Some of My Best Friends: ‘Bierkeller’ and ‘Bistro’ Anti-Semitism
by Jacob Kamaras / JNS.org
JNS.org – If you’re a fan of his weekly column for JNS.org, you may want to check out Ben Cohen’s new book, Some Of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism, which is now available through Amazon.
At the center of Cohen’s book is what he calls the difference between between “bierkeller” and “bistro” anti-Semitism.
“The crude, violent anti-Semitism incubated in the German bierkellers where the Nazis guzzled beer and shouted themselves hoarse was a hallmark of the 20th century,” he says. “Polite, modulated, ostensibly reasonable anti-Semitism, often calling itself ‘anti-Zionism,’ and expressed in the progressive chatter across the tables of fashionable bistros, is a hallmark of the 21st.”
Meanwhile, in his column for JNS.org this week, Cohen examines new developments surrounding the fate of the much-debated Iraqi Jewish Archive, a topic he also covered for us last fall.