Outrage as Peter Schäfer, Director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, Accused of BDS Sympathies

2019/06/26 Leave a comment

Of note:

Peter Schäfer, the director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, resigned last Friday, a year before he was due to retire, forced out after the backlash over a tweet from the museum’s official account that linked to a pro-Israel-boycott story. But since the controversy erupted, hundreds of scholars of Judaic Studies from around the world have been signing letters in his defense.

The often bitter debate centers on perceived support for the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement meant to pressure Israel in its dealings with Palestinians. The museum’s tweet shared an article that had appeared in the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung (TAZ) that discussed a June 3 letter signed by 240 Jewish and Israeli scholars delivered to the German government.

The scholars’ letter condemned a parliamentary proposition that had passed on May 17 that linked the BDS movement with anti-Semitism. The scholars argued that linking BDS to anti-Semitism was counterproductive, writing that doing so “does not assist” but rather “undermines” the fight against anti-Semitism.

A later tweet from the museum clarified that its aim was to share the arguments raised by these scholars about the problems with linking BDS to anti-Semitism, not to support the BDS movement itself.

But there was a storm of denunciations, many of them on social media, beginning with one that claimed, “The Jewish Museum in Berlin obviously sees as its task to take a stand against Jewish life in our country and especially against Israel.”

In his resignation letter Schäfer, who will be 76 this month, said that his decision to resign was “to prevent further damage to the museum.”

Following Schäfer’s resignation, Schäfer’s supporters in the realm of Judaic Studies began to mobilize.

“We are united in our profound admiration for Prof. Schäfer as a scholar, academic leader, and public intellectual.”
— 50 Talmud scholars in an open letter

Two petitions were quickly organized. The first, signed by 50 Talmud scholars, including Ishay Rosen-Zvi (Tel Aviv University) and Moulie Vidas (Princeton University), read, “We are scholars of the Talmud and Ancient Judaism who hold diverse and even opposing opinions regarding the BDS movement. But we are united in our profound admiration for Prof. Schäfer as a scholar, academic leader, and public intellectual.”

Source: Outrage as Peter Schäfer, Director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, Accused of BDS Sympathies

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The tropes around Jews and ‘Jewish money’

2019/04/01 Leave a comment

Of note:

The charcoal illustration on the front of the London Saturday Journal, a popular Victorian magazine, published in late March 1841, pictured a rather sinister looking man, with a cap in hand and a sack on his back looking slyly at the reader. Entitled “The Jew Old Clothes Man”, an article inside the magazine goes on to describe Jewish second-hand clothes sellers in London in particularly prejudiced terms.

The cover is one of the many chilling images and texts on display at a new exhibition at London’s Jewish Museum. Entitled “Jews, Money, Myth,” the exhibition, on till July 7, examines both the role that money has played in Jewish life as well as the ways in which the associations — mostly negative — between Jews and money and profit have developed over the centuries.

The exhibition is particularly timely. Concerns around anti-Semitism have risen in the U.K. as they have across much of the rest of the world. While the Labour Party has faced allegations that it has not been tough enough on anti-Semitism within its ranks, the Jewish charity Community Security Trust reported a record number of anti-Semitic incidents last year. It is striking that even in Camden, a diverse London neighbourhood, entry into the museum is subject to security checks.

Even as major political parties have attempted to crack down on anti-Semitic rhetoric, others have got away with sharply divisive language. In 2017, the former head of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage faced considerable criticism over remarks on LBC radio about how a “Jewish lobby” in the U.S. was “very powerful”. He is yet to apologise.

In this context, the exhibition is particularly striking and powerful, drawing both on objects involved in Jewish rituals, art, literature, and other objects of life such as board games. It also has some newly created videos to explore and build up an understanding of how the tropes around Jews and money have come to be built up — as well as the reality. “Throughout history, there have been both rich and poor Jews. The exhibition shows how Jewish wealth and poverty have been created by circumstances as well as the activity and acumen of Jews themselves — rather than ‘Jewishness’ itself,” says a note on the exhibition.

Objects, ancient and modern

There are ancient Judean coins, ceremonial objects involved in charitable giving and, in more modern times, the paperwork of efforts made by Jewish communities in the U.K., during and before the Second World War to bring Jewish refugees to Britain. Chillingly — particularly in the context of the heated discussion on immigration and refugees under way across much of the West — there is a reminder of the difficulties that Jewish refugees faced coming to the U.K. even at that time: to seek refuge, they needed to prove they were able to finance themselves privately.

There are literary explorations of the stereotypes built up around Jews and money — from Shakespearean characters such as Shylock and Charles Dickens’s Fagin, to literature such as the Nazi propaganda book The Poisonous Mushroom.

There are also exhibits such as Rembrandt’s “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,” rather sympathetically picturing the biblical figure down on his knees begging for forgiveness from a group of priests as he attempts to return the thirty pieces of silver he was said to have betrayed Christ for. That story, the exhibition notes, has been key to propelling anti-Jewish stereotypes till this day.

Given the weight of the matter, it is perhaps unsurprising that some of the material resorts to black humour and satire, such as a video by U.S.-based artist Doug Fishbone. At one point, he notes the extent to which Indians in the West are now out-earning Jews there, leading British politician and author Lord Archer to declare, back in 2008, that Indians were the new Jews. “Maybe they will be accused of being the puppet masters behind the throne too?” asks Mr. Fishbone in his video.

Source: The tropes around Jews and ‘Jewish money’

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