Individual moral opposition to antisemitism is embedded in larger traditions

Evidence

But since I have alluded to my anti-antisemitism as a kind of spiritual practice, I should like to linger with that a little more. It seems clear that there is indeed a higher calling at work here, a measure of magnitude and of gravity that is undeniable. All the more reason, I think, to endorse ‘the view that spirituality, whatever it is and however it is defined, is entangled in social life, in history, and in our academic and nonacademic imaginations’. It would be misleading, in other words, even mistaken, simply to extract my experience of antisemitism, my commitment and struggle against it, ‘from the institutions where it is lived out’ and to do so at the outset. It moreover runs the risk of distorting and mischaracterising the phenomenon, drawing ‘attention away from the conundrum it poses and the possibilities it allows’ (ibid.). — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1190 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This feeling that anti-Semitism is something sinful and disgraceful, something that a civilized person does not suffer from, is unfavorable to a scientific approach, and indeed many people will admit that they are frightened of probing too deeply into the subject. They are frightened, that is to say, of discovering not only that anti-Semitism is spreading, but that they themselves are infected by it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 376 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Moral stigma against anti-Semitism makes people afraid to examine their own prejudice — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 376; Anti-antisemitism is a spiritual practice embedded in institutions and history; Spiritual commitment against antisemitism cannot be separated from its institutional settings — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 1190

Broader Connections

• Spiritual commitment against antisemitism cannot be separated from its institutional settings #corroborates (0.94) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1190
• Anti-antisemitism is a spiritual practice embedded in institutions and history #expands (0.92)
• Moral stigma against anti-Semitism makes people afraid to examine their own prejudice #complicates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 376