HISTORY THEN AND NOW
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Jewry in 1900. American Jewry represented about one million, that's to say
ten percent of the Jewish people. Of course, that was to change very rapid–
ly in the first decades of the twentieth century, so that on the eve of the
Holocaust, the largest single Jewish communi ty in the world was already
located in the U.S. Nevertheless, if we take the year 1939, on the eve of the
Holocaust, even then fifty-seven percent of the world Jewish population
still lived in Europe. We are talking about 9.5 million Jews, mainly of
Ashkenazi origin, many of them still Yiddish-speaking. They were con–
centrated mostly in Poland, Soviet Russia, and other parts of eastern
Europe, but also in Germany. The Holocaust destroyed two-thirds of
European Jewry. That is the primary and overwhelming reason why the
Jews are no longer a European people and why, increasingly since 1945,
the world Jewish map has become increasingly simplified. It is much more
bipolar, with two great centers: Israel and the U.S. In Europe there are now
for the first time since the eighteenth century less than two million Jews.
For the first time since the middle ages there are more Jews in western
Europe than eastern Europe. The largest single community on the
European continent is the French Jewish communi ty, the only one which
has shown a significant growth rate since 1945, the only one to have actu–
ally increased its size and vitality since the Holocaust, overwhelmingly due
to considerable Sephardic North Mrican immigration.
Ifwe now look at the global Jewish situation, I think we can immedi–
ately see the huge differences that exist between the present and the past.
First of all I would suggest that there has probably never been a period in
history where Jews have experienced greater social acceptance than now,
where they have been more a part of the "establishment," of the dominant
economic, cultural, and even political elites, particularly in the western
diaspora. They've enjoyed, in the more recent post-war period, an
unprecedented climate of tolerance, openness, and willingness to accept
cultural differences. A society like France, for instance, which since 1789
had been very reluctant to accept any deviation from the Jacobin norm,
from the uniform mold of the republican nation, has acknowledged the
"right to difference." The same is true throughout most of Europe today.
Anti-Semitism is, it would seem to me, relatively dormant at the present
time. This is less true of Russia and some parts of eastern Europe, but anti–
Semitism does not have the same empirical significance it once did because
of the tragic decimation of most Eastern European Jewish communities.
This is also true, for different reasons, of the Arab and Islamic world. Anti–
Semitism no longer affects the indigenous Jewish communities, which
have virtually disappeared. There is, of course, a deep hostility towards
Israel and Zionism and this also spills over into violence against Diaspora
Jews
in
the form of terrorist actions. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism seems a
much weaker force currently than it was one hundred years ago and certainly
