According to legend, the 13th-century Catalan rabbi and author Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi once appealed to Christian authorities to burn the books of his contemporary Maimonides, considering those works heretical. Less than a decade later, he saw the Christian authorities burning copies of the Talmud in the same square and swore to travel to Maimonides’ grave to seek repentance. Whether or not the story is apocryphal, it is a good reminder: It is wise to use caution when asking outsiders, potentially antisemitic ones at that, to resolve internal disputes. A Christian willing to burn the "Guide for the Perplexed" will just as easily burn the Talmud. It is wise to remember this, too, when throwing charges of antisemitism around too loosely.
Last December, Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen created a small stir when they were awarded the Hannah Arendt prize for political thought by Germany’s Heinrich Böll Foundation. The prize was almost withdrawn, thought ultimately awarded, after Gessen’s New Yorker article, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust,” drew charges of antisemitism, due to its comparisons of Gaza, even before the current wave of hostilities in Israel, to Jewish ghettoes before World War II.
