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The Jewish Press

(Founded in 1920)

Margie Gutnik

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Annette van de Kamp-Wright

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Richard Busse

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Lori Kooper-Schwarz

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Gabby Blair

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Sam Kricsfeld

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Mary Bachteler

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Margie Gutnik, President; Abigail Kutler, Ex-Officio; Seth Feldman; David Finkelstein; Ally Freeman; Mary Sue Grossman; Les Kay; Natasha Kraft; Chuck Lucoff; David Phillips; and Joseph Pinson. The mission of the Jewish Federation of Omaha is to build and sustain a strong and vibrant Omaha Jewish Community and to support Jews in Israel and around the world. Agencies of the JFO are: Institute for Holocaust Education, Jewish Community Relations Council, Jewish Community Center, Jewish Social Services and the Jewish Press. Guidelines and highlights of the Jewish Press, including front page stories and announcements, can be found online at: www.jewishomaha.org; click on ‘Jewish Press.’ Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Board of Directors, the Jewish Federation of Omaha Board of Directors, or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole. The Jewish Press reserves the right to edit signed letters and articles for space and content. The Jewish Press is not responsible for the Kashrut of any product or establishment.

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This is not a competition

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor

David Baddiel is a British comedian-turned-activist against antisemitism. He has been discussing the forthcoming documentary based on his 2021 bestseller, Jews Don’t Count. The book deals with the idea “that progressive anti-racists are guilty of hypocrisy towards Jews by not viewing them as worthy of similar protection or championing as other minorities because they are seen as white, privileged and wealthy.” (Jacob Judah for JTA). This ‘being seen as white’ is a central issue in the documentary. For many Jews, this is an issue we wrestle with only privately—as pushback from others is almost a given. At some point, Baddiel speaks with actor David Schwimmer: “I am highly aware that I pass as white and I enjoy a lot of the privileges of being a straight, white, man, able bodied, I get it, I understand, and I am very aware of my privilege,” Schwimmer says before mentioning the murder of two Jewish civil rights activists by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964. “I never felt white, because for me, white means safe.” Generally, in American public discourse, ‘white’ points to skin color. It means ‘not brown, not black.’ It is, in and of itself, a racist construct, a context in which people practically use a color wheel to decide where others belong. Like crayons in the newly updated skin-tone box. How brown are you? A little bit? Medium? Are you more of a beige? Can you be technically white if you look white, but you have a parent who is not? How much white is white enough? How much is there about the word ‘white’ that has nothing to do with color at all? Obviously, Schwimmer is onto something: white is much more than skin tone. And if he is right when he equates white with safe, then no, Jews are not white because we are definitely not safe.

David Baddiel. Credit: Channel 4 “Baddiel — while recognizing that there is a certain privilege in being able to ‘pass’ as white — has argued that being white is more about being ‘protected because you are a member of the majority culture’ than it is about skin color. He says antisemitism is racism, and not about ‘religious intolerance.’” (JTA) But: this is not a competition. A fact Baddiel seems to have conveniently forgotten. Here is where this whole discussion really becomes problematic. During the 1990s, Baddiel mocked soccer player Jason Lee while wearing blackface. He chose to include his public apology to Lee in this documentary. Apologizing for being a racist while making the case that antisemitism is racism? The discussion about whether Jews are white or not, and what that means for us, is in and of itself useful. I don’t think Baddiel is entirely wrong to bring it up. I can’t argue that we are the majority, that we have ever been safe, or accepted. I think one of the great motivators of antisemitism is the fact that as a people, we are difficult to categorize. I often feel sometimes non-Jews get irritated because they can’t put us in a box. Are we a religion? An ethnicity? What are we? So they built a new box just for us and that box is antisemitism. At the same time, Baddiel’s work has a little bit of a martyrdom flavor. A hint of ‘me, too’ which makes that apology a strange thing to include in this documentary. A bit like saying ‘I may be a bully, but I have feelings, too.’ I don’t know. I have a hard time taking Baddiel seriously. Especially when I read things like this: “He often feels ‘whatever the Jewish equivalent of the Bat Signal is’ and recalled how a senior Labour Party politician ‘came up to me yesterday and said: How does it feel to be the person saving the Jews?’” Saving the Jews from what? If we have to believe David Baddiel, we mostly need to be saved from ourselves. And that really is a most uncomfortable idea.

The exhausting job of debunking antisemitic conspiracy theories

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL

JTA A few days after the comedian Dave Chappelle appeared to justify the never-ending appeal of Jewish conspiracy theories, this sentence appeared in the New York Times: “Bankman-Fried is already drawing comparisons to Bernie Madoff.” I’ll explain: Sam Bankman-Fried is the 30-yearold founder of FTX, the crypto-currency exchange that vaporized overnight, leaving more than 1 million creditors on the hook. Bernie Madoff, is, of course, Bernie Madoff. It’s a fair comparison, as a former regulator tells CNN: “Bankman-Fried, like Madoff, proved adept at using his pedigree and connections to seduce sophisticated investors and regulators into missing ‘red flags,’ hiding in plain sight.” Nevertheless, seeing these Jewish figures lumped together, I braced myself for the inevitable: Nasty tweets about Jews and money. Slander from white supremacists. Plausibly deniable chin-scratching from more “mainstream” commentators. It’s exhausting, having to deny the obvious: that a group of people who don’t even agree on what kind of starch to eat on Passover regularly scheme to bilk innocents, manipulate markets or control the world. And it often seems the very attempt to explain these lies and their popularity ends up feeding the beast. Chappelle’s now notorious monologue on Saturday Night Live is a case in point. At first pass, it is a characteristically mischievous attempt to both mock the rapper Kanye West for his antisemitism, and to push boundaries to explain why a troubled Black entertainer might feel aggrieved in an industry with a historic over-representation of Jews. Jon Stewart certainly heard it that way, telling Stephen Colbert, “Look at it from a Black perspective. It’s a culture that feels that its wealth has been extracted by different groups. That’s the feeling in that community, and if you don’t understand where it’s coming from, then you can’t deal with it.” That is a useful message, but consider the messenger. Chappelle appears to disapprove of West’s conspiracy-mongering, but never once discusses the harm it might cause to the actual targets of the conspiracies. Instead, he focuses on the threat such ideas pose to the careers and reputations of entertainers like him and West. The “delusion that Jews run show business,” said Chappelle, is “not a crazy thing to think,” but “it’s a crazy thing to say out loud.” He ends the routine by ominously invoking the “they” who might end his career. That’s what critics meant when they said Chappelle “normalized” antisemitism: He described where it’s coming from, explained why his peers might feel that way, and only criticized it to the degree that it could lead the purveyors to be cancelled. It’s like saying, “You don’t have to vaccinate your kids. Just don’t tell anybody.” A documentary shown recently at the DOC NYC festival here in New York teeters on the edge of the same trap. The Conspiracy, directed by the Russian-American filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin and narrated by Mayim Bialik, uses 3-D animation to explain how conspiracists ranging from a 19th-century French priest to American industrialist Henry Ford placed three Jews — German financier Max Warburg, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and falsely accused French soldier Alfred Dreyfus — at the center of a vast, contradictory and preposterous scheme to take over the world. It connects age-old Christian animosity to the Jews to centuries of antisemitic paranoia and fear-mongering that led to unspeakable violence at Kishinev, Auschwitz and Pittsburgh. “This myth has plagued the world for centuries,” Pozdorovkin explains. Or at least that’s the message you and I might have gotten. But I can also see someone stumbling on this film and being seduced by the rage and cynicism of the conspiracy-mongers — who, I should note, are quoted at length. Part of the problem is the film’s aesthetic: a consistently dark palette and a “camera” that lingers on ugly examples of antisemitic propaganda. Even though these images are seen on a creepy “conspiracy wall” and connected with that red thread familiar from cop shows and horror films, I can well imagine an uninformed viewer asking why members of this tiny minority seem to be at the center of so many major events of the 19th and 20th centuries. I was reminded of a joke by the Jewish comedian Modi, ridiculing the ritual of inviting celebrities accused of antisemitism to visit a Holocaust museum. “Which is the stupidest idea, ever,” he says. “You’re taking someone who hates Jews into a Holocaust museum. They come out of there [saying] ‘Wow!

Oh my God, that was amazing! I want a T-shirt!’” The makers of The Conspiracy (oy, that title) obviously intend the very opposite. In an interview with the Forward, Pozdorovkin agrees with the interviewer’s suggestion that those “who most need to see this film might be the least likely to be convinced by it.”

A scene from The Conspiracy, a film by Maxim Poz-

dorovkin. Credit: Third Party Films/DOC NYC “My hope is that this film has a trickle-down effect,” he explains. The fault lies not with those who seek to expose antisemitism but with a society that relies on the victims to explain why they shouldn’t be victimized. As many have pointed out, antisemitism isn’t a Jewish problem; it’s a problem for the individuals and societies who pin their unhappiness and neuroses on a convenient scapegoat. Ultra-nationalism and intolerance are the soil in which conspiracies take root. But as long as scapegoating remains popular and deadly, the victims have to keep explaining and explaining the obvious — that, for instance, the fact that Sam Bankman-Fried and Bernie Madoff are

Jewish is no more significant than the fact that

Henry Ford and Elon Musk, two people who founded car companies, are gentiles. The question is, who is listening?

Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor in chief of the

New York Jewish Week and senior editor of the

Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He previously served as JTA’s editor in chief and as editor in chief and

CEO of the New Jersey Jewish News. @SilowCarroll

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

MANISHTANA

JTA Last week saw Dave Chappelle deliver a brilliant monologue on Saturday Night Live addressing the antisemitism controversies surrounding Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. Unfortunately, “brilliant” doesn’t inherently mean “moral” or “good.” Chappelle’s monologue was a masterclass in how to normalize and embolden antisemitic discourse, delivered in plain sight and with just enough “wink wink, nudge nudge” plausible deniability — mixed in with a sprinkle of real commentary — that one would easily almost not realize that … wait, did Chappelle denounce anything exactly? He opened the monologue by pretending to read from the kind of apology being demanded of Kanye West, the rapper who in recent weeks had exposed various antisemitic tropes. “I denounce antisemitism in all its forms, and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community,” Chappelle “read,” mocking the boilerplate apologies that often arise in these moments. At face value, it’s a great piece of satire. But then he follows up with the punchline: “And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.” He isn’t holding West to account. He’s clearing the way and setting the stage for the finest bout of antisemitic dogwhistling probably ever featured on SNL. There is legitimate commentary to be made about the often disproportionate and racialized vitriol directed at Black Americans who engage in antisemitism, coming from a society that revels in Black pain and punishment. Jews of color, and especially Black Jews like me, have been addressing this reality across social media for decades, noting the lack of intensity and accountability when the shoe is on the other foot — when Jewish figures espouse anti-blackness. But this monologue by a Black comedian is making no such argument. And it comes as more bold and brazen bad-faith actors are acting out in more and more violent ways. Comedians are just as capable of incitement as political figures. Chappelle is wildly adept at structuring complex jokes. For years he deftly delivered biting, raw and real socio-racial commentary, from his standup routines to The Chappelle Show, and since the 2000s has positioned himself as an astute teller of hard truths. If you doubt the man’s intelligence, watch what he does late in the SNL routine when he talks about Donald Trump. With backhanded praise, Chappelle attributes Trump’s popularity and appeal to his skill at being an “honest liar.” Never before, said Chappelle, had voters seen a billionaire “come from inside the house and tell the commoners, ‘Inside that house we’re doing everything you think we’re doing.’ And then he went right back inside the house and started playing the game again.”

Chappelle took notes on Trump’s knack for saying exactly what he means and telling people exactly what he planned to do. When Chappelle says there are two words you should never say together — “the” and “Jews” — he’s not speaking against antisemitic conspiracy theories that treat Jews as a scheming monolith. He’s insinuating instead that there is a “The Jews” that should never be challenged. (Chappelle goes on to repeatedly use the phrase “The Jews” in his monologue.) The one time he uses “the Jewish community” is to introduce the straw man argument that Black Americans should not be blamed for the terrible things that have happened to “the Jewish community” all over the world — a declaration so baffling that only one person in the audience responds. After all, no one was blaming West or Irving, the NBA star who shared on Twitter a link to a wildly antisemitic film, for the terrible things that happened to Jews. They were just being asked not to promote the ideas of people who had done those terrible things. Also on full display is Chappelle’s deft, almost “1984”-esque doublespeak. Chappelle notes that when he first saw the controversy building around West’s antisemitism, he thought “Let me see what’s going to happen first” — a strange and telling equivocation. Chappelle diminishes the significance of the film shared by Irving, Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America, by describing it as “apparently having some antisemitic tropes or something,” but then jokes that Irving probably doesn’t think the Holocaust happened — a trope presented in said movie. Chappelle is reluctant to call Kanye “crazy” but acknowledges he is “possibly not well,” but has no problem referring to Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker as “observably stupid.” Ultimately and persistently, Chappelle suggests that Kanye erred not in being antisemitic, but in being antisemitic out loud. Most insidious in this regard was his seeming rejection of the notion, promoted by West, that Jews control Hollywood. Said Chappelle: “It’s a lot of Jews [in Hollywood]. Like a lot. But that doesn’t mean anything, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of Black people in Ferguson, Missouri. It doesn’t mean we run the place.” He refers to the idea that Jews control Hollywood as a “delusion.” And then, rather than let this necessary distinction set in, he undercuts it, saying, “It’s not a crazy thing to think. But it’s a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.” The problem, Chappelle is suggesting, is not harboring dangerous delusions, but saying them in public and risking being called on it. The “climate” is not one of dangerous antisemitism, but the danger of speaking one’s mind. Chappelle telegraphed this sentiment with an earlier quip: West, he said “had broken the show business rules. You know, the rules of perception. If they’re Black, then it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob, but if they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should never speak about it.”

Manishtana is the pen name of Shais Rishon, an African-American Orthodox rabbi, activist, speaker and writer. He has written for Tablet, Kveller, The Forward, Jewcy and Hevria.

Posters advertising a Netflix special by Dave Chappelle line a

wall in Midtown Manhattan, April 2017. Credit: Brecht Bug/Flickr Commons

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