Tony Judt’s Particularism Problem
First, historian Tony Judt griped that the character of the Israeli state was too Jewish, labeling it the “an anachronism.”
Now, he’s complaining that the lens through which we view the Holocaust is too Jewish. He warns that we’re exaggerating the threat posed by contemporary antisemitism, and that in tying “the memory of the Holocaust so firmly to the defense of a single country — Israel — that we are in danger of provincializing its moral significance.”
Read Tony Judt’s latest New York Review of Books polemic against particularism (Jewish particularism in particular) here.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
