I first came across anti-subordination theory (in the form of critical race theory) right after I graduated from high school. I was no stranger to finding arguments that I found interesting, fun, or otherwise intriguing. This was different. This felt harmonic. It spoke to me in a way few things had before. It felt intuitive — like a language I had known as a child, then forgotten. I’m not saying I “got it” all right away. But, given how foreign it was to most of my friends (and indeed, the prevailing educational and social norms of American society), it certainly didn’t seem alien to me.<\/p>\n
A major reason why, I suspect, was that I immediately identified a link between the arguments of the crits, and my own experiences a Jew. It gave me a language to talk about my Jewishness that hitherto was unknown to me, and it was like a breath of fresh air. When I first got to college (and with it obtained access to a full research library), I was excited to find what this same theoretical school had to say about Jews. And the answer was … not much. A LexisNexis search for “Critical Jewish Studies” yields exactly two hits. “Critical Jewish Theory” gets zero. The person whom you get pointed to if you go down the path of “Critical Jewish Studies” is Stephen M. Feldman, currently a law professor at the University of Wyoming. His book, Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State<\/a> was tremendously influential on me (he also has a great volume entitled Law and Religion: A Critical Anthology<\/a>), eventually becoming the basis for my senior thesis<\/a>. But Feldman’s work, while important, is also limited to the domestic status of American Jews as mediated through legal church\/state doctrine. That’s always been a very important issue to me as a Jew, but obviously is not the only one. And one of the primary areas in which Jews perceive themselves as experiencing anti-Semitism is in discussions of Israel.<\/p>\n I think it is fair to say that critical discussion of anti-Semitism is relatively uncommon. It’s not entirely absent, there is some excellent stuff out there, and I feel like we might be seeing a very slight uptick over recent years, but overall the amount of work produced occurs on an order of magnitude less compared to many other oppressions.<\/p>\n This is not to say anti-Semitism is not talked about. But it’s missing a theory<\/em>. Anti-Semitism has a theory — a very vibrant and robust one at that — anti-anti-Semitism does not. And as the old maxim goes, “it takes a theory to beat a theory”.<\/p>\n The Feministe<\/em> series was an attempt to try and sketch a theory. Obviously, it still needs work. Yet at the same time, there’s a reason there was a one and a half year gap between when I first was encouraged to write such a manifesto, and the attempt itself. It’s very daunting to try and do this on your own (indeed, one shouldn’t<\/em> do it alone, but sometimes it feels very lonely out there). The monster feels too big to tackle, particularly without guides. Undoubtedly there will be missteps along the way. Any time you’re undertaking a project so new and so fundamentally at odds with the way society has operated for thousands of years, that’s a given. It’ll be hard no matter what, but the degree of difficulty will be dramatically affected depending on whether we have allies supporting us, or whether they’re jeering from the sidelines.<\/p>\n Resistance to oppression doesn’t go away without a theory, but it does become in many ways incoherent — the survivors know they’re being wronged, but the grammar of the system is so foreign that even their own protests seem nonsensical. Without a theory to explain them, most claims of anti-Semitism won’t make sense<\/em>. They will strike us as emotional, paranoid, in bad-faith, panicky, groundless, isolated, and\/or unwarranted. And many times, the speakers themselves won’t be able to clarify, because they’re are as confused (and consequently, insecure) as anybody else. They can’t explain, in exquisite detail, every syllogism and connection latent in their argument. They are just exhibiting the same reflex every other human has: if you prick a Jew, we will bleed. And very likely, we will cry out.<\/p>\n I understand, then, that a lot of time non-Jews have trouble understanding what Jews are talking about when they say something is anti-Semitic (particularly, it seems, when that something is a given criticism of Israel). I don’t ask that you “get it” right away, particularly when our own language is so inchoate. In many ways, I don’t think we “get it” ourselves. A lot of the time I feel confused and disoriented, and frustrated as well — I can’t expect more out of others than I can give of myself. But I do think it is fair to ask that you assume our <\/em>good faith. When Jews say something is anti-Semitic, we’re saying something important. It is not a frivolous charge, even when it might ultimately be wrong. It is not something we do for fun. It is not something we do for leverage. It is not card-playing. It means something.<\/p>\n Richard Bernstein defines the goal of critical theory as an effort to “encounter\u2026what is radically \u2018other\u2019 and alien. To do this requires imagination and hermeneutical sensitivity in order to understand the \u2018other\u2019 in its strongest possible light.” When J Street or the AJC or, yes, even AIPAC says that they feel some argument, institution, or person is anti-Semitic, what is the strongest<\/em> possible light we can give to that statement? When many Jews say that they believe the existence of Israel is critical to their safety and well-being as human beings, and that they view the politics of certain members of the progressive pantheon as fundamentally threatening their lives, what is the strongest<\/em> possible light we can use to evaluate the claim? The strongest, not the weakest — not the one that assumes even our expressions of fear or grief are closet political power-plays, not the one that assumes that the beginning and the end of Jewish political practice is as a brigade in the Western White Christian reactionary army.<\/span><\/p>\n It takes a theory to beat a theory. We can only create a theory if our friends are there to support us when we speak. Support is not a synonym for “agree”. Support is a synonym for assuming our words matter us, that what we are trying to say is important and represents a real experience, even if it hasn’t all come together yet. Support means not assuming you know it all from the beginning; being willing to hear an alternate tale and open to adjusting your own assumptions accordingly. Support means that when you disagree, when something sounds a false note, you see it as an opportunity to build something up, not tear something down.<\/p>\n <\/mce><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I first came across anti-subordination theory (in the form of critical race theory) right after I graduated from high school. I was no stranger to finding arguments that I found interesting, fun, or otherwise intriguing. This was different. This felt … Continue reading