Editing Israel Shahak (section)

==Critical reception==
As a public intellectual, Israel Shahak was accused of fabricating the incidents he reported, of [[Victim blaming|blaming the victim]], of distorting the [[normative]] meaning of Jewish religious texts, and of misrepresenting Jewish belief and law.{{sfn|Jakobovits|1966}} Paul Bogdanor claimed that Shahak "regaled his audience with a stream of outrageous libels, ludicrous fabrications, and transparent hoaxes. As each successive allegation was exposed and discredited, he would simply proceed to a new invention."{{sfn|Bogdanor|2006|p=119}} Ari Alexander, co-founder of the Children of Abraham Organization for Jewish–Islamic dialogue, said that, despite the use of Shahak's works by neo-Nazis and anti-Israel organisations in Arab countries:

<blockquote>The texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak's sporadic use of footnotes makes it difficult to check all of them). Often, the interpretation [by Shahak] of these texts is debatable, and their prominence in Judaism negligible, but, nonetheless, they are part of Jewish tradition, and, therefore, cannot be ignored.{{sfn|Alexander}}</blockquote>

Accusations of being an antisemite were among the responses to Shahak's works about [[Judaism]] and the [[Talmud]].{{sfn|Cohn|1994|pp=28–29}} In that vein, in ''The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics'', the [[Anti-Defamation League]] (ADL) listed Shahak as one of four authors of antisemitic polemics, and Bogdanor said that in his works, Shahak was "recycling Soviet anti-Semitic propaganda".{{sfn|Bogdanor|2006|p=122}} [[Werner Cohn]] said, "without question, he is the world's most conspicuous Jewish anti-Semite.... Like the Nazis before him, Shahak specialized in defaming the Talmud. In fact, he has made it his life's work to popularize the anti–Talmud ruminations of the eighteenth-century German anti-Semite, [[Johann Andreas Eisenmenger|Johann Eisenmenger]]".{{sfn|Cohn|1995|p=18}} [[Emanuele Ottolenghi]], reviewing Alexander and Bogdanor's book, argued that Jews such as Shahak, [[George Steiner]], [[Tanya Reinhart]], [[Tony Judt]], [[Avi Shlaim]], [[Seymour Hersh]] and [[Daniel Boyarin]] act as enablers for antisemites, because the rhetoric of antisemitic Jews plays a "crucial role... in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism." In his opinion, "Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language, and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism, for making the same arguments?... The mechanism through which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable once a Jew endorses it is not limited to Israel's new historians.... Israel Shahak made the comparison between Israel and Nazism respectable — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the [[blood libel]]".{{sfn|Ottolenghi|2006}}

The journalist Dan Rickman argues that

<blockquote>Shahak ignores [the dialectical nature and humanist] aspects of the sources. Further, through overstating his case, his analysis fits into anti-Semitic traditions of such accusations against the Talmud. Copies of the Talmud have been burned, and the text of the Talmud that is studied today is still heavily censored. Shahak's view that chauvinism in these sources in any way 'justifies' anti-Semitism is also very troubling. However, I do believe that his trenchant critique of Judaism is, tragically, not without some force. The contemporary situation is that we do see some modern Orthodox rabbis utilise xenophobic sources in modern rulings. Orthodox rabbis in organisations such as [[Rabbis for Human Rights]] are sadly the exception rather than the rule.{{sfn|Rickman|2009}}</blockquote>