viewpoint: ben cohen

Robert Wistrich is required reading

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A year ago, the world of Jewish academia suffered an irreplaceable loss with the passing of Prof. Robert Wistrich, the head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Wistrich died in Rome on May 19, 2015, shortly after arriving in the Italian capital to deliver a lecture on anti-Semitism.

Many of his friends, colleagues, and admirers—myself included—took this tragedy as a sign of Wistrich’s dedication to his mission to examine, expose, and combat the world’s “longest hatred,” one that he pursued until his last breath. After all, as his wife Danielle reminded the audience at a recent memorial event in Germany organized by the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, “In academia, some subjects are taboo, and Robert had the courage to bring them to light.”

Few subjects these days have the aura of a taboo as does anti-Semitism. That’s not to say it isn’t researched and studied in academe—there are fine institutions doing just that at American universities like Yale and Indiana, as well as at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University in Israel. If anything, serious academic study of anti-Semitism, in significant part because of the efforts of Robert Wistrich himself, is a growing and welcome trend. It is a fascinating subject because deciphering its ugliness involves so many disciplines, among them history, sociology, philosophy and psychology, and so many globally critical historical episodes, such as the Dreyfus trial and the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of the Arab world—both subjects close to Wistrich’s heart.

The problem emerges, however, when it comes to contemporary anti-Semitism. There are plenty of academics and activists out there who view the entire subject through the prism of “solidarity” with the Palestinians, and who therefore dismiss any identification of a person or a statement as anti-Semitic as an attempt to prevent—as former London mayor Ken Livingstone has repeatedly charged—“criticism of Israel.”

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