IS THERE A
CURE FOR
ANTI-SEMITISM?
405
Semite except "Up yours!" or "Shut up!" or "Drop dead!" or some–
thing similarly elegant. I should, however, say that I have known some
anti -Semites who
have
been converted, though in the case of pathologi–
cal anti-Semites, nothing is possible.
To repeat, my view is that the best thing to do is to keep calling
anti-Semitism by its proper name and to keep condemning it. That
sounds self-evident, but the fact is that very few people and very few or–
ganizations have actua lly done that in the past twenty-five years . If you
look at the history of responses to explosions of anti-Semitism among
blacks, you will find many more apologetics, justifications, and denials
than strong condemnations. So I think that condemning these statements
and trying to isolate the people who make them, instead of lionizing
them, as has so often been done, might help. And it would certainly be
better for intellectual hygiene and for Jewish self-respect ifJews behaved
in that way instead of constantly begging blacks to help them out in this
area.
Edith Kurzweil:
Thank you. Harry Kahn?
Harry Kahn:
Just a comment on the NAACP and the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund. Many people confuse this organization with the NAACP.
The Legal Defense Fund was begun in the Thurgood Marshall days and
it was a part of the NAACP, but later the NAACP actually sued the
Legal Defense Fund for using its name. The NAACP had Senator
Brooke as their lawyer; he lost. The Legal Defense Fund is a separate or–
ganization which has been against anti -Semitism and has spoken out
against it. Jack Greenberg was the executive director for twenty-four
years, and they built up respect in many intellectual segments of the black
community. They are speaking out. Elaine Jones, the new executive
director, is speaking with the Anti-Defamation League, and this area of
promise, I think, shou ld be encouraged and helped. Many people confuse
the two organizations and refuse to give any more money now to the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund for their fight. That I think is a mistake; I
think it should be supported and helped.
Edith Kurzweil:
Thank you.
Questioll:
My question is for Robert Wistrich. It's difficult to ask you a
question, in tact, since you yourself have so beautifully and dauntingly
raised so many issues. You said, if I understood you, that in going
through the history, briefly, after the "God-reasons" more or less went
away, in the advent of modernity, the Jew became an abstraction, and
