Can People Just Stop Talking about ‘the Jews’?

T his is the season in which most of the major Jewish holidays are clustered together (today and tomorrow are also a holiday, Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, during which we celebrate the Torah upon the conclusion of the annual cycle of reading it). This year, the holidays have coincided with some colorful discourse on Jews — about what we control, whom we are ungrateful toward, how we spread sexual depravity to Christians, and how annoying it is that you just can’t talk about Jews anymore without somebody raising a fuss.

To elaborate a bit further, the most recent round of Jewish discourse in popular culture seems to have begun when Kanye West, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, surmised that Jared Kushner made a peace deal between Israel and Arab states for financial benefits, saying, “I just think that’s what they’re about is making money.” West said a lot in that interview, so it was easy enough to chalk it up to some beef he had with the Kushner family, and perhaps it would have been forgotten amid all the other nutty stuff West says. But just to leave no doubt that he did in fact have a problem not only with Kushner but with the Jews, he later tweeted that he was going to go “death con 3 on Jewish people.” In the tweet, he pushed the Black Hebrew Israelite narrative that claims that they are the true Jews, and then complained, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

Candace Owens, either because she doesn’t know what she is talking about or because she is simply reluctant to burn bridges with West, declared, “If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was anti-Semitic.” She then set up the straw man that “this is not representing the beginning of a Holocaust” and suggested that critics were behaving as if West had ordered a military strike on Israel. She then lamented, “You can’t even say the word Jewish without people getting upset.” Of course, back on planet earth, nobody was talking about a Kanye-ordered Holocaust; people were just pointing out that the Black Hebrew Israelite narrative (which erases the Jewish religion from the origins of the Jewish people) coupled with claiming that Jews “black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda” is antisemitic language. It might be news to Owens, but there are plenty of things that stop short of the actual Holocaust that are nonetheless antisemitic. And yes, people might get a bit touchy if somebody decides to use his celebrity platform to target the Jewish religion and perpetuate the idea of a nefarious Jewish plot.

Just in case there was any doubt, however, West gave another interview in which he said, “Jewish people have owned the black voice. Whether it’s about us wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt, or all of us being signed to a record label, or having a Jewish manager, or being signed to a Jewish basketball team, or doing a movie on a Jewish platform like Disney.” He then said, “They came into money through the lawyers,” claimed the Twelve Tribes of Israel were black, and riffed about “Jewish business secrets.”

Not to leave room to be outdone, he recounted that Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson have sex by the fireplace “to honor their grandmother.” And this is all because of — you guessed it — “Jewish Zionists” who are “about that life” and who are “telling this Christian woman, that has four black children, to put that out as a message in the media.”

While the Kanye West drama has been playing out, Donald Trump decided it was a good time to drop this “truth” about Jews:

While Trump’s statement is not on the same level as West’s, it is also not the ranting of a rapper with a history of mental-health issues but, rather, a message from a former president who remains the most influential Republican, as well as the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination. Trump has previously let American Jews know that he thinks they are ungrateful for his strong pro-Israel record. My guess is that he has been among Jewish supporters who have vented about other Jews being liberal and anti-Israel. American Jews are Americans, and Israel is a foreign country to them, and, as such, they have different views about Israel and different levels of interest in Israel. But it is not Trump’s place to swoop in, because of his own bitterness about his 2020 election defeat, and start attacking American Jews for being insufficiently appreciative of him and Israel. To offer a parallel, I happen to know many conservative Catholics who have a lot of complaints about the current leadership of the church. But if I decided to hop on Twitter at a random moment and start ranting about Vatican II, Pope Francis, and American Catholics, I bet it wouldn’t be received too well.

There are 15 million Jews out of 8 billion people on the planet, meaning we represent less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the world population. Yet we are the subject of a wildly disproportionate amount of hate crimes, conspiracy theories, and Internet hot takes. It remains true that there are plenty of people in the world who are, in fact, out to get us. So maybe just do us a favor. If you’re a celebrity or public figure with a very large platform, and you feel the itch to get something off your chest about the Jews, how about just don’t.