Monday, September 04, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
As my readers know, I like to look at old newspapers and see how stories from the past illuminate the present.
The Kent and Essex Mercury of September 9, 1823, has a story about how an antisemite falsely accused a Jewish pencil manufacturer of not having a license to trade in the products, but a manufacturer did not need a license. The antisemite took the Jew to court where he lost.
But there are multiple layers of antisemitism. One is the explicit antisemitism of those who look to blame Jews for any and everything they don't like. The others are more subtle.
The newspaper article, ostensibly on the side of justice, goes out if its way to depict the Jew with a stereotypical accent. (Newspapers in the 19th century regularly did this for all minorities, especially Black people.) The message is clear: we don't discriminate, but the Jews aren't really full citizens.
Similarly, Samuel Moss Solomon apparently needed the help of a kind gentile friend to vouch for him. It is implied that the judge might not have been so sympathetic if Solomon had defended himself to court.
Is this any different than the New York Times nowadays painting religious Jews as the "other" who do not fit into their respected society, where assimilated Jews are seemingly fully accepted but people whose idea of morality and priorities differs from that of the "good" Jews? Or how non-Jews defending Israel are somehow considered to be a bit more trustworthy as to their arguments compared to those of Jews, whose arguments are considered suspect from the start because they are indeed Jewish?
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