Author puts hate, antisemitism in context

When antisemitism began to crop up again in the past few years, Julie Saar found it difficult not to take it personally.

But then, the president of the Bexley synagogue Congregation Agudas Achim saw that hate crimes were increasing against many different groups, making her realize that Jews aren’t the only targets.

Now, she hopes people in central Ohio will be able to see how antisemitism fits into the bigger picture of hate when author and historian Deborah Lipstadt speaks as part of an event hosted by the synagogue over Zoom next week.

Saar wanted Lipstadt to address her synagogue after reading her 2019 book “Antisemitism: Here and Now,” because she could talk about Jewish history and the Holocaust, as well as compare it to the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.

“With Deborah, she has a way of bringing everyone in on to the sort of human level,” Saar said of the professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University.

It’s a quality that is dearly needed right now, she added.

“Everyone at this time is so hyperaware that we are in hard times, and in many ways she just has a wonderful way of telling us what’s important and giving us some hope,” she said.

Saar said getting Lipstadt to speak at Congregation Agudas Achim’s annual fundraiser represents the start of a new beginning for the synagogue. In fall of 2019, the synagogue parted ways with its rabbi.

It is now seeking an interim rabbi and considering a possible merger with nearby Congregation Tifereth Israel on the Near East Side, but is taking “baby steps,” Saar said.

“We feel like we’re on the crux of something new with our synagogue,” she said.

When the synagogue’s board decided to reach out to Lipstadt, they worked with the Wexner Foundation and its president, Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson, who is a friend of Lipstadt.

Saar thinks Lipstadt can help viewers of Lipstadt’s presentation on Zoom think deeply about antisemitism and

“how to not let it define us as Jews and how to respond to it without being consumed by it.”

Antisemitism is called by some scholars as the world’s oldest hatred, but Lipstadt said people fail to connect it to other forms of hatred.

She said the self-avowed white supremacist from Ohio who plowed his car into counter-demonstrators opposing a white nationalist rally in Virginia three years ago, the mass shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018 and many attacks on African Americans are perpetrated by “people cut from the same cloth,” Lipstadt said.

Lipstadt said she explains this in her book, which is written as a series of letters to make it accessible to people who aren’t familiar with antisemitism.

“It’s not about someone hating someone, it’s really about lack of exposure and preconceived notions that were passed on, sadly. And a lot of times, it’s about fear,” Saar said.

In order to respond to it, Lipstadt said Jewish people have to realize that antisemitism is absurd and not based on the actions of Jewish people.

“Antisemitism is less connected to what Jews do and more connected to a prevailing hatred,” she said, adding that she wants to give Jewish people hope.

“Antisemitism has been around for millennia and, by all rights, there shouldn’t be Jews around, but there are. That’s hope,” she said. “We’re here and we’re thriving, and that means a lot.”

Still, Lipstadt hopes her presentation will attract more than the Jewish community, including the purveyors of discrimination, because the victims “know it.”

“The point is to talk about those who engage in it,” she said.

Saar believes anyone who would take the time to listen to the webinar at 7 p.m. Thursday would benefit from Lipstadt’s message.

“It doesn’t take much for people to realize we need to come together, that’s her message,” she said.

To learn more or register for the event, go to zoom.us/webinar/register/ WN_CBFX1BKUSB2OKTBSHXIR-Q. Cost is $50. dking@dispatch.com @Danaeking