A Tikvah Fund lecture in Jerusalem.
At the request of the Tikvah Fund (Israel), I delivered tonight a lecture in Jerusalem on the recent events in France and what it may entails for Jews.
I made clear that European Jewry as a whole and French Jewry in particular underwent a spectacular ressurection after WW2 and the Holocaust, both in demographic and cultural or religious terms. I noted also that Jews are supposed to enjoy a high level of toleration and consideration in contemporary Europe ; and that the memory of the Holocaust plays a significant role in the European Union's "civic religion".
For all that, I could not deny that antisemitism is rising sharply all over Europe. It is getting explicit, brutal, letal. Even more ominously, mainstream politicians and cultural or religious leaders tend to question, time and again, the tenets of the post-1945 philosemitism. Religious rituals like kosher slaughtering and processing or circumcision have been attacked by journalists, judges, members of elected assemblies, members of cabinet. Piety about the Holocaust has been criticized as "excessive" or "exclusive".
I offered four explanations for the rise of antisemitism : (a) the persistance of traditional European antisemitism, either religious (Christian) or racist, in many places, in spite of the guilf feelings induced by the Holocaust ; (b) complacence towards anti-Zionism, as a way to downplay the Holocaust guilt feelings ; (c) non-European mass immigration, especially from Islamic countries where antisemitism, Holocaust denial and hatred for Israel are solidly embedded in the local culture ; (d) the emergence of a '"fusional antisemitism" that mixes traditional European antisemitism, immigrant antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
I devoted some attention to Charles de Gaulle and to the various Marxist or radical networks as the main disseminators of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Europe since the late 1960's. De Gaulle built an impressive State machine in France that eventually dominated the European Union and reoriented many of its options, especially regarding Israel. The Marxist and radical networks took over the academia and "soft power" at large.
My final observation was that all European Jews had vivid, organic, memories of at least two major catastrophes, the Holocaust and the Expulsion from Islamic countries, and were accordingly taking quite seriously the present deterioration. Jewish emigration out of Europe – to Israel or North America – is likely to increase.