Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

184 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:181
and sensitive jobs? The uncompromising opposition of the Bolsheviks to
Jewish self-organization found concrete expression in these policies,
thereby providing an observable and credible basis for the charge of
antisemitism.
But imagine, momentarily, that the Soviet regime had stopped short of
concrete discrimination against its Jewish citizens. Imagine, furthermore,
that Soviet antisemitic activities had been confined to spreading the propaganda
of pamphleteers like Trofim Kichko—a clear precursor to Atzmon—
who wrote, in Judaism and Zionism, of the connection between the Torah,
the “morality of Judaism,” and Israeli “aggression.” Would Jewish advocates
have made their case with such comparative ease?
In today’s climate, the answer would have to be negative. Indeed, it’s
tempting to believe that, were he still alive, Kichko would be on a speaking
tour of North American and European campuses. A veritable army of
professors, commentators, and student activists would line up to shield this
progressive intellectual from the smear of antisemitism—aided, no doubt,
by self-consciously Jewish leftists.
Which brings us to what is arguably the most important feature of
bistro antisemitism: its openness to individuals of Jewish origin. Again,
there is a Soviet-era precedent for this. In a bid to rival both the Zionist
Poale Zion and the non-Zionist Bund for the support of Jewish workers, the
Bolsheviks created the Yevsektia—the Jewish section of the party, which
held its first Congress in 1918. Its dual aims, wrote Hugo Valentin, were
“extirpating the Jewish petty tradesmen and combating the Jewish religion.”
Put another way, Jews were charged with obliterating the conditions
for a distinctive Jewish identity and existence in the new Soviet Union.
And, of course, with Jews supporting, framing, and even implementing
these policies, accusations of antisemitism directed at the Soviet authorities
could simply be deflected.
The small cluster of disaffected Jewish intellectuals who in our own
time have established their reputations either through full frontal assaults
upon Israel, writers such as M. J. Rosenberg and Max Blumenthal, or more
personal, agonized disavowals from writers such as Peter Beinart and Philip
Weiss, can be described as the Yevsektia for a post-modern, democratic
age. A distrust of “Jewish power” and a desire to expose its nefarious
effects is the foundation of their public interventions as Jews.
Might the bistro and the bierkeller eventually cross paths? It is worth
invoking Leon Wieseltier’s recommendation that the “analysis of antisemitism
must take place somewhere between indifference and hysteria.” By dint
of Israel’s existence, empowered Jews are a reality, and therefore parallels
with the 1930s can be misleading. Yet discourse does not take place in a