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Understanding American Anti-Semitism - and Fighting Back
(JTA) Rabbi Jonathan Sacks - The shocking events in Monsey, together with those in Jersey City, Poway, and Pittsburgh, are proof that the darkness has returned. It has returned likewise to virtually every country in Europe. That this should have happened within living memory of the Holocaust, after the most systematic attempt ever made by a civilization to find a cure for the virus of the world's longest hate - more than half a century of Holocaust education and anti-racist legislation - is almost unbelievable. Cyberspace has proved to be an effective incubator of resentment. The Internet is particularly dangerous for loners, people in whom the normal process of socialization - learning to live with others who are not like us - has broken down. When bad things happen, bad people ask, "Who did this to me?" They cast themselves as victims and search for scapegoats to blame. The scapegoat of choice has long been the Jews. For a thousand years, they were the most prominent non-Christian minority in Europe. Today, the State of Israel is the most significant non-Muslim presence in the Middle East. It is easy to blame Jews because they are conspicuous, because they are a minority and because they are there. Anti-Semitism has little to do with Jews - they are its object, not its cause - and everything to do with dysfunction in the communities that harbor it. The writer served as Chief Rabbi of the UK from 1991 until 2013.