The Myth: Someone has published the minutes from a meeting of a bunch of Jewish elders who are plotting world domination and discuss the various way they plan to manipulate other peoples, economies, and governments. It has widely been used to fuel anti-Semitic sentiment.

Jews As Snakes: if only we were on a plane... Last year I had a scary experience at Vanderbilt where a professor started telling the class that the Elders of Zion were a religious group. I stepped in and immediately set the record straight, but even as I was talking I realized I didn’t know quite as much about the hoax as I’d like to.

There are some great online sources for debunking this myth. There’s always Wikipedia, which does a great job of giving background on the original document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with a long and very well-cited article:

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Russian: "Протоколы сионских мудрецов", or "Сионские протоколы", see also other titles) is an antisemitic and anti-Zionist plagiarism and literary forgery first published in 1903 in Russian, in Znamya; it alleges a Jewish and Masonic plot to achieve world domination.

"The Protocols" (the most brief title by which the text is known) is an early example of contemporary conspiracy theory literature, and takes the form of a speech describing how to dominate the world, the need to control the media, finance, replace traditional social order, etc. It is one of the best known and discussed examples of literary forgery, and a hoax.

The text was popularized by those opposed to Russian revolutionary movement, and was disseminated further after the revolution of 1905, becoming known worldwide after the 1917 October Revolution. It was widely circulated in the West in 1920 and thereafter. The Great Depression and the rise of Nazism were important developments in the history of the Protocols, and the hoax continued to be published and circulated despite its debunking.

The United State Holocaust Museum has a really nice page about the Protocols and all of the anti-Semitism they’ve inspired from their genesis at the turn of the 20th century through the Holocaust and to today.

Though the Protocols have been debunked over and over, they’re far from out of favor. There was a New York Times article about the Protocols in 2006 called The Anti-Semitic Hoax That Refuses to Die, and documentary called the Protocols of Zion about the rise of anti-Semitism after September 11th. Finally, there’s a Snopes page about a similarly anti-Semitic blood libel in Saudi Arabia that claims Jews use Christian blood to make hamentaschen. Snopes mentions the recent reprinting of the Protocols in an Egyptian newpaper.

I’ve written before about an undergrad class I’m taking at Vandy that’s supposed to be looking at the literature and history of the Middle East. For the past few weeks we’ve been talking about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and, not surprisingly, it hasn’t been pretty.
They're Not Complete Idiots: But they don't understand Judaism
Here's the best example of the problem I have with the class: two Tuesdays ago we were talking about the origins of Zionism, and one of the two profs who teaches the course asked the class what they knew about Zionism. A girl raised her hand and said, "The Elders of Zion...?" She then started to say what she thought they were, which sounded like it might be right, but the professor interrupted her and said that it was a religious group. I cut in at that point and zealously set the record straight. Clearly, the prof wasn't trying to be anti-Semitic, and I don't think he had any idea he was wrong. The history of the Protocols aren't part of his field as an Islamic studies professor, but his lack of knowledge was pretty terrifying.

Today in class, the other professor handed out a copy of a page he had made from a Reform siddur. He pointed to the maariv aravim and ahavat olam paragraphs and then read the translation that the siddur provided:
“O God, how can we know You? Where can we find You? You are as close to us as breathing, yet You are farther than the farthermost star. You are as mysterious as the vast solitudes of night, yes as familiar to us as the light of the sun. To Moses You said: "You cannot see My face, but I will make all My goodness pass before you."
Even so does Your goodness pass before us: in the realm of nature, and in the joys and sorrows of life.

When justice burns within us like a flaming fire, when love evokes willing sacrifice from us, when, to the last full measure of selfless devotion, we demonstrate our belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness, then Your goodness enters our lives and we can begin to change the world; and then You live within our hearts, and we through righteousness behold Your presence.”

The problem is, those paragraphs aren’t even remotely related to the Hebrew texts they purport to be translating. The prof then went on to say that in Judaism what's most important is the "ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness" which is why American society has chosen to (mostly) embrace the Israeli superstory, and Zionism. This text was what we needed to know about Judaism, he explained.

I don't know what to do. Tikkun Olam, the idea of trying to fix the world and spread righteousness, is not even mentioned in the Hebrew text. Yes, Tikkun Olam is a huge part of Judaism, but it's not why the US is supportive of Israel, and neither is it the reason any particular person should support Israel. The Hebrew is, I think, a more accurate and succinct description of what Judaism is about, but that was clearly not helpful to the agenda of the class/discussion in the mind of the professor.

I like both professors on a personal level, but I'm excruciatingly uncomfortable in class. Their understanding of Judaism is (or seems to be) bad, and they're passing this poor understanding off onto a class that dutifully copies it down into notebooks. These aren't anti-Semitic people, and I don't particularly object to what they're saying about Israel, but I'm really concerned about what they're saying about Jews and Judaism. In some cases, like the Elders of Zion episode, I’m happy to step in and make sure that outright and harmful falsehood isn’t propagated, but with something like the prayers, the line is less clear to me. What he was saying about Judaism was nice, it just wasn’t particularly true. And if I step in I risk him getting mad at me for correcting him in front of a classroom full of students. And I’m not sure what I’d accomplish if I stepped in, anyway.

What is the most practical way of dealing with this situation?

PS- I know my posts have been kind of heavy lately. I promise to go back to posting about sex soon.

Rav Shmuel is no Weird Al. There I said it.

Filmmaker Andrew Goldberg's latest documentary, "Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century," which airs tonight, was reviewed by The Boston Globe today and while it seems a bit like replayed narrative:

Out in the world, as filmmaker Andrew Goldberg shows, there are still people who believe in an almost mystical set of falsehoods. A young woman in Cairo says there were no Jews in the World Trade Center on 9/11; she knows this for a fact since she was in America at the time.

A young boy, perhaps 3 years old, is asked what he thinks of Jews. "They are apes and pigs," he says.

"Who said they are so?" says an off-camera female voice.

"Our God

Nonetheless, however rehashed a theory and unoriginal in insight, it might be worth a cursory watch. As Globe critic Joanna Weiss poignantly points out thru a number of Borat comparisons, "We'd like to think that "Borat" is a powerful way to combat hateful ideas. 'Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century' reminds us that the power of fiction can be used to spread hatred, as well."

ANC MP, Farida Mahomed, has been gaining her share of attention for the comments she made at a recent Iranian-sponsored conference in which a Jewish Seminar delegate posed a question to her on South Africa's role in global democratic efforts and the need to discard Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust.

Mahomed validated the The Protocols of The Elders Of Zion as a legitimate source on the subject of Jews. And then posed the following question to Jewish delegate Claudia Braude:

Are the protocols still relevant to you in today’s time? How do we apply this balanced approach to reconciliation when we read them and they are totally the opposite?

Asked in an interview about the Protocols' cred (since it' a well-known that they were largely a vehicle for Nazi propaganda aimed at anti-semitism), Mahomed claimed that she was "unaware" that they were a "hoax." She also said re: The Holocaust:

I don’t want to comment on something that I haven’t done research on. I wouldn’t want to be influenced by any scholar

In the words of my Israeli boyfriend, "Oof!"