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Wondering Who’s an Anti-Semite? The ADL Can Help!

Hint: it’s not the one who embraces terrorists

by
Liel Leibovitz
July 07, 2017
Joella Marano / Wikicommons Media
Joella Marano / Wikicommons Media
Joella Marano / Wikicommons Media
Joella Marano / Wikicommons Media

Who’s an anti-Semite? It’s so hard to tell these days! Folks are just so touchy!

Luckily for us, we have the Anti-Defamation League, an organization devoted to helping us avoid needless hysteria and perceive real danger. Here as a public service, then, is a handy guide to contemporary anti-Semitism, courtesy of the ADL:

A person expressing admiration for an unindicted conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, arguing that a woman can’t be both a Zionist and a feminist, and that antisemitism isn’t a “systemic” problem?

Totally fine! In fact, maybe even a First Amendment heroine. The ADL believes being balanced is very important, and suggesting that people who say hateful things about Jews are hateful is not very woke.

A person who appeared in a PSA to speak out against anti-Semitism and then dropped a few lines on a rap album about how Jews were good in business and savvy with real estate?

Bad! The ADL is very troubled by the way hip hop bravado, a category anyone with ears and a brain knows to read as anything but a literal description of reality, plays into “deep-seated anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews and money.”

That’s your lessons for today, kids.

And to think, people wonder why Jewish organizations are dying.

Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.