Jews Don't Count

This is a great, brief audiobook narrated by the author. It vividly illustrates the tension many left-leaning, liberal Jews like me feel about being left behind by the progressive movement, and the confusion many of us feel about the rise of identity politics.

It's impossible for me to read this book without comparing it to my favorite book on the subject, How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss. Bari offers the American perspective, David the British. Bari leans into Judaism and Zionism, David sets them aside to focus on anti-Jewish racism irrespective of religion and Israel. Bari's book has breadth, looking at historical and present anti-semitism from the left, right, and radical Islam; David's book is more narrowly focused on recent examples from the left.

Bari's target audience is mainly (I think) other Jews; in the “How to Fight” chapter, she is speaking to Jews (e.g., “Lean into Judaism,” and “Nurture your Jewish identity”). David's target audience is (I think) everyone. In one example after another, he turns an antisemitic incident on its head, inviting people to consider how they would react if an analogous incident had been targeted at a different minority.

I even went so far as to search for any comments Bari and David may have written about each other's books, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that they will be speaking with each other next week (3/18/2021): https://howtoacademy.com/events/bari-weiss-meets-david-baddiel-jews-dont-count/

I preferred Bari's book. I preferred her approach of embracing Israel and Judaism as inextricably linked to fighting anti-semitism over David's approach of minimizing their importance to the Jewish experience of a British atheist Jew. But I hope you'll read both anyway.

A quick and accessible read, with a tone both breezy and deeply sardonic, redolent of the particular pain to which most progressive and left-leaning Jews can relate: one of being continually obscured, erased, occluded, dismissed, and gaslit about our experiences, while also doing our utmost to stay on the “right side of history” where progressive values are concerned. A good book, though one whose readership I feel relatively sure will be 95% Jewish. I fear that those who really need to hear what this book is saying – non-Jewish progressives who are more or less ignorant about antisemitism – will mostly dismiss it out of hand, which is a shame.

Baddiel does an excellent job of deconstructing and making plain the very complex layers of racism, xenophobia, anti-Judaism, conspiratorial thinking, and general anxiety that comprise antisemitism as a phenomenon, and does his level best to explain to the reader why they should bother to care about it, as they (presumably, hopefully) care about other types of bigotry.

I can't say this is a perfect book (hence my rating); other reviews have discussed its rhetorical and narrative shortcomings (the remark about it reading like a transcribed voice memo was a bit harsh, but honestly? Not far off the mark). Nevertheless, in a dearth of easily accessibly writing on the subject, I'd say it's still definitely worth reading.