When I was a boy in Berlin in the early years of the Nazi regime, some five or ten years before the Holocaust, a young rabbi broke the conventions of rabbinical discourse and managed to bring solace and spiritual strength to the Jews of the city. He created a sensation. Jews who would never enter a synagogue otherwise made their way to hear him. This rabbi's name was Joachim Prinz and in due course he became a leader of American Jewry. But in those early 1930's, he held the rapt attention of his people, speaking approximately as follows:
"Everywhere you read and hear that you are ugly and hateful. Right now, look at the person next to you: is he hateful ? Is he ugly ? "
And suddenly Rabbi Prinz's listeners, cowed as they had been by the incessant propaganda of the haters, could see the truth: no, the Nazis were not right. They could see the irrationality of all that hatred. They could see, and they knew that they should have seen all the time, that it was not they who were the guilty ones.
This book by Anthony Julius performs something of the same function for us today that Rabbi Prinz performed for the Jews in the 1930's. All around us the "enlightened" tell us of the perfidy of the Jews. who are nowadays called Zionists. If only Israel (read, the Jews) behaved better, all would be well. In the meantime, it is important to punish the "Zionists." Boycott them ! Divest from Israeli investments ! Sanction them !
On the notion of boycott, as on many other issues, Julius is particularly revealing, showing the ancient, irrational hatreds that move people to call for boycotts of Israel, the only country so singled out.
There are scores and maybe hundreds of books on the modern anti-Semitism. I am familiar with many of them. But Julius has historical material (mostly from England) and thoughtful analyses that break absolutely new ground. The book will not and cannot change the mind of anyone who is infected with anti-Semitism, but it will greatly inform the rest of us. And yes, it will confirm that which in theory needs no confirmation: there is no reason, no excuse, nothing whatever acceptable in the anti-Semitic hatreds of our day.
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