidents-following-oct-7">hate</a> on campuses. </p>
<p>Universities must aim to create educational institutions in which all lived experiences are included. </p>
<p>A good way to address antisemitism would be for specific universities and the higher education sector to launch a task force. In so doing universities would also need to address hard political conversations surrounding Israel and settler colonialism. Universities have tended not to address this because of complexity, but this can no longer be avoided.</p>
<p>Jewish students should not be made to feel less than or illegitimate as they attend university. We have a responsibility to condemn and actively address antisemitism as part of our commitment to EDID.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lilach Marom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The silence of some Canadian universities in addressing antisemitism, in particular when considered alongside active approaches toward equity and racial justice, needs to be addressed.Lilach Marom, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2097762023-11-02T21:11:32Z2023-11-02T21:11:32ZJewish women’s illustrated memoirs of the Holocaust cover matrilineal relationships<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557290/original/file-20231102-21-2mtyf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C13%2C800%2C751&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Images from Bernice Eisenstein’s ‘I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors’ and Miriam Katin’s We Are on Our Own.’</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Film Board/Drawn & Quarterly) </span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/jewish-womens-illustrated-memoirs-of-the-holocaust-cover-matrilineal-relationships" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mandatory-holocaust-education-schools-1.7015118">The Ontario government recently made a welcome announcement</a> that as of September 2025, lessons on the Holocaust will be included in the mandatory history class for Grade 10 students. The announcement precedes <a href="https://torontoholocaustmuseum.org/participate/signature-programs/neuberger-holocaust-education-week">Neuberger Holocaust Education Week at the Toronto Holocaust Museum</a>, which runs Nov. 1–9.</p>
<p>As someone who teaches the Holocaust through literary works, I have found that illustrated graphic memoirs serve as an excellent entry point to this important but difficult subject.</p>
<p>Art Spiegelman is recognized for having launched a new genre of Holocaust memoir with <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/banning-maus-only-exposes-the-significance-of-this-searing-graphic-novel-about-the-holocaust-175999">Maus: A Survivor’s Tale</a></em> (1986; 1991), a two-volume graphic work that focused on a father-son relationship.</p>
<p>Lesser known are two groundbreaking graphic works published in 2006 that foreground matrilineal connections and women’s survival during the war years: Miriam Katin’s <em><a href="https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/we-are-on-our-own-paperback/">We Are on Our Own</a></em> and Bernice Eisenstein’s <em><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/books/i-was-a-child-of-holocaust-survivors-1.5063197">I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors</a></em>.</p>
<p>These memoirs emphasize women’s embodied, gendered experience and show their intelligence, agency and resolve. </p>
<p>In documenting women’s bravery in the face of Nazi persecution, they help balance the field of Holocaust writing, which <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib1690">still is dominated by the experiences and perspectives of men</a>.</p>
<h2>Miriam Katin’s <em>We Are on Our Own</em></h2>
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<img alt="Drawing of a person bent over a letter with a sombre face." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554360/original/file-20231017-29-utrjoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554360/original/file-20231017-29-utrjoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554360/original/file-20231017-29-utrjoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554360/original/file-20231017-29-utrjoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554360/original/file-20231017-29-utrjoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554360/original/file-20231017-29-utrjoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554360/original/file-20231017-29-utrjoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘We Are on Our Own’ by Miriam Katin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Drawn & Quarterly)</span></span>
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<p><em>We Are on Our Own</em> recounts how Katin and her mother manage to survive in wartime Hungary. Katin was a small child during the war. She grew up with family stories and, as noted in the coda to her graphic memoir, “could somehow imagine the places and people my mother told me about.” </p>
<p>The memoir traces Katin and her mother’s departure from Budapest in 1944 for the Hungarian countryside, where they lived until the end of the war under the guise of a peasant woman with an illegitimate child.</p>
<p>Katin highlights her mother’s heroism. First, her mother procures false identity documents for herself and her daughter. She then burns all photographs, letters, books and other documentation that record her true family history. After a loyal housemaid helps fake her death by suicide, she adopts the facade that is essential to her life in <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/resistance-responses-collaboration/resistance/hiding/">open hiding</a>.</p>
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<p>Katin also records her mother’s experiences of harassment, rape, pregnancy and abortion. Her mother confronts jeering soldiers. She endures repeated <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kmgKAnDniI">rape by a Nazi commandant</a>, knowing the aberrant relationship ensures her survival and her ability to protect her toddler. She offers herself to a Soviet soldier, saving her daughter from untold harm.</p>
<p>And when she becomes pregnant, she overcomes intense anxiety, even thoughts of suicide, to act pragmatically and seek an abortion.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-women-change-their-stories-of-sexual-assault-holocaust-testimonies-may-provide-clues-138705">Why do women change their stories of sexual assault? Holocaust testimonies may provide clues</a>
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<h2>Bernice Eisenstein’s <strong><em>I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors</em></strong></h2>
<p><em>I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors</em> features Bernice Eisenstein’s mother’s story of survival, transcribed from a 1995 videotaped interview with Regina Eisenstein for the <a href="https://sfi.usc.edu/collections/holocaust">University of Southern California Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive</a>. </p>
<p>Eisenstein describes her mother’s “unfaltering voice” and “the precision and directness of her words,” which extend over several pages to constitute a presence in her daughter’s graphic memoir and in the history she recalls. </p>
<p>In the very act of incorporating “my mother’s story as she told it,” Eisenstein is valuing Regina’s gendered wartime experience, the judgement she showed then and “the courage she has always possessed.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bernice Eisenstein’s <em>I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors</em> was adapted into an animated film by Ann Marie Fleming for the National Film Board.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In September 1939, when the Germans first enter her hometown of <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bedzin">Bedzin, Poland</a>, Regina grasps at any opportunity to survive amid the chaos. She understands that being assigned to work duty makes her useful and less of a target. As the only family member with a work permit — she sews uniforms for German soldiers — she is able to hide her relations when the SS stand outside her door. </p>
<p>Towards the end of the war, she herself hides to avoid the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1942-1945/death-march-from-auschwitz">death march from Auschwitz</a>. In mid-January 1945, she and a few friends decide to bury themselves under clothing stored in a warehouse. They wait until dark to emerge and race to an abandoned barrack, where they “hid for four more days without food or water. At night, we stepped out and ate snow.”</p>
<p>It is the presence and love of her mother and sister that most succour Regina. <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz">In Auschwitz-Birkenau</a>, her mother helps Regina recover from dysentery by giving her a mixture of burned coal and water. When typhus sends Regina into a coma, she later learns her mother visited the hospital to be by her side. </p>
<p>Her mother and sister also prevent Regina from being sent to work on an officer’s farm somewhere in Germany. Later, when Regina is transferred from Birkenau to Auschwitz and the three women are forcibly parted, a sense of their abiding bond prevents a descent into hopelessness.</p>
<p>When Regina cannot find language to “describe what it was like when I am reunited with my mother and sister” after liberation, Eisenstein accepts her silence. She characterizes the experience of listening to and watching Regina on videotape as her own “silent journey,” which suggests the degree to which she connects with her mother’s experience of falling silent at the close of her 1995 interview.</p>
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<h2>Breaking silence</h2>
<p>In their graphic memoirs, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_CfLIB16RE">Katin</a> and <a href="https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/scl/2018-v43-n1-scl04443/1058071ar/">Eisenstein</a> break the silence that once shrouded their mothers’ suffering. </p>
<p>Each daughter centres her mother’s wartime story, asserts her mother’s fortitude in the face of affliction and shows her mother’s capacity to live with deep wounds.</p>
<p>Each records a singular story in an effort to validate her mother’s particular experience under Nazism and to restore women’s lived experiences to Holocaust literature and history.</p>
<p>Teachers might consider bringing these memoirs into their classrooms. My own experience confirms that students are moved by these texts and learn a great deal from the stories they tell.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Panofsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Memoirs about the Holocaust by women emphasize women’s embodied, gendered experiences, and show their intelligence, agency and resolve in the face of Nazi persecution.Ruth Panofsky, Professor, Department of English, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2164162023-10-30T21:34:56Z2023-10-30T21:34:56ZIsrael-Hamas war: Canada must act to prevent hate crimes against Muslim and Jewish communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556728/original/file-20231030-29-z9qjr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4496%2C3000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People marching from Manhattan to Brooklyn against the rise in antisemitism in New York in 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/israel-hamas-war-canada-must-act-to-prevent-hate-crimes-against-muslim-and-jewish-communities" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The violence in Israel and Palestine has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-israel-gaza-conflict-is-so-hard-to-talk-about-216149">reached brutal and devastating levels</a> in recent weeks. Thousands have been killed and injured. Witnessing the extreme violence against civilians has been polarizing for many around the world. </p>
<p>In such a climate, potential hate crimes and the spillover effects of the ongoing conflict need to be addressed and governments need to take action to prevent grave consequences. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-defence-minister-orders-complete-siege-on-gaza">Dehumanizing rhetoric</a> is further inflaming the situation and risks leading to even more extreme violence. </p>
<p>Already, we have witnessed tragic consequences of the violence unfold in different communities. A Chicago-area man was recently arrested and charged with murder and hate crimes after police alleged <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/15/us/chicago-landlord-attack-muslim-boy-mother/index.html">he stabbed a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy to death</a>. </p>
<p>Police in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/hate-crime-rise-israel-gaza-1.7001288">Toronto</a> and <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/10040666/montreal-police-hate-crimes-israel-hamas-jewish-muslim-arab-community/">Montreal</a> have reported an increase in hate crime calls since the beginning of the conflict on Oct. 7. </p>
<h2>Hate on the rise</h2>
<p><a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230322/dq230322a-eng.htm">Recent statistics</a> indicate that religiously motivated hate crimes are on the rise in Canada. There has been a 67 per cent increase in police-reported hate crimes from 2020 to 2021, with a specific rise in hate crimes against Muslim (71 per cent) and Jewish (47 per cent) Canadians. </p>
<p>Canada has the <a href="https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/ca">fourth-largest Jewish community in the world</a>, with a population of over 390,000, and a Muslim population of around two million people. In recent years, there have been violent attacks against Muslim Canadians such as the killing of the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-muslim-family-attack-what-we-know-1.6057745">Afzaal family</a> in London, Ont., the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/tag/quebec-city-mosque-shooting/">mosque attack</a> that killed six Muslims during prayers in Québec, and violent attacks against hijab-wearing Muslim women in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-police-muslim-women-hijabs-assaulted-1.5903427">Alberta</a>. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-islamophobia-and-anti-palestinian-racism-are-manufactured-through-disinformation-216119">How Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism are manufactured through disinformation</a>
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<p>Jewish Canadians have been attacked through a variety of <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/corporate/transparency/open-government/standing-committee/ahmed-hussen-pch-contract-cmac/antisemitism-canada.html">hate crimes</a> including vandalism and graffiti, online and offline racist propaganda and bomb threats to Jewish schools and community centres.</p>
<h2>Conflicts trigger hate crimes</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/68492">2021 study</a> from the United States explored whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict leads to acts of hatred towards Jews and Muslims. The study discovered that instances of conflict trigger hate crimes, displaying a retaliatory trend: occurrences of hate crimes against Jews escalate following Israeli assaults, whereas incidents of hate crimes against Muslims increase after Palestinian attacks.</p>
<p>The threat against Muslim and Jewish communities has become more concerning given the rising violence in the region and its potential spillover. </p>
<p>These effects on diaspora groups have been observed across different countries. <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkish-kurdish-conflict-spills-over-into-europe-47610">Turkish and Kurdish diasporas in Europe</a> have been affected by the decades-long conflict between the Turkish government and the <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/turkiyes-pkk-conflict-visual-explainer">Kurdistan Workers’ Party</a>. </p>
<p>Occasional tensions and violence break out between diaspora communities, especially when the political situation back home becomes fraught or violent. Similar tensions have been seen between <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2023.2199601">Turkish and Armenian diasporas</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2023.2199598">Hindu and Muslim</a> diasporas. </p>
<p>Rising hate crimes can negatively affect the psychological and physical well-being of diaspora communities. Even if they are not directly targeted, people can experience fear and insecurity in their daily lives. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v9i4.1514">recent research study</a> on the impacts of hate crimes, colleagues and I found that victims significantly changed their lifestyles to avoid conflict; as a result, they became alienated from their own community and society. These changes might include moving to another neighbourhood or city, changing daily routines and avoiding being in certain places and attending group activities.</p>
<h2>Canada’s role</h2>
<p>To prevent the spillover effects of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Canadian government should take a proactive role. This includes fostering a sincere dialogue and understanding among diverse communities through genuine campaigns and listening to the concerns of each affected community. Community leaders must also be involved in these efforts. </p>
<p>Establishing <a href="https://cacp.ca/index.html?asst_id=2131">hate crime investigation units</a> within Canadian police forces is a more professional approach to preventing and investigating hate crimes. Communities should be informed about the existence of these units, and invited to come forward when they feel intimidated or witness any hate crimes. Police officers should also be trained about the unique aspects of international conflicts and how best to intervene in conflicts among diaspora groups.</p>
<p>In a broader sense, the Canadian government should actively engage in diplomatic efforts through international organizations and bilateral relationships to reduce the violence we are now seeing. </p>
<p>Canada has committed to <a href="https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/readouts/2023/10/13/prime-minister-justin-trudeau-speaks-president-palestinian-authority">provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza</a> and called for “<a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-calling-for-humanitarian-pauses-to-be-considered-amid-israel-hamas-war-1.6615146">humanitarian pauses on hostilities</a>,” but much more must be done to ensure a fair and peaceful resolution. Much of the world has called for an immediate ceasefire, however, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/27/unga-calls-for-humanitarian-truce-in-israel-hamas-war-how-countries-voted">Canada remains among a minority of countries to not do so</a>. </p>
<p>Canada must join calls for an urgent ceasefire to end the violence in Israel and Palestine, and avoid violence at home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Davut Akca does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>International conflicts can often trigger hate crimes against diasporas and other connected communities. Canadian governments should take action to prevent a rise in hate crimes.Davut Akca, Assistant Professor, Criminology, Lakehead UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2152942023-10-09T16:16:13Z2023-10-09T16:16:13ZWhy Al-Aqsa remains a sensitive site in Palestine-Israel conflict<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552792/original/file-20231009-18-w1sjg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C25%2C5580%2C3712&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A view of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and its Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-picture-taken-from-the-mount-of-olives-shows-a-view-of-news-photo/1708612985?adppopup=true">Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a <a href="http://www.kenchitwood.com/">scholar of global Islam</a>, I teach an introduction to Islam course and include a discussion about Al-Aqsa as part of the syllabus. That’s because Al-Aqsa has deep religious significance for Muslims around the world. </p>
<p>But it is also important to highlight its remarkable political relevance for Palestinians. </p>
<p>These two facts make it a focal point for conflict. </p>
<h2>The night journey of Muhammad</h2>
<p>The Masjid al-Aqsa, or simply Al-Aqsa, means “the farthest mosque” or “the farthest sanctuary,” and <a href="https://books.google.de/books/about/The_Oxford_Dictionary_of_Islam.html?id=6VeCWQfVNjkC&redir_esc=y">refers to the lead-domed mosque</a> within the sacred precinct of Haram al-Sharif – “the Noble Enclosure.” The precinct includes the Dome of the Rock, the four minarets, the compound’s historic gates and the mosque itself.</p>
<p>Mentioned in Sura 17, verse 1 of the Quran, the mosque is linked to the story of Muhammad’s “Isra” – the “night journey” from Mecca to Jerusalem – that in part confirms him as the last and most authoritative of the prophets for Muslims. <a href="https://quran.com/53">The Quran says</a> the prophet was “carried … by night from the Sacred Mosque [in Mecca] to the Farthest Mosque [al-Aqsa], whose precincts we have blessed.” </p>
<p>From there, it is believed that Muhammad ascended to heaven – called the Mir'aj. The Dome of the Rock – Qubbat as-Sakhra – is said to shelter the rock <a href="https://books.google.de/books/about/The_Oxford_Dictionary_of_Islam.html?id=6VeCWQfVNjkC&redir_esc=y">from where Muhammad physically ascended</a>. </p>
<p>The mosque’s origins stretch back to the seventh century. It was <a href="https://books.google.de/books/about/The_Oxford_Dictionary_of_Islam.html?id=6VeCWQfVNjkC&redir_esc=y">first built in A.D. 637</a>, just five years after the prophet’s death. It has been destroyed, rebuilt and renovated multiple times.</p>
<p>The current building largely dates to the 11th century and hosts daily prayers and Friday gatherings that draw large crowds. It lies adjacent to important Jewish and Christian religious locales, particularly the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples. </p>
<p>At times, the Dome of the Rock – a shrine – and Al-Aqsa – a mosque – have been confused as one and the same. While part of the same “Noble Sanctuary,” they are two distinct buildings with different histories and purposes. </p>
<p>However, the term Al-Aqsa is sometimes used to indicate the entire “Noble Sanctuary” complex. Originally, it is believed that the term <a href="https://books.google.de/books/about/Aspects_of_Islam.html?id=FAWPAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">“the farthest sanctuary” referred to Jerusalem as a whole</a>. </p>
<h2>Place in Islamic history</h2>
<p>After Mecca and Medina, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide consider <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Palestinians_Born_in_Exile/qRnUAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=palestinians+born+in+exile&printsec=frontcover">Jerusalem the third-holiest place on Earth</a>. </p>
<p>Referenced frequently in Islamic tradition and hadith – records of something the Prophet Muhammad said, did or tacitly approved of – it is believed that while in Mecca, Muhammad originally oriented his community’s prayers toward Al-Aqsa.</p>
<p>In A.D. 622, the community fled Mecca because of persecution, seeking refuge in Medina to the north. After a little over a year there, Muslims believe God instructed Muhammad to face back toward Mecca for prayers. In Surah 2, verses 149-150, the Quran says, “turn thy face toward the Sacred Mosque [the Kaaba in Mecca] … wheresoever you may be, turn your faces toward it.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Jerusalem and its sacred locales – specifically Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock – have remained sites of Islamic pilgrimage for 15 centuries. </p>
<h2>The ‘most sensitive site’ in conflict</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400320/original/file-20210512-19-btu5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A golden dome and columns decorated by elaborate byzantine decorations." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400320/original/file-20210512-19-btu5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400320/original/file-20210512-19-btu5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400320/original/file-20210512-19-btu5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400320/original/file-20210512-19-btu5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400320/original/file-20210512-19-btu5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400320/original/file-20210512-19-btu5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400320/original/file-20210512-19-btu5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The decorated interior of the golden dome inside the Dome of the Rock mosque at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, in Jerusalem’s Old City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/picture-taken-with-a-fisheye-lens-on-january-10-shows-the-news-photo/903284924?adppopup=true">Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given its sacred significance, there was great concern about the precinct’s fate after Israel’s victory in the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/de/academic/subjects/history/middle-east-history/1967-arab-israeli-war-origins-and-consequences?format=PB">1967 Arab-Israeli War and its subsequent annexation of East Jerusalem</a>.</p>
<p>Although Israel granted jurisdiction of the mosque and complex to an Islamic waqf – “endowment” – Israel still commands access to the grounds and security forces regularly perform patrols and conduct searches within the precinct. Under the <a href="https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Protection+of+Holy+Places+Law.htm">Preservation of the Holy Places Law</a>, the Israeli government has also allowed entry to different religious groups – such as Christian pilgrims. </p>
<p>Many Israelis respect the sanctity of the place as the holiest site in Judaism. In 2005, the <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/1.4706117">chief rabbinate of Israel said it is forbidden for Jews to walk on the site</a> to avoid accidentally entering the Holy of Holies – the inner sanctum of the Temple, believed to be God’s dwelling place on earth. Nonetheless, certain ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups controversially advocate for <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/laying-the-groundwork-for-a-third-temple-in-jerusalem/">greater access and control of the site</a>, seeking to reclaim the historic Temple Mount, in order to rebuild the Temple.</p>
<p>Described as “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/violence-erupts-al-aqsa-mosque-israel-marks-jerusalem-day-2021-05-10">the most sensitive site in the Israel-Palestinian conflict</a>,” it has frequently been host to political acts. </p>
<p>For example, in August 1969, an Australian Christian named Dennis Michael Rohan <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-an-australian-sheepshearers-al-aqsa-arson-nearly-torched-middle-east-peace/">attempted to burn down</a> Al-Aqsa, destroying the historically significant and intricately carved minbar – or “pulpit” – of Saladin, a treasured piece of Islamic art. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400322/original/file-20210512-14-1tuw3mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Israeli security forces fire sound grenades inside the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400322/original/file-20210512-14-1tuw3mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400322/original/file-20210512-14-1tuw3mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400322/original/file-20210512-14-1tuw3mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400322/original/file-20210512-14-1tuw3mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400322/original/file-20210512-14-1tuw3mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400322/original/file-20210512-14-1tuw3mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400322/original/file-20210512-14-1tuw3mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Israeli security forces fire sound grenades inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem on Aug. 11, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/israeli-security-forces-fire-sound-grenades-inside-the-al-news-photo/1160931707?adppopup=true">Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On Sept. 28, 2000, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon and a delegation guarded by hundreds of Israeli riot police <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/29/world/sharon-touches-a-nerve-and-jerusalem-explodes.html">entered the precinct</a>. This sparked protests and a violent crackdown by Israeli authorities, with multiple casualties. Many Muslims worldwide considered this a “<a href="https://books.google.de/books/about/111_Questions_on_Islam.html?id=fkZAnNDuNvsC&redir_esc=y">desecration” of the sacred mosque</a>, and the event helped ignite the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising. </p>
<p>Tensions peaked again after an attack on Yehuda Glick, a controversial right-wing rabbi, in autumn 2014. In response, Israeli authorities <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2014/11/03/world/meast/jerusalem-temple-mount-crisis-lister">closed down access to Al-Aqsa for the first time since 1967</a>. In March and April of that year, Israeli police <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/israeli-forces-storm-al-aqsa-mosque/2014/07/18/8ab345c0-0ea4-11e4-b0dd-edc009ac1f9d_video.html">used tear gas and stun grenades on Palestinians inside Al-Aqsa</a>, prompting an international outcry. </p>
<p>Numerous other incidents between Israeli forces and worshipers <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/3/12/israeli-police-assault-worshippers-close-al-aqsa-compound">have occurred at Al-Aqsa</a> in recent years. </p>
<p>Controlled access to the site reminds Palestinians of their relative powerlessness in their ongoing land disputes with Israeli authorities. At the same time, attacks at Al-Aqsa resonate with Muslims across the world who react with horror to what they see as the desecration of one of their most sacred sites. </p>
<p>Defending Al-Aqsa and fighting for rights to access it, I argue, have become proxy conflicts for both Palestinian claims and the need to defend Islam as a whole.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-al-aqsa-mosque-has-often-been-a-site-of-conflict-160671">piece originally published on May 12, 2021</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215294/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ken Chitwood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Al-Aqsa mosque, a flashpoint in Hamas’ recent assault against Israel, hosts daily prayers and Friday gatherings. It lies adjacent to important Jewish and Christian religious locales.Ken Chitwood, Senior Research Fellow, Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at IUPUI and Journalist-fellow, USC Dornsife Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern CaliforniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2131282023-09-12T12:27:15Z2023-09-12T12:27:15ZAntisemitism on Elon Musk’s X is surging and dredging up many ancient, defamatory themes of blaming Jews<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547548/original/file-20230911-22-zstdy0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=367%2C22%2C3460%2C2346&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elon Musk has both sparked and permitted antisemitism on X, the social media platform he now owns.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chief-executive-officer-of-spacex-and-tesla-and-owner-of-news-photo/1499013102">Chesnot/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since buying Twitter, rebranded as X, billionaire Elon Musk, who calls himself a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/10/opinion/musk-free-speech.html">free speech absolutist</a>,” has welcomed hatemongers to the platform, including one who recently coined the <a href="https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1700091804677280041?s=20">trending hashtag #BanTheADL</a>. </p>
<p>The ADL, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, was founded in 1913 during <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-leo-frank-case-tells-us-about-the-dangers-of-fake-news-75830">the trial of Leo Frank</a>, a Jewish factory manager wrongly convicted of murdering one of his young workers. After Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment, <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/leo-frank-case/">Frank was lynched</a>. Since then, the ADL has aimed to fight antisemitism and secure “justice not only for <a href="https://www.adl.org/who-we-are/history">Jews but for all people</a>.”</p>
<p>Musk attacked the ADL on Sept. 4, 2023, saying that “Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1698755938541330907">primarily due to pressure</a> on advertisers by @ADL.”</p>
<p><iframe id="ya6mD" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ya6mD/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>As #BanTheADL trended on X, users tweeted that it is “<a href="https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1699595933678223817?s=20">anti-Christian</a>.” One said, “<a href="https://twitter.com/rj1299599/status/1700336247926083694?s=20">When you say #BanTheADL</a>, what you really mean is #BanTheJews from power and organizing against white western civilization.”</p>
<p>The tweets may be new; <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EPN4PGAAAAAJ&hl=en">as a scholar of Jewish history</a>, I know the ideas they contain are not. </p>
<h2>Religious antisemitism</h2>
<p>The belief that Jews are “anti-Christian” comes from the Gospels, where Jews are blamed for <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-from-the-early-church-to-1400">the crucifixion of Jesus</a>. As Christianity became the dominant faith in the Roman Empire in the late fourth century, Jews, condemned by the church for their treachery, <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/research/about-the-mandel-center/initiatives/ethics-religion-holocaust/articles-and-resources/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries">faced discrimination</a>. Beginning with restrictive legislation, it led eventually to locked ghetto walls and brutal attacks.</p>
<p>Immigrants to America carried ideas about Jewish enmity along with their rucksacks. In 1654, New Amsterdam Gov. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/jewishamericans/jewish_life/">Peter Stuyvesant tried to expel 23 Jews</a> fleeing persecution who had just landed in the colony. He called them a “deceitful race – such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.” </p>
<p>In October 2022, when white supremacists hung banners over Highway 405 in Los Angeles, some <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/banner-kanye-right-los-angeles-freeway-antisemtic-group-rcna53653">news sites blurred one</a>. That particular banner pointed to the Gospel of John, where Jesus tells the Jews, “<a href="https://www.biblindex.org/en/bible/new-revised-standard-version-including-apocrypha/jn-8:44">You are from your father the devil</a>.” </p>
<p>And a few days after Musk blamed the ADL for ad revenue losses, a user of X posted a video of ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and wrote, “<a href="https://twitter.com/BasedTorba/status/1700193521288765693?s=20">Watch his demonic face</a> recoil when he says the word Christian.” </p>
<h2>Jews and money</h2>
<p>The antisemites attacking the ADL dredged up old stereotypes falsely depicting the Jews as a people interested only in money, malevolently employing their wealth to undermine the political order.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/GoyimNewsNet/status/1700522066363969620?s=20">A maliciously false tweet on Sept. 9, 2023, proved</a> that #BanTheADL was not just about attacking one Jewish organization, which no one could accuse of being “the richest group in the world.” It expanded beyond the ADL and targeted all Jews: “The richest group in the world, who owns 99% of the media, controls the monetary system and started every war on Earth – is portrayed as the *victims* … under assault by ‘antisemitism.’” </p>
<p>Since Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver in 33 C.E. – depicted in <a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/1/MAT.26.14-15.KJV">Matthew 26:14-15</a> – Christians have cast Jews as venally corrupted by money. Judas, the Greek version of Judah, refers to the tribe of ancient Israelites who became known as Jews. Shakespeare propelled that idea forward with the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/a-jewish-reading-of-the-merchant-of-venice">wicked moneylender Shylock</a> in his 16th-century play “The Merchant of Venice.”</p>
<p><a href="https://antisemitism.adl.org/greed/">Shylock’s name has come to signify Jewish greed and villainy</a>, a charge that spills over to other wealthy Jews. Mississippi Gov. Alexander Gallatin McNutt raged in 1841 about the power of the British Baron Rothschild, a member of the international Jewish banking family: “The blood of Judas and of Shylock <a href="https://www.vqronline.org/essay/those-southern-repudiated-bonds">flows in his veins</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cartoonish image of slyly smiling Jewish bankers, passing dead soldiers while holding their money bags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Slyly smiling Jewish bankers, passing through a red sea of dead soldiers while holding their money bags, depicted in this section of ‘The Way Of The Red Sea Is A Way Of Blood,’ a 1944 Italian poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn544978">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Katz Family</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Money buys power</h2>
<p>After Musk’s targeting of the ADL, contemporary antisemites jumped to targeting the Hungarian Holocaust survivor and billionaire philanthropist George Soros, with a <a href="https://twitter.com/bambkb/status/1699770247081865247?s=20">Sept. 7, 2023, post on X quoting</a> Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban saying that Soros “has an ARMY at his service, MONEY, #NGO’s, Universities, research institutions and he OWNS half the bureaucrats in BRUSSELS!!”</p>
<p>Conspiracy theories about Jewish leaders using their money to acquire political power predated the notorious forgery, “<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</a>.” First published in an obscure newspaper in Russia in 1903, it was brought to America by a Russian émigré determined to restore the Romanov monarchy. It described an imagined meeting of Jewish elders who reported on their progress in fomenting revolutions to destroy western Christian civilization and seize control of the world. </p>
<p>In the early 1920s, this version of antisemitism – claiming a world Jewish conspiracy – found a home in America thanks to the publication of “<a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-international-jew-quot">The International Jew – The World’s Foremost Problem</a>.” A compilation of the articles that ran for 91 weeks in the newspaper <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2013218776/">Dearborn Independent</a>, “The International Jew,” <a href="https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/the-international-jew-the-worlds-foremost-problem">financed and published by Henry Ford</a>, charged that Jews exercised outsize influence in America, that they controlled the world’s finances and that they were the “power behind many a throne.”</p>
<p>The Protocols’ antisemitic fantasies of Jewish leaders plotting to destroy Christianity and control the world also <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">inspired Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf</a>,” written in 1924 while he was in jail for trying to overthrow Germany’s government. There, referring to World War I, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/06/race.usa">Hitler said if</a> “during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas … the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dearborn Independent front page, May 22, 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2013218776/1920-05-22/ed-1/seq-1/">Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Victim blaming: Jews cause antisemitism</h2>
<p>Elon Musk has tweeted that ADL’s aggression against antisemites posting on X makes them the “<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1698615533170557116?s=20">biggest generators of anti-Semitism</a> on this platform.” </p>
<p>Blaming Jewish behavior for triggering antisemitism also has deep roots. The second-century <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Melito-of-Sardis">Greek Bishop Father Melito of Sardis</a> made it clear that the Jews had not only killed Jesus, they had stubbornly <a href="https://ehrmanblog.org/melito-and-arly-christian-anti-judaism/">failed to recognize that he was God</a>. Over the centuries, his words would be used to justify violence against the Jews. </p>
<p>During the Civil War, when Union Gen. <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/17/this-day-in-politics-december-17-1063364">Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews</a> from his military district, called the Department of the Tennessee, which stretched from the southern tip of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, he charged that <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-and-general-orders-no-11.htm">the punishment fit their crime</a>: “The Jews, as a class, [were] violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department.”</p>
<p>In 1890, the editors of the New York Jewish newspaper the American Hebrew were so distressed by the prevalence of antisemitism that they asked more than 50 American leaders about <a href="https://singermanja2.exhibits.library.upenn.edu/items/browse?tags=PREJUDICE+AGAINST+THE+JEW">antisemistism</a>, collected in a volume entitled, “<a href="https://singermanja2.exhibits.library.upenn.edu/items/show/29635">Prejudice against the Jews</a>: Its Nature, Its Causes and Remedies. A Consensus of Opinion by non-Jews.” Rev. Morgan Dix, minister of Episcopal Trinity Church, made it clear in his response that, if only Jews would stop being so obstinate and convert to Christianity, antisemitic persecution would end. </p>
<p>In 1938, on the eve of the Holocaust, when Germany’s Jews were being targeted with antisemitic regulations but had not yet experienced the horror of the death camps, 65% of Americans told the polling firm Gallup that these victims were either <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/musk-antisemitism-anti-defamation-league-twitter/675235/">“partly” or “entirely”</a> responsible for the persecution they faced.</p>
<p>The hashtag #BanTheADL recycles variations on old antisemitic themes. X’s users write nothing new. What is new is the bigger megaphone X gives them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pamela S. Nadell receives funding from National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award to write a book on the
history of American antisemitism.</span></em></p>Antisemitism on X recycles ancient tropes falsely blaming Jewish people for a wide range of social and political ills, and for their own victimization.Pamela S. Nadell, Professor and Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women's & Gender History and Director of the Jewish Studies Program, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2072972023-06-15T12:49:27Z2023-06-15T12:49:27ZJewish denominations: A brief guide for the perplexed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531466/original/file-20230612-248839-aos7wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C0%2C3024%2C2005&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">From Reconstructionism to ultra-Orthodoxy, Judaism is richly diverse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/torah-ark-royalty-free-image/160368465?phrase=torah&adppopup=true">MendyHechtman/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As <a href="https://jewish.cofc.edu/documents/jewish-studies-faculty-and-staff-bios/joshua-shanes,-associate-director.php">a scholar of modern Jewish history</a>, religion and politics, I am often asked to explain the differences between Judaism’s major denominations. Here is a very brief overview:</p>
<h2>Rabbinic roots</h2>
<p>Two thousand years ago, Jews were divided between <a href="https://www.wjkbooks.com/Products/0664239048/from-the-maccabees-to-the-mishnah-third-edition.aspx">competing sects</a> all based on the Jewish scriptures, but with different interpretations. After the Romans <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-2-500-year-old-hebrew-poem-still-matters-81442">destroyed the Jerusalem Temple</a> in 70 C.E., one main group, who called themselves “rabbis” – sages or teachers – began to dominate. What we now know as “Judaism” grew out of this group, technically called “Rabbinic Judaism.”</p>
<p>Rabbinic Judaism believed that God gave Jewish teachings and scriptures to Moses at Mt. Sinai, but that they came in two parts: the “written law” or “written Torah” and the “oral law” or “oral Torah.” The oral Torah is a vast body of interpretations that expands upon the written Torah and is the source for most of <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/making-gods-word-work-9780826415578/">the rules and theology</a> of Rabbinic Judaism.</p>
<p>Fearful that these traditions might be lost, the early rabbis began the process of writing them down, culminating in two texts called <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/texts/Mishnah">the Mishna</a> and <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/texts/Talmud">the Talmud</a>. This corpus became the foundation of rabbinic literature.</p>
<p>The rabbis assured the Jews that although the temple’s destruction was devastating, <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/judaism-after-the-temple/">Jews could continue to serve God</a> through study, prayer and observing God’s commandments, called “mitzvot.” Someday, they promised, God would send the Messiah, a descendant of King David who would rebuild the temple and return the exiled Jews to the land of Israel. </p>
<h2>Historic turning point</h2>
<p>There were tensions in Rabbinic Judaism from the outset. For example, starting in the Middle Ages, a Jewish group called the Karaites <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199840731/obo-9780199840731-0090.xml">challenged the rabbis’ authority</a> by rejecting the oral Torah. </p>
<p>Even within the rabbinic tradition, there were regular disagreements: <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=6634">between mystics</a> <a href="https://store.behrmanhouse.com/index.php/maimonides-guide-for-today-s-perplexed.html">and rationalists</a>, for example; debates over people <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Messianism">claiming to be the messiah</a>; and differences in customs between regions, from medieval Spain to Poland to Yemen.</p>
<p>Still, Rabbinic Judaism remained a more or less united religious community for some 1,500 years – until the 19th century.</p>
<p>Around that time, Jews began <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691164946/jewish-emancipation">to experience emancipation</a> in many parts of Europe, acquiring equal citizenship where they had previously constituted a separate, legal community. Meanwhile, thousands – eventually millions – of Jews <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/haven-century.html">moved to the United States</a>, which likewise offered equal citizenship.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531756/original/file-20230613-19-52vpff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of long lines of people with luggage in an old-fashioned arrival hall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531756/original/file-20230613-19-52vpff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531756/original/file-20230613-19-52vpff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531756/original/file-20230613-19-52vpff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531756/original/file-20230613-19-52vpff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531756/original/file-20230613-19-52vpff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531756/original/file-20230613-19-52vpff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531756/original/file-20230613-19-52vpff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jewish immigrants arriving at the immigration office on Ellis Island in New York City, around 1910.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jewish-immigrants-arriving-at-immigration-office-in-ellis-news-photo/89857923?adppopup=true">Apic/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>These freedoms brought opportunity, but also new challenges. Traditionally, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691160139/how-judaism-became-a-religion">Judaism</a> was based on Jewish autonomy – communities governed by rabbinic law – and taking the truth of its beliefs for granted. Political emancipation challenged the first, while Enlightenment ideas <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Heretical_Imperative.html?id=wgk9AAAAIAAJ">challenged the second</a>. Jews were now free to choose what to believe and how to practice Judaism, if at all, at a time when they were experiencing widespread exposure to competing ideas.</p>
<h2>Three major groups</h2>
<p>Competing Jewish denominations emerged, each one attempting to negotiate the relationship between Jewishness and modernity in its own way. Each group claimed that they followed the best or most authentic traditions of Judaism. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/response-modernity">first modern denomination</a> to organize was Reform – first in Germany in the early 19th century, but soon in America as well. Reform Judaism is based on the idea that both the Bible and the laws of the oral Torah are divinely inspired, but humanly constructed, meaning they should be adapted based on contemporary moral ideals. Reform congregations tend to emphasize prophetic themes such as social justice more than Talmudic law, though in recent years many <a href="https://urj.org/press-room/survey-confirms-trend-toward-reform-embrace-ritual">have reclaimed some rituals</a>, such as Hebrew liturgy and stricter observance of Shabbat.</p>
<p>Orthodox Judaism soon organized in reaction to Reform, rallying to defend the strict observance of Jewish customs and law. Orthodox leaders often blurred the distinction between these categories and put particular emphasis on the 16th-century legal code called <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Shulhan_arukh">the Shulchan Aruch</a>. Orthodoxy insists that both the written and oral Torah have divine origins. Contrary views in pre-modern sources are often <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/changing-the-immutable-9781904113607?q=changing%20the&lang=en&cc=us">censored</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531759/original/file-20230613-15-ltthcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of people gather around a table with several menorahs on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531759/original/file-20230613-15-ltthcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531759/original/file-20230613-15-ltthcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531759/original/file-20230613-15-ltthcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531759/original/file-20230613-15-ltthcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531759/original/file-20230613-15-ltthcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531759/original/file-20230613-15-ltthcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531759/original/file-20230613-15-ltthcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of a Reform congregation in Pennsylvania gather for a menorah-lighting ceremony during Hanukkah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/wyomissing-pamembers-of-the-congregation-during-the-menorah-news-photo/1315680463?adppopup=true">Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://masortiolami.org/resource/emet-vemunah-statement-of-principles-of-conservative">Conservative Judaism</a>, which did not arrive in the U.S. until the mid-1900s, shares many of Reform Judaism’s views, such as equal religious roles for men and women. However, Conservative Jews argue that the Reform movement pulled too far away from Jewish tradition. They insist that Jewish law remains obligatory, but that the Orthodox interpretation is too rigid. In practice, most Conservative Jews tend not to be strict about even major rituals, like observing Sabbath restrictions or kosher food practices.</p>
<p>There are also smaller but still influential Jewish movements. For example, <a href="https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/who-reconstructionist-jew/">Reconstructionism</a>, created by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan in the 1930s and 1940s, emphasizes community over ritual obligations. And the <a href="https://aleph.org/what-is-jewish-renewal/">Jewish Renewal</a> movement, born out of the late 1960s counterculture, seeks to incorporate insights from Jewish mysticism with an egalitarian perspective, and without necessarily following the minutiae of Jewish law.</p>
<p><iframe id="YKida" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/YKida/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>What makes Jewish identities even more complex is that for many Jewish people, being “Jewish” is more of a cultural or ethnic identity than a religious one. Over <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/">a quarter of Americans who describe themselves as Jewish</a> say they do not identify with the Jewish religion at all, though Jewish culture or their family’s Jewish background may be very important to them.</p>
<p>It’s also important to keep in mind that Jewish groups evolved in different ways <a href="https://katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/blog/what-do-you-know-sephardi-vs-mizrahi">in the Middle East and Northern Africa</a>. Jews from the Muslim world, <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814797051/sephardic-and-mizrahi-jewry/">often called Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews</a> – a minority of American Jews, but over half of Israeli Jews – did not experience the kind of abrupt emancipation that they did in much of Europe. Different Sephardic traditions developed, which are often described as “Masorti” or “traditional” <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society/">Judaism in Israel</a>, although many of their adherents have become Orthodox in recent years.</p>
<h2>From Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox</h2>
<p>Of all the Jewish denominations, the Orthodox groups are perhaps most misunderstood. They all share a commitment to Jewish law – especially regarding gender roles and sexuality, food consumption and Sabbath restrictions – but there are many divisions, generally categorized on a spectrum from “modern” to “ultra” Orthodox.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781618117502-010/html?lang=en">Modern Orthodoxy</a> celebrates secular education and integration into the modern world, yet insists on a relatively strict approach to ritual observance and traditional tenets of belief. They also tend to see Zionism – the modern movement calling for Jewish national rights, today connected to support for Israel – as part of their religious worldview, rather than just <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-its-75th-birthday-israel-still-cant-agree-on-what-it-means-to-be-a-jewish-state-and-a-democracy-204770">a political belief</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.harediresearchgroup.org/report/">ultra-Orthodox</a>, on the other hand – sometimes <a href="https://www.harediresearchgroup.org/report/">called “Haredim</a>” or Haredi Jews – advocate segregation from the outside world. Many continue to speak Yiddish, the traditional language of Jews in Eastern Europe, or to dress as traditional Jews did in Europe before the Holocaust.</p>
<p>This is especially true of Hasidic Jews, who make up about half of the ultra-Orthodox population worldwide. Hasidism is a mystical movement <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Hasidism">born in 18th-century Ukraine</a>, but today mostly concentrated in New York and Israel. Hasidic Jews are known for being particularly strict about shunning secular culture and education, but they remain also a mystical movement focused on God’s close presence. They are divided into subgroups named after cities in Eastern Europe, and they follow leaders known as “Rebbes,” who wield enormous power in their communities. </p>
<p>Haredim are particularly committed to gender segregation, separating men and women beyond what previous Jewish traditions called for, and tend toward the strictest interpretation of Jewish law, even when traditional understanding of a rule has been more lenient.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531762/original/file-20230613-26-bmom89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four teenage boys in black coats and black, broad-brimmed hats study a book while standing outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531762/original/file-20230613-26-bmom89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531762/original/file-20230613-26-bmom89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531762/original/file-20230613-26-bmom89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531762/original/file-20230613-26-bmom89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531762/original/file-20230613-26-bmom89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531762/original/file-20230613-26-bmom89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531762/original/file-20230613-26-bmom89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ultra-Orthodox boys prepare for Yom Kippur, the most important day in the Jewish calendar, in the Israeli city of Netanya.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ultra-orthodox-jewish-men-and-children-perform-the-tashlich-news-photo/1243700909?adppopup=true">Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Whether modern or Haredi, Orthodox Judaism sees itself as “traditional.” However, it is more accurate to say <a href="https://www.academia.edu/43682607/Jacob_Katz_Orthodoxy_in_Historical_Perspective_in_Peter_Y_Medding_ed_Studies_in_Contemporary_Jewry_vol_2_The_Challenge_of_Modernity_and_Jewish_Orthodoxy_Bloomington_Indiana_University_Press_1986_3_17">it is “traditionalist</a>.” By this I mean that Orthodoxy is attempting to recreate a pre-modern religion in a modern era. Not only has Orthodox Judaism innovated many rituals and teachings, but people today have greater awareness that other types of life are available – creating a firm break with the traditional world Orthodoxy claims to perpetuate.</p>
<h2>Becoming a nation</h2>
<p>Jewish groups are often described as “Zionist.” What is Zionism, and where does it fit in to all these terms?</p>
<p><a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/Z/bo43636872.html">The first Zionists</a> were mostly secular Jews from Eastern Europe. Inspired by nationalist movements around them, they claimed that Jews constituted a modern nation, rather than just a religion. Traditions and prayers connected to the land – often reinterpreted through a secular, nationalist lens – became all-important for Zionists, while many other rituals and traditions were abandoned.</p>
<p>Most Jews <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3627929.html">opposed Zionism for decades</a>. Reform Jews and even some early Orthodox Jews worried that defining Jews as a “nation” would undermine their claim to equal citizenship in other countries. Orthodox Jews, meanwhile, opposed Zionists’ staunch secularism and emphasized that Jews must wait for the Messiah to lead them back to the land of Israel.</p>
<p>Within a decade or two of Israel’s establishment as a modern state, however, most Jewish denominations integrated Zionism into their worldview. Still, most ultra-Orthodox Jews today continue to oppose Zionist ideology, even as they hold right-wing political views on Israel. <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691168999/trouble-in-the-tribe">Young liberal Jews</a>, too, are increasingly emphasizing the distinction between Zionism and their own Jewish identity.</p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/">most U.S. Jews</a> are either unaffiliated with any particular denomination or Reform. However, the percentage of Jews who are Orthodox – especially ultra-Orthodox, whose members tend to have very large families – is growing rapidly. Almost 10% of American Jews and nearly 25% of <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society/">Israeli Jews</a> are Orthodox today, although attrition from these communities is also rising.</p>
<p>This trend may continue, or that sector may see mass defections, as it did a century ago. Either way, Orthodoxy is going to continue to play a very important role in Jewish life for many years to come.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct a chart caption and include information about Masorti Judaism.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207297/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Shanes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jewish communities have always followed some different customs in different parts of the world, but the 19th and 20th centuries brought much more dramatic divisions.Joshua Shanes, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047702023-05-10T12:29:08Z2023-05-10T12:29:08ZOn its 75th birthday, Israel still can’t agree on what it means to be a Jewish state and a democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525208/original/file-20230509-27-4vwc7n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6050%2C3431&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Under a portrait of Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948, declares the establishment of a Jewish state to be known as the state of Israel.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-israeli-declaration-of-independence-proclaimed-on-14-news-photo/944222584?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Israel celebrates the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-protests-flag-netanyahu-overhaul-354a807daa5c901823a99419ce1eb638">75th anniversary of its founding</a>, and nearly a century and a half after the <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3946.htm">first Zionists came to Palestine from Europe</a>, the core tension behind the country’s establishment – whether a Jewish state could be a democratic state, whether Zionism could accommodate pluralism – is more obvious than ever.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.php?country_id=israel">Israel today is a military powerhouse</a> and one of 38 members of the influential <a href="https://www.state.gov/the-organization-for-economic-co-operation-and-development-oecd/">Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development</a>, formed in 1961 to promote cooperation among democratic, free-market-oriented governments. </p>
<p>Such strength and economic viability would be unfamiliar to the Jews whose identity was forged in the <a href="https://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-0-387-29904-4_17">European diaspora</a>. There, Judaism and its practitioners shunned political and military power. They saw themselves as a minority facing discrimination, persecution and violence. Power was the domain of gentiles. </p>
<p>Jews, often <a href="https://pluralism.org/diaspora-community">separated from the non-Jewish world</a>, focused instead on developing social institutions to help the poor and weak, not asserting their will as a political community.</p>
<p>This attitude toward the state and politics began to change for Europe’s Jews in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1486474">aftermath of the French Revolution</a>, when the majority of Jews lived in Europe, especially central and Eastern Europe. As some of the traditional legal and political barriers that kept Jews outside of mainstream society began to crumble, Jews began to integrate into broader society and culture.</p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/israel-1948-138054">Expert analysis</a> of the birth of the state of Israel and the plight of the Palestinian people.</em></p>
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<p>This process also brought about, for some Jews, <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2011/september/polonskyexcerpt.html">new attitudes toward their Jewish identity</a>.</p>
<p>Many no longer defined themselves as members of a religious community. As many other <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/43852/summary">groups had begun to do in Europe</a>, they saw themselves as belonging to a national community. For some, nationalism also offered a way out of the predicament that Jews faced in Europe: hatred and discrimination, which came to be known as antisemitism.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism">nationalism was called Zionism</a>. And the thinking went that if the Jews are a nation, then they should have their own nation-state, <a href="https://www.fpri.org/article/2015/01/origins-and-evolution-of-zionism/">preferably in Palestine</a>, the Jews’ ancestral homeland. There they could assume control of their historical destiny, not to be at the mercy of non-Jewish nations and rulers.</p>
<p>Zionism sought to solve a particular Jewish problem, gathering Jews dispersed around the world, ending the unique Jewish historical experience of centuries of life under the rule of often hostile governments, and universalizing the Jewish experience by creating a Jewish state and society like all other nations. It was the “natural right of the Jewish people to be <a href="https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/about/pages/declaration.aspx">masters of their own fate</a>, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State,” said Israel’s declaration of independence. </p>
<p>But just how universal would a Jewish state be? Could such a nation be both Jewish and democratic?</p>
<p>That is the central question that, more than a century later, has yet to be answered clearly and affirmatively.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A clipping from the London-based Jewish Chronicle by Zionist Theodor Herzl, saying the founding of a Jewish state is the 'solution of the Jewish question.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An article by Zionist Theodor Herzl for the London-based Jewish Chronicle, Jan. 17, 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JewishChronicle1896.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
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<h2>Reconciling universal and particular</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Theodor-Herzl">Theodor Herzl</a>, an Austro-Hungarian Jew acknowledged as the father of modern Zionism, considered this tension in his 1902 utopian novel “<a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-altneuland-quot-theodor-herzl">Altneuland,” or “The Old New Land</a>.” Herzl tried to envision what a future Jewish society in Palestine would look like.</p>
<p>One of the novel’s key plot lines involves a political campaign pitting a xenophobic rabbi who preaches the Jewish character of the community against a secular candidate who advocates inclusivity and cooperation between Jews and Arabs in this imagined Jewish society.</p>
<p>Herzl’s choice: the pluralist candidate prevailed.</p>
<p>But throughout the history of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel, what Herzl described has been a core source of tension. This duality was on full display in <a href="https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/about/pages/declaration.aspx">Israel’s declaration of independence</a>, in many ways the quintessential manifestation of political Zionism.</p>
<p>On the one hand, the document offers a version of Jewish history that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Jewish experience and offers historical justification for the creation of a safe haven for the Jews. </p>
<p>After establishing the attachment of the Jews to their ancestral homeland, the authors of the declaration address the Holocaust, writing that, “the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe … was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem” of Jewish “homelessness” by “re-establishing” the Jewish state, which would “open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew.”</p>
<p>At the same time, <a href="https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/about/pages/declaration.aspx">the document pledges</a> that the state of Israel would be faithful to the U.N. charter, protecting the rights of all minorities: “The State … will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”</p>
<p>David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, suggested that once the country was created, Zionism would wither away. The nation, as a Jewish state with laws that protect minorities, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41805141">would resolve the contradictions inherent in Zionist ideology</a>.</p>
<p>But as long as the majority of Israelis felt a sense of existential threat – <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1952102300">both from neighboring Arab states</a> and <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/a-brief-economic-history-of-modern-israel/">dire economic conditions</a> – Zionism continued to provide a unifying ideological umbrella to most Israelis.</p>
<h2>After 1967, a transformation</h2>
<p>In the aftermath of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39960461">the 1967 Six-Day War</a>, when Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria, the country emerged as a <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-1967-six-day-war">regional military and economic power</a>. </p>
<p>It was a time of significant social, political and economic change.</p>
<p>A growing number of Israelis – especially those from the more secular, upper classes – <a href="https://en.idi.org.il/articles/15731">began to question</a> the country’s particularism, which conceived of the country as a shelter for Jews that would protect them from external threats. For these upwardly mobile Israelis, known <a href="https://sunypress.edu/Books/B/Beyond-Post-Zionism">as the post-Zionists</a>, the founding myths of a vulnerable young state no longer seemed relevant. </p>
<p>They wanted Israel to become a fully normal part of the American-led global order. They believed the country should integrate into the region by <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/israels-rightward-shift">resolving the conflict between Jews and Arabs</a>. And they wanted to participate in the global economic market as the country transitioned from a state-run economy to the free market.</p>
<p>At the same time, religious Jews and poorer Israelis, mostly descended from Jewish communities of the Arab Middle East and North Africa, resisted this cosmopolitan liberal shift. They held tightly to their Jewish identity, rejecting what they saw as compromises driven by alien ideals like democracy and pluralism. To this group, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2009-06-05/ty-article/neo-zionism-101/0000017f-f454-d223-a97f-fdddf95b0000">known as neo-Zionists</a>, the ideal was a Jewish state as protection from the rapid changes engulfing the country.</p>
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<span class="caption">Palestinians surrender to Israeli soldiers in June 1967 in the occupied territory of the West Bank, during what is known as the Six-Day War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/palestinians-surrender-to-israeli-soldiers-in-june-1967-in-news-photo/51347132?adppopup=true">Pierre Guillaud/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Palestinian question disappears</h2>
<p>From the 1970s through 2000, much of the post-or-neo-Zionist divide was over the occupation of the West Bank, <a href="https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/west-bank/">where 3 million Palestinians live</a>. Could there be peace between Israelis and Palestinians? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40209614">Post-Zionists wanted peace</a>, seeking a two-state solution that would see a Palestinian state next to Israel. <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2009-06-05/ty-article/neo-zionism-101/0000017f-f454-d223-a97f-fdddf95b0000">Neo-Zionists rejected any territorial compromise</a> with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>In the 21st century, in the aftermath of <a href="https://users.ox.ac.uk/%7Essfc0005/The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20the%20Oslo%20Peace%20Process.html#:%7E:text=Why%20did%20the%20Oslo%20peace,between%20Israel%20and%20the%20Palestinians.">the peace process collapse</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Israel/The-second-intifada">the second intifada</a>, or Palestinian uprising, the Palestinian issue has virtually disappeared from Israel’s political landscape.</p>
<p>Instead, the country’s attention has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/world/middleeast/israel-divisions-judicial-overhaul.html?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ForwardingtheNews_6535443">returned to the old divisions</a> between those advocating policies that would <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/views-of-the-jewish-state-and-the-diaspora/">enhance the Jewish character of the country</a> and those who champion universal policies more favorable to excluded minorities.</p>
<p>The Israeli government that came into power in late 2022 represents the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-stunning-political-comeback-for-israels-netanyahu-may-give-way-to-governing-nightmare-ahead-193892">nationalistic, particular camp most forcefully</a>. Its main agenda has been a plan <a href="https://theconversation.com/israels-netanyahu-facing-off-against-the-supreme-court-and-proposing-to-limit-judicial-independence-and-3-other-threats-to-israeli-democracy-197096">to diminish and restrict the Israeli Supreme Court’s powers</a>. To the ruling coalition, the court has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-enters-a-dangerous-period-public-protests-swell-over-netanyahus-plan-to-limit-the-power-of-the-israeli-supreme-court-199917">a hindrance in pursuing policies</a> advancing the country’s Jewish nature.</p>
<p>This so-called reform has driven <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-enters-a-dangerous-period-public-protests-swell-over-netanyahus-plan-to-limit-the-power-of-the-israeli-supreme-court-199917">hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets</a>. Their demand is a simple one: democracy.</p>
<p>Israel may no longer be a fledgling state – but it has yet to overcome the basic contradiction that has defined it from the very beginning: Can it be Jewish and democratic?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204770/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eran Kaplan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Israel may no longer be a fledgling state – but it has yet to overcome the basic contradiction that has defined it from the very beginning.Eran Kaplan, Rhoda and Richard Goldman Chair in Jewish Studies, San Francisco State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2051322023-05-08T07:39:20Z2023-05-08T07:39:20ZCourage, wit and integrity: Raimond Gaita farewells writer, historian and son-in-law, Mark Raphael Baker<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524853/original/file-20230508-26085-48gi2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C1980%2C1446&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mark Raphael Baker, author of The Fiftieth Gate</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Philipson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mark Raphael Baker, who died on May 4, is best known for two outstanding books, radically different in kind. The groundbreaking Holocaust historian Christopher R. Browning describes Mark’s award-winning memoir <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-fiftieth-gate-a-journey-through-memory">The Fiftieth Gate</a>, about his parents’ experience in the Holocaust, thus: “Combining precise historical research and poetic eloquence […] The Fiftieth Gate remains the gold standard of second-generation Holocaust memoirs”. </p>
<p>When it was reissued for its 20-year anniversary five years ago, it had sold over 70,000 copies.</p>
<p>In The Fiftieth Gate, Mark entered his parents’ memories – and in the darkness, found light. Across the silence of 50 years, he and his family travelled from Poland and Germany to Jerusalem and Melbourne, as Mark struggled to uncover the mystery of his parents’ survival: his father Yossl was imprisoned in concentration camps and his mother Genia was forced into hiding after the Jews of her village were murdered. </p>
<p>In an introduction to the book’s 20th anniversary edition, Mark reflected on how the testimonial culture in Holocaust studies has spread to awareness of other genocides and our responsibility (and failure) to prevent them.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/thirty-days-a-journey-to-the-end-of-love">Thirty Days</a>, Mark’s memoir about the dying and death of his first wife Kerryn, was written in the first 30 days of mourning, and published in 2017. Wrote author Miranda Richmond Mouillot: “Piercing, unsparing and sweet, this book will break your heart and put it back again”. </p>
<p>Mark recalled their life together and wrote of Kerryn’s death and dying in many tones – lyrically, tenderly, with self-deprecating irony, embarrassed candour and more – but one heard in them all pain so raw and need so desperate that it sometimes threatened to unhinge him. This elegy of love and grief takes back to our hearts knowledge that is too often only in our heads – that the disappearance of a human personality will forever be mysterious to us because every human being is irreplaceable. </p>
<p>Much later, long after I first wrote these words about his book, Mark met and married his second wife, Michelle Lesh – my stepdaughter.</p>
<p>Two new books will be published, hopefully this year and early next year. Mark’s novel, The Alphabet of Numbers, is a literary thriller in the mould of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and Donna TartT’s The Secret History. </p>
<p>A Season of Death is a memoir, written after Mark was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in April 2022. Michelle and I will prepare it for publication. </p>
<p>When I sent Mark’s final draft to his children (from his marriage to Kerryn) I wrote: </p>
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<p>I’m sure you will be profoundly moved by your father’s last work – deep, poignant, inspiring, painfully - sometimes unbearably – raw, yet often characteristically funny.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524857/original/file-20230508-95951-vmh0q0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524857/original/file-20230508-95951-vmh0q0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524857/original/file-20230508-95951-vmh0q0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524857/original/file-20230508-95951-vmh0q0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524857/original/file-20230508-95951-vmh0q0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524857/original/file-20230508-95951-vmh0q0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524857/original/file-20230508-95951-vmh0q0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524857/original/file-20230508-95951-vmh0q0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Raphael Baker with his wife, Michelle Lesh, and their daughter Melila.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Friendship and courage</h2>
<p>My relationship to Mark had two phases. In the first, we knew each other as writers and academics. In 1999, my book <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/romulus-my-father">Romulus My Father</a> and Mark’s The Fiftieth Gate competed for premier’s literary awards in two states. Perhaps it was good for our future relationship that we were awarded one each – though Mark also got a trip Sydney, with an overnight stay (all expenses paid, I assume). </p>
<p>Over the next decade, our friendship developed, though it was not yet close. For the most part, it centred on academic matters. He invited me to speak on two or three occasions to the <a href="https://www.monash.edu/arts/acjc">Centre for Jewish Civilisation</a> at Monash University, of which he was director. </p>
<p>I invited him to give a lecture in a series of six I curated on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/04/israel-gaza-hamas-hidden-agenda">Israel’s invasion of Gaza</a> in 2009. Each week the lecture theatre was packed, usually by an audience hostile to Israel – for the most part the same audience. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524870/original/file-20230508-105550-xtourr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524870/original/file-20230508-105550-xtourr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524870/original/file-20230508-105550-xtourr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524870/original/file-20230508-105550-xtourr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524870/original/file-20230508-105550-xtourr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524870/original/file-20230508-105550-xtourr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524870/original/file-20230508-105550-xtourr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524870/original/file-20230508-105550-xtourr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A poster for the Gaza lecture series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A significant number of that audience showed their distaste – sometimes verbally, but more often in unnervingly expressive body language – at the prospect of hearing many and fine distinctions drawn in service to an attempt to judge whether the Israeli invasion was justified. Such an attempt, many of them seemed to think, was indecent. </p>
<p>The content of Mark’s lecture was excellent and its delivery eloquent. More impressive was his ability to engage the serious attention of that difficult audience because he spoke so obviously from a heart made open to their hostility – and even mockery. </p>
<p>He condemned <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-accountability-for-alleged-war-crimes-so-hard-to-achieve-in-the-israel-palestinian-conflict-160864">Israel’s crimes</a> and also the growing tendency to believe they were a reason for it to cease to exist as a Jewish state. It was then that I came to respect his integrity, both moral and intellectual, and to admire his courage. </p>
<p>Courage is one of the most important virtues: without it, some values cannot develop, and others will be forsaken. Wisdom – as distinct from cleverness – will not develop unless one cares fearlessly for truth, against fashion, peer pressure, vanity and so on. Loyalty will come to nothing if betrayed by cowardice. Ditto for political commitment. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-of-rigid-legalism-greets-asylum-seekers-and-their-kind-22951">Ghassan Hage</a> was also one of the speakers at my lecture series. He is a renowned anthropologist, who last year gave the prestigious annual Margaret Mead Lecture at Columbia University. His hostility to Zionism is uncompromisingly fierce. When I shared the video announcing Mark’s death on Facebook, Ghassan wrote a comment: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Rai, I am sorry for you and your daughter’s loss. I’ve only met Mark a few times and it is some time ago now. We had some rather strong disagreements, but I know you’d know that I am not saying a platitude when I say that he always came across as a fine human being who never let political disagreements come in the way of decent and sincere interpersonal relations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given how passionately Ghassan and Mark held the beliefs that brought them into irreconcilable conflict, that is a fine tribute. I’m grateful, on Mark’s behalf, that Ghassan made it.</p>
<p>Looking over old emails, I noted I had praised Mark’s courage to his brother Johnny as early as 2012 – and did the same later in that year in an email to Mark himself. The courage to which I referred in those emails was not as it showed in his defence of Israel against people critical of it. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524863/original/file-20230508-225450-14ycmf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524863/original/file-20230508-225450-14ycmf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524863/original/file-20230508-225450-14ycmf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524863/original/file-20230508-225450-14ycmf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524863/original/file-20230508-225450-14ycmf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524863/original/file-20230508-225450-14ycmf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524863/original/file-20230508-225450-14ycmf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524863/original/file-20230508-225450-14ycmf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>It was to the way he manifested criticism of Israel – loyal always to the nation and its founding ideals as he believed them to be, but not therefore to any of its governments. It was criticism that hurt and offended a community of Holocaust survivors not ready for it to be made outside the community – and, in fact, often not ready for it, period.</p>
<p>It was primarily Mark’s posts that kept me on Facebook, which I had joined more or less accidentally. His condemnation of the occupation and the brutal treatment of Palestinians provoked hostile criticism more often than friendly (albeit critical) support. “I applaud your courage and good judgement in seeing so clearly the difference between patriotism and jingoism,” I wrote in that 2012 email. </p>
<p>Almost always Mark responded to attacks with a determination to keep discussion rational and answerable to facts. I say “almost always” because he could be hot-headed – but given the provocation he received, it was hardly worth remarking on. </p>
<p>I also looked to his posts for the articles he recommended. I was struck that Mark was probably one of the most well-read people I know – one of three, indeed.</p>
<p>Apart from his writings, his work at the Centre for Jewish Civilisation was his most important contribution to Australian cultural and intellectual life. He brought many eminent international speakers – writers, historians, social theorists, religious scholars – to Monash, and from there to universities around Australia. Some of the centre’s activities were closed to participants in workshops or conferences, but many were open to the public. The lectures were always packed. The gratitude of the audience for the opportunity Mark made available, and the respect and affection they showed him, was almost palpable. </p>
<p>During his directorship, his uncompromising commitment to academic freedom ensured the Centre’s independence from pressure to not alienate important figures in the Jewish community on matters regarding Israel – pressure applied by academics and donors.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524868/original/file-20230508-124380-35ccil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524868/original/file-20230508-124380-35ccil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524868/original/file-20230508-124380-35ccil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524868/original/file-20230508-124380-35ccil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524868/original/file-20230508-124380-35ccil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524868/original/file-20230508-124380-35ccil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524868/original/file-20230508-124380-35ccil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524868/original/file-20230508-124380-35ccil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Raphael Baker at Treblinka death camp on a research trip for The Fiftieth Gate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From colleague to father-in-law</h2>
<p>The second phase of my relationship to Mark was by far the most important. I call it “the father-in-law phase”. Strictly speaking, I was his stepfather-in-law, but we resisted the qualification – eventually dropping it, unless some occasion or protocol required strict veracity. We spoke to one another about this aspect of relationship in several tones, but always with a touch of bemused disbelief. </p>
<p>In my speech at Michelle and Mark’s wedding, I said: “I have often laughed incredulously at the thought that Mark Baker would be my stepson-in-law. I don’t know if I will ever stop.” On a number of occasions, however, we publicly expressed pride in our new relationship. I’ve stopped laughing.</p>
<p>Mark’s fine mind – open, sharp, witty, critical and self-critical – is known to all who have read, or conversed with him, as was his impressive knowledge. Few people would not have been humbled by the extent and depth of his reading. Those qualities made him one of the most important figures in the Jewish community and beyond – and a fine writer. They made our many conversations fruitful and enjoyable. </p>
<p>It’s so very painful for me now to remember how much I’d been looking forward to years of those conversation, at the dinner table in our St Kilda homes, seven minutes’ walk from one another. We agreed about a lot, but anybody who eavesdropped on our conversation would think we were often in constant and sometimes passionate disagreement.</p>
<p>The intellectual qualities I have described were impressive, but a moment’s reflection will tell you that they can be possessed by someone quite superficial and even by people who are evil – as the <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution-beginning/wannsee-conference.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmN2iBhCrARIsAG_G2i588XQw3xyiZ072q173DU4D7bQqh2Bk0ZJJ9YpQFZFMmtDqbuUiEbkaApCWEALw_wcB">Wannsee conference</a>, littered by PhDs who planned the Final Solution, proved. </p>
<p>For that reason, I have never been greatly impressed by intelligence in the sense conveyed when we praise someone for being bright, or quick on their feet, intellectually high-flying. After 50 years in academic life, I’ve seen a lot of it and have often been reminded of a remark by <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-albert-camus-the-plague-134244">Albert Camus</a>. He said he admires intelligence, but distinguishes between “intelligent intelligence” and “stupid intelligence”. </p>
<p>What’s the difference? Intelligence is stupid when it is only, even at its best, what I just described. Intelligent intelligence is what Mark showed in his Gaza lectures. It is ethically serious – but not thereby earnest. </p>
<p>Mark was never earnest. He was renowned and loved for his wit and gaiety. But he was also known for his passion for truthfulness. Sceptical about any temptation to award the concept of truth a capital “T”, he never doubted the importance of trying to see things as they are, rather than as they appear from the perspective of distorted loyalty, or vanity, or fear of what people might think of you. And he never doubted the importance of the need, for the sake of democratic politics, to make one’s thoughts answerable to the facts – especially after Trump.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/raimond-gaita-on-donald-trumps-america-a-cloud-cuckoo-land-devoid-of-fact-evidence-and-argument-68752">Raimond Gaita on Donald Trump's America: a cloud cuckoo land devoid of fact, evidence and argument</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Love, care and fatherhood</h2>
<p>Important and pleasurable though the intellectual dimension of our relationship was, it would never have taken me even to affection. I’ll describe two occasions that took me from admiration and affection to love.</p>
<p>Michelle was invited in 2018 to Geneva to join the United Nations Human Rights council to investigate the bloody events at the Gaza border that year. But she was morally compelled to resign – a decision accompanied by great stress and anxiety – before the council delivered its scathing report accusing Israel of violations of Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law. Not because she disagreed in any serious way with the ethical/political content of the council’s judgement, as she anticipated it, but because of the way she believed it came to that judgement. The route to a judgement in law is as important as its destination. Concern for the integrity of law and its respect in the international community ethically compelled her resignation.</p>
<p>That was when my affection for Mark turned into love. His support for Michelle when she was desperately in need of it was unwavering. In Geneva, he made good in a dramatic fashion on the promise he made to my wife Yael and me at the beginning of his relationship with Michelle. “I love her. I will care for her. I will be good to her”.</p>
<p>There was another period where he showed even greater supererogatory devotion. Michelle and Mark underwent 22 IVF procedures. Twenty-two! It’s almost impossible to believe. Mark tells their heartbreaking journey and its joyful outcome in A Season of Death. In my reading, most people found the heartache of three IVF failures too much to bear. “Twenty-two might be a world record,” Mark writes in his memoir. </p>
<p>I remember vividly an evening, again at the kitchen table at our house in St Kilda, when Michelle, Mark, Yael and I discussed whether they should try again, a 22nd time, with one of two remaining eggs; or should they, after so many years of heartbreak, opt for surrogacy? </p>
<p>Hesitantly, Yael and I told Michelle that we believed that if she didn’t, she would spend her life wondering what would’ve happened if she did. I remember catching Mark’s eyes. I could see that he was wondering whether their spirits could withstand yet another assault of searing disappointment. I saw also in his eyes the realisation that they had no choice but to try again and to steel themselves for the consequences. It’s no wonder that it is said in so many cultures that the eyes are the window to the soul. </p>
<p>I don’t know if the advice we gave that evening played a part in bringing Melila to this world – Melila the miracle child, who everyone loves – but if we did, it was one the best things we have done in our lives.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524867/original/file-20230508-180826-pceh3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524867/original/file-20230508-180826-pceh3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524867/original/file-20230508-180826-pceh3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524867/original/file-20230508-180826-pceh3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524867/original/file-20230508-180826-pceh3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524867/original/file-20230508-180826-pceh3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524867/original/file-20230508-180826-pceh3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524867/original/file-20230508-180826-pceh3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark, Michelle and Melila, ‘the miracle child’, protesting for democracy in Israel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Final words, from Mark</h2>
<p>I’ll end with Mark’s words from A Season of Death, because they are so beautiful. He had taken Melila to a walk on St Kilda Beach, to a small Jetty.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After I was diagnosed with cancer, Michelle organised a private yoga class at home on my birthday. I loved it so much that the teacher returns each week, then twice a week. It’s the only thing that gets me out of my head and allows me to forget that I have cancer for a single hour on the mat. I tell the teacher that my aim is to once again stand on my head and see the world upright — my upside-down world.</p>
<p>I go down on all fours onto the hard floor of the pier. I know I should have a rubber mat but the risk of falling on wood spurs me on. I place my arms outwards and kick my feet up. They fall back on the ground. I try again. The same thing. On the third attempt, I feel my body rise, the tumour and liver spot stretching inside me, and for one millisecond I am suspended in the air. I wonder what Melila is thinking watching her Dadda upside down. And then I fall hard on the ground onto my back. The back that has been screaming for pain relief. </p>
<p>I lie there for a few seconds and look up at the vaulted sky. Rain has begun to fall lightly. I pull myself up and unlock the brakes on Melila’s wheels. I sing her a Yiddish song that my father used to sing to me, and me to my children, and now my mother to Melila. I turn the masculine words into the feminine. I dare myself to dream about my baby’s future. </p>
<p>Go to sleep my beautiful girl,</p>
<p>Close your little dark eyes</p>
<p>A little girl who already has all her teeth</p>
<p>Still needs her Dadda to sing her a lullaby.</p>
<p>The skies open and whip us with torrential rain. I push my daughter homeward and protect my sweet Melila, my zisseleh, by picking up speed. Am I really running?</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205132/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Raphael Baker is my son-in-law.</span></em></p>Mark Raphael Baker is best known for two outstanding memoirs, The Fiftieth Gate, exploring his parents’ Holocaust experience, and Thirty Days, about the death of his first wife.Raimond Gaita, Honourary professorial fellow, Melbourne Law School, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2040092023-04-19T18:21:12Z2023-04-19T18:21:12ZIsrael’s domestic turmoil raises serious questions about its long-term survival<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521717/original/file-20230418-24-ypx1fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3451%2C2278&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Israelis opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial overhaul plan set up bonfires and block a highway during a protest in March 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/israel-s-domestic-turmoil-raises-serious-questions-about-its-long-term-survival" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In late 2022, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/2022-11-03/ty-article/israel-election-final-results-netanyahu-jewish-far-right-win-power-fiasco-for-left/00000184-3e80-daf1-abc4-7f9a53f40000">Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won Israel’s fifth election in the past three years</a> by forming a coalition with far-right religious extremists whose ilk were previously considered <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/beware-itamar-ben-gvir-rising-far-right-star-with-a-destructive-vision-for-israel/">beyond the pale</a> in Israeli politics. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/27/1166200532/israel-civil-war-netanyahu-court-control">Netanyahu’s coalition recently introduced legislation to overhaul Israel’s Supreme Court</a>, aiming to eliminate the court’s ability to impose democratic checks on elected leaders. </p>
<p>The overhaul, which would also <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9549410/israel-netanyahu-corruption-knesset-bill/">protect Netanyahu</a> from pending corruption charges, provoked an unprecedented wave of anti-government protests across Israel that have shaken the country’s political and economic foundations. </p>
<p>The protests included threats by combat personnel from Israel’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64866873">air force</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hundreds-elite-israeli-reservists-say-they-are-joining-judicial-protests-2023-03-19/">special forces units</a> to boycott their reserve duty.</p>
<h2>Defense minister reinstated</h2>
<p>In response, Netanyahu temporarily shelved the legislation, candidly admitting that he wished to avoid “<a href="https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/03/27/Israeli-PM-Netanyahu-says-delaying-judicial-overhaul-to-reach-broad-consensus">civil war</a>.” </p>
<p>Netanyahu also reinstated Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/27/1166180013/as-israels-judicial-overhaul-legislation-faces-a-final-vote-protesters-dont-let">whom he had fired</a> for publicly calling on him to end the judicial overhaul because the internal divisions it caused made Israel vulnerable to external threats. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1645503180807995393"}"></div></p>
<p>On one level, the widespread protests against governmental overreach represent an indicator of Israeli democracy’s robustness. But as a country that considers itself beset by external enemies, Israel has only a slim margin for internal division. The gulf between the protesters and Netanyahu’s coalition reflect the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society/">deepening fault line between secular and religious Jews</a>.</p>
<p>And despite Netanyahu’s backtracking, Israel’s ability to deter its enemies has already been weakened by wounds that are self-inflicted.</p>
<h2>Ramadan attacks</h2>
<p>In early April 2023, during the holy month of Ramadan, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/5/israeli-police-attack-worshippers-in-jerusalems-al-aqsa-mosque">Israeli police raided</a> Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. The site has been under Israeli control since 1967 and has increasingly become a place of resistance to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. </p>
<p>Israeli forces were caught on camera using brutal force to subdue worshippers in a video that quickly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/middleeast/israel-al-aqsa-mosque-clash-intl-hnk/index.html">went viral</a> globally. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman in an hijab sits at the feet of two armed police officers, a man and woman, who appear to be trying to drag her away." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521718/original/file-20230418-28-y0m5y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521718/original/file-20230418-28-y0m5y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521718/original/file-20230418-28-y0m5y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521718/original/file-20230418-28-y0m5y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521718/original/file-20230418-28-y0m5y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521718/original/file-20230418-28-y0m5y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521718/original/file-20230418-28-y0m5y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Israeli police arrest a Palestinian woman at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound following a raid at the site in the Old City of Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Islamist militant group Hamas responded by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-intercepts-rocket-fired-lebanon-military-sources-2023-04-06/">firing a barrage of rockets</a> at Israel from Gaza. Another was fired from Lebanon, where Hamas has a foothold under the patronage of <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/irans-islamist-proxies">Hezbollah, the strongest of Iran’s various proxy militias</a> across the Middle East.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-hezbollah-matters-so-much-in-a-turbulent-middle-east-88111">Why Hezbollah matters so much in a turbulent Middle East</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>When militant attacks then killed several civilians inside Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Hamas called this a “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65211160">natural response</a>” to Israeli forces’ actions at Al-Aqsa. </p>
<p>This was followed by another <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israeli-military-3-rockets-fired-syria-israel-rcna78817">barrage of rockets</a> fired at Israel from Syria, where Iran, Hezbollah and other Iranian-aligned militias all have forces deployed near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.</p>
<h2>Self-inflicted wounds</h2>
<p>These rocket salvos caused minimal casualties. Many rockets were <a href="https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/rockets-fired-at-israel-from-lebanon-raise-risk-of-conflict-1.94978176">shot down</a> by Israeli air defences, and Israel then launched retaliatory strikes.</p>
<p>Yet the rockets nevertheless caught Israel’s political and defence establishment off-balance. Afterward, a former chief of Israel’s military intelligence branch warned that the damage inflicted to Israel’s national security by Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-idf-intel-chief-damage-to-israels-national-security-may-be-irreversible/">might be “irreversible</a>.” </p>
<p>Another former senior defence official said Israel’s enemies are “<a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/israel-generals-give-a-stark-warning-its-enemies-smell-blood-1.1906231">rubbing their eyes in disbelief</a>” about the domestic turmoil and wondering whether the country “has decided to die by suicide.” </p>
<p>During a special Ramadan address, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/irans-supreme-leader-israels-demise-coming-faster-than-i-expected/">Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei exulted</a> in the alarm of Israeli political elites over Netanyahu’s overhaul, noting that Israel’s “own officials continuously warn that their collapse is nearing.” Khamenei concluded that Israel’s demise was unfolding even faster than he had anticipated. </p>
<p>In recent years, Khamenei’s Islamic Revolutionary regime has itself been rocked by widespread <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64062900">anti-government protests</a>, raising questions about its own survival. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large crowd and cars are seen on a tree-lined city street, smoke billowing in places." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486507/original/file-20220926-27-3rh4qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3000%2C1998&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486507/original/file-20220926-27-3rh4qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486507/original/file-20220926-27-3rh4qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486507/original/file-20220926-27-3rh4qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486507/original/file-20220926-27-3rh4qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486507/original/file-20220926-27-3rh4qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486507/original/file-20220926-27-3rh4qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, protesters chant slogans during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini, who was detained by the morality police, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 21, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Testing Israeli defences</h2>
<p>But after weathering the protests and a United States-led economic boycott, the Iranian regime’s fortunes appear to have turned. </p>
<p>Iran has won its bet in Syria. Its military intervention alongside Russia has kept Bashar al-Assad’s regime in power, keeping open a conduit for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-exploits-quake-relief-mission-fly-weapons-syria-sources-2023-04-12/">weapons transfers</a> to Hezbollah in Lebanon. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Iran’s recent renewal of diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, <a href="https://time.com/6262985/china-saudi-arabia-iran-ukraine-peace-talks/">brokered by China</a>, has crippled Saudi Arabia’s young alliance with Israel <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/15/world/us-saudi-china-relations-intl/index.html">while eclipsing</a> U.S. influence in the Middle East. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1634391192010883075"}"></div></p>
<p>This has emboldened Iran to test Israel’s internal cohesion and resolve. Hamas’s <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/04/12/rockets-lebanon-hamas-hezbollah-ties-israel">deployment in Lebanon</a> and its ability to fire rockets from Lebanese soil, along with rocket fire from Gaza and Syria, shows Iran’s assorted proxy forces are testing Israel’s defences. </p>
<p>The far-right swing in Israeli politics is inseparable from Israel’s police brutality at Al-Aqsa. Amid its ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories, the worsening tensions between Israel’s secular and religious Jewish blocs have blown wide open. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, as Netanyahu’s coalition injects virulent extremism into Israel’s political mainstream, a reprise of the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44124396">deadly violence</a> between Arab and Jewish citizens that exploded across Israel in May 2021 seems inevitable. </p>
<p>Israel’s current internal tumult is far greater than at any other moment in its history. As many <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220613-palestinians-are-bound-to-win-why-israelis-are-prophesying-the-end-of-their-state/">Israeli analysts have already noted</a>, this raises serious questions about the country’s long-term survival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel L. Douek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent backtracking to ease civil unrest, Israel’s ability to deter external foes has already been weakened by wounds that are self-inflicted.Daniel L. Douek, Faculty Lecturer, International Relations, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027102023-04-04T21:43:04Z2023-04-04T21:43:04ZHow ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ video game reinforces antisemitic scapegoating with goblins<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518627/original/file-20230330-20-ifa4ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=222%2C471%2C3994%2C2209&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The portrayal of goblins in the Harry Potter universe are the product of centuries of antisemitic images and tropes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In its first two weeks after being released, the video game <em>Hogwarts Legacy</em>, described by the developer as “<a href="https://www.hogwartslegacy.com/en-us">set in the world of the Harry Potter books</a>,” sold 12 million copies and made about <a href="https://variety.com/2023/gaming/news/hogwarts-legacy-sales-850-million-1235533614/">US$850 million in revenue</a>. </p>
<p>Despite its commercial success, the game has been at the centre of heated <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/02/21/how-does-hogwarts-legacy-handle-its-most-controversial-aspects-in-practice/?sh=3c1802972f74">online debates</a> around the <a href="https://www.themarysue.com/is-hogwarts-legacy-anti-semitic-hogwarts-legacy-anti-semitic-allegations-explained/">use of antisemitic tropes</a> in its imagery and story line. </p>
<p>The Campaign Against Antisemitism tweeted that the portrayal of goblins in the Harry Potter universe are “the product of centuries of association of Jews with grotesque and malevolent creatures in folklore, as well as money and finance.” These associations have “become so ingrained in the Western mind that their provenance no longer registers with creators or consumers.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1478739540307230720"}"></div></p>
<p>Makers of the game haven’t responded to criticism about antisemitism.</p>
<p>The antisemitic tropes present in <em>Hogwarts Legacy</em> have such deep roots in our shared cultural repertoire that they remain invisible to us, or we remain indifferent to them. </p>
<h2>Antisemitic tropes</h2>
<p><em>Hogwarts Legacy</em> maintains the associations built into antisemitic tropes. This normalizes hatred and violence against Jews, which, according to the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, is already at its <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/anti-defamation-league-reports-dramatic-rise-in-antisemitism-in-u-s">highest level recorded since 1979</a>. The number of violent antisemitic incidents in Canada rose <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-antisemitism-violence-report-1.6430495">more than 700 per cent</a> in 2021 compared to 2020. </p>
<p>It is necessary to call out overt antisemitism. It is also important to identify when antisemitism is normalized to the point of becoming habitual. We should be concerned when <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/Other/bo130702283.html">threads of blame that trace back at least as far as the Middle Ages</a> are visible today. </p>
<p>My research has examined how past <a href="https://www.celiaedell.com/research">patterns of scapegoating persist into the modern day through our (often unknowing) participation</a>. </p>
<p>Scapegoating involves shifting blame onto a group for societal issues and fabricating the need to expel or control the threat. But the target of scapegoating must <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/589887">be credible</a>, meaning that who we choose to blame will draw upon existing fears and prejudices.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People seen strolling past a set featuring tall marble towers, a balancing scale and a goblin bank teller." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518817/original/file-20230331-14-50563x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518817/original/file-20230331-14-50563x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518817/original/file-20230331-14-50563x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518817/original/file-20230331-14-50563x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518817/original/file-20230331-14-50563x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518817/original/file-20230331-14-50563x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518817/original/file-20230331-14-50563x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People seen at Warner Bros. Studios, in London, England, walking past goblins of Gringotts Wizarding Bank.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Goblins and economic scapegoating</h2>
<p>Given that goblins as mythical creatures originate <a href="https://www.heyalma.com/the-antisemitic-history-of-goblins">in 14th century European folklore</a>, it is worthwhile to consider how the antisemitic myths of the time may have influenced their construction.</p>
<p>In the 14th century, European life was structured around Christianity, not only as a common religion but as the foundation for social and cultural organization. </p>
<p>In this context, blaming Jews for societal problems, most famously the <a href="http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/3770">bubonic plague</a>, was possible because it drew upon <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/anti-semitism/medieval-antisemitism/">centuries of Jewish persecution</a>. Medieval art is rife with <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805096019/darkmirror">antisemitic woodcuts and drawings</a> portraying Jews with <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/11/14/invention-jewish-nose/">particular physical characteristics</a>: short stature, large hooked-noses and hairy features. </p>
<h2>Heavy historical baggage</h2>
<p>We see these aesthetic features in imagery from the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903)</a>, and throughout Nazi propaganda. </p>
<p>So, while an artist depicting goblins may not intend them to be Jewish, particular combinations of features carry heavy historical baggage. </p>
<p>This archetype has been absorbed and reinforced by art and media since the Middle Ages, and the portrayal of the goblins in <em>Hogwarts Legacy</em> is no exception. Jewish or not, they resemble antisemitic caricatures with histories far longer than the Harry Potter franchise.</p>
<h2>A goblin horn?</h2>
<p>What the players learn about goblins in the game is partly through the discovery of certain items. Players may come across a “<a href="https://hogwarts-legacy.fandom.com/wiki/Goblin_Artefact">goblin artefact</a>,” which is described as a “<a href="https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/hogwarts-legacy-missed-chance-reimagine-potterverse-s-anti-semitic-tropes-and-stereotypes">horn used by goblins during the 1612 Goblin Rebellion</a> to rally troops and generally annoy witches and wizards.” </p>
<p>While this kind of detail is common in open world games, and helps add realism and depth to the game-play, this particular “artefact” looks remarkably like a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/shofar">shofar, a sacred Jewish musical instrument</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Image of a horn seen next to a fringed shawl." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518625/original/file-20230330-1159-yn9pp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518625/original/file-20230330-1159-yn9pp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518625/original/file-20230330-1159-yn9pp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518625/original/file-20230330-1159-yn9pp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518625/original/file-20230330-1159-yn9pp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518625/original/file-20230330-1159-yn9pp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518625/original/file-20230330-1159-yn9pp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘artefact’ in ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ looks remarkably like a shofar, a sacred Jewish musical instrument.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even worse, 1612 was the year that began the <a href="https://www.lbi.org/griffinger/record/249226">Fettmilch Uprising</a> in present-day Germany, where the Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main was expelled from the city as a result of a pogrom following built-up economic resentment. If there is a defining and lasting stereotype of Jews, it is that they have a disproportionate influence in economic matters.</p>
<h2>Feudal roots</h2>
<p>It is not surprising, then, that the goblins in <em>Hogwarts Legacy</em> are obsessed with gold, and effectively run the entire wizarding economy. This, combined with their aesthetic features (short, hook-nosed and hairy) and the “goblin artefact,” paints a picture of who is “really” in economic control. </p>
<p>This image has roots back to feudal societies that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/09/jews-money-antisemitism-judas-shylock-capitalism">pushed Jews into financial roles</a> and barred them from doing much else. And this image has influence. <a href="https://www.ajc.org/news/5-of-kanye-wests-antisemitic-remarks-explained">Kanye West’s recent comments</a> exemplify how the ongoing associations between Jews and money can escalate into outright Jew hatred. </p>
<h2>Reinforce conspiracies</h2>
<p>Even if the Hogwarts goblins weren’t created to “look Jewish,”
and even if, as some commentators suggest, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/02/21/how-does-hogwarts-legacy-handle-its-most-controversial-aspects-in-practice/?sh=6e2a185a2f74">the game calls into question the process and practice of “othering” enemies</a>, goblin images reinforce <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-hitler-conspiracies-and-other-holocaust-disinformation-undermine-democratic-institutions-191116">conspiracies that already exist in our collective consciousness</a> — whether we agree with them or not. </p>
<p>Tracing the threads of blame between the past and present can reveal ongoing associations so ingrained as to become almost invisible. However, it is much easier to recognize scapegoating in retrospect than it is to catch ourselves in the act. Public discussions surrounding <em>Hogwarts Legacy</em> offer an entry point to do just that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202710/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Celia Edell receives funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec.</span></em></p>Historical patterns of scapegoating Jews persist into the modern day through our often unknowing and unconscious replication of images which date back centuries.Celia Edell, Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1999972023-02-21T09:40:14Z2023-02-21T09:40:14ZSouth Africa and Israel: new memorial park in the Jewish state highlights complex history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510859/original/file-20230217-16-6qx4p0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artist's impression of Gan Siyobonga memorial park in Israel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by author</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Israeli officials and Jewish South African activists <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-723790">inaugurated</a> a memorial park in Tel Mond, a city north of Tel Aviv, in November 2022. Gan Siyabonga (We Thank You Garden) commemorates several dozen Jewish South African anti-apartheid activists who had personal connections to Israel. </p>
<p>The main sponsors of Gan Siyabonga are the <a href="https://www.jnfsa.co.za/">Jewish National Fund South Africa</a> and <a href="https://www.sazf.org/">South African Zionist Federation</a>. The park’s creation is a milestone in the South African Jewish community’s decades-long introspection into its complex relations with the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>This memorial site is unique in Israel, where an <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-south-africa-home-white-colonialists">estimated</a> 20,000 South Africans live.</p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is the first site in Israel to highlight the involvement of Jews in the anti-apartheid struggle. It is also unique because it calls attention to a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist, or at least not anti-Zionist. The combination is considered unconventional today. That’s because <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism">Zionism</a>, the political ideology that favours a Jewish state, is largely associated in South Africa with collaboration with apartheid and the oppression of Palestinians. </p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is a reminder that relations between Zionism and apartheid, and between Israel and South Africa, were complex and multilayered. In the last few years I have been working on a PhD dissertation that explores this complexity. Digging into archives and historical periodicals revealed a fascinating story that defies some assumptions. </p>
<h2>Israel’s troubled relations with apartheid</h2>
<p>Israel is commonly remembered as one of the last allies of apartheid South Africa. From the mid-1970s, the Israeli government maintained <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/unspoken-alliance-israels-secret-relationship-apartheid-south-africa-sasha-polakow-suransky">close relations</a> with the minority white regime in Pretoria. </p>
<p>It was one of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/09/17/israel-imposes-sanctions-on-south-africa/70cbb4f4-77b9-4898-8df7-dc39c2c5a500/">last countries</a> to enforce full sanctions on Pretoria. As a result, many anti-apartheid activists, including Jewish ones, held fierce anti-Zionist stances. These were amplified by the strong alliances South African liberation movements forged with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/history-may-explain-south-africas-refusal-to-condemn-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-178657">Soviet Union</a> and the <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220609-the-plo-at-58-and-the-anc-at-110-how-they-evolved-and-where-do-they-stand-today/">Palestinian Liberation Organisation</a>.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-push-led-by-south-africa-to-revoke-israels-au-observer-status-is-misguided-168013">Why the push led by South Africa to revoke Israel’s AU observer status is misguided</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution">accusation</a> that Israel practises apartheid-like policies against Palestinians is another reason Israel hasn’t been seen as anti-apartheid. Recent anti-Zionist rhetoric by some Jewish veterans of the South African struggle, such as <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/17/how-stop-apartheid-israel">Ronnie Kasrils</a>, strengthened this feeling of unbridgeable contradiction between Israel and anti-apartheid values.</p>
<h2>Support for Israel</h2>
<p>But anti-apartheid activism and Zionism were not always in conflict. Up until the late 1960s, many radical anti-apartheid activists were sympathetic towards Israel and Zionism’s more progressive strands.</p>
<p>In 1948, most radical activists in South Africa supported the establishment of the State of Israel and its war against the invading Arab armies in Palestine. <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/362107/pdf">The Guardian</a>, the main radical weekly in South Africa at the time (linked to the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>), rooted for an Israeli <a href="https://twitter.com/AfrIsrRel/status/1626615101770936322">victory</a>. </p>
<p>Young Israel was a symbol of opposition to racial persecution and fascism. Those two themes strongly resonated with South African anti-apartheid activists. They tended to see the Afrikaner <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Party-political-party-South-Africa">National Party</a> as an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582473.2021.2009014?tab=permissions&scroll=top">ideological relative</a> of the Nazis. </p>
<p>The initial <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinkramer/files/who_saved_israel_1947.pdf">Soviet support for Israel</a>, and a prominent socialist element within Zionism, also contributed to these feelings, especially among South African Marxists.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-search-of-advantages-israels-observer-status-in-the-african-union-165773">In search of advantages: Israel’s observer status in the African Union</a>
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<p>From the late 1950s, many anti-apartheid activists cherished Israel’s stances against South Africa <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/132/559/1440/4831456">at the United Nations</a>. Similarly its <a href="https://www.academia.edu/90295451/_We_Are_Returning_to_Africa_and_Africa_is_Coming_Back_to_Us_Israels_Evolving_Relations_With_Africa">support for decolonisation</a> in Africa. By the early 1960s, Israel had become the most anti-apartheid country in the “western” camp of the Cold War. In 1963, it <a href="https://www.jta.org/archive/south-african-premier-attacks-israel-for-recall-of-envoy-israel-mum">recalled its envoy</a> and supported international sanctions against South Africa. Israeli archives contain many <a href="https://twitter.com/AfrIsrRel/status/1524773424324923393">letters</a> from South African liberation movements <a href="https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b071706800399c8/File/0b071706804bc4fc">thanking Israel</a> for its support at the UN and elsewhere. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An old typed letter signed by an ANC official praises Israel" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Letter from ANC officials praising Israel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Israel State Archive</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>During the 1960s, Israel offered covert material support to anti-apartheid groups, perhaps even <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2013-12-20/ty-article/.premium/mandela-and-the-mossad/0000017f-e66d-dc7e-adff-f6eda1960000">to Nelson Mandela</a>. Israeli experiences inspired the early stages of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the African National Congress’ (ANC) military wing, for example through <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/arthur-goldreich">Arthur Goldreich</a>. It also had stable communication channels with the <a href="https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b0717068031bdef/File/0b0717068062f0ae">Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania</a>. </p>
<h2>Post-1967</h2>
<p>Sympathy towards Israel diminished considerably after the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4325413">Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973</a>. But relations between anti-apartheid activism and Zionism remained complicated.</p>
<p>Many Jewish individuals who joined the struggle against apartheid had been active in Zionist youth movements. The socialist-oriented <a href="https://habonim.org.za/">Habonim</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Shomrim_in_the_Land_of_Apartheid.html?id=ZMltAAAAMAAJ">Hashomer Hatzair</a> stand out. Those who joined the anti-apartheid struggle (such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Slovo_the_Unfinished_Autobiography.html?id=9QxzAAAAMAAJ">Joe Slovo</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Revolutions_in_My_Life.html?id=vQYwAQAAIAAJ">Baruch Hirson</a>) typically abandoned Zionism. But they acknowledged its role in forming their radical worldview.</p>
<p>Jewish South African individuals were prominent in the liberal strand of the anti-apartheid struggle too. They usually used their professional skills to challenge the apartheid regime. Lawyers like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/advocate-israel-isie-aaron-maisels">Isie Maisels</a>, parliamentarians like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/helen-suzman">Helen Suzman</a>, journalists like <a href="https://southafrica.co.za/benjamin-pogrund.html">Benjamin Pogrund</a>, and rabbis like <a href="https://www.sajr.co.za/rabbi-ben-isaacson-a-maverick-soul-finds-rest/">Ben Isaacson</a> were examples. Jewish liberal activists usually expressed support for Israel in various ways.</p>
<p>Developments since the mid-1970s have largely overshadowed the complex history of Zionism’s engagement with the apartheid regime. The anti-apartheid struggle became tightly associated with the Palestinian struggle. And, after its rise to power in 1994, the ANC reaffirmed its commitment to its Palestinian allies.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-and-russia-president-cyril-ramaphosas-foreign-policy-explained-198430">South Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa's foreign policy explained</a>
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<p>Since then, relations with Israel have largely remained chilly. The ANC <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/s-africas-ruling-party-anc-reaffirms-boycott-israel-resolution">supports</a> the movement to boycott Israel and Pretoria <a href="https://thewire.in/external-affairs/south-africa-israel-anc">downgraded</a> its representation in the Jewish state. South African foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor has <a href="https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-713140">called</a> for Israel to be declared an “apartheid state”. </p>
<h2>A step in the right direction</h2>
<p>Israel and South Africa’s Jewish communities have a long and ambiguous history of entanglement with race politics. There were admirable moments in this history. But there were also periods of complicity with racism. In Israel, both sides of this history are largely forgotten.</p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is an important first step in placing this history in the Israeli public sphere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Lubotzky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gan Siyabonga is unique in Israel. It highlights a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist.Asher Lubotzky, PhD Candidate, History, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1980492023-02-14T15:53:02Z2023-02-14T15:53:02ZBy policing history, Poland’s government is distorting the Holocaust<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509630/original/file-20230213-22-vsqclm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C113%2C3556%2C2549&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw, Poland, commemorating the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. History surrounding the Holocaust has become increasingly controversial in Poland in recent years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In January 2018, the Polish parliament <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur37/7858/2018/en/">passed a law</a> that imposed prison terms of up to three years of anyone who claimed Poles had any responsibility for or complicity in crimes committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A banner for the event with Jan Grabowski" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509895/original/file-20230213-16-kb2qti.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509895/original/file-20230213-16-kb2qti.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509895/original/file-20230213-16-kb2qti.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509895/original/file-20230213-16-kb2qti.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509895/original/file-20230213-16-kb2qti.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509895/original/file-20230213-16-kb2qti.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509895/original/file-20230213-16-kb2qti.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/society-societe/icw-ca/index-eng.aspx">Prof. Jan Grabowski will talk about his research on the Holocaust in an interview with Ibrahim Daair, The Conversation Canada's Culture + Society Editor. Click here to join the event for free by registering.</a></span>
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<p>The law was intended to silence historians, and indeed, it has created a chilling atmosphere within academia and beyond.</p>
<p><a href="https://iupress.org/9780253010742/hunt-for-the-jews/">My research</a> focuses on the relations between Polish Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish population.</p>
<p>In my case, the Polish government (acting directly or through proxies) has decided to use civil litigation. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/university-of-ottawa-professor-wins-libel-case-1.6143539">I have been sued for libel</a> and Polish organizations have requested my removal from my position as professor of history at the University of Ottawa. </p>
<p>More recently, I have been questioned by Poland’s <a href="https://www.abw.gov.pl/en">Internal Security Agency</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ziobropl/status/1427525611019546634">the country’s justice minister has expressed outrage</a> about my work. </p>
<p>These are just some of the legal and extra-legal challenges related to writing the history of the Holocaust in Poland today.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/poland-is-trying-to-rewrite-history-with-this-controversial-new-holocaust-law-91774">Poland is trying to rewrite history with this controversial new holocaust law</a>
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<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A statue of a man carrying a child with other children following behind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509565/original/file-20230211-22-klk8sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3464%2C2664&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509565/original/file-20230211-22-klk8sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509565/original/file-20230211-22-klk8sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509565/original/file-20230211-22-klk8sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509565/original/file-20230211-22-klk8sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509565/original/file-20230211-22-klk8sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509565/original/file-20230211-22-klk8sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A memorial to Janusz Korczak, who died in the gas chamber of the Treblinka death camp in 1942, together with the children of the Jewish orphanage that he ran in the Warsaw Ghetto.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>History and nationalism</h2>
<p>The notion of wartime complicity by segments of Polish society in the Holocaust has long been considered a taboo subject.</p>
<p>In 2015, the far-right <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34631826">Law and Justice party came to power in Poland</a>. Defending the <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/news/world/as-poland-re-writes-its-holocaust-history-historians-face-prison/">good name</a> of the nation has become one of the focal elements of its political platform and a sure way to consolidate its electoral base.</p>
<p>As a result, independent historians and educators, <a href="https://www.tvp.info/52369152/dalej-jest-noc-historyk-dr-piotr-gontarczyk-engelking-padla-ofiara-wlasnej-metodologii">myself included</a>, have become targets of vicious hate campaigns in state-owned and state-controlled media.</p>
<p>There is a saying among scholars of the Holocaust: “I did not choose to study the Holocaust, it chose me.”</p>
<p>Trained as a historian of the 17th and 18th centuries, I came to the study of the Holocaust rather unexpectedly, at the turn of the century, while on a trip to Warsaw visiting <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-historians-under-attack-for-exploring-polands-role-in-the-holocaust">my ailing father, a Holocaust survivor</a>.</p>
<p>With some time on my hands, I did what most historians do: I went to the local archives. That’s when I stumbled upon thousands of files of the German courts from occupied Warsaw.</p>
<p>What made me curious was the fact that hundreds of files concerned Jews from the <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/ghettos/warsaw.html">Warsaw Ghetto</a>. I found out that the Germans prosecuted them for the breaches of various Nazi regulations: Refusing to wear <a href="https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/info/yellowstar/theyellowstar.html">prescribed armbands with the star of David</a>, for leaving the ghetto without permission, for violating curfews, for buying and smuggling food from the “<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/aryan-1">Aryan</a>” side to the ghetto or for “slandering the good name of the German nation” — which usually meant telling jokes about the occupation.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509564/original/file-20230211-713-yg8q94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Flowers next to a grave stone with a star of david." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509564/original/file-20230211-713-yg8q94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509564/original/file-20230211-713-yg8q94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509564/original/file-20230211-713-yg8q94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509564/original/file-20230211-713-yg8q94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509564/original/file-20230211-713-yg8q94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509564/original/file-20230211-713-yg8q94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509564/original/file-20230211-713-yg8q94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial in Wojslawice, Poland, to the 60 Jews executed in the town during the Holocaust.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Holocaust’s ‘bystanders’</h2>
<p>The eminent scholar on the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, divided the human scenery of the Holocaust into three categories: <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-019035-4">perpetrators, victims and bystanders</a>. Over the years, we have learned much about the Holocaust’s German perpetrators and Jewish victims, but much less about the ill-defined last category.</p>
<p>Who were the bystanders? Were they people who knew nothing about the ongoing Jewish catastrophe? Or people who were conscious of the event but who chose indifference?</p>
<p>Poland was an epicentre of the Holocaust. It was a place where the Nazis built death camps, and where <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/fate-of-jews/poland.html">most of the Jewish population was murdered</a>. In my research, I found that it was simply impossible — I saw that very clearly — for people to remain distant or aloof from the genocide.</p>
<p>Not all the Jewish ghettos (<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ghettos-in-poland">and there were hundreds of ghettos in Poland</a>) were isolated from the outside world. Most of the ghettos were either open (no walls), or with flimsy fences that did not prevent contact between the Jews and other Poles.</p>
<p>Then, in 1942, the liquidation actions began. The Germans, together with local helpers, rounded up the Jews and drove Jewish families towards the nearest railway station, where they were placed on <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-railways-and-the-holocaust">death trains</a> destined for the death camps of Treblinka, Bełżec, Sobibór and Auschwitz.</p>
<p>All of this happened in plain view of the surrounding non-Jewish population. Once the masses of Jews had been deported to their deaths, the emptied ghettos became the sites of massive robbery. Tens of thousands of houses, apartments and furniture were all for the taking.</p>
<p>That is when uncounted thousands of Jews who chose to hide in <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/surviving-the-holocaust-uncovering-secret-hideouts/video-60539431">ingenious hideouts</a> under and inside their houses were detected, pulled out and delivered into the hands of the Germans for immediate execution.</p>
<p>Some Jews fled the ghettos altogether, seeking shelter in the forests, most often, with locals who offered assistance either for a fee or for altruistic reasons.</p>
<p>During this last, final stage of the Holocaust — one which the Germans called Judenjagd or “hunt for the Jews” — the hidden Jews, from the German standpoint, became largely invisible. During this last phase (which continued until the end of the war), it was often one’s non-Jewish neighbours who decided who lived and who died.</p>
<p>It was my research into this stage of the Holocaust that led me to believe that being a bystander in Eastern Europe and, most of all, in Poland, was simply impossible. The whole idea of “bystanding” needed to be re-examined, questioned and perhaps even dismissed.</p>
<p>My research generated discussion among historians but, at the same time, in Poland, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/jan-grabowski-holocaust-hate-campaign-1.4169662">it also raised ire and anger among nationalists</a>.</p>
<h2>Night Without End</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509563/original/file-20230211-25-n022k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Red and black book cover with the words: Night without end, the fate of Jews in German-occupied Poland." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509563/original/file-20230211-25-n022k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509563/original/file-20230211-25-n022k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509563/original/file-20230211-25-n022k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509563/original/file-20230211-25-n022k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509563/original/file-20230211-25-n022k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509563/original/file-20230211-25-n022k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509563/original/file-20230211-25-n022k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Night Without End by Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Indiana University Press)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was within such a political context that <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253062864/night-without-end/"><em>Night Without End</em></a>, a book that I co-wrote and co-edited, was published in 2018. The two-volume, 1,600-page study is a specialized inquiry into the fates of Jews in selected areas of wartime Poland. We looked at the Jewish struggle for survival and German genocidal policies.</p>
<p>We also tried to understand the attitudes of the surrounding Polish society to the Jewish catastrophe. The results were grim: the results of many years of research pointed to the fact that at least two-thirds of Jews who went into hiding had either been murdered or betrayed to the Nazis by their Polish neighbours.</p>
<p>The reaction of the authorities was swift and furious. My co-author and I have been <a href="https://www.tvp.info/52288441/kiedy-historyk-boi-sie-babci">denounced in the press</a>. An unprecedented campaign of hate, followed by civil lawsuits and criminal accusations, ensued.</p>
<p>Attacks on historians and on history itself go hand in hand with attacks on other vital parts of open and democratic society. The defence of history and the struggle to preserve our right to know what has happened are among the foundations of the democratic system. </p>
<p>“Who controls past, controls the future,” <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nineteen-Eighty-four">George Orwell wrote</a> in <em>Nineteen Eighty-Four</em>. His words have never rang more true.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198049/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Grabowski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Holocaust has become a contentious issue in Poland in recent years. And those challenging the government’s historical narrative have faced condemnation and lawsuits.Jan Grabowski, Professor, Department of History, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1969112023-01-24T19:17:09Z2023-01-24T19:17:09ZHolocaust survivor stories are reminders of why we need to educate against antisemitism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505931/original/file-20230123-14-ctz5xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=119%2C28%2C4563%2C2450&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlaender attends the unveiling of a bust of herself in Berlin, Jan. 23, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Michael Sohn)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Home and Belonging” is this year’s <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/international-holocaust-remembrance-day">theme for International Holocaust Remembrance Day</a>, as designated by the United Nations, Jan. 27, the day
<a href="https://www.auschwitz.org/en/">Auschwitz-Birkenau</a> was liberated in 1945.</p>
<p>This theme should compel us to reflect not only on belonging and Canadian identity, but on what these ideas mean to those persecuted during and after the Holocaust. </p>
<p>As we are all too often reminded, antisemitism did not die in the fires of Auschwitz-Birkenau, rather it lay dormant waiting for new opportunities to spread. </p>
<p>This year’s theme is particularly poignant <a href="https://www.friendsofsimonwiesenthalcenter.com/news/jewish-community-rise-in-hate-crimes-remains-most-targeted-religious-group">as Statistics Canada reports</a> a <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/85-002-x/2022001/article/00013-eng.pdf">rise in police-reported hate crimes</a> targeting Jews: figures from 2020 to 2021 showed a 47 per cent rise, with 331 hate crimes reported in 2020 and 487 reported the next year.</p>
<p>Prioritizing Holocaust education at all levels of the education system is imperative. </p>
<h2>Young people and antisemitism</h2>
<p>Alarmingly, as antisemitism <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-hitler-conspiracies-and-other-holocaust-disinformation-undermine-democratic-institutions-191116">and Holocaust distortion</a> become dangerously prevalent, some acts are associated with <a href="https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-students-charged-with-hate-crimes-after-antisemitic-incident-1.6224954">younger members of</a> Canadian society. Earlier this month two Ottawa high-school students faced hate crime charges stemming from an antisemitic incident at their school. </p>
<p>In Toronto, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/antisemitism-schools-holocaust-education-1.6372798">Canada’s largest school board</a> also faced a barrage of antisemitic incidents. </p>
<p><a href="https://globalnews.ca/video/9340706/anti-semitic-hate-crime-on-the-rise-in-the-mainstream-across-canada-u-s">Antisemitic acts are quickly becoming normalized</a> across the mainstream and <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2023/01/18/a-mixed-reality-for-canadian-jews.html">show few signs of slowing down</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Eyewitness to History: Pinchas Gutter, video from Museum of Jewish Heritage.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rise in hate, antisemitism</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148478489/antisemitic-beliefs-anti-defamation-league-survey">A recent and</a> comprehensive <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/antisemitic-attitudes-america-topline-findings">study by the ADL, a non-governmental organization that fights antisemitism and bias</a>, surveyed a representative sample of the American population between September and October 2022 and found over three-quarters of Americans (85 per cent) believe “at least one anti-Jewish trope.” That is an astonishing growth factor given that the 2019 study found 61 per cent of Americans believed in an anti-Jewish trope or conspiracy theory. </p>
<p>Although these are U.S. figures, Canadians also clearly need to be concerned given expressions of antisemitism, Holocaust disinformation and hate here. As civil society grapples with this, new initiatives are needed to ensure that hate and antisemitism is eradicated. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/banning-maus-only-exposes-the-significance-of-this-searing-graphic-novel-about-the-holocaust-175999">Banning ‘Maus’ only exposes the significance of this searing graphic novel about the Holocaust</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>“Home and belonging” underpins what citizenship and human rights mean in any democratic society, and this themes resonates with Canadians of all ethnicities, religions and cultures.</p>
<p>This is exactly what makes the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-introducing-grade-6-holocaust-education-requirement-in-2023/">announcement about Holocaust education being incorporated into the Ontario Grade 6 curriculum</a> so important — it is about teaching Canadians the dangers of where unbridled hate and antisemitism can lead, while sending a message to Canadian Jews that Canada is their home too. </p>
<p>The home and sense of belonging that approximately 40,000 Holocaust survivors found in Canada after the Second World War must remain in place for contemporary Jewish communities. </p>
<h2>Holocaust education</h2>
<p>Holocaust memory is one of the strongest tools for fortifying society against the dangers of racism, hate and antisemitism. However, to pretend that it will solve all manifestations of contemporary antisemitism would be a mistake. </p>
<p>Holocaust education must <a href="https://sunypress.edu/Books/W/Walter-Benjamin-s-Antifascist-Education">also address the ideological</a> <a href="https://www.tcpress.com/teaching-anti-fascism-9780807766965">roots of neo-fascism</a>, identity and alienation, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691188836/a-lot-of-people-are-saying">conspiracism and disinformation</a>, all of which lay the foundation for the widespread belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories and anti-Jewish tropes. And, it must do this while teaching people how to navigate <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393713503">propaganda in a digital age</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Daunted but Undeterred - Holocaust Survivor, Judy Cohen, ‘DOLCE Magazine’ video.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Importance of first-hand accounts</h2>
<p>Still, Holocaust memory as represented by the first-hand accounts of those who survived the horrors of Nazi persecution remains the bedrock for understanding how the Holocaust forever impacted individuals, families and entire communities. </p>
<p>As we mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day this week on Jan. 27, Canadians of all ages can discover for themselves what home and belonging has meant for some who survived the Holocaust. </p>
<p>Over 100 life stories of Holocaust survivors have been published through the <a href="https://memoirs.azrielifoundation.org/">Azrieli Foundation Holocaust Survivors Memoir Program</a>. This week, five titles in this <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/campaign/2708/holocaust-survivor-memoirs-collection?utm_source=Azrieli+Holocaust+Memoirs+Program&utm_campaign=231749e450-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_FALL_2022_ED_NEWS_10122022_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9127a05633-231749e450-">collection are available for free as audiobooks for a two-week period</a>. Four of these titles are the first-ever audiobooks narrated by Holocaust survivors themselves.</p>
<p>Listening to the experiences of Holocaust survivors, narrated in their voices, is a powerful learning experience. </p>
<p>To understand the significance of home and belonging to Jews across Canada, and why the increase in antisemitism is so serious to Canadian society, choose to listen to one of these memoirs as a means of marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carson Phillips is a Canadian delegate to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.</span></em></p>Over 100 life stories of Holocaust survivors have been published through a Holocaust survivors’ memoir program. Listening to survivors narrate their stories is a powerful learning experience.Carson Phillips, Faculty, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Gratz CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1967842022-12-18T12:20:18Z2022-12-18T12:20:18ZHow to live up to the true spirit of Christmas<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501649/original/file-20221217-22510-tt2p4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People enjoying Christmas decorations in Johannesburg, South Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Luca Sola/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If the media, popular entertainment, and retail habits are taken as indicators then the celebration of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christmas">Christmas</a> is no longer just the reserve of Christians. This has some consequences for the religious and non-religious alike.</p>
<p>In popular culture and the media, Christmas is portrayed as a time of happiness, togetherness, generosity, and peace. In the “made for Christmas” movies, such as those on the popular <a href="https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/christmas">Hallmark Channel</a>, a “feel good” message is the order of the day.</p>
<p>Whether it be the rekindling of a <a href="https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/christmas-in-tahoe">long-lost love</a> or <a href="https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/christmas-at-the-golden-dragon">reconciling</a> between family members after a long and painful conflict, viewers are led to believe that there is a certain kind of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508419867205">“magic”</a> at work during what has become known in largely <a href="https://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/documents/vol11/davis.pdf">secular terms</a> as “the holiday season”. </p>
<p>Many people believe, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021516410457">either overtly or tacitly</a>, that Christmas and the celebrations surrounding it will bring them joy, peace, happiness and togetherness.</p>
<p>In my <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ids.v56i1.2849">research</a>, which is in a field called <a href="https://www.otago.ac.nz/ctpi/what/">public theology</a>, I study such “beliefs” to try to understand where they come from, why people hold them, and what implications they have for our social, political and economic life.</p>
<p>I call these <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_3PnDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT17&dq=dion+forster+secular&ots=R7LY9TV9Ea&sig=Qp3CMnur46BuSNxLb6TKRyLvxv0#v=onepage&q=dion%20forster%20secular&f=false">“secular beliefs”</a> to differentiate them from traditional “religious beliefs”. A secular belief is not formally attached to a religion, or has become detached from a particular religion over time. In this sense, Christmas has come to embody a kind of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09345-1_5">“secular spirituality”</a>. This has much more in common with the dominant symbols and aspirations of our age (such as leisure, pleasure, social control and consumption) than it does with its religious roots.</p>
<h2>Understanding Christmas</h2>
<p>Christmas, as the name suggests, is linked to the birth of Jesus the Christ. As a professor of theology, I have often jokingly said, “Christ is not Jesus’s surname”. The word “Christ” comes from the Greek word <em>Χρίστος</em> (Chrístos), which is the Greek translation for the Hebrew word “messiah” (<em>מָשִׁיחַ</em> or <em>māšīaḥ</em>). For Jewish people, and later for Christians (people who name themselves after their messiah, Jesus the Christ), the messiah was God’s <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wJe_SIyxwEkC&oi=fnd&pg=PR12&dq=messiah+as+liberator&ots=HPiqhXM9jn&sig=LDQwEKNz2FV2dQZL7fv46_Xaydc#v=onepage&q=messiah%20as%20liberator&f=false">promised liberator</a> – a King who would come to liberate God’s people from their oppressors and lead them in peace and prosperity.</p>
<p>Christians believe that Jesus is the promised messiah (according to passages in the Bible, such as Isaiah 9:6-7, John 4:25 and Acts 2:38). He came preaching a message of love, peace and anti-materialism. </p>
<p>Early in Christian history, Christians began to celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ (the promised liberator) in special services, what became known as the <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/mass">“mass”</a> after the Latin word <em>missa</em>. Hence, it was the combination of those two words that later became one word, Christmas, a feast that celebrates liberation, peace and joy through the messiah.</p>
<p>When presented in these terms, it would not be surprising to ask what the contemporary presentations of Christmas (particularly in the western world) have to do with the celebration of Jesus the Christ. Santa Claus, snowmen and reindeer seem to have replaced Jesus and his disciples. </p>
<p>Instead of focusing on messianic liberation and anti-materialism, Christmas is focused on parties, family gatherings, and gift-giving. In other words, like so much of western modernity, the focus has turned from the <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/A_Secular_Age/hWRXYY3HRFoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=charles+taylor+secular+age&printsec=frontcover">sacred to the secular</a> and from God to the human self.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021516410457">Research shows</a> that there are seven primary activities and experiences that are attached to the contemporary Christmas holiday:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Spending time with family </p></li>
<li><p>Participating in religious activities</p></li>
<li><p>Maintaining cultural, national, or family traditions (such as decorating a Christmas tree) </p></li>
<li><p>Spending money on others to buy gifts </p></li>
<li><p>Receiving gifts from others</p></li>
<li><p>Helping others (such as a local charity) and</p></li>
<li><p>Enjoying the sensual aspects of the holiday (such as good food and drink, rest, and relaxation).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>However, the same research shows that for many people, these “peaceful” and “joyous” expectations are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021516410457">not met</a>. Christmas is no longer a time of joy, generosity, family togetherness and rest. </p>
<p>Rather, the contemporary expectations of the festive “season” – such as the costs associated with gift giving, travel, celebrations (such as work functions, family gatherings, and community events) – can lead to dissatisfaction, stress, conflict and disappointment. Perhaps you can relate? </p>
<p>Moreover, the burden on <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/17/3/333/1822554?login=false">women</a> is often much higher than it is on men. Women are often expected to arrange gatherings, buy gifts, prepare food, clean up the aftermath and keep the peace.</p>
<h2>Rekindling the true spirit of Christmas</h2>
<p>So, taking these realities into account, what might you do to rediscover the “true”, or at least the historical “spirit” of Christmas this year (whether you are religious or not)?</p>
<p>Here are a few suggestions, based on sociological research.</p>
<p>First, social and psychological research shows that in general, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021516410457">but also at Christmas</a>, people report far greater “well-being”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when experiences of family closeness and helping others were particularly salient.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Second, that “diminished well-being” is reported where people’s experiences and expectations “focused on the materialistic aspects of the season (spending and receiving)”. Moreover, the research <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021516410457">showed</a> that religious people who actively participated in religious gatherings tended to have a more positive experience of Christmas, with their expectations largely being fulfilled.</p>
<p>So, whether you are Christian, or have more of a secular spirituality, it may well be wise to recapture something of the historical “spirit” of the Christ-mass message by engaging in the responsible use of money and time, choosing positive consumption practices, while seeking to foster good relationships with family, friends and colleagues.</p>
<p>Moreover, pay careful attention to issues such as the gendered division of labour and responsibility by sharing the work and effort. In doing so, you just may have a happier Christmas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196784/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dion Forster currently receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation (NRF), the HB Thom fund, and the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is affiliated with the Methodist Church of Southern Africa where is and ordained minister of religion.</span></em></p>Research shows that religious people who actively participate in religious gatherings tend to have a more positive experience of Christmas, with expectations largely fulfilled.Dion Forster, Full Professor of Ethics and Head of Department, Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology, Director of the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1947802022-11-30T16:01:54Z2022-11-30T16:01:54ZAncient DNA from the teeth of 14th-century Ashkenazi Jews in Germany already included genetic variations common in modern Jews<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498055/original/file-20221129-11920-w79ymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C31%2C2036%2C1406&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Partial layout of the graves discovered during the excavation at the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thuringian State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology/Karin Sczech + Katharina Bielefeld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>About two-thirds of Jews today – or about 10 million people – are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews">Ashkenazi</a>, referring to a recent origin from Eastern and Central Europe. They reside mostly in the United States and Israel. Ashkenazi Jews carry a particularly high burden of <a href="https://www.jewishgeneticdiseases.org/jewish-genetic-diseases/">disease-causing genetic mutations</a>, such as those in the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/young_women/bringyourbrave/hereditary_breast_cancer/jewish_women_brca.htm">BRCA1</a> gene associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer.</p>
<p>This genetic burden suggests that the population was shaped by what geneticists call a <a href="https://evolution.berkeley.edu/bottlenecks-and-founder-effects/">founder event or a bottleneck</a>. In other words, a small number of foremothers and forefathers contributed much of the modern gene pool. As the population grew and the descendants of these founders had many children, disease mutations that were carried by the few founders became widespread.</p>
<p>One of the most striking features of Ashkenazi Jews today is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr133">how genetically homogeneous</a> they are, with almost no discernable differences in ancestry between Ashkenazi Jews across the world. Were Ashkenazi Jews equally similar to each other in the past? What were their origins? To what extent was the gene pool shaped by intermarriage with non-Jews?</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-genom-083117-021749">New technology</a> has made it practical to economically sequence whole genomes from skeletal remains. <a href="https://scarmilab.org">We</a> <a href="https://reich.hms.harvard.edu">and</a> 30 colleagues mostly from Israel, Germany and the U.S. investigated these questions by <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002">sequencing the centuries-old remains of Ashkenazi Jews</a> from the medieval Jewish community of Erfurt, Germany.</p>
<h2>Sequencing DNA from a medieval cemetery</h2>
<p>Previous studies of genomes of Ashkenazi Jews living today made it clear that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.08.030">founder event occurred in medieval times</a>. But the earlier geographic origins of the Ashkenazi ancestors are poorly understood.</p>
<p>The first historical records of Ashkenazi Jews are from the Rhineland in Western Germany in the 10th century. In the hundreds of years that followed, an increasing proportion lived in Eastern Europe. Despite periodic persecution, the <a href="https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/dell/DellaPergola%20Some%20Fundamentals.pdf">number of Ashkenazi Jews grew</a> and peaked at more than 10 million in the mid-20th century, before about <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/33397139">six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="four story medieval building with excavated dirt in foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archaeologists worked to recover medieval remains from a graveyard. The granary building is in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thuringian State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology/Martin Sowa</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://juedisches-leben.erfurt.de/jl/en/middle-ages/index.html">medieval Ashkenazi Jewish community of Erfurt, Germany</a> existed between the late 11th century and the mid-15th century. After a gap following a 1349 massacre, the Erfurt Jewish community became one of the largest in Germany – in fact, one of the <a href="https://juedisches-leben.erfurt.de/jl/en/middle-ages/old_synagogue/index.html">oldest intact Jewish synagogues</a> in Central Europe is in Erfurt – but Jews were expelled in 1454. After that, the city built a granary on top of the Jewish cemetery.</p>
<p>In 2013, the granary was converted into a parking garage. Prior to construction, the state led a rescue excavation that uncovered 47 graves, most of which we sampled for DNA before the skeletons were reburied in the 19th-century Jewish cemetery.</p>
<p>Our study required review from the local Jewish community, because traditional Jewish law prohibits disturbing the dead under most circumstances. But <a href="https://din.org.il/2021/09/11/%d7%93%d7%92%d7%99%d7%9e%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%93%d7%a0%d7%90-%d7%9e%d7%a9%d7%9c%d7%93%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%a2%d7%aa%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%a1%d7%95%d7%92%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%9c%d7%9b/">recent rabbinical scholarship</a> suggested that ancient DNA research is permissible if scientists use loose teeth from already excavated remains. We followed this approach with the aim of being <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04008-x">sensitive to community perspectives</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="tooth next to ruler and labelled plastic bag" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In accordance with rabbinical ruling, researchers collected DNA from teeth that were already loose in the remains of people who lived during the 1300s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Reich/Harvard Medical School</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Today’s population is a blend of past groups</h2>
<p>We sequenced 33 individuals who lived in the 14th century. Among them were two families: a mother and two children, and a father, who had likely been killed by a sword blow to the head, and his daughter.</p>
<p>Our first question was: Do medieval Erfurt Jews and modern Ashkenazi Jews belong to the same genetic population? On average, yes. There has been almost no incorporation of genes from non-Jewish European populations over the last 600 years. </p>
<p>But the biggest surprise was that Erfurt Jews were noticeably more diverse than modern Ashkenazi Jews.</p>
<p>Some medieval individuals had greater Middle Eastern ancestry; they were genetically most similar to modern Ashkenazi Jews with origins in France and Germany.</p>
<p>Others had greater Eastern European ancestry, consistent with historical evidence that a number of people living in Erfurt between 1350 and 1400 had surnames indicating origins in the East, as well as Slavic given names.</p>
<p>The two groups – those with more Middle Eastern or more Slavic origins – also had distinct levels of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9418O">oxygen isotopes</a> in their teeth, indicating they used different water sources in childhood, and thus, at least one of the groups must have included migrants. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, individuals from both groups were buried side by side, suggesting no social segregation.</p>
<p>Non-genetic research suggested that in the Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews were <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/origins-of-yiddish-dialects-9780198739319">culturally divided into two major groups</a>. Western Jews lived in the Rhineland, where Ashkenazi Jews first settled. They may correspond to the Erfurt group with the greater Middle Eastern ancestry. Eastern Jews, from eastern Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, may correspond to the Erfurt group with the greater Eastern European ancestry.</p>
<p>Erfurt was at the geographic boundary between the two medieval Jewish communities, and in the 14th century, it was likely a home to Jews belonging to both. This may explain our detection of two genetically distinguishable groups in one place.</p>
<p>Modern Ashkenazi Jews don’t show the medieval genetic heterogeneity. Instead, their genomes look like a nearly even mixture of the two Erfurt groups. Our genetic results fit with <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/origins-of-yiddish-dialects-9780198739319">studies of names, dialects and religious rites</a>, which suggest that the Western and Eastern groups eventually merged and formed a single Ashkenazi culture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a man kneeling on pad on dirt works on something buried in the ground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In advance of construction, archaeologists carefully excavated medieval remains so they could be respectfully reburied in a 19th century cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thuringian State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology/Ronny Krause</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A founder event left its genetic mark</h2>
<p>Our next question was whether Erfurt Jews show signs of the founder event so evident in the genes of modern Ashkenazi Jews.</p>
<p>They do. A stretch of genetic material called <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mtdna-and-mitochondrial-diseases-903/">mitochondrial DNA</a> is inherited only from mothers. Different people around the world today carry subtly different variations of it. One variant of mitochondrial DNA is found in 20% of modern Ashkenazi Jews and is nearly absent in non-Jewish populations. We identified it in 35% of the Erfurt individuals.</p>
<p>In other words, a third of the people we sampled from the graveyard descended, via their maternal line, from a single woman. That so many people share the same ancestral mother implies that the population must have been extremely small in the centuries before.</p>
<p>In the Erfurt individuals, we also found mutations common in Ashkenazi Jews today but extremely rare elsewhere, including 16 disease-causing mutations, one of them in the well-known BRCA1 gene. Another research group sequenced the genomes of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.036">six Ashkenazi Jews from 12th-century Norwich, England</a> and identified other disease mutations that are also still seen in Ashkenazi genomes today.</p>
<p>What was most striking about the founder event was how strongly the Erfurt Jews were affected. We estimate that the degree of relatedness of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.08.030">modern Ashkenazi Jewish genomes to each other</a> is about what would be expected if they descended from a population that had been persistently small throughout the second half of the Middle Ages. How small? We calculated that a core of only 1,000-2,000 reproducing people during this time would be responsible for most descendants today.</p>
<p>When we repeated a similar calculation using the Erfurt data, we encountered a surprise. Based on the medieval DNA, our estimate of the size of the founding population was about 3-fold smaller, only around 500 people. </p>
<p>How could it be that we were detecting the same founder event – responsible for the same disease-causing mutations in the Erfurt and in the modern Ashkenazi Jewish communities – and yet its impact on the Erfurt Jews was larger? </p>
<p>To address that, we proposed there were additional medieval Ashkenazi communities that inherited much less DNA from the core group of reproducing people we identified for Erfurt. We don’t yet know who these communities were, but our modeling suggests that they must have existed and later mixed with Erfurt-like communities, averaging together to form today’s Ashkenazi Jews.</p>
<p>So sometime after the 14th century, genetic barriers between Ashkenazi Jewish communities must have broken down, and the archipelago of scattered early Ashkenazi Jewish populations collapsed into the homogeneous group seen today. This was accompanied by extremely rapid population growth, which then continued for centuries. The Ashkenazi Jewish community, which had originally been demographically peripheral in the Jewish world, with its center of gravity around the Mediterranean and the Middle East, eventually became the largest world population of Jews.</p>
<h2>A template for future studies</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="view of an old stone building through a stone arch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Old Synagogue of the medieval Jewish community of Erfurt is now a museum documenting past Jewish life in Erfurt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stadt Erfurt Marcel Krummrich</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Erfurt and Norwich are just two locations. A richer picture of medieval Ashkenazi Jewish history will require sampling additional sites. How Ashkenazi Jews relate to Sephardi Jews and the many other living Jewish communities, and how all of these communities relate to Roman-period Judeans, are mysteries that ancient DNA research may also one day address. Any such research would need to take into account modern community sensitivities, and we think our work in Erfurt is a good model.</p>
<p>More broadly, this work provides a template for how ancient DNA, even from individuals who lived relatively recently, can reveal aspects of history that are otherwise invisible. By carrying out such studies, scholars can help reveal the roots of modern groups, enriching people’s understanding of themselves and each other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194780/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shai Carmi received funding for this study from the Israel Science Foundation and the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation. He is a paid consultant at MyHeritage.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Reich receives funding for his research from the US National Institutes of Health, the Allen Discovery Center program (a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised program of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation), the John Templeton Foundation; a private gift from Jean-François Clin, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.</span></em></p>A German town needed to relocate a medieval graveyard to build a parking garage. A positive side effect: Scientists got to sequence the DNA of Ashkenazi Jews who lived more than 600 years ago.Shai Carmi, Associate Professor of Population and Statistical Genetics, Hebrew University of JerusalemDavid Reich, Professor of Genetics and of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1910032022-11-24T00:20:51Z2022-11-24T00:20:51ZThis Jewish woman’s story of surviving the Holocaust by passing as Catholic and sheltering with Nazis is (rightly) hard to read<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491231/original/file-20221024-12-ht0ihu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C5%2C3964%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">images provided by Pieter van Os</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/hiding-in-plain-sight-9781922585035">Hiding in Plain Sight</a> tells the Holocaust story (and post-Holocaust life) of Mala Rywka Kizel – or Marilka Shlafer, as she became known later in life. But these are only two of the names by which she has been known. </p>
<p>Mala, a Polish Orthodox Jewish woman, was born in 1926, in Warsaw. She was just 13 when the second world war began. She spent the beginning of the war in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/warsaw-ghettos-defiant-jewish-doctors-secretly-documented-the-medical-effects-of-nazi-starvation-policies-in-a-book-recently-rediscovered-on-a-library-shelf-182726">Warsaw Ghetto</a>, participating in smuggling ventures, before escaping and going into hiding, passing as a Catholic. </p>
<p>She moved around, worked as a farmhand, was looked after by a committed Nazi family, the Mollers, became friends with <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-tracked-antisemitic-incidents-in-australia-over-four-years-this-is-when-they-are-most-likely-to-occur-154728">antisemites</a>, and fell deeply in love with Erich, a German plane engineer she met on a train platform who “was not a committed Nazi”, although he “wore the badge of Hitler’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party">NSDAP</a> on his lapel”. She told Pieter van Os that Erich was “the love of my life” – a fact her Jewish husband, who she met at a shelter for Jews after the war was over, knew and accepted.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Hiding in Plain Sight: How a Jewish Girl Survived Europe’s Heart of Darkness – Pieter van Os, trans. David Doherty (Scribe)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When going outside the ghetto walls to smuggle in food, Mala had “one distinct advantage” to help her avoid getting caught: her appearance. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Dobry wyglad</em>, “good looks”, was the expression Poles used to describe Jews who did not look Semitic. Mala was fair-haired, and her eyes were blue with a hint of green. It also helped that she was a girl. Any boy with a suspect appearance or a Yiddish accent risked having his pants pulled down to see whether he had been circumcised. If a girl was stopped by the Polish police, they would make her recite a Polish prayer, something Mala could do without a trace of an accent.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490256/original/file-20221018-8454-w2yf76.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="the pale face of a beautiful young woman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490256/original/file-20221018-8454-w2yf76.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490256/original/file-20221018-8454-w2yf76.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490256/original/file-20221018-8454-w2yf76.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490256/original/file-20221018-8454-w2yf76.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490256/original/file-20221018-8454-w2yf76.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490256/original/file-20221018-8454-w2yf76.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490256/original/file-20221018-8454-w2yf76.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The oldest existing photograph of Mala, probably from 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">provided by Pieter van Os</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her escape from the ghetto was followed by years spent travelling, escaping, relying on some, evading others. This is not a Holocaust story of life in the camps, but one that follows the twists and turns of a young woman’s journey of trying to survive, and the necessary connections she made. </p>
<p>Pieter van Os – a journalist – interviewed Mala, at her Amsterdam home, several times (“welcomed […] with coffee and biscuits”) over the four years it took to put the book together. She also gave him access to her unpublished memoir, which he drew on, along with his own investigations.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I transcribed our recorded conversations, and then – with the transcripts and her memoir to hand – I set out on a journey through time, tracking down the cities, towns, and villages, the people and the buildings that figure in her story, looking for documents, books, and eyewitness accounts to provide more context.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He weaves together stories of Mala, her extended family and the people she encounters, with stories of the town, the community, and national events. Towards the end, he describes this as choosing “which side streets to wander down”. These wanderings provide context and depth. They remind us of the many journeys taken by many others.</p>
<p>He says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Recalling events that expose the deepest abysses of human nature, she speaks with remarkable lightness, a tone I have never really encountered in writings or discussions about the Holocaust. […] Yet she trivialises nothing: her story traverses the abyss.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-few-australians-know-about-our-own-connections-to-the-holocaust-175325">New research shows few Australians know about our own connections to the Holocaust</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Always a foreboding</h2>
<p>In this book, and others about the Holocaust we read now (in its aftermath), there is always a foreboding. We might not know exactly what will happen, but we know we are on the path to encountering brutal violence. This is heightened – or perhaps exploited – when we come to descriptions of how fluent Mala was in Polish, but that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yiddish was not only her mother tongue, but the language she spoke in her sleep when she was younger. In the story of her survival, this seemingly unimportant detail would put her life in the balance. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For we know that during the Holocaust, the seemingly unimportant or inconsequential could play a determining role in someone’s life or death. </p>
<p>There were so many ways to be murdered. “Of the 35,000 Jews who lived in Lublin before the war, only 230 survived the occupation,” van Os writes, describing how Jews were able to live relatively freely there until the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/einsatzgruppen">Einsatzgruppen</a> came through in 1942. </p>
<p>Reading these words when I did, a few hours before Kol Nidre – the evening service that begins <a href="https://theconversation.com/yom-kippur-what-does-judaism-actually-say-about-forgiveness-189514">Yom Kippur</a>, or the Jewish Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar – tore at me a little bit. </p>
<p>In Judaism, we say that to save a life is to save a whole world. Tonight I will stand in a community of Jews and attempt to account for my personal and collective errors, pondering how I and we can do better. Today I am reading about the murder of so many Jews, whose whole worlds I will never know. Stories of the war, of what people could not endure, never stop being painful.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490254/original/file-20221018-15481-y4hu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and an older woman, smiling at the camera. He is in a white shirt and she wears a sequinned top under a cardigan" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490254/original/file-20221018-15481-y4hu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490254/original/file-20221018-15481-y4hu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490254/original/file-20221018-15481-y4hu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490254/original/file-20221018-15481-y4hu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490254/original/file-20221018-15481-y4hu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490254/original/file-20221018-15481-y4hu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490254/original/file-20221018-15481-y4hu8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Author Pieter van Os with Mala Rivka Kizel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">provided by Pieter van Os</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This book is a meditation on evidence, history and memory. This is reflected by how Mala manages to live, the stories she can weave – and the truths, partial truths and mistruths she tells. </p>
<p>At one point, while hiding her Jewishness, the reader’s earlier foreboding is realised: Mala is heard speaking Yiddish in her sleep and dobbed in as a Jew by a man she had already distrusted. She is imprisoned in a camp for a few weeks while an investigation is carried out – but she is found to be German, not Polish or Jewish. </p>
<p>She is released to become a worker for the man who directed the camp; the two of them take a tram to an office in the city centre. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mala filled in forms and was given a document that granted her temporary status as a stateless person. A racial assessment at a later date would determine whether she was actually an ethnic German. An immediate consequence of her new status was that she no longer had to wear a purple “P”. Mala had gone from Jewish to Polish to stateless.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Through stories like this, we learn the vagaries of national definition: the ways they are mutable and changeable – in certain circumstances. They are certainly never natural. But of course, Germany and its <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/SS">SS forces</a> tried to naturalise and racialise nationality. </p>
<p>During the investigation into her nationality, Mala had to attend a testing centre where her blood was taken and she was quizzed on her family background by eight SS assessors. She spun them a tale. They found her – incorrectly – to be a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksdeutsche"><em>Volksdeutsche</em></a>, an ethnic German. It seems she may have been the only case of such an occurrence. </p>
<p>This was what led to her being placed with the German family (under the name Anni Gmitruk): as a <em>Volksdeutsche</em>, she was considered racially too superior to return to work as a forced labourer. The Mollers had lost two sons on the Eastern Front, so were glad to “do their part” and take her in.</p>
<p>After the war, Mala left the Mollers and returned to Poland, where she learned her family and friends had all been murdered. There, she enrolled (under her given name) at a shelter for Jews, where she met her future husband, Nathan. They were married by a rabbi on her 20th birthday, February 22 1946.</p>
<p>Together, with their young son, they emigrated to Israel in November 1948, quickly settling in <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1651427">Lydda (soon renamed Lod</a>), a city that Israeli intellectual (and Zionist) Ari Shavit has called “the epicentre of the conflict over the existence of Israel”, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/21/lydda-1948">claiming that</a> “Zionism carried out a massacre in the city of Lydda” on July 12 1948 – just months before Mala and her family arrived there. “I was astounded that Mala had yet again found herself in the thick of ethnic cleansing,” writes van Os. </p>
<p>Nathan’s job with the local police was short-lived, after he was horrified by an assignment to patrol one of two segregated areas:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Barbed wire separated them from the rest of the city, and the 500 or so people fenced in were virtual prisoners. These were Christians and Muslims who had refused to leave when Lydda fell to the Jews, in addition to the inhabitants of local villages cleared by the Israeli army in the days that followed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He refused. “Nathan had not survived the Lodz ghetto only to patrol the barbed-wire fences of the Lod ghetto.” Instead, with two friends, he tried to set up a cooperative to repair and renovate houses. This led to an ongoing job with the airline El Al.</p>
<p>He and Mala had their second child, a daughter, soon after arriving in Israel. They moved permanently to the Netherlands in 1979, after their daughter finished her military service and married a Dutchman. Mala died in 2020, at the age of 94 – five years after Nathan died, in an “old folks’ home”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490279/original/file-20221018-23092-ap4t2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Jewish people being escorted from the Warsaw ghetto by German soldiers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490279/original/file-20221018-23092-ap4t2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490279/original/file-20221018-23092-ap4t2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490279/original/file-20221018-23092-ap4t2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490279/original/file-20221018-23092-ap4t2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490279/original/file-20221018-23092-ap4t2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490279/original/file-20221018-23092-ap4t2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490279/original/file-20221018-23092-ap4t2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jewish people being escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto, from which Mala escaped, by German soldiers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/moral-ambiguity-and-the-representation-of-genocide-is-there-a-limit-to-what-can-be-depicted-177537">Moral ambiguity and the representation of genocide – is there a limit to what can be depicted?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Testimonies of trauma</h2>
<p>Hiding in Plain Sight ponders evidence and historical narrative in other ways too. Every chapter ends with a section, “Instead of footnotes”, where van Os provides information about his research and hints at references. </p>
<p>Throughout the book we have moments such as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even by Polish standards, Mala recalls, the poverty in the region was abject. Research confirms this, although only scant historical data survive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, we all rely on numerous different types of evidence to tell our stories or create our arguments. But this way of setting it out – that “research”, presumably of papers and archives, confirms the testimony – works intriguingly not to support Mala as a truth-teller, but to undermine the power of her story as evidence in its own right. </p>
<p>Similarly, in talking about a scene Mala described having seen in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-nazi-exhibitions-tell-us-about-how-the-far-right-engages-audiences-today-97381">Nazi propaganda</a> film, van Os writes, “Mala is mistaken. There is no such scene in the surviving copies” of the film. He then describes the film and its antisemitism. The more interesting and generous question, I think, is – why did Mala remember the film in this way? What did that scene do for her, whether it “really” existed or not?</p>
<p>When Mala hears stories after the war ends, she finds it hard to believe some of the atrocities. This is a problem many survivors have discussed: when they reported what had happened, what they had endured, they were disbelieved. This is always described as a unique kind of pain. </p>
<p>“Mala could not or did not want to believe” the story of babies being thrown from the third-floor windows of a hospital in the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lodz">Lodz ghetto</a>, van Os reports. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Germans would never do such a thing. She knew that; she had lived with a German family. It took her years to accept that this had really happened, after hearing the accounts of others and seeing them printed in black and white.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490258/original/file-20221018-15124-tn4i1e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="an old photograph of a German couple" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490258/original/file-20221018-15124-tn4i1e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490258/original/file-20221018-15124-tn4i1e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490258/original/file-20221018-15124-tn4i1e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490258/original/file-20221018-15124-tn4i1e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490258/original/file-20221018-15124-tn4i1e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490258/original/file-20221018-15124-tn4i1e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490258/original/file-20221018-15124-tn4i1e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Otto and Emma Moller, the ‘committed Nazi’ family who took Mala in and loved her.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">provided by Pieter van Os</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Famously, in his <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Testimony-Crises-of-Witnessing-in-Literature-Psychoanalysis-and-History/Felman-Laub/p/book/9780415903929#">work on trauma, testimony and the Holocaust</a>, alongside Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub recounts a moment when a woman who was in <a href="https://theconversation.com/auschwitz-women-used-different-survival-and-sabotage-strategies-than-men-at-nazi-death-camp-132296">Auschwitz</a> testified (in an interview for the Yale Fortunoff Archive) about seeing “four chimneys going up in flames, exploding […] It was unbelievable.” </p>
<p>At a later conference where this testimony is discussed, Laub recounts that some historians asserted that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the testimony was not accurate […] the number of chimneys was misrepresented. Historically, only one chimney was blown up, not all four.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This meant, for them, her testimony was “fallible”. But Laub – a psychoanalyst who had interviewed the woman for her testimony and who was present at this conference – “profoundly disagreed” and asserted instead that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the woman was testifying […] not to the number of chimneys blown up, but to something else, more radical, more crucial: the reality of an unimaginable occurrence […] The number mattered less than the fact of the occurrence. The event was almost inconceivable. The woman testified to an event that broke the all compelling frame of Auschwitz […] She testified to the breakage of a framework. That was a historical truth. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the pressing task for any of us listening to testimonies: to hear what they are saying, what they are testifying to, what truths they can hold. And also what they can never say, because some things will remain unsaid. As van Os writes, for instance, in his mention of the one woman from the town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zerbst">Zerbst</a> – the town where Mala ended the war:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>she returned from a women’s internment camp in May 1945, unable to relay any information about the fate of the town’s other Jews. She had lost her mind. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question of how to understand, how to write about, and how to approach testimonies of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-hard-to-just-get-over-it-for-people-who-have-been-traumatized-71764">trauma</a> is an important one. It is forever unsettled. Van Os does well in pushing us to continue to think about these questions, and not take anything for granted. </p>
<p>Hiding in Plain Sight is an utterly immersive book, bringing readers into lives and places and communities, into their loss and (re)building. It is a hard book to read. As it should be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordana Silverstein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mala, a Polish Orthodox Jewish woman, escaped the Warsaw ghetto early in the second world war and survived by passing as a Catholic. A new book tells her story.Jordana Silverstein, Historian, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1911162022-10-24T17:03:11Z2022-10-24T17:03:11ZHow Hitler conspiracies and other Holocaust disinformation undermine democratic institutions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490176/original/file-20221017-6899-yxtviw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C475%2C4673%2C2668&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Ukrainian serviceman inspects a classroom with a sign 'Z' on the door used by Russian forces in the retaken area of Kapitolivka, Ukraine, Sept. 25, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin spread an outlandish conspiracy theory to justify military invasion of Ukraine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-hitler-conspiracies-and-other-holocaust-disinformation-undermine-democratic-institutions" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Godwin’s Law posits that any online argument, if it continues long enough, will <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/memes/godwins-law/">inevitably invoke a comparison to Hitler</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps there should be an updated version: If you examine any given conspiracy theory, even seemingly innocuous ones, it won’t be long until you find coded and explicit antisemitism. </p>
<p>Some cases are obvious. Remember how far-right U.S. congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene embraced the <a href="https://www.globalnews.ca/news/7607501/marjorie-taylor-greene-jewish-space-laser/">“Jewish space lasers</a>” theory after the California wildfires in 2018? </p>
<p>Other conspiracy theories, such as those that claim <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/antisemitic-conspiracies-about-911-endure-20-years-later">9/11 was an inside job</a>, require a little more deciphering. </p>
<p>More recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin spread an outlandish conspiracy theory to justify his military invasion of Ukraine. Nothing less than the <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/disinformation-threat-to-democracy-requires-stronger-response-by-noelle-lenoir-2022-05">de-nazification of Ukraine</a> was required, Putin bizarrely claimed, while neglecting the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish <a href="https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/in-israel-zelensky-tells-own-familys-holocaust-story.html">and lost family members in the Holocaust</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-putins-denazification-campaign-hits-babyn-yar-holocaust-memorial-to-33-000-murdered-jews-178403">Ukraine war: Putin's 'denazification' campaign hits Babyn Yar holocaust memorial to 33,000 murdered Jews</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>All too often, such theories and disinformation are rooted in <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2022/02/09/abbie-richards-fights-tiktok-disinformation-with-a-cup-of-tea-a-conspiracy-chart-and-a-punchline">antisemitic tropes</a>. These promote false claims of Jewish control over institutions and even the outcome of specific events. </p>
<p>While it might be easy to dismiss such disinformation as harmless or too bizarre to be believable, in reality disinformation and conspiracy theorizing often spreads harmful antisemitic messages and also <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691188836/a-lot-of-people-are-saying">undermines our democratic institutions</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man seen holidng a sign that says 'We shall not forget.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-Nazi demonstration, Carlton St., Toronto, May 31, 1981.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Ontario Jewish Archives, item 3076-3077)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Longevity of antisemitic conspiracy theory</h2>
<p>One of the longest lasting conspiracy theories — even though it has been repeatedly proven false — is the narrative of a Jewish world conspiracy presented in <em><a href="https://www.theconversation.com/why-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-is-still-pushed-by-anti-semites-more-than-a-century-after-hoax-first-circulated-145220">The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.</a></em> </p>
<p>British historian <a href="https://www.richardjevans.com/">Richard Evans</a> will explore the longevity of the Protocols and how they are seen within the framework of Nazi ideology, in Toronto on Nov. 2, <a href="https://www.holocaustcentre.com/hew/featured-programs2022">opening Holocaust Education Week 2022</a>.</p>
<p>Evans’s book <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314851/the-hitler-conspiracies-by-evans-richard-j/9780141991498"><em>The Hitler Conspiracies</em></a> is an important reminder of the perennial fascination with and longevity of the inherently antisemitic conspiracy theory that historian <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/walter-laqueur/warrant-for-genocide-by-norman-cohn/">Norman Cohn famously described as a “warrant for genocide.</a>” </p>
<p>As Yehuda Bauer, honorary chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, stated, “a half truth is worse than a full lie.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/most-popular-conspiracy-theories">Myths and disinformation about the Holocaust</a> continue to permeate social media and increasingly, political discourse, even while the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/deniers_01.shtml">Holocaust is one</a> of the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution">most thoroughly documented events</a> in history.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman seen standing at the side of a wall of names." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman lays a flower on the Wall of Names during a ceremony at the memorial garden of the children of the Vel d'Hiv Roundup in Paris, July 16, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Distortion, misinformation</h2>
<p>Whether intentional or not, disinformation breathes new life into old, often violence-inducing antisemitic narratives. The power of distortion and misinformation is its seemingly immutable ability to defy the historical truth. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/7-ways-to-spot-polarizing-language-how-to-choose-responsibly-what-to-amplify-online-or-in-person-177276">7 ways to spot polarizing language — how to choose responsibly what to amplify online or in-person</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Dangerous narratives found in the <em>Protocols</em> continue to inform attempts to deny and distort the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum calls it the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times</a>.</p>
<p>Born out of fear and hatred, Holocaust conspiracy theories have enormous longevity and regain traction in times of uncertainty and societal unease. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/conspiracy-theories-and-the-people-who-believe-them-9780190844073?q=Conspiracy%20Theories%20and%20the%20People%20Who%20Believe%20Them&lang=en&cc=ca#">distortion and disinformation attempts to erode our belief</a> in the historical record and cast aspersions on Jews, it simultaneously nourishes conspiracy theories that encourage extreme nationalism, and not infrequently antisemitism. </p>
<p>Antisemitism is inherently conspiratorial. In the 20th century, it became <a href="https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/ctec/ctec-publications/violent-impact-anti-semitic-conspiracy">deeply enmeshed in western antidemocratic and fascist politics</a>.</p>
<p>Visions of shadowy Jewish cabals pulling the strings behind world events and orchestrating disasters, both macro and personal, continue to hold sway in our political imagination. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1547250248204095488"}"></div></p>
<h2>Pandemic misappropriations</h2>
<p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-lockdown protesters around the world frequently <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/holocaust-survivor-decries-abuse-of-yellow-star-at-covid-protests/">appropriated the yellow star</a> that was forced upon Jews during the Holocaust. Others invoked visuals of the <a href="https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/shameful-auschwitz-style-banner-polish-133615944.html">notorious death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau</a> in a misguided attempt to compare their supposed victimization to the genocide of European Jewry. </p>
<p>Holocaust distortion and conspiracism are equally dangerous: both open the door to entertaining fantasies and ideas that have historically led to mass murder of Jews. </p>
<p>This is the case whether it is the intentionally hateful kind espoused by infamous neo-Nazis <a href="https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/holocaust-denial/ernst-zundel/">like Ernst Zundel</a>, or misguided appropriations by anti-lockdown protesters <a href="https://www.againstholocaustdistortion.org/news/debunking-inappropriate-holocaust-comparisons-the-covid-19-yellow-star">during the pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>One result of this phenomenon is <a href="https://www.governing.com/now/conspiracy-theories-cast-shadows-over-washington-midterms">the weakening of our democratic institutions</a>, which are the foundation of western democracy itself. </p>
<h2>Weakend public trust</h2>
<p>Just as the spread of this disinformation and false equivalencies instrumentalize history, they also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211000217">weaken public trust in</a> the bodies <a href="https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/transparency-communication-and-trust-the-role-of-public-communication-in-responding-to-the-wave-of-disinformation-about-the-new-coronavirus-bef7ad6e/">that determine public health guidelines</a> and oversee public safety <a href="https://thehub.ca/2022-08-25/rudyard-griffiths-wef-conspiracies-are-antisemitic-and-a-moral-stain-on-conservative-politics">and economic policy</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Health-care workers in scrubs and masks look out a window at the top of protest signs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Health-care workers watch from a window as demonstrators gather outside Toronto General Hospital, in September 2021, to protest against COVID-19 vaccines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Characteristically, conspiracy theories, disinformation and misinformation don’t need to prove their claims. They need only to cause doubt and undermine the agencies and departments that function as part of the democratic process.</p>
<p>We are living in conspiratorial times. The concerning prevalence of Holocaust distortion and denial material online today poses a serious challenge to educators. Even when debunked, disinformation can remain accessible through online platforms influencing new generations unaware of how this information has been discredited. </p>
<p>A recent UNESCO study reported that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/holocaust-denial-telegram-history-distortion-content-moderation/">nearly half of the Holocaust content on the app Telegram</a> contained denial and disinformation. <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000381958">Educational programs have been developed</a> that target the specific challenges posed by this proliferation of falsehoods and disinformation. </p>
<h2>Robust Holocaust education, digital literacy</h2>
<p>It will require however, prioritizing teaching digital literacy and robust Holocaust education — and repeatedly equipping learners with <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2022/02/09/abbie-richards-fights-tiktok-disinformation-with-a-cup-of-tea-a-conspiracy-chart-and-a-punchline">tools to critically analyze what they encounter in online forums</a>. </p>
<iframe src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6890257204004359430?lang=en-US" style="border:0;width:100%;min-height:825px;" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Holocaust distortion and conspiracism are only one form of ugly disinformation swirling our polluted media ecosystems and social networks, but they are a particularly venomous and dangerous one. </p>
<p>Addressing this problem will not be easy. It requires a collaborative response that must include international co-operation from all levels of governments, leaders and international organizations devoted to nurturing and protecting civil society. When a celebrity such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/19/kanye-west-changes-name-ye">Ye, formerly known as Kanye West</a>, can espouse <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/us/los-angeles-demonstrators-kanye-west-antisemitic-remarks/index.html">antisemitic conspiracy theories</a> and still have a business partnership with Adidas — <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/25/adidas-terminates-partnership-with-ye-following-rappers-antisemitic-remarks.html">now ended after mounting public pressure</a> — there is indeed a lot of work to do. To their credit, <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/10/21/kanye-west-balenciaga-antisemetic-comments-twitter-instagram/?queryly=related_article">sponsor Balenciaga severed ties</a> with him after his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/arts/music/kanye-west-adidas-balenciaga-yeezy.html">antisemitic outbursts</a>.</p>
<p>To effect real change, education, collective responsibility and action are essential for success.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carson Phillips is affiliated with the Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto, Canada and a Canadian delegate to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.</span></em></p>Many conspiracy theories and disinformation are rooted in antisemitic tropes which spread harm and undermine our democratic institutions.Carson Phillips, Adjunct, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Gratz CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1830762022-06-06T12:51:18Z2022-06-06T12:51:18Z2/3 of US colleges and universities lack student groups for Muslims, Jews, Hindus or Buddhists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464516/original/file-20220520-25-yatomj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C0%2C5843%2C3931&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Muslim student groups are located at only 28% of U.S. colleges. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/side-view-of-asian-beautiful-young-muslim-student-royalty-free-image/1213143339?adppopup=true">mkitina4 via iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Most U.S. colleges and universities lack minority religious student groups for Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim students. This is according to our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407221084695">2022 peer-reviewed study</a> about officially recognized minority religious student groups across 1,953 four-year not-for-profit colleges and universities in the United States. </p>
<p>Colleges and universities across the U.S. typically <a href="https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.70.2.c8121767x9075210">maintain databases of all student organizations on their campuses</a>. By analyzing those databases, we found that Muslim student groups are located at only 28% of U.S. colleges and universities, while Jewish student groups are at just 25% of U.S. colleges and universities. </p>
<p>Additionally, Buddhist and Hindu student groups are each represented at 5% of colleges and universities. And 66% of U.S. colleges and universities lack any type of minority religious student group. </p>
<p>Using <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/">U.S. Department of Education data</a>, we also identified characteristics of schools that are home to one or more minority religious student groups. We found that the presence of minority religious student groups is partly due to institutional resources. For example, schools with large endowments tend to have more minority religious student groups than schools with smaller endowments, partly because wealthier schools employ more <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780761834236/Where-You-Work-Matters-Student-Affairs-Administration-at-Different-Types-of-Institutions">student affairs professionals</a>. Those professionals’ jobs are to support student organizations on campus. Also, wealthier schools often provide <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2018.1495073">funds</a> to student organizations.</p>
<p>Beyond providing staff and money, schools with larger numbers of students have more minority religious student groups. This is likely because schools with larger student bodies have more students interested in forming Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim student groups. </p>
<p>Finally, certain types of institutions are more likely to have minority religious student groups. We found that approximately 40% of public colleges and universities have minority religious student groups, while only 27% of private Christian colleges and universities have minority religious student groups. This is partly because private Christian colleges or universities are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-786X20210000044012">legally allowed to discriminate</a> against non-Christian students, including by refusing to recognize non-Christian student groups. Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim students may also avoid attending Christian colleges and universities in the first place.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Research shows that minority religious student groups can provide Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim student groups “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3200/CHNG.38.2.22-27">safe spaces</a>,” even in places where they do not feel welcome. For example, after 9/11, Muslim students faced <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1360200032000139910">abuse and harassment</a> on some college and university campuses. Muslim student groups supported these students by providing them with advice on how to navigate unwelcoming campus environments.</p>
<p>Minority religious student organizations also play important roles in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-013-9640-6">transforming their campuses’ policies</a> in ways that make those campuses friendlier to students from minority faiths. For example, national-level organizations such as the <a href="https://www.msanational.org/">Muslim Students Association</a> and <a href="https://www.hillel.org/">Hillel International</a> instruct leaders of local college chapters on how to establish prayer rooms on their campuses. They also provide guidance on how to persuade schools to serve halal or kosher meals, foods that conform to Muslim or Jewish dietary regulations, respectively.</p>
<p>The fact that most colleges and universities lack minority religious student groups means that many students lack resources that could <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469629964/muslim-american-women-on-campus/">make them feel more welcome on their campuses</a>.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>When researchers interview leaders or members of student groups, they often <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469636221/gay-on-gods-campus/">identify</a> practical strategies and tactics that students use to form and grow organizations on campus. However, because of our reliance on quantitative data, we don’t know how the strategic thinking and leadership capabilities of Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim students may have contributed to the establishment of groups on their campuses.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>Future research could take a look at the characteristics of schools that have the largest or most active minority religious student organizations. Subsequent research could also identify characteristics of the most effective minority religious student groups.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan S. Coley is a Public Fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute. He receives funding from the Association for the Sociology of Religion, Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Associations, and the Louisville Institute.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary John Adler Jr receives funding from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Religious Research Association, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Associations, the Louisville Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dhruba Das does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim student organizations are rarities at most colleges and universities. An expert delves into why.Jonathan S. Coley, Associate Professor of Sociology, Oklahoma State UniversityDhruba Das, PhD Candidate and Graduate Teaching Associate, Oklahoma State UniversityGary John Adler Jr., Associate Professor of Sociology, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1813912022-05-27T17:02:10Z2022-05-27T17:02:10ZThe ordination of the first female rabbi 50 years ago has brought many changes – and some challenges<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465149/original/file-20220524-19-c9gyrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C14%2C1943%2C1434&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sara Hurwitz, Amy Eilberg, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso and Sally J. Priesand, each of whom was the first female rabbi in her branch of Judaism.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, on June 3, 1972, as <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/priesand-sally-jane">Sally J. Priesand</a> became the first woman ordained a rabbi by a Jewish seminary, her 35 male classmates spontaneously rose to their feet to acknowledge her historic feat. </p>
<p>For nearly 2,000 years, the position of rabbi – which literally means “my master” or “my teacher” - was limited to men. The only exception during all those years had been Rabbi Regina Jonas, <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jonas-regina">who was ordained in a private ceremony in Germany</a> in 1935. Jonas perished at Auschwitz in 1944, and the details of her life <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41444469">were discovered</a> in archives after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Students in black regalia seated along three rows for a class photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465152/original/file-20220524-26-1qv8v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465152/original/file-20220524-26-1qv8v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465152/original/file-20220524-26-1qv8v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465152/original/file-20220524-26-1qv8v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465152/original/file-20220524-26-1qv8v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465152/original/file-20220524-26-1qv8v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465152/original/file-20220524-26-1qv8v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rabbi Sally Priesand with her 35 male classmates and faculty of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 3, 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thirty-seven years after Jonas’ pioneering first, Rabbi Priesand’s ordination by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the seminary of <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-jewish-denominations/">Reform Judaism</a>, the largest denomination of religious affiliation among American Jews, opened the door to hundreds of women becoming rabbis. </p>
<p>As a rabbi and <a href="https://www.carolebalin.com/author">historian</a> <a href="https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/the-sacred-calling-four-decades-of-women-in-the-rabbinate">of Jewish women in the modern era</a>, I know that while the advent of women as ordained religious leaders has changed the face of the rabbinate, the <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/justice-justice-you-shall-pursue/">values of equity and justice </a> codified in the Hebrew Bible have not yet been fully realized when it comes to gender.</p>
<h2>Making a difference</h2>
<p>The rise and integration of women into the rabbinate over the past five decades has transformed many aspects of Jewish life, especially in North America, where they primarily serve. A smaller number are employed in Israel, Europe and Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A female student holding a Torah scroll." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465357/original/file-20220525-20-bcs9ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465357/original/file-20220525-20-bcs9ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465357/original/file-20220525-20-bcs9ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465357/original/file-20220525-20-bcs9ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465357/original/file-20220525-20-bcs9ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465357/original/file-20220525-20-bcs9ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465357/original/file-20220525-20-bcs9ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sally Priesand as a student rabbi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An estimated 1,500 women have become rabbis across every major Jewish denomination. After Rabbi Priesand in 1972, Rabbi <a href="https://jwa.org/rabbis/narrators/sasso-sandy">Sandy Eisenberg Sasso</a> was the first in the Reconstructionist movement in 1974, Rabbi <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/eilberg-amy">Amy Eilberg</a> in the Conservative movement in 1985 and Rabba <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hurwitz-sara">Sara Hurwitz</a> in Modern Orthodoxy in 2009. </p>
<p>The use of the professional title “rabbi” for an ordained woman remains controversial among Orthodox Jews as it derives from the masculine Hebrew word “rav,” the title given to men at ordination. As a result, some use “<a href="https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/rabbi-rabba-maharat-rabbanit-orthodox-jewish-women-whats-title">rabba</a>,” the feminine rendering of “rav” in Hebrew, while others use “maharat,” a Hebrew acronym for a female leader of Jewish law, spirituality and Torah. </p>
<p>Classes at liberal Jewish seminaries today often consist of at least equal numbers of male- and female-identifying rabbinical candidates. <a href="https://www.yeshivatmaharat.org/mission-and-p2">Maharat</a> in New York City was founded in 2009 as the first institute to ordain women to serve as Orthodox clergy. Over 50 women have been ordained since then.</p>
<p>Along with female academics, female rabbis have expanded the canon of Jewish study and stretched the parameters of Jewish practice to include women and their perspectives. </p>
<p>New commentary based on the <a href="https://wrj.org/spirituality/torah-study/torah-womens-commentary">Torah</a> – which means Jewish learning in general but refers literally to the first five books of the Bible contained in the scroll regularly read in synagogue – has recovered the stories of biblical women and treated them with the academic rigor usually reserved for biblical men. Women, alongside men, are studying classical legal texts and responding knowledgeably to questions that inform practice.</p>
<p>Feminist Jewish theologians have questioned the ways in which <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/engendering-judaism/">God</a>
is described and understood, challenging the centrality of both male imagery and hierarchy in Jewish religious thinking and leading to the production of prayer books with gender-inclusive language. </p>
<p>Moreover, female rabbis have been instrumental in creating <a href="https://www.ritualwell.org/">rituals</a> to acknowledge milestones relating to women’s experiences. So, for instance, baby namings welcoming girls into the covenant now coexist alongside those for boys, and new religious ceremonies marking the first menstrual period and menopause have emerged.</p>
<p>By dint of their presence as religious authorities, female rabbis are toppling the traditional gendered differentiation of roles between Jewish women and men and democratizing Jewish communities. In Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, for instance, women are no longer relegated to lighting candles and men alone privileged with reciting Kiddush, the blessing over the wine, on the Jewish Sabbath. Female scholar-rabbis now teach and, in some cases, lead seminaries, like <a href="https://hebrewcollege.edu/about/president/">Boston’s Hebrew College</a> and <a href="https://www.jtsa.edu/team/shuly-rubin-schwartz/">New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary</a>. </p>
<p>They are also challenging conventional definitions of professional success by raising questions about work-life balance pertinent to all rabbis, regardless of gender.</p>
<h2>Fighting for equality</h2>
<p>While their impact on Jewish life has been significant, female rabbis continue to face considerable challenges.</p>
<p>Teams deployed to Reform synagogues in the early 1980s to interview Jews about their qualms regarding female rabbis’ initial entry into the workplace yielded <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120718002329/http://data.ccarnet.org/journal/997cb.html">comments</a> such as “the rigors of the rabbinate are too great and women too weak for the demanding routine,” “women do not know how to, nor care to, wield power or authority” and “women who succeed will reflect poorly on their [male] colleagues.” These have given way to far more egregious claims of gender discrimination and <a href="https://religionnews.com/2021/10/22/in-a-first-conservative-movement-publishes-list-of-expelled-rabbis-to-website/">sexual misconduct</a> at <a href="http://huc.edu/sites/default/files/About/PDF/HUC%20REPORT%20OF%20INVESTIGATION%20--%2011.04.21.pdf">seminaries</a> and <a href="https://10pzbn347s7w1b9a412ijnxn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Alcalaw-Report-of-Investigation.pdf">synagogues </a>in the wake of the #MeToo movement. </p>
<p>Equity in the Jewish workplace has yet to materialize. There is, for instance, an 18% <a href="https://10pzbn347s7w1b9a412ijnxn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Winter-2022-_-The-Gender-Wage-Gap-in-the-Reform-Movement-An-Updated-United-Data-Narrative-_-Savannah-Noray.pdf">gender-based wage gap</a> among Reform rabbis in congregations. The <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rabbis-in-united-states">acceptance</a> of female rabbis in Orthodox Judaism remains highly contested. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America <a href="https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.23.3.01">continues to reiterate its opposition</a> to ordaining women. For sectors further to the right, like the ultra-Orthodox Hasidim, affirmations of male and female difference make the question of women rabbis moot. </p>
<p>Organizations like the <a href="https://womensrabbinicnetwork.org/">Women’s Rabbinic Network</a> and the three-year-old grassroots Facebook group known as <a href="https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-week-that-all-jewish-women-turned-invisible/?utm_source=August+21%2C+2019&utm_campaign=Wed+August++21&utm_medium=email">Year of the Jewish Woman</a> are seeking to root out inequities. Plans to thoroughly revise the ethics code of Reform rabbis have been set in motion, and the Women’s Rabbinic Network continues to advocate for passage of a uniform family and medical leave policy.</p>
<h2>‘Little girls can grow up knowing they can be rabbis’</h2>
<p>The truth is that the days of a rabbi envisioned as a white man with a beard in a dark suit are coming to a close. </p>
<p>In more recent years, the diversity engendered by women in the rabbinate has expanded to include <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/stanton-alysa">rabbis of color</a>, <a href="http://huc.edu/news/2022/02/09/alum-spotlight-rabbi-rebecca-l-dubowe-93">rabbis with disabilities</a>, <a href="https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/story/ra-spotlight-rachel-isaacs-nurturing-small-town-jewish-life">openly gay rabbis</a> and <a href="http://www.transtorah.org/whoweare.html">transgender rabbis</a>. In May 2022, the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion issued a certificate of ordination to a nonbinary candidate for the first time in its 147-year history. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465153/original/file-20220524-22-eci0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman removes a Torah scroll from the ark, a cabinet that houses scrolls of the Hebrew Bible." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465153/original/file-20220524-22-eci0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465153/original/file-20220524-22-eci0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465153/original/file-20220524-22-eci0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465153/original/file-20220524-22-eci0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465153/original/file-20220524-22-eci0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465153/original/file-20220524-22-eci0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465153/original/file-20220524-22-eci0aw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin, the first Chinese American rabbi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ClergyStressToughJobMadeTougher/2201668b01af41dcac4d3263c81262c1/photo?Query=Rabbi%20Jacqueline%20Mates-Muchin&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=8&currentItemNo=3">AP Photo/Noah Berger</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh <a href="https://forward.com/israel/3416/tinseltown-rabbi-saves-a-prayer-for-prime-time-sho/">appeared on the long-running medical television drama</a> “Grey’s Anatomy” in 2005 (as herself), and Jacqueline Mates-Muchin, who is the first Chinese American rabbi, <a href="https://jweekly.com/2020/08/18/oakland-rabbi-opens-democratic-national-conventions-jewish-event/">addressed</a> the Democratic National Convention’s Jewish American Community Meeting in 2020, they were smashing the so-called stained-glass ceiling and enabling all Jews to consider the rabbinate as a calling. </p>
<p>As Priesand <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQTKsjivpGU&ab_channel=Women%27sRabbinicNetwork">told me during an interview in May 2021</a>, “One of the things I’ve always been proudest of is that little girls can grow up knowing they could be rabbis if they want to. And I’ve worked really hard not just to open the door but to hold it open for others to follow in my footsteps.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carole B. Balin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rabbi Sally J. Priesand’s ordination by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion opened the doors to hundreds of women becoming rabbis.Carole B. Balin, Professor Emerita of Jewish History, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.