(Jewish Group) How centuries of Jew-hate shaped us
The Talmud observes that the Hebrew letters for ‘truth’ (emet) are spaced far apart in the alephbet while the Hebrew letters for ‘falsehood’ (sheker) are consecutive, with the reason that ‘Falsehood is frequent, truth is rare’ (Shabbat 104a).
The shocking media proliferation of lies widely believed to be true - most recently, that Donald Trump won a landslide re-election as president of the United States, and that the Covid-19 pandemic is a massive hoax - recalls the nightmare of lies by which Jews were consistently persecuted in the past, and which, in different forms, endangers them now.
Antisemitism has existed for most of Jewish history, but only in recent times has it been classified in some countries as a hate-crime punishable by courts of justice. Still, it is questionable how effective legal measures can be in dealing with irrational hatreds and prejudices. Antisemitism has proven resistant to all rational solutions.
Hannah Arendt wrote of pre-Holocaust Europe that ‘all Jewish children encountered antisemitism’, and that German antisemitism was ‘a hammer blow to the head’ driving her to Zionism: ‘When one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew’.
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Goes well with, Time for academia to come clean about its role in driving Jew-hate