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It was me.  I did it–all of it.  I was hoping to get away with it, but I might as well come clean so others will not be blamed.

I know that Jew-hatred has persisted throughout the millennia in a broad cross-section of societies and across a swath of demographic and racial constituencies.  But I was born in 1948, at the confluence of an unprecedented number of favorable circumstances: the world was feeling guilty about and disgusted by the Holocaust, especially the complicity of governments and people in European countries; the State of Israel had been established in the ancestral home of the Jewish people, with the approval of a large majority in the United Nations; the United States was about to usher in a Golden Age of inclusion and prosperity for its Jews. Even Europe, that desiccated graveyard for Jews, closeted its worst antisemitic predilections.

I thought it was over. I thought that I, together with my innocent brethren and sistren, were going to be the first generation of Jews in Diasporic history to fit in, to be accepted, valued, and loved for our contribution and citizenship.

No such luck. Eventually, inevitably, people jealous or stupid or unhappy with the way life or history turned out for them need to blame someone and the rage bubbles to the surface. “God chose you and designated you a light unto the nations? I hate you.” And then, driven by inferiority or hateful ideology, they feel free to burn a synagogue, or, better, punch a defenseless Orthodox woman, or shoot children, showing the world what kind of real man they are. Who knows? Maybe it helps them feel less like losers. 

I accept the antisemitic environment, even as I perceive it to be driven by the transcendentally stupid. And, as to that, you must grant that the quality of antisemites has diminished at an alarming rate. From the fiery hatred of Savonarola to the mindless idiocy of Candace Owens and Steve Bannon is a pretty steep drop.  Tucker Carlson is no Pat Buchanan. You would think that a proud........

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