There are whispers here and there that fighting antisemitism plays into the hands of the far right. This alternative, when presented in this way, leaves only two options: fighting for democracy or fighting antisemitism. While there is nothing to be gained from those who allow themselves to be taken in by this fool’s game, the problem is no less serious, particularly when we turn our gaze to the US. The interview we had with the great American historian David Bell—a specialist in the French Enlightenment and professor at Princeton—testifies to the gravity of the situation on campuses. For it is impossible to ignore that, since the beginning of his second term, Trump has been exploiting the fight against antisemitism to impose his security agenda, roll back the rule of law, and justify his anti-intellectual offensive against the academic world. Nor can we ignore that, while antisemitism is merely a pretext for Trump, it has been handed to him on a silver platter by progressives who are incapable of cleaning up their own house. What remains is to refuse to be swept away by this little game in which each side participates, in its own way, in the erosion of democracy and its knowledge-producing institutions…
Still on the other side of the Atlantic, and still the same vice gripping Jews: on the one hand, an extreme right that claims to protect them and defend Israel, while attacking the rule of law and minorities; on the other, a progressive movement that is increasingly porous to antisemitism. This is the situation, as summarized by Sébastien Levi: caught between the Trumpian hammer and the anti-Zionist anvil. But how are American Jews reacting to this new situation? What political realignments can already be glimpsed? Drawing on both his own understanding of American Judaism and his analysis of the Jewish vote in the last presidential election, Sébastien Levi examines how the relationship with Israel is being reevaluated, particularly by the younger Jewish generation, and the new political alliances that could be forged.
To close this last issue before the summer holidays, we are teleporting ourselves back to Birobidzhan, an “autonomous Jewish region”, which was founded in May 1934 on the edge of the USSR, on the Chinese border, with Yiddish as its official language. While, according to the soviets, every nationality living on Soviet territory was to be allocated a region, it was Stalin who took the initiative for the Jews. The aim was ambiguous, as it was also to keep Jewish intellectuals away from the big cities and to offer a credible alternative to Zionism. Tens of thousands of Jews lived there at the end of the 1940s, representing a quarter of the local population. Today, the Jews have left the area and only represent a tiny percentage of the local community. This is where Ber Kotlerman grew up. He wrote a novel about this region, of which we are publishing the epilogue, translated from Yiddish by Vivian Felsen. In this extract, the narrator drinks tea at the home of an old lady, the daughter of a Birobidzhan pioneer, whose life has been steeped in nostalgia for her father’s illusions about Jewish autonomy.
