ABSTRACT
One of the most puzzling aspects of the growth of anti-Semitism in the United States has always consisted in the difficulty of locating, or isolating, the tradition which has sanctioned its use. A study of American political institutions, therefore, would lead one to the conclusion, once expressed by Bernard Drachman, that "anti-semitism in America should be like the snakes of Ireland: there shouldn't be any". To seek out the tradition that sanctions the "private and communal" variety of anti-Semitism in America, therefore, one must turn from the official record to the unofficial; from the real tradition to its mythical counterpart. Germany, like America, appeared to have repudiated its classic tradition. Today the split in our cultural tradition, occasioned by the rise of industrial capitalism, has become wide that one can, by a number of simple tests, measure the extent of the rift. It is the rift in our cultural tradition that accounts for the omnipresent ironies in contemporary American life.
