Remembering Robert Wistrich, leading scholar of anti-Semitism

The cemetery in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul neighborhood was bathed in the fading sunlight of a late May afternoon. Silently and steadily, the column of mourners wound their way towards an open grave, surrounded by glinting white headstones, inhaling the heady scent of the cypress trees that flourish on the adjacent hillsides.

As the mourners came to a halt, a rabbi recited the Jewish memorial prayer, El Male Rachamim, his sorrowful tones punctuated by the crunch of the gravel underfoot and the gentle sobs of the family of the deceased.

The mourners, of whom I was one, had come in tribute to one of the greatest Jewish intellectuals of the last century. Many of us had flown thousands of miles to be there.

I think it’s reasonable to say that for all of us, the reality of our loss became apparent only at that moment, as the grave was filled with fresh earth. It was true, terribly, shockingly true. We really were saying our final farewell to Professor Robert Wistrich.

I learned of Robert’s death on Tuesday afternoon, May 19. Less than 24 hours later, I was on a plane from New York to Tel Aviv. In my seat, a novel open on my lap, I found myself reading the same sentence over and over again. Consumed by sadness and unable to concentrate, I closed my book, swallowed a sleeping pill, and woke up shortly before we landed at Ben Gurion Airport.

For the last three years, I was fortunate to enjoy the friendship and intellectual support of Robert, unquestionably the world’s leading scholar of anti-Semitism. We had first met in person at a conference in London where I’d presented a paper, and we continued our relationship by email, as well as on the phone and on his visits to New York. I don’t mind admitting that I was awed by Robert, and could never quite believe that he considered my own modest contributions on the subject of anti-Semitism—the “longest hatred,” as he famously termed it—worthy of his attention. After all, I’d been reading his work since I was a schoolboy, beginning with his book on the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, whose ideas I became infatuated with during my precocious teenage years.