Antisemitism: The world’s oldest hatred

Introductory remarks

Rabbi Sacks: Kvod HaRav Rabbi Scheier, and beloved friends. Thank you for that beautiful and very touching welcome. 

Forgive me if I don't speak in French, but I did once, and I explained to my audience in Paris that when I speak in English, nobody else understands me, but at least I understand what I'm saying. When I speak in French, I haven't got a clue. So, forgive me if I'm speaking in English, but may I thank you and this Sha’arei Shamayim community and this incredibly warm and successful Montreal Jewish community, a model for any community in the Diaspora. Be proud of what you have achieved.

And thank you, Rabbi Scheier, for reminding us of one of my predecessors, the late Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, of whom the Dictionary of National Biography says that “He never despaired of a peaceful solution to any problem once every other alternative had been exhausted.” And who once, when asked, ‘How long do Chief Rabbis serve?’, memorably replied, ‘Chief Rabbis never retire and only very rarely… die.’ 

Thank you also, and I salute the achievements of the Federation CJA, about to celebrate its centenary in 2017. What you have built here is truly a model community. You have done great things. May Hashem bless you all to do even greater things in the future.

But I must say, I was so touched by the beautiful singing of the children of your Talmud Torah. And since this is a French-English environment, and since we have just heard the beautiful singing of those young people, forgive me if rather impromptu I share with you a story. And here it is.

Many years ago, Elaine and I were invited by the then Prime Minister of Britain, John Major, to have lunch with him and his wife, Norma, in their country home. The Prime Minister has a country home called Chequers. Now it's quite special to be invited just to have an ‘à quatre’ with the Prime Minister and his wife in a place that most people never see.

But as it happens, the next day I received an invitation to open a new Jewish school - not one under my auspices - but a new Jewish school in London. Exactly, that time, on that Sunday, that we'd been invited for lunch with the Prime Minister. Which takes precedence?

So I said to Elaine, “Let's not just decide, let's open a book and see.” And so I opened the book of Jewish teachings, and I discovered in Pirkei Avot, “Havei mitpalel bishloma shel malchut,” always work for the welfare of the government, “she'ilmaleh mora'a ish et rayeihu chayim bala'o,” because were it not for fear of it, respect for it, we would eat one another up alive. So always respect the government, because society depends on it.

Then I turned the page, and I read the following. “Kol ir she'ein bo tinokot shel beit rabban, machrimim oto,” any city which has Jews and doesn't have a Jewish day school, you excommunicate it. “She'ein ha'olam mitkayem, ela b’hevel pihem shel tinokot shel beit rabban,” because the whole universe only exists in merit of the sound of Jewish children at their studies.

I said, ‘When it comes to the society versus the universe, the universe wins.’ We said thank you very much to the Prime Minister, but please excuse us, we have a Jewish school to open. And that is what happened.

The years passed, and “Eyn HaKadosh Baruch Hu mekapayach s’char shel kol beria.” God always rewards you for doing what's right. So the years passed, and we got another invitation.

This time from Prime Minister John Major, he said, “Norma and I would like to invite you, we're having dinner with the President of France, Monsieur Jacques Chirac, at Chequers.” So we went, we finally got to Chequers, and we had dinner with a crowd, and the President of France and the Prime Minister of Britain. At the end of the meal, John Major came over to our table and said, “Jonathan, I would like you to have a few minutes together with Monsieur Chirac. You'll go into my study, you'll just have some quiet time together.”

He took me into the study with Monsieur Chirac, and he was just about to leave, and Monsieur Chirac said, “John, don't go. I want you to hear this.” And he then proceeded to tell John Major and myself how he, as Mayor of Paris, had built so many Jewish day schools. He'd given them the grounds, the grants, he mentioned their names - Zotsa Hadorah and Chabad.

And I was listening to this for 20 minutes. I came back shell-shocked, and I said to Elaine, “I have just heard the President of France give a lecture to the Prime Minister of Britain about the importance of Jewish day schools.”

Let me tell you, “Ein ha'olam mitkayem, ela b’hevel…” the whole universe exists in virtue of the pleasure of seeing our kinderlach, our children, singing their Judaism with love. And never forget, Montreal Jewish community, that those children are the most precious things we have.

Always build a community full of children singing the song of our faith. And truly, Hashem will bless you all, and the universe will continue to exist. 

I want to begin with a little scene, my favourite scene. It goes like this. There are two Jews sitting together in Vienna in a coffeehouse in 1933. One of them is reading the local Jewish newspaper, the other is reading the notorious antisemitic rag called “Der Sturmer.” The first says to the second, ‘How can you bring yourself to read that rag? It's antisemitic filth!’ The second one, with a big smile, turns to the first one and says, ’You're reading the Jewish press, what does it say? Let me tell you, we're assimilating, we're declining, we're arguing, we're divided. I read my newspaper, what does it say? The Jews control the banks, they control the economy, they control the world. No, if you want good news about the Jewish people, always go to the antisemites!’

Friends, I begin with that story because I have to tell you something. I want to talk to you about the world's oldest hatred, and the most dangerous, which has become suddenly real again in our time. It's very, very tragic indeed. 

I begin with an autobiographical note. I was born in Britain, I was born in London, I grew up among non-Jews. Most of my friends growing up were non-Jews. 

I became a public figure in British life. In all those years, I did not experience one episode of antisemitism, not one. My father, alav haShalom, who came from a little town called Kielce in Poland, not known for its philosemitism. To be honest, Kielce was the town where they had a pogrom of Jews in 1946, one year after the Holocaust.

So my father, with a bit of a sense of humour, but only a bit, every time we were driving along and the traffic lights went red, he used to say, “Antisemitic traffic lights!” So, when it came to the Haggadah on Pesach, and we said, you know, “Vehi sheAmda l’avoteinu… shelo echad bilvad amad aleinu l’chaloteinu ela bechol dor vador omdim aleinu lechaloteinu.” When we come to the bit in which we say, it wasn't just one generation, every generation they rise against us. I always used to say, that was for my dad, alav haShalom. That doesn't relate to me at all. 

And so, it came as a real shock, when in 2001, our youngest daughter, who was then a student at the London School of Economics, went to a rally, an anti-globalisation rally, which quickly turned into a tirade, first against America, then against Israel, and then against Jews.

And our youngest daughter, who's a very, very courageous young lady, sat, came back that night, sat on my bed with tears in her eyes. And she said to me, “Dad, they hate us.” I have to tell you, that to hear that from a daughter of ours, in the 21st century, was something I never expected.

Dame Rebecca West once said, that Jews having known what they have known, are “possessed of an unsurprisable soul.” That night I discovered, I have a surprisable soul. 

Every contemporary of mine, all of our generation, grew up knowing that Europe had pledged itself, after the Holocaust, “Never again.”

I was present with the British Foreign Secretary, in Stockholm, on January 27th, 2000, when every European nation, in the form of its Head of State, or Foreign Secretary, pledged itself to a continuing programme, to ensure “Never again.” And almost immediately, after that was said, and said in good faith, a new antisemitism was being born. 

Now, let's begin by trying to understand what antisemitism is.

I struggled with this, because if you try and understand antisemitism, as a coherent set of beliefs, you quickly discover that it is not a coherent set of beliefs, but a set of contradictions. Jews in the 19th century were hated, because they were poor, and because they were rich. Because they were communists, and because they were capitalists. Because they kept to themselves, and because they infiltrated everywhere. Voltaire hated the Jews, because he said, they have “an ancient, incorrigibly superstitious faith.” Stalin hated the Jews, because he said, they were “rootless cosmopolitans,” who believed nothing.

Antisemitism is a set of contradictions. 

And therefore, the only way I found of understanding it, is to think of it as a virus. And just as a virus carries the disease that afflicts the human body, so the virus of antisemitism, afflicts the body politic.

Now, the human body, in its most sophisticated of all mechanisms, has something called the immune system, which is geared and trained, to recognise viruses as intruders, and to repel them. 

So, how does a virus survive? Viruses survive by mutating, until they're no longer recognisable, until the immune system doesn't see that that's an enemy, and thinks it's a friend. 

After the Holocaust, the West constructed the most systematic effort, ever undertaken in all of human history, to create an immune system, so powerful, that the virus of antisemitism could never happen again. And it did so, by pretty much half a century of anti-racist legislation, of interfaith dialogue, of Holocaust education. 

What happened? Antisemitism mutated, and thus defeated that immune system. 

I think this was only the third mutation, in all of human history. Antisemitism has been around for the better part of two and a half thousand years, and there have only been three major mutations. 

First of all, of course, in the Middle Ages, Jews were hated, for their religion. Then, in the 19th century, when you could no longer legitimately hate somebody for their religion, they were hated for their race. Today, in the 21st century, where you can no longer hate someone for their religion, or for their race, they're hated for their nation-state. For the right, the right of any people, to have space, where they can defend themselves. Anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism.

Now, what is very interesting - and surprised me at first - was to discover that, although it is very easy to hate, it is very difficult indeed, to justify hatred, in public discourse. So, throughout the ages, when people have sought to justify antisemitism, they have done so, by recourse, to the highest source of authority available within the culture. 

What was the highest source of authority, available in the culture, in the Middle Ages? It was the Church, it was religion. So, what we had was religious Judeophobia. 

Now, in the 19th century, in post-enlightenment, emancipated, Europe of secular nation-states, you couldn't possibly justify anything in terms of religion. What was the highest source of authority in the Europe of the Enlightenment? It was science.

And so, we find, that antisemitism was predicated on two disciplines, that were thought in the 19th century, actually to be sciences. One was the so-called, scientific study of race, a curious hybrid of biology and anthropology, and the other one was social Darwinism. The belief, apparently thought to be scientific, in those days, that what applied in biology, applied in society, that the strong survive, by eliminating the weak.

After the Second World War, after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, science was no longer the most pristine source of authority. It had given us unprecedented powers, but they were seen to be powers, sometimes of destruction. 

What, after the Holocaust, after World War II, was the highest source of authority? The answer was, human rights.

The United Nations 1948, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, became the new standard of authority. And that is why, whereas, in the Middle Ages, antisemitism was justified, in terms of religion, and in the 19th century, on the grounds of science, it had to seek vindication, in the modern world, in terms of human rights. 

And that is why, in the notorious, United Nations Conference, against racism, in Durban, in August, late August of 2001, one week before 9/11, the State of Israel was accused, especially in the parallel sessions of the NGOs, of the five cardinal sins, against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and attempted genocide. 

Only one nation in the world, accused of those five crimes, and that was the State of Israel. 

Let me give you an example of what that actually meant. I don't know if you do this in Canada, we've done it in Britain ever since 2000. We observed 27th of January, as National Holocaust Memorial Day. I presume you do that here as well. So each year, we would go to a different city in Britain, and it was always a very moving ceremony. 

In 2003 - I will never forget this - we did Holocaust Memorial Day, in Edinburgh. And it was set to begin at 7.30 in the evening. At 6 o'clock, I went live on BBC News, to talk about this year's Holocaust Memorial Day. So I'm expecting the normal questions, ‘Why in Edinburgh this year?’ ‘What's the theme of this year?’ Instead, my first question, the first question that I received was, ‘Tell me Chief Rabbi, what do you have to say, about the Muslim community, who are boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day, because it fails to account for the ongoing genocide, against the Palestinians?’ This live on national news, at 6 p.m. Of course, you will understand my answer.

I said ‘The Holocaust began with the debasement of language, and you have just given us a first rate example of that.’ I've never seen an interviewer back off so fast. 

But that is one of the tactics in karate. You take your opponent's strength, and you turn it against himself, and that is what happened.

People say you're against the Nazis, you're shocked by the Holocaust, you believe never again. Well, they say, the new Jews are the Palestinians, Israel are the new Nazis, and that is why every thinking, feeling human being has to be against the State of Israel. This is an outrage.

And the trouble is, that it is capable of convincing intelligent people, even in, not just in the Middle East, but in Europe, and the United Nations, and campuses. Under the aegis, and the guise of BDS. And I salute every one of you, and every one of those wonderful students at McGill, who voted down the BDS.

This morning I had the privilege of speaking, not only to the Catholic Archbishop, but also the Deans of McGill, and Concordia, and I've forgotten which other universities. And I shared with them my belief, and I share it with you. 

I said to them, in 1927, a very distinguished French intellectual, called Julien Benda, wrote a book, which if I could speak French, I could tell you the title of. It was called, “La Trahison des Clercs,” The Treason of the Intellectuals. And in that book, he wrote, that - this is 1927 in France. He said universities used to be a place, where people engaged in the collaborative pursuit of truth. Today they have become homes for, listen to his phrase, “the intellectual organisation of political hatreds.”

You let that happen to universities, and you say goodbye to freedom. And therefore I salute everyone who stands with Israel, against BDS, and let us defeat that motion wherever it appears.

But friends, you will understand if I share with you my view, that this third mutation of antisemitism is serious. Why is it serious? Because in the 19th century, the European nation states - France, Austria, Germany and the rest, said to Jews, ‘We offer you emancipation. We offer you the chance to be full citizens of the secular nation-state. Just become like us. Just integrate, acculturate, assimilate, and there will be no more hatred of Jews.’

And Jews did just that. They integrated. They assimilated. Some of them even converted.

And still they found that Europe hates the Jews. And that's when racial antisemitism was born. 

By the end of the 19th century, with the pogroms in Russia, with the Dreyfus Affair in France, with an antisemitic Mayor, Karl Luger, in Vienna, Jews realised, we did everything Europe asked for us.

And as gornisht helfen, as they say in French, it achieved nothing at all. And it was a number of Jews, most famously Theodor Herzl, who said, “If it is not safe for Jews in Europe, then we have to leave Europe and go to the Middle East. If the nation-states of Europe have no place for the Jews, then the only solution is Jews must have a nation-state of their own.”

And he was right. And so Zionism was born. And the belief of Theodor Herzl, and Yehuda Leib Pinsker, and Moses Hess, and everyone else, was once Jews had a land of their own, a state of their own, they would be “keChol haGoyim,” like all the nations, and antisemitism would end. 

And what happened? Antisemitism did not end. Instead, a new form of antisemitism was born. Anti-Zionism.

And at this point we have to say, this we cannot accept. As Amos Oz put it, in the 1930s antisemites stood and said, “Jews to Palestine!” Now they stand and say, “Jews out of Palestine!”

He said, “They don't want us to be here, they don't want us to be there, they don't want us to be.” 

And we have to stand up and say, this is not on. And that is why I decided to write “Not in God's Name.”

I believe that time and again in history, Jews made a fateful mistake. They believed that because antisemitism is about Jews, it is our problem. We have to fight this problem on our own. If it is our problem, we must find the solution. And that, I believe, was a terrible mistake, which we must not make again. 

Let me be very blunt with you.

In the world right now, there are 2.4 billion Christians. There are 1.6 billion Muslims. And there are few of us, most of whom seem to be in shul tonight.

We are outnumbered. There are maybe 13 million Jews in the world today, keyn yirbu, but do the arithmetic. For every Jew in the world today, there are 185 Christians and 123 Muslims. And if we are left to fight the battle alone, we will be very vulnerable. 

In 2003, at our request, at the request of the Conference of European Rabbis, the European Union held its first conference on antisemitism under Romano Prodi. 2003, I was there, I spoke. And to my horror, I saw that the European Union headquarters in Brussels, there were a thousand people in the audience. To my horror, I saw that approximately 98% of those people were Jews. And I was shocked.

And I got up and I said, “Jews cannot and must not be left to fight antisemitism alone. The victim cannot cure the crime. The hated cannot cure the hate.”

“... I will fight for the right, as I have done consistently, for Christians throughout the world to live their faith without fear. But I need you Christians to fight for my rights and my people's right to live their faith without fear.”

In 2002, April, as antisemitism began to get serious, as it spilled over from our daughter's anti-globalisation rally and started flooding through university campuses, I called in the Union of Jewish Students in Britain, an incredible, courageous bunch of kids.

And I said to them, ‘You're going to face tough times ahead. And we're going to be here with you. I and our community will be with you on the front line. And you will not be left alone. But I want you to do something really unexpected, something paradoxical - what they call in psychotherapy, “paradoxical intervention” - I want you, the Jewish students, to lead the fight against Islamophobia.’ And they did. 

And I said in Brussels, “I will continue to fight the right against Islamophobia in any attempt to incite hatred against Muslims. But I need you Muslims to stand up and lead the fight against Judeophobia.”

We really need that standing together. 

And I have to tell you, we succeeded in Britain. Because in Britain, from pretty much then on, the fight against antisemitism has been led by non-Jews.

And I salute Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown, and David Cameron, who have led from the front. I salute, with unlimited admiration the Prime Ministers of Canada, your previous Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who stood up for Israel - I almost applied to live here. What a great man. And may that precedent continue. 

We have to get non-Jews to understand that antisemitism is their problem as much as our problem.

We have to get people to understand that the problem is global and we will not win until we persuade them that it is their problem as well as ours. 

And that is now possible. Because something is new in our situation and I want to tell you exactly what it is.

Because in the Middle East, it is not just Jews who are under attack. Christians are under attack. Seriously under attack. In Iraq, 15 years ago, there were 1.5 million Christians. Today, 400,000, 300,000 and dropping. They've been completely eliminated from Mosul by ISIS, a community where there have been Christians almost since the birth of Christianity.

In Afghanistan, the last church was burned to the ground in 2010. In Syria, all 800,000 Christians were turned into refugees. In Egypt, 5 million Coptic Christians have been living in fear. In Gaza in 2007, the last Christian bookseller was asked by Hamas, please close your bookshop. He didn't. They burned down his bookshop and then they cut his throat.

There is ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East. 100 years ago, Christians were 20% of the population of the Middle East. Today, less than 4%.

Let us as Jews stand together with Christians and say no to this violence against people of faith. 

But let me be very blunt. The primary victims of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, Islamic Jihad and the rest are Muslims. Muslims are dying across the Sunni-Shia divide, across the radical-moderate divide, across tribal divisions. There are horrendous catastrophes taking place in Iraq, in Syria, in Somalia, in Yemen. All countries are melting down. A horrendous crisis, catastrophe is in the making between the radical Sunni forces of ISIS on the one hand and Iran, with its proxy powers of Hezbollah and Hamas, on the other. This is horrendous. 

Meanwhile, a thoroughly questionable Russia is getting involved. Turkey is playing a very difficult game and Europe is falling apart under the impact of migrants. I have to tell you, the radicals are destabilising one country after another and a humanitarian tragedy, which embraces people of all faiths, is about to take place. 

And that is why we have to understand that what begins as antisemitism never ends as antisemitism.

The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews.

It wasn't Jews alone who suffered under Hitler. It wasn't Jews alone who suffered under Stalin. And it will not be Jews alone who suffer under ISIS. 

Let me be very blunt. What I have done in my book is to show that antisemitism is only a specific instance of a much wider phenomenon. Something that has to do with identity, with in and out groups, with the people like us and the people not like us.

And that fundamental source of violence in human identity is capable, as it is now, of taking on a religious dimension. And when that happens, you have to realise that we are making ourselves liable to some of the most vitriolic and violent tensions that have existed in the whole of human history, many of which have been between the three Abrahamic monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

And the end result has been that people have killed in the name of the God of Life, waged war in the name of the God of Peace, hated in the name of the God of Love, and practised cruelty in the name of Allah Rahman, the God of Compassion.

And we have to say, as I have said in this book, that when people do that and claim religious justification, we, people of faith, of any faith, have to say, ‘No, God is calling out to us from Heaven saying, not in My name.’

Friends, we're just coming up to Purim. And Purim records the first warrant for genocide in history. Haman's decree, “leHa’arog leHashmid ul’abed et kol haYehudim, mina’ar v’ad zaken, taf v’nashim, b’yom echad,” to kill all Jews in one day. Genocide. 

And from Haman HaRasha, we understand the root of antisemitism, what it really is. He says to King Achashverosh, “Yeshno am echad, mefuzar umefurad mikol ha’amim, v’dateihem shonot mikol am.” There is this one people whose laws are different from any other.

Antisemitism is, at bottom, dislike of the unlike. Jews were hated because they were different. 

They were the most significant non-Christian minority in a Christian Europe. And today, they are the most significant non-Muslim presence in an otherwise Islamic Middle East. Jews were hated because they were different. 

But we are all different.

That is one of the great truths about humanity. None of us is identical with any other, even genetically identical twins only share 50% of their attributes. Because we are all different.

We are each unique, therefore irreplaceable, therefore unsubstitutable, therefore of infinite worth. 

Difference constitutes our humanity. 

Therefore, any society that has no room for difference, no room for Jews, has no room for humanity itself.

And I have to say that the time has come for us to be very blunt with our friends. As I have said for the last three or four years, “If it is not safe to be a Jew in the streets of Europe, then it is not safe for a European to be in the streets of Europe.”

We have to speak to all of us, Jews, Christians, moderate Muslims, and for that matter, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians, Baha'is, even my beloved atheist friend, Richard Dawkins.

Let's stand together on this. Because what is at stake is something deeper than our specific faith. What is at stake is our humanity.

And the time has now come for us to stand together, because otherwise we will fall separately. Today we have to be leaders in a campaign not just against antisemitism, but against religiously motivated hate, whoever practises it, and whoever it is practised against. 

And the good news is that the book, to my amazement, has been taken quite seriously.

It has been read by a lot of people in Britain, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prime Minister, and it has really captured something in their imagination. In the United States, it was excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, given beautiful reviews in the New York Times, and endorsed by CNN. You see, you can sometimes get endorsed by CNN. Don't count on it, but sometimes it happens. 

I think people begin to realise this is the issue of our time. And it may sometimes seem that it's a long way from the Middle East to Montreal, but in a global age, nowhere is a long way away from anywhere else in this world.

So in the book, I sound the warning, I give an analysis, I offer a solution, and I do not believe that books change the world. I believe that people change the world. 

But in this book, I have called on young Jews, young Christians, young Muslims, young people of any faith or of none, to stand together, to build a world that really cares for one another, that respects us in our differences, and understands that there's something very sacred about the right to be what we are.

And therefore, I want us not to be defensive. Don't be afraid. We're going to win.

We are going to win because we are going to stand with Christians, with Muslims, with Hindus, with Sikhs, in defence of life, and liberty, and tolerance, and generosity, and love. And we're going to win. 

So I hope you will be able to read the book, and do all we can to reach out to others, way beyond the Jewish community, to stand with us. Remembering why it is that the Torah begins with Bereishit 1, the creation of humanity, long before it gets to “Lech lecha meArtzecha,” the choice of Abraham, or of us, Abraham's children, to teach us that our common humanity. precedes our religious differences. 

And that must be the call of all of us in the 20th century.

Sometimes the world looks a little dark, but never believe that there is any problem that cannot be solved.

Jews are the world's great problem solvers. 

So, just to end, let me give you my favourite story about Jewish problem-solving.

It is set in pre-state Israel in 1947, when relations between the Jews in Israel and the British mandatory power were not that great. And a gunrunner for the Haganah - we'll call him Chaim - gets caught by the British and put in jail in the military prison in Akko, where he receives a letter from his wife, Chenia, who's writing to him from the Moshav in the Galil. And she says, ‘Chaim, it's all very well for you to go and be a hero for the Jewish people, but meanwhile we have a farm to run, and fields to plough, and potatoes to plant. How am I supposed to do that if you are in jail?’

Chaim sits down and writes Chenia a letter. 

‘Dear Chenia, whatever you do, don't touch the ground. There are rifles buried underneath.’

The letter is intercepted by the British military authorities. The next morning, the farm is overrun by British soldiers. They dig up every inch of ground. They find not one single rifle. Disconsolate, they return to base. 

The next morning, Chaim writes to Chenia, “Chenia, now plant potatoes.”

Thank you very much indeed.