From
the inside flap
“On
October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their
synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American
history.
“For
most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss
became a bar mitzvah, came as a shock. Yet anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred,
commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that
terrible morning in Pittsburgh raised a question Americans can no longer avoid.
Can it happen here?
“This
book is Weiss’s answer.
“Like
many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the risingtide of
anti-Semitism. With its promise of free speech and religion, its insistence
that all people are created equal, its tolerance for difference, and its
emphasis on shared ideals rather than bloodlines, America has been, even with
all its flaws, a new Jerusalem for the Jewish people. But now the luckiest Jews
in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all to well to
Jews of other times and place: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral
fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear or resurgent fascism
and populism.
“No
longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious
bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics as well as the
reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First
isolationism and the rise of one-world fascism, and in the spread of Islamist
ideas into unlikely places.”
Review
Fight is
one of the best and most intense nonfiction books I’ve read this year. It is
informative, disturbing, angry, pro-active─and life-changing, at least for this
reader. Weiss, with her measured use of the above elements and logic, lays out
how the hatred of Jews is a distinctive, constantly morphing horror, not rooted
in a few main reasons but many. If you are interested in confronting racism or interested in the subject for other reasons, this is a should-read, one worth owning.
No comments:
Post a Comment