IS THERE A CURE FOR ANTI-SEMITISM'
379
kind of future does anti-Semitism have? That it does have a future, in
one shape or another, is something on which I think - alas - we can all
agree.
1
am not certain that I would want to put the case as strongly as
Saul Bellow has. But anti-Semitism is one of the great expressions of
human baseness; there is nothing to suggest that baseness is going to go
away in the near future and no reason to suppose that one of its proven
outlets is going to vanish just like that, either.
Certainly history teaches us
to
be cautious - as Jews, very cautious.
Perhaps I can risk telling a joke that I heard recently, in the hope that it
is not yet a chestnut. Weare in Russia, some time after the fall of
Communism. A Jew applies for a job; he has all the necessary qualifica–
tions, but he is turned down out of hand. He protests: surely he should
at least get an interview? The official decides to be open with him: "We
don't give jobs to Jews." The Jew is shocked:
"I
knew that things were
like that under the old regime, but I thought that now everything was
different." The official looks at him hard: "We
especially
don't give jobs
to
stllpidJews."
Well, none of us want to be stupid Jews. None of us want to be
caught out. A degree of caution seems at the very least a form of
psychological insurance.
But how great a degree? I return to my original question: what
kind of future does this monstrous phenomenon have? And 1 find myself
faced, as I often do when considering anti-Semitism at large, with the
problem of balancing personal impressions and reactions against larger
reflections; with weighing the prevailing circumstances of the world in
which I live against conditions in other societies or the lessons of the
past.
It's a problem which we all face, no more so than in the English–
speaking world. Most Jews in the United States and the lesser English–
speaking communities seem to me, all said and done, "at ease in Zion".
To discuss their (or our) affairs against the broader backdrop of Jewish
history is to find oneself juxtaposing the logical and mundane with the
tragic and apocalyptic. They are part of the same story, but it is hard to
maintain the necessary double focus .
To complete matters, the contours of anti-Semitism itself are much
less easily defined today than they were in the past. Perhaps it is anti–
Semites rather than Jews who ought to learn to talk about anti–
Semitisms in the plural (often connected or overlapping, but still distinct
from one another) rather than about a single anti-Semitism.
It has always been a bit like that, no doubt - we simplifY the past in
retrospect - but I think we can still say that until very recently there was
something called classic anti-Semitism. It varied from culture to culture,
