In 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte summoned French Jewish leaders for a conversation about loyalty. French Jews had gained the status of full citizens 16 years earlier. Napoleon wanted to understand how, as newly empowered civilians, they saw the world. So he asked them if they truly considered France their country, and Frenchmen their countrymen. In 1894,…
In her new book, “Antisemitism: Here and Now,” Deborah Lipstadt presents what she calls a taxonomy of Jewish hatred. There is the unambiguous extremist, the sort who marches with torches in Charlottesville, and who believes, with some justification, that there is a sympathizer in the White House. There is the utilitarian anti-Semite, “the pot-stirrer who…
The history of anti-Semitism is sprawling and ugly. But as Americans look to understand this unique prejudice in the aftermath of the massacre in Pittsburgh, a number of books and essays can serve as useful primers on the subject. The New York Times recently suggested three such titles: “(((SEMITISM))): Being Jewish in America in the…
September 17 marked the 40th anniversary of President Jimmy Carter’s singular achievement — the Camp David Accords. The Accords established the framework of the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty, which the parties signed six months later. In return for Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordering Israeli withdrawal — including settlements — from the entire Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian President…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. As midrash has it, the righteous spend eternity in heaven studying Torah. On January 14, the Jewish Review of Books brought a little piece of comparable heaven to Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, featuring seven influential Jewish thinkers at its Third Annual Conference. Abraham Socher, the magazine’s…
Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory University historian, has garnered more than a 100,000 views for her TED talk on Holocaust denial and the fight she waged against notorious “revisionist” David Irving. “There are facts, there are opinions, and there are lies,” she said at the lecture, given in the United Kingdom in April. “Truth is not…
Deborah Lipstadt has suggested President Trump is guilty of denying the Holocaust for the now infamous statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that omitted specific mention of Jewish victims. The famed Jewish historian said the White House statement, which Trump advisers repeatedly defended, was as nefarious as more clear-cut forms of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. “There…
Holocaust Historian Reaches the Red Carpet Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt finally got to walk the red carpet this year. The painstaking scholarship on Holocaust denial that she’s pursued from her perch at Emory University for decades has garnered headlines in the past. Now, she’s being played by an Academy Award-winning actress (Rachel Weisz) in a…
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