The most recommended books on antisemitism

If McWhorter focuses on how woke ideology harms Blacks, Bernstein shows how it harms Jews and inevitably fosters antisemitism.

Like McWhorter, Bernstein provides very specific examples of wokeness in action, both on and off campus. Jews were asked to leave an LGBT Pride event because their flag – a Pride flag with a Star of David on it – “made people feel unsafe”; a Jewish organization that issued a public statement condemning George Floyd’s murder was lambasted because the statement had not been drafted by a person of color; and more.

Bernstein and I are both liberal Jews, but we both fear the consequences of an ideology that divides the world into the non-privileged oppressed and the privileged oppressors – Jews, by virtue of their current success, are automatically considered privileged oppressors despite the long worldwide history of antisemitism.

I recommend Arendt’s book for its guidance in helping readers interpret signs of totalitarianism—a growing concern in today’s civil society. Arendt is a pivotal thinker and an inspiring source of first-hand experience when it comes to fascist regimes.

This is an absolute must-read if we hope to prevent fascism from emerging once again.

This book stunned me by becoming something different over and over again.

The characters in Amerikaland are upright role models, but then we dip into their super complicated pasts. When their family pops up, the story begins to weave itself into a wild plot that requires unbelievable fortitude to endure. As the pages kept coming, I no longer had any idea what was going to happen next and felt like anything could happen. These people were driven by inner fires that could burn up the world at any moment.

I had to lay on the couch after this one as I felt completely gutted, but while lying down, I picked it up again and started rereading.

When I am overwhelmed by awful news about plagues, wars, ecological disasters, financial implosions, and the rise of homegrown American fascism, I find it oddly comforting to learn about earlier eras when everything was falling apart. That’s why – every few years – I reread A Dream of Scipio.

The story takes place in a single village in France, but at three different times when the End of the World was nigh: the final days of the Roman Empire when the barbarians actually were at the gate; the months of the medieval Black Death, when the whole world seemed to be dying; and the years of the Nazi-occupation of France, when European civilization was devolving into mechanized savagery.

This novel is about finding a way to behave ethically in a time when doing so can get you killed. Sometimes there is a price for being decent and kind and humane.… show more.

I love how this book portrays young people intelligently speaking truth to power…even when that power is the teacher grading you…even when that teacher is well-liked…even when some oppose your ideas.

This novel showed me what antisemitism (and bigotry in general) can look like in a contemporary high school, a place already brewing with emotions, factions, and hormones. The characters are so nuanced and realistic that I felt I was right there with them in the classroom and beyond.

This book inspired many productive conversations with my family and friends.

This inspiring picture book is based on the true story of a little boy whose family is the target of an anti-semitic incident during Hanukkah. The community responds not with aggression but solidarity, with hundreds of homes displaying menorahs in their windows.

This book illustrates the idea that kindness and faith can turn one light into many, an echo of the Hanukkah miracle.

The art by Caldecott Medalist Paul Zelinksy is powerful and gorgeous. Inspirational!

I have long felt the need to push my feelings about being a Jewish American woman to the background when considering and discussing issues of oppression; British writer and comedian David Baddiel tells me why I feel this way and why I should not.

Jews Don’t Count is a bold polemic, a detailed, vivid, and often witty explanation of why oppression must not be a competitive practice. He explains how Jewishness is made synonymous with privilege by both the political Right and the Left despite lived experience to the contrary. And he makes plain that Jewishness must be explored via race, not religion, for this is what white supremacists do and have always done.

I felt enlightened and empowered by this critical commentary, which argues and illustrates so well how antisemitism is a significant factor in racism worldwide today.

I had never heard of Zygmunt Bauman when I picked up this book, but then I couldn’t put it down. By the time I had finished reading it, I was filled with the deepest appreciation and respect for both the man, and his biographer. Bauman’s life spanned almost a hundred years and his story is also the story of Europe, from 1925-2017.

Izabela Wagner has done monumental work to produce a biography worthy of its subject. Her loving respect for Bauman is tangible and adds greatly to the pleasure of reading the story of this extraordinary man’s life: Polish Jew, refugee, soldier, sociologist; an intellectual who spent his life reflecting on what he saw, and speaking and writing about it with pristine clarity.

This is Eliot’s last novel about an ostensible British aristocrat’s journey to uncovering his real identity. Often referred to as Eliot’s “Jewish novel,” it reflects her unerring ability to empathize with the Other. It is very long but also un-put-downable, with two interwoven plots that complement each other masterfully. It’s at once a conventional 19th-century novel and an entirely original and surprising take on the genre. As a Jew with a love of nineteenth-century British novels, this one spoke to me most powerfully.

How did my ancestry help define me? My great-grandfather created a dairy farm outside of Tacoma, and my mother grew up impoverished in Indiana during the Great Depression. These experiences shaped my family, but how far into the past do such influences arise?

I have been fascinated by history and genealogy since childhood, and even my professional role as a paleoanthropologist is an extension of that interest in prehistory. Christine Kenneally addresses in direct language the implicit questions I was seeking–what roles did genes, ancestry, and history play in shaping me and the populations around me? It is not hard for me to identify with the values of the Puritan farmers from whom I descended, but before I read this book, I didn’t appreciate the persistence of historical experiences in shaping a community. For example, the slave trade instilled a modern community's suspicion of strangers in the worst affected areas… show more.