the definite article 73
antisemitism everyplace!
tda 73
Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes among others of the far-out alt right believe that Christian Zionists are minions of the devil, etc etc etc. They speak more critically and with more rancor about their co-religious colleagues than they do of Jews. Of course, not all Christians are of this ilk. This amazing article by Gerald McDermott chronicles when he “replaced [his} replacement theology,” and began to realize that there is a solid theological foundation for the return of Jews to their land from a Christian perspective. A good read!
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2025/12/99662/
On the same topic, it is relevant to ask if Nazi antisemitism had its ideological foundations in earlier Cristian antisemitism. Hannah Arendt thought not, but in this article, Samuel Rubenstein believes their is a clear link between the nationalist and racial antisemitism of these days and the earlier articulation of Jewi hatred that was prevalent in Christian religious thought.
https://unherd.com/2026/01/christian-jew-haters-are-back/
Modern antisemitism and antizionism has its roots in the past, and the past resonates like plucked string into our times. Douglas Feith uses the Hebreon massacre of 1929 as a paradigm for the tendency to justify Arab terrorism, which just leads to further expressions of Arab terrorism
Something not so terribly unusual in Europe are memorials at sites where Jews were killed by the numbers with no acknowledgment that the murdered victims were Jews. One memorable example was the main memorial at Plasov, the Nazi labor and concentration camp just outside Krakow. That tradition lives on! Both JD Vance and the BBC carefully scrubbed any mention of Jews from their Holocaust Day commemorative speeches. I do need to mention though that a few days later in an interview, Vance said that he found antisemitism despicable, along with other racial hatreds. That he was unable or unwilling to speak specifically about the victims of the overwhelming number of hate crimes in America leaves me feeling….like I’d be hard pressed to think of voting for him in a couple of years.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/01/30/stealing-the-holocaust-from-the-jews/
To segue into a tangential topic, Eric Mandel wonders how it is that the West keeps misunderstanding the mindset of the Middle East. which is conditioned more “by history, tribal identity, and rivalries that long pre-date modern nation -states.” The West places its trust in formal and signed agreements: Middle Eastern states are more visceral than that.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-885697
Back to antisemitism, which seems to be the theme this week: Russ Roberts who head the Shalem College in Jerusalem had an interesting conversation with David Deutsch about the dynamics of antisemitism. Deutsch believes that it is a fool’s task to try to understand the reasons for antisemitism: the reasons are a justification for an impulse to legitimize the hurting and hatred of Jews. The desire to hurt or at least legitimizing the desire to hurt Jews precedes the reason. His explanation comes close to the idea expressed in the book Jew Hatred.
https://substack.com/@listentothesirens/note/p-182494568?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=3s36m
Every year, a prominent Jewish figure is asked to give a State of the Union speech for the Jewish people. This year Brett Stevens was invited to speak, a former editor at the Jerusalem post and the Wall Street Journal. He also believes that there is no sense in trying to understand antisemitism, not any way to “cure” it. Trying to explain Judaism or trying to humanize Jews is a fool’s errand. Antisemitism just IS, and the question is not why, but how we are going to respond.
This short but incisive piece in Pirate Wires explores the prevalence of slavery in the Arab world, a theme relevant to this week’s Torah portion.
In a turn of events that I believe no one could have predicted. Yoram Hazoni criticizes those who accuse Tucker Carlson et al, of being antisemitic. It’s an article by Peter Berkovitz
If you have never heard about or learned the story of the famous and intrepid Mr. Shoshani, this is a good time to start! One of the most unique enigmatic, and influential Jews to come out of the Holocaust.
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-philosophy/19380/the-riddler/