Antisemitism Today. Lecture delivered at LSE on November 7, 2024

There is much to say, and much of it will have to be left unsaid if I am not to run over the hour, and cut into the time allotted for questions.Yet, I wonder what more needs to be said than that these are bad, dark times for Jews?How bad?A young Jewish woman, a master's student, relates: "I was wearing a JSoc [Jewish Society] jumper on campus and someone spat on me as they walked past."Shylock's protest to Antonio comes to mind: "[You] spat on my Jewish gaberdine" (1.3.122).For Venice's Rialto read university campus; for Jewish gaberdine, read JSoc jumper.Other Jewish university students have related similar experiences: "After leaving a bagel lunch from the Jewish chaplaincy on campus I was spat at." "I wear a Magen David.I have been spat at and shouted at as well as not allowed to enter certain areas in the university.I have been told I should have 'died in the gas chambers.'" 1What does it mean, to spit at a Jew at her place of study?You are not wanted here.You do not merit the ordinary civilities.You are an object of disgust; expressions of disgust are therefore your portion.Spitting at a Jew is a moral act: something to be done precisely in public, in demonstration of virtue, as an act of witness, a refusal of complicity with the Jew.Now-let us agree that a student spitting at another student is an objectionable, reprehensible act, and that, when the student is spat at because she is Jewish, it is an objectionable, reprehensible, anti-Jewish or antisemitic act.And let us further agree that for it to be necessary for me to say these things-and it is necessary-is a sign of quite how bad these bad times are.It is my disagreeable task this evening to speak about such objectionable, reprehensible antisemitic acts and language; to communicate some sense of their weight and consequence; and to protest against them.How could one not protest against them?It is a puzzle and a scandal that they are regarded with such complacency by so many people.