Community and Society Archive
Welcome to Community and Society where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the changing nature of community and society in America today. What are the challenges and opportunities these changes represent for the Jewish people in America at the dawn of a new century?
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A Wrongheaded Assumption
By David
Kraemer
In a recent
“address at morning prayers,” reported in The New York Times, Lawrence
Summers, President of Harvard University, expressed at some length his concern for
evidence of rising anti-Semitism, on campuses and abroad.
What was most remarkable about this address was neither its substance nor the
quality of its analysis, which were neither new nor otherwise notable. Rather, what was significant was who delivered
the address, where, and what he said about himself in the process.
One can agree or
disagree with different elements of Summers’ speech.
Basically, Summers directs our attention to the well-known and much reported
instances of anti-Semitic vandalism in Europe over the past year and connects this
phenomenon with the initiatives in European and American academic communities to exclude
Israeli participants in protest against Israeli government policies vis-à-vis the
Palestinians. Now, there is no doubt that the
acts of anti-Semitic vandalism in Europe are reprehensible.
But they must be put in perspective. Most
have been perpetrated by recent Muslim immigrants, whose anti-Jewish attitudes are hateful
and ignorant. But contemporary Muslim
anti-Judaism testifies primarily to conditions in Muslim countries, not to those in
Europe. In fact, on a recent trip to France
(Burgundy and the Alps), reputedly one of Europe’s most anti-Semitic countries, I
witnessed no anti-Semitism at all. What I
witnessed, instead, was graffiti representing reverse-swastikas, labeled
“anti-Nazi,” and other graffiti condemning Le Pen for being a “Nazi.” Asked about French anti-Semitism, my educated and
enlightened host at a wonderful B & B outside of Beaune, insisted that there is no French
anti-Semitism in France, and though I suspect he was being a bit naïve, I have no doubt
that he was accurately reflecting his common experience in the French countryside. We don’t hear these things reported
much, do we?
But the poorest and
most interesting section of Summers’ analysis is where he equates
“anti-Israeli” with “anti-Semitic” and then goes on to express his
alarm over “anti-Israel views…in progressive intellectual communities [=
universities] …that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.” Now, I have no doubt that many of the anti-Israel
initiatives on campus represent a highly misguided liberalism. But this does not make them anti-Semitic. Notably, even the ADL, in its recent, much-noted
report on anti-Semitism, characterized anti-Semitism on American college campuses as
“virtually non-existent” (the language is that of the report, not mine). How can this be so?
Because, according to the findings of the report, members of college communities,
students and faculty alike, are evidently able to distinguish between their opinions
regarding Israeli government policy (which they condemn) and their attitudes concerning
Jews (whom they respect highly). Anti-Israel
does not necessarily lead to anti-Semitic, despite what many Jewish community spokespeople
would have us believe.
It is this latter
point that I want to emphasize. The organized
Jewish community has long equated these two “antis,” and they have evidently
convinced Summers of the correctness of this equation.
In fact, if we were to remove Summers’ personal comments, his speech
could easily have been penned by a spokesperson for a Jewish Federation. I say this not to detract from what he
says—though, as I have said, I believe his argument is flawed—but to note that
his speech is, in both form and substance, an act of profound identification with the
Jewish community. It is, in both its
strengths and its weaknesses, Jewish through and through.
Near the beginning of Summers’ remarks, he affirms quite publicly that he is
“Jewish, identified but hardly devout.” What
the substance of his talk shows is that he is Jewish in ways that he does not even
recognize. He has so internalized the views
of the Jewish community that he espouses those views without subjecting them to the
thoughtful critique that should typify academic discourse.
Summers’
speech was delivered at morning prayers in the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard on
September 17, 2002. Can we fail to be
astounded that in our time, at the beginning of the 21st century, the Jew who
is president of Harvard University, the most prestigious university in the most powerful
nation on earth, steps up in such a setting and publicly makes an expression of Jewish
affiliation that is extremely powerful? The
Jewish community should be vigilant in the face of anti-Semitism, Muslim and otherwise. But it should at the same time recall where we
stand as a community—in the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, or in any of the many
other halls of power that are open to us today as they have never been open before.
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