Have we been stupid about anti-Semitism in America?

[TomSea]

Have we been stupid about anti-Semitism in America?
 BY Shmuel Rosner | PUBLISHED Feb 23, 2017 | Rosner's Domain

A.
Let me show you something quite incredible, and please forgive me for opening an article with a graph. I know this might not be the most appealing start. Still, bear with me and take a look. In many of the Annual Surveys of American Jewish Opinion that have been published in the last decade and a half, a simple question was asked, in almost exactly the same way: Is anti-Semitism currently a problem in the United States?

In most surveys, the Jews had three options to choose from: yes, a very serious problem; yes, somewhat of a problem; and no, not a problem at all. Generally, a majority of them answered that anti-Semitism exists, that it is still a constant in the US. Sampling these polls and making a graph out of them, one can easily see that the “somewhat” category is the one most Jews choose. The problem of anti-Semitism is not severe enough to deserve to be called “serious,” and it is not negligible enough to be treated as “not a problem at all.”

Here it is:



Well, is it?

And here is what happens when we divide the Jews into just two groups: those who think there is a problem – large or small – and those who believe there is no problem (namely, those answering the question by saying “no, not a problem at all”):



Do you see where this is going? In the last decade and a half, the trend among Jews was to be growingly convinced that anti-Semitism in America is gone, a solved problem, non-existent. In 2016, a quarter of all Jewish Americans responded to the survey by saying there is no such problem. That is more than 20 percent above the numbers of the early 2000s.

Continued: http://jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain/215519/stupid-anti-semitism-america/