Severyn Ashkenazy on Anti-Judaism, Tzedakah, and Church Power

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/01

Holocaust survivor and hotelier Severyn Ashkenazy recounts his family’s prewar comfort in Tarnopol (now Ternopil, western Ukraine), their survival while hiding for roughly twenty months in a rural cellar, and a lifelong commitment to art and philanthropy. Ternopil’s total population was about 50,000 on the eve of World War II (1939), and is estimated at ~225,000 in 2022. The city’s Jewish population was about 18,000–18,600 around 1939–June 1941; after the war, only about 139 Jews from those present when the Germans arrived were recorded as surviving in the city, with a further few hundred surviving via evacuation to the USSR or military service. 

In conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Ashkenazy argues a thesis (his interpretation) that centuries of “anti-Judaism,” later branded antisemitism, were sustained by church authority; he points specifically to Vatican conduct during and after World War II. That critique reflects Ashkenazy’s viewpoint and the argument developed in his book Swords of the Vatican: Reflections of a Witness to Evil. He contrasts public stereotypes with the Jewish communal ethics of tzedakah (charitable obligation) and learning, notes the widely discussed phenomenon of outsized Jewish contributions in science, and emphasizes education and historical memory. The discussion also touches on Ukraine’s wartime realities and evolving definitions of Jewish identity. These are framed as Ashkenazy’s perspectives; readers should examine the underlying evidence and counterarguments directly.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Severyn Ashkenazy to discuss antisemitism from both historical and lived perspectives. To set the stage: during World War II, how did your family live before the war, and then during the early parts of the war?

Severyn Ashkenazy: My family was comfortable—financially and socially. My mother was a pianist who spoke several languages; my father was a food chemist with strong mathematical skills and ran an extensive delicatessen and distribution business in Tarnopol (now Ternopil). Before the war, Tarnopol was a regional center near the Soviet border. (Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939; the Soviet Union invaded from the east on September 17, 1939.) 

We were comfortable enough that, in 1937, a leading Polish chocolatier (as I recount in Swords of the Vatican) tried to recruit my father for a Chicago chocolate venture. My father—also a Talmud student—decided against it, believing we should not risk a stable life. Two years later, there was nowhere to go. When German forces occupied Ternopil on July 2, 1941, mass violence against Jews followed, the ghetto was established that year, and deportations to Bełżec and mass shootings at sites like Petrykiv (Petrykowo) occurred in 1942–1943. Of roughly 18,000–18,600 Jews present as the Germans arrived, only about 139 were recorded in the city after liberation in mid-1944, with a few hundred more surviving via evacuation or service in the Red Army. My immediate family—my father, mother, brother, and I—survived as an intact unit, hidden in a peasant family’s cellar for about twenty months. 

Jacobsen: For twenty months, you were hidden in a peasant family’s cellar. As a child, what were the psychological challenges you faced? And, for the adults, in hindsight, what ethical challenges did they face in that context?

Ashkenazy: As a child, because my parents were with us, I did not feel unsafe. They gave me the security a child needs. I did feel fear and anxiety. My mother was always with my brother and me, and my father joined us whenever he could. In the final eight months of our time hiding, we were in a cellar—more precisely, a cramped space under a basement—roughly six by twelve feet. Eventually, eight people lived there around the clock. Of those eight, six survived. They were hiding with us.

Jacobsen: What about your brother’s passion for art?

Ashkenazy: That passion came from my father, and his love came from his father. My parents’ major customers included the local aristocracy and the army. When they could not pay their bills, they sometimes sent a steward to settle accounts in kind. If there was no money, they brought a piece of art or an antique.

I remember one time we ended up with an old halberd—an approximately eight-foot pole weapon with an axe-like blade at the top, used historically in warfare. In French, it is hallebar­de; in Polish, halabarda. Those were the sorts of objects that came through the door. When my father returned from Vienna, he realized my grandfather was an Orthodox Jew—not Hasidic, but traditionally observant as many were at that time—and he discovered a trove of paintings depicting Jesus and Mary, including Madonna-and-Child images. He recognized that we had, almost by accident, a collection. That is how we became art collectors.

My father always loved art. I have a photograph of my parents in a small apartment in Orléans, France, where they ultimately escaped communist-controlled territory. Behind them, you can see unframed paintings and the piano. This was part of my brother’s and my life, as it was theirs.

Art became something we pursued. When my father became comfortable again, he would sponsor an artist, and one of them painted my mother. His name was Oliver Foss; he was, at one point, well known. His brother was the composer Lukas Foss. Oliver later taught at UCLA, which is how I ended up at UCLA—because of him. That is where the art came from. In a way, we were forced into becoming collectors.

Jacobsen: In my interviews about the current war in Ukraine, certain myths fall away when one scratches the surface. Reconstruction, for example, does not wait for the last shot to be fired; it begins as soon as the first bombs land. Forms of violence—sexual violence among them—become weaponized in war, but they existed beforehand in less concentrated forms. With that analogy in mind, in European societies after World War I but before World War II, where did you observe antisemitism—perhaps in “lighter” forms, yet still persistent?

Ashkenazy: You are not touching on something new. Before the 1870s and 1880s, the phenomenon was commonly referred to as anti-Judaism. The term “antisemitism” was popularized in 1879, and, despite the literal root “Semite,” it came to be used almost exclusively for hatred of Jews.

Antisemitism has been a problem for roughly two millennia. Call it anti-Judaism if you prefer; in many respects, that is more accurate. Much of it arose in religious contexts. The antisemitism of the last 1,500 years, in my view, must be laid chiefly at the feet of the Catholic Church. There is no doubt in my mind. People could not always say so openly because they were afraid. Church-backed institutions exercised immense power, and persecution could be deadly. The Spanish Inquisition’s last execution occurred in 1826, and inquisitorial structures persisted into the nineteenth century in various forms. There were sermons, edicts, and pogroms inspired or tolerated by the clergy. We should place responsibility where it belongs, while acknowledging that intensity and forms of hostility varied by era and place.

It began as a religious contest and evolved into a centuries-long anti-Semitic movement. From there, it equated to hatred. Hatred is as old as humanity. In the Bible, Cain and Abel: one brother envied the other and killed him. That is a primitive, early example. Then came religious fanaticism, conquests, and the persecution of those who did not believe as others did—and you have antisemitism. It is as simple as: “My God is better than your God.”

Antisemitism is not something that needs formal instruction; once it starts, it can become instinctive, passed from generation to generation. It is hatred. It exists within us, waiting to be unleashed. Once authorized, the worst human instincts surface.

You asked about Ukraine today—this is what we see. When hatred is unleashed, you release our worst instincts. What do you get? Pain, rape, death, torture, hunger—everything. But you must ask: where did it start? Who promoted it?

Even today, the Pope refers to a political leader in the West Bank as a “messenger of goodwill.” Yet that man is a killer who calls for eliminating Jews, citing verses from the Qur’an. Who was Muhammad? In my view, an illiterate wanderer who created stories to escape an older wife, disappearing for weeks at a time. Nonsense. But people believed him. Of course, they believed him. His wife would have been embarrassed that her husband had multiple partners for years, so he became a prophet. And this legacy persists.

When we were children in the ghetto, we were told the last place to seek refuge was the Church. They would call the Gestapo. If our parents were gone, they might baptize us and keep us. There is a letter from Pius XII to a bishop in France, who asked if Jewish children should be returned after the war. The answer was: not if they were baptized. They belonged to the Church.

So, if you analyze it, the Church bears primary responsibility. As children, we thought, “Pretend we are brothers, and they will help us.” But they would not. The couple who saved us were decent, but we paid them. It was a business transaction. They were kind, yes, but their hearts were not the only factor—their pockets mattered, too.

Jacobsen: Have there been individuals within the Church who acted on a legitimate moral basis to counter this long history?

Ashkenazy: This is almost a joke. Out of hundreds of thousands of priests—today perhaps a million clergy and, with nuns, many more—the Church points to possibly two thousand who suffered, were killed, exiled, or tortured by the Nazis. Statistically, that is almost nothing. One percent would be ten thousand. Two thousand is two-tenths of one percent. And we do not even know why all of them were killed. Some may have been anti-Nazi for other reasons.

The Church plays this game: when accused of complicity, it points to Father So-and-So as an example. One man out of billions of Christians. It is ridiculous. Of course, some individuals could not live with what they saw, but who truly protested?

In 1941 or 1942, the government in Vichy France—Marshal Pétain, Laval, and others—asked the Vatican whether Nazi laws against Jews conflicted with Christian teaching. The answer from bishops and cardinals was that there was no conflict. That is documented. It was reported in the work of the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission. So, for the Pope to say he did not know what was going on is false. He knew.

Pope Pius XII was not neutral. He enabled Hitler. After his death, a book published by his close confidante revealed details. They knew everything. That is the reality we are left with.

And then, consider the refusal to recognize Israel. Israel declared independence in 1948. The Vatican, the last major central authority to do so, recognized Israel only in 1993—forty-five years later. That delay says everything. The Vatican had even complained to President Roosevelt about Jewish plans to establish themselves in Palestine, warning it would “sadden the Pope” if it were allowed.

If you study the record, you find blood on the Church’s hands from the beginning. In antiquity, Church leaders such as the bishop of Milan and John Chrysostom in Constantinople incited violence against Jews. Forced conversions and expulsions accompanied these campaigns. If you look carefully at history, the blame must be placed where it belongs.

And today, the Vatican has not fundamentally changed. During the Second World War, the Vatican did not aid the Jews; on the contrary, it was, in my view, Hitler’s partner. Yet when the Nazis needed assistance, the Vatican and allied channels were there. Adolf Eichmann, for example, was able to obtain a Red Cross passport and a Vatican-issued travel document, part of the so-called “ratlines” that helped Nazi fugitives escape Europe. Many fled to South America or the Middle East, where some later served as military advisers in wars against Israel.

If you look into it, what you find is shame. Shame on people. I say “people” because 2.6 to 2.8 billion are Christians, and 2.1 billion are Muslims—humanity’s shame.

So, if you ask about antisemitism and do not examine the role of the Church, you have missed the point. It is like blaming one shooter for killing two people in Washington without asking where the ideology that fueled him came from. Where did it come from? Either the Church or the state. There is nowhere else to look.

Have you ever had a serious discussion with an Islamist? With a Muslim? With a believing Muslim? Many defend their faith, but rarely in a serious way. Have you sat down with one?

Jacobsen: It depends. I have sat with Sufis and Quranists, some of whom are highly educated cosmologists. But Islamists, no. I have not sat with one, though I am sure that would be an educational experience. There is a particular psychology to fundamentalism.

Ashkenazy: I have read the Qur’an in three languages because I could not believe its absurdities. Since I do not read Arabic, I read it in Polish, French, and English. I keep copies next to my chair. One was abridged—still more nonsense. I have annotated another completely, pencil in hand. If you force yourself, and you are writing, you should do the same.

We already know what the Church thinks. I have friends—one is Casey Olderman, a prominent American actor. He and his wife have been my friends for a long time, even before she married him.

During the Second World War, did you hear that the Church lifted a hand to save Jews? Of course, here and there, a family saved ten Jews, especially children. But did you also hear that the Church actively helped Nazis? That is the part people leave out.

And today, what do we see? After the killing of 1,200 Jews and the taking of 250 hostages, no great sorrow came from the Vatican. Who takes hostages in the 21st century, other than criminals or warlords? Savages. We are dealing with savages.

No one stands when presented with secular codes—the Napoleonic Code, the Magna Carta, the Constitution. People may respect them in theory, but they do not rise to their feet. But when the Torah is carried in synagogue, every Jew rises, even if he does not know why. At the age of four, I was instructed to blow a kiss toward the Torah. This matters. We listen to the law.

Who knows? I will ask you a few questions, and you will see how ignorant we are about the subject, because either no one dares to speak, or no one cares. What is the most critical law in Judaism?

Jacobsen: No idea.

Ashkenazy: It is more important than all the other 613 laws put together. Charity. You see? It is a law. Want to test it? Go to the nearby church dressed as a homeless man and ask the priest for $500. He will almost certainly say he has a hole in his roof, that he is collecting money himself before the winter. He will apologize, but he cannot help you. That is the standard answer.

Now go to a synagogue. The rabbi will call an Ashkenazi congregant and say, “My discretionary fund only allows me to give $100. Can I count on you for the rest?” And how can you say no to the rabbi? So the man receives his $500. That is the standard.

When I was in business, this was a daily occurrence. If not from this rabbi, then from another. They never asked for themselves, always for others. Jews are different. Non-Jews have no idea who Jews really are. All they see is, “Look at how much money the Jews gave to the University of Victoria or Vancouver.” To them, it just means, “They are rich.”

We thought they were rich. We are not rich. We are obligated to be charitable. It is not philanthropy—it is law. Have you ever visited UCLA, a public university?

Jacobsen: I have been to UC Irvine and Long Beach, but not UCLA, as far as I recall.

Ashkenazy: Look at the donors. Look at the names. Many are now Smith. They used to be Silverberg, now they are Smith. You can tell.

There are about two percent Jews in California, and yet roughly half of the donors to public universities—not Jewish ones—are Jewish. I mention this because the subject comes up constantly: “Jews have money.” Yes, on average, Jews may have more than some Americans, but we are not the richest people. The richest are not Jews. Jews are singled out as wealthy, and even more so because they give, and giving is the law.

But no one wants to see it this way. That is antisemitism. Jews give not because they wish to, but because they must. And they provide not only to Jewish causes, but also to non-Jewish ones. The world says, “They have so much money they do not know what to do with it, so they give it away.” That is the explanation outsiders use. The truth is: it is endless. We cannot stop.

And when a Jew does something shameful—Madoff, Epstein—we are furious. I would have killed the man myself. He did not need to commit suicide, but by his crimes, he shamed an entire people. We remember these men, and we are not happy. It irks us. Why did he not think of how his actions would harm the Jewish people?

We are angrier at Madoff and Epstein than non-Jews are. We are ashamed. But only Jews know this. No one else is interested—because God forbid anyone admit that this could be a good side of Jews.

I will soon publish a book called Jew, Who Are You? Because Jews do not know who they are. If I ask you—because you are a good man, curious, someone who wants to leave something behind, which is commendable—you are mine, you are my Jew. You must understand that: by doing good.

But if I ask you, “Why are you? Who is a Jew for you? What makes a Jew a Jew?”—most Jews themselves do not know.

Jacobsen: I once spoke with a child of Holocaust survivors, Amos Guiora, as part of this book project. He served in the IDF and did significant work on enablers, abuse, and related contexts. He made a strong legal point—because he is a jurist. He explained that the Israeli Supreme Court once tried to define what a Jew is, and to this day, no solid definition exists. There is only an acknowledgement that there are multiple definitions that different groups consider legitimate. So it remains a rhetorical question, a good one. It connects to your point about self-identification. It is a similar quandary, a similar conundrum.

Ashkenazy: Well, let us speak about Muslims for a while. How many Muslims are there in the world? About 2.1 billion—second only to Christianity, which has about 2.6 billion. Their numbers are rising. How many Nobel Prize winners have come from 2 billion people?

Jacobsen: I know Abdus Salam won one alongside Steven Weinberg, but not many. When I looked at this with a Jewish colleague, we noted that Jews make up about 0.2 percent of the world’s population but have earned a disproportionately large share of Nobel Prizes. Per capita, the rate is roughly 100 times higher than expected. For Muslims, I do not know the number.

Ashkenazy: The Jews? Of course. Roughly 25 to 26 percent of all Nobel Prizes in the sciences have gone to Jews—about 240 or 250 laureates—while today the global Jewish population is only 15 or 16 million. Compare that with Muslims: four Nobel Prizes in science. One laureate shared his award with two Jewish colleagues; another married his colleague’swidow and raised her children as Jewish. So, four from 2 billion. I mention this not to belittle anyone, but because the contrast is so striking. It gets repeated often, like Einstein being the only Jewish name many people remember. But the pattern tells you something about who Jews are. If you look at that, you see their law, their main law, their most important law: charity.

Two thousand years ago, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (c. 37–100 CE) wrote about his people. In The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, he noted that Jewish families placed extraordinary emphasis on educating and raising their children. For him to make such an observation meant he was describing a practice already deeply rooted in his time.

So Jews have long valued education. A Jewish family would not be a Jewish family if it did not strive to do everything possible to educate its children.

Yesterday, I was watching the news, and someone was interviewed about the current situation at Harvard and the many Jewish presidents and deans throughout its history. At one point, he claimed, “Forty percent of our professors are Jews, and close to thirty percent of students are Jews.” That was an exaggeration. In reality, Jewish representation at elite American universities has historically been high compared to the population size. At certain times in the late 20th century, Jews made up roughly 20–25 percent of Harvard’s faculty and student body, though today it is closer to 10–15 percent.

So how do you reconcile this with antisemitism? Antisemitism does not appear on a fixed date, nor does it vanish on one. When I came here in 1957, Harvard and other Ivy League schools had only recently abolished numerus clausus quotas that restricted Jewish admissions—a system in place for decades. Being a Polish Jew, I did not even consider applying. I attended UCLA, which I loved, and I am grateful that I did. But when one of my children proved to be a good student, I made sure he went to Harvard and secured strong letters of recommendation from the head of the parents’ association, who was a close friend.

Is the name Theodore Bikel familiar to you? He died in 2015. Bikel was a celebrated actor, folk singer, and activist, famous for playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. He was also president of the American Jewish Congress at one point, though not of Harvard’s Parents’ Association—that may have been a different Theodore altogether. Still, Bikel is often remembered in this broader cultural context.

I did everything I could to educate my children. My second one could not get into UCLA because he had not studied appropriately in high school. I sent him to a remedial school for a year so he could qualify for UCLA. It was that important to me that my children had piano lessons and every educational opportunity possible.

I did not always travel first class, but I used the money for their education—whether it was to learn Spanish, French, or Chinese, or to send them abroad to study in Shanghai or Moscow.

And so did my friends. Among my Jewish peers, I was not unusual. It is striking today, as I spend more time with my generation, when we gather for music evenings or social occasions, how deeply this shared value of education and culture remains.

I know, for instance, two people who cannot wait to tell everyone that their children are at Princeton or Harvard, or that they study medicine, or that they are doctors or lawyers. It is amusing—they steer the conversation so they can boast.

And you do not find this in many societies. But you do in the Jewish world, because education is that important. You still see it today. Look at Israel: 7.5 million Jews, and their laboratories and universities are thriving.

Germany has three top universities, because before World War II, it was the intellectual center of the world. Germany, with a population of over 80 million, has three universities ranked among the world’s top 100. Israel, with 7.5 million Jews, also has three in the top 100.

I was not even looking for this. Someone once asked me to check Israeli universities for possible study abroad. I checked, and yes—three appear among the world’s top 100. Interesting. Apart from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, you do not find another Catholic university in the top 100. What a world.

Soon, I will publish Jew, Who Are You? I want Jews to appreciate who they are. But that is not what you are seeking here. You are looking for antisemitism. We can cover that in a separate interview if that interests you. Right now, I have many fires going, and I want to make sure none of the eggs in each pan get burned.

Jacobsen: Soft-boiled or hard-boiled? Different timing for each plate.

Ashkenazy: The question that could interest you is one I can speak to with some measure of knowledge, going back 60 or 70 years. I was part of a family and a milieu where these subjects were discussed among friends. It was not the central topic, but it came up often. So if you ask me questions, I can respond. If not, I will digress, as the mind sometimes insists.

I must set this in context: I am an individual. I cannot live in every era or in every country. Human academic pursuits are too varied and too deep for any one person. I can have conversations with experts.

Whether their expertise stems from lived experience, scholarship, or serving as representatives of institutions, they can speak accurately on behalf of their communities. By gathering these perspectives, I can provide a clear and concise delivery system in conversation, synoptic in presentation. That too has value, even if it is not strictly academic.

So tell me: what would you like me to speak about? Ask me the questions that interest you. If I know the answers, I will gladly tell you. 

Jacobsen: Suppose you were to examine the interactions between different groups—how they have treated Jewish friends, colleagues, co-citizens. The real question becomes: what sustains the view of Jews as “the other,” and what allows the transition to seeing Jews simply as human beings, with the same dignity, respect, and rights as everyone else? Following from that: what works, and what does not? 

Ashkenazy: It is an all-encompassing question because you are asking how people live together in a community without feeling separated. Well, education. My sense is that hate—antisemitism—is not instinctive. It is directed for a reason. Education can erase barriers to a great extent. But education is not one-directional. There is no prescription for “uneducation.” Education is what we have learned—not only in schools, which have existed in their modern form for only a few centuries, but long before that. For most of the last three or four thousand years, if you could afford education, it came from parents or from religion. Religion took over the role of education. It was about what they taught you.

And what did they teach? Often, to benefit the institution itself. Eventually, religion became a self-serving organization. That holds across traditions: among the most orthodox Protestants, among Muslims, certainly among Catholics, and also among Jews. If you are what is called a Haredi Jew—an ultra-Orthodox Jew—you are bound within a closed educational system. The same is true of ultra-Orthodox Muslims, who at the extreme may kill for their faith. The same occurred in Christianity, less so after the Protestant Reformation, but very much so in earlier Catholicism.

Now we have a large portion of the world divided by what people are taught, and of course, they end up believing it. You ask about antisemitism—well, look around. Competing religions, in their struggle for legitimacy, often decided that to win a place in the sun, they had to push out or eliminate the others. Each of the major Western religions has at times claimed to be the one true faith, insisting that all others must convert.

Hence, the attacks on Jews began some 1,600 to 1,800 years ago. The result is that a people who might number 150 to 200 million today instead number around 15 million, on what some describe as their “last legs.”

During Roman times, Jews were as many as 8 million out of a global population of perhaps 250 to 300 million—about 3 percent of the world’s people. They were more numerous than the Romans themselves, who counted roughly 5 million citizens.

In the post-Roman world, you see Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Romania. If you add those populations together, 5 million Romans gave rise to hundreds of millions of descendants. The Jews, on the other hand, kept shrinking because of continual persecution.

It is almost impossible to stop the persecution of Jews because it is not embedded in the traditions of others to defend them. Once one wave of persecution ends, another emerges—sometimes two, three, or four generations later. Look at the map: the Jews often do not seem to stand a chance. You can hardly find Israel on it.

Look at the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which proposed a Jewish state and an Arab state. Have you seen it? I encourage you to. It is as if someone tried to sell you a condominium with the kitchen on the sixth floor, the living room in the cellar, the desert as the bedroom, and hallways connecting them in broken pieces. That is what they offered the Jews.

If you study the map, you see that what was proposed was unacceptable to everyone. The Jewish state was divided into three noncontiguous areas, easily cut off and eliminated. That Israel survived is miraculous. No one expected it to. One glance at the map shows it was not defensible, not manageable, and barely governable.

And remember, this was thirty years after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 had promised British support for a Jewish homeland. Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism, had earlier travelled across Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century seeking support. He met emperors, sultans, popes, and politicians. None gave him what he wanted. The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was hospitable but refused land. The German Kaiser gave him nothing. The Pope told him bluntly, “You did not recognize our Lord; we cannot recognize you.” He added that if Jews ever had a state, the Church would try to proselytize them out of existence.

The English betrayed them. The French betrayed them. If you read the record, it is remarkable. From the beginning, the idea of a Jewish state was under siege. Since Herzl proposed it in the 1890s, Zionism faced hostility. And since Israel’s actual founding in 1948, the state has been besieged in one form or another.

The most prolonged siege in recorded history, incidentally, was not in Israel but in Ceuta, a Spanish city in North Africa, where Muslim forces pressed intermittently for centuries. Israel, however, lives in a state of siege to this day.

The most prolonged continuous siege in history lasted about 30 to 32 years. But the Jews have lived under siege, in a broader sense, for more than 150 years in the modern era. And then you read this nonsense—“They will recognize Palestine.” What is Palestine? Who are these people?

What do they teach their children? Can they form a country of their own? They are Egyptians, Syrians, Saudis, Iraqis, Lebanese—you name it. Do you know how large Libya is? About a hundred times the size of Israel or Gaza. And what is the population within a thousand kilometres? Around 7.4 million. So why can’t they relocate their brothers and sisters if safety is the issue? Instead, they fight among themselves and against the Jews and Egyptians alike.

And then, the money. Can you imagine a billion dollars a year being poured into this? You would think most of that money would come from their brothers and sisters. But no. Saudi Arabia gives about $100 million a year—hardly generous, considering that is roughly what the Saudi crown prince spends annually on his private jet. That is the only substantial Muslim contribution to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees.

Where is Yemen? Where is Sudan, where hundreds of children die every day? Of course, no Jews are involved there, so the world stays quiet. But with Jews, they are suddenly the villains—genocide, they say.

Can you imagine someone with a high school degree, never mind a PhD, calling this genocide? They are out of their minds. We know what genocide is. By misusing the word, they pollute its meaning. They risk making the Holocaust meaningless by cheapening the term “genocide.”

Imagine, for a second, that Iceland attacked Canada. How long would it take before Iceland was reduced to a parking lot? 

Jacosben: They do not even have an army

Ashkenazy: Yet, the response would be overwhelming. Or take Puerto Rico—if Puerto Rico attacked the United States, it would be a parking lot the next day.

But in the Middle East, in the 21st century, you have supposedly civilized people taking hostages—children, women, the elderly. That is gangster behaviour, kidnapping for ransom. Sometimes even gangsters fail at that. And yet this is tolerated? It is impossible to accept.

But the Jews—wow, the Jews are attacked. “They killed 50,000?” Well, let us see who these 50 or 60,000 are. First of all, they were forewarned that the area was unsafe and would be bombed or attacked. They could have moved.

Second, many of these people protect the gangsters, the Hamas fighters, if you will. They protect them and stay where they are because they want to. Their lives are so bleak that they prefer to die as martyrs, believing they will be promised heaven. That idea sustains them. And if they are desperate to feed their families, someone will take advantage of that desperation.

Jacobsen: So, within that political lens—people seeing the Jew as “the other” and trying to expand the moral circle to achieve more inclusive dignity, respect, and ethical consideration—what do you think?

Ashkenazy: This is one man’s opinion: I believe it is too late to seek genuine reconciliation—an intelligent reconciliation—between Jews, Christians, and certainly Muslims. For Muslims, reconciliation would mean Jews leaving Israel, surrendering. At best, they would allow Jews to survive as a minority under Muslim rule, as has often been the case in the last 800 years.

In my opinion, the differences are irreconcilable. That leads either to the disappearance of the Jews or to their confinement somewhere so they no longer exist as Jews. Because to the primitive mind, the Jew is unacceptable. The very idea of the Jew is an impasse.

Jean-Paul Sartre explained antisemitism as envy, which can bring you to kill the person you envy. That theme is in the Bible—Cain and Abel. Envy is at the root. A Jew is seen as a foreign body.

I know this from Poland. Even today, because I speak Polish fluently, most non-Jews I meet there say to me, “Your father was Jewish, but not your mother?” In other words, before they can befriend me, they want to make sure I am not fully Jewish. That happens invariably. So I know who I am dealing with.

I once invited a professor of history from a major university to dinner—twice—before I realized he was a learned individual with a degree. I joke when telling the story that you can get a PhD through your brain or through your ass. Just sit long enough, and you will get it. I know that for sure now.

But this is only part of my experience. It is not that I do not have phenomenal, devoted friends who are not religious and not Jewish in Poland. My closest friend there was a Frenchman from an intelligent family. His father was the Chief Justice of the commercial court.

That was his son. We were friends until he died. I even helped his daughter when she wanted to learn the hotel business. To this day, she is like a child of mine. So yes, there are close friendships. But as a group—for the vast, vast, vast majority—no.

It will not happen. There is a barrier. You cannot see it, you cannot even understand what the barrier is. Jews have a great deal to offer, and they are more than willing to share it. When I say they have a lot to offer, they are, to a great extent, the intelligentsia of the Western world.

Maxim Gorky, the Russian writer, once said that whenever he met an intellectual in Tsarist Russia, that person was almost always a Jew. He wrote it down. And he was not an antisemite. He understood Jews were not a danger but a benefit.

So, what is the preeminent profession of Jews? 

Jacobsen: I would say law or physics—teachers of law and physics.

Ashkenazy: Teachers. My daughter is a teacher. I am proud. She has a master’s degree from Columbia and a BA from UCLA. I am pleased because she is a teacher.

And if it were not for Jewish women teachers, women in America might have stayed hidden. Jewish women represented a significant share of women teachers in the United States during Truman’s time. The world does not know it. Why would they?

Did you know Columbus was Jewish? No? You see? Why are we hiding it? Jews always suspected he was Jewish, but we did not have certainty. Now we do. It is widely reported—though historians still debate it—that Columbus may have had converso ancestry, that he received financing from conversos, Jews who had converted under pressure, and that he took persecuted Jews with him. That is how perhaps a dozen or more ended up in the Americas. For centuries, Jewish financiers and merchants contributed to exploration and trade, though this rarely appears in schoolbooks.

And of course, people eventually agreed Jesus was Jewish. But not everyone accepts it. If he ever existed, he was a rabbi stirring trouble. In Poland, a lawyer once told me, “I can accept that Jesus was Jewish, but not Mary, his mother.” Because in Poland, Mary is considered the Queen of Poland. For him, it was unacceptable that she be Jewish. And this came from a highly educated man.

What do you do with this? So—this is what you have. We are at an impasse. Unless we surrender—which the world may one day insist upon—because for Jews, life is more important than our own country. It is. The most important thing is life. We have no paradise waiting for us after death. And certainly our wives would forbid us a harem, if you think about it. We do not have compensation in the afterlife.

So if you ask me, reconciliation is impossible. Maybe when there are only a couple of million Jews left, and they are all Orthodox, they will end up confined to Brooklyn or some small town in Israel. That will be the end of it. We are not wanted.

Would you believe that in 1938, at the Évian Conference, when Jews were being persecuted, outlawed, beaten, killed, and pursued, none of the 32 countries represented moved a finger to help? Not one.

Churchill could have called the New Zealand prime minister—who was part of the British Commonwealth—and suggested taking in 100,000 Jews. He did not. Roosevelt could have called any Latin American country and offered trade incentives in exchange for accepting Jewish refugees. He did not. On the contrary, in 1939, the ship MS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees, was turned away from American and Canadian ports. It was forced back to Europe under the shadow of warships in the North Atlantic. Many of its passengers later perished in the Holocaust.

So this is what we had then. Why would it have changed today?

And now the world blames Jews as perpetrators. Why is the world as a whole not saying: “We will come and force you, so-called Palestinians, to release the hostages—or face consequences”? Instead, they accuse Jews of cruelty while hostages are killed one by one.

Jacobsen: I have not heard that. No, the Jews should stop and then talk? Are they out of their minds? Just think about it. If you did this to Canada—yes, I repeat myself—are you kidding? If Iceland were to attack, you would throw everything you had at them. If you had no weapons, you would pummel them with rotten eggs. And the world would not say a word. Not a word.

You mentioned earlier that you do not see a rational reconciliation as possible anymore, particularly between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. What about a non-rational or emotional reconciliation—not only among the Abrahamic religions, but also with other major population centers in the world, like the Chinese? Or if the Vatican were to step in?

Ashkenazy: If the Vatican did what the King of Spain once did—intervened—it might reverse matters. But they will not. They need this hatred. The absurdity of religion itself prevents them from making such a move. The Vatican created and sustained antisemitism. I am writing a book on this irreconcilability. Almost finished.

And when I reread it for corrections, I cannot believe we Jews are still here. Literally everyone has tried to kill us. At one point, we almost disappeared. If it had not been for Poland, we might have vanished five, six, or seven hundred years ago. Poland gave us a respite. They had the intelligence to see Jews were useful. They invited us in and gave us two to three hundred years of relative peace. That pause allowed Jewish life to stabilize and endure.

Then, of course, the Russians began massacres again centuries later. And they have not stopped.

So when you read history, it is astonishing that we are still here. The King of England—Edward I—expelled the Jews in 1290. (You mentioned 1060, but it was 1290.) Before that, Jews had lived in France, in places like Poitiers, doing well. England invited them, and they contributed to the country’s wealth. Then, as always, they were turned on.

And then they threw us out. For centuries, Jews were barred. They were then accepted back in the mid-17th century, under Cromwell, mainly due to economic necessity.

Do you know that England has never formally repealed the Edict of Expulsion of 1290, issued under Edward I? On the books, technically, it was never rescinded. The King of Spain, however, in 1992—on the 500th anniversary of the Alhambra Decree of 1492—apologized to the Jews. He invited them back and offered Spanish citizenship to any Jew who could prove Sephardic ancestry. It was not easy to document, but they accepted applications.

That was an apology. Now, Jews in Israel will tell you there was also a curse. At the end of the 15th century, rabbis pronounced a curse on Spain for expelling the Jews. That curse, they say, was only lifted in 1992 with the apology. And after that, Spain began to recover economically. Few people talk about this. Jews are afraid to say it, and non-Jews would never give credit to Jews for Spain’s renewal. But if you look at Europe, Spain has been stagnant for centuries. Now it is doing better—paying its debts and moving forward. Coincidence? Maybe. But interesting.

Jacobsen: What about this dual-loyalty myth? The trope that Jews, wherever they are, somehow harbour loyalty both to their host state and to an outside state, meaning they cannot be trusted—whether they live in a place of respite like Poland or in a place of persecution like Weimar Germany?

Ashkenazy: I would invite you to look at the actual record. The most important law for Jews is charity. Did I mention that to you? Yes, charity.

Now compare: look at Catholic schools, universities, or a Catholic church. Or look at USC, which was initially a Protestant—specifically Methodist—school. Look at who the donors are. Jews send their children there. Proportionately, their children tend to serve in the army, often as officers, due to their education. This myth of dual loyalty ignores reality.

However, examine the facts and draw your own conclusion. Jews comprise approximately 1.8% of the American population. Find out how many serve in the police force or the army—you will see they outperform their numbers in service to the country.

They also support non-Jewish institutions to a considerable extent. Just look at them: they serve in the army, they serve in the police, they serve in politics. Even when they are wealthy, they give their time. They do not serve to enrich themselves. Jewish governors are not Trumps. They leave office poorer than when they entered. The idea of using public office to enrich themselves would not even cross their minds. Look at them—how devoted they are.

They teach. And yes, they are Zionists. They are Zionists, but they do not make much money in Israel. Israelis know that at any time, what has been happening for the last 1,600 years could happen again—in Canada or the United States—any time.

It almost happened in the United States. Hitler himself said he learned from the United States how to handle the Jews. That is what he said.

So when you ask if Jews are loyal, the answer is: they are faithful. They are not saints—you have the Maddows and you have the crazies. They do not physically kill anyone, but we are not proud of them.

Every time a Jew does something wrong, all Jews feel ashamed. It is a kind of collective guilt. We all apologize. But we are people. And we are highly educated—proportionally, among the most educated communities. Take the Fairfax District here in Los Angeles. It is mainly Jewish, middle-class, or lower-middle-class. Many people there live off their Social Security checks.

Yes, Jews have gained wealth, but contrary to myth, they are not the wealthiest group in America. Still, if you look at the 25 most prominent philanthropists in the United States, how many are Jews? Out of the top 25, about 12 are Jewish. And how many Muslims? Zero. You see the point.

And these Jewish philanthropists are not necessarily the wealthiest people, but they give the most. That is the difference.

So when you ask if Jews are loyal, I say yes. In Canada, for example, there are around 350,000 to 400,000 Jews—about one percent or less of the population. They are Canadians. They are loyal.

I have cousins in Canada. One of them is the Dean of Linguistics at Columbia. How many Jewish professors are there at the University of Toronto, one of the world’s top universities? I do not know, but it is worth checking. Given the small size of the Jewish population, their representation in academia is notable.

It would be an interesting exercise, even for you. Take McGill, take the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver—check how many Jewish professors they have. Remember, Jews are only about one percent of the Canadian population. See how many professors come from that one percent. See who the philanthropists are. That would tell you something about loyalty.

Look at the teachers. If my daughter had not inherited some income from her late mother, she could not have afforded to be a teacher in New York. Teaching does not pay. And yet, Jews still choose that path. That is loyalty. Because, believe me, if she had opened a liquor store, she would make much more money than teaching.

Jacobsen: What about the relationship with non-Abrahamic populations? For example, with Chinese or Indian communities?

Ashkenazy: Yes. I went to Shanghai. My son studied at Fudan University. He is fluent in Chinese—that is my Jewish pride, I must admit.

I visited Shanghai several times. During the war, the Chinese gave Jews free entry. The Jews ended up in Harbin, in northeast China. Harbin became a major center for Jewish refugees, mainly from Russia. And the Chinese treated them with respect.

My son was in a class of foreigners, and when his teacher—a woman—learned he was Jewish, she invited him to her home to meet her daughter. That is how much regard they had.

And did you know that at one point, a Polish Jew became a general in China? For twenty years, he played an important role, working closely with the leadership of the time. No one talks about it. In the 1910s and 1920s, he advised the Chinese government and influenced policy. China did relatively well under his guidance.

But these things are not advertised. You will not read it in the papers, whether from Jews or non-Jews. Just like with Columbus, people will not tell you the Jewish angle. But I am of another age, and I have to say it.

So, China—do you know who translated the Talmud into Chinese?

South Korea, they want to know. Many are becoming Christian or Catholic—about 30–35% of South Koreans now are—but they have also translated the Talmud. Why? Because they want to know why Jews are so smart.

South Koreans emerged from being colonized by Japan, pushed around by China, and exploited by the Western world. Now that they have built their own power, they look around and ask, “What do Jews read? What makes them so successful?” Their ambassador explained: “We figured Jews read the Talmud, so we’d better read it too.”

Almost no one knows this. Maybe a few thousand people care enough to know. But Jews themselves cannot even say it openly. If they did, they would be accused of bragging. Jews are expected to remain modest.

I once asked a friend of mine to read Cleveland’s—well, never mind that. Think about India. What about India? There is no antisemitism there. Few Jews live in India, but the Muslim world around them—Pakistanis and others—were taught to hate Jews. What does an Afghan know about Jews? Nothing. Jews left Afghanistan long ago. In Muslim countries, there are practically no Jews left. And you will not find a single Muslim university that ranks among the world’s best.

Do you know the two oldest universities in the world, known as universities? Let me tell you. You should pay me five cents per lesson. That is what education is for—teaching, including the learning of charity.

The University of Bologna, in Italy, dates to the 12th century. Then there is Oxford, founded in the 12th or 13th century. But earlier than these, two universities in the Muslim world are still operating. One is al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, founded in the 9th century. The other is al-Zaytuna in Tunis, also from the 9th or 10th century. They are the oldest still operating. But in truth, their diplomas do not carry the same weight internationally. They are religious institutions, not centers of modern science.

Now, compare that with India. In the 5th century, India had one of the greatest learning institutions in the world: Nalanda.

Nalanda was truly a depository of some of the most precious documents of its time—arguably more precious than the Library of Alexandria. It was destroyed in the 12th century during a Muslim invasion. They burned it to the ground, along with other centers of learning.

Muslims did not exist in the 5th century, when Nalanda was established. That was in Gupta India. The destruction happened much later, around 1193, when Bakhtiyar Khilji invaded. Nalanda Mahavihara was wiped out. Today, India has created a new institution called Nalanda University, but it is not the same. Few people know this history.

I once told you—I read the Qur’an in three different languages. Yes, Jews do that. (Laughing)

So if you ask me, the cycle is the same: temporary admiration, then fear, then hatred and jealousy. That is what Jews encounter. People do not know who Jews are. I just finished a book—it should be printed by the end of the month, though it has been delayed. It is titled Jew, Who Are You? In it, I explain what a Jew is, what he has been taught for 3,000 years. I felt compelled to write it because Jews themselves do not know who they are, and non-Jews certainly do not.

Jacobsen: And in that light, what sustains the hatred?

Ashkenazy: Hatred continues. Sometimes there is temporary relief—“today’s Jews are not responsible.” But then the old accusations return. Jewish law is obvious: you cannot accuse the children of the crimes of their parents. Yet Jews are blamed for killing Jesus Christ across a hundred generations. It is absurd.

Look around—peasants in different countries raise their children from the age of six to work the fields, ensuring the inheritance and feeding the family. They are good farmers. But do not ask them to write a book. That is not their world.

The Jews, by contrast, uniquely—though not entirely uniquely—educated their heirs. European aristocrats did something similar: they had preceptors, music teachers, and dance teachers for their heirs. But for Jews, the education of children was central across the whole people, not just the elite.

Not necessarily all the children—just the heirs, so that the aristocracy could maintain governance. That tradition goes back thousands of years. But it was limited to aristocrats. Girls did not count. At best, they learned dance or manners.

The aristocrats taught their sons to inherit power—kings, czars, noble houses. But Jews, by contrast, are educated broadly. Józef Piłsudski, the general and president of Poland after World War I, once wrote that Jews were closest to the aristocracy precisely because they were educated. He valued the Jewish contribution and was one of the few Polish leaders to support the Jewish community openly.

Jacobsen: Yes, and alongside the aristocracy, the Church also had a role in education. It partnered with rulers to reinforce authority. Who, then, do you think has been most instrumental in combating antisemitism—and who in advancing it?

Ashkenazy: Certainly, the religions have been central—both in promoting antisemitism and in possessing the power to end it, if they would tell the truth. Perhaps the Vatican, facing Islam’s growing strength, might someday change. But Islam discourages critical education. In many places, children are taught only to recite the Qur’an by heart, drilled by semi-literate clergy.

And look at Christianity. Remember Martin Luther? At first, he hoped Jews would convert. When they did not, he turned to hatred, urging persecution. That is where Protestant antisemitism began. Few mention it, but it is written plainly in his words.

Yet, the Protestant Reformation also gave rise to some of the world’s most significant centers of learning. Look at Europe and the United States: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge. These are Protestant institutions, or at least emerged from Protestant traditions. Protestantism aligned with knowledge rather than treating it as an enemy. That was progress.

The Catholic and Muslim institutions, by comparison, did not keep pace in higher learning. They remained tied to dogma rather than opening themselves to science.

One has to recognize this: the Vatican holds the key. Everyone else can try, but there are 2.6 billion Christians worldwide. Despite the Reformation, Protestants and Orthodox Christians still retain a respect for the Vatican. If the Vatican gave the signal, perhaps 1.6 billion Catholics and another billion Christians would follow. Tell the truth—do not invent stories. But knowledge is dangerous to both Islam and Christianity.

The Jews, however, have no such conflict. Whether the stories of God, Moses, and Sinai are legend or history, they are beautiful. Moses may not have been related to the Pharaohs, but someone like him surely existed. And monotheism—whether fact or legend—is meaningful. If you tell a rabbi you are an atheist, he will say, “That’s all right, you can still be a Jew.” You cannot be an atheist Catholic or Muslim, but you can be a secular Jew. Jewish identity is not contingent on belief.

The essence is education. From generation to generation, parents teach their children at all costs. No Jew would argue against it—except perhaps the ultra-Orthodox, who resist secular learning. But even there, children slip into the modern world through the internet.

Jacobsen: I’d like to turn to specific historical cases. Do you have commentary on the expulsion from England in 1290, or from Spain in 1492, or on the Soviet anti-cosmopolitan campaigns?

Ashkenazy: England, yes. The expulsion was in 1290 under King Edward I. It was economic. The monarchy and the Church were eager to acquire Jewish wealth. They decided that immediate confiscation was more important than long-term prosperity. Through decree, the Jews’ assets were seized. For 400 years, England stagnated financially—struggling with France, fighting on the continent and off it.

Cromwell, centuries later, realized that Dutch Jews had transformed Holland into a financial powerhouse through trade and finance, particularly with the Dutch East India Company. He saw the potential. So despite English antisemitism, he readmitted Jews in the mid-17th century—not out of love, but pragmatism. He knew Jews were good for finance and growth.

Jacobsen: And Spain in 1492?

Ashkenazy: That was Vatican-driven. First came the medieval Inquisition, which was not only against Jews but also against Christian groups the Church considered heretical—like the Cathars in southern France. They were extraordinary: women were equal, they lived communally, and they respected Jews. The Church fought them for 200 years, finally wiping them out. In a single day, a French prince’s army killed some 30,000.

Then came the Spanish Inquisition at the end of the 15th century, aimed first at conversos—Marranos, Jewish converts suspected of secretly practicing Judaism. And finally, in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued the Edict of Expulsion under pressure from the Church. That was the end of Spanish Jewry’s Golden Age.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Severyn.

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