The Ugly Rise in Anti-Semitism

Week #3

Unfortunately, my weekly “Current Obsessions” re-cap is getting choked by one anxious, overriding obsession this week: the ugly rise in anti-Semitism.

Just like African Americans told whites like me when we were appalled in 2016 at the overt racism of the Trump campaign and his subsequent election: This antisemitism is nothing new.

I’ve felt its heat my whole life, particularly in lefty circles, and yes, at my woke college decades ago.

Of course harsh criticism of Israel is warranted—and has been for a long time—nor is it inherently anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. But it’s not hard to detect the sickness of anti-Semitism when its embedded in those critiques, as it often is.

What makes this week so troubling is that anti-Semitism is out in the open now (even popular) , seething and loud.

Open Anti-Semitism had already been elevated by the right wing Trump era, which makes sense given that Trump’s Nativist America First rhetoric —called out and denounced during its original incarnation in the 1940s by Woody Guthrie !—is steeped in the historic tropes of anti-Semitism. QAnon’s focus on saving the children, for example, is just an updated version of age old conspiracy theories about Jews killing Christian babies.

I wish I could be obsessed this week with the tune I’m currently polishing on piano, “Carry Go Bring Come,” by Justin Hinds & the Dominoes; or with the book I just finished, Tomorrow Will Be Better by Betty Smith (or the one I just started, The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels); or by Benny Goodman’s famous 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall, which I’ve been listening to all day (loving the Jewish Klezmer vibes);

or even by my new vintage 1966 Mod sweater.

But the pathology of anti-Semitism is too heavy today. I’m having a hard time thinking about anything else right now or thinking that the world is a safe place for me to be.