I think most everyone is overwhelmed this week and an admission of that is a perfectly cromulent way of parsing this week’s events. I know it is certainly how I am (partiality failing) to process things.
I also want to thank you for the Shanes’s piece. Having such a succinct summary of the last few years discussion around dueling antisemitism definitions made me able to put to words a frustration I’ve had the last few years:
There has been a lot of ink spilled, understandably, on how to define individual instances as antisemitic or not but less conversation on a wider theory of WHAT role antisemitism is playing in a broader abstract sense in society and culture l.
Personally I feel like something broader like that would be useful in helping parse whether any given…hand gesture is worth focusing on.
I’ll say that my own search for more recent writing like that will likely mean cracking open my copy of Shaul Magid’s “Importance of Exile” and maybe poking my head into some sources he mentions there (e.g. Lapidot’s Jews Out of the Question etc. ) but I’d be very interested if you or readers/commenters to the newsletter had any other recommendations for anything along those lines written post-Oct 7th.
Sorry to bump this thread almost a week later BUT I just bumped into a post by Shaul Magid (I was not even aware he had a Substack!) that appears to be the opening to a series of posts where he hopes to discuss a related topic of why the Jewish community, from his perspective, has had such trouble broaching the subject of antisemitism post-Oct 7. I thought it might be worth linking here.
The crux of his initial post seems to be the following which I find both depressing and plausible but I am not convinced just yet that it gets at the reality of things:
“I want to explore a different question: why Jews today can’t seem to talk about antisemitism without the conversation quickly breaking down. It is not that we differ on the reality of antisemitism; rather, I think, we differ on how we understand the Jew qua Jew, now, and historically. And if we can’t agree on the subject (the Jew/s), we will never agree on the definition of what has victimized it. “
Hi Emily,
I think most everyone is overwhelmed this week and an admission of that is a perfectly cromulent way of parsing this week’s events. I know it is certainly how I am (partiality failing) to process things.
I also want to thank you for the Shanes’s piece. Having such a succinct summary of the last few years discussion around dueling antisemitism definitions made me able to put to words a frustration I’ve had the last few years:
There has been a lot of ink spilled, understandably, on how to define individual instances as antisemitic or not but less conversation on a wider theory of WHAT role antisemitism is playing in a broader abstract sense in society and culture l.
Personally I feel like something broader like that would be useful in helping parse whether any given…hand gesture is worth focusing on.
I’ll say that my own search for more recent writing like that will likely mean cracking open my copy of Shaul Magid’s “Importance of Exile” and maybe poking my head into some sources he mentions there (e.g. Lapidot’s Jews Out of the Question etc. ) but I’d be very interested if you or readers/commenters to the newsletter had any other recommendations for anything along those lines written post-Oct 7th.
Hi! This is a really lovely and important thought - I will pull this together for next week's newsletter. Thank you for the idea!
Hi Emily,
Sorry to bump this thread almost a week later BUT I just bumped into a post by Shaul Magid (I was not even aware he had a Substack!) that appears to be the opening to a series of posts where he hopes to discuss a related topic of why the Jewish community, from his perspective, has had such trouble broaching the subject of antisemitism post-Oct 7. I thought it might be worth linking here.
The full post is here: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaulmagid/p/why-do-jews-have-such-a-hard-time?r=4oyd8&utm_medium=ios
The crux of his initial post seems to be the following which I find both depressing and plausible but I am not convinced just yet that it gets at the reality of things:
“I want to explore a different question: why Jews today can’t seem to talk about antisemitism without the conversation quickly breaking down. It is not that we differ on the reality of antisemitism; rather, I think, we differ on how we understand the Jew qua Jew, now, and historically. And if we can’t agree on the subject (the Jew/s), we will never agree on the definition of what has victimized it. “