New Book Unpacks the Revolting Phenomenon of Jews Who Side With Jewry's/Judaism's Enemies

It's impossible, we're often told, for Jews to be anti-Semites. Now, a new book refutes that fatuous claim:

In Jews against Themselves, [Edward] Alexander takes up the curious and disturbing phenomenon of his volume’s title. A professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Alexander is a distinguished student of American and English literature and an essayist whose erudition is ornamented by a coruscating wit. Among his highly regarded books is The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies (1988), an examination of the various intellectual strands—liberalism, rationalism, relativism—that, emerging from the Enlightenment, have long been in tension with, or in outright opposition to, central tenets of the Jewish tradition. 

In Jews against Themselves, Alexander engages in a related project but one that entails turning over a rock. His inquiry examines the disfiguring yet critical subject of Jews who defame their own people. Over the centuries, Alexander writes, there has been “fruitful interaction” between Jewish apostates and the world’s anti-Semites, making for a distinctive Jewish contribution to “the politics and ideology of anti-Semitism” itself.