Ruth Wisse: The Criticism-Proof Zionist
Ruth Wisse is a brilliant Yiddish scholar, beloved Harvard professor, and National Humanities Medal recipient. She is also living proof that you can be an eminent intellectual and still treat criticism of Israel like somebody just tracked mud across your Persian rug.
For Wisse, Zionism isn't merely a political conviction. It comes with a force field. Criticize Israel and suddenly you're not discussing policy—you may be participating in Jewish self-betrayal. Apparently the Middle East has one remaining forbidden topic: Israel's behavior.
She went after institutions, too. The New Yorker was accused of "hate-mongering." The New York Review of Books became the "Women's Wear Daily of the American intelligentsia." That's impressive. Most academics write footnotes. Wisse writes obituaries for entire magazines.
And if a Jewish critic dares to criticize Israel? Wisse has compared such critics to the Soviet Union's Yevsektsiya. Nothing says "let's have a thoughtful debate" quite like dragging Stalin into the room.
Her 1992 book, If I Am Not for Myself, argues that liberalism's instinct for "evenhandedness" can become another form of Jewish betrayal. It's an extraordinarily convenient intellectual system: Israel is never merely wrong; criticism of Israel may itself be the evidence that you're wrong.
So yes, Ruth Wisse believes passionately in argument. She just seems to prefer the kind where she delivers the opening statement, closing statement, rebuttal—and historical analogy involving Stalin. As Ezra Glinter put it, with Wisse, the argument is never over.
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