A couple of months ago, I spoke to a group of about 60 people at a Friday evening Shabbat dinner in the Washington, DC area, on the topic of my new book, Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews (recently excerpted in Quillette). I’m always a bit apprehensive before I speak to mainstream Jewish audiences about my book’s thesis—not because I fear the majority will disagree with me, but because many congregations feature one or two highly assertive ideological watchdogs who tend to attend this kind of event with a view toward angrily deligitimizing the speaker.
The Rabbi of the community in question, whom I have known for many years, interviewed me in front of the audience. Then the congregants in attendance, not a heckler among them, asked a series of thoughtful questions. Phew, I thought, controversy averted. But a few days later, I received an email from the Rabbi. “Apparently you have some detractors,” he wrote. “Tell me something I don’t know,” I thought to myself.
The Rabbi—call him Rabbi One—had apparently been on a call with other Rabbis from the area, discussing how to respond to rising antisemitism. My book came up, at which point the Rabbi facilitating the discussion (Rabbi Two) said he adamantly refused to discuss either my book or my ideas about the ideological underpinnings of antisemitism. Another Rabbi agreed the book was beyond the pale. They did not, mind you, express disagreement with any specific arguments I made in the book. In fact, I doubt either one of them had read it.
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