Never Again!

Recognizing and Repudiating Antisemitism

Antisemitism specifically means hatred of, hostility toward, or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines antisemitism as “having or showing a strong dislike of Jewish people, or treating them in a cruel and unfair way.”^[1] The word antisemitism comes from the German antisemitisch, which was a neologism coined by the Austrian Jewish scholar Mortiz Steinschneider in the phrase antisemitische Vorurteile (“antisemitic prejudices”) that he used to attack the French philosopher Ernest Renan’s argument that “Semitic races” were inferior to “Aryan races.”^[2] In 1879, Wilhelm Marr, who came to be known as the father of modern antisemitism, used the terms antisemitism and antisemite in his essay, “Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums uber das Judenthum” (“The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism”) to describe his conflict with the Jews that was based on “supposed racial characteristics” rather than on “religious differences.”^[3] In order to fight Jewish influence in Western society, Marr introduced the word antisemite “into the political lexicon,” established “the first popular political movement based entirely on anti-Jewish beliefs,”^[4] and organized the League of Antisemites.^[5]

In spite of all the attempts to “define” antisemitism—and the herculean efforts that have been expended to do so with political correctness—the task seems virtually impossible in today’s world. “Nowadays,” says Kenneth Marcus with much irony, “virtually everyone is opposed to anti-Semitism although no one agrees about what it means to be anti-Semitic,” and he rightly concludes that an argument may be made “that virtually every anti-Semite today is also a professed enemy of anti-Semitism.”^[6]

Historical Aberration or Unitary Phenomenon?

Is antisemitism the product of specific sociohistorical events or circumstances, or is it a more pervasive and enduring phenomenon? Though many efforts have been made to define antisemitism as historical aberrations that have been limited to distinct and highly individualized sociohistorical circumstances,^[7] the preponderance of evidence confirms that antisemitism as a recurring, enduring, and even unrelenting malady that has asserted itself in a wide variety of ways throughout the centuries of Jewish existence. Ritchie Robertson argues that antisemitism “is a durable, not a unitary phenomenon” such that “persistence of hostility to Jews as such is as remarkable as the variety of justifications given for it.”^[8] This view of antisemitism actually conforms to the principle of immutability that Solomon described when he declared that “there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

A Psychopathology?

Many scholars have advanced the argument that antisemitism is a pathological process of displacing or projecting hatred upon a people because they are perceived as being different. Steven Bartlett maintains that such analysts view antisemitism as “a true mass social psychosis, a psychosis of hatred that is infectious.”^[9] Red Bain further observes that “the neurotic anti-Semite is put on the defensive, has to ‘excuse’ and ‘explain’ his conduct, has to compensate for his guilt feelings, and is thus driven to more and more violent ‘vicious circle’ expressions of the neurosis.”^[10] History is replete with examples of social, economic, and religious events and circumstances for which Jews were blamed by those who were adversely affected by inexplicable events or circumstances or who simply could offer no other explanation for such situations than to “blame the Jews.” Gordon Allport deals with this mass psychosis by identifying what he calls “functional prejudice,” the psychological benefit derived from scapegoating, which itself is a crutch that gives an insecure person “reassurance of past failures, safe guidance for present conduct, and … confidence in the future.”^[11]

This is why Lucy Dawidowicz claims that “generations of anti-Semitism had prepared the Germans to accept Hitler as their redeemer.” She maintains that the economic problems of post-World War I Germany and the suffering that they inflicted on the German people “produced an emotional milieu in which irrationality and hysteria became routine and illusions became transformed into delusions” that then “assumed mass proportions” so that “the mass psychosis of anti-Semitism deranged a whole people.”^[12] For most Germans, the Jews were to blame for all of the social and economic problems during the time after World War I. Indeed, Hitler deemed “Jewish journalists to be a seminal factor in Germany’s interwar malaise.”^[13] The Nazis carefully orchestrated the libel against the Jews, whom they “blamed for every ill: the loss of the war, the Diktat of Versailles, and the inflation, from which Jews were said to have profiteered.”^[14] Indeed, the Weimar Republic that was established in Germany at the end of World War I even came to be known as the “Jew Republic.” Additionally, says Edward Flannery, all of the Jewish people “were suspected of ties with Communism, which was commonly referred to as ‘Jewish Bolshevism.’”^[15]

No matter what the problem may have been, the Jews were responsible for it! As had been the case throughout history, the Jewish people were once again set up as the “default scapegoats” for every ill in society, including what Daniel Rancour-Laferriere calls “Christian paranoia by proxy.”^[16] This disorder was fanned to a frenzy as the Nazis used statements of Christian leaders before and during that time to advance their occult, Neopagan agenda that was rife with social and racial Darwinism and radically perverse eugenics philosophy. Without the Jews as scapegoats, Hitler and the Nazi party would likely never have succeeded in gaining control of German society as they did. As Flannery wondered, “How did [Hitler], mediocre in so many ways, so quickly attract to his standard” such a cross section of German society? His answer? “The one catalyst that above all else enabled him to reconcile oppositions and finally transform Germany from a liberal republic into a totalitarian state in a single decade was his anti-semitism.”^[17]

Saul Friedländer calls Christian antisemitism a “collective psychosis,” pointing out that Jews, like witches and demons, served the Christian psyche as “the most enduring symbol of Evil known to Christianity.”^[18] Eve Garrard summarizes this malady well: “[The] long tradition of appealing to the idea of Jewishness to explain the world’s troubles … persists today, both in the West and in the East. … There’s a Jew-shaped space, and not a pleasant one, in Western culture, and placing actual Jews, both inside and outside the Jewish state, into that space seems obvious, familiar and natural—they seem to fit the space so remarkably well, especially once their actual activities have been reconstructed to conform to a deeply hostile picture of them.”^[19]

Friedrich Nietzsche expanded further on the psychosis of hatred that would reach its nadir in the antisemitism of the Holocaust some forty years after his time. He explained how prejudice can be multiplied into a pathological hatred and then into inflicting pain and suffering on the objects of prejudice and hatred. In fact, he observed that “to behold suffering gives pleasure, but to cause another to suffer affords an even greater pleasure.”^[20] Those who resort to scapegoating in order to excuse their own inadequacies, whether personal or societal, also usually derive a measure of pleasure from inflicting suffering and pain—even death—upon those whom they have blamed for their perceived loss of dignity, health, or wealth. It is no wonder that Bartlett says that “as the Holocaust is to genocide, so is anti-Semitism to prejudice.”^[21] Antisemitism is prejudice and hatred taken to their furthest possible extreme.

Antisemitism and Manifest Evil: Cosmic Dimensions

Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin point out that “hatred for the Jew has been humanity’s greatest hatred. While hatred of other groups has always existed, no hatred has been as universal, as deep, or as permanent as antisemitism.”^[22] Although antisemitism has emerged from various situations and has had many manifestations, its underlying cause has always been the hatred for Israel’s God that rests in the pagan heart—an antipathy that has been directed against the Jewish people because they represent God in the earth. This pathology seethes in the subconscious recesses of the Gentile mind and is ready to leap forth at any time and in any place. For this reason alone, Jews for thousands of years have held the opinion that antisemitism is “religious and particularist.”

Antisemitism, then, is much more than a psychopathological hatred for Jews. In fact, antisemitism in the Holocaust was, as Judith Hughes so poignantly observes, “the apotheosis of evil—the epitome of limitless depravity.”^[23] Antisemitism is a deep-seated spiritual issue, the ultimate demonstration of manifest evil.  Michael Seizer maintains that “anti-Semitism is not,” as much “a ‘social disease’” as it is “a moral aberration.” Indeed, “it is a denial of the humanity of other human beings, and the responsibility for it lies with those who are guilty of it.”^[24] Antisemitism has long been perhaps the most vile manifestation of evil in the world. This is why “psychoanalysis cannot reduce the evil acts of the Holocaust to simple psychopathology.”^[25]

In the final analysis, antisemitism and the excesses it produces­—including its “final solutions”—are not comprehensible through psychology or psychoanalysis. Instead, they require understanding the spiritual dimension of human depravity. Though antisemitism requires human agency in order to be manifest, the malevolence that underlies it is a fundamental manifestation of the cosmic evil that predated human creation and continues unabated in today’s world. Antisemitism is the human depravity of manifest evil that, when taken to its extreme and ultimate conclusion, inevitably produces holocaust. Antisemitism is the product of spirit both inside humanity and outside humanity. Indeed, antisemitism is “the inevitable false fruit of man’s spirit,” and it must have existed even before the manifestation of its various appearances, “even before Abraham, the first Jew,” says Yoram Hazony.^[26]

Ultimately, the agent of vile antisemitism is haSatan, the personification of evil in the universe. The Hebrew word satan (mentioned five times in the Hebrew Scriptures and 34 times in the Apostolic Scriptures) means “adversary,” one who stands in opposition to God and to human beings. Jewish sages have expressed their personal doubts that haSatan is actually a being, preferring to view this “adversary” as merely an aspect of the human psyche.^[27] In the Hebrew Scriptures, however, haSatan is more than a psychological predisposition or an inclination. HaSatan is given personification. He was the tempter who deceived Eve and overcame Adam in the Garden of Eden at the very genesis of human creation (Genesis 3:13). Paul warned Christians to be on guard lest they also might be “outwitted by Satan’s schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11), and he encouraged them to be careful not to allow the serpent who “deceived Eve by his craftiness” to lead them “astray from sincere and pure devotion” (2 Corinthians 11:3).

From the Apostolic Scriptures, it is clear that Jesus and the Jewish leaders of the first-century Messianic community believed haSatan to be a literal being, a fallen angel. As a matter of fact, Jesus described the primordial fall of Satan that he himself witnessed at the beginning of time: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18, niv). Jesus also encountered Satan during his forty days of fasting in the Judean desert and rejected the “adversary’s” three major temptations by citing specific instructions from the Torah (Mark 1:13). He also declared that the woman who had been bent double for eighteen years was thus afflicted not because of a personal psychosomatic issue but because “Satan [had] bound [her]” (Luke 13:11-16).^[28] The apostle Peter warned the early Christians that “your adversary [haSatan], the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The apostle John summed up the overarching apostolic perspective on haSatan from creation to the final judgment: “I saw an angel come down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand, and he laid hold on the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:1-2).^[29] Each of these leaders recognized haSatan as more than mere conflict within the human psyche: he was the “devil,” the “serpent,” the “dragon”—evil personified and self-contained in the adversary of God.

In the ongoing conflict with evil, the apostle Paul observed that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). As the most vile and vicious form of human hatred and prejudice, antisemitism is rooted in and prompted by the same haSatan and powers aligned with him in a spiritual realm. While antisemitism is inspired by insidious forces in the heavenlies that position themselves against the Almighty and his people, the struggle against antisemitism works itself out however in human agents and human societies where personal and community choices are made that determine “who is on the Lord’s side” (Exodus 32:26) and who is aligned with haSatan in this most wretched demonstration of manifest evil in the earth.

Antisemitism and Human Inclinations: The Good and Evil

The prophet Jeremiah declared that “the [human] heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Whether it is humanist, secularist, or pagan, the heart of godless man despises both the God of Scripture and the Scripture of God. And, like it or not, the Jews still represent God, and the Scriptures of the Jews still speak for God as his own self-disclosure. The devious human heart also hates the Jewish people, the Jewish nation, and the Jewish land because this people, this nation, and this land bear witness to the existence of the one and only true God (Isaiah 43:10; Malachi 3:6).

Paul says it well: “The mindset of the flesh is hostile toward God” (Romans 8:7). This hostility toward God can be both mental and visceral. It prompts the conflict which Paul also laments when he confesses, “I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. … I know that nothing good dwells in me … the good that I want to do I do not do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep doing” (Romans 7:15-19, nasb, niv). Even with the best of intentions and determination, humans often find themselves engaged in actions for which they are sorrowful and for which they know they need to make restitution. Paul’s description of this existential battle led him to draw this poignant conclusion: “What a wretched man I am!” (Romans 7:24-25).

The sages of Israel discussed this same dilemma, noting that God created in the first human being and every person since that time two inclinations—an inclination toward good (yetzer hatov) and an inclination toward evil (yetzer hara)—and that this creation set the stage for the unending struggle between good and evil in every human person. Alan Dershowitz explains: “The yetzer tov serves as people’s moral conscience, while the yetzer ra drives people to satisfy their personal needs and desires. The yetzer ra is not intrinsically bad; it becomes bad when it is not countervailed by yetzer tov and leads to wrong doing.”^[30] The term yetzer hara is usually translated as “evil imagination” and is characterized as evil, the enemy, and a stumbling-block.^[31] “The sages generally agreed that the yetzer hara is inborn, like a genetic trait, and that it is essentially a nature of evil—characterized by pride—that is resident in the human instinct for survival.^[32] At the same time, however, they also agreed paradoxically that the evil inclination is the source of the drive for self-improvement and the restoration of the world, prompting them to conclude, therefore, that “the inclination toward evil in humans has a potential for good as well.”^[33] King Solomon actually established this idea when he said, “I have also noted that all labor and skillful enterprise come from men’s envy of each other” (Ecclesiastes 4:4). While elements of the yetzer hara are positive and necessary for human existence, the potential for the manifestation of the most heinous evil also rests in its paradoxical realm.

Both good and evil are present in the mind and in the heart of every human being. The sages maintained that unlike the yetzer hara, which was present in a human being from birth (Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 91b). the yetzer hatov was generally acquired at puberty.^[34] Scripture does confirm the presence of an inclination toward evil in humanity from birth. God himself said that, in the antediluvian world, “every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood” (Genesis 8:21). King David took the issue further when he was so overwhelmed with remorse over the heinous nature of his own sin that he exclaimed, “I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5, niv). Scripture indicates that the yetzer tov is inherent in human creation from birth. Paul makes it clear that all non-Jewish people of the earth have resident in their beings the same Torah (Law of God) that was given to the Israelites at Mount Sinai (Romans 2:14). It is the Torah that is written on the heart of every human being that prompts Gentiles “who do not have the Torah” to do instinctively the things of the Torah” (Romans 2:15). Apparently, the Torah was written in the first human being’s heart at the time of his vivification, for Scripture declares that God “breathed into [ha-adam’s] nostrils the breath (neshamah) of life, and he became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). Since Holy Scripture is “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), it is likely that the Torah was “written” on the human heart when God “breathed” life into humanity.

The blessed and righteous person is the one who “delights in the Torah of the Lord” and meditates in it “day and night” and finds that “whatever he does prospers” (Psalm 1:1-3). Because the human mechanism is “hypersensitive, delicately balanced,” says Kallistos Ware, it all too easily goes wrong; yet, there is “incomparably more” to the “human person”^[35] because every human being is uniquely God’s creation and, as such, is possessed of infinite value. Each person is capable of profound and utterly depraved evil, yet, under the influence of the inclination toward good and the indwelling Spirit of God, each person is capable of immeasurable good.

In order to ensure that the yetzer hatov, through the agency of the Spirit and the Word of God, overcomes evil when it is presented, a person must be wise to the devices of haSatan when, in his profound subtlety, he presents himself as an “angel of light” and seeks to beguile the person by corrupting him from the “simplicity” of divine truth and righteous conduct (2 Corinthians 11:3). Those who fail to educate themselves in respect to haSatan’s devices inevitably find themselves outwitted and overcome with evil. Only faith in God and his divine Word can empower for victory.

Sadly, rather than ruling their yetzer hara through the power of the Word and Spirit of God, so many human beings come to be ruled by the inclination toward evil to such a degree that the inclination toward good is so severely suppressed that it is virtually nonexistent. Paul speaks of individuals who have their “conscience [yetzer hatov] seared with a branding iron” (1 Timothy 4:2). These are the people who have submitted themselves to evil to such a degree that they have been “given over to a depraved mind” (Romans 1:28).

Evil that is resident in the human heart can be controlled by engaging in a spiritual warfare wherein one follows the example of Paul who declared, “I discipline my body and make it my slave” (1 Corinthians 9:27). Impulses toward prejudice and hatred are best controlled when they arise, not after they are allowed to fester and breed violent intent. Antisemitism is obviated when human beings employ their God-given inclination toward good to constrain their all-too-human inclination toward evil.

Antisemitism and Deicide

Antisemitism is even more far-reaching than human evil inclinations toward prejudice and bigotry that are directed against the Jewish people. “What makes the Jewish people such a controversial element in the history of the world?” asks Isaac Rottenberg. “Could it be that their very survival and presence in our midst remind us of the God of Israel, the Great Disturber of our pagan souls?” he rightly wonders, with an answer that is all too obvious. What is the reason, then, for this disruption in the pagan heart, he asks? “The God of Israel refuses to be absorbed into a pantheon of gods.”^[36] Jacob Neusner is correct when he concludes that “those who hate Israel hate God, [and] those who hate God hate Israel.”^[37] It is the God of Israel who demands a conclusion that the pagan heart cannot endure: “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. … I call heaven and earth to record this day … that I have set before you life and death, the blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19).

Neusner is correct, therefore, when he concludes that “the nations hate Israel because of their remaining loyal to the Torah.”^[38] David Patterson argues further that “the anti-Semitic determination to erase the People of the Book from the face of the planet is a determination to erase the Book itself; without the People there is no Book; and without the Book there is no People.”^[39] Antisemitism, therefore, “is inextricably tied to anti-Judaism: the Jews were an evil nation because they had an evil religion.”^[40] Patterson exposes the real root of the vitriol against the Jewish people and their nation and land: “What the anti-Zionists would obliterate is precisely the voice of the Torah—and with the Torah, God and Israel as well. Because the Torah determines the covenantal relation to the land … the Jewish presence in Israel far transcends any political agenda.”^[41]

The people of Israel are detested—and their destruction is sought—because, in the words of Emmanuel Lévinas, the faith of the Jews “stems from the religion which modern political life supplants,”^[42] the religion that Patterson calls the religion “of creation and covenant, of revelation and redemption.”^[43] This bent toward eradicating both the Scriptures of the Jews and the Jews of Scripture is at the heart of the secularist agenda for deicide, the murder of God. The hatred for God that consumes the pagan heart perpetually drives its efforts to commit deicide. Richard Rubenstein is right when he speaks of the reason for the profound misotheism that resides in the pagan heart: “Had we but the power, we would murder God, for we will never cease to be tempted by Ivan Karamazov’s demonic fantasy that if God were dead, all things would be permitted.”^[44] Patterson notes that since antisemitism is at bottom God hatred and ultimately human hatred, “killing God requires killing the children of Abraham.”^[45] No wonder Immanuel Kant suggests that “the euthanasia of Judaism [would produce] the pure moral religion freed from all ancient statutory teachings,” and thereby answer the Jewish Question.^[46] And make no mistake about it: the “euthanasia of Judaism” requires the “euthanasia” of the Jews, for Judaism will never die as long as the Jews are a living, breathing entity, standing as God’s witnesses to the pagan world that Yhwh is the one and only God (Isaiah 43:12).

This is why antisemitism differs from all other forms of hatred. Robert Wistrich identifies the core issue: “The sacral, quasi-metaphysical quality of anti-Semitism is singularly absent in other cases.”^[47] Thomas Torrance says it well: “The story of Israel reveals a people hated by other nations because Israel’s life bore witness to divine prohibitions among the Gentiles.”^[48] The heart of godless man universally despises God. And because it does, it also hates Israel—the one people, the one nation, and the one land that stands for and bears witness to the one and only true God. Like it or not, Israel as a whole represents God, and the Scriptures of Israel still speak for God, even when the Jewish people may not faithfully follow the instructions of the Torah.

Utter Ignorance, Superstition, and Prejudice

“The panorama of human history reveals again and again vast multitudes of people swept away by manias, phobias, and hysterias caused by ignorance and fear and culminating in high emotional excitement and violence,” says Clyde Miller.^[49] Nineteenth-century Christian scholar Alfred Edersheim gives a clear-cut analysis of the basic cause of antisemitism when he says, “It is difficult to associate the so-called Anti-Semitic movement with any but the lowest causes: envy, jealousy, and cupidity on the one hand; or, on the other, ignorance, prejudice, bigotry, and hatred of race.”^[50] Because antisemitism has been history’s greatest mania, phobia, and hysteria, it should have come as no surprise that the ignorance, superstition, and prejudice that prompted it should have led to continuing violence that culminated in the Holocaust.

Generally speaking, antisemites have no coherent idea as to why they hate Jews. Johnson concludes that “in all its myriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non sequiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and inconsistency.”^[51] Anthony Julius agrees: “Anti-Semitism takes on the character of both perverted or ‘partial’ truths and the sheerest of fantasy. It is evidence of a “blurring” of “perfect knowledge and utter ignorance.”^[52]

It has been said that “prejudice is being down on something you’re not up on.” This is particularly true of antisemitism. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League observed in the 1930s before the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany that “there are major contributing factors to this antagonism against the Jew. Underlying most of them is the lack of knowledge of the Jew by the general public. This ignorance makes the Jew somewhat mysterious and creates suspicion, which, in turn, simplifies the propagandist’s task. Ignorance of any group makes it an emotional mystery. This causes apprehension, leading easily to dislike and even to hatred.”^[53] The level of ignorance of Jews and things Jewish in the non-Jewish world is simply breathtaking.

Too many Christians, for that matter, have minimal knowledge about the Hebrew Scriptures (which they have pejoratively termed the “Old  Testament”), and they have virtually no knowledge of the vast array of Jewish literature that is foundational to Rabbinic Judaism. With such monumental ignorance, it is easy for non-Jewish people—even Christians—to make false assumptions about the Jews. Because their opinions about the Jews are based on what others—including ignorant or biased Christian commentators—have said about the Jews rather on what the most reliable sources, the Jews themselves, have said about themselves, they have only stereotypes that secular and religious Judaeophobes and antisemites have created.

As Wayne Dosick observes, “While simple ignorance and prejudice do not constitute anti-Semitism, hateful and virulent attacks against Jews—usually just for being Jewish—is an insidious disease that still grips much of the world.”^[54] Sadly, many mainstream Christian denominations and even some Evangelicals are regularly duped by the subtlety of today’s antisemitism that woos them into joining politically fashionable efforts to delegitimize the Jewish people, the Jewish nation, and the Jewish land. In the process, some Christians have even aligned themselves with the most virulent form of antisemitism that has existed since the Holocaust—radical Islamism. They have also chosen to be on the wrong side of history and, worse yet, on the wrong side of the God of the universe who has said unequivocally, “Have you not observed what this people have spoken, saying, ‘The two families which the Lord chose [Judah and Israel], he has rejected them’? … This is what the Lord says, ‘He who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord Almighty is his name; Only if these decrees vanish from my sight, declares the Lord, will Israel ever cease to be a nation before me, declares the Lord’” (Jeremiah 31:35-36). When will Christians—supposedly the most enlightened and spiritually sensitive people in the world—ever learn? The answer may well be found in the refrain of Bob Dylan’s anthem about war, peace, and human freedom: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.”^[55]

About the Author

John D. Garr, Ph.D.

President & CEO