reaches of civilization. It was an odd fellow,nnothing more—until Dunedin, furthernstill toward the polar ice cap, settlednby the Scottish Presbyterians when thenEnglish Anglicans started Christchurch.nThere, visiting friends at a dinnernparty, I was seated—as co-baby sitter, Infound out, along with a young Canadiannlaw professor from Otago University—nnext to a woman who cleady could notnstop talking to save her life. She was anlawyer, paid to bablile I reckon, the thirdngeneration in her family’s law firm,nDunedin-born and -bred, speaking thatnnearly unintelligible patois that mynCanterbury friend, who is an Englishnprofessor, called “demotic Kiwi,” meaning,nEnglish spoken with so bizarre an accentn(for American ears at least) as tonform a private, antipodean language—nPresbyterian pidgin, really. Since on thenother side of her sat a lawyer, she commencednto tell her “lawyer jokes,” whichnrivaled in stupidity the old Polish jokesnthat mercifully have gone into oblivion.nThen, turning to me at her left, shenannounced, “Well, I have told my lawyernjokes. Now tell me your Jewish jokes,” bynwhich she cleady meant jokes at the expensenof Jews. I said as coldly as I could,n”I don’t know any and have never heardnany. People don’t tell me that kind ofnjoke.” Without a pause, she turned tonher right and asked the young law professor,n”Well, you tell me your Jewish jokes.”nI had the sense that he would not havenminded dropping dead on the spot, butnbetween the two of us, we managed tonsteer her in the direction of a monologuenon some—any—other subject.nThis, too, I wrote off not as anti-nSemitism but as just another example ofnhow far we Americans have come inncleaning up our ethnic act. A womannsuch as this gives a bad name to feminism,nwhich I favor, and a good name tonpolitical correctness, which I despise.nBut, no, it was not anti-Semitism.nMy third encounter was. As a professornat Waikato University in Hamilton,non the North Island, explained to me, anstudent of his who, in the context of anclass discussion about religion, identifiednher faith as Judaism liad been told by anothernprofessor, “No, Judaism is not a religion—it’snjust a certain attitude towardnmoney.”nWhen I heard that icy judgment (I’dngotten hints of the same thing amongnstudents at Canterbury University), I begannto reflect on the difficulty with distinguishingnthe varieties of ethnic and re­n40/CHRONiCLESnligious bigotry that encircle Jews andnour religion: Jew-hatred, anti-Judaism,nanti-Semitism, Jew-baiting, anti-Israelism,nor anti-Zionism, and the variousnother species of the common genus. Indid not fully trust the judgment of mynnative informant, who used the last talenas evidence that New Zealand is an anti-nSemitic country with a fascist government,nneither of which is true.nWe lump all Jew-haters together andnclass them as guilty of “anti-Semitism.”nBut this is misleading. It is like not knowingnthe difference between a headachenand a brain tumor. Each should standnon its own terms. People label as anti-nSemitism anything from the casualn(“Jewish jokes”) and merely stupidn(“wandering Jew, I presume”) to the viciousn(“attitude toward money”) andndangerous. This makes the trivial andnthe consequential into the same thing.nPeople may impute to Jews a set ofnc]ualities they do not like. That’s Jewhatred,ncommon for example in America’snblack community, and to a lesser extentnin the white community as well.nClassify this as dislike of the unlike.nFor nearly 20 centuries, faithful Christiansnhave maintained that Judaism diednat Calvary, meaning, Jesus Christ replacednJudaism and Christianity supersedednit. This is’anti-Judaism. UntilnVatican II (for Catholicism) and itsncounterparts in Protestantism, that viewnprevailed universally. Classify this as thenquite familiar theological warfare—nall against all in God’s name.nPeople say things they know will offendnJews, for example, ridiculing ournsupposed ethnic traits or our religiousnpractices. That’s Jew-baiting. Somenthink Patrick Buchanan has occasionallynnot just disagreed on matters of publicnpolicy concerning Israel but gone out ofnhis way to bait Jews (Israel’s “amen corner”nin the United States Senate, for instance);nothers write off such commentsnas mere colorful language aimed at accomplishingna polemical goal. No one Inknow who knows him personally takesnthe former view. Classify this as verbalnbullying.nPeo|3le who hate Jews may condemnnthe state of Israel in terms they do notnuse for any other country and impose anstandard that no country can reasonablynhope to meet. This is a form of anti-nZionism or anti-Israelism, and it yields itsnown cruel vocabulary, comparing Israelisnto Nazis, for instance. Classify this asnpolitics poisoned by bigotry.nnnNone of these trivialities changesnthe world very much. None qualifies asnanti-Semitism, because, by themselvesnor all together, none can have led to thenholocaust of World War II. Only anti-nSemitism, which encom]Dasses all of thenabove, so focused an entire civilization—nEurope, East and West, North andnSouth—that the holocaust happened.nBut anti-Semitism is not the same thingnas casual bigotry, mere dislike of the unlike,nlet alone theological animus or anspiteful form of politics. Unlike the rest,nanti-Semitism sets forth a worldview, anphilosophy of life and culture and politics,nlike communism or socialism or fascismnor democracy or Christianity.nAccording to anti-Semitism, Jews are anseparate species within humanity, peculiarlynwicked, responsible for the evil ofnthe human condition. A political philosophynformulated in the world of laten19th-century Germany and Austria, anti-nSemitism formed the ideological foundationnof political parties and served asnthe basis for public policy. It provided annaccount of life and how the Jews corruptnit. It offered a history of Western civilizationnand how the Jews pervert it. Itnformulated a theory of the worid’s futurenand how the Jews propose to conquer it.nPeople make sense of the world lay appealingnto anti-Semitism, and in WorldnWar II, millions of Germans willinglyngave their lives for the realization of theirncountry’s belief in an anti-Semitic idealnof national life and culture.nAn encompassing worldview, anti-nSemitism stands by itself, not to be confusednwith expressions of intergroup hostilityn(such as Howard University’snfamous football chant, “Who killed NatnTurner? The Jews! the Jews! the Jews!”);ninterreligious conflict over religious truthn(the centuries-long struggle betweennJudaism and Christianity, as in “hisnblood be upon our heads and our children’s”);nsimple dislike of the unlike innthe setting of civil conflict (the Senate’sn”amen corner”); and even impatiencenspilling over into unreasonable irritationnwith one foreign country or another. Allnthese are irritating, but trivial. Confusingnwith them that wholly other philosophy,ntheology, and metaphysics that constitutenanti-Semitism trivializes the latternand imparts importance to matters ofnlittle consec]uence.nWhen I was recently a visiting professornin Finland, some young men spentnan estimated 15 hours of hard labor, usingnheavy construction equipment, ton