So much for the ‘People of Einstein’ myth
By Emma Teitel - Monday, September 26, 2011 - 19 Comments
Emma Teitel on how a York University student makes Jews look bad—and why that’s a good thing
wokka/Flickr
There’s an inside Yiddish expression used by Jews to describe other Jews behaving badly in the public sphere: “shanda for the goyim” — shanda meaning “shame” and goyim denoting “gentiles” (non-Jews). The phrase is most commonly employed by Semitic seniors, when the modern media informs them that Jews can in fact be lechers (Dominique Strauss-Kahn), alcoholics (Amy Winehouse); unsuspecting nudes (Scarlett Johansson); and now, thanks to one 22-year-old Toronto Jewish girl, dangerously obtuse.
The woman in question—with whom I share at least one mutual Facebook friend (I am also a 22-year-old Jewish girl and it’s very possible we crossed paths, maybe at B’nai Brith summer camp, or perhaps in the annual United Synagogue Youth Limousine Sukka Hop)—is a York University senior named Sarah Grunfeld, who last week made shanda-esque headlines when she put her social science professor’s career in jeopardy over an anti-Semitic remark that turned out to be—well—not. The statement “All Jews should be sterilized,” Professor Cameron Johnston explained in the introductory lecture to his class, was an example of an invalid and dangerous opinion; his point was that in academia especially, opinions must be reasonably qualified. Grunfeld failed to catch that qualifier, though, perhaps because before the prof had a chance to offer it, she had stormed out of class and enlisted the on-campus Israel-advocacy group, Hasbara (Hebrew for “Explanation”), to call for his immediate resignation.
Word of Johnston’s so-called racism exploded virally online by way of what National Post columnist Jonathan Kay has dubbed the “Bubbie-net” (Jewish grandparents frantically emailing their kin with fresh findings of alleged anti-Semitism); at the same time widely-respected Canadian Jewish civil rights association, B’nai Brith (Children of the Covenant), leaped in with equal gusto to champion Grunfeld’s claim. Then came the big reveal: Ms. Grunfeld had made a mistake. Not only was professor Johnston not an anti-Semite, he was a Jew. To borrow a more accessible Yiddish phrase, political correctness at York University had effectively schtupped itself. Not to mention Sarah Grunfeld.
The maligned university student has since “qualified” her accusations against Johnston with claims twice as ludicrous as the original. “The words, ‘Jews should be sterilized’,” she told the Toronto Star recently, “still came out of his mouth, so regardless of the context I still think that’s pretty serious.”
A lot of Canadian Jews are embarrassed and ashamed by this kind of doublespeak, and so was I, until I re-examined the root of my disquiet. There’s a reason why this particular shanda—and not, let’s say, Woody Allen’s marriage to his adopted daughter, or Garth Drabinsky’s defrauding of his shareholders, or The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart’s changing his name from John Stewart Liebowitz—ignites such fierce indignation in the Jewish community: Because Grunfeld doesn’t simply make us look bad (like the guys above); she makes us look stupid, and in doing so debunks the cultural stereotypes of intellectual superiority that we sometimes not-so-secretly enjoy.
Jewish American author Michael Chabon explored the seductiveness of this stereotype to Jews themselves in the New York Times last year in considering the calibre of the discussion following Israel’s botched raid of the Gaza bound Turkish flotilla, Mavi Marmara, in which nine activists died at the hands of Jewish soldiers (a debacle Diaspora Jews had trouble reconciling with our supposed “cultural” cleverness):
“I would look around the Passover table, say, at the members of my family, and remark on the presence of a number of highly intelligent, quick-witted, shrewd, well-educated people filled to bursting with information, explanations and opinions on a diverse range of topics. In my tractable and vainglorious eagerness to confirm the People of Einstein theory, my gaze would skip right over—God love them—any counterexamples present at that year’s Seder.”
Sarah Grunfeld—God love her—is one such counterexample. But we’d be wrong to let our gaze skip right over her, because there’s another, more disturbing lesson to be drawn from the Grunfeld affair and it’s this: as Jews, we hold the moral high ground to call out anti-Semitism. That’s why, in part, Grunfeld’s accusation had the legs it did, and why, perhaps, it got the backing from the Jewish infrastructure organizations such as B’nai Brith, which still hasn’t distanced itself from Grunfeld or denounced her fallacious claim, but has instead published her unapologetic letter blasting Professor Johnston for a sin he didn’t commit, with a logic even more addled than before. And there lies the biggest shanda of all: Grunfeld’s false allegations and the group’s uninformed decision to support her are bad mistakes, but both parties’ inability to own up to those mistakes renders them inexcusable. Because when we cry wolf —especially on one of our own—serious apologies are in order.
But it’s doubtful that apologies of any kind will be made, and B’nai Brith will continue sniffing out anti-Semitism where there may not be any, all the while undermining cases where there is. If anything good does come from this debacle, however, it’s that our enemies and unsolicited friends (Glenn Beck comes to mind) may think twice before attributing all things grave and glorious to the “People of Einstein.” Because if public representatives of the Jewish faith continue to make exceedingly stupid mistakes, then the various calumnies the conspiracy theorists like to heap on all of us—the blood libel, the plague, AIDS, the Iraq War, and our obvious plans to take over everything from Saturday night TV to the World Bank—start to ring kind of hollow. After all, with Sarah Grunfeld leading the way, for what exactly can they blame us?
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The resurrection of John Galliano?
By Leah Mclaren - Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 6 Comments
The acclaimed designer is expected to return to the fashion world—anti-semitic slurs be damned
Antonio de Moraes Barros Filho/WireImage/Getty Images
Earlier this month, a Paris court found fashion designer John Galliano guilty of “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity,” for his now-notorious anti-Semitic rant in a Paris café.
It was, of course, a crime for which the disgraced designer had months ago been sentenced in the court of public opinion, and rightly so. The diatribe in which he slurred “I love Hitler” in the faces of a couple of astonished women was caught on video and later posted online. After Galliano’s arrest in February, for which he was dropped both as head of the House of Dior as well as his own eponymous label, his career prospects seemed forever dashed. But now that the court case is over and the dust is beginning to settle, some fashion world observers are speculating that a comeback might be in the cards. “Given how superficial the fashion world can be—and how cynical—it could be that Galliano’s very notoriety makes him a short-term money-spinner,” Telegraph deputy fashion editor Luke Leitch wrote last week after the verdict came down.
The court found the designer guilty after hearing testimony from patrons who’d experienced Galliano’s abuse on several separate occasions over the past year. Plaintiff Geraldine Bloch testified that the designer remarked on her “dirty Jewish face” and called her a “ ‘dirty whore’ at least a thousand times” in a 45-minute rant as she shared a drink with a friend on the patio of La Perle, an establishment located in the Marais, the lively gay district and historic Jewish quarter of Paris. And another victim, Fatiha Oummedour, told the court of a separate occasion on which an inebriated Galliano taunted her as “ugly Jewish” at the same café a few months earlier.
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Follow the money
By John Geddes - Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 5:00 PM - 102 Comments
An MP inquiry into anti-Semitism vowed to be open and independent. Its shadowy funding says otherwise.
Sean Kilpatrick/CP
When a group of Conservative, Liberal and NDP MPs formed the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism in 2009, they decided to work outside of the normal structures of Parliament and raise their own money to hold a conference and conduct an inquiry. But transparency would be crucial, they said, pledging on their website to “voluntarily disclose all sources of funding” and remain independent of the Conservative government, advocacy groups and “Jewish community organizations.” By the time they released their report this month, however—warning that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Canada—that vow of full disclosure seemed to be forgotten, and the coalition appeared closely tied to the government.
Conservative MP Scott Reid, chairman of the coalition’s inquiry steering committee, said the CPCCA promised anonymity to private donors, who contributed a total of $127,078. As for their relationship with the government, the coalition accepted $451,280 from the department of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who sat on the CPCCA’s inquiry steering committee as an ex officio member. The coalition’s key conclusion that a “new anti-Semitism” tends to focus on criticism of Israel echoes Kenney’s long-standing position.
Perhaps surprisingly, the MPs’ ethics code appears not to oblige them to reveal the names of their backers. The Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner didn’t comment specifically on the CPCCA, but told Maclean’s the “Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons” requires only that individual MPs disclose money they receive—not MPs acting as a group. “There is no mechanism within the code for a group of MPs to disclose a collective gift,” the commissioner’s office said. The coalition knows the rules. “The ethics commissioner doesn’t cover [the CPCCA] because the donations went to an entity, not to an MP,” said Mike Firth, Reid’s executive assistant.
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Dior fires Galliano over anti-Semitic remarks
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 4:24 PM - 4 Comments
Fashion designer caught on tape saying, “I love Hitler”
French fashion house Christian Dior has fired its chief designer, John Galliano, on Tuesday after a video of a drunken, anti-Semitic outburst at a Paris bar was circulated on the Internet. Citing the “particularly odious comments” made by Galliano, Dior Couture’s chief executive, Sidney Toledano, announced that the company has “immediately suspended relations” with the designer. The video shows Mr. Galliano in an apparently intoxicated state verbally abusing customers at a Parisian bar called La Perle, declaring things like “I love Hitler” and “people like you would be dead.” Actress Natalie Portman, who won the Oscar for Best Actress on Sunday, recently signed a contract with Dior to be a spokesperson for their new line of perfume. She has since said “In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way.” Galliano has denied making the comments.
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Montreal Jews fear hate campaign
By macleans.ca - Monday, January 17, 2011 at 1:44 PM - 24 Comments
Schools and temples vandalized over the weekend
B’nai Brith, the Jewish advocacy and community organization, is warning against “an orchestrated campaign of anti-Semitic attacks” in Montreal after the windows of three synagogues, a Jewish school, and a daycare were smashed over the weekend. The targeting of the school and daycare is of particular concern to Montreal’s Jewish community, given the 2004 firebombing of the United Talmud Torah School. So far, no arrests have been made and no eyewitnesses have come forward, although police will be reviewing surveillance video.
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A part of our heritage
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 1:17 PM - 0 Comments
The Ottawa Citizen considers the anti-semitism of some Canada’s more honoured public servants, including a prime minister, a cabinet minister and a governor general.
All these figures, including Whitton, were “very prominent and important in their day,” said Robert Bothwell, an eminent Canadian historian at the University of Toronto. If their recognition is meant to represent what Canada was, Bothwell said in an e-mail to the Citizen, “then all these people should be commemorated.
“As the war museum controversy some years back should have demonstrated, history is not a series of pleasant bedtime stories, pre-sanitized so that only the worthy appear in order to make our hearts thump with a patriotic pit-a-pat.”
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The new anti-Semitism
By Julia Belluz - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments
Young German Muslims vs. Israelis
THOMAS HAENTZSCHEL/AP
“Gone with the Jews!” yelled a group of youths at Jewish dance performers on the fringes of Hanover, Germany. It was International Day, and celebrations were focused on social diversity and cohesion. These hate-filled sentiments, though, broke up the festivities when the young people began stoning the dancers. Unlike traditional sources of anti-Semitic hatred in Germany—white, right-wing radicals—German authorities say this and other such cases mark a new source of anti-Semitic hatred in Germany: young Muslims.
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Sven the kid, An American in China and Some of his best outfits are animals
By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
Newsmakers
Sven the kid
When Dutch skating sensation Sven Kramer, 23, looks in the mirror he sees a very relaxed athlete. When Canadians look at Kramer—who won gold in the 5,000-m race in front of 4,500 fans from back home, including Crown Prince Willem Alexander and Princess Maxima—they see another Olympian, Sidney Crosby. The hockey great and Kramer share a huge celebrity in their home countries—and a striking resemblance. Canadian speed skater Christine Nesbitt recalls a time Kramer competed in Calgary and visited a local mall. “All the girls were asking for his autograph, and he thought it was because he was Sven Kramer,” she says. Nesbitt herself is more often recognized in skating-mad Holland than Canada, she says. Expect that to change after Vancouver.An American in China
She’s no Yao Ming, says Team USA assistant captain Julie Chu, but she sure gets attention in China. After the U.S. women’s hockey opener against China on Feb. 14, Chu, the all-time leading scorer in NCAA women’s history, was mobbed by Chinese media. The final score was 12-1 for the U.S., but it didn’t much matter to the China-supporting crowd, who gave their team an ovation for its lone goal. Chu—whose parents and three siblings all have matching tattoos of the Olympic rings, and of Julie’s number, 13—happily quoted the two Mandarin phrases she knows for Chinese national TV. As luck would have it, they include, “Happy New Year!”But some of his best outfits are animals
Fears for his safety have forced drama-magnet Johnny Weir into the security-laden Olympic Village. The figure skater had chosen to live in a hotel during the Games after an unhappy experience at the athletes’ lodgings in Turin. But the white fox fur he added to his costume at the U.S. championships last month unleashed a torrent of what he calls “very serious threats” from anti-fur activists. Arranging security at the hotel was too hard. So he’s sharing a suite with ice dancer Tanith Belbin, having made himself at home by putting up b posters and lighting scented candles to mask an odour he says “smelled like wet dog.” That comment won’t win him fans in the PETA crowd. -
Liberals play the victim on Israel
By Andrew Coyne - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:15 AM - 93 Comments
If the issue is who has been the stauncher supporter of Israel, there’s no question that it’s the Tories, not the Grits
There are many diversions in this carnival world—canasta, bubble wrap, Donald Trump’s hair—but none so entertaining as a politician trying to persuade us the emotions he puts on for a living are real. Michael Ignatieff may profess bemusement, in interviews with the foreign press, at the “theatricality” of it all, but your average pol would never concede the point. They are like those movie co-stars who must pretend to be dating in real life.
Mind you, it doesn’t take much to persuade us in the media. We are as invested as they in the pretense that, when the Member for Diddly-squat is observed to be “shaking with rage” or “visibly distraught,” he is actually experiencing something like the named emotion. Hence the readiness of so many media outlets to advertise the Liberals’ hurt feelings at those Tory pamphlets accusing them of anti-Semitism.
They don’t actually accuse them of anything of the kind, you understand. But, next to being the subject of a vicious personal attack (“you can say what you want about me, but leave my family out of it”), there is nothing a politician lives for more than to be unjustly accused of something—even if he has to levy the charge himself. The opportunities to play the victim are too tempting. Continue…
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A Canadian uncovers the real Haydn
By David Laster - Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments
‘Papa’s’ operas are rife with subtext about Hapsburg-era Vienna and anti-Semitism
University of Toronto music historian Caryl Clark shocked her audience into silence when she spoke at a conference devoted to the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn in Budapest this past May. “The reaction among my older colleagues was, ‘Oh my God, we don’t talk about such things here.’ And the younger people couldn’t picture the stereotypes I referred to.”Haydn—inventor of the symphony and string quartet—was perhaps the most influential composer in history. Yet many classical music critics argue that he doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Mozart, whom he mentored, and Beethoven, his student—because he lacked their “inner seriousness.” Indeed, Haydn has long been characterized as a pious, naive, conservative, untroubled servant of his noble patrons, given to musical jokes and witticisms. Continue…
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The controversial opera cities love
By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 4:40 PM - 1 Comment
No one seems to admire Wagner, but nicer artists just don’t have the same cultural clout
No arts community can be taken seriously without Richard Wagner. The Canadian Opera Company already chose his Ring cycle (the four-opera marathon that created the stereotype of the fat soprano in armour) to inaugurate its new opera house, and in 2010, Los Angeles will celebrate its first production of the complete Ring with a city-wide promotion called “Ring Festival L.A.” This plan got some unwanted publicity when Mike Antonovich, an L.A. County supervisor, protested the decision to honour the operas that “inspired Hitler and became the de facto soundtrack for the Holocaust.” The objection was voted down, but another supervisor, Zev Yaroslavsky, told Maclean’s that the festival will “delve deeply into Wagner’s anti-Semitism” and “focus on him in the totality of his life and times—for better and for worse.” Nobody can produce Wagner without acknowledging his racism; even the Bayreuth Festival, which Wagner himself founded, has announced that it will produce a report and exhibit on how associated the festival was with Hitler and Nazism. But though nobody seems to like Wagner the man, everybody wants to produce his work.Even casual music fans are often aware that Wagner’s non-musical writings are full of what Linda Hutcheon, a professor at the University of Toronto, calls “articulate and verbally vehement” expressions of dislike for Jews and Jewish composers. But at this point, casual fans may actually know more about his racism than his work, because except for isolated excerpts like the bits that Bugs Bunny parodied in What’s Opera, Doc?, Wagner’s operas are more talked about than seen. They were good box office in the 1930s, but today, only one (his early effort The Flying Dutchman) appears on a list of the most popular operas in North America. The operas are also tremendously long and expensive to stage, and they make huge demands on singers for little gain: the Ring contains no arias or applause breaks. Why then do cities court controversy by devoting a major chunk of arts funding to Wagner instead of composers whose operas are more profitable (or at least less unprofitable) than his? Continue…
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School heads are ‘enablers’ of anti-Semitism
By Barbara Amiel - Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 86 Comments
I will eat my hat the day they allow an Anti-Islamism Week or even an Anti-Taliban Week
The usual anti-Semitic incidents are listed in a letter from the Anshe Emeth synagogue in New Brunswick, N.J., to Rutgers University president William H.S. Demarest: officials failed to take action after a student mob attacked some Jewish students shouting “We don’t want you Jews here”; the campus allowed vandalism and “narrow-mindedness and bigotry” alien to its principles. The letter writers proposed remedial measures: that president Demarest publicly denounce statements “ridiculing and insulting Jews”; that he threaten expulsion to “students who interfere” with the rights of Jewish students and make serious attempts “to apprehend” the violators. President Demarest met with the synagogue committee, who professed satisfaction. And of course, nothing changed.The letter and incidents took place at Rutgers in 1920. Israel did not exist. Hitler had not appeared. Islamofascism had not surfaced in the West. The situation, however, was pretty much identical to what goes on at universities year round these days, with highlights during last month’s Israel Apartheid Week, when anti-Semites got together on campuses to demonize Israel, the single democracy in the Middle East.
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Sid Ryan’s foreign policy includes only Israel
By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 3 Comments
He’s never demanded American or Russian scholars denounce Bush or Putin
At an anti-Israel rally in New York last week, a young, Middle Eastern-looking fellow in a dark beard and camouflage toque leaned against a police barricade and held up a large hand-lettered sign. “Death to All Juice,” it read. A picture of the sign was widely circulated on the Internet, sparking an intense debate over whether the man was an illiterate anti-Semite, or a pro-Israel plant trying to make the protesters look like illiterate anti-Semites.
The episode underscores one of the curious things about idiocy, which is that you often can’t tell the real idiots from the people only pretending to be idiots in order to make other people look idiotic.
