The Cancellation of Jewish Culture

The “systemic exclusion and marginalization of Jewish and Israeli artists across American cultural life” is the headline finding from a new Anti-Defamation League project that details a particularly baleful manifestation of antisemitism — one practiced by the mandarins of culture. The ADL’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, laments that “We knew the situation was bad, we just didn’t know how bad.” The report makes for harrowing reading.Feature the findings on museums, meant to be temples of beauty accessible to all. The ADL notes that of 40 “leading museums, not one includes Jewish identity in its DEI commitments.” Furthermore, only one of 40 museums demonstrated recognition of Jewish American Heritage Month. Meanwhile, Jewish and Israeli collections are “absorbed into broader narratives that obscure their Jewish or Israeli significance or are difficult to discover online.”The state of the publishing world is even bleaker. The ADL documents “suppression of books with Jewish, Israeli or Zionist characters and themes at the acquisition stage” as well as rampant blacklists and boycotts. Anti-Israel — antisemitic in effect — campaigns work successfully to “isolate Israeli literary life from the rest of the literary world.” Suppressionary tactics include “blacklisting, review-bombing,” and “event cancellations.”These findings confirm a PEN America report from July, covered in these columns, that found Jewish writers facing “a widening cultural isolation since the attacks of October 7.” One literary agent based at Jerusalem, Deborah Harris, told PEN that after October 7 she has not sold a single novel in America. In 2024, the literary magazine Guernica pulled an essay by a leftist Israeli writer because it made the magazine “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism.”“A silent moratorium” is how one writer described the state of affairs to PEN. The former president of PEN, Dinaw Mengestu, was so outraged over the temerity of Jewish writers to share their story that he resigned his post. The ADL reckons that the behavior of both the cultural rank and file as well as grandees like Mr. Mengetsu have left Jews and Israelis “without meaningful institutional protection” within the republic of letters.The author Dara Horn decries the “racist and bigoted hate movement that many people in the publishing industry have swallowed.” Some cultural machers, though, have stepped into the breach. The agent for J.K. Rowling, Neil Blair, last month launched High Line Publishing Studio to rectify the “lack of diversity in publishing in New York and London with respect to Israeli and Jewish voices.” Meg Keene Books is lifting off at Wicked Son Press.A noble exception in this deteriorating environment is the Irish novelist John Banville. This week the son of Wexford who has long-contested for the Nobel Prize announced his withdrawal from a Spanish literary festival at Granada, where he was scheduled to deliver a keynote. His stand followed the exclusion from the festival of an Jewish-Argentinian novelist, Ariana Harwicz. She was barred for daring to oppose cultural boycotts of Israel. The ADL also notes how the performing arts have become hazardous for Jews and Israelis, who “face growing scrutiny, protest, disruption and cancellation.” Violent protesters are exercising a “security veto” that drives venues to cancel gigs. A comedian, Judy Gold, was heckled by bellows of “You’re a Jew” during shows in April. Jerry Seinfeld has been heckled too. Those who have it hardest are not the likes of Macklemore, but pro-Israel Jews.The writer Alyssa Rosenheck tells the ADL that “this is what literary antisemitism looks like. It doesn’t announce itself with swastikas. It hides behind excuses, shifting standards, institutional silence, community exclusion, and decisions that become impossible to separate from the climate surrounding Jewish voices after October 7.” While, say, a hijacked plane underscores the lethality of antisemitism, its cultural versions are no less insidious.

The Cancellation of Jewish Culture

The Cancellation of Jewish Culture

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