Bret Stephen's Address of The State Of World Jewry In New York
Part I
Bret Stephens and His Address of The State Of World Jewry
Bret Stephens recently addressed an audience at the influential New York cultural centre, the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, with his State Of World Jewry speech. The State Of World Jewry address has been made annually since 1980 by renown speakers including Abba Eban, Elie Wiesel, Bernard-Henri Levy, and more recently by Bari Weiss and Dan Senor. Stephens deserves to follow in this impressive queue of speakers. His incredible credentials include his opinion columns writing for the New York Times, and his senior contributing role at NBC. (In his address, when referring to his outlier but unperturbed writing role for the New York Times which is often noted for its biased coverage of Israel, Stephens called himself a “gadfly”. In a similar outlier role, Bari Weiss very publicly resigned from her writing position at the New York Times.) Stephens is also a founding member and editor-in-chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations. With SAPIR, Stephens puts his money where his mouth is, with regards to building an “astounding and vibrant cultural institution,” something he calls out the need for in his address to the Jewish community.
Stephens was also previously a foreign affairs columnist as well as a deputy editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal. (In 2013, Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize For Commentary, relating to his work at the Wall Street Journal.) Stephens was also the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
Needless to say, Stephens is today, one of the bright leading lights of world Jewry. In his delivery speech, Stephens did not disappoint. I will extract some of his spoken words and relay the gist of his speech, but I cannot fully do justice to it. That is why I am including a link to the entire 35 minute speech at the end of this post.
However, having said that I am so impressed with Bret Stephens and his address, there were some things that he said that I did not agree with. By his own admission, Stephens said that he would be making four points “that might not sit entirely well with everyone in the audience. That is OK because disagreement is in the lifeblood of our Jewishness, and I should add, I possess no monopoly on truth.” I will elaborate on my differences with Stephens in Part II, to be delivered in a week or so.
From Stephen’s Introduction, All Jews are Hated Which Should Give Us the Right to Wear Badges of Honour
Bret Stephens opens his speech with these words:
“The Jewish people, Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews, observant Jews and secular Jews, right-wing Jews and left, all of us, ultimately in the same boat, whether we like it or not, have the honour of being hated.”
In his introduction, Stephens attempts to round up the categories of Jew-haters:
“We are hated by the campus lemmings chanting antisemitic slogans whose meanings most of them aren’t bright enough to understand, though some of them understand it perfectly well.
We are hated by Ali Khamanei, Recep Erdogan, and other despots whose loathing of Jews is directly proportionate to their crimes against their own people.
We are hated by Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Alice Walker, Roger Waters, Francesca Albanese, Tucker Carlson, the out and out Jew-haters and their sly enablers.
We are hated by those who believe Jesus was a Palestinian.
We are hated by the so called feminists who downplayed the rape of Israeli women on and after October 7, and by the so-called progressives who denied it.
We are hated by virtually every political movement, left or right, that also opposes the idea of personal merit as an organizing social principle.
We are hated by UN mandarins who would like you to know that the preponderance of human rights violations are committed by one small country, Israel.
We are hated by ‘Queers For Palestine’ who neglected to notice what happens to queers in Palestine.
We are hated by Hamas water carriers masquerading as reporters at the BBC and other news media.
We are hated by all the Hollywood celebrities who see nothing amiss with demanding boycotts of Israeli artistic institutions, but not, say, Chinese ones.
We are hated by our charming new Mayor (-Zohran Mamdani) who thinks he can endorse the erasure of one state, and only one state, a Jewish state, and still acquit himself of the charge of antisemitism.
We are hated by people who parade their so-called Jewishness only when it serves as a tool to defame and endanger half the Jewish people as if they will be spared the furies, should, G-d forbid, Israel someday fall.
In short, we are being honoured by an axis of the perfidious, the despotic, the hypocritical, the cynical, the deranged, and the incurably stupid.”
That just about sums up all the Jew-haters in the world. Who would want to be associated with this notorious group of people? Apparently, Jew-haters think nothing of it. As Jews, being opposed to this group of disreputable Jew-haters, we should be entitled to wear a badge of honour. However, metaphorically or literally wearing that “badge of honour,” would be like wearing the yellow star of David in Nazi controlled Europe, or wearing the yellow star in medieval European Jewish ghettos. As Bret Stephens remarks, “it is an honour all of us yearn to do without, but we can’t.”
Bret Stephens’ Four Positions
1) The fight against Jew-hatred is costly and largely ineffective. (This expensive fight sucks away valuable and limited resources that could otherwise be used more effectively for world Jewry);
2) Arguably, history’s most demented (and longest-standing) hatred is also the world’s most unwitting compliment (to the Jews);
3) The proper Jewish defense against Jew-hatred is not to prove them wrong by outdoing ourselves in feats of altruism, benevolence, and achievement; and
4) Jewish diaspora survival and indeed vitality depends, just as it did in the past, on Jews reinventing themselves and focusing on building new and more independent Jewish institutions.
Analysis, Agreement, and Disagreement With Stephen’s Four Positions
I am going to scramble the order of Stephen’s four positions that he addressed in his speech. I will start with position #2 because it is very instructive and not very disputable:
(Stephen’s Position #2), Arguably, history’s most demented (and longest-standing) hatred is also the world’s most unwitting compliment (to the Jews):
Stephens, on this position, endeavors to explain why Jews have been so hated with venom and violence, over the millennia.
One common belief that Stephens raises, is that it is not Jew-hatred in the first place. It is anti-zionism. Yet if we look not even too closely at the outrageous claims made against Israel, we see a remarkable resemblance of those claims, as Stephens puts it, with classic Jew-hating “tropes of insatiable Jewish blood lust and secret manipulation of global affairs”. Compare some but not nearly all the centuries-old blood libels and tropes used against Jews embracing the murders of non-Jewish babies, using that captured blood for their rituals including the baking of matzah, and controlling the world. In their war against Hamas, Israel is accused of genocide and mercilessly targeting innocent children and mothers. Israel has regularly been accused of using Palestinian organs for self-beneficial transplants, and using blood for baking and eating matzah. Of course, Israel is also accused of controlling and manipulating American and Western foreign policies. (Americans and European leaders must be either pretty stupid and weak to be so easily controlled by a foreign country, many miles away, or they are subject to demonic spells cast by this “demonic” State of Israel. Note, Jews throughout centuries have also been called demons). Putting aside the almost exact fits of blood libel accusations used against Jews with those used against Israel, one should also wonder why Israel, the only liberal democratic state, and a tiny Jewish one at that, is the only country in the world, singled out for its right to exist.
Another common belief is that Jews are hated because they are the “eternal other”. Then why aren’t other “others,” in every human society, Stephens asks, “so persistently subjected to such world conspiracy theories, such murderous designs, such blatant double standards? Why has none written the book called the “Protocols of the Amish,” or “The International Quaker”?
Are Jews hated because they rejected Christ as a Messiah and Mohammed as a Prophet? Then Stephens asks how do we explain the persecution of Jews whose families converted to Christianity and Islam?
All of these and more, are just misplaced reasoning for why there is Jew-hatred. Stephens instead explains Jew-hatred on a psychological basis as millennia of “resentment marinated in envy.” Stephens goes on to explain what this resentment is.
He calls the Jewish people, a “counter-cultural nation.” The envy part, he explains, comes from Jewish flourishing everywhere they settle, which is the direct result of their counter-cultural convictions.
Jews were hated, at one time, for always believing there is only one G-d, and that there is “a common moral code that applies to all people, everywhere.”
Jews, per Stephens, always believed that all human beings “are made in the image of G-d and therefore human life is inherently precious and the lowest amongst us is equal in basic dignity to the highest.”
The Jewish belief system, Stephens points out, includes the “belief in freedom and the quest for freedom.” This, Stephens posits is a “fundamental challenge to every tyrant who would deny freedom (and human rights).”
Adolph Hitler himself said disparagingly about Jews that conscience is a Jewish invention.
Stephens also reasons that Jews put great stock in “questions” which “are of equal if not greater importance than answers and therefore that curiosity, second guessing, and the quest for knowledge, are social goods. (Jews have always believed) in argument for the sake of heaven, and therefore in disagreement that is not heresy.” Try explaining that to, for example, the Church in medieval times, or to those today who are fixated on narratives and ideologies.
In short, Jews have been perceived to be contrarians and infuriating to intolerant others with fixated beliefs and ideologies. Jewish contrariness, however gently and/or quietly applied, has always greatly endangered Jews. As Stephens puts it, just “ask anyone who has been turned down by a college, an employer, or a love interest. The normal ordinary reaction to a rejection is rage.” That rage is only accentuated when that rejection is perceived to be judgmental with a moral relative superiority.
Stephens concludes for this position “that there is nothing Jews can do to cure the Jew-haters of their hate. The (Jew-haters) can hire their own psychiatrists...”
I would like to jump to Stephens’ position #4, completing Part I, because it too is instructive and not very arguable, at least on its own merits:
(Stephen’s Position #4) Jewish diaspora survival and indeed vitality depends, just as it did in the past, on Jews reinventing themselves and focusing on building new and more independent Jewish institutions:
This is nothing new. At the turn of the century, Jews were ostracized after they arrived in North America. Jews were rejected employment in law and accounting firms, hospitals, social and recreation clubs, and more. Jews responded by creating their own acclaimed law and accounting firms, hospitals, social and recreation clubs and more. The question asked is, what is the Jewish future in the diaspora? Jews have been so successful since arriving in North America, that to “progressive” ideologues, Jews after once being considered “coloured” or “oriental,” have succeeded to the point that now they are labelled “white and privileged”. (To right extremists, Jews will always be “coloured,” and “demonic”).
For the first time in over a century, many Jews, once again, feeling unwelcome, are considering the possibility of leaving their host country. Many Jews, ironically, feel safer in Israel, a perennial target surrounded by adversary states that seek its complete destruction. Stephens’ answer for the diaspora Jews is to look inward, not outward, and build more vibrant and cultural Jewish institutions. He recognizes that “the (Jewish) infrastructure is already, mostly there. What’s missing is the scale.” By way of example, he says we need more “superb Jewish day schools, hundreds more of them, at Catholic school tuition rates, to give every Jewish family in America, a chance to give their children an excellent education rooted in Jewish values”. He adds, we need more Jewish institutions, duplicated, in dozens of more cities. Jewish philanthropy, he asserts, needs to be more focused on Jewish coordinated priorities. While Jewish employment and perspectives are not welcome in some colleges, and media outlets, Jews should create new ones “on a path to becoming the most desirable employment destination for the best writers, reporters, and editors, in America.” In Stephens’ mind, it is either step up to the challenge, depart, or worse, go the way of the dodo.
The “October 8 Jew” as Stephens coined it, is now facing, not by design, once again, a new beginning. As always, where there is a threat, there is also an opportunity.
Stephens concludes this position and his speech and predicts Jews “will again endure the honour of being hated, as we continue to work for a thriving Jewish future.”
Part II, Are Efforts Against Jew-Hatred, “A Fool’s Errand?’, to follow.
Bret Stephens full Address To The State Of World Jewry In New York: