Combating Antisemitism Through Cultural and Historical Understanding: Part Two
Posted on 03/14/2025 @ 06:00 AM
Dara Horn, Author and Workshop Facilitator and Dr. Miriam Kassenoff, Director of the Holocaust Teacher Institute
Read Part One HERE
The above was the title of the interactive workshop offered two weeks ago by Dara Horn at the Holocaust Teacher’s Institute of the University of Miami School of Education and Human Development.
Most of the attendees were public school teachers from all across Miami-Dade.
This was a full-day workshop, so I divided my description of what we learned into two parts.
Part one explored how Dara Horn laid out the seminal foundations of Jewish civilization and what made its ideas so radical.
Part two laid out the Dynamics of Antisemitism.
Horn noted that antisemitism/ Jew hatred started in the pre-Christian world as we might remember from the story of Purim (~5th century BCE), Chanukkah (~165 BCE) and was written about in the Roman chronicles (40 CE and later).
Why was this hatred so consistent throughout Western history?
Horn argued that the goal of all empires is to conquer lands and peoples and convince them of the universal rightness of the empire’s culture and ideology in order to create more uniformity.
Guess which people are the only ones who don’t tend to go along to get along?
If you answered “Am Yisrael / The Jewish people,” you are correct.
Time and again, Jews refused to blend in completely, suggesting by their very presence that freedom of thought is possible. And that’s a threat to the powerful rulers who want complete control.
Horn defined antisemitism as “a big, shape-shifting lie, that Jews are the obstacle to that society’s ideals and therefore, Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist.”
This Big Lie can be broken down into 3 parts:
- A society has what it considers is a universal and right idea
- Tyrants and others who want political and/or social power announce that Jews are trying to destroy or harm that right idea
- Everyone now has permission to righteously hate Jews because they are told that Jews deserve it.
Horn quoted scholar David Nierenberg, author of Anti-Judaism, that Jews are “whatever WE are NOT.”
She also pointed out that antisemitism/ Jew hatred is not just another form of bigotry.
Bigotry is that the other group is inferior to your group.
Antisemitism/ Jew hatred very often portray Jews in conspiratorial ways so that Jews are seen as superior, evil supervillains.
As part of the workshop, we each analyzed a text that characterized one era in history (Medieval to Modern 400s-1800s, Post- Enlightenment 1800’s -1945, Post WWII 1945-2001, Current 2001-present) and tried to identify:
- Who is the Dominant Group or an Influential Power?
- What is Society’s Ideal (according to the group or power)?
- Why are Jews Perceived as the Obstacle to That Ideal?
- How Does Antisemitism Become a “Righteous” Cause?
- What New Media Accelerated the Spread of the Big Lie?
Can you apply these questions to our time and come to conclusions?
Horn clarified that “Anti-Zionism isn’t Antisemitism” is an old Soviet talking point that was taught to and then adopted by today’s gallery of rogues—Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, anti-Zionists worldwide.
She reminded us all that when empires collapsed in the late 1800s- post WWII, nation states were born all over the world in massive, violent population upheavals.
India vs. Pakistan. Greece vs. Turkey. Israel vs. Arabs/ Palestinians.
Prior to 1948 Baghdad (Iraq) was 30% Jewish, Tripoli (Libya) was 25% Jewish, Beirut (Lebanon) was 25% Jewish.
This is the story of the 20th century when ~700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from the Land of Israel and ~700,000 Jews from Arab countries fled or were expelled from nearly every Arab country in the Middle East and North Africa.
Dozens of countries were created just like Israel; yet today, there is no anti-Pakistan movement screaming that the country doesn’t have a right to exist.
Only movements and groups claiming that the Jewish state has no right to exist. Makes you go “hmmmm.”
The last part of the workshop was contributed by my colleague, Carly Orshan, CAJE’s Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Teen Education, who compiled five real-life scenarios from schools around Miami-Dade.
Teachers were asked to read them and discuss in their groups how they would handle them and what they would say to the students involved.
Once again, I want to thank Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff and Dr. Robert Brazofsky, District Director and Head of the Department of Social Studies for Miami-Dade Public Schools as well as Professor Laura Kohn-Wood, Dean of the University of Miami’s School of Education and Human Development that sponsored and hosted the workshop.
