Did you ever read something and afterward feel as if you were hit with an iron fist? Punched hard in the gut?
That’s what happened to me this past week, triggered by one sentence at the end of a short article. Just 15 words that rocked me.
The Jewish Review of Books, a quarterly, highfalutin publication filled with deep thinkers, pulled together a group of a little over a dozen people; clergy, academics, diplomats, authors and historians, to answer one question. What did you believe before October 7 that you no longer believe?
It’s something many of us have asked ourselves in the aftermath of the barbaric attack by Hamas on the citizens of Israel.
Some participants in the symposium said they feel more vulnerable and isolated after 10/7, having been abandoned by groups and organizations they thought were their friends. Others went farther and said the durability and inevitability of the State of Israel has been plunged into doubt.
Strong feelings to struggle with and to ponder.
Reading what all the smart people wrote about their 10/7 reality checks, there was one that shook me to my core.
Anthony Julius, noted British solicitor and law professor, wrote about what he now believes, after 10/7. Julius said, my belief that the postwar period, in which Jews enjoyed relative security, was utterly anomalous.
Fifteen words. Let them sink in for a moment.
The lesson of October 7 for Anthony Julius, is that the Jewish sense of security in the decades after World War II, was peculiar and abnormal.
That’s one helluva big and extraordinarily scary thing to write.
For one thing, Anthony Julius is stating an obvious truth. For a long time, being a public antisemite was gauche. Tell a Jew joke or two at the country club but don’t march down main street calling for the extermination of Jews. There may be an antisemitic attack here and there in Brooklyn, but all was good in Scarsdale. Antisemitism, dare we say it, was relatively under control.
Layer in the massive post-war Jewish contributions to the world in science, medicine, technology and liberal thought, plus the establishment of the State of Israel in the ancestral home of the Jewish people, and Jews believed the old hatreds, if not eradicated, were at least pushed off to the fringe.
An anomaly, indeed.
But after 10/7, everything we may have felt and believed, was shattered into 1200 pieces. The hatred of the Jewish people was very much alive and well. It raced from Gaza into Israel on motorcycles, it marched on the campuses of our most esteemed universities, it grew like weeds on social media.
In the US, the UK, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and other so-called liberal democracies, antisemitic incidents are at an all-time high.
Israel has been calculatingly transformed from victim to victimizer. It has been hauled before the International Court of Justice, defending itself against the accusation of genocide, while its enemy hides in hospitals, schools and mosques, with nary a peep from the civilized world. Israel’s citizens were murdered, burned alive, tortured, raped and kidnapped, yet it is Israel that is being castigated for war crimes.
In 15 searing words, Anthony Julius is saying to Jews all over the world, they’ve been tragically deluding themselves. They may have thought, believed, hoped, this anomalous era of Jewish history would endure, but 10/7 proved them wrong. It was no different than past generations of exclusion, expulsion and extermination.
Post 10/7, any illusion the Jewish people had of relative acceptance, relative safety, brotherhood and sisterhood with our besties, is gone.
The world where Jews thought it would never happen again, like never, forever, is an utter anomaly because it happened on 10/7.
It put Jews in danger, in New York, Paris and Tel Aviv. It means the people we thought had our backs, don’t. It means, we don’t know how all this is going to turn out.
Our security was an anomaly and now we’re in the open field with no cover.
It also means Jews dare not be fooled by those who purport to know what’s good for them, or be deluded by the politicians, pundits and columnists that posit the path to real, not relative Jewish security, hinges on seizing this moment and taking big risks.
The volcano filled with molten Jew hate had been relatively dormant and we thought we were safe. It’s now clear we were living on borrowed time. Antisemitism and anti-Israelism is flowing brightly and boldly in rivers of burning lava, all around us.
So, what do I believe now, after October 7, that I didn’t believe before?
I believe winter has come to the Jewish people. It is stark and it is harsh.
Our relative security has been stripped away. The anomaly has ended. It was probably all a chimera.
Pooh-pooh Anthony Julius if you want, but do so at your own peril. He walloped me with his 15 words. I’m still reeling. May I say he scared the shit out of me? Has he done the same to you?
1 thought on “Shattered Illusion”
“Now is the winter of our discontent,” wrote Shakespeare. You vividly wrote, “it is stark and it is harsh.” To those surprised by 10/7 and its aftermath, the insidious and overt hatred was laid bare, having been obscured by the greenery and niceties of other seasons and civilized society. Yet it is in this winter that we are seeing the education, planning, and activism needed to grow healthier, with and deeper roots in the spring. The past complacency, especially among the younger generation, is finally awakening and reacting to the realities in our comity, polity, and the world. Anthony Julius is correct and perceptive in his assessment of what has past. As the Jewish remnant did after world War II, we need to understand the past and present, but now focus our energies on a constructive future. See excellent article in today’s Sunday Opinion (yes – in the NY Times !!) by Liat Atzili.