This is breathtaking work, Jay. It's also the kind of work that must have been so difficult, on an emotional and psychological level, to compile. To go through generation after generation after generation of suffering in one's lineage is no easy task, and I can see now why you'd mentioned the weight of this task on you in recent weeks.
Nevertheless, it is important work, and powerful work, and I'm grateful to you for having done it. May the rest of these days of awe find you able to lean on that word in both senses: not just in horror, but also in wonder. You are *here*. You are here because some light, through so much suffering over the millennia, survived.
I feel that warmth, M L. That's something you have in you. You also use a word, of this season for Jews but that we all use, "awe," that is sometimes in modern, variant speech used a little cheaply but that is so important, in just the way you offer it here. I think, perhaps, I'm partly working my way toward some vision of that word in this work.
Also, I think I'm correct to say about you from what I've read along the way (you'll correct me if I'm mistaken) that you would count as a "non-theist," as I am, but along with your very impressive intellect, I've always experienced from your writing a profound spirituality, which some might prefer to call rather a deeply ethical nature, but maybe when it's that deep there isn't much meaningful distinction.
I feel that from you here, as I often do. Thank you.
Jay, this is an important contribution to our understanding of the history of persecution. Christianity has a long and violent record of refusing to accept any doctrinal differences. Against both Jews and other Christians. Each Jew alive today is in some ways a miracle.
While your post is mainly a record of horror, I left it also with gratitude for my ancestors who persisted and who were lucky enough to come to this country. Now the torch of survival has been passed to us, a sacred duty.
Thanks a lot, David. You express many things I feel -- the some-kind-of miraculousness, the gratitude for the amazing fortitude, the duty. So many times in writing this I felt that amazement, that Jews have actually survived all this, for over twenty-seven hundred years. It astonishes. I see implications in that astonishment, as you do, and that, too, is something I think I'm working towards here.
Jay this is a monumental work. Assembling this sad history must have brought you to your knees many times. The sheer ignorance required by many to memory hole such a history is as monumental.
And how—and how—could our culture be raising another entire generation of anti-semites cloaked in their misguided leftist ideology? How, when we are smarter? How, when we are more educated? How, when we are supposedly kinder, more inclusive, and more empathetic?
Thank you, Dee, for responding like this. Yes, it was a tough go. It's interesting how different commenters are touching on ideas I have in mind as I work my way through this larger work.
The "memory hole" is another key element in all this I'm developing. That element, I think, relates to another generation, as you say, adopting a form of antisemitism -- in the example you mention, the enmity founded not in religion (though it's mentioned), not in race (though it's there) but rather political ideology, masking it all.
It's a point I've been making for a long time now. Of course, just as with other bigotries and racisms, there are antisemites who don't seek to deny their antipathy toward Jews, their malevolent characterizations of Jews. But most do, and one of the ways they engage in denial is by telling themselves that this time *it's true*. This time, *they're right*.
As if all the others before them didn't think that.
Have you listened to Douglas Murray speak on the current situation? His interview with Bari Weiss the other day on “Honestly” was powerful. He’s one of the best thinkers of our time and makes a very binary case with history as his guide.
Well, there are a lot of contradictions in the world, Dee, as we both know. I agree with Murray and Weiss about the current situation regarding Jews, and Israel, and the far left political tendencies more generally that produce the ideas and behavior they criticize. But I'm otherwise not intellectually sympathetic to either with regard to much else.
I have more exposure to Weiss than Murray, which included a splendid performance debating Mehdi Hassan about Israel (though given Hassan's extraordinary antipathy to Israel, that isn't too hard). But because both contextualize our areas of agreement in a broader web of beliefs and allegiances I reject, I don't find value, generally, in further extended exposure. Weiss, for instance, I believe, established her reputation by resisting and criticizing those far-left tendencies that are clear and easy targets. Good for her. But the record of the ideas and people she has supported and allied herself with -- the record of her non-critical judgment -- is quite poor in my view. So to listen to them converse together? I'd have to have a lot of time on my hands. :)
Jay, beautifully rendered history but even more so a story of a people haunted and hunted by generations of persecutors. It is a troublesome thing for me to understand hatred of another because of some random discriminator, be it race, color, creed, religion, etc... Anger and hatred consumed me for years towards an individual for something they did to me but to hate an entire people for who they are? I so appreciate your willingness to embrace this project and to share this story. History is often cyclical and if we do not learn from our past, we will repeat the same mistakes. Good people of all creeds must stand together to ensure kindness, love, and acceptance are the rule of the day, disavowing hatred in all forms.
Thank you, Matthew. It is the same troublesome thing for me and for many of us, but not for all. Your brining up a personal hatred, with cause, leads me to think about any connections between the two apparently different kinds of hatred, though they are both hatreds. But maybe in this instance, use of the same word doesn't really indicate similarity of feeling or disposition. I don't know without more thought.
I do think, though, how a prevalent theme of revenge tragedies is the self-destructive nature of the hatred that drives the desire for revenge. And James Baldwin wrote so eloquently in "Notes of a Native Son" that "“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”
I do know that bigots, of any kind, display a kind of ugliness. They are made ugly by their hate, though I think mostly they don't see that in the mirror.
Jay, as usual, your comment got me thinking. It is hard to know if the same word is useful for both things. We use the same word, but do they describe the same thing? That is complicated. When I think of hatred, it is inherently personal. Some sort of personal violation needs to take place to incur that strong of a feeling. So, it is hard to comprehend how hatred for an entire people can come about. That requires some deeper thought.
I also agree that hatred of any sort is self-destructive. I didn't get into it in my original comment, but my hatred for this individual did significantly more harm to me and to the people around me than it ever did to him. It is possible he knew nothing of my hatred, and having died, he never will. My hatred for that individual made me ugly, but after some time, I was able to see what was becoming of me.
My essay this coming Tuesday dives into this a bit more as far as it relates to my own situation.
You got me thinking further, too, Matthew, and the more I think about it, the more I think how distinct these two experiences we call hate really are, whatever connection there might still be. You suffered the kind of personal offense that it's very easy for me to see producing hatred of that personal variety. As I examine myself, I find myself discovering, to some surprise, that I don't think I've ever experience hatred. I don't say that to claim any virtue by it --hardly. People have hurt me in ways that produced a lot of anger in me, in some cases, for a long time, and sometimes I've discovered that anger I thought was long gone was just dormant. But anger -- a volatile emotion often connected to injury and hurt -- seems different to me from what we mean by hate. I don't hate antisemites, and not because I feel any Christian charity toward them. (Understand, too, that when I refer to antisemites, I've been exposed to -- and as a writer, attacked by --the most virulent and, themselves, hateful kind of antisemites. I blocked and reported one here on Substack and Homo Vitruvius just last week.) I feel a kind of depersonalized contempt for them that doesn't open itself to any kind of emotion so personal as hatred, as yours obviously and rightfully was. Of course, if I were physically attacked by an antisemite -- and I have been -- in my fighting back I would summon up a level of angry outrage, like a knot of flame, that might count, for that brief period, as hatred.
Well, you see, we both got each thinking. Always a good thing!
It’s impossible to read this tough, necessary, majestic essay without being awed that Jews exist. I have been reading Reza Aslan’s controversial book Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, which provides harrowing detail on some of the ancient, monumental atrocities you include in this litany of horror. If people of the distant and not-so-distant past had the technology to execute Hitler’s final solution, they would have embraced the project with gusto.
"without being awed that Jews exist." Isn't that so? How did it ever happen? The achievement of the survival, no less than the persecution, is staggering to contemplate. What you say about the gusto ancient peoples would have brought to a final solution had they Hitler's means seems true. I offer just a few but stunningly vivid descriptions from contemporaneous sources of the wild savagery of the attacks on Jews that tend to support that view.
Despite all my years of reading, especially about the Holocaust, my poor education in world history leaves me so without preparation for what you document here, Jay. Needing to grasp the immensity of loss, the through-line of century upon century of persecution, the staggering depth of ingrained and passed-on hatred, I did not allow myself while reading to gloss over a single line, dumbfounding and numbing as the numbers are, even your "etceteras" themselves giving pause. I have tried and tried to understand what impels humans to wreck such horrors upon each other, and I find none; not even my faith, which I came to late in life, offers the hope that violence of the kind described in your work here will ever end. I can only agree with other commenters who cite the miracle and the wonder of the Jewish people's survival.
Thank you for reading in that dedicated way, Maureen. Of course, I'm not surprised you did. You write, "I have tried and tried to understand what impels humans to wreck such horrors upon each other, and I find none; not even my faith, which I came to late in life, offers the hope that violence of the kind described in your work here will ever end."
Again, like other commenters, you've touched on an essential consideration of my work in all this. Increasingly in recent years, I've become focused on origins, especially origins of human culture and the ideas, symbols, and systems of belief that arose among humans -- why they did when they did, how they did, what meaning those beliefs can have for us now outside of their lingering cultural institutionalization (first thought, best though?), so many questions. In Judaism, in Christianity, in all the belief systems I know of, end times are not good times, and any vision of overcoming is on another plane of existence. So what are we doing here?
This is breathtaking work, Jay. It's also the kind of work that must have been so difficult, on an emotional and psychological level, to compile. To go through generation after generation after generation of suffering in one's lineage is no easy task, and I can see now why you'd mentioned the weight of this task on you in recent weeks.
Nevertheless, it is important work, and powerful work, and I'm grateful to you for having done it. May the rest of these days of awe find you able to lean on that word in both senses: not just in horror, but also in wonder. You are *here*. You are here because some light, through so much suffering over the millennia, survived.
Much warmth from afar.
I feel that warmth, M L. That's something you have in you. You also use a word, of this season for Jews but that we all use, "awe," that is sometimes in modern, variant speech used a little cheaply but that is so important, in just the way you offer it here. I think, perhaps, I'm partly working my way toward some vision of that word in this work.
Also, I think I'm correct to say about you from what I've read along the way (you'll correct me if I'm mistaken) that you would count as a "non-theist," as I am, but along with your very impressive intellect, I've always experienced from your writing a profound spirituality, which some might prefer to call rather a deeply ethical nature, but maybe when it's that deep there isn't much meaningful distinction.
I feel that from you here, as I often do. Thank you.
Jay, this is an important contribution to our understanding of the history of persecution. Christianity has a long and violent record of refusing to accept any doctrinal differences. Against both Jews and other Christians. Each Jew alive today is in some ways a miracle.
While your post is mainly a record of horror, I left it also with gratitude for my ancestors who persisted and who were lucky enough to come to this country. Now the torch of survival has been passed to us, a sacred duty.
Thanks a lot, David. You express many things I feel -- the some-kind-of miraculousness, the gratitude for the amazing fortitude, the duty. So many times in writing this I felt that amazement, that Jews have actually survived all this, for over twenty-seven hundred years. It astonishes. I see implications in that astonishment, as you do, and that, too, is something I think I'm working towards here.
As a Sicilian, I'm so sorry.
Thank you for that. Thank you for reading and for caring to know. That's what I hoped for.
Jay this is a monumental work. Assembling this sad history must have brought you to your knees many times. The sheer ignorance required by many to memory hole such a history is as monumental.
And how—and how—could our culture be raising another entire generation of anti-semites cloaked in their misguided leftist ideology? How, when we are smarter? How, when we are more educated? How, when we are supposedly kinder, more inclusive, and more empathetic?
Because we are not. 🥲
Thank you, Dee, for responding like this. Yes, it was a tough go. It's interesting how different commenters are touching on ideas I have in mind as I work my way through this larger work.
The "memory hole" is another key element in all this I'm developing. That element, I think, relates to another generation, as you say, adopting a form of antisemitism -- in the example you mention, the enmity founded not in religion (though it's mentioned), not in race (though it's there) but rather political ideology, masking it all.
It's a point I've been making for a long time now. Of course, just as with other bigotries and racisms, there are antisemites who don't seek to deny their antipathy toward Jews, their malevolent characterizations of Jews. But most do, and one of the ways they engage in denial is by telling themselves that this time *it's true*. This time, *they're right*.
As if all the others before them didn't think that.
I look forward to further writings by you and this.
Many thanks, Dee. That's generous of you.
Have you listened to Douglas Murray speak on the current situation? His interview with Bari Weiss the other day on “Honestly” was powerful. He’s one of the best thinkers of our time and makes a very binary case with history as his guide.
Well, there are a lot of contradictions in the world, Dee, as we both know. I agree with Murray and Weiss about the current situation regarding Jews, and Israel, and the far left political tendencies more generally that produce the ideas and behavior they criticize. But I'm otherwise not intellectually sympathetic to either with regard to much else.
I have more exposure to Weiss than Murray, which included a splendid performance debating Mehdi Hassan about Israel (though given Hassan's extraordinary antipathy to Israel, that isn't too hard). But because both contextualize our areas of agreement in a broader web of beliefs and allegiances I reject, I don't find value, generally, in further extended exposure. Weiss, for instance, I believe, established her reputation by resisting and criticizing those far-left tendencies that are clear and easy targets. Good for her. But the record of the ideas and people she has supported and allied herself with -- the record of her non-critical judgment -- is quite poor in my view. So to listen to them converse together? I'd have to have a lot of time on my hands. :)
Jay, beautifully rendered history but even more so a story of a people haunted and hunted by generations of persecutors. It is a troublesome thing for me to understand hatred of another because of some random discriminator, be it race, color, creed, religion, etc... Anger and hatred consumed me for years towards an individual for something they did to me but to hate an entire people for who they are? I so appreciate your willingness to embrace this project and to share this story. History is often cyclical and if we do not learn from our past, we will repeat the same mistakes. Good people of all creeds must stand together to ensure kindness, love, and acceptance are the rule of the day, disavowing hatred in all forms.
Thank you, Matthew. It is the same troublesome thing for me and for many of us, but not for all. Your brining up a personal hatred, with cause, leads me to think about any connections between the two apparently different kinds of hatred, though they are both hatreds. But maybe in this instance, use of the same word doesn't really indicate similarity of feeling or disposition. I don't know without more thought.
I do think, though, how a prevalent theme of revenge tragedies is the self-destructive nature of the hatred that drives the desire for revenge. And James Baldwin wrote so eloquently in "Notes of a Native Son" that "“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”
I do know that bigots, of any kind, display a kind of ugliness. They are made ugly by their hate, though I think mostly they don't see that in the mirror.
Jay, as usual, your comment got me thinking. It is hard to know if the same word is useful for both things. We use the same word, but do they describe the same thing? That is complicated. When I think of hatred, it is inherently personal. Some sort of personal violation needs to take place to incur that strong of a feeling. So, it is hard to comprehend how hatred for an entire people can come about. That requires some deeper thought.
I also agree that hatred of any sort is self-destructive. I didn't get into it in my original comment, but my hatred for this individual did significantly more harm to me and to the people around me than it ever did to him. It is possible he knew nothing of my hatred, and having died, he never will. My hatred for that individual made me ugly, but after some time, I was able to see what was becoming of me.
My essay this coming Tuesday dives into this a bit more as far as it relates to my own situation.
You got me thinking further, too, Matthew, and the more I think about it, the more I think how distinct these two experiences we call hate really are, whatever connection there might still be. You suffered the kind of personal offense that it's very easy for me to see producing hatred of that personal variety. As I examine myself, I find myself discovering, to some surprise, that I don't think I've ever experience hatred. I don't say that to claim any virtue by it --hardly. People have hurt me in ways that produced a lot of anger in me, in some cases, for a long time, and sometimes I've discovered that anger I thought was long gone was just dormant. But anger -- a volatile emotion often connected to injury and hurt -- seems different to me from what we mean by hate. I don't hate antisemites, and not because I feel any Christian charity toward them. (Understand, too, that when I refer to antisemites, I've been exposed to -- and as a writer, attacked by --the most virulent and, themselves, hateful kind of antisemites. I blocked and reported one here on Substack and Homo Vitruvius just last week.) I feel a kind of depersonalized contempt for them that doesn't open itself to any kind of emotion so personal as hatred, as yours obviously and rightfully was. Of course, if I were physically attacked by an antisemite -- and I have been -- in my fighting back I would summon up a level of angry outrage, like a knot of flame, that might count, for that brief period, as hatred.
Well, you see, we both got each thinking. Always a good thing!
Outstanding work and should be required study.
Good of you to say. Thank you.
It’s impossible to read this tough, necessary, majestic essay without being awed that Jews exist. I have been reading Reza Aslan’s controversial book Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, which provides harrowing detail on some of the ancient, monumental atrocities you include in this litany of horror. If people of the distant and not-so-distant past had the technology to execute Hitler’s final solution, they would have embraced the project with gusto.
"without being awed that Jews exist." Isn't that so? How did it ever happen? The achievement of the survival, no less than the persecution, is staggering to contemplate. What you say about the gusto ancient peoples would have brought to a final solution had they Hitler's means seems true. I offer just a few but stunningly vivid descriptions from contemporaneous sources of the wild savagery of the attacks on Jews that tend to support that view.
Thanks for those complimentary words.
The guy cracking the whip in one of those ads reminds me an awful lot of Benjamin Netanyahu....
Despite all my years of reading, especially about the Holocaust, my poor education in world history leaves me so without preparation for what you document here, Jay. Needing to grasp the immensity of loss, the through-line of century upon century of persecution, the staggering depth of ingrained and passed-on hatred, I did not allow myself while reading to gloss over a single line, dumbfounding and numbing as the numbers are, even your "etceteras" themselves giving pause. I have tried and tried to understand what impels humans to wreck such horrors upon each other, and I find none; not even my faith, which I came to late in life, offers the hope that violence of the kind described in your work here will ever end. I can only agree with other commenters who cite the miracle and the wonder of the Jewish people's survival.
Thank you for reading in that dedicated way, Maureen. Of course, I'm not surprised you did. You write, "I have tried and tried to understand what impels humans to wreck such horrors upon each other, and I find none; not even my faith, which I came to late in life, offers the hope that violence of the kind described in your work here will ever end."
Again, like other commenters, you've touched on an essential consideration of my work in all this. Increasingly in recent years, I've become focused on origins, especially origins of human culture and the ideas, symbols, and systems of belief that arose among humans -- why they did when they did, how they did, what meaning those beliefs can have for us now outside of their lingering cultural institutionalization (first thought, best though?), so many questions. In Judaism, in Christianity, in all the belief systems I know of, end times are not good times, and any vision of overcoming is on another plane of existence. So what are we doing here?