Ruth Wisse on the Nature and Functions of Anti-Semitism

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cui bono? Who benefits? Who benefits when Jews are turned into scapegoats for the ills of the world? Who stands to gain from turning the Jews into the source of all a society’s pathologies? Who comes out ahead when politics are organized against that ever-present outsider—the Jew?

These kinds of questions—questions about the political functions of anti-Semitism—are, regrettably, rarely asked by those who seek to understand the phenomenon. Often, anti-Semitism is understood as but one prejudice among many, another irrational hatred that infects the human heart. But to view anti-Semitism in this way, argues Professor Ruth Wisse, is to misunderstand its true nature as a ruthlessly effective political movement. In “The Functions of Anti-Semitism,” published in National Affairs in the fall of 2017, Professor Wisse analyzes the many uses of Jew-hatred and makes the case for studying anti-Semitism using the tools of political science.

In this podcast, Professor Wisse joins Jonathan Silver to explore her essay in greater depth. They examine the history of modern anti-Semitism from its genesis in 19^th-century Germany to its manifestations in the Muslim world and contemporary college campuses. Wisse and Silver demonstrate, through a methodical look at the nature and functions of anti-Semitism, that if one wants to understand this most persistent of hatreds, one must look for its roots not in the Jew, but in the anti-Semite.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble, as well as “Baruch Habah,” performed by the choir of Congregation Shearith Israel.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Looking through the span of Jewish history, hatred of the Jews has taken different forms at different times, and it's been rooted in different intellectual soil.
0:16.0	Anti-Semitism has been theological, racial, ethnic, national, anti-Semitism's adaptability
0:23.1	is bewildering to try and understand. It's bewildering to understand because we look for theological
0:29.2	or racial or ethnic or national counter-arguments to disarm the anti-Semites' various articulation
0:35.5	of his hatred. But what if? What if those were all
0:39.9	surface expressions of a yet deeper rationale? What if we can't understand religious
0:46.0	anti-Semitism through the concepts of theology? What if, to really understand what
0:51.1	anti-Semitism is, we need to take a different track altogether.
0:55.6	Antisemitism is a form of political organization, and as a form of political organization,
1:01.8	we can only understand its essence, how it is deployed, and for what purpose, by asking the
1:08.5	first question of politics. Cui Bono. Who benefits from the organization of politics against the Jews?
1:15.6	Welcome to the Tikva podcast and great Jewish essays and ideas. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
1:21.6	Who benefits from politics organized against the Jews is the question that eminent literary
1:26.6	scholar and cultural analyst
1:28.7	Ruth Weiss asks in her essay the functions of anti-Semitism, published in fall 2017 in the
1:35.4	Policy Journal National Affairs. Her essay probes the connections between anti-Semitism and
1:41.6	anti-liberalism, the surfacing of anti-Semitism on the political
1:45.4	right and the political left, and altogether invites a bold new approach to the diagnosis
1:51.1	and the analysis, what one might call to the political science of anti-Semitism.
1:57.0	If you like listening to the Tikva podcast, I invite you to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher, where you can leave us a rating and a review.
2:03.5	And if you'd like to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website, tikfa fund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
2:11.0	Now, here's my conversation with Harvard University Professor Emerita and Tikva Fund Senior Distinguished Fellow, the great Ruth Weiss.
	...

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