A range of new books and reports on antisemitism offer important insights but need to go further to escape the confines of orthodoxy

This article first appeared in Vashti. It was written in December 2024 and January 2025, but reflects issues and questions that I’ve been thinking about for some time. It’s worth stating here that I much admire the books and reports mentioned below, I just want them to go further and forge a new and more inclusive path.

Of the writing of books on antisemitism there is no end, as Kohelet might have said had he lived in the 2020s. And verily, there has been an enormous outpouring of words on the subject in the last decade or so. Many of those words have been journalistic, ephemeral and not very analytic. But in recent years, quite a few have made it into book and report form, making it easier to examine them for their positions, assumptions and approaches.