This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Jack Mintz, October 7, 2024
Writing on antisemitism, German-American historian Hannah Arendt quoted a joke from the First World War: “An antisemite claimed that Jews had caused the war. The reply was ‘Yes, the Jews and bicyclists.’ ‘Why the bicyclists?’ asked the antisemite. ‘Why the Jews?’ replied the other.” The joke illustrates the scapegoating that has prevailed against Jews for centuries. “The Jewish question” has been obsessed over despite Jews being only a small part, if any part at all, of most countries’ populations.
In his masterful book, Anti-Judaism, David Nirenberg, now at Princeton, treats antisemitism as “historical thought” rather than simply scapegoating. Reviewing Egyptian, Christian, European and Islamic history, he provides a thread showing that Jews could not be accepted, given their unwillingness to change religion. For that matter, Karl Marx argued not even conversion to Christianity could free Germany from Judaism. He argued Judaism is an attitude, and money and property its “God.” Capitalism could produce “Jewishness” whether people were Jews or not.
Canada’s record on antisemitism is far from pristine. In the late 1930s, Mackenzie King’s Liberal government allowed only 5,000 Jewish refugees from Europe to come to Canada. In 1939, it turned back the German merchant ship St. Louis, with the result that 254 Jewish passengers met their death in the Holocaust. In 1946, almost half of Canadians were opposed to immigration, but the doors began to swing open after 1947, as popular opinion changed. Even so, restrictions on Jewish access to certain professions and educational institutions persisted. It wasn’t until 1968 that Herb Gray, appointed by Pierre Trudeau, became the first Jew in the federal cabinet.
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