Every so often, Edelman, creator of the BBC radio show Peer Group, likes to scroll through the vile list, as a treat. One such evening, he came across an open invitation to attend a meeting for White Nationalists at a private apartment in Queens. “Curious about your whiteness?” the tweet read. Edelman is curious about everything, and hey, maybe there’d be a cute girl there. And that’s how a curious Orthodox Jew wound up at a gathering of neo-Nazis and, using wit and charm, lived to tell the tale.

What happened next? No spoilers here! You’ll have to buy a ticket to Edelman’s third solo show, Just For Us, playing at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City (and Mike Birbiglia produced it!) If you’re lucky enough to snag a seat during the show’s limited run, the award winning comedian will take you back to his very Jewish childhood in the very racist Boston and explain in hilarious detail how he infiltrated a group of White supremacists and survived unscathed. Come for the Nazis, stay for the unexpected love story, and applaud Edelman for the finale zinger of all zingers. 

Dear reader, I realize it’s kind of late to insert my voice here, but deal with it. Edelman doesn’t remember this, but we first met at a comedy show in January of 2015. He was MCing and checking IDs — a man of many talents — and when he read my Hebrew name written on the silver necklace I wore, I fangirled hard. Critics describe him as a young Jerry Seinfeld, but I think he’s more of a Bugs Bunny — charming, full of tricks, and a master at deploying humor to examine uncomfortable issues. Anyway, seven years later I found myself on a Zoom call with Edelman joking about dead Jews. He was telling me about a recent episode of his BBC radio show Peer Group that was “controversially” called “Dead Jews.”

Controversial? People love dead Jews, I quipped (I know “quipped” sounds pretentious, I just didn’t want to write “joke” again). “Right, the joke is that people care a lot more about dead Jews than they do about living ones,” he replied. 

Dead Jew jokes don’t sit well with everyone, but it’s less of a joke and more so an observation about Jews in non-Jewish spaces, which is precisely what Just For Us is about. Okay, let’s get into my conversation with Alex.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What I loved about the show were the handful of moments where I felt the jokes were just for Jews, just for us. It surprised me that the majority of your audience is actually non-Jewish. Do they, like, get it?

Every joke that is specifically Jewish is contextualized by at least one explanation and two context clues. It’s calibrated to appeal to non Jews, but also to make Jewish audiences feel like it’s for them. And the reason for that isn’t cynical. The reason for that is that I am a Jew, who, after many years of trying to figure it out, is existing as a Jew in non Jewish spaces. And that’s one of the layers of the show is what it means to exist as a Jew in a space that isn’t Jewish, and tackling everything around that. It’s nice, though, to have jokes in the show with the word shul or HaShem, and it does get a different pop here. It’s a joy to be doing it in New York, precisely because this is the first time I’ve performed in a market where there’s a substantial base of Jewish people.

People say the show is so timely, especially now. But I think it’s evergreen.

People always tell me, “What a timely show.” When I ask them why, they answer, “Because of all the antisemitism.” And I was like, bro, even when I started writing—back in my second solo show in 2015—people were like, “What a timely joke about an antisemitic experience!”

I have a feeling the show will be evergreen and it will always be timely. If this show is filmed with a special — God willing — and comes out in 2023, people are going to be like, “What a timely special,” Yeah, man… antisemitism. We’re always on the menu.

That’s it, you can call your next show, “Timely,” or “Always on The Menu.” 

If my next show is about Israel and Palestine my old manager said we should call it “Career Suicide.” I do sort of want to tackle it. I think comedy should try to thread the needle. No one can agree on the Israel and Palestine conflict generally, but everyone can agree that it’s hard to talk about. Everyone can agree that what’s happening on the ground is heartbreaking to people on both sides. Everyone can agree these are two distinct people who just want to live in peace and have nice televisions and eat food with their families. So there is common ground, and comedy is such a great vehicle for exploring it and navigating heavy issues in a light-hearted way. 

So you go to this neo-Nazi meeting for anyone who’s “curious about your whiteness.” What’s your gut response to the ever debated question — are Jews white? 

The short answer is “it’s complicated.” The long answer is Jews have a complicated relationship to whiteness. In some spaces, Jews are considered white and in some spaces, Jews aren’t considered white; they benefit from certain white privileges and things have changed throughout history. But the way I qualify it is — which is a joke that I’ve done on the BBC — here’s how you know if you think Jews are white. If you think being white is awesome, then Jews are definitely not white. If you think being white is terrible, then Jews are whiter than white, the whitest people who’ve ever lived. It’s a lose-lose situation. Look at me, I’m a white person, although some people look at me and they’re like, “You’re clearly Jewish.” I have passing privilege, right? I wear my hair in a certain way, I dress in a certain way, so if I’m in a certain environment, people might not register me as Jewish. So I have this passing privilege, but the fact that Jews even need to pass raises all these complicated questions.  

And it’s your white privilege that allowed you to infiltrate this group of neo-Nazis. Another issue with the are-Jewish-White question is that it erases Jews of color. It’s not even about all Ashkenazi Jews, but the white-passing Ashkenazi Jews like you and me.

It’s complicated, because there’s no one-to-one here, right? The construct of skin color and reckoning with what a Jew is, as a cultural, religious, ethnic melange… it’s hard to quantify. It’s fascinating and complex because it’s like trying to do a math problem with two different mathematical languages. Some people go, “It’s the same language,” and other people go, “No, it’s entirely different.” It’s contentious in every way. What I reckon with is that some Jews have elements of white privilege and other Jews do not. 

I think this addiction of binaries that is reflected within the general culture is unhealthy. Someone’s either this or they’re that. A big part of the show, and a big part of my work, my upbringing, and day-to-day life is examining a shade of gray (no pun intended). It’s where all the interesting stuff is! The tension between tradition and modernity, comfort and anxiety… I’m not uncomfortable saying that there’s a tenseness to the question — are Jews white? — I’m also not uncomfortable trying to examine that tension in a thoughtful way. I think anyone who declaratively states one way or the other might have firmer conviction in their beliefs than I do. 

Stephen Fry, one of my favorite Jews and intellectual heroes, likes to say that he’s constantly suffused with doubt. I’m the same way. You know who Stephen Fry is, right? Google him real quick and you’ll be like “I know this guy.” 

*Googles quickly* Ohh LOL yeah, I know him.

Right, he’s super recognizable, one of the funniest people alive and the smartest people alive. His approach is to come at everything with a degree of doubt. There’s a quote by Yeats, the poet, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst, are full of passionate intensity.” Let’s bring passion and intensity to not having conviction! We’re getting a little Talmudic now. Ask another question. 

No! This is where the good stuff happens! 

Well, yeah! I mean… things have changed. Things keep changing, and the Jews that I speak to about this often tell me that they’re frustrated by what is perceived to be a lack of allyship in all corners, and there’s real value to that message. There’s a tendency for people on the Right to not call out right-leaning antisemitism. I think there’s a tendency for people on the Left to not call out left-leaning antisemitism.

As they say, Jews are — or rather, antisemitism — is the canary in a coal mine. Or the scapegoats, which is ironically from the Torah.

Antisemitism skyrocketed in the last year, especially in Europe. Did you experience any Jew-hatred from your show? 

I had a bad antisemitic experience onstage in England in February of 2020, but I’ve also had a shocking amount of Jewish allyship from British people. The amount of people I’ve met on tour who’ve come up to me and been like, “Man, you’re the first Jew I’ve ever met,” and I’m like, “sick!”

Now that’s good for the Jews!

Being good for the Jews is really important for me. All of my heroes are people who are good for the Jews. Like Mel Brooks, who I would argue is great for the Jews.

Ugh, the best. 

David Baddiel identifies as an atheist, but still gets to be good for the Jews. In the show I say that Judaism is a mailing list you can never unsubscribe from. It’s like the Hotel California of religions. For better or for worse, you can be an atheist and wake up every day and curse the name of God and eat pork nonstop from the time you get up until the time you go to sleep and engage in the ritual slaughter of Torah scrolls or something—

But a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.

Exactly, a Jew is a Jew a Jew.

The post Alex Edelman Is Good for the Jews appeared first on Jewcy.

General Mills continued adding mascots to the line of monster cereals, but none were as popular as Count — “I vant to suck your blood!” — Chocula. The kid-friendly box of carbs, whose mascot was loosely based on House of Dracula, a 1931 movie starring Bela Lugosi, was beloved by all, that is, until American Jews ruined all the children’s fun. 

Due for a makeover, in 1987 General Mills updated the Count Chocula box design with a superimposed image of Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. He appeared to be wearing a six-pointed “medallion” around his neck which absolutely looks like a magen david. General Mills admitted they goofed and assured American Jewry they’re not antisemitic. “Our intent was merely to use Dracula’s likeness in a fresh and entertaining way,” said William Shaffer, manager of public relations for General Mills. 

Dear reader, when I say I rolled on the floor laughing my tuchus off from this Los Angeles Times headline, “Necklace Chokes Count Chocula: General Mills Pulls Box Design With 6-Pointed Star,” unlike the Jews who protested the new design, I’m being hyperbolic. To the rest of the world, the Count Chocolate controversy was a misplaced overreaction to a beloved monster cereal, but to the Jews, that six-pointed medallion sounded the alarms for invoking the deadliest antisemitic trope — the blood libel. 

Blood libel, or ritual murder libel, is a centuries old antisemitic canard which outrageously accuses Jews of murdering succulent Christian babies for a myriad of evil doings. Above all, non-Jews were, and arguably remain, convinced that a splash of baby-goy-blood is the secret ingredient to matzah, which is absolutely ridiculous — the secret ingredient is two splashes! Nevermind the fact that the Torah specifically forbids the chosen people from drinking blood and sacrificing infants, the myth of the Jew as a bloodlusting, disease carrying, foreigner bent on sinking their teeth into virgins persisted. Count Chocula is only a more recent depiction of this blood libel, but it was hardly the last and most certainly not the first. 

The history of blood libel as an effective means of solving the Jew problem is long and winding, so here’s a cheat sheet on how the creature of the night got his bar mitzvah. And remember, all antisemitic roads lead to blood libel. 

Predating Christianity, our story begins in 168 BCE in Jerusalem, when the Seleucid Greek empire was the ruling power. To justify the pillaging and plundering of the Second Temple, King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (the Hanukkah villain) pulled a crazy story out of his tuchus. With full confidence he declared that once a year,  the Jews, Jewish historian Flavius Josephus recorded, kidnapped a traveling Greek, stored him in the Temple and gorged him on fattening foods only to lure him in the woods and kill him. Horrified, the Jews were like “da fuq?” but the Hansel and Gretel-esque story was good enough for the King’s subjects. Fast forward to the invention of Christianity and the beginning of the Medieval Ages, the Greek’s blueprints were all too ripe for Jesus’ followers to take. Like a game of broken telephone, fifth century historian Socrated Scholasticus reported that some Jews, in a drunken frolic, bound a Christian child to a cross in mockery of the death of Christ and scourged him until he died.” 

Jumping ahead to 1144, the discovery of young William of Norwich’s lifeless body in the woods spurred the first legit accusation of ritual murder. Despite a single shred of evidence, Christians were all too quick to solve the case by scapegoating the Jews, subsequently spurring a global trend. Adding fuel to the burning fire, a converted Jew concocted an Incredibly Bad for the Jews tale in which a secret international council of Jews selected a different country each year on Passover to ritually murder a scrumptious Christian child, ensuring a return to the Promised Land. OY! 

Whenever a Christian child went missing, the Jews were blamed and the god-awful racist parents got off scott free, and the blood libel began taking multiple forms. Accusations against European Jews were incredibly creative, including using baby blood to remedy Jewish men who menstruated, and to aid other mysterious illnesses typical of the Jew (listen, if blood reversed lactose intolerance, we’d be all for it). Shit really started to hit the fan in 12th century Europe when Jews were blamed for spreading the Black Death in an effort to overthrow Christianity. 

Associated with rats and other vermin, Jews were slandered, demonized, and thought to be best friends with the devil himself, all of which justified mass pogroms. “However helpless individual Jews might seem, Jewry possessed limitless powers for evil,” historian Norman Cohn wrote. “And already then, there was talk of a secret Jewish government — a council of rabbis located in Moslem Spain, which was supposed to be directing an underground war against Christendom.” Cue Mel Brooks’ “The Inquisition” song. 

I could go on about the thousands of Jews murdered in Spain, France, Germany, England, and pretty much all of Europe, but, dear reader, I did promise a brief history report. Yalla, we’re moving on to the 19th century literary world. 

At this point, Jews were cemented as the go-to scapegoat for all evils in the world. Obsessed with money, the hooked-nose deviants’ sole purpose was to wreak havoc and infect Europe from the inside, all the while happily noshing on Christian baby blood-soaked matzah. Soon enough, Jew hatred advanced from anti-Judaism to antisemitism, and the urgency to solve the Jew problem advanced. How? Enter Bram Stoker, the author of the 1897 gothic novel, “Dracula.” 

Stoker’s protagonist, Count Dracula, wasn’t the first creature of the night in literary fiction, but is hailed as the prototypical and archetypal vampire. Like the Jew, Dracula was a parasite from a foreign country — Transylvania — who traveled to different villages, draining the life out of its hosts. Dressed in all black, the vampire was associated with rats and werewolves, and like the Eternal Wandering Jew, he remained virtually unchanged. Charming and elegant, the pale, undead creature was obsessed with money, and abhorred holy water and the Christian cross. Whether Stoker intended to create a monster based on the perception of Jews is up for debate, but he was a man of his time, and antisemitism was in vogue. Professor of English Ken Gelder wrote that, “the anti-Semitic mythology of the Eastern European Jew folded in to what became — through stoker’s novel about — the “Dracula myth.” 

If there was any doubt surrounding the Jewish vampire, the first cinematic portrayal of Dracula cleared it. Albeit being an unauthorized and unofficial adaptation of Stoker’s novel, the 1922 silent German film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror emphasized the “Dracula myth.” To avoid copyright infringements, director F. W. Murnau changed Count Dracula’s name to Count Orlok, brought to life by Max Shreck, whose last name coincidently means “monster” in Yiddish and German. While Stoker depicted Dracula as more of an elegant aristocrat, Nosferatu’s Orlok, “with this hooked nose, long claw-like fingernails, and large bald head” was more in line with stereotypical caricatures of Jewish people in 20th century Germany. Deviating from Stoker’s original plotline, Orlok’s trip to the German town of Wisborn absolutely capitalized on anxieties of the German public. Here, the movie’s depiction of an “invasion of the German homeland by an outside force… poses sidquieting parallels to the anti-Semitic atmosphere festering in Northern Europe in 1922,” Professor Tony Magistrale wrote in Abject Terrors: Surveying the Modern and Postmodern Horror Film.

You know who fucking loved Nosferatu? German Nazis, duh, especially Julius Streicher, the editor-in-chief of Der Sturmer, a Nazi propaganda newspaper dedicated to Jew hatred. Actually, the antisemitic paper was inspired by Nosferatu’s Orlok, who, for Streicher, symbolized “the ultimate ‘other’: the anti-German, the contamintaor of the pure blood, the carrier of plagues — in other words, the Jew,” writes Sahara Blau in “Kosher Vampires: Jews, Vampires, and Prejudice.”

Hitler ate this shit up like a child at a candy store and heavily referenced Jewish vampire imagery in Mein Kampf. As part of Germany’s “the Jew as World Parasite” campaign, in 1943 the Regional Education Office of the Nazi Party published Der jüdische Vampyr chaotisiert die Welt — The Jewish Vampire Brings Chaos to the World. Anyway, all this to say that by perpetuating the myth of the supernatural blood lusting Jew, Hitler laid the groundwork to exterminate the Jews with little backlash. After all, he was merely performing a service for the safety of the world, and most importantly, the Aryan race. 

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, sympathy grew for the nearly exterminate Jewish population, and accusations of blood libel quieted down. Vampires and other monsters rooted in antisemitic origins evolved from a threat to society to kitchy characters made for TV sitcoms and to sell sugary cereals. Today, vampires still drink blood for breakfast, but instead of perpetuating blood libel, the Edward Cullens and Buffy’s Angel are fashioned to arouse horny teens with forbidden love. By way of introducing the vampire with a soul, pop culture successfully converted Jewish leeches who, unlike their successors, were not redeemable. 

So you see, American Jewry had every right to be up in arms over a Jewish Count Chocula. Vampires no longer pose a threat to the Diaspora, and we can drink our chocolate cereal milk free of anxiety. The myth of the Jewish vampire has rested, but be it on the cover of a New York Times paper or a cereal box, like the Eternal Jew, blood libel never dies.

The post How Vampires Perpetuate an Ancient Antisemitic Libel appeared first on Jewcy.

When comedian Amy Schumer shared a tweet about the FBI’s 2020 Hate Crime report — that of all hate crimes motivated by religion, 57.5% targeted Jews, who make up less than 2% of the total population — the usual infuriating, anti-semitic comments rolled in. 

Aside from numerous “Free Palestine” comments, we got: 

“Some additional stats: 13% were based on religion. 20% on sexual orientation, 62% on race, ethnicity and ancestry bias.”

“Ok…. Now let’s see hate crimes due to race… don’t forget to include police brutality, Covered up Lynchings to be called a suicide, etc. Jewish people got it bad, but they don’t have it as bad as MOST of the minority group.”

“I don’t understand how someone could hate based on religion!” 

Here’s the thing: people don’t attack Jews because of their religion. We’re attacked because we are Jews. 

Jewish businesses aren’t vandalized because someone takes issue with the fact that Jews keep the Sabbath or debate the Talmud. 

When someone asks me my opinion on the Israel/Palestine conflict after introducing myself, it’s not because I was talking about attending Rosh Hashanah services. It’s because my last name is Katz, and they know that Katz is a Jewish surname. 

When kids called me a kike in high school and made fun of my nose, they weren’t making fun of me because I held a different view about covenants with G-d. It’s because they thought I looked Jewish and mocked me about that. 

When Chasidic Jews get harassed in Brooklyn in the name of ‘Palestinian activism,’ it’s not because the person takes issue with their commitment to Halacha. It’s because they saw their visibly Jewish appearance and decided to attack them. 

Do Jews get harassed based on religion? Yeah — every time a Jew gets interrogated on why they won’t accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, it’s anti-semitic. But that’s only a small portion of all anti-Jewish hate. 

You know how I know attacking Jews isn’t only a religious hate crime? Because atheist Jews get attacked. Jews with no relationship to religion get attacked. “Culturally Jewish” people get attacked. Israelis who aren’t Jewish get attacked. It’s the association with our tribe, our group: it’s not religion-based, it’s identity-based, and that’s dangerous.

Did you know that Jews are the third-most targeted of all reported hate crimes despite being less than 2% of the population? 

When you look at the charts the FBI provides, it seems like anti-religious hate crimes are no big deal compared to hate crimes of race, ancestry, or ethnicity. But when you ignore the categories and look by specific bias type — like anti-Jewish — you find that anti-Jewish hate crimes account for 9% of all hate crimes reported in 2020. 

9%. If Jews were 9% of the United States population, there would be 29.5 million Jews in the United States.

There are only 7.6 million Jews in the United States.

There are so many issues with the term “religious hate crime,” but above all, it diminishes anti-semitic hate.

It’s an issue on the left and the right. Alt-right neo-nazis don’t really care that we don’t believe in Jesus. They care that we’re impure, non-white, and a threat to the white race. Leftists don’t care that we don’t eat pork. Woke, culturally-Christian atheists care less about ‘religious hate crimes’ because they think religion is backward or something from which Jews need to evolve. In their mind, Christianity is oppressive and fucked up, so Judaism is too. 

The term itself is just ridiculous. When the FBI calls anti-semitic attacks “religious hate crimes,” they imply that anti-semitism will magically cease to exist if we stop being religious — but they won’t. 

It’s not just Jews that suffer because of this. The term “religious hate crimes” leads to confusion for other ethnoreligious groups. When Sikhs are attacked for “looking Muslim,” is that a religious hate crime against Sikhs? Or Muslims? 

Hate crimes are violence by bias, and that bias is no fault of the individual. I didn’t date in high school, and I had a pixie cut, which led my peers to call me a lesbian — even though I wasn’t. I was bisexual, but nuance doesn’t matter to those who perpetrate hate crimes. 

And many organizations — including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and the international Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights — categorize hate crimes by specific bias or ideology. Categorizing hate as anti-Black, anti-Jewish, anti-Romani/Sinti, etc., allows for more nuance and clear data. 

Identity is complex, and the hate minorities face cannot be diminished to one facet of our peoplehood. So call a spade a spade: it’s racism, plain and simple, and shouldn’t be subject to diminishing terminology.

Every year in school, my classmates would learn about the Holocaust. And every year, without fail, someone would ask, “Why did Hitler attack Jews for their religion? Couldn’t he do that to Christians, too?” Then, because I grew up in the bible belt, someone would say, “Well, maybe if Jews believed in Jesus, they wouldn’t have been killed.”  

So — why do people hate Jews because of their religion? 

That’s easy! They don’t.

The post Anti-Jewish Hate Crimes Have Nothing to Do With Our Religion appeared first on Jewcy.

A lot of ink has been spilled about Linda Sarsour’s place on a panel tonight at the New School on anti-Semitism, and a prominent benefactor has threatened to withdraw funding for the New School as a result. A lot of the negative reactions have to do with who Linda Sarsour is, what she’s said about anti-Semitism in the past, and what she supports. And there is an up-swelling of bigotry and Islamophobia rearing its ugly head, for which as a public Muslim figure, Sarsour is an unfortunate lightning rod.

But a lot of the censure has much to do with who is considered to be an appropriate spokesperson for the Jews about a Jewish experience. In activist and leftist circles, it is taken for granted that the people most appropriate to define their struggles in life are the ones who experience it. Thus, it is expected to defer to Muslims when the topic is the experience or definition of Islamophobia, or African-Americans when the topic is anti-Blackness in America, or women when the topic is misogyny. Why are Jews not afforded the same deference? Who has the right to define what we suffer for our Jewishness, or to define what it is to be Jewish? Who are the gentiles that are perceived to be experts on us from the outside, and why are we deferring to them?

While some of the panelists are Jews, none of them are experts in the topic of anti-Semitism. There are no scholars in the field, nor activists whose focus is combatting anti-Semitism. The panel has two members of Jewish Voices for Peace, one member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and the Arab-American Association of New York. None of these groups focus on anti-Semitism. The issue then becomes not just who is on the panel, but why this panel exists at all.

The eventbrite page reads: “When antisemitism is redefined as criticism of Israel, critics of Israeli policy become accused and targeted more than the growing far-right. Join us for a discussion on how to combat antisemitism today.”  In addition to an unproven assertion that critics of anti-Semitism do not focus on far right purveyors of anti-Semitism, the framing of this event seems to focus less on defining anti-Semitism or combatting, but minimizing it and redefining it in the framework of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That is dangerous for those of us who live with the consequences— namely, Jews.

It’s no surprise then that ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt slammed the event, saying “Seriously there’s not a single Jewish organization that studies this issue and/or fights this disease (such as @adl_national) would take this panel seriously, let alone the institution that put it together.”

A panel like this may not be a total disaster. JFREJ released a PDF concerning antisemitism, a result of their earlier webinar (also featuring non-Jewish input!) and while there are issues with the document, including the historically inaccurate too-rosy view of Jewish life as second class citizens in the Muslim world or glossing over the prevalence of anti-Semitic rhetoric in anti-Zionist circles, it is still a decent bit of work. But it is unlikely that we will see even this caliber of result from this panel. What is far more probable is that anti-Semitism will be minimized and redefined to suit the political needs of the group in question, as will the fundamentals of Jewish history and identity.

Instead of wrestling with the difficulties presented by Zionism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism head on, we can expect this universally anti-Zionist (or at best, agnostic) panel to redefine the issues into non-existence, and thus write off the majority of Jewish opinion as wrong and misinformed— a misled people, acting against their own self-interest, an elitist opinion trotted out by those too out of touch to understand why people make the decisions they do, and what motivates them, for good or for ill.

The left often fails in anti-Semitism by refusing to look at Jews as a community. They are usually willing to go to bat for a Jewish person’s individual rights, but almost never for our communal rights. To justify this, they will redefine our identity, our history, our oppression, and ourselves. We are not permitted to speak for ourselves. At best, we get spokespeople we did not elect, speaking on behalf of others in our name, but not in our interests— as is the case here. As with the right wing, Jews are more useful as pawns than as people.

This is odious. It is also typical. Even JFREJ admits to anti-Semitism’s cyclical nature, and the forced re-definition of Jews and the pathological bigotry we faced in order to benefit the elites. Where this panel of non-experts will inevitably drop the ball is in their failure to realize that in their circles, they are those elites, and they are doing nothing more than pandering to the demands of a gentile majority, seeking to inflict their self-interested moralizing on our backs. And if we have to pay for their self-aggrandizing in our blood, then so be it. It’s a price they are willing to have us pay.

After all, it’s a price we’ve paid before.

Image via Wikimedia

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If you haven’t heard of the jam band The String Cheese Incident, that’s OK. You probably won’t need to hear of them again after this, an incident in which their drummer Michael Travis went on an anti-Semitic tirade on Facebook.

(Tablet contributor and self-described SCI fan Armin Rosen describes the group as a “lamer, less interesting, and less fun version of Phish.”)

A few days ago, in now-deleted posts, Travis proclaimed that “the Zionist banking cartel” is at the source of the world’s evils. The whole rant merits being reproduced outright; it’s a thing of beauty.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post This is the Most Sublime Anti-Semitic Internet Rant You Will Read Today appeared first on Jewcy.

On Sunday night, April 30th, a little theater in Saint Marks Place hosted a rather unusual event: a panel, and a protest. At its height, the protest outside was no more than 20 people, with a core group of ten or so sticking it out long term, most of them Jewish.

The small, but spirited crowd merrily chanted at Gilad Atzmon, a provocateur who markets himself as an “ex-Jewish” pro-Palestine jazz musician, and is widely derided as anti-Semitic for his conspiratorial views concerning a shadowy Jewish global cabal, to “go kakken effen yam,” (a Yiddish pejorative phrase that means “go poop in the sea”). They came armed with leaflets describing Atzmon’s views and their reasons for protest, and engaged in fierce, but restrained debate with Atzmon and his supporters outside the venue. At one point, a supporter of Atzmon’s and an Orthodox Jewish protester were arguing about if Jews were a race or not.

“Unfortunately, I now have to consider Lorcan an ex-friend,” said protestor Bill Weinberg, holding a stack of fliers outside the theater venue. Weinberg had attempted to convince Theater 80 owner Lorcan Otway to disinvite Gilad Atzmon, to no avail. Protest organizer Eugene Onegin added, “Free speech doesn’t mean that the venue owner is exonerated from any and all responsibility from renting — and giving a platform to — a fascist.” The protest was as much against the theater owner as against the speaker. While no one accused Lorcan Otway of harboring anti-Semitic views, the anger at him for giving a platform to bigots was palpable, and it is clear that the protesters held him responsible for his part in aiding its dissemination.

As the protest outside dwindled, the crowd inside Theater 80 numbered about 65, with only small fluctuations throughout the evening. The event billed as a chance to hear Gilad Atzmon and his co-panelists give a talk. Flyers for the event said the discussion was to be about Brexit, the Middle East, and Trump, but Brexit never came up, Syria was only mentioned by one speaker, and Trump was used as a comparison to Archie Bunker. Instead, the panelists spent most of their time talking about Jews and their nefarious effects on society: Jewish power, Jewish identity, Jewish politics.

What happened here isn’t much different than what happened in September at the Brooklyn Commons, when a crowd of mostly Jewish leftists protested the inclusion of noted anti-Semite and 9-11 “truther” Christopher Bollyn was given a platform to speak by the Commons’ owner, Melissa Ennen. In fact, a number of faces from that protest also appeared at this one. This time, the bigot in question was Gilad Atzmon, but the defenses floated for his bigotry were the same.

Lorcan Otway, the theater owner, speaks and writes about the importance of free speech. Unlike Melissa Ennen, Otway is not a “truther,” not a conspiracy theorist, but like Ennen, Otway relies on an absurd interpretation of free speech to be about supporting platforms for bigots— and disdaining protest. At the event, panelist Stanley Cohen accused the protesters of wishing to “shut down free speech,” as if opposition to bigotry is an act of censorship. A supporter of Atzmon, who would only go by Bill, railed against the previous demonstration at the Brooklyn Commons, saying it was an infringement on free speech, defended his enmity towards “the Rothschilds” as “not anti-Semitic!,” and grudgingly admitted that this smaller protest was, perhaps, not a violation of Atzmon’s rights. In his Times of Israel blog, Otway supports the right to picket and protest, but elsewhere seems to raise the specter of calling the cops, and both in his piece and on Facebook, lists progressive events the theater has hosted, similar to how Ennen relied on her resume to bolster her own progressive credentials.

Atzmon’s anti-Semitism and attachment to conspiracy isn’t hard to find. His rap sheet is a long one, and his co-panelists, Stanley Cohen and Norton Mezvinsky have troubling histories of their own. Only Michael Lesher, an Orthodox Jew, comes with a non-political background, as he was a whistleblower about sexual abuse cover-ups in some Orthodox Jewish communities. Lesher’s take on Jewish identity wasn’t particularly earth-shattering, but his condemnations of abusive behavior, praiseworthy in another context, took on a conspiratorial air when presented in the context of an entire evening dedicated to the myth of “secret Jewish power.” The background of the panelists only seemed to prove that Jews are quite capable of being anti-Semitic.

In the lead up to the panel, Atzmon engaged with some of his detractors, and took seeming delight in egging them on using blatantly anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as referencing “shekels,” “the Jewish condition,” or even simply calling them “you people.” Apparently, two Jews are two too many, for he mixed up two organizers of the protest: Eugene Onegin, and Bill Weinberg, the (former) friend of Otway’s who tried to engage with him before taking further action.

Certainly, the online interaction left an impression on Atzmon, well throughout his panel appearance. No less than four times did Atzmon mention Weinberg by name, interspersed between assertions that he has “no problems with national socialism,” and that political correctness and identity politics, which “intellectually castrate” the people and divide the Left, is a creation of a “Jewish intelligentsia,” which “sees a value in dividing society.” Atzmon continued, “Jewish power, which we aren’t allowed to talk about, explains the link between Marx, Soros, the 100 Jewish landlords, Israeli criminality, AIPAC….and Bill Weinberg!” Stanley Cohen, meanwhile, explicitly urged the Left to “work with National Socialists, with Al-Qaeda,” in order to break away from a “narrow” and self-sabotaging Left.

Melissa Ennen, Lorcan Otway, and Gilad Atzmon all claim to be members of the progressive left. Atzmon appeared at his panel wearing a pro-Palestine T-shirt, and before being wholly ejected by Palestinian activists for his anti-Semitism, had made for himself quite a name among far-left circles. Cohen and Mezvinsky also claim the “progressive” mantle, despite the former having offered legal aid to Hamas and Hezbollah operatives, and the latter having ties with white supremacists.

If you’re scratching your head at all this, you aren’t alone. Throughout the evening, much of what was said, when it wasn’t poorly organized word-salad, would sound at home in the mouths of the alt-right. Some of the audience members also embraced a jingoistic sort of nationalism, with one enthusiastically detailing to me his hopes of a closed border, and another asking the panelists “Is what’s going on in Syria a culmination of the Zionist policy and the Balfour Declaration?” But the panelists, the audience members, and those supporting them all described themselves as progressives — despite some troubling support from neo-Nazis and white supremacists, including David Duke.

While regressive-progressives of the likes of Ennen and Otway claim that speech must answer to speech, neither Bollyn nor Atzmon are willing to hear the concerns of their detractors, or those whom they aid in further marginalizing. And while Otway did not discourage a picket, the majority of the supporters of Bollyn and Atzmon are entirely unwilling to consider protest a form of speech, despite their enshrinement as such under the First Amendment.

In this twisted view of free speech, all speech must be consequence free, even the most harmful, dangerous, and bigoted of speech. Any permitted reaction must be parsed, neutered, and presented in a specific manner to render it toothless against the bigotry it seeks to counter. Ennen may not hate Jews, and Otway may not be party to conspiracy theories, but they doubtless bear responsibility for boosting the voices of bigots and attempting to scuttle challenges to the noxious views they espouse.

The key to cutting through this Gordian knot is understanding that anti-Semitism truly is the “socialism of fools,” and it functions as a social pathology and a conspiracy theory, and that will always assure its manifestation on either side of the political spectrum, right or left. In Trump’s America, that pathology has resurfaced, and its virulence appears both on the far-right and the far-left, who often crib vocabulary from each other to better propagate their ideals. It therefore is very likely that we will witness more and similar events over time, as ideas born on the far-right appear in discourse on the far-left. The far-right sees in the conspiracy mongering of the far-left an opportunity to recruit, make common cause, and inject their philosophy. When it comes to anti-Semitism, it seems they don’t have to work too hard.

Photo by B. Lana Guggenheim

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The flyer, handed out by three masked men to Jews exiting synagogue, instructs its Jewish readers that an “ID and passport are required to register your Jewish religion,” and that they should bring “religious documents of family members, as well as documents establishing the rights to all real estate property that belongs to you, including vehicles.”

The leaflets were approved by Denis Pushilin, who is identified as a chairman of “Donetsk’s temporary government.” Secretary of State, John Kerry, labeled the incident as “grotesque.”

“It is beyond unacceptable,” Kerry said. “And any of the people who engage in these kinds of activities — from whatever party or whatever ideology or whatever place they crawl out of — there is no place for that.”

Beyond unacceptable is right. Though there is speculation that the leaflet is being proposed as a political tactic, it’s still pretty awful. And what is the consequence if you don’t comply with this daunting request? Deportation.

(Photo by Twitter)

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