Anti-Semitism has proven to be one of the most enduring concepts in European civilization. In a 1927 book called The Wandering Jew, about the struggles of poor eastern European Jews, Viennese Jewish novelist Joseph Roth concluded that anti-Semitism would vanish from the world, ended by the Soviet Union. He wrote of anti-Semitism, "In the new Russia, it remains a disgrace. What will ultimately kill it off is public shame." He noted virulent outbursts in Russia but dismissed them as the death struggles of dinosaurs resisting the inevitable future.

Roth even speculated that "If this process continues, the age of
Zionism will have passed, along with the age of anti-Semitism--
and perhaps even that of Judaism itself."

Today the Soviet Union has been gone for a decade but anti-Semitism
is still here. So for that matter, is Judaism. "The Jewish
question"--I have never been certain what the question is--that
Roth predicted would be put to rest with Russian leadership, has
endured.

The lesson to be learned from Roth, aside from a warning to
writers not to publish predictions in books, is that both Judaism
and anti-Semitism have deep and permanent roots in Europe.
Though Judaism is a less European idea than anti-Semitism, for
many Jews, Jewish culture is European--or was.

Because of the Holocaust, Europe is no longer the most Jewish
continent. It may have remained the most anti-Semitic, though
Africa and Asia, with their Muslim populations are certainly vying
for the title. It is difficult to be certain because anti-Semitism is
more difficult to quantify than Judaism. As the nations of the former
Soviet bloc struggle for accept...