There’s an old Woody Allen joke about the guy who goes to his psychiatrist because he thinks he’s a chicken. The psychiatrist reassures his patient that he’s no bird, and the guy responds, “But I need the eggs.”
Allen used the line in his classic film “Annie Hall” to underline the irrationality of relationships. But the line came to mind after a recent survey showed that the vast majority of American Jews believe anti-Semitism continues to be an ongoing threat.
According to the American Jewish Committee poll, 61 percent of 1,160 adults surveyed said anti-Semitism remains a greater threat to U.S. Jewry than the acknowledged scourge of the community — intermarriage.
While Jewish leaders have long bemoaned the approximate 50 percent intermarriage rate for years, it seems those people polled now perceive anti-Semitism as a deeper threat to Jewish life.
Yet AJCommittee officials noted two things: Of the majority who sensed anti-Semitism, 81 percent were intermarried; the findings also come at a time when some social scientists say anti-Semitism has plummeted to a historic low.
Interestingly, the survey also found 95 percent of those polled believe anti-Semitism is either “a very serious problem” or “somewhat of a problem,” while 47 percent disagree with statements that most positions of influence in America are open to Jews.
Surely those findings cannot be dismissed as the paranoid or oversensitive views of an unrepresentative few. They raise some serious questions.
What is the respondents’ experience as Jews on a daily basis? What makes them feel threatened by anti-Semitism? What do they consider to be anti-Semitism?
Is it a case of Jews never being satisfied, no matter what? Or is there some deeper force at work? And is that force an external one, or internal?
It remains significant that most American Jews, at the millennium, still don’t feel quite at home.