Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

It Never Sleeps:
A Note from the Editors
Much has happened since the first issue of Journal for the Study of
Antisemitism (JSA) went to press. We have had an overwhelmingly positive
response from interested people from all four corners of the globe. Computer
hits were received from places ranging from Dhaka Bangladesh to
Buenos Aires, from Alaska to Australia.
That is the good news. The bad news is that the interest in the journal
speaks to the need to study antisemitism as never before. Much of what
goes on is an all-out frontal assault on the Jewish state since 2001. But what
starts with Israel ends with hating the Jew of social imagination. With the
exception of the U.S., rates of antisemitism increased globally. In
Helsingborg, Sweden, parishioners were sent fleeing as windows were shattered
and burning cloths were hurled during services. Eleven armed men
ransacked a Caracas synagogue and left slogans on walls: “We don’t want
Jews here” and “Jews get out”—several of the vandals were police. A guard
at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was killed in the process of
preventing an octogenarian racist with an AK-47 from entering and committing
mass murder. Antisemitism is a lethal passion, as Israeli historian
Robert Wistrich (2010, 12) would say, because “beneath the surface” are
“ancient myths, dark hatreds, and irrational fantasies [that] continue to
nourish antisemitism.”
By the time you have read Richard Rubenstein’s excerpt from Jihad
and Genocide, you may agree. The antisemitic myths that fuel Muslim
antisemitism are reflected in the history of Islam. Rubenstein’s point is well
taken by law professor Kenneth Lasson, who grapples with how journalistic
integrity has been compromised when it comes to reporting on Israel. The
social transmission of beliefs is key to understanding why you think what
you think. And the social myths seem to be key.
For Baum, his position is clear: the road to Auschwitz was not paved
with indifference as much as with deliberate dislike—and the dislike is
based on legend, myth, and social fantasy. He begins with a not-so-innocent
Mother Goose poem and winds his way through Grimm Brothers stories.
The contaminated antisemitic fairy tales stand in contrast to the recent
opening of Berlin’s pristine Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center at Humboldt
University. Such fairy tales reaffirm key antisemitic themes. Most frightening
is the transition from fantasy to reality. Two tables at the end of his
article say it all. The tables provide a brief history of antisemitic mass
murders throughout Christendom and Islam and juxtapose the precipitating
rumor that triggered the attack.
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