O pinion
Why Should Jews Be Concerned About Hyphens?
BY KENNETH L. MARCUS
DEBORAH LIPSTADT,
recently named by President
Joe Biden as the U.S. Special
Envoy to Monitor and Combat
Anti-Semitism, won’t just
combat anti-Semitism but may
well eliminate it.

And that would be a mistake.

To be clear, the Emory
University historian is a fierce
opponent of Jew-hatred and
Holocaust denial, having
vanquished the Holocaust
denier David Irving in a British
court, among other triumphs
over bigotry.

But over the past few years,
Lipstadt has led a campaign
to eliminate the hyphen in the
word “anti-Semitism,” prefer-
ring “antisemitism.”
Why do hyphens matter?
Lipstadt argues that “anti-Sem-
itism” is misleading because
it denotes hatred of Semites,
not Jews. She notes that the
German historian who coined
the term “anti-Semitism” was a
far-right polemicist who sought
to blame Jews for the “Semitic”
characteristics that allegedly
incited anti-Jewish bigotry.

She joins several authorities
who have eliminated the hyphen
in response to those who, either
for political reasons or in error,
misuse the term to minimize
its anti-Jewish character. [The
Associated Press and the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency are among
the news organizations that have
recently agreed to the change.]
The issue generates surprising
controversy. In Palgrave’s
new collection of essays, “Key
Concepts in the Study of
Antisemitism,” some authors
eschew the hyphen, arguing
that it lends credence to offen-
sive arguments about Jews’ racial
otherness. Others, however,
prefer the hyphen either because
of common usage or to empha-
size that the term originates in
a tradition that viewed Jews and
Arabs as sharing a common
“Oriental” heritage. This caused
the editors to throw up their
hands in frustration. Unable to
choose, they permit both spell-
ings, skittering back and forth in
a way they acknowledge may be
“disconcerting.” Lipstadt is right that
“anti-Semitism” has mislead-
ingly conflated Jews and
“Semites” since it was first coined
in the 19th century. But she is
wrong to think eliminating the
hyphen will solve anything.

In German, “Antisemitismus”
has been hyphen-less for over a
century. This has not averted the
confusion that worries Lipstadt.

Nor did it eliminate Jew-hatred
in that country.

The problem lies not in
the hyphen but in the term
itself, which was invented by
Jew-haters who thought its
pseudo-scientific sound would
give social acceptability to
their prejudice. Scholars and
linguists, however, have yet to
devise a suitable alternative.

“Jew-hatred,” “anti-Judaism”
and “Judaeophobia” have their
partisans, but each term has
problems. Until a better term
arrives, we are stuck with
anti-Semitism. Hyphen removal
is no panacea.

The dilemma worsens when
the hyphen is removed from
“anti-Semitism” but not its
handmaiden, “anti-Zionism.”
Much commentary surrounds
the contested relationship
between these concepts.

Some say that anti-Semi-
tism refers to discrimination
against “Jews as Jews,” while
anti-Zionism means opposi-
tion to Zionists as Zionists.

They are wrong about both.

Anti-Semitism opposes Jews
based on false stereotypes and
gross fantasies. It hates Jews not
as Jews, but as monsters whose
villainy is concocted by the
haters. In the same way, anti-Zi-
onism hates Zionists not as
Zionists, but as figments of the
haters’ imaginations.

Zionism can be many things:
a political ideology, the yearning
of a people for return to a land,
the Diaspora’s support for Israel’s
security. But it never means the
murderous, world-dominating
conspiracy that its opponents
fantasize about. The hyphen in
“anti-Zionists” wrongly suggests
that such people oppose what
Zionism really is, as opposed to
what they imagine it to be.

Historian James Loeffler
argues that anti-Zionism, as a
concept and a construct, deserves
the same historical analysis as
anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism,
as opposition to Jewish national
aspirations, arises from many
strands within the Jewish and
Arab worlds. As a distinct
ideology, however, antizionism
(the spelling is mine) was forged
in Soviet propaganda, in the
context of the Cold War and
the rise of post-colonialism, as
a reaction to Israel’s orientation
toward the United States and the
West. This ideology of hate fuses
age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes,
European conspiracy theories,
left-wing anti-nationalism and
post-Cold War geopolitics.

This new ideology, which has
gained considerable steam since
the Second Intifada and the
United Nations’ 2001 Durban
anti-racism conference, should
not be conflated with the polit-
ical movements — including
the opposition to Zionism that
arose among Jews themselves —
that preceded it. If ever there is
a place to remove the hyphen,
it is here: Antizionism today is
no mere opposition to Zionism.

It reflects instead an indepen-
dent form of hate with its own
history and logic.

At the Louis D. Brandeis
Center, we frequently defend
Jewish students and professors
who are stigmatized, excluded
or attacked for their sympa-
thies toward the State of Israel.

If their antagonists were merely
critics of Zionism as a political
movement, then this might be a
mere political dispute, albeit one
conducted with unusually nasty
tactics. In fact, students are targeted
because Zionism is an overt
element of their identity as Jews.

This Zionophobia, as some prefer
to call it, can only be understood
on its own terms as a distinctive
form of prejudice. This notion
is lost when anti-Zionism is
hyphenated but antisemitism is
not. Thus between anti-Semi-
tism and anti-Zionism, there
should be two hyphens or none.

Most commentators have
praised Lipstadt’s nomination,
given her international reputa-
tion. A few critics oppose based
on her perceived partisan-
ship. As a former Republican
appointee, I am willing to go
out on a limb: Confirm Lipstadt,
but let her fight anti-Semitism. If
she wants to go hyphenless, she
must fight antizionism, too. l
Kenneth L. Marcus is a former
Assistant U.S. Secretary of
Education for Civil Rights, author of
“The Definition of Anti-Semitism”
and founder and chair of the Louis
D. Brandeis Center for Human
Rights Under Law.

Shmita a Model for Tackling Climate Change and Inequality
BY SEN. MEGHAN KALLMAN AND
RABBI LEX ROFEBERG
WE ARE IN an era of multiple
interlocking crises. From
record-breaking heat waves to
wildfires to water shortages,
from rising authoritarianism
to a pandemic rampaging
across the world, it is clear that,
to survive, human beings will
12 SEPTEMBER 30, 2021
need to make urgent, major
changes to how we live.

Bold policy proposals
already exist to address
these problems, both nation-
ally and in different states.

Additionally, we — one of us
a politician, the other a rabbi,
and both progressives — want
to suggest another possibility,
gleaned from Jewish tradition:
JEWISH EXPONENT
the ancient idea of shmita,
the sabbatical year, which can
guide our work in this urgent
moment when everything we
do matters.

Both of us are millennials,
and therefore have come of
age under the worst inequality
since the Gilded Age — exacer-
bated and symbolized by a
student and health care debt
crisis. The disastrous effects
of climate crisis, extinctions,
displacement and environ-
mental degradation
are threatening to turn life into
a nightmare for most on the
planet. These problems can be
traced to a global obsession
with unending growth.

Our only chance to avoid
that is to drastically re-envision
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM