Dershowitz: “Anti-Semitism May Be Dead, But Can Jews Let Go of It?” (1997)
Anti-Semitism May Be Dead, But Can Jews Let Go of It?
Future generations won’t accept a Judaism that requires them to pray for persecution to survive.
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
Anti-Semitism, as it affects the average American Jew, is over. Perhaps not forever. But certainly for the foreseeable future. There are still anti-Semites—in the militia movement, among Louis Farrakhan followers, in the Holocaust-denial movement and sprinkled throughout the general population, but for the most part, these bigots are marginalized individuals with little power or influence over the day-to-day lives of American Jews….
Yet despite these enormous gains, many Jews do not seem to be able to give up their anachronistic status as victims….It has long been argued that Jews need enemies to survive, that without persecution Jewish life will disappear.
This victimization perspective on Jewish survival has not been limited to fervently Orthodox rabbis. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism and a secular Jew, believed that “our enemies have made us one.” He predicted that if our “Christian hosts were to leave us in peace…for two generations,” the Jewish people “would merge entirely into surrounding races.” Albert Einstein agreed: “It may be thanks to anti-Semitism that we are able to preserve our existence as a race.” Jean-Paul Sartre, a non-Jew, went even further arguing that “it is the anti-Semite that makes the Jew.”
I call this the “tsuris theory of Jewish survival.” (“Tsuris” means trouble in Yiddish.) This negative theory seems to be supported by current trends. Just at the time when Jews have nothing to fear from remaining Jewish, they are shedding their Jewish identity in record numbers. I believe that this is happening because far too much of Jewish identity has been tied to our victimization and our long history of being persecuted. We are not prepared to face what I call the coming “post persecution era of Jewish history.”
As we enter that era, we must define a more positive Jewish identity based not on what our enemies have done to us, but rather on what we are able to contribute to the world. Unless Jewish life in America can thrive in good times, when Jews are accepted as first-class Americans, it will not survive the coming century. Our children will not accept a Judaism that requires them to pray for persecution so that they may survive…
