Who's afraid of the big bad Jew? Exploring the root of antisemitism

Rabbi Raphael Shore’s new book and film address the root causes of antisemitism.

By ALAN ROSENBAUM NOVEMBER 17, 2024 05:00

RAPHAEL SHORE (photo credit: Sharon Gabay)

For 17-year-old Raphael Shore, the “No Jews Allowed” sign that his friends hung on the door one Friday evening in 1978 at his high school hangout was a wake-up call that antisemitism was alive and well in his hometown of London, Ontario.

Recalling the incident that occurred more than 40 years ago, Shore described his Jewish upbringing and the shock of being the subject of an antisemitic slur. “We weren’t religious, but we were Jewish. We were proud. We had a strong identity. We had managed to become part of the ‘cool people’ in high school, and we hung around with them every single weekend, all the time,” he recounted.

“And then all of a sudden, one weekend it was ‘No Jews allowed.’ The combination of being quite proud [about our Judaism], and then seeing that sign definitely had a profound impact on me.”

Shocked by the encounter and inspired by his twin brother’s newfound Jewish observance, Shore studied antisemitism at the University of Toronto, became an ordained rabbi, educator, and filmmaker, and today lives with his wife and children in Jerusalem.

Last month, Shore released the documentary film Tragic Awakening: A New Look at the Oldest Hatred, which explores the roots of antisemitism, along with his book titled Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jew? Learning to Love the Lessons of Jew-Hatred. The film was produced in conjunction with the Aseret Movement, founded by Rabbi Shalom Schwartz.

SHORE INTERVIEWS pro-Israel Arab Rawan Osman (credit: Courtesy ‘Tragic Awakening’)

In a recent interview with this writer, Shore said he began working on the book several years ago, based on ideas that had been percolating within him for the past 40 years. While the book was in its final stages of preparation, Shore decided to make a companion film.

The tragic attacks of Oct. 7, the ensuing Operation Swords of Iron, and the worldwide rise in antisemitism make the questions addressed in the film and the book especially relevant for this period.

The film

“Today, almost every Jew is asking the question ‘Why?’” said Shore. “Why is there such hatred? Why is it once again in our generation – not just Oct. 7 – but the global reaction, the reaction on campuses? It was shocking to the Jewish world. This book and the film are coming in a very timely way to answer the question that’s on people’s minds.”

The film anchors its message through Shore’s extensive discussions with human rights activist Rawan Osman, who was born in Syria and raised in Lebanon. “I hated the Jews,” she tells Shore early on in the film. “I was told that the Jews were evil, that they hate everybody, and would do anything to achieve their goals.”

Osman eventually changed her negative views about Judaism and, over time, became a staunch supporter of Israel. After the Oct. 7 massacre, she visited Israel and the Gaza communities.

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Footage of the events of that tragic day, video clips of anti-Israel protests, and comments from well-known activists and commentators such as Bari Weiss, Yossi Klein Halevi, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and former MK Michal Cotler-Wunsh are interspersed through the film, which runs just short of one hour.

“The Jews are blamed for all the ills of the world,” Osman tells Shore. “Why? Where does this come from?”

He responds to her with several possible answers. The first possibility – that the Jews are hated because they are wicked and evil – is discarded almost immediately.

THE SECOND possibility is that Jews have been used as scapegoats for the ills of society throughout history, and there is nothing unique that makes them hated. Shore dismisses this possibility as well and instead embraces the idea that “they hate us because we are Jewish,” tracing it to Adolf Hitler’s worldview, which saw the Jews as a threat to his philosophy.

“Hitler believed that there was one great conflict that drove human history – survival of the fittest,” says Shore. “Just as in the animal kingdom, where ruthlessness and power govern that realm, so too it would be for mankind.”

In Hitler’s view, continues Shore, the success of humanitarianism – love, equality, and democracy – would mean the end of humanity. In his warped viewpoint, the Jews were dangerous to human development and were a spiritual and moral threat to mankind.

Shore extends Hitler’s point of view to antisemitism in general – that haters of the Jews have seen them as a threat to their ideology and philosophy. “Although Hitler could articulate it consciously, perhaps that same concern underlies antisemitism throughout history, even when people can’t successfully articulate it – and that gives rise to all kinds of reasons,” he explains.

“They can’t always put their finger on it, so they say it’s because Jews have too much money. They come up with various excuses and scapegoats, but none of them are satisfactory. No answers are truly satisfactory. And then Hitler comes along and answers it for us.”

It was this overarching hatred of the Jews and what they stood for, explains Shore, that made the destruction of the Jewish people the core mission of World War II for the Nazis.

Replying to Shore’s explanation, Osman notes, “Hitler perceived the Jews as the conscience of humanity. Hitler’s hatred of the Jews was more fear than it was hate. He wanted to kill the Jews because they were good.”

The book

In his tome, Shore expands further on the impact of the Jewish people in history and why Hitler considered them to be a threat.

“Jewish philosophy and tradition would say that Adolf Hitler was right about the nature of man’s struggle and the Jewish people’s disruptive impact, but he was dead wrong morally.”

Throughout history, writes Shore, Jews have always been disruptors and have always strived to invent and improve the world. “What so often characterizes Jews,” he writes, “was a drive for more, or for a better or different way to do things, from the secrets of the universe to better economic and political systems for mankind.”

The desire for change and improvement has manifested itself not only in religious matters but in all aspects of human endeavor. For thousands of years, he notes, the Jews may have been powerless militarily but possessed great strength in the world of ideas.

He points out that Jews have won 40% of all the Nobel Prizes in Economic Sciences, which includes 38 awards in the 56 years since that award’s establishment. Israelis are the 13th-largest recipients of Nobel Prize awards, despite being only the 94th-largest country by population. Globally, 22% of all Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish since the awards began in 1901.

Examining antisemitism in this light, Shore explains in the film and in the book that the roots of antisemitism stem from Sinai. At Sinai, the Jewish people received the Ten Commandments and accepted the mission to bring morality, ethics, ethical monotheism, and light into the world. The Jews will be hated for it, and the world will protest and resist. That resistance, he says, is called antisemitism.

“The goal of destroying Sinai,” says Cotler-Wunsh in the film, “whether it was Hitler’s or now, with the Hamas charter, and whether it was along the thousands of years of history before this, is the destruction of our shared humanity. That binds together Hamas with Hitler” and with all those who preceded them.

Who should watch or read these?

What is the target audience for Tragic Awakening and Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jew? Shore says that it is intended for three main groups.

“First of all, for young Jews because I think they’re the ones who are most vulnerable. Quoting Prof. Robert Wistrich (1945-2015), one of the world’s leading scholars on antisemitism who headed the Vidal Sassoon International Center for Antisemitism at Hebrew University, Shore said, “Jews need to get an inner armor. They’re facing antisemitism and global anti-Israel hatred. If they don’t understand, if they don’t have moral self-confidence, then they are probably just going to go straight to assimilation.
“For me, this anti-Israel, antisemitism movement that’s going on in the world is the greatest threat to the next generation of Jews, primarily in the Diaspora, and leads straight to assimilation,” the author and filmmaker said. “That’s my primary market.”

The second intended audience for the book and the film is the Jewish establishment. Shore says that it has “gotten it wrong” on what antisemitism is about and what the Jewish people are about.

When you say that antisemitism has occurred “because the Jews are scapegoats, then there is nothing Jewish about it. It’s just that we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s the conventional wisdom today, and it’s superficial and wrong,” he asserted. “I want to challenge that, and I want to get that conversation going because I think if we understand it, not only can we have that inner armor and moral self-confidence, but it can lead to a strengthening of the Jewish community in general.”

Shore said that the third group for whom the film and book are intended is non-Jews because they “need to understand to get on the right side of history.”

Tragic Awakening: A New Look at the Oldest Hatred premiered at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and has been screened at Jewish communities throughout the world. It has been shown in Israel and will be screened on December 25, the first night of Hanukkah, at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, in conjunction with the official book launch there.

Shore said that one of the common responses to his film by those who have not seen it is that it is just another depressing film about Oct. 7. Instead, he maintains, it tells a much deeper and inspiring positive story. “The purpose of the film is not just to deepen our understanding about antisemitism and the nature of antisemitism but to deepen our understanding of the nature of the Jewish people. It’s a film about why the Jews [are so hated], but it’s also more importantly about why be Jewish.

“We do have an obsession with antisemitism,” he continued, “and it’s understandable because it’s such a serious problem. At the same time, we haven’t told our positive story to the next generation as much as we should. So very often, and this goes back to our generation, it’s been too much on the Holocaust and antisemitism.

“When your identity is based on that, it’s not so positive. We’ve got to become better at telling our positive, inspiring story,” he asserted. 