The problem with ‘Never Again’

It’s hard to have a conversation with Jews anywhere in the world today without hearing the phrase “Never again.”

Few of those using it realise that the phrase was popularised by the notorious nationalist extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, who used it as the title for his 1972 book promoting the Jewish Defense League.

Since then, ‘Never again’ has become a rallying cry for not only Holocaust memory and Zionism but also a myriad of unrelated social causes, such as against gun violence and animal welfare.  It has been used on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict and, recently, in large demonstrations in Australia denouncing antisemitism. It was the title of a documentary on antisemitism presented by Josh Frydenberg which screened on Sky News on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, a clip from the Israeli comedy series The Jews Are Coming dramatised the analogies that underly the phrase ‘Never again’ and unwittingly made clear exactly why it is so problematic.

Called “Never again is all over again,” the skit links the events of October 7 to six unrelated historical attacks on Jews. These include the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, the Crusades, Kishinev Pogrom, Kristallnacht, Hebron Massacre and the Farhud in Baghdad.

It’s a powerful, simple piece of drama, but it is fundamentally deceptive. It paints Jewish history as one long chain of antisemitism, ignoring both the context of individual events and the positive generations of interfaith harmony in between these crises.

Each of these events happened in the context of larger wars conducted by empires that also had millions of non-Jewish victims.

They also happened in the context of a long history which also includes golden ages such as the 1500 years of Jewish flourishing in Babylon, or the 800 years when our greatest rabbinic works were written in Poland.