nightdream

Like many people around the world, I sometimes used to say, “I don't really understand antisemitism.” Over the past few years as antisemitism has ramped up across the United States, I decided it was time to educate myself. Here are some of the readings that I have started or am currently reading that I recommend for a variety of entry points and viewpoints. I will continue to add to this list as I read and re-read well-thought, reliably sourced articles and books.

While I can't say I understand everything about antisemitism now, I no longer say “I don't understand it.” Instead, I try to help other people understand. If you're still on the other side of that line, consider taking the initiative to join those of us who have moved beyond ignorance to the side of knowledge.

Short Reads

The pullout quotes below are excerpts from the associated article.

• The Antisemitism Post ™ | by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg | 2024

  I thought it might be time to share this piece, based on a talk I gave last autumn. It is meant as a framework for people to use to understand, analyze, discern– to illuminate the longstanding tropes of antisemitism in order to see where they are alive in our discourse today.

• Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism | by Eric K. Ward | 2017

  as much as I draw inspiration from the Jewish community, and as much as I adore my Jewish partner and friends, it was my organizing against antisemitism as a Black antiracist that first pulled me to the Jewish community, not the other way around.

• Opinion | Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars | by Henry Louis Gates Jr. | 1992

  for the tacticians of the new anti-Semitism, the original sin of American Jews was their involvement — truly “inordinate,” truly “disproportionate” — not in slavery, but in the front ranks of the civil rights struggle.

Long Reads

• Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism | by Magda Teter | 2023 Teter's book provides a deeply researched explication of the common Christian roots of antisemitism and anti-Blackness.

• Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History | by Steven J. Zipperstein | 2018 Pogrom provides a solid overview of how a pogrom works, the Jewish experience of a specific pogrom (Kishinev, 1903), and the role of the pogrom as a catalyst for further antisemitism (the infamous fabricated publication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion originated on the coattails of the Kishinev pogrom.)

• The Damascus Affair: 'Ritual Murder', Politics, and the Jews in 1840 | by Jonathan Frankel | 1997 I'm still working my way through this historical account of the murders of a Capuchin (Catholic) monk and his assistant in Damascus, Syria, in 1840. It's both fascinating and horrifying, and is recounted in such a way that the reader finds out the truth about who is responsible for the murders over the course of the telling – much as people would have experienced at the time the events took place. There are times when, as the reader, I've thought, that's a lot of evidence – maybe they really did it? And then I read about the assumptions of guilt, the torture – whipping a young man until his flesh fell off like spaghetti noodles (he died of course) – and baseline antisemitism of many of those involved in the justice proceedings, and the underlying political realities that influenced everything. I still don't know whodunnit, but I have a much greater understanding of the complexities surrounding the case.