Antisemitism and Anti-Science: A Deadly Overlap and the Case of the Missing Hyphen
Rabbi Jack Shlachter
If there is any town in which anti-science is anathema, it is Los Alamos. Anti-science involves the “rejection of mainstream scientific views and methods or their replacement with unproven or deliberately misleading theories, often for nefarious and political gains” according to Professor Peter Hotez. It has appeared in the guise of climate change denial-ism and anti-immunization, and it can be seen historically in opposition to advances in psychology and physics, most notably in the cases of Freud and Einstein respectively; both were marginalized by the Nazis. As a minority in virtually every community outside of Israel, Jews have often been blamed for many societal problems including bubonic plague in the 14th century and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In this talk, we’ll examine the convergence of antisemitism and anti-science in the 21st century and explore approaches to combating both of these threats to democratic values and human lives.
Jack Shlachter is a physicist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for over thirty years with much briefer stints at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, the Atomic Energy Agency, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, the latter two based in Vienna, Austria. In parallel, Jack was ordained as a rabbi in 1995. He was the rabbi and spiritual leader for the Jewish congregation in Los Alamos for many years, was the rabbi in Center Moriches, NY, during his years at Brookhaven, and now serves as rabbi of HaMakom, a congregation in Santa Fe, NM as well as the Los Alamos Jewish Center. He has also provided itinerant rabbinic support to far-flung Jewish communities including those in Vienna, Austria, and Beijing, China.
