With Jewish leaders throughout the world worried about a perceived rise in anti-Semitism, Alan Levinson attempted to put current events in a historical perspective.

This Tuesday, in a talk sponsored by Hillel, the Jewish Studies Department the Religion Department, and the Office of Chaplains, Levinson addressed another time and place where anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic feelings were prevalent19th century Germany.

Levinson is an instructor at the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies in Cleveland and has taught at Wittenberg Universiy, the College of William and Mary and Case Western Reserve University. His lecture was entitled “Anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism, Then and Now: Modern Germany and Contemporary United States of America.”

For the purposes of this article it would be helpful to think of philo-Semitism as the opposite of anti-Semitism.

Levinson described the various aspects of philo-Semitism in nineteenth century Germany, and pointed out that opposition to anti-Semitic thought existed in that society. According to Levinson, the dialogue ranged from half hearted defense of the German Jewry, such as that of Germany’s liberals, to the more supportive Socialists and the particularly Philo-semitic German Peace Society.

Using these issues as something analogous to the current trend of a “gray area” between Zionism and anti-Zionism, Levinson segued into an analysis of the current question of anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism.

“There is as much to criticize about Israel as any other government,” Levinson said. “Criticism of Israel, whether the critics are Jewish or not, is certainly not anti-Semitic per se.”

This issue of anti-Semitism is one of the most volatile ones on campus today. In a dialogue with Oberlin students and faculty, Levinson engaged in further discussion of the Zionism controversy, as well as changing views of the political meaning of being Jewish in the United States.

Levinson took some time to criticize certain “navely utopian” solutions proposed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as the idea that Israel should pursue a policy of binationiality. This idea, Levinson argued, is fundamentally flawed in that it does not consider the animosities of the region, nor does the proposal consider that no group inhabiting the region advocates binationality.

Real solutions, according to him, will have to be based on a realistic assessment of the political situation and an understanding of the history of both Zionism and anti-Zionist sentiment.