Spiritual commitment against antisemitism cannot be separated from its institutional settings

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

Categorization

• XREF: The entanglement-of-spirituality claim connects to Asad’s and Talal Asad-style arguments about religion and secular institutions.