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How to Fight Anti-Semitism
The prescient New York Times writer delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains what we can do to defeat it.
“Stunning . . . Bari Weiss is heroic, fearless, brilliant and big-hearted. Most importantly, she is right.”—Lisa Taddeo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Women
On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history.
For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a total shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh raised a question Americans can no longer avoid: Could it happen here?
This book is Weiss’s answer.
Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism.
No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics and the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo, anti-Semitism is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all.
Weiss’s cri de couer is an unnerving reminder that Jews must never lose their hard-won instinct for danger, and a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in uncertain times from one of our most provocative writers. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.
“Stunning . . . Bari Weiss is heroic, fearless, brilliant and big-hearted. Most importantly, she is right.”—Lisa Taddeo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Women
On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history.
For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a total shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh raised a question Americans can no longer avoid: Could it happen here?
This book is Weiss’s answer.
Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism.
No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics and the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo, anti-Semitism is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all.
Weiss’s cri de couer is an unnerving reminder that Jews must never lose their hard-won instinct for danger, and a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in uncertain times from one of our most provocative writers. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published September 10, 2019
366 people are currently reading
2642 people want to read
About the author
Bari Weiss
3 books161 followersBari Weiss is a staff writer and editor for the opinion section of The New York Times. Weiss was an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal before joining the Times in 2017. She has also worked at Tablet, the online magazine of Jewish politics and culture. She is a native of Pittsburgh and lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 270 reviews
September 25, 2019
Bari Weiss is nothing if not intellectually dishonest. Every criticism ever levied against Bari, is reinforced by this utter and complete drivel.
Bari occupies a truly bizarre niche market by being a Jewish woman who, like Ben Shapiro, helps inspire and excuse Rightwing extremism that literally results in Jewish casualties, while instead presenting the left through a distorted lens that attempts to conflate criticism of the Israeli government with anti-semitism as the “real threat”.
Bari would have been flushed down the toilet a long time ago if not for her ability to spin a phrase. But once you get past the craft you see that she cherry picks and inflates facts while omitting key context and being wholly incapable of applying any sense of proportion to her grievances.
Does Bari explore or attempt to explain how growing numbers of white men are radicalized online and picking up guns to kill because of Rightwing extremism? No.
Does Bari even mention once the attacks against Jews by evangelicals? No
Bari’s whole focus is on the leftist threat, which she attempts to claim is a tinderbox of Nazi-ism ready to burst forth and start killing Jews at any moment.
Bari has referred to herself as an unhinged Zionist. And it really is the only way one can understand her shallow takes on what is and isn’t anti-semitism. She knows the left isn’t going to support a Jewish genocide. Her fear is that the left is willing to examine the authoritarian Israeli regime and its decades long apartheid treatment of Palestinians, their push for constant conflict in the Middle East (lest some country could challenge Israel’s war machine), and Israel’s own efforts to interfere in American politics which are absolutely a kin to Putin’s efforts in scope and volume.
The vast majority of Americans, regardless of political stripes, will always support Israel. But by Bari and her ilk distorting the focus, she is in fact empowering and enabling more synagogue shooters.
Bari occupies a truly bizarre niche market by being a Jewish woman who, like Ben Shapiro, helps inspire and excuse Rightwing extremism that literally results in Jewish casualties, while instead presenting the left through a distorted lens that attempts to conflate criticism of the Israeli government with anti-semitism as the “real threat”.
Bari would have been flushed down the toilet a long time ago if not for her ability to spin a phrase. But once you get past the craft you see that she cherry picks and inflates facts while omitting key context and being wholly incapable of applying any sense of proportion to her grievances.
Does Bari explore or attempt to explain how growing numbers of white men are radicalized online and picking up guns to kill because of Rightwing extremism? No.
Does Bari even mention once the attacks against Jews by evangelicals? No
Bari’s whole focus is on the leftist threat, which she attempts to claim is a tinderbox of Nazi-ism ready to burst forth and start killing Jews at any moment.
Bari has referred to herself as an unhinged Zionist. And it really is the only way one can understand her shallow takes on what is and isn’t anti-semitism. She knows the left isn’t going to support a Jewish genocide. Her fear is that the left is willing to examine the authoritarian Israeli regime and its decades long apartheid treatment of Palestinians, their push for constant conflict in the Middle East (lest some country could challenge Israel’s war machine), and Israel’s own efforts to interfere in American politics which are absolutely a kin to Putin’s efforts in scope and volume.
The vast majority of Americans, regardless of political stripes, will always support Israel. But by Bari and her ilk distorting the focus, she is in fact empowering and enabling more synagogue shooters.
September 3, 2019
READ THIS, NOW.
This book must be read by every single human being who wants to be a better one, and especially the ones who don't. Bari Weiss is the Grace Paley of our time. In these pages and everywhere else, Weiss is heroic and brilliant and greathearted and, most importantly, she is right.
This book must be read by every single human being who wants to be a better one, and especially the ones who don't. Bari Weiss is the Grace Paley of our time. In these pages and everywhere else, Weiss is heroic and brilliant and greathearted and, most importantly, she is right.
December 5, 2020
Bari Weiss shows why arguing logic with anti-Semites is not productive. The primary approach to fighting anti-Semitism, she argues, is to call it out. Don't shy away from it. Don't hide from it, or if you are Jewish, don't hide your Jewish identity. Instead, expose hateful talk it for what it is. It is racist. There are no justifications for it--it is just pure racism, plain and simple. Expose racism as the exact opposite of American values and democracy.
One of the most interesting aspects of this book, is how Weiss explains that anti-Semitism is not just spewed by extreme right-wingers. It is also just as bad among the far-left. Many of the people who spew out anti-Semitic junk claim political rationalizations to hide their racism. They use historical justifications, without even a superficial understanding of history.
I highly recommend this book to everyone, not just Jews. Because racism is infectious. It is so easy to hate "the other". In this nation, minorities make up 40% of the population. Among children 16 years and younger, minorities make up 50% of the population. We are becoming a nation where racism is so easy. We must call it out.
I did not read this book; I listened to the audiobook. The author narrates her own book, and she is a pretty good speaker. She brings a certain level of emotion in her reading; her voice brings out a feeling of -- what should I call it-- terror, anger, indignation, sadness, to the actions of horrible racists.
One of the most interesting aspects of this book, is how Weiss explains that anti-Semitism is not just spewed by extreme right-wingers. It is also just as bad among the far-left. Many of the people who spew out anti-Semitic junk claim political rationalizations to hide their racism. They use historical justifications, without even a superficial understanding of history.
I highly recommend this book to everyone, not just Jews. Because racism is infectious. It is so easy to hate "the other". In this nation, minorities make up 40% of the population. Among children 16 years and younger, minorities make up 50% of the population. We are becoming a nation where racism is so easy. We must call it out.
I did not read this book; I listened to the audiobook. The author narrates her own book, and she is a pretty good speaker. She brings a certain level of emotion in her reading; her voice brings out a feeling of -- what should I call it-- terror, anger, indignation, sadness, to the actions of horrible racists.
June 20, 2020
This is one of those novels that tell you more about the writer's mind than the world she is attempting to analyze. It is a bad-faith argument not just in support of racism and genocide, but one against the most basic tenets of judaism: to welcome the stranger.
While she makes mentions of this and attempts to occupy the "intellectual elite who is provocative because she's speaking the truth" space, this ahistorical analysis of anti-semitism — one that utilizes a peculiar definition that became conflated with criticism of far-right Israeli policy in the 70s — will actually lend itself to racism and anti-semitism were it not so sanctimonious and obfuscated.
Ironically, Weiss asks no serious questions of Israel or the neo-nazi. Which is peculiar considering the latter literally calls for the annihilation of Jews. (Shapiro occupies this same space, simultaneously dog-whistling the "coastal elites" and talking about a set of people who control the world, but also pretending to care about the tenets of Judaism.) The ignorance is astounding here. The cleverest grift in her book is one of conflation. It begins immediately, grabbing you by the throat and squeezing. She conflates anti-semitism with criticisms of Israel's genocidal approach to Palestinians. That is to say, criticizing the racist government of Israel is anti-semitic. This is a laughable argument were Weiss not perpetually falling upwards through far-right editor positions in major American newspapers.
Judith Butler points out:
Another peculiar section of the book engages in Islamophobia, where she brings up far-right fringe muslim leaders who are racist, and then generalizes these fringe ideas to all muslims as justification to the inevitable lead up: "there is a reason to worry" about muslims in Europe. If one were to say "Netanyahu's comments regarding ethnic cleansing is a reason for Palestinians to worry…" Mademoiselle Weiss would be up in arms, frantically typing an op-ed and calling it anti-semitic and asking for that person's head on a stake.
There is a minute political approach and no historical analysis. Her haphazard "argument" is thus applied backwards. Israel exists and therefore is a legitimate democratic force. While this is fine, she extends that legitimacy to the breaking international human rights laws. If the argument is that they are a legitimate democratic force, why does she abdicate their responsibilities to international law? The fascistic element of this: "I can criticize Palestine and Hamas because they're illegitimate, but if you criticize Israel, which is legitimate, you are an anti-semite."
She raves against "identity politics" and discounts the threat of far-right neo-nazis and online hate platforms like 4chan and 8chan; weirdly, she thinks the real threat is coming from the left. (This is a bizarre right-wing talking point that Weiss adopts.) Yet, her entire identity is one of "Israel can do no wrong and criticizing Israel is anti-semitic." It is so ignorant and devoid of any intellectual fervour that one wonders how it passed the vigorous fact-checks one has to go through with their publisher as a professional writer. Her foray as an "op-ed" writer is filled with controversy as she has attempted to stifle dialogue regarding Israeli policy at various universities — something she derides left-wing thinkers of doing. This is absurd projection and one of the hallmarks of the bad-faith "intellectual provocateur," read troll.
Talia Lavin also notes how problematic this approach is:
This is where the problem with the book lies, it very obviously has an agenda and is duplicitous in its goal from the beginning. Again, she derides identity politics except when they support Israeli genocide. She derides "left-wing activism" but permits and discounts neo-nazis and far-right online trolls. The true snake-oil in this book is the bait-and-switch of right-wing talking points into a perspective that desperately yearns to pass for "rational and fiscal liberal." She ends the book by undermining the possibility the solidarity between Jews; claiming those who are zionist and those who have legitimate arguments against Israeli policy can never agree and the latter are traitors to other Jews and anti-semites, and everyone else; by being islamophobic and deriding the "left," she cuts out any potential ally in the very real fight against anti-semitism (one that has been rising since Republicans have amassed power and populist policies), and cyclically feeds into her paranoia that everyone on the "intellectual left" and "anti-zionists" want to destroy Israel. This racialized paranoia is dangerous and frankly, anti-semitic itself, for it excludes Jews who do not agree with the genocide of the Palestinians (or even other policies touted by the government of Israel), and she does not respect their opinions nor their world-view.
0 stars.
While she makes mentions of this and attempts to occupy the "intellectual elite who is provocative because she's speaking the truth" space, this ahistorical analysis of anti-semitism — one that utilizes a peculiar definition that became conflated with criticism of far-right Israeli policy in the 70s — will actually lend itself to racism and anti-semitism were it not so sanctimonious and obfuscated.
Ironically, Weiss asks no serious questions of Israel or the neo-nazi. Which is peculiar considering the latter literally calls for the annihilation of Jews. (Shapiro occupies this same space, simultaneously dog-whistling the "coastal elites" and talking about a set of people who control the world, but also pretending to care about the tenets of Judaism.) The ignorance is astounding here. The cleverest grift in her book is one of conflation. It begins immediately, grabbing you by the throat and squeezing. She conflates anti-semitism with criticisms of Israel's genocidal approach to Palestinians. That is to say, criticizing the racist government of Israel is anti-semitic. This is a laughable argument were Weiss not perpetually falling upwards through far-right editor positions in major American newspapers.
Judith Butler points out:
Many scholars have taken up this argument in the ensuing decades, and some of us have countered that an actual rise in antisemitism is obscured when views critical of Israel are mistakenly taken to be the paradigmatic form of antisemitism.
Another peculiar section of the book engages in Islamophobia, where she brings up far-right fringe muslim leaders who are racist, and then generalizes these fringe ideas to all muslims as justification to the inevitable lead up: "there is a reason to worry" about muslims in Europe. If one were to say "Netanyahu's comments regarding ethnic cleansing is a reason for Palestinians to worry…" Mademoiselle Weiss would be up in arms, frantically typing an op-ed and calling it anti-semitic and asking for that person's head on a stake.
There is a minute political approach and no historical analysis. Her haphazard "argument" is thus applied backwards. Israel exists and therefore is a legitimate democratic force. While this is fine, she extends that legitimacy to the breaking international human rights laws. If the argument is that they are a legitimate democratic force, why does she abdicate their responsibilities to international law? The fascistic element of this: "I can criticize Palestine and Hamas because they're illegitimate, but if you criticize Israel, which is legitimate, you are an anti-semite."
She raves against "identity politics" and discounts the threat of far-right neo-nazis and online hate platforms like 4chan and 8chan; weirdly, she thinks the real threat is coming from the left. (This is a bizarre right-wing talking point that Weiss adopts.) Yet, her entire identity is one of "Israel can do no wrong and criticizing Israel is anti-semitic." It is so ignorant and devoid of any intellectual fervour that one wonders how it passed the vigorous fact-checks one has to go through with their publisher as a professional writer. Her foray as an "op-ed" writer is filled with controversy as she has attempted to stifle dialogue regarding Israeli policy at various universities — something she derides left-wing thinkers of doing. This is absurd projection and one of the hallmarks of the bad-faith "intellectual provocateur," read troll.
Talia Lavin also notes how problematic this approach is:
All told, How to Fight Anti-Semitism is a book that launders prejudice under the guise of fighting prejudice. It also renders a real and frustrating problem—the existence of anti-Semitism on the left—flat and parodic. I have encountered leftist spaces, from podcasts to activist meetings, where the use of the term “Zionist” became a euphemism for bigger, darker maladies in the world. But from Weiss’s sealed intellectual aerie, constructed of blithe generalities about leftist thought, little of this real, messy, troubling dynamic is visible. Worse, her open dismissal of journalists and researchers studying the far right denigrates those who work daily, under severe harassment, to understand and combat threats to the safety of Jews in their homes and places of worship.
This is where the problem with the book lies, it very obviously has an agenda and is duplicitous in its goal from the beginning. Again, she derides identity politics except when they support Israeli genocide. She derides "left-wing activism" but permits and discounts neo-nazis and far-right online trolls. The true snake-oil in this book is the bait-and-switch of right-wing talking points into a perspective that desperately yearns to pass for "rational and fiscal liberal." She ends the book by undermining the possibility the solidarity between Jews; claiming those who are zionist and those who have legitimate arguments against Israeli policy can never agree and the latter are traitors to other Jews and anti-semites, and everyone else; by being islamophobic and deriding the "left," she cuts out any potential ally in the very real fight against anti-semitism (one that has been rising since Republicans have amassed power and populist policies), and cyclically feeds into her paranoia that everyone on the "intellectual left" and "anti-zionists" want to destroy Israel. This racialized paranoia is dangerous and frankly, anti-semitic itself, for it excludes Jews who do not agree with the genocide of the Palestinians (or even other policies touted by the government of Israel), and she does not respect their opinions nor their world-view.
0 stars.
September 8, 2019
Outstanding analysis of how today's anti-semitism is coming from the political right and left as well as from extremist Islam. There is at least something that will make everyone uncomfortable, as they are the anti-semitism coming from segments of society close to them. Her observations about standing against anti-semitism, strengthening support for Israel and building Jewish pride are priceless.
September 20, 2019
The book's title is a misnomer. This book doesn't address the question at all. Weiss writes from such an unbearably pompous tone. As an jew, I wondered a few times prior to and consistently during my reading of this novel what qualified her to lecture me about this issue . This may have been the worse book I have read this entire year. This book is filled with terrible prose, disconnected thoughts, blatant islamophobia/racism and idiocracy. If anything this book is a testament to how far you can get as a white suburban girl with a rich dad and no talent. Brown jews -who let Bari Weiss speak for us?
December 7, 2020
I was quarantined this Simchas Torah, so instead of spending the holiday as I usually do (and let's be honest: that means standing around shul for hours, watching the men dance, and being bored because I'm bad at making small talk with other women), I read this book the whole day. I know that learning Torah would have shown more simcha for it than reading about politics, but I consider it a holiday well spent.
As someone who's fairly conservative in religious practice yet liberal-leaning politically, I've already been well exposed to the anti-Semitism of both the right and left. Really, this book didn't teach me anything I didn't already know, but Bari Weiss did have some unique ways of framing the problem. For example, most religious Jews know the difference between the two types of oppression we were saved from on Purim and Chanukah. Purim was an attempted Holocaust; Haman and Achashveirosh wanted to wipe us all out. Chanukah wasn't so much an attack on Jewish lives as it was Jewish values. All we had to do was abandon our religion, capitulate to Hellenism, and our enemies would consider that a triumph.
Bari Weiss is the first person I've ever heard connect this to the right-wing and left-wing. The alt-right hopes to kill us. They're going after brown and black people first, but they'll get to us eventually if they don't pit us all against each other. Anti-semitism on the left is different. They just want us to espouse their ideology, which includes disparagement of Israel. To any left-leaning Jew, this is always a matter of heartbreak. It means we don't have an ideological home anywhere. The militarism and racism of the right is repugnant, but so is abandoning Israel, or for that matter, Judaism itself, which "pure" leftists seem to require.
The other point that Bari Weiss makes so well is summed up in this sentence: "Sometimes we tell ourselves lies because reality is too painful to face." There's a lot of gaslighting in the world right now, but there are also a whole lot of people waking up to it. That's my main take-away from this book, other than the point above. When we excuse or just ignore other people's anti-Semitism, we're lying to ourselves about the hatred we face. Luckily, Bari Weiss' call to action is one I can handle. Protests don't work, she says. Rather, we should be outwardly Jewish yet stand up for democracy. Making a positive Jewish impression - a kiddush Hashem - is always the best we can do.
As someone who's fairly conservative in religious practice yet liberal-leaning politically, I've already been well exposed to the anti-Semitism of both the right and left. Really, this book didn't teach me anything I didn't already know, but Bari Weiss did have some unique ways of framing the problem. For example, most religious Jews know the difference between the two types of oppression we were saved from on Purim and Chanukah. Purim was an attempted Holocaust; Haman and Achashveirosh wanted to wipe us all out. Chanukah wasn't so much an attack on Jewish lives as it was Jewish values. All we had to do was abandon our religion, capitulate to Hellenism, and our enemies would consider that a triumph.
Bari Weiss is the first person I've ever heard connect this to the right-wing and left-wing. The alt-right hopes to kill us. They're going after brown and black people first, but they'll get to us eventually if they don't pit us all against each other. Anti-semitism on the left is different. They just want us to espouse their ideology, which includes disparagement of Israel. To any left-leaning Jew, this is always a matter of heartbreak. It means we don't have an ideological home anywhere. The militarism and racism of the right is repugnant, but so is abandoning Israel, or for that matter, Judaism itself, which "pure" leftists seem to require.
The other point that Bari Weiss makes so well is summed up in this sentence: "Sometimes we tell ourselves lies because reality is too painful to face." There's a lot of gaslighting in the world right now, but there are also a whole lot of people waking up to it. That's my main take-away from this book, other than the point above. When we excuse or just ignore other people's anti-Semitism, we're lying to ourselves about the hatred we face. Luckily, Bari Weiss' call to action is one I can handle. Protests don't work, she says. Rather, we should be outwardly Jewish yet stand up for democracy. Making a positive Jewish impression - a kiddush Hashem - is always the best we can do.
September 26, 2019
Although superbly written, I found myself unpersuaded by the author's central claim; that anti-zionism is almost always cloaked anti-semitism.
September 18, 2019
It's not that there was so much in this book that was new to me (well, I didn't know about the Basel Massacre of 1349). But Bari has a way of giving voice to concerns that I wish I could express half so well. (On the other hand, I can't say that I'd be up for the public vilification that she so often receives in return.)
October 3, 2019
How to Fight Anti-Semitism, Bari Weiss
Weiss is a staff writer and editor for the opinions section of the New York Times, and she was also a bat mitzvah at the Tree of Life synagogue, having grown up in Pittsburg. On the morning of October 27, 2018, when the gunman burst in on the worshipers screaming “all the Jews must die” Weiss didn’t know yet that that phrase would mark the “before and the after” for her. The massacre of those Jews, where her father still attends services, was the largest in America, and it was her alarm bell. As she writes, “I had spent much of my life on a holiday from history. And history, in a hail of bullets, had made its unequivocal return.”
In her very short, concise, and important book, Weiss details the way anti-semitism and Jew hating has been around since the dawn of time, and how it has reared it’s ugly head over and over again throughout history.
Weiss also talks about how American Jews have felt safe here in the land of plenty. How it seemed that Europe, with its endless history of anti-semitism, was somehow different and that the horrific rise of anti-semitism again there was not going to happen here. But she was wrong. What she discovered is that there is a three headed dragon of hate Jews must face and fight against in America to try and combat anti-semitism: the right, the left and radical Islam.
Here in America we see anti-semitism very obviously from the extreme right and, less obviously and most sadly for many of us from the very left, where most Jews for so long found their political home.
Weiss discusses the difference in the two extremes and how their anti-Semitism continually places the evils of the world at the feet of the Jews. The right believes the Jews own the world and are working to replace them by bringing brown skinned people and Muslims to America. Whereas, the left believe that Israel is an evil colonizing state that should be erased, and that good American Jews must not believe in its right to exist in order to prove they are worthy. Weiss tracks the rise of both of these belief systems, which is extremely enlightening, as is her discussion of the rise of radical Islam.
I found her overview and her history eye opening and much of what she has to say about what’s going on today in American and Europe is very true and very brave of her to discuss. Weiss goes where others do not want to tread. She talks about defending Israel and how calling out Muslim Americans for being anti- Semitic scares many people because you then get called xenophobic. But just because Muslims in this country are also subjected to bias and discrimination doesn’t mean they can’t also be anti-Semitic. And calling out their anti-semitism doesn’t mean that as Jews we won’t still come to their aid when they are abused, harassed, harmed, etc. She reminds us that calling them out for the bad, and trying to educate them about their own bias is the right thing to do.
Weiss urges us to remember the roots of Judaism and our call to welcome the stranger, but she also urges us to be outspoken when it comes to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hate or else we will be silenced to our detriment.
In the end Weiss is hopeful. How can she not be. The days after the massacre at Tree of Life gave her much hope about how the broader community in America reacts to anti-semitism. In Pittsburg they came out in full force to show their love and support, and she is hopeful that her community is a reflection of the larger American community.
In the last pages of her book Weiss lists ways to “fight” but she also emphasizes the need for American Jews to be proud and involved in their faith, and to believe in and to support Israel. She writes, “In these trying times, our best strategy is to build, without shame, a Judaism and a Jewish people and a Jewish state that is not only safe and resilient but self-aware, meaningful, generative, humane, joyful, and life affirming. A Judaism capable of lighting a fire in every Jewish soul — and in the souls of everyone who throws in their lot with us.”
My take away is we cannot be in denial of what is happening, and we must stand up to those who wish for the destruction of the only Jewish State in the world post the holocaust and the only democratic state in the Middle East. We also cannot live without our faith and the belief that we must be kind and loving to our neighbors and the downtrodden and the stranger, an enormous part of who we are as Jews. Do not let the left silence you. Do not let them make you believe Israel does not have the right to exist and that Jews don’t have a claim to that land. You can absolutely find fault with the way the leadership is running the country but that country has every right to exist as does every Jewish person.
Condemn BDS. Condemn Anti-semitism when you see it. Do not be afraid to speak out and speak up.
Weiss is a staff writer and editor for the opinions section of the New York Times, and she was also a bat mitzvah at the Tree of Life synagogue, having grown up in Pittsburg. On the morning of October 27, 2018, when the gunman burst in on the worshipers screaming “all the Jews must die” Weiss didn’t know yet that that phrase would mark the “before and the after” for her. The massacre of those Jews, where her father still attends services, was the largest in America, and it was her alarm bell. As she writes, “I had spent much of my life on a holiday from history. And history, in a hail of bullets, had made its unequivocal return.”
In her very short, concise, and important book, Weiss details the way anti-semitism and Jew hating has been around since the dawn of time, and how it has reared it’s ugly head over and over again throughout history.
Weiss also talks about how American Jews have felt safe here in the land of plenty. How it seemed that Europe, with its endless history of anti-semitism, was somehow different and that the horrific rise of anti-semitism again there was not going to happen here. But she was wrong. What she discovered is that there is a three headed dragon of hate Jews must face and fight against in America to try and combat anti-semitism: the right, the left and radical Islam.
Here in America we see anti-semitism very obviously from the extreme right and, less obviously and most sadly for many of us from the very left, where most Jews for so long found their political home.
Weiss discusses the difference in the two extremes and how their anti-Semitism continually places the evils of the world at the feet of the Jews. The right believes the Jews own the world and are working to replace them by bringing brown skinned people and Muslims to America. Whereas, the left believe that Israel is an evil colonizing state that should be erased, and that good American Jews must not believe in its right to exist in order to prove they are worthy. Weiss tracks the rise of both of these belief systems, which is extremely enlightening, as is her discussion of the rise of radical Islam.
I found her overview and her history eye opening and much of what she has to say about what’s going on today in American and Europe is very true and very brave of her to discuss. Weiss goes where others do not want to tread. She talks about defending Israel and how calling out Muslim Americans for being anti- Semitic scares many people because you then get called xenophobic. But just because Muslims in this country are also subjected to bias and discrimination doesn’t mean they can’t also be anti-Semitic. And calling out their anti-semitism doesn’t mean that as Jews we won’t still come to their aid when they are abused, harassed, harmed, etc. She reminds us that calling them out for the bad, and trying to educate them about their own bias is the right thing to do.
Weiss urges us to remember the roots of Judaism and our call to welcome the stranger, but she also urges us to be outspoken when it comes to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hate or else we will be silenced to our detriment.
In the end Weiss is hopeful. How can she not be. The days after the massacre at Tree of Life gave her much hope about how the broader community in America reacts to anti-semitism. In Pittsburg they came out in full force to show their love and support, and she is hopeful that her community is a reflection of the larger American community.
In the last pages of her book Weiss lists ways to “fight” but she also emphasizes the need for American Jews to be proud and involved in their faith, and to believe in and to support Israel. She writes, “In these trying times, our best strategy is to build, without shame, a Judaism and a Jewish people and a Jewish state that is not only safe and resilient but self-aware, meaningful, generative, humane, joyful, and life affirming. A Judaism capable of lighting a fire in every Jewish soul — and in the souls of everyone who throws in their lot with us.”
My take away is we cannot be in denial of what is happening, and we must stand up to those who wish for the destruction of the only Jewish State in the world post the holocaust and the only democratic state in the Middle East. We also cannot live without our faith and the belief that we must be kind and loving to our neighbors and the downtrodden and the stranger, an enormous part of who we are as Jews. Do not let the left silence you. Do not let them make you believe Israel does not have the right to exist and that Jews don’t have a claim to that land. You can absolutely find fault with the way the leadership is running the country but that country has every right to exist as does every Jewish person.
Condemn BDS. Condemn Anti-semitism when you see it. Do not be afraid to speak out and speak up.
September 29, 2019
Before I go further, I have to say that I agree with almost everything Weiss has written. I can relate to almost all of her experiences. I myself have stood guard at my synagogue with a rifle in the wake of shootings.
But I'm not giving stars on the basis of how much I agree. I'm giving it on how good of a book I think this is. It's aiite. It's too long to be an essay and too short to be a detailed study. It probably should be half as long with some of the items in the end on a short punch list.
I know writers are speakers are told to personalize stories. I know they are told to have an emotional argument (pathos) to go with your reasoning. But for me being so close to a mass shooting pulls the reader into a situation that they want to be in denial about and we scramble not to relate.
I also think she could have done with some better organization. One minute we are talking about Jews in France, the next sentence we are back in the US. One minute we are beating up the left and the next the right. That's fine for a short essay or an introduction, but a more organized and thorough look at each problem and each place would have helped a lot.
There are many recent quality books on the "New Antisemitism" of the left and the resurrection of the old on the right. Weiss doesn't add anything there. There are many good books wondering about the far left and the intersectional left from a liberal point of view and she doesn't add much there, either. She had a chance to put those together and really lay out a stronger vision of why, as she states, sick societies turn on their Jews, and how that's playing out today in greater detail. Instead she mostly asserts that it does (I agree, but I don't think it's edifying).
Douglas Murray argues that the contradictions of the intersectional left are intentional. Maybe for some, but the wide support in the culture those ideas have probably cannot bear the contradictions they present for long. One of the reasons Jews are the canaries in the coalmine so often is the mirror we hold up and contradictions we reveal in cultural and political logics.
tl;dr Good essay, good points, needs more meat on the bone and organization, and a little less pathos.
But I'm not giving stars on the basis of how much I agree. I'm giving it on how good of a book I think this is. It's aiite. It's too long to be an essay and too short to be a detailed study. It probably should be half as long with some of the items in the end on a short punch list.
I know writers are speakers are told to personalize stories. I know they are told to have an emotional argument (pathos) to go with your reasoning. But for me being so close to a mass shooting pulls the reader into a situation that they want to be in denial about and we scramble not to relate.
I also think she could have done with some better organization. One minute we are talking about Jews in France, the next sentence we are back in the US. One minute we are beating up the left and the next the right. That's fine for a short essay or an introduction, but a more organized and thorough look at each problem and each place would have helped a lot.
There are many recent quality books on the "New Antisemitism" of the left and the resurrection of the old on the right. Weiss doesn't add anything there. There are many good books wondering about the far left and the intersectional left from a liberal point of view and she doesn't add much there, either. She had a chance to put those together and really lay out a stronger vision of why, as she states, sick societies turn on their Jews, and how that's playing out today in greater detail. Instead she mostly asserts that it does (I agree, but I don't think it's edifying).
Douglas Murray argues that the contradictions of the intersectional left are intentional. Maybe for some, but the wide support in the culture those ideas have probably cannot bear the contradictions they present for long. One of the reasons Jews are the canaries in the coalmine so often is the mirror we hold up and contradictions we reveal in cultural and political logics.
tl;dr Good essay, good points, needs more meat on the bone and organization, and a little less pathos.
October 19, 2019
I first heard about Bari Weiss on an episode of Unorthodox podcast and what she was talking about, the way she was talking about it, really resonated with me. She is one of the first public intellectuals I have heard speaking about antisemitism on the Right AND the Left. I’m used to hearing each side only speak of antisemitism on the other side, often in a manipulative way.
Weiss takes a deep dive and a long look into the history of antisemitism on the Right and on the Left, as well as the way that those ideas have also influenced governments that are driven by radical Islamist ideology (a distinct ideology from the religion of Islam), and how those ideas were often imported from the west, be it during the Crusades or by the Nazis. The book also discusses how during the middle ages, the Islamic world was a much better place to be a Jew than the Christian world (though neither was perfect).
Besides the history and cultural analysis, all of which is spot on, Weiss discusses solutions, most of which really resonate with me: the idea of thinking about which organizations and politicians you support, the idea of helping to build Jewish community, leaning into your Jewishness, learning more, the idea of supporting the existence of Israel even while criticizing its policies (no state should be free of criticism), the idea of supporting liberalism, that a liberal, tolerant nation is one that is best for religious and ethnic minorities, as opposed to the extremes we are offered these days on the Right and on the Left, the idea of calling Jewish friends in to what you are interested in, the idea of not dividing Am Yisrael, because in the end, so many distinctions are not important to those that want to destroy us.
Definitely worth reading. You will be uncomfortable sometimes. I read the audiobook but I'm also considering buying the IRL book so I can look at certain parts again!
Weiss takes a deep dive and a long look into the history of antisemitism on the Right and on the Left, as well as the way that those ideas have also influenced governments that are driven by radical Islamist ideology (a distinct ideology from the religion of Islam), and how those ideas were often imported from the west, be it during the Crusades or by the Nazis. The book also discusses how during the middle ages, the Islamic world was a much better place to be a Jew than the Christian world (though neither was perfect).
Besides the history and cultural analysis, all of which is spot on, Weiss discusses solutions, most of which really resonate with me: the idea of thinking about which organizations and politicians you support, the idea of helping to build Jewish community, leaning into your Jewishness, learning more, the idea of supporting the existence of Israel even while criticizing its policies (no state should be free of criticism), the idea of supporting liberalism, that a liberal, tolerant nation is one that is best for religious and ethnic minorities, as opposed to the extremes we are offered these days on the Right and on the Left, the idea of calling Jewish friends in to what you are interested in, the idea of not dividing Am Yisrael, because in the end, so many distinctions are not important to those that want to destroy us.
Definitely worth reading. You will be uncomfortable sometimes. I read the audiobook but I'm also considering buying the IRL book so I can look at certain parts again!
March 22, 2024
This book was amazing. I realized how much time I spend trying to pretend I am not hearing antisemitic rhetoric, how I wish with all my might that someone will change the subject rather than speaking out against what is said. Weiss laid it out for me and also made me realize that ar some point I bought into a lot of the narrative. Her reasoning is rigorous and supported and her writing is well-crafted and persuasive. This is a life-changing book for me. I know I must do better, and I know how to do that.
January 30, 2020
This book is a 200 page Twitter rant. I feel for the author and her feelings, but the whole book is written in the fashion of a newspaper article/Twitter rant. Could not get myself to finish it.
September 10, 2020
I have strong reactions to this book. I strongly agree with her suggestions (mostly near the end of the book) for fighting antisemitism. I strongly appreciate her detailed information about recent antisemitic events in Europe (and in the U.S. of course). Yet despite her assurances that a balanced critique of Israel is not considered antisemitic, many of the charges of antisemitism she levies against the "left" in America and the UK are solely at people who are specifically criticizing Israeli policy. She applauds those who are Islamic when they stand up for Jewish people, but refuses to stand for other Jewish or non-Jewish people who work toward change in Israeli politics to consider the Palestinian plight on a purely humanitarian stance. While she inextricably links fighting antisemitism and condemning those who criticize Israel, I would say that the issues intersect but are not the same, and I don't think she treated it that way.
March 4, 2020
Yikes. We absolutely need a thorough examination of anti-Semitism on the left, but vilifying intersectionalism and glorifying centrism is not the way to do it.
February 7, 2022
Unfortunately, I agree with everything Bari Weiss says in this book. I've felt this vague, creeping uneasiness stealing over me since 2014, the feeling that our brief, glorious post-Holocaust-era, a period of time when antisemitism was considered uncool, was coming to an end. Bari Weiss outlines with painful detail the three-headed dragon of antisemitism threatening Jews today: from the right, which Jews always expect; from Islamic extremism, also expected; and from the left, which is new, and as unnerving and as frightening as the other two.
Bari Weiss makes her case using clear and detailed research. I highly recommend this short book for anyone who is confused about the difference between antisemitism and legitimate critique of some of the Israeli government's policies. This book is also an excellent source of information for Jewish students who are headed for college campuses, and will be discussing Israel with less knowledgeable students.
Bari Weiss makes her case using clear and detailed research. I highly recommend this short book for anyone who is confused about the difference between antisemitism and legitimate critique of some of the Israeli government's policies. This book is also an excellent source of information for Jewish students who are headed for college campuses, and will be discussing Israel with less knowledgeable students.
December 12, 2024
Not only do I agree with it, but reality after 7th of October 2023 proved us Bari was right and anti-semitism is not only subtly on the rise, but massively so from left progressists to the far right, inciting to pogroms in Europe's largest cities.
The 'how to fight it' seems downsized by the proportion this anti-semitic wave is now taking.
Would like to read her book updated to current political situation. Maybe a new one? :)
The 'how to fight it' seems downsized by the proportion this anti-semitic wave is now taking.
Would like to read her book updated to current political situation. Maybe a new one? :)
August 25, 2019
Wonderful, engaging, well written book. Read my full review at
https://journalingonpaper.com/2019/08...
https://journalingonpaper.com/2019/08...
April 18, 2022
Sigh. I had hoped this book would be better than it is, as I’ve had a number of people who I respect tell me that it is a thoughtful, passionate argument against antisemitic bigotry.
However, it’s just typical Bari Weiss. The way she conceives of Judaism ties it to a project of uncritical American exceptionalism, imagining the United States as “a shining city on a hill,” means she ends up conjuring a “clash of civilizations” style conflict between a besieged West and the threat of “radical Islam”. The fact that Weiss’s chapter on “radical Islam” never defines the term or fails to make any sort of distinction between Islam and Islamism means she mostly ends up trafficking in a lot of Islamophobic tropes and, at times, blatant bigotry. Unsurprisingly, Palestinian suffering is glossed over, an unspoken casualty of Weiss’s simplistic narratives.
Her attempts to analyze the left are also woefully inadequate. Working from the assumption that the BDS movement and anti-Zionist activism are, at their base, expressions of antisemitism, allows Weiss to make it seem like Ilhan Omar or Jeremy Corbyn are somehow equivalent to the likes of Donald Trump or David Duke. This is not to say that antisemitism isn’t a problem on the left, but I think Weiss is grossly overreaching in her claims. The more accurate reading of our current moment seems, in my view, that the broad left simply doesn’t know how to talk about antisemitism in a structural, historical, and theoretically sophisticated way.
This would involve reviving historical memory about how the two Red Scares overwhelmingly targeted Jewish activists and organizers, with Jews making up half of the U.S. Communist Party’s ranks in the 1930s and being a prominent force on the New Left. The repressive force of anti-Communism in the U.S. can be tied directly to the phenomenon of American Jews beginning their assimilation into whiteness. White Jews, in our tying Jewish identity to the nationalist politics of the State of Israel, are searching for an ethnic identity that we traded in for upward class mobility. Weiss can’t seem to imagine a Jewishness that is tied to the history of radical, left-wing Jewish organizing in the U.S., invested in the struggles of other marginalized groups, because the importance of Israel in her mind trumps cross-ethnic or class solidarity.
There are glimmers here of useful, proactive suggestions for building a robust 21st-century Jewish identity predicated on social justice, equality, freedom, and solidarity, but Weiss’s seeming inability to engage in a structural critique of antisemitism means she will always end up retrenching around a pugilistic Zionism tethered to U.S. global hegemony.
However, it’s just typical Bari Weiss. The way she conceives of Judaism ties it to a project of uncritical American exceptionalism, imagining the United States as “a shining city on a hill,” means she ends up conjuring a “clash of civilizations” style conflict between a besieged West and the threat of “radical Islam”. The fact that Weiss’s chapter on “radical Islam” never defines the term or fails to make any sort of distinction between Islam and Islamism means she mostly ends up trafficking in a lot of Islamophobic tropes and, at times, blatant bigotry. Unsurprisingly, Palestinian suffering is glossed over, an unspoken casualty of Weiss’s simplistic narratives.
Her attempts to analyze the left are also woefully inadequate. Working from the assumption that the BDS movement and anti-Zionist activism are, at their base, expressions of antisemitism, allows Weiss to make it seem like Ilhan Omar or Jeremy Corbyn are somehow equivalent to the likes of Donald Trump or David Duke. This is not to say that antisemitism isn’t a problem on the left, but I think Weiss is grossly overreaching in her claims. The more accurate reading of our current moment seems, in my view, that the broad left simply doesn’t know how to talk about antisemitism in a structural, historical, and theoretically sophisticated way.
This would involve reviving historical memory about how the two Red Scares overwhelmingly targeted Jewish activists and organizers, with Jews making up half of the U.S. Communist Party’s ranks in the 1930s and being a prominent force on the New Left. The repressive force of anti-Communism in the U.S. can be tied directly to the phenomenon of American Jews beginning their assimilation into whiteness. White Jews, in our tying Jewish identity to the nationalist politics of the State of Israel, are searching for an ethnic identity that we traded in for upward class mobility. Weiss can’t seem to imagine a Jewishness that is tied to the history of radical, left-wing Jewish organizing in the U.S., invested in the struggles of other marginalized groups, because the importance of Israel in her mind trumps cross-ethnic or class solidarity.
There are glimmers here of useful, proactive suggestions for building a robust 21st-century Jewish identity predicated on social justice, equality, freedom, and solidarity, but Weiss’s seeming inability to engage in a structural critique of antisemitism means she will always end up retrenching around a pugilistic Zionism tethered to U.S. global hegemony.
November 21, 2021
I should probably have picked a different book to start diving into this topic--and I guess that's my most optimistic takeaway, that there IS far more out there to read with writing styles and approaches that are...less aggravating. To me personally, anyway. I was NOT at all fond of the many, many paragraphs that ended with some vague point alluded to and then--nothing. White space. Hard cut to the next paragraph. From my (frustrated) notes: "There are many things that could mean, why are you dangling your point over a cliff and expecting readers to make the leap in assuming what you mean instead of just saying it??" Like. "[C]ountries like Egypt"--I? don't know? what grouping of countries that is? You could say "countries like China" or "countries like Uruguay," those don't make sense either unless you explicitly state what metric you're using for categorization. (From how Weiss was using the phrase, as well as other bits and pieces in this book, I get the distinct sense--never quite outright confirmed--that "countries like Egypt" is used in an Islamophobic sense.)
Also, 75% of the book (76% according to my e-reader) is taken up by Weiss defining anti-Semitism/explaining her perspective on what it is. The "How to" (from the title! presumably the main reason to read this!) is very brief by comparison.
All that said, I may revisit this after more reading. I'd be interested to see what notes I take a second time around.
Also, 75% of the book (76% according to my e-reader) is taken up by Weiss defining anti-Semitism/explaining her perspective on what it is. The "How to" (from the title! presumably the main reason to read this!) is very brief by comparison.
All that said, I may revisit this after more reading. I'd be interested to see what notes I take a second time around.
September 7, 2024
Just read this book.
August 18, 2024
I admire Bari Weiss' principles. Not long after this appeared in 2019, she stood up to her New York Times bosses, and lost a plum job for one who'd ascended the ranks of journalism rapidly. The same conviction permeates these pages. Sadly all the more relevant five years later, an understatement.
She's spot on when she links Soviet manipulation of Jewish radicals to turn them against their fellow people, and how Stalin crafted the anti-Zionist canard to trap those seeking to separate themselves from charges of (mere?) antisemitism. Weiss shows deftly how the now-dominant leftist movements in politics, media, academia, and professional life represent a danger more insidious for being harder to combat, for who doesn't want liberty, equality, and unity among all nations? Whereas the racial supremacist and Islamist threats don't hide their hatred, those purportedly advancing betterment in Western democracies demand that their Jewish allies convert to a disavowed anti-Israel progressive fealty which singles out that nation as the sole cause of countless evils and pseudo-"racist" crimes.
Suffice to say these are charged issues. Weiss concludes with sensible strategies. But in addressing those within her own orientation of well-educated (almost inevitability she went to Columbia, although to her credit, this began to shake her from her complacency as to the follies of the rhetoric and the actions which have become increasingly publicized since October 2023l, liberal, well-off, and informed "MoT's" (my shorthand, not hers). My question: given 70% of non-observant Jews marry outside their ethnicity/ faith (as she has, by the by), what context does this offer to her advice?
By aiming it at the Jewish community of her ilk, without the framework of a much more common mixed-family background for those who claim maybe one Jewish-born parent or grandparent (which is the norm I see in Southern California), doesn't this limit the impact of what could be potentially a far larger cohort to mobilize of sympathetic relatives, friends, neighbors, and those who haven't been asked to sign on and assist in Weiss' call to rally for the right to stand up for the right to be Jewish?
She's spot on when she links Soviet manipulation of Jewish radicals to turn them against their fellow people, and how Stalin crafted the anti-Zionist canard to trap those seeking to separate themselves from charges of (mere?) antisemitism. Weiss shows deftly how the now-dominant leftist movements in politics, media, academia, and professional life represent a danger more insidious for being harder to combat, for who doesn't want liberty, equality, and unity among all nations? Whereas the racial supremacist and Islamist threats don't hide their hatred, those purportedly advancing betterment in Western democracies demand that their Jewish allies convert to a disavowed anti-Israel progressive fealty which singles out that nation as the sole cause of countless evils and pseudo-"racist" crimes.
Suffice to say these are charged issues. Weiss concludes with sensible strategies. But in addressing those within her own orientation of well-educated (almost inevitability she went to Columbia, although to her credit, this began to shake her from her complacency as to the follies of the rhetoric and the actions which have become increasingly publicized since October 2023l, liberal, well-off, and informed "MoT's" (my shorthand, not hers). My question: given 70% of non-observant Jews marry outside their ethnicity/ faith (as she has, by the by), what context does this offer to her advice?
By aiming it at the Jewish community of her ilk, without the framework of a much more common mixed-family background for those who claim maybe one Jewish-born parent or grandparent (which is the norm I see in Southern California), doesn't this limit the impact of what could be potentially a far larger cohort to mobilize of sympathetic relatives, friends, neighbors, and those who haven't been asked to sign on and assist in Weiss' call to rally for the right to stand up for the right to be Jewish?
Read
December 28, 2021Incredibly well written and thought provoking.
February 13, 2022
Before this book, my awareness of Bari Weiss was limited but it took me less than a chapter to realize that her writing was problematic and a quick internet search confirmed that not just her writing in this book is in questionable taste. Being Ashkenazi myself, I was hoping when I quickly grabbed this from the stacks at work based on the title that I'd be gaining some historical knowledge, insights into the interplay between racism, white supremacy, and antisemitism, and advice on protecting myself and others from this epidemic of antisemitic hostility.
I was wrong.
The book, while lightly seasoned with historical, factual information, largely served as a self-defense essay to her haters and anyone who disapproves of Zionism, including plenty of gratuitous finger-pointing, while claiming that anyone who criticizes the actions or creation of the nation state of Israel or other Zionist beliefs is inherently antisemitic. She equates progressives' criticism of the Israeli settlements in Palestine with bombings and shootings performed by white supremacists and other terrorist groups. Not to mention, the book is rife with Islamophobia and fails to address nonwhite antisemitism in a productive way. She accurately states that antisemitism differs from other forms of racism where we are usually cast as the powerful, oppressive puppeteer behind the curtain in the minds of white conspiracy theorists, and then turns around to defend the colonization and oppression of MENA folks, saying that if you cast them as the powerful oppressor youre no different than the conspiracy theorist skinhead bombing synagogues. Clearly it takes a little more work in decolonizing and anti-racist scholarship to write a book on antisemitism that doesn't devolve into a defense of colonizer violence and your own questionable reputation.
I was wrong.
The book, while lightly seasoned with historical, factual information, largely served as a self-defense essay to her haters and anyone who disapproves of Zionism, including plenty of gratuitous finger-pointing, while claiming that anyone who criticizes the actions or creation of the nation state of Israel or other Zionist beliefs is inherently antisemitic. She equates progressives' criticism of the Israeli settlements in Palestine with bombings and shootings performed by white supremacists and other terrorist groups. Not to mention, the book is rife with Islamophobia and fails to address nonwhite antisemitism in a productive way. She accurately states that antisemitism differs from other forms of racism where we are usually cast as the powerful, oppressive puppeteer behind the curtain in the minds of white conspiracy theorists, and then turns around to defend the colonization and oppression of MENA folks, saying that if you cast them as the powerful oppressor youre no different than the conspiracy theorist skinhead bombing synagogues. Clearly it takes a little more work in decolonizing and anti-racist scholarship to write a book on antisemitism that doesn't devolve into a defense of colonizer violence and your own questionable reputation.
February 4, 2021
So. I found this an incredibly frustrating read and, ultimately, it ended up pissing me off. Yes, we should definitely not treat anti-semitism on the right as more "important" than anti-semitism on the left, even though that on the right is typically more violent or traditionally dangerous. She opened my eyes to a lot of the anti-semitism on the left. BUT, there were several times where she took things out of context or left out critical information which, I felt, severely weakened her argument and credibility overall. As just one example - she talked about an incident in Philly where school aged children sang or recited a poem at an event that included lyrics essentially advocating for death to all jews, etc. Did she mention that the song was sung in arabic and these kids didn't know what they were singing? No. Completely changes the story from one of indoctrinating school aged kids in hatred to one of a bad actor selecting an anti-semitic poem in a foreign language. She misrepresented the incident, which didn't sit well with me. There were a few other examples of this in the book. It is disappointing. Because, surely, there is plenty of anti-semitism in the world, on the "right" and "left" that needs to be addressed.
September 23, 2019
This book is essential reading for Americans whether Jewish or not . It is well researched and gives an eye opening picture of antisemitism both historically when it was a result of a world that persecuted those of a different faith and presently when it discusses the evils of the extreme right and left . It discusses the lack of knowledge in the world , the impact of the Muslims on the Jews of Europe today , the untruths that continue to be perpetuated by those who make up reasons for hatred .
And why ?
It is easy to understand religious intolerance of the 14th c . But it is not easy to comprehend the lies and ignorance today .
And I cannot accept that some of our institutions of higher learning in America are a part of it . It is untenable that Jewish parents continue to send their children to schools who allow these professors to remain on the faculties .
The book is excellent .
And why ?
It is easy to understand religious intolerance of the 14th c . But it is not easy to comprehend the lies and ignorance today .
And I cannot accept that some of our institutions of higher learning in America are a part of it . It is untenable that Jewish parents continue to send their children to schools who allow these professors to remain on the faculties .
The book is excellent .
August 4, 2020
A courageous book that inspires not just Jews to be courageous but others, like me, as well.
March 20, 2022
Well-written book by a brave liberal, who is not afraid to call out her own side (while also of course calling out Muslim terrorists and far-right white supremacists). I hope people from all sides will read this reasonable and logical book!
“To be a good progressive increasingly requires distorting Jewish history and disavowing the Jewish state. Telling the truth is not worth the risk to reputations, careers, or social standing.” -p. 91
“Neo-Nazis, in a way, are easy. We know they wish us dead. Anti-Semites with PhDs, the ones who defend their bigotry as enlightened thinking, are harder to fight.” -93
“So when people say they are anti-Zionist, it is important to be clear about what they seek. What they seek is the elimination of an actual state in the Jewish ancestral home where more than six million Jews, more than half of whom have roots in the Middle East, live with their families, not to mention some two million non-Jewish citizens, who are not spared when Israel is attacked by its enemies…(Most) Anti-Zionists do not support the elimination of any other country in the world. Just one state. The Jewish one.” -p. 103
“And what happens when the anti-Zionist dream- a one-state solution or the elimination of Israel- is imposed?... it would result in massive carnage or genocide...If the Christian experience in the region- not to mention that of the Yazidis or the Zoroastrians- has taught us anything, it is that minorities in the contemporary Middle East cannot survive without protection...The kumbaya of the anti-Zionist guarantees a very bloody reality, and anti-Zionists should be forced to defend it.” -p. 104
“Anti-Zionists will say that they are opposed to nationalism, yet they champion the Palestinian kind. They will say that they care about religious minorities, but they are curiously silent about the treatment of Uighurs in China or the forced modern exodus of Christians from the Middle East. They will say that they care about indigenous rights, yet they elide the inconvenient truth that there has been a Jewish presence in the historical land of Israel since the destruction of the Temple. They will say that Israel was established by foeign imperial powers, but they will ignore that modern India, say, was established in the same way. Somehow none of those who claim to oppose nationalism ever suggest dismantling India.” -pp. 108-9
“The most powerful figures in the Democratic Party and their allies in the press have decided that Ilhan Omar is worth defending...What the Democrats have already made clear is that saying bigoted things about Jews has become entirely politically survivable.” -p. 162
“To be a good progressive increasingly requires distorting Jewish history and disavowing the Jewish state. Telling the truth is not worth the risk to reputations, careers, or social standing.” -p. 91
“Neo-Nazis, in a way, are easy. We know they wish us dead. Anti-Semites with PhDs, the ones who defend their bigotry as enlightened thinking, are harder to fight.” -93
“So when people say they are anti-Zionist, it is important to be clear about what they seek. What they seek is the elimination of an actual state in the Jewish ancestral home where more than six million Jews, more than half of whom have roots in the Middle East, live with their families, not to mention some two million non-Jewish citizens, who are not spared when Israel is attacked by its enemies…(Most) Anti-Zionists do not support the elimination of any other country in the world. Just one state. The Jewish one.” -p. 103
“And what happens when the anti-Zionist dream- a one-state solution or the elimination of Israel- is imposed?... it would result in massive carnage or genocide...If the Christian experience in the region- not to mention that of the Yazidis or the Zoroastrians- has taught us anything, it is that minorities in the contemporary Middle East cannot survive without protection...The kumbaya of the anti-Zionist guarantees a very bloody reality, and anti-Zionists should be forced to defend it.” -p. 104
“Anti-Zionists will say that they are opposed to nationalism, yet they champion the Palestinian kind. They will say that they care about religious minorities, but they are curiously silent about the treatment of Uighurs in China or the forced modern exodus of Christians from the Middle East. They will say that they care about indigenous rights, yet they elide the inconvenient truth that there has been a Jewish presence in the historical land of Israel since the destruction of the Temple. They will say that Israel was established by foeign imperial powers, but they will ignore that modern India, say, was established in the same way. Somehow none of those who claim to oppose nationalism ever suggest dismantling India.” -pp. 108-9
“The most powerful figures in the Democratic Party and their allies in the press have decided that Ilhan Omar is worth defending...What the Democrats have already made clear is that saying bigoted things about Jews has become entirely politically survivable.” -p. 162
November 9, 2023
I am incredibly impressed with this well-written and well researched work. Bari Weiss maintains a personable tone as she explains the history of anti-Semitism, it’s present day manifestations and what we can do about it. She speaks in a moderate yet urgent voice. In fact, I applaud the urgency she felt when she wrote this three years ago - it is an urgency I am just beginning to feel. Despite knowing what was abound, I lived as a Jewish person comfortable in my identity, privately and publicly with a slight (naive) feeling of immunity to this ancient hate. That is no longer the case. Thank you for writing this Bari. Your voice is so important.
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