Book 5 of 2022: How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

 

Bari Weiss wrote this book soon after the slaughter of Jews at prayer at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Weiss grew up in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. She and her family were members of Tree of Life.  

The book was published in 2019 before COVID-19 and before Weiss resigned from the New York Times in 2020. An article in Politico talked about the reason for her resignation:

Weiss described the Times as an institution where "intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability" and where the opinions of Twitter users have become the paper's "ultimate editor." She complained that she felt bullied by colleagues who "called me a Nazi and a racist" and who posted an ax emoji next to her name. 

“Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery,” Weiss wrote.   

I listened to the almost every episode of the "Honestly by Bari Weiss" podcast before I read the book.  So I knew her positions on the anti-Semitism of both the Left and the Right before I started reading.  

In the first chapter she takes on the long history of Christian anti-Semitism, "the mere fact that Jews continue to exist in the world was an affront to the most foundational Christian idea, that the Messiah had indeed come. 

She says her intent is not to blame Christian doctrine, "It is simply to point out the historical and intellectual depth of the anti-Jewish conspiracy."

She then talks about the Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.  She says, "That event was a shattering awakening for those of us who believed that the poisonous ideology of white supremacy was mostly confined to the lunatic online fringe."  

On Friday evening, August 11, 2017, I watched news footage of men with torches marching across the University of Virginia campus chanting "Jews will not replace us" and "Blood and soil."  Between then and now Great Replacement Theory has become the truth for Fox News viewers.  The most popular Fox shows promote Great Replacement Theory.    

My response to Charlottesville was to join a synagogue. In a country with a President who says there are "fine people on both sides" I knew I had to take sides.  

The next two chapters in the book explain the anti-Semitism of the woke left and radical Islam. The last chapter is titled "How to Fight."  Weiss says, "ethnic nationalism always puts us in grave danger."

The last chapter has a different category of advice every page or two. Under the heading: Trust your discomfort. she says, "If a politician you thought represented your values claims that Israel is among the worst abusers of human rights in the world, you know the truth about that politician."

Next she advises Call it out. Especially when it's hard.  She says it is easy to call out white racists, but when a Democrat is anti-Semitic, we have to call it out: "Ilhan Omar can espouse bigoted ideas [about Jews]. And Ilhan Omar can herself be the hate object of bigots, including the (45th) president of the United States." 

Weiss says we should maintain liberalism. Worship of the state, Christian nationalism expressed in America First, is bad for democracy. Since the writing of the book three years ago, the right in America has become openly hostile to democracy and praising Putin, Orban of Turkey and other right-wing dictators.  

We should also support Israel: ready to criticize its flaws, but in support of a political and historical miracle.  She later quotes Walker Percy on the extent of that miracle:

Why does no one find it remarkable that in most world cities today there are Jews but not one single Hittite, even though Hittites had a flourishing civilization while the Jews nearby were a weak and obscure people. When one meets a Jew in New York or New Orleans or Paris or Melbourne, it is remarkable that no one considers the event remarkable. What are they doing here? But it is even more remarkable to wonder, if there are Jews here, why are there not Hittites? Where are the Hittites? Show me one Hittites in New York City.

Percy is right. I have never met a Hittite, but Jews are everywhere I go. The book inspired me to do what I can to keep it that way.  

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First four books of 2022:

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

My Love-Hate Relationship with Russia and Ukraine

A Map of the Former Soviet Union. 

Ukraine is the yellow country on the far west.

The kind of person we are inside shows itself both in what we do and how we react.  I had a soul-revealing moment when I heard the news in 2014 of Russia invading Eastern Ukraine and taking Crimea. The summary of the thought that raced through my mind:  “You Go Vladimir (Putin)!”

Cheering for Russia in a military dispute with Ukraine is like cheering for the New York Yankees against a high school team.  Nevertheless I had a vivid moment, not of loving Russia, but hating Ukraine.

The face that came into my mind was my grandmother.  She and my grandfather escaped Ukraine, then part of Russia, at the turn of the 20th century when more than a million Jews were slaughtered in Ukraine in a series of attacks called pogroms. My grandparents had the double good fortune of making it all the way to America.  Many other Russian Jews fled to Eastern Europe.  Those who fled to Eastern Europe and their children were killed by the Nazis 40 years later.

The Holocaust in Ukraine

My grandparents would have described themselves as Russian Jews, not Ukrainian Jews.  For the last thousand years Ukraine has been Russia a lot more than it has been an independent country.  Mark Schauss covers the sad history of Ukraine and Russia in The Russian Rulers History Podcast, available on iTunes. 

While Russia, Poland and much of Eastern Europe has a long history of hating Jews, Ukraine is the most anti-semitic country in a very nasty region. 

Next August, when I ride across what my grandparents called Russia, my trip will begin in Odessa, Ukraine. I won’t be in Ukraine long, but I expect to have the same experience arriving in Odessa that I had when I first set foot in Germany:  “Can this beautiful place really be home to those who slaughtered so many of my people?”

I am re-reading Vassily Grossman’s “Life and Fate,” a haunting book that is “War and Peace” set in World War II, particularly in Stalingrad.  Currently I am reading the letter a Jewish mother in Ukraine is writing to her son in the Russian Army.  The Germans just took over her town.  The Jews are being rounded up, robbed and will soon be killed.  Most of the neighbors are happy and cheer the Germans on, taking the possessions and houses of the Jews.  The mother writing the letter describes women who were friendly for 50 years suddenly turning on her with venom. The neighbor thinks the Jews are getting what they deserve. 

My love-hate relationship with Ukraine and Russia extends through my whole life.  My first military job was live-fire testing of the US Air Force missile inventory, everything from the Sidewinder wing rocket to the Minuteman multi-stage nuclear missile, the main weapon delivery system in the US Cold War arsenal.  Then I was a tank commander on the East-West German Border waiting for World War III to start. 

When I went to college after the Army, the literature of Russia and the literature of Florence, Italy, became lifelong passions.  Chekov, Dostoevsky, Lermontov, Pushkin, Tolstoy and later Solzhenitsyn wrote the books I loved most, along with C.S. Lewis, Dante and Machiavelli.  Now I am studying the Russian language so I can read the authors I love most in their language.  Russia is currently home to many brilliant authors, but who knows when they will be forced underground. 

From my grandparents persecution, to my Cold War childhood and military life, through finding the beauty of Russian literature in college, to my current plans to travel across Russia and neighboring countries, I continue to intensify my love-hate relationship with Russia and all of its sad and brilliant history.  At this age, my love-hate relationship with Russia and Ukraine is a permanent part of my life.