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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



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our society and its priorities.

Both of us are also, in
particular, Jewish millen-
nials. We have, in different
ways and at different points
in our lives, felt called to
participate in Jewish commu-
nities of learning, prayer and
communal gathering. Despite
our involvement in those
spaces however, neither one of
us learned of shmita’s existence
until adulthood. It is time for
our Jewish spaces, around
the world, to reprioritize this
sacred ritual, and apply its
wisdom in concrete ways to
our own times.

The word “shmita” is
observed every seven years.

The shmita year began several
days ago, on Rosh Hashanah.

“Sabbatical” tends to refer to
respite from work, typically in
a university context. But the
shmita year is slightly different.

It is a collective sabbatical, a
radical recalibration of society
as a whole, in order to align
it with principles of justice
and equity for human beings
and for the lands we inhabit.

Shmita offers a framework
for how we might enshrine
seemingly individual choices
as social values.

The shmita year has two
major components. The first is
that it serves as a rest for land:
Just as humans get to observe a
sabbath once every seven days,
the land that we inhabit gets a
sabbath, too. In biblical times,
it meant that the land should
lay fallow for a year, and the
gleanings left for the needy and
even animals. Through shmita,
our relationship to land can
shift from one of control and
domination to one of appre-
ciation and interdependence.

Clearly, such lessons are appli-
cable to this moment as well.

Shmita’s other major compo-
nent is that debts are forgiven.

This is done to address finan-
cial inequities that grow over
time, and to enable everyone
to have the opportunity to
thrive. Debt forgiveness every
seven years disrupts wealth-
hoarding and provides relief to
those struggling to meet their
basic needs. Shmita approaches
justice expansively.

These ideas can be, and
should be, used in practice
— not just in our ancient
texts, and not just aspiration-
ally. For instance: we could
forgive debts and change the
systems that cause such terrible
indebtedness. Two-thirds of
contemporary U.S. bankrupt-
cies are over medical issues and
medical debt; we must make
health care free and universal
to solve this problem over the
long term. Collectively, U.S.

college students owe nearly
$1.6 trillion in student loan
debt; President Biden could
and should forgive up to
$50,000 per borrower in federal
student debt through executive
action. Over the medium term,
we must make public colleges
and universities free, to avoid
recreating the same problem
— something that our home
state of Rhode Island is already
on its way to doing. This year,
its General Assembly perma-
nently enacted RI Promise,
the free tuition program at the
Community College of Rhode
Island. The idea of shmita can also
guide us in acting to avoid
the most catastrophic effects
of climate change. Shmita
proposes that for a year, humans
must avoid treating land simply
as a means to our ends; we must
not think in terms of limit-
less expansion, but rather in
terms of sustainability and rest.

Leaving the land fallow rejects
the notion that our planet —
and its resources — exist only
to serve us.

Our state’s Act on Climate
bill sets legally binding targets
for emissions reductions; now
Like America, Genesis Has Two
Distinct Stories of Creation
BY RABBI RUTH ABUSCH-MAGDER
EVERYONE HAS at least a
few creation stories: how they
were born, how they came to
the career they chose, how they
met their loved one.

This week Jews around
the world will return to our
creation story, the one found
in the first chapters of the
Torah that are read on Simchat
Torah (beginning Tuesday
evening, Sept. 28) and again
on the following Shabbat (Oct.

2). Each time we engage with
these stories we uncover more
of the mystery and discover
a bit more of the truth. The
story of Bereshit — Genesis —
reminds us that reexamining
beginnings can help us find a
deeper understanding of why
and how we have arrived at this
moment, and how we can use
these insights to continue to
uncover and understand other
creation stories in our lives.

This year, with America’s
creation story the subject of
fierce ideological debate, I
am thinking about what we
can learn from Bereshit about
American history.

The story of creation as
presented in the Torah is really
two versions of the story. The
first story is found at the end of
the first chapter of the book of
See Kallman, Page 26 Genesis. In this version, God
creates a being in the divine
image, both male and female.

This being or beings (it is a
bit unclear) share the same
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JEWISHEXPONENT.COM JEWISH EXPONENT
ruling over all the other living
creatures. Male and female
are equal, they have distinct
names and personas. Neither
one precedes the other. While
this sets up a binary gender
dynamic that creates its own
problems, it also embeds
male/female equality into
the foundation of our culture
and story. From this moment
forward, binary equality is part
of Jewish life and tradition.

The second story of creation
comes in the second chapter
of the book of Genesis. In
this version, God first creates
a singular, male being. God
brings all sorts of creatures
into the world to be company
for the man, but none of the
animals truly completes him.

God decides it is not good for
the man to be alone. While
the man sleeps, God removes
a rib from Adam’s side and
from this manly rib fashions
a woman. She is derived from
him and there to complement
and complete him. Man is first,
woman is secondary. From
here on, men are at the center
of Jewish life and tradition
and women play a supporting,
secondary role.

Scholars have tried to recon-
cile these two versions of the
Jewish creation myth; it is not
easily done. The contradictions
reverberate throughout Jewish
life: There are many ways in
which man and woman are
equal to each other within
Jewish life, and there are many
ways in which they are not.

While it would be easier to
have a singular narrative to
either celebrate or revile, we
are forced to live with the
contradictions. From the start, our tradition
has encouraged us to embrace
complexity. We understand
that complexity can coexist
with wholeness.

The contemporary fight
over American history — as
embodied by the “1619 Project”
that seeks to anchor the
country’s creation story in the
year the first enslaved people
were brought from Africa to
North America, and efforts
by conservatives to ensure it
is not taught in schools — is
a fight over complexity. And
the lessons we learn from the
biblical telling of creation
enable us to better navigate our
national creation story.

The United States was
founded on a platform of
freedom and equality for all.

Our brave colonial forefa-
thers broke with the British
monarchy and its hierarchical
structures and governance.

The Constitution enshrines
freedoms for all. Many have
died fighting for this vision of
society. Laws and policies have
been shaped to bolster this
ideal. With the Constitution
as our guide, we have sought
this equality in our schools,
our elections and our social
interactions. This is the founding narrative
that makes Americans proud of
their country. For too long, it
was the only narrative taught in
our schools. It is easy to celebrate
this version. It is a promise that
draws immigrants to our shores,
believing that they too can be
part of this dream. It is hopeful.

See Abusch, Page 26
STATEMENT FROM THE PUBLISHER
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not necessarily reflect the views of the officers and boards of the Jewish Publishing
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letters to letters@jewishexponent.com or fax to 215-569-3389. Letters should be a
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published. SEPTEMBER 30, 2021
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