Are Jews an Oppressed People Today; Or, Why the Obsession with Defining Antisemitism?

For at least the past 1,500 years, it is safe to say that in most places where Jews lived, they constituted an “oppressed people,” in some places more than others. Antisemitism, loosely defined, was one expression of that state of oppression. Are Jews an oppressed people in America today? And if not, how can we understand contemporary antisemitism in relation to the past? And why are we obsessed today with “defining” it? We will ask these questions by looking at the two recent documents on defining antisemitism today; the IHRA document and the Jerusalem Document in an attempt to understand what is going on.