Dan Simmons, the science fiction writer, was asked to contribute to an anthology about the year 3000. He wondered what commonality would exist between the years 2000 and 3000. After all, a visitor from the year 1000 would find modern life almost completely incomprehensible. Then it came to him: The one certain continuity between 2000 and 3000 is that in the latter year someone somewhere would be trying to kill the Jews.

However, the unspoken assumption, to which I subscribe, is that there would be Jews to try to kill. I sometimes take comfort from the realization that in five hundred years the only people who will remember Yasser Arafat, for example, will be Jews, because he will be another on a long, long list, those who “in every generation” tried to kill us.