IS THERE A CURE FOR ANTI-SEMITISM'
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their campuses are involved in a political version of rock and roll, a way
of being outrageous and driving the adults up the walls. In this case, the
adults are the whites and the black academics who have faced the inter–
woven nature of our American identities. When the academic commod–
ity sales of alienated futures resulted in such heavy trading on campuses,
many were afraid to accept their American identities. They want to
chuck the hyphen and what comes behind it. They want to be ethnic
students first and foremost; their own versions of what they think Jews
are. What we are talking about is the unflagging certitude we associate
with the most strong-minded Jews. We are talking about the invincible
proof of the power of the written word, the text that has carried Jews
through century after century. This results, unfortunately, in some places,
in what I call "oppression envy" on the parts of those who don't have
great tales encoded with the level of insights into the human soul that
beget the high understandings of our strengths and of our weaknesses;
that tell us, as the Bible does, of the ominous responsibilities of power;
that tell us, over and over, how even the most enlightened can fall to
brutal humiliation. Even for all the inroads into our lives of the martial
arts and the various schools of meditation and Buddhism and cuisine have
had, adding an Eastern set of spices to the goulash of our American cul–
ture, the heaviest weight still comes from the Judeo-Christian heritage.
Oppression envy is mostly connected these days to World War II. It
was the crucifixion of Jews in modern Europe that saved us from having
too much confidence in civilization. It was a heavy tab, a tab paid in
blood and one we must always remember, because what happened to the
European Jews is humbling. We have to face how easy it is to mistake a
toilet seat for a throne and slide down into the spiritual feces of xeno–
phobia most foul. Genocide, without a doubt, is xenophobia most foul.
Pehaps the history of the world is the history of how societies addressed
xenophobia; to what degree they fear or persecute the Other, welcome
the Other, learn from the Other. But the xenophobia that cuts at the
flesh and souls of Jews is not one that comes of being unfamiliar. It is a
protean xenophobia: if you hate books, you can hate Jews; if you hate
business, you can hate Jews; if you hate the law, you can hate Jews; if
you hate crime, you can hate Jews. For the anti-Semite, Jews exist in an
endless department store that sells only resentment, paranoia, and irra–
tionality. Because the Jew is both Moses and Jesus, we might be talking
about a remarkable tale of the Oedipal impulse.
I want to conclude by saying that I have, from my experience in the
world, absolute confidence in the fact that we will come through all of
this; that these various yahoos and demagogues and rednecks of one hue
or another will periodically bark at the gates; they will sometimes ring
the bell; they may even be able to get past the doorman and defecate on
