The piece has been published in The Aus­trali­an Jewish News by ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin.

There is a story that emerged from Kristallnacht, of the Jews of one German town being forced to line up and spit on a Torah taken from the ransacked synagogue. To the delight of the sneering Nazi thugs, even the most observant of the community did so, choosing debase­ment over death. When it came the turn of a Jew named, Slater, long lapsed and a known criminal, he responded, “I’ve done a lot of miserable things in my life, but this I won’t do.”

Slater showed us that the Jewish essence resides within each of us and while it may lie dormant for con­sid­er­able time, it can never be extin­guished.

The antisemitism we face today is of an entirely different character and severity. But the hatred of our people can also slumber. When it rises, and it always does, it is with an almighty lash.

In stat­ist­ics compiled by the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, we see a steady rise in incidents. We hear of horrific cases of antisemitic bullying and abuse in schools, a toxic campus envir­on­ment and regular instances of vili­fic­a­tion and har­ass­ment.

Grappling with antisemitism begins with the will to do so. Lead­er­ship matters. Securing the endorse­ment of the Inter­na­tion­al Holocaust Remem­brance Alliance (IHRA) defin­i­tion by the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was a crucial achieve­ment for our community. Now the ECAJ is determ­ined to ensure the defin­i­tion is used in the forum where Jews feel most vul­ner­able, the uni­ver­sity campus.

We have seen the baiting of Jewish students through metres high “f*ck Zionism” graffiti and a sequence of student council res­ol­u­tions each seeking to outdo the other with how many slurs can be inserted into a single motion. The unmis­tak­able aim of this is to silence Jews. To show them that their accept­ance comes at the cost of relin­quish­ing something sacred to virtually all Jews, an emotional or ideo­lo­gic­al con­nec­tion to Israel. It forces them to spit upon an insever­able part of being Jewish.

IHRA gives insti­tu­tions a tool to under­stand what antisemitism is and how it presents today, in order to apply their policies and com­plaints systems when Jews in their care are targeted.

Direct inter­ven­tion in schools is another vital piece of the ECAJ’s education strategy. The oppor­tun­ity to stand before students as a Jew, to tell our story, to answer the questions of the curious, builds empathy and weakens the appeal of antisemitic slurs and con­spir­acy theories.

The ECAJ has suc­cess­fully piloted a program in part­ner­ship with our Catholic allies to teach Catholic educators about antisemitism. This empowers educators to teach this to their students, year on year.

The ECAJ will also shortly commence missions to Israel for academics.

To reinforce these endeav­ours, the ECAJ will dis­trib­ute to schools, journ­al­ists and politi­cians, a new book by this writer, slated for release in the new year titled, “The Seven Deadly Myths”, which invest­ig­ates how antisemitism takes hold in minds and in societies, being through a series of myths of ancient origins which survive to this day.

These measures are critical at a time when, owing to both malice and ignorance, antisemitism is so poorly under­stood.

As John Safran wrote about last week, a Greens member of the South Aus­trali­an par­lia­ment opposed the adoption of IHRA because “it is not clear what is a Semite … [which] includes a much broader range of people than the Jewish people.” As Safran further noted, an article in the Green Left Weekly recently spoke of “anti-Arab antisemitism.”

Both instances are a form of erasure, a tactic popular among despotic regimes and their enthu­si­asts, that seeks to oblit­er­ate the true meaning of words thus vapor­ising the thing itself. The aim here is to place antisemitism beyond the grasp of under­stand­ing and therefore beyond coun­ter­ac­tion.

The antisemitism of the left-Stalinist variety has always traded in euphem­isms to maintain the façade of anti-racism and claim the moral high ground from political enemies. From the 1950s, “Jew” gave way to “Zionist”, while classical themes and slanders were retained – the tentacled beast manip­u­lat­ing the media, gov­ern­ments and finance; the lust for the blood of the innocents, the obstacle to a better, purer world.

They equate Jewish-Israelis with those who slaughtered their kin in forest pits and death camps. They hold the very concept of a state for the Jews as a racist endeavour while having no complaint with the idea of the nation-state itself, of which Israel is but one of many. They shrug at French, German or Polish policies to maintain a national character in a tumul­tu­ous world while decrying the presence of the menorah or Star of David on Israeli postage stamps as evidence of a diabol­ic­al regime ripe for toppling.

The denials and gas-lighting deployed by these anti­semites have made teaching an under­stand­ing of antisemitism even more urgent.

IHRA and our other education measures decloak these insidious forms of antisemitism by equipping admin­is­trat­ors with a clear defin­i­tion and examples that look beyond form and appraise the substance of what is said and done.

Education for its own sake is futile. We must educate through a com­bin­a­tion of real-life encoun­ters with Jews to demon­strate who we are as a people and a community; by imparting knowledge of antisemitism and the ruin it brings; and providing the tools to both under­stand and take action.

Napoleon said, “without education there is no present and no future.” With this education, our future as Aus­trali­ans and Jews will be protected and the forces against us will be exposed for what they are. 

Alex Ryvchin is the Co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry