opinion
Kanye in Context: Which Came
First, the Hatred or the Target?
BY RABBI AARON MILLER
I 16
NOVEMBER 3, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
An antisemitic freeway demonstration in Los Angeles in support of Kanye West
Like fi re, antisemitism is only dangerous when it is
allowed to spread.

At the risk of sounding too much like Jerry
Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo, the spread of antisemi-
tism depends on a host of conspirators. While
Republicans are right to call out antisemitism on
college campuses or under the guise of inter-
sectionality, they have been slow to reject Ye’s
“bold” ideas on Jewish world domination. While
Democrats are right to sound the alarm on right-
wing antisemitic violence or shameless dog-whis-
tling, they are doing precious little to address
anti-Israel purity tests that its Jewish activists
increasingly must pass. If antisemitism remains a
cudgel that the right and left use only to wallop
each other, then today’s hatred has more than
enough room to spread. And unchecked, this
madness will consume us all.

Jews are the fi rst victims of antisemitism, but his-
tory has shown that Jews are never the last. Millions
of people starved to death while Russian elites ped-
dled “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Societies
collapsed and nations fell with the Nazis’ rise to
power. Jews suff ered gravely and disproportion-
ately during these upheavals, but as the expression
goes, crazy does not know where to stop. Jews are
a nation’s canary in the coal mine. The same forces
that hurt Jewish people will eventually come for
everyone. They always have. No exceptions.

As we witness our democracy fraying and civil-
ity reaching ever new lows, the time has come for
people who are not Jewish to be just as worried
about antisemitism as Jews have been. I used to
think that the Holocaust fi nally taught the world a
lesson in acceptance 2,000 years in the making. I
naively hoped that future generations would see
once and for all where the hatred fueling antisemi-
tism inevitably leads. This week has shown, again,
how easily people forget. Though antisemitism
hurts Jews fi rst, its spread only exacerbates the
crises that cause it. We are in crisis now. It will take
everyone committed to reconciliation and under-
standing to fi ght for a future where these things
are far from guaranteed.

Jews have been fi ghting hatred for millennia
against the strongest forces the world has ever
known. But altogether, we comprise only 0.2% of
humanity. Now is the time for allies who are not
Jewish to join the struggle and raise their voices
with ours. Together, and only together, can we
stop antisemitism’s spread. We can make sure this
chapter of madness has fi nally reached its end.

And then, together, we will be able to write a new
story, one in which God’s children can come back
together once again. JE
Rabbi Aaron Miller is associate rabbi of Washington
Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C.

StopAntisemitism.com/Twitter n the early years of my rabbinate, antisemitism
rarely crossed my mind. I saw how antisemitism
was rising in Europe, and I knew how pervasive it
had become in the Middle East. But somehow, I
held the illusion that the spread of antisemitism was
contained to a specifi c time (the past), certain places
(not here) and fringe people (whose names I have
never heard). Antisemitism had not disappeared, but
it felt like a distant siren shrieking so far away that I
could hardly hear its blare.

Now, as these past days have shown, antisem-
itism is spreading like wildfi re, and the alarms are
sounding everywhere. Antisemitism has rightly
been called “the world’s oldest hatred.” On its
surface, antisemitism is a hatred against Jews,
but underneath, antisemitism emerges from a per-
son’s need to hate someone and, conveniently,
yet again, landing on the Jew. For antisemites,
hatred comes fi rst, and for thousands of years,
Jews have been their fi rst targets.

This has been a terrifyingly familiar week for the
Jewish people. When Kanye West posts about
Jewish bankers or Jewish media moguls or Jewish
blood libel, for all his creative genius, his antisem-
itism is actually quite stale. When the United
Nations publishes yet another report singling out
the State of Israel for crimes against humanity, as it
recently did, we know we have been here before.

When a former president tweets, yet again, about
Jewish dual loyalty, he is not saying anything that
Jewish people have not heard countless times
before. Jewish space lasers? That’s a new one,
but for anyone who has studied or experienced
antisemitism, this week’s fl are up is surprisingly old.

Today’s antisemitic outbursts do not reveal any-
thing about Jews, but they speak volumes to our
times. I should not even have to say it, but there is
no Jewish conspiracy. There is no cabal. There are
no secret meetings. We are not parasites, or ter-
mites or cancers spreading across the globe. The
world has not and will never be saved by long-suf-
fering international superstars or politicians who
believe they are the only ones courageous enough
to stand up against the Jewish strawman of their
imaginations. The fi rst revelation of antisemitism is
the madness of the antisemite.

Antisemitism’s other great revelation is a soci-
ety so dysfunctional that Jew-hatred spreads. The
world is full of dangerous people. We Jews know
this better than most. But this week, we have seen
how a broken political system, or a soulless corpo-
ration, can bring their ravings to the mainstream.