The post-October 8th, 2023 outbreak of Jew-hatred in academe continues to open psychic wounds. As a battle-tested veteran of many combats (for example the one pictured above), this phenomenon of psychic wounds is itself startling to me. Let me give my readers a fly-over view of just a few of my earlier combats.

Years before the combat to save the core, before I had tenure in Brooklyn College, I voted for the loser in an election for chair of the philosophy department. I voted that way, in full knowledge that a different answer to a leading question asked me by a powerful man just before the election would have secured both my job and my promotion. For the following seven years, I was fired, reinstated thanks to a union-backed grievance procedure, and promptly fired again. And again. The interesting details are told in the final chapter of my book, A Good Look at Evil (under my name Abigail L. Rosenthal).

The point of bringing up that combat now is that – to the surprise of the union – it left me with no hard feelings. When it was over, I was just happy to be back in the department, among colleagues whose work I respected, and teaching students I loved. And that’s why I entered the fight to save Brooklyn College’s core curriculum.

Here’s another case: living with Jerry in Pennsylvania, I joined the local Reform Temple because holding on to Jewish identity here appeared to require more forethought than it had needed in New York City. As it turned out, all kinds of challenges came with that membership. Just to let your imagination get the picture, I’ll list the ones I recall: getting the heroic Phyllis Chesler invited to speak on the new anti-semitism (back when it was new); getting the anti-Israel weekly vigil-holders in the town square to fade away (their sublime devotion to peace believed consistent with frightening the nearby Jewish shopkeepers); persuading our then rabbi to stand face to face before the Presbyterian congregants who fired questions like arrows at him, by way of endorsing their denomination’s anti-Israel resolution; contacting the local museum about the anti-Israel (or anti-Jewish, I forget which) cartoon featured in a current exhibit and so on. 

So here, in the peaceful hinterland, Jewish identity was turning out exhausting. The climactic case involved a guy whose charisma had captivated the Temple board’s president but meanwhile was behaving “inappropriately” with the women. He was not even a Temple member, so efforts to oust him would not have required any extraordinary measures, but nobody wanted to offend his high-level supporter. Except me, Abigail. Who was treated, in classic whistle-blower style – as herself the trouble-maker. And, although it took me some months (and giving a talk of my own to a Temple forum) to get my honor back – the predator was finally ousted and gone with him were the dangers he had brought to the Temple.

*. *. *

Given that combat record of psychic and emotional survival, I’m puzzled as to why I couldn’t just “roll with” one more trying phenomenon: here the positive glee with which the atrocities of October 7 had been celebrated in universities world-wide. Why did that affect memory and other psychic powers that had survived unimpaired in the wake of previous combats? Why now does my psyche seem to me like a fighter on the ropes?

Well, here’s what I seemed to hear when I put the same question in the form of a prayer:

*. *. *

You love and you believe in

the Jewish assignment in history:

real people in chronologically real

relations with God

as their Witness and companion-Traveler

on the timeline.  

You also love and believe in

the House that Plato built –

where truth can be sought

without fear or favor.

*. *. *

Now to see them in seeming contradiction … is heartbreaking.

Related Content: A Good Look at Evil | The Campus Wars