The New Anti-Semitism – Educational Challenges

The first conference on The New Anti-Semitism – Educational Challenges (Rationale of the Conference) Conveneor: Professor Ilan Gur-Ze'ev The "new anti-Semitism", some would claim, is nothing but a new rhetoric tool in the service of Zionist propaganda; an instrument meant to halt justified critique and enhance the efficiency of refusing moral responsibility for the fruits of the Israeli evil industry. Others claim that there is nothing new in anti-Semitism, and that actually the discourse that addresses "the new anti-Semitism" is misleading and turns the focus from genuine challenges to empty and misleading aims. Still others conceive "the new anti-Semitism" as a genuine, challenging, new phenomenon. According to this view we should prepare ourselves for a worthy addressing of the new challenge since not only does the new anti-Semitism offer an unknown de-legitimization of the very existence of the State of Israel, it might become a framework for a world politics which will threaten the prosperity, and before long even endanger the very existence, of the State of Israel. The present conference will allow room for these perspectives, but it will devote itself mainly to a fresh perspective on the new anti-Semitism. It will address the new anti-Semitism as an actual phenomenon which is not to be reduced to the rhetoric concerning "dangers" but should rather be treated as a challenge, one that we have not yet prepared ourselves properly to meet. Why is it that we are not properly prepared to take on this challenge or respond to its possibilities and rotten fruit? It is because we still do not understand what we are faced with, in spite of the vitality, urgency and enormous embarrassment it presents us with. This conference will place special focus on the educational challenges of the new anti-Semitism. As an introduction to the upcoming various and diverse discussions of the educational challenges of the new anti-Semitism, herewith I offer one perspective— my own. This introduction will hopefully answer the question of why I initiated this discussion and this meeting. * Until recently the "new anti-Semitism" as a phenomenon received its visibility, a proper name and reactions almost exclusively within the prism of reaction to the growing critique of Israeli policies and in face of a new, unconcealed delegitimization of the very existence of the State of Israel. Under the flag of "the new anti-Semitism" an attempt is made to unveil the roots of an alleged unfair critique, even hatred, of Israel, which, according to this line of argument, contains so much unconscious and intellectual vitality within the framework of the anti-Israeli rhetoric, which flourishes today in Western academic and intellectual centers, from where it propagates to the public discussion, goodsearching NGO's, progressive Websites, public opinion polls, and spontaneous reactions in streets from Amsterdam, Dublin, Berkeley, Sydney, Tokyo or Caracas, to the Muslim quarter of Paris, Marseilles, Cairo or Teheran. Without underestimating the importance of this question it is my view that what we are actually facing here is a challenge of much higher magnitude, immensely richer, rooted profoundly deeper; a grave threat to mankind as a whole in the present historical moment. Three seemingly disconnected dynamics are incubated in the present moment, and the explosion of their togetherness offers hospitality to the weaker ones among us: globalization of capitalist logic, exile of the humanist killer of God, and the near-possibility of humankind bringing an End to all Life on earth by its own Will to Power; an End for ensuring whose realization the human race assembles all its resourcefulness as its most grandiose and everlasting spectacle. The ongoing discourse which concerns the new anti-Semitism normally relates merely to the tip of this gigantic-ecstatic educational iceberg. In fact, as the strongest and richest myth of the present historical moment, the new anti-Semitism offers to all an outstandingly fruitful critique, a unique powerful resistance and the last still possible quasi-religious-ecstatic creativity. The new anti-Semitism is a total, and ironically also universal, substitute for the Enlightenment's telos; an unrestrained ecstatic striving to oppose and destroy the essence, the history, and the aim of the West and its Judeo-Christian foundations. As an alternative to the possibility of the hospitality of a humanist-oriented emancipating telos, the new anti-Semitism offers humans of the present day rich theological, philosophical, psychological and political constructs, strong symbols and ecstatic drives which enable an effective self-forgetfulness: these are of so much need in the era of the exile of the killer of God! In its explicit and "external" manifestations it is connected, actualized in, and gives fruits to various and even conflicting arenas, fashions, interests and agendas. It has no single, unified, manifestation. It is realized in a thin, plentiful, quasi-religious, fragmentary range of high-speed changes and developments; it includes a range of varieties: from a reaction to the exile of God's holiness to the exile of the great humanist rebel against God and the desolation of the holiness of killing-God-each-moment-anew. The world that was freed of holiness and "vertical" spirituality acknowledges the richness and the excitement of the "thin", "horizontal" exchanges, the joy of experiencing "differences" which do not make a difference and the quasi-moral and quasi-spiritual potential for ecstatic reaction of the nervous system as a joyous, quasi-spiritual resistance. "Resistance" with no holy, transcending history of progress toward redemption: resistance to any (immanently oppressive) quest for homogeneity, exclusivity, elitism, hierarchy and stability. How ironic it is that the emancipatory tradition has become a homogenizing, elitist, exclusivist-oriented, hierarchical and racial ethical commitment. As a pedagogical catharsis it offers an alternative totality – against the whole-penetrating power of contingency and the homelessness of innocence, prayer and quest for redemption in an era of mega-speed, globalization and the near-possibility of realizing the human's potential for a celebrated destruction of all Life on earth. At the one, moderate, edge of the new Anti-Semitism range we find postcolonialist sensitivity to suffering of the less lucky ones, empathy with the marginalized and the victims whose absence has been so strongly experienced all through the agonizing history of humanist education. At the other extreme of this range the new sensitivity is organized into "resistance" and terror, or, at least into "understanding" terror of the victims of the West; yes, even its celebration, as in the case of Ward Churchill. It is very different from what was until now understood as "anti-Semitism" as we can see in the open letters exchanged on this matter by Habermas, Brumlik and Honderich after the publication of the latest book After the Terror hailing Palestinian terror as morally justified. One should remember, however, that the "counter-violence" of the victims of the West is diverse and has spread from Riyadh to New York, but its focus is Jerusalem, or, even more precisely, the Jewish Spirit and its successful universalization in the form of Enlightenment, "western civilization" or "colonialism". Its roots are spiritual, theological and philosophical. Its manifestations and preconditions are global, political, economic, technological, psychological and intellectual. Education worthy its name in such an historical moment cannot afford to ignore the challenge of this transformation. The educational fruits of this transformation constitute the horizons and the possibilities of our present gaze, eavesdropping, inclusiveness, as well as our impending cultural rebirth. The realization in actuality of this post-modern Geist within the post-colonialist political framework is unfeasible unless it has a durable, solid, representation apparatus and an effective educational implementation. And post-colonialism does educate. It educates extremely lucratively! Post-colonialism educates fundamentally for "resistance" to the victimization drive which is so essential to Judeo-Christian monotheism/"the West"; contra any claim for objective-universal truths and values; specially it is directed against (Western) pretentiousness to deliver the word of "redemption" or "liberation" in a genuine, just and universally valid manner: whether it is in the form of authority/hierarchy of the symbolic father, phalocentric logos and its fruits, an all-mighty God and the missionaries that represent "him" or in the form of the humanist universally valid Utopia and the Enlightened pedagogues who are totally and genuinely devoted to its realization. The negation of this and other Western "liberating" projects is grounded on the understanding that in their service the foundations are set for the predatory practices of capitalism, oppression and destruction of the Others' identity, aims and ways of life in the margins of Western hegemonic culture, especially in the Third World. The impetus for this Western oppressive drive is the Jew. The Jew, or the Jewish spirit, is identified by its uniqueness. The Jew is different from all nations, from any "goy". The Jewish nation is holy and it has a holy mission since God is holy and he chose one nation from all nations, the Jewish nation. This self-understanding, which has been so problematic for Christianity with its universal truth claims, and for traditional anti-Semitism, is even more problematic for the postmodern philosophies and for the post-colonialist agenda. Judaism and the post-colonialist agenda are in a life-and-death struggle: who is the true Other? Who is the deliverer of the alternative to the history of human violence and oppressive pedagogy? Who bears genuine transcendence from the history of violence of which Western colonialism, in its various forms, is the latest and most threatening manifestation? The very claim to uniqueness which no standard can match or judge; holy exclusivity, the very self-perception as "light for the nations" and the vanguard of morality and "light" in face of blindness or the non-Jews as darkness ("or lagoyim") culminates in the racist-oppressive existence of the State of Israel, in view of many post-colonialists such as Churchill and their post-structuralsit masters such as Deleuze or the late Zizek. This is quite a challenge for educators to address, especially in the era of globalization, fundamentalism and the post-modern zeitgeist which is anti-transcendent, anti-monotheistic, "pantheistic", yet badly needs quasiholiness, quasi-transcendence in the form of ecstatic "resistance" of the kind suggested by the new anti-Semitism. The resistance to the actualization of the Judeo-Christian essential drive for elitism, exclusivism and colonization is realized under different flags and in countless arenas and contexts. Among them one may note the resistance to "Monotheism" (with the exception of Islam), resistance to "phalocentrism", resistance to "colonialism", resistance to "hegemonic sexual practices and ideals", resistance to "Israel and its oppressive racial policies", and so forth. These have their positive manifestations in the form of peace education, work for a growing number of stimulating NGOs, and especially in support for the Palestinians whom Pope Benedict XIV just recently acknowledged in his visit to the Holy Land as "God's chosen people". What, if at all, could be in a post-metaphysical era the common denominator for phenomena as diverse as insisting to disregard China/Syria/Somalia/Russian/Zimbabwe/Venezuela's civil rights record, silence concerning Iranian official anti-Semitism, challenging "phalocentrism", resistance to "monotheism", "radical multicultural education" and "postcolonial activism"? The complex, rich nets and arenas of postmodern existence of which this list is only a reminder, with all its important differences, share one, semi-religious holiness, which is actualized in education for "resistance" to Western/monotheistic/Judeo-Christian oppressive essence. In various and different degrees and actualizations it shares resistance to two conflicting trends: 1. A claim to moral uniqueness and an exclusive mission in history. 2. Any claim to objectiveuniversal truth, value or yardstick. The resistance to these Western but fundamentally Jewish educational agendas is grounded on the understanding that they set the preconditions for oppressive capitalism, political enslavement, cultural asymmetries and other forms of Western colonization – within the margins of the West and especially in the Third World. Israel is here conceived as the most extreme, violent and fragile representative of the colonialist essence of the West, its impetus being its Judeo-Christian heritage. Jewish monotheism is the root of this heritage and postcolonial education must address these roots, this essence, if it be true to its commitment to overcome colonialism in all its forms and manifestations. Postmodern "resistance" is much more than political and educational praxis, and is erotic and quasi-religious in an era from which not only God is exiled; even the exile of the holiness of killing-God-each-moment-anew has been deconstructed, ridiculed and swallowed by the system. Derrida, Lyotard and surely Levinas did not explicitly implement it within the post-colonial prism but many of their pupils and epigones did. Within the post-colonial prism it easily becomes a new anti-Semitism. As late Zizek himself admits, in a post-colonial moment the Jewish question reappears as our central challenge. "Resistance" as quasi-religiosity is actualized under different banners and in endless different arenas such as resistance to "monotheism", resistance to "phalocentrism", resistance to "colonialism", activism in favor of "alternative sexual ideals and practices", and so much more. All these are united in facing the truth of the post-metaphysical moment; the exile of the holiness of transcendence or progress in the form of a humanist killing of God. It is an educational contest which demands addressing. Most humanists, however, have not yet attained the conceptualization, sensitivity or courage to address this ecstatic-spiritual-psychological challenge and its political fruits. They are not alone: even the most enthusiastic partners to the creation of the new anti-Semitism as an ecstatic spirituality in a dull, post-metaphysical, historical moment are normally unaware of the powers manipulating them. In a totality within which changes become ever deeper and faster in all levels and dimensions of life there is only one arena or dynamic in which they are all united. They are all amalgamated in one sacred work in a world from which holiness, meaning and telos have been exiled: "resistance" to "Israel", "the Zionists", or, even, much more simply, "the Jews". The move from "resistance" to "Israel" to "resistance" to "the Jews" varies and sometimes is even sublime and sophisticated, but it has become almost so politically correct nowadays that Egypt's Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni will be the candidate most certain of election in October 2009 as the new head of UNRRA regardless of his countless explicit vulgar anti-Semitic expressions and calls to burn all Israeli books since, as he explained on another occasion, "the Jews are known to steal the cultures of other people", and so forth. In readiness for the approaching election he published today (28 May 2009) in Le Monde an article which tries to explain that he is actually not a racist, only a genuine post-colonialist facing Israeli evil. Today such an explanation is on the edge of political correctness and is accepted by Hosni's relevant readers in progressive intellectual and political circles with barely a pinch of embarrassment. In a hybridist, "plain" actuality, in which contingency and mere power-relations are established as the sole rulers, "resistance" to Israel becomes an ecstatic quasiholiness, part of the New-Age daily spirituality but also its exclusive alternative: "Israel" becomes an icon for all evil that is presently threatening, but not unconditionally. The condition is in the space between the brackets and the fetishized symbol. The target of transforming a representation of a political entity into a spiritual entity is a self-defeating project since Israel is by its very nature a symbol, a holy movement outside history that has acquired the alternative to its own "brackets" by the Zionists entering history and establishing the new dialectical dimension within the Jewish spirit by the establishment of the State of Israel as a normal state, as a nation among nations under non-normal conditions. The new anti-Semitic work being done here is supposed to edify within contingency and immanence; as if transcendence, meaning and telos are still possible. The possibility is conditioned by exposing "Israel" as a unique entity which opens otherwise impossible possibilities in a postmetaphysical era. "Israel" saves the human in "our" post-metaphysical moment from meaninglessness, from contingency and from the psychological fruits of the concept of "Difference", namely, the quest for "home-returning" into nothingness. Judaism, for the new anti-Semitism, is the arch-rival in its love of Life on the one hand and in its universal mission on the other—not in its claim for normality or the gravity of its policies. The State of Israel serves here both as an object for facing oneself by experiencing ecstasis via "resistance" to the claim of universalism on the one hand, and by engagement in the horrific commitment to an exclusivist sense of being "the(elected)-One" on the other. It is worth nothing that not only on the psychological level do post-colonial heroes such as Hugo Chaves, Mikis Teodorakis, Ahmadinejad, Farouk Hosni or Nobel laureate Saramago move smoothly from "resistance" to "Israel" to "resistance" to "the Jews": within the post-colonialist philosophy it is almost a conceptual imperative, while explicitly keeping its distance from traditional anti-Semitism. That is, because the State of Israel is conceived as the incarnation of the Jewish Spirit, in poststructualist critique its monotheism is conceived no longer as the Other of Western civilization but rather as the essence and impetus of Judeo-Christian civilization, in sharp contrast to traditional Western anti-Semitism. In all the diverse manifestations of the new anti-Semitism "Israel" is conceived and represented as the agent of "the West" and its immanent, multi-façade, oppressive colonialist drive. It serves as an extreme, "dense" manifestation of a general phenomenon that the spirit of Judaism initiates and realizes universally, in countless arenas and occasions. The explicit accusation of a world "Jewish conspiracy" or "hegemony" is only the most primitive, obsolete articulation of this philosophy, which in its more sophisticated versions post-colonial education offers us as the most progressive politically correct mantra of the day. The aim of this conference is to focus the attention of scientific research and of public discourse on the ways in which postmodernism challenges not only modernism but, no less important, its "monotheistic" foundations: the claim of the objective and universal validity of a certain set of values and assertions; a linear conception of time; binary logic; telos whose aim is monolithic truth, ethnocentrist-oriented universal- peaceful-order, and so forth. The "pantheistic" character of the postmodern discourse and its sensitivity and commitment to "difference", "multi-culturalism", "phalocentrism", resistance to any hierarchy, stability, universalism and objectivism oppose existentially, philosophically, psychologically and politically the Jewishness of the Enlightenment's emancipatory project and fruits. It opposes the Jewish spirit which is the constitutive element and the philosophical impetus of Western cruel oppressive colonialism. It all originates in the notion of one God, one chosen people, one Torah, one telos to be inflicted universally, at any cost, on all others. This is the impetus of Western violence even if the concept of "chosen people" is transformed into an anti-violent missionary agenda of the "chosen ones" who see their exclusiveness in readiness to suffer for the Other and self-sacrifice for the Other's reeducation. Present-day new anti-Semitism is not entirely original. It has a (forgotten) history in modernity that it is important critically to reconstruct. What we presently face is a new version of the new anti-Semitism. Along with the present, post-colonialist, version one should note Marx's new anti-Semitism, and Nietzsche's, which were new as compared with traditional anti-Semitism. These continued traditional anti-Semitism in focusing on its unique existence among other nations, but their focal point was neither the religious nor the desolate stance of Jewish existence and its universal challenge to all others. For both Marx and Nietzsche, modern Jewish existence opened the gate to a dramatic transformation and to progress for all humanity, a challenge which no other nation could take up. The specific kind of progress and the victims of the universal realization of the spirit of Judaism was the focal point of the earlier stages of new anti-Semitism. This threatening side of the universal realization of the essence of Judaism is also at the center of the present wave of the new anti- Semitism, which is a difficult phenomenon for a specific, comprehensive reduction that will offer an exact determination. This is because the new version of the new antiSemitism is more of an uninstitutionalized religion in a Godless world, a zeitgeist in a world from which Spirit is exiled so that some might think, not without reason, that "new anti-Semitim" is not the right name for this phenomenon, and others, also with good reasons, might claim that the new anti-Semitism is a phenomenon that by its nature cannot be described by any right name and should not be reduced to any specific determination. The present, post-colonial new anti-Semitism is different from that of Marx and Nietzsche. This is because their versions, for all their differences, were united in presenting the reaction of the West to the killing of God by modernity and the constitution of an edifying mission to the killer of God – whether this deification related to all humanity or to the "superman". The present version of the new antiSemitism is a manifestation of the exile of the killer of God and the desolation of the historical deification of Man/humanity – not a reaction to the killing of God, not to the reaction to the deconstruction of the deification of humanity, not to pre-modern sanctity which concerned the total presence of the goodness of God Almighty. The present version of the new anti-Semitism is a reaction. It is a reaction to holiness and edification being enthusiastically deconstructed and swallowed within the endless arenas and manifestations of the dullness of the present post-metaphysical historical moment; an historical moment which has neither space nor time for transcendence or exaltation – to nothing more grand than temporary, individual "plain" pleasure on the one hand, and a pragmatic struggle for the interests and self-evidence of the victims on the other. This, unless it accepts the richness and holiness of the fundamentalist total alternative to the progressive humanist agenda, which has its coalitions with globalizing capitalism and post-colonialism and should be considered part and parcel of the shallowness of the triumphant postmodern historical moment. Counter-education at such a time—if worthy its name—should be alarmed and awake. It should rouse itself from dogmatic slumber and encourage the humanists among us, as well as the consistent Diasporic humans, and present them with the central challenges of this historical moment, its imperatives, invitations, and threats, and its new gates for hope. The present conference hopes to become part of such an awakening effort. In face of such an invitation which this conference is, it is worth the effort to emphasize the complexity of the category "new anti-Semitism" and its relation to post-structuralist philosophies and to the post-colonialist agenda. What we face is a transformation-in-process, a new medieval epoch on the edge of a total shift in spacespeed relation, entering mega-speed actuality within which post-colonialism prospers. Post-colonialism, it should be added, is only one of many prisms that prosper in the present zeitgeist-without-Spirit. Among these prosperous prisms one may note multiculturalism, radical feminism, queer theories, and so many more—all initiated by the spiritual suffocation inflicted by the desolation of the humanist project of deifying humanity within the realization of the holy responsibility to kill-God-each-momentanew as part of transcendence toward Uropia. The post-colonialist momentum is a true quasi-spiritual power and not merely political might. The "critique" and "resistance" to "Israel" within it is sacred work, surely far from a kind of critical reasoning and argumentation within which one can resolve the disagreements between "the West and the rest" and between "Israel" and "the post-colonial alternative". Within it there is no room for the prospect of dialogue of the kind that Enlightenment has offered for the last two centuries with so much enthusiastic optimism. Here Israel is irredeemably destined to become "the Jew among the nations", a demonic entity, not a concrete political reality which is essentially different from all other nations and political entities, even in light of the works of Hayden White, Benedict Anderson, Gill Deleuze or Michel Foucault to whom they normally pay tribute as present-day high priests of the new religion. In the new anti-Semitism "resistance" to "Israel" has theological, philosophical, psychic and political meaning which transcends specific disagreements such as the number of unnecessary road blocks imposed in the West Bank by the IDF or the exact line of the future Palestinian state: there is no rational discussion that might satisfy the postcolonial agenda on these disagreements and no room for a possible agreement – only total annihilation of the Jewish State of Israel, and this too solely as a first step toward "genuine decolonization". All possible agreements are conceived within this agenda as steps toward this aim of "genuine de-colonization". There is a range of rhetorical differences between "resistance" to "Israel" and "resistance" to "the Jew", and between them are psychological barriers, cultural barriers and politically correct barriers. It is not (yet) politically correct to be explicitly anti-Jewish or a blunt anti-Semite in the traditional sense of the concept. The old blunt anti-Semitism is conceived in normative critical discussions as obsolete, primitive, and unsuitable for current-day progressive activists. Even heroes such as Hugo Chaves or Farouk Hosni deny their racism, rearticulate themselves or apologize when caught in too blunt anti-Semitic expressions. Others, less politically correct, such as Jose Saramago, do not make these differences in their post-colonialist critique, when offering their "critique" against "those experts in cruelty with doctorates in disdain, who look down on the world from the heights of the insolence which is the basis of their education. We can better understand their biblical god when we know his followers. Jehovah or Yaweh or whatever he is called, is a fierce and spiteful god, whom the Israelis always live up to". Sometimes, in respect of the above barriers "resistance" to the "Jews" is replaced with "resistance" to the "Zionists". Many post-colonialists, among whom quite a few are Jews, do not see themselves as racists or anti-Semites. Many of them are proud anti-racists and are explicitly and consciously against (the old) anti-Semitism. It is quite a challenge for them to face their anti-racist credo as part and parcel of the new anti-Semitism. Either way, resistance to the Jewish State of Israel becomes in the post-colonialist zeitgeist a universal moral question, neither merely a political problem nor a rational challenge: it has vital existential, philosophical, political and educational dimensions which are central for the self-recognition of the West as colonialist that must redeem itself. According to this educational agenda, if the West is ever to purify itself of its impurities it must embark on genuine, courageous self-decolonization. The West, at its best, is presently struggling for the salvation of its soul by sacrificing its spirit. And the West is horrified. It is terrified by its present identity, by its past, as well as by the proposed remedy. So it gives birth neither to children nor to great new ideas. This anxious effort for salvation in conditions of fright, however, takes its toll: hatred. Ardent self-hatred. Its flame is thrown at the most essential thing of all in the Western spirit, which is now acknowledged as a sin that it has to be cauterized: its Jewish germ. In a process of projection this threatening germ of Western civilization is enthusiastically extroverted as its Other. The Jew, again, becomes the Other of Western civilization and the object of torture, humiliation, and, finally, attempts at annihilation across a range from abasement and pressure to convert at one extreme to physical extermination at the other. That is how Christian civilization and Islam have treated the Jews throughout history, with brief intervals of relative tolerance. The redeclaration of the Jew as the Other is currently even more universal, and is enhanced by capitalist globalization. This time it goes under the title "Zionism", "Israel" or "unacceptable self-declared moral superiority and uniqueness", and in the West it is to be sacrificed religiously as an educational process of penance. Hatred is here selfhatred, being transformed into "critique", and "resistance" as a sacred work of atonement. This is no easy thing in the dullness of the present historical moment, in the post-metaphysical era, in face of the desolation of the preconditions for "moral", "meaning" and religious fanatics of all kinds. The fanaticism of the new antiSemitism is only one dimension of the anti-fanaticism that is an imperative of the dullness of the post-metaphysical moment. How may we understand this transformation? What we are faced here with is an attempt at purification of a terrible sin within the framework of the myth which triumphs in the zeitgeist of the exile of Spirit. It is the last possible quasi-religiosity, which differs from everyday New-Age spirituality and still contains a connection to religiosity; the last possible holiness in the era of the exile of the killer of God and the deconstruction of the ethos of universal utopian emancipation. Self-hatred and the hatred of the not-I within the self, namely commitment to purification of the otherness of the Jew within Western culture as the most infamous dimension of Judeo-Christian civilization, join together not only psychologically but conceptually and spiritually. They give birth and re-present a new myth, a zeitgeist, quasi-spirituality and rhetorical fashions and even codes of the politically correct; these are not to be separated from global capitalism, massive immigration waves and the other manifestations of the present historical moment. In this sense the new anti- Semitism is the disease of our time as well as its constitutive myth and promise of a cure. It is also the credo of the West for meeting itself purified, redeemed, enabled. New anti-Semitism as the constitutive myth of the era of the exile of the killer of God is an enabling power that we should not underestimate. Presently we have no better suggestion from the post-colonialist educational point of view. It enables psychological, intellectual and political changes and good-searching. These do challenge past and present dimensions of the West which do tend to oppression, totalitarianism, silencing and self-indulgence under the banner of redemption, emancipation, progress or universal truth. The election of Barack Husain Obama to the presidency of the USA would have been only a dream without this development. At the same time, it is important to note that this constitutive myth and the quasispirituality of the present zeitgeist is moving down a path far more dangerous than the present misdeeds and limits of Western culture. Within the historical change from arenas of ever faster changes, higher speed and humanist holiness in the killing-of-God-each-moment-anew to the exile of the killer of God, deconstruction of the humanist holiness and the entrance into mega-speed realities, Western self-hatred has replaced the spirit of reflection. It has substituted the critical ethos and the spirit of homocentric "critique" which began its modern journey in Descarte's Cogito ergo sum. It has reached its historical conclusion today in deconstructing "Spirit" itself. The power of anxiety, frustration and fury which are incubated in the new anti-Semitism are fertilized by the downfall of modern Utopia, and more specifically the dissolution of its last 1968 revolutionary experience. The post-1968 West is incompetent to face itself, its past and its telos in the era of megaspeed. No substitute has been created for the metaphysical anchor of Monotheism nor for the humanist revolt against it. No alternative has been found or created to progressive education as a secular sacred work. No alternative exists to the creative vitality of ecstatic humanism as a manifestation of progress, as transcendence toward worthy life. It is not the end of vitality but rather its transformation from an erotic one into a Thanatos-oriented vigor. The absence of erotic strength appears as hospitality; as the hospitality of an invitation: an invitation to "home-returning" into nothingness. Within this hospitality the West cannot avoid facing its past and present and the absence of a new New Testament except by giving birth to quasi-spirituality, a return of the constitutive myth in the form of projection of its "Satanic" germ (in the words of Hugo Chaves, the undisputable hero of the post-colonialist ideology) and its purification in the fire of the altar of self-decolonization. The theocentric era, in which humans devoted themselves to God, and the following homocentric era, in which human devoted themselves to the deification of humanity by killing-God-each-moment-anew, are now replaced by a new era of the kind Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Adorno could not even imagine. Two rival educational agendas flourish in this post-metaphysical era. They nourish each other and recycle a new myth, a new way of self-forgetfulness which enables human life even in the absence of holiness under the banners of the infinite right of the victim of the Judeo-Christian civilization on the one hand and under the banner of the infinite right of the client in the MacWorld, on the other; life as an arena that initiates a kind of self-forgetfulness within ecstatic recycling of pleasures and symbols with no depth, telos or "meaning" beyond its recycling on the one hand, and life as ecstatic "resistance" which actualizes itself in feminist, multi-cultural, post-colonialist and queer prisms, on the other. These seem like antagonistic trends, yet they have so much in common. They are two versions of anti-Diasporic existence: one path deconstructs Diasporic existence by enthusiastically being swallowed by the pleasure machine, the other by the ecstasies of quasi-spiritualist in dogmatic "resistance" to genuine Diasporic existence and eternal improvisation-transcendence as offered by Judaism. The boundaries between these discourses are not always stable, clear and definite. They all drink from the post-structuralist well and from the postmodern culture, which hails the local, partial, hybrid, contingent, and heterogeneous, and in the extreme also the call for un-aimed-creative violence, for the triumph of the aesthetic demon, for the return of the Gnostic god. In the post-colonialist context, neither "justice" nor "truth" nor universal human progress but rather the partial, local, and ethnocentric selfevidence of the victims and the creativity of counter-violence (of the victims, which actually makes it at the same time to nothing but an echo of the victimizer's original sin) are to be the substitute for the utopian telos of humanist education and its supposed immanent colonialist oppression. The quasi-religious nature of the ecstatic "resistance" to the originally Jewish homogenization drive of the West and to Western imposed hierarchies, to Western silencing, colonization and oppression, becomes an alternative to holiness and the essentially Jewish insistence on Love of Life; a postmodern alternative to Jewish-Western moral uniqueness in a Godless world from which even the killer of God has been exiled. Universal, exclusivist Utopia and the promise of human emancipation have been deconstructed and recycled as part of the new anti-Semitic myth; as the grand alternative to the Jewish monotheistic heritage and its alternative concepts of difference, uniqueness and nomadism. The burning excitement of this "resistance" constitutes a psychological, spiritual alternative: as the September 11 destruction of the symbol of Judeo-Christian synthesis shows, there is a powerful relevant reply to this dualistic phallic quest for transcendence and domination on the part of the coalition between post-colonialism and the world of Jihad. They are united in a commitment to level Jewish devotion to Love of Life and Diasporic devotion to its unique path by targeting its negation in the form of the State of Israel and the Zionist quest to return to history and to mundane life. Before we turn to the Third World's reaction to the truth of the present historical moment we should ask: how does the West react to the truth of the present historical moment? And in other words: what is "the meaning", or what is the relevant substitute for "the meaning" and the "mission", in face of the successful deconstruction of the revolt against God and the triumph of the Gnostic god? How can the West save itself from "home-returning" into haughty return into nothingness in face of the deconstruction of the preconditions for transcendence, in face of the triumph of relativism, contextualism and instrumentaloriented pragmatism that inherit metaphysics, holiness and the hospitality of mysterium? What is the possible worthy deed in the era of the truth that the killing of God and the exile of the killer of God have been taken over by endless quasi-meanings, aims, truths and "plain", "horizontal" recycling of "differences"? What is the worthy act in face of higher speeds within endless dull arenas which have inherited the metaphysical, "dense" history where holiness hospitalized humanity under conditions of hope, happiness, truth, transcendence and worthy suffering? This transformation on the edge of entering the mega-speed arenas is a Gnostic road back, homeward, into the end. The end not as eschatological, religious or imaginary category. Not at all. The End in the era of global capitalism and mega-speed is "plain" and banal; reality becomes a prosaic, reasonable, pragmatic adjunct to human progress whose realization becomes more probable by the day. The new anti-Semitism and the end rival the worthiest alternative in this dull historical moment. For now we will not go into the rich philosophical, existential, spiritual and political meaning of the end. I will relate more to the new anti-Semitism, its affair with the "home-returning" quest into nothingness and its post-modern manifestations. The absence of ground for an anchor – psychological, spiritual and political ground, in a post-metaphysical moment is a vivid absence and demands a reaction. A seemingly creative reaction. A reaction whose grandeur will match the greatness of the loss in face of the exile of the holiness of the pedagogy of humanist killing of God. The philosophical and psychological loss unites in quest of a signifying compensation: a quasi-transcendence aim or at least an explicit, visible, detectable enemy; so that the post-modern nomad might struggle against and indulge in selfforgetfulness which offers an overwhelming illusion of ecstatic catharsis which will make bearable the loss of transcendence and the exile of holiness. The exclusivity and the meaning of such a struggle are irreplaceable. In the absence of negation, struggle and victory there is no life. The Gnostic redemption, reveling itself as a Paulineoriented renaissance, needs a struggle, needs a substitute for the exile of the killer of God. It cannot abandon the promise invested in the need for an arch-enemy and a redemptive struggle. This is the titanic mission the new anti-Semitism currently has undertaken in the West. In the Third World, for marginalized groups and for the oppressed, "resistance" to Israel has a different character. It derives from the spiritual and political effort to establish a new, post-colonial, framework for meeting the West and to reestablish new relations with it and more importantly – with itself. The attempt to enforce new, postcolonial, relations with the West is complemented by a gigantic educational effort; it has become the framework for change in identity, for representation of identity and meeting its Other. Within this pedagogical effort a place is reserved for the West for confession of its sins, for compensating its victims and for self-transformation (de- colonization) to its opposite against the background of the terrible moral asymmetry that characterized their relations until now. This post-colonialist pedagogical effort for transforming the economic, political, and moral relations between the West and the rest is actualized in the context of globalizing capitalism, which is also the era of change from higher speeds to mega-speed, which is also the post-metaphysical moment. In face of the exile of the killer of God new possibilities are opened in rich and different levels of existence. This, however, is also an actuality of greater inequalities, suffering for more people, disastrous economic "restructuring", cultural devastation and ecological ruin for huge populations matched by mass migration and greater frustrations in the Third World. This is fertile ground for the Third World's reception of the old anti-Semitism, and not solely within Muslim communities. As such it might be considered part of the new anti-Semitism. One should note that the post-modern dimension of the new anti-Semitism is accompanied by a new flowering of good old anti-Semitism in the West and elsewhere, especially in Japan and South America, after two generations of delegitimation of anti-Semitism following WWII. The structural economic changes inflicted by the change into a post-Fordist economy are paralleled, as at the turn of the 19th century and in the 1929 crisis, by an anti-Semitic bloom. In Japan it is part of the more general burgeoning of a post-colonialist culture industry in the dullness of the era of the exile of the killer of God, such as the cult worship of comics, automats and sports. In Third World cultures the need to address the economic crisis and the drastic structural changes inflicted by capitalist globalization is accompanied by the destruction and restructuring of old traditions and the triumph of global culture industry which is in quest of spectacle, ecstasies and quasi-transcendence, which will enable safe self-forgetfulness while enhancing productivity in an ever more speedy and competitive market. In face of these tendencies in the Third World and in the West, the dullness of the post-metaphysical moment and the deconstruction of Judeo-Christian monotheism in the form of humanist education and its economic, cultural and existential preconditions leave room for a search for an alternative to the quest for transcendence, holiness and telos, for an alternative to the possibility of alethea: a search for "horizontal" ecstatic experiences which will replace the quest for "vertical" transcendence, edification and redemption. Nervous reactions to stimulus-exciting self-forgetfulness inherit edifying holiness and religious sacred work, enabling effective ever more extreme forgetfulness of passionate-self-forgetfulness. This intensification and quest for further outlandish intensification is a vital element of the new anti-Semitism in the era of high-speed and globalizing capitalism. The economic reasons, the technological, ecological, cultural and political changes, are of much relevance: they re-establish "the Jew" or "Israel" in the Muslim world, but more generally in the Third World, in a new-old centrality for the evaluation of one's stance in Life, wherever one is, as against the traditional and the post-colonialist concept of the Other. The two rival concepts of otherness are in a fierce struggle, each claiming to be the genuine Other, the ultimate victim and the true deliverer of the alternative pedagogy. It re-positions and de-territorializes the old centrality of "the Jew" as "the elected one" or the devil's deliverer. Old anti-Semitism targeted the Jews and their concept of one God, One Torah, one, holy, chosen nation. New anti-Semitism (re)elects "Israel", even if under the banner of "a Nazi-State", or responsible for the economic crisis, for the violence of the Islamic world, for the oppressive nature of capitalism, and so forth, in a new context: in the context of the absence of a true God, in face of the need for self-forgetfulness, for an effective quasi-spirituality or for a substitute to the presence of Spirit and its edification, catharsis and salvation. It is an attempt to be completely swallowed, with no remnant, by self-forgetfulness, and to be totally consumed and integrated into the quasispiritual experiences which post-colonial education offers. As such it justifies, glorifies and empowers capitalist globalization to the very roots of the postmetaphysical soul of the individual. The infinity of the edifying rituals in the forms of endless "rights of the victim" of the Judeo-Christian civilization are integrated with the infinity of "the rights of the client" which are, actually, the richness of the victimization process/deconstruction/differentialization, on the one hand, and the response-ability of the cyborg in the present capitalist pleasure machine on the other. Old and the new anti-Semitisms successfully join forces on the political level, as a social-critical momentum. The case of Hugo Chaves, the Leader Maximus of Socialist Venezuela which has made post-colonialism its ultimate emancipatory aim, is paradigmatic in this case. It is wrong to address the "resistance" of Chaves' regime as a balanced or imbalanced criticism of Israel. To my mind it is a mistake to treat it as a particular case of old anti-Semitism. The agenda enhanced by Chaves – and he is but one explicit and especially effective manifestation of Third World's current postcolonialism – has its roots and connections, of course. It is, however, a new phenomenon. A new phenomenon which joins resistance to the traditional and new Jewish exclusivisms: 1. Reaction to the old Jewish claim of a unique moral stance and an exclusive universal spiritual mission as materialized by Jews and especially by the State of Israel. 2. Post-colonialist resistance to the oppressive homogeneity imposed by the West and its current most extreme emissary – the State of Israel as a representative of the wrong, misleading, otherness, in the name of the genuine Other, the post-colonial victim of Judeo-Christian civilization. Most of us are still unaware of its richness and potentials and we are certainly not properly equipped to challenge and enhance its educational fruits. The humanists among us are embarrassed in face of the post-colonialist critique. They are speechless, disoriented and deprived of a grand emancipatory mission under whose banner to struggle for a better future. It is not only that the post-colonialists have taken over much of the critical language that was so dear to the critical educationalists, it is the very fact of the near probability of The End of life as a manifestation of the Western kind of progress on the one hand, and the guilt, the terrible guilt of acknowledgment Judeo-Christian values and ideals as the grand oppressor in human history, on the other. At most, my humanist friends can hope for a fierce polemic or a strong apologia. Some, such as Michael Walzer, Terry Eagleton, Charles Taylor or Allen Bloom, still insist on refusing the suggested spiritual hara-kiri of the kind offered to them by post-colonial education. But all this does not culminate into the ultimate philosophical deed: commitment to begetting children, namely, to an erotic response to the hospitality of Thanatos and its agents. In the meeting, at home, between those who experience the omnipotence and holiness of Allah as the living God and those experiencing the exile of the holiness of killing the Judeo-Christian God and its humanistic substitutes the birth ratio gap is currently 1.4 to the Europeans and 7.6 to the Muslim immigrants. Today about half of the newly born children in the Netherlands are Muslims. In the absence of a dramatic change it is not unlikely that in 46 years France will become an Islamic republic. Courageous counter-education should today overcome both Islamphobia and the Western call to surrender Life as well as their synthesis in the form of the new anti-Semitism. These post-colonial spiritual, political and demographic dynamics in the West and in the Third World integrate within the capitalist globalizing developments. They have, of course, a strong presence in Israel and Palestine too. According to the demographical predictions, if no dramatic change suddenly occurs secular Jews will be outnumbered by Islamist and Jewish Jihadists by 2020. How should the JudeoChristian civilization respond once it abandoned all versions of its monotheistic holiness and quest for transcendence? It can choose between a rapid (post-colonialist) transformation, a gradual change, and a renewed struggle for its Spirit. In the Israeli context, the fruits of the Zionist insistence of Jewish return to secular history and its "home-returning" project, the traditional reaction of the Arab world, and the new anti-Semitism have brought Israel to a situation wherein it has to pay in coin of worthy existence to ensure its very existence; they have caused Israel to become ever closer to some of the most disgusting anti-Semitic misrepresentations of it. Paradoxically, at the same time the major part of Israeli society, under the influence of global capitalism and the post-colonialist education, is becoming rapidly more pragmatic, more neo-liberal, and favors multiculturalism-light. It longs for pragmatic compromises, good business and unthreatened plugging-in into the postmodern pleasure machine: not for heroic sacrifice or for grand victories; because it has lost its Spirit, telos and strive for transcendence, along with the rest of the West. These trends, the rhetoric and the fashions they create, manifest the third stage – the post-metaphysical stage, within which the exile of the killer of God is actualized. Holiness and mysterium are deconstructed. Its relics are swallowed in a quasireligiosity of the neo-liberal creativity on the one hand, and the ecstatic postmodern "resistance" on the other, strengthened by the realities suggested by the world of Jihad. Ambitious, indeed, is the task of the critical reconstruction of these developments. It is not an easy job to reconstruct and systematically show their roots, their dynamic ever-changing synthesis and their unification within the framework of the new antiSemitism as a burning quasi-spiritual ecstasy. This task, however, is ours. We should not abandon our duty to address the suggestive power and fruits of the new antiSemitism as the current strongest myth; to address the challenge of quasi-meaning as well as individual and collective telos in an era of successful deconstruction of the hubris of eternal truths, objective aims and worthy universal values. How ironic it is that the triumph of the new anti-Semitism enables the rebirth of education. Counter-education worth its name in such times must engage fierce rivals and titanic challenges on various levels: 1. Modern humanist education has not prepared us to address such challenges. It has neither envisaged its preconditions and its commitment to establish a post-metaphysical reality nor has it acknowledged a dystopia or a rival Utopia exterior to the project of killing-God-each-moment-anew. The triumph of the Gnostic god was beyond the prospects of humanist educators from Lessing to Marx, Thomas Mann, Buber or Marcuse. 2. The new space-time relations appear in various, different, even conflicting, arenas and prisms that as part of the fragmentation of reality in high-speed arenas or even in mega-speed realities are hard to detect. Even the justification of the expression "the present development" is problematic, an object for a post-structural deconstruction and post-colonial "resistance". It is especially important to note the complex relations of technological, political, cultural and psychic developments in such an historic moment of high speed and fragmentation. 3. The evasiveness of the theoretical articulations and the unveiling of different arch-enemies to struggle against. The critique targets archenemies as diverse as "monotheism", "phalocentrism", "Judeo-Christian civilization", "The West", "America", "Empire" and so forth. All these culminate into one agreed immediate arch-enemy: "Israel". 4. The covenant between postmodern philosophies and capitalist globalization, between the special status of "the victim" of JudeoChristian civilization and "the client". Jewish monotheism and its material and symbolic development as the focal point and impetus of Western spirit and its immanent colonialist drive owe a moral debt that cannot be repaid. The infinity and eternity of the West/monotheism/Judaism, and certainly of "Israel", are the two main pillars of the post-colonial political prism of actualizing post-structuralist thought. This is also the well from which stems the quasi-holiness of the counter-violence of the victims in a post-metaphysical era. In the era of the exile of transcendence, holiness is deconstructed and re-introduced as immanent ecstatic celebration. In an era which surrenders to dullness and "horizontal", "spiritual" experiences and mysticism of daily life, to the imperatives not of a universal moral or an almighty God but to those of the logic of the market and of the fashion in which the victims are but one of the aspects of the symbolic exchange/recycling and the movement of products, the new anti-Semitism becomes a must. It enables quasi-freedom, quasi-moral excitement and quasi-meaning which are universal and transcending, enabling ecstatic selfpositioning in the world. The preconditions for the specific and concrete appearances of the new antiSemitism are enabled effectively by globalizing capitalism. Globalizing capitalism is not a mere economic phenomenon but has rich and vital sources, arenas and fruits: psychic, ecological, technological, political and cultural. It is wrong to separate among the privatization drive of current neo-liberalism which flourishes today all over the globe, the post-structuralist quasi-spirituality, and the post-colonialist symbolic, emotional and political quasi-moral ecstasies in the midst of the post- metaphysical moment. It is wrong to disregard the connection of nihilism, narcissism and relativism, which are so dominant in the rating culture governed by neoliberalism and the highlighting of the self and her strong experiences as an "empowering" dimension of the quest to be swallowed by the postmodern pleasure machine, as much a mistake as it would be to disconnect post-Fordist economy from the threats to life on earth. Globalization and its loyal adjunct, glocalization, are economically, culturally, and politically integrated. They co-exist in and encourage the return of the myth, a zeitgeist in a world from which Spirit has been exiled so that the gate has been opened to the primogeniture of the local, to the contingent, to the marginal and to the evermore-exotic or ever-more-ecstatic; to the self-evidence and caprices of "the client" (actually it is "the market", or still more precisely the dynamic-creative meaninglessness and its imperatives) – just the same as they unreflectively surrender to the self-evidence of the marginalized, the interests of the victims and the refusal of any hierarchy, any claim for a non-contingent yardstick or any claim to universality, objectivity or exclusivity of the kind introduced by the Jewish people and later by the West. The world of Jihad joins this critique and the anti-humanist agenda. The McWorld, the world of Jihad and the post-colonialist agenda join forces, and globalizing capitalism sets the conditions for materializing the common aims of this coalition. These are different manifestations of the post-metaphysical moment: fundamentalism and "home-returning" to the fundamentals (the world of Jihad), McWorld (affirmation of the capitalist pleasure machine in the form of ecstatic daily spiritual experiences ranging from a new fast car to yoga or "cabbala courses for daily life") and the quasi-moral excitement and sense of aim and meaning offered by postcolonialist "resistance" and the other prisms of the new myth. These are all manifestations of the (un)truth of the post-metaphysical moment, of the presence of the exile of the killer of God. The fundamentalism of the world of Jihad, the capitalist pleasure machine and the post-colonialist resistance unite in celebrating the destruction of the hope of humanist education. They unite in their striving for the desolation of the processes of modernization as a road to emancipation. Globalizing capitalism, the continuous intensification of the speed of change, movement and re-cycling in a "flat" world with no "vertical" axis for transcendence and the quasi-spiritual resistance to the Jewish spirit in the form of monotheism, phalocentrism, Enlightenment and Western colonialism are interwoven and united in the new anti-Semitism. It challenges the Jewish spirit as the impetus and framework of a Western God and the immanent colonizing teleological education of the humanist killer of God. New anti-Semitism as the return of myth in an historically dull moment is committed to offer both a grand quasi-spiritual ecstasis and a political alternative within the "flat" post-metaphysical moment. These are the preconditions of the new anti-Semitism as the great myth of our time. The Jew, in the form of "the Jewish state", becomes, again, an acid test of the stance of the human: as a Westerner, as a victim of the West, or even as a Jew. The Jew and the Jewish State of Israel are made equal, without regard to the theological and the existential tension between them. The new anti-Semite disregards the gap that creates the post-colonialist tension between the (Israeli) claim for a nation-state and the commitment to truth of the national narrative or the imperative of the true religion in a post-metaphysical moment. He does not ask about rival moral claims that clash in different time-space formats – one a legitimate modern nation-building project, the other a postmodern post-colonialist deconstructive moral commitment. The new anti- Semite connects his post-colonial blindness to the truth of the gap between rival moral loyalties to the pre-modern, modern and postmodern Platonic caves to his devotion to the otherness of the victims of the otherness of the Jew as the ultimate Other. He must destroy the Diasporic essence of the Jewish otherness since he is committed to the truth of the post-colonialist dogma regarding true otherness, victimhood and nomadism. In order to survive, in order to produce quasi-spirituality post-colonialism must destroy the Jewish essence on two different and even opposing fronts: its Diasporic-universal telos on the one hand and its particular-nationalistic manifestation, on the other. It is a life-and-death struggle for the concept of the postcolonialist Other as the victim of the diabolic or false Other, namely the Jew. It is very important to elaborate on this question, the question of who is the genuine Other in the center of the new anti-Semitism and its post-colonial educational prisms. We should seriously relate to its commitment to resist both genuine Diasporic life as represented traditionally by Judaism and its opposite in the form of devotion to "home-returning" and national flowering as represented by the State of Israel. Sometimes the post-colonialists do understand the opposition between Judaism and Zionism, but even then they tend to de-legitimate "Israel" on the one hand, and resist the truth of eternal Diasporic existence as represented by Judaism on the other. The progressive powers of the day, if they still dare to speak about "progress" instead of "re-mapping" or challenging "asymmetries", do not claim to educate for universal values, certainly not those of Western humanism, Jewish religion or JudeoChristian monotheism, on the educational path toward Utopia. Quite the contrary: present-day post-colonial progressivism is committed to overcome this emancipatory universalistic tradition which, according to its critiques, is in quest of homogeneity, which unavoidably is exclusivist and oppressive as much as the Jewish God (or its universal secularization and materialization in the form of capitalism or Enlightenment) may be. Post-colonial education offers a grand pedagogical alternative within a rapidly fragmentizing world in reaction to and as part of affirming hybridity, contingency, locality, kaleidoscopic reality and quasi-eternal nomadism on the one hand, and an ultra-ethnocentrist educational agenda under the flag of "diversity", "multiculturalism" or "post-colonialist education" on the other. Progressivists of the day are committed to give "voice" to the silenced ones on the road to radical, multicultural democracy and other manifestations of eternal nomadism and a celebration of differences, clashes, dionystic temporarities, local and contingent alliances and agreements, which, according to the post-colonialist promise, will give birth simultaneously to harmony, quasi-spiritual ecstasies and eternal Diasporic life where everyone flourishes in a "flat", post-monotheistic, post-metaphysical, postviolent reality. At best, it is a myth which brings with it a very naïve Utopia. The new anti-Semitism is a genuine and most serious educational challenge. On the simplest level, it calls us to address the charge, justified so many times, to our shame, that the discourse concerning the new anti-Semitism actually serves Israel's avoiding moral responsibility for terrible acts. More challenging still it the facing up to the characteristics of the monotheistic tradition and its central concepts such as "chosen people", "universalism", "objective truth", "redemption" and so forth, in a post-metaphysical moment, namely, facing metaphysics and its deconstruction in light of the void left by the exile of the holiness in killing-God-each-moment-anew. The educational challenge of the new anti-Semitism is here, now, and real. It invites us to courageously address the different responses to the exile of holiness and the demolition of transcendence. It calls us to overcome the hospitality of the greatest and most unarticulated of present-day myths. As such, it enables counter-education to address the roots, the present and the open possibilities for genuine transcendence, or genuine, responsible, improvised co-poiesis: Diasporic life in what I call orcha – the no-man's-land between immanence and transcendence. It offers us a serous addressing of the spiritual struggle over the identity of the "I", meaning, aim and emancipation/redemption/meaninglessness of Jews, Westerners and all other humans in a post-metaphysical moment, where there is no room for "genuine transcendence", meaning and telos but only for hatred, quasi-spiritual ecstatic political "resistance"; or alternatively, joining the capitalist pleasure machine. In such a context the Jews, once again, become the chosen people, this time chosen by those claiming to be the genuine victims, the injured party of the Jew. In light of its commitment to the holiness of the one and only true God Jews became the holy people, and their unique moral status and mission as an undefeated burning love of life was enabled. This exclusivist self-conception is represented as the impetus of Western colonialism and oppression and as its present most aggressive and explicit manifestation in the form of "Israel". The new anti-Semitism must unleash this satanic moral fire and destroy "Israel" if it is to save the world from a triumphant history of oppression. Nothing less than that will suffice. To the complexity, richness and demanding qualities of the new anti-Semitism we are not yet fully equipped to respond. Not even courageous enough; not to mention the desolation of the Enlightened concepts, ideals and drives, which are not of much use in face of the suggestive power of the new conquering myth in the dullness of the present historical moment. Maybe we should turn not to an alternative "homereturning" project or to a rival Utopia of perfect dwelling on the humanized earth, but to a Diasporic hospitality, to an improvised co-poiesis which is essentially religious even in face of the exile of God as well as the exile of the killer of God. Holiness and transcendence are possible today through the presence of the infinite in our lives: the near probability of The End, as the final, most glorious manifestation of human progress; as a response-ability to the return from exile of the Gnostic god. A return with its awful truth: no "home-returning" exists. It unites us, all humans, conceptually and existentially, and makes life as an eternal erotic improvisation each-momentanew more relevant than ever before. Yes, contrary to the educational message of the new anti-Semitism it enables us to learn from Judaism that Diaspora is not solely a punishment or a disaster: it is a universal gate to eternal life as responsible, improvising nomads, as part of derech-eretz, of orcha: to which the new antiSemitism is but another part of the eternal desert of Life, and as such also one of its oases to be respected yet never dwelt in. The conference will take place at the Hecht Museum, University of Haifa June 22, 2009 from 9 AM to 7 PM.