It was just an e-mail: not very long, written hurriedly, and copied to a dozen friends. But, given that it had been sent this past week from a young Canadian traveling in Israel – given that it was sent just hours after two dozen Jews were murdered in Tel Aviv – the e-mail had greater significance than most.

“Not to worry – I am OK,” wrote the young woman, a political assistant to a member of Ontario’s legislature. “It is hard here, I tell you. As I write this, I really have tears in my eyes. Can you imagine, living life never knowing what might happen, what crazy person might decide to blow himself up…in a blast that will kill maybe you and many others? Brothers, friends, people you have never had the chance to meet yet? Can you imagine?

“It could have been me.”

The e-mail was chilling, but not just for the words that made it up. It was chilling because it vividly made real something that, for most of us, is a far-away abstraction – a rote recitation of body counts in the morning papers, a glimpse of ambulances flashing by on the nightly news. It was real: Jews being slaughtered, daily, for the crime of being Jews. Without pause, without mercy. Anti-Semitism, the Beast, is awake once more.

To Jews and those others who still pay attention, of course, the Beast was never fully asleep. In every country, in every region, anti-Semitism usually manifests itself in the usual ways: swastikas scrawled on the doors of synagogues, Orthodox children being beaten up, neo-Nazis denying the Holocaust on the Internet. But in the past year or so, there has been a perceptible change. The virus has become much more virulent; it has mutated.

The traditional allies of anti-Semitism are economic dislocation, conflicts in the Middle East, ignorance. These pretexts for hate have lately been joined by some new ones: the second Intifada, right wing political populism, anti-globalization conspiracy theorists, September 11-related tensions, and even the intellectualization of Jew hatred on university campuses. You have been hearing more about anti-Semitism, these days, for the simple reason that there is more of it.

The Beast walks Canada, too, and not simply because an editorialist at the Jerusalem Post said so. In a widely-reported opinion piece published at Christmas, the Post declared: “With the rising tide of anti-Jewish hostility in Europe getting so much attention in recent months, it is somewhat surprising that an equally worrisome trend across the Atlantic has gone largely unnoticed – mounting anti-Semitism in Canada.” The editorial probably exaggerated a little. But not by much.

Proof of this is found in an interim audit of anti-Semitic incidents recently released by B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights – “interim” because the League was alarmed enough to report, mid-way through 2002, about burgeoning anti-Semitism in Canada. February: a Montreal theatre running a film with “Jewish content” firebombed. April: a Saskatoon synagogue firebombed. May: a pipe bomb tossed at Quebec City’s only remaining synagogue. June: threats of violence mailed to a score of Jewish organizations – and, in some cases, envelopes filled with an ominous white powder. In all, 197 anti-Semitic incidents reported between January and June 2002, nearly double the figure from the same period in 2001.

Some of the anti-Semitism seeping out the sewers was, to be sure, the sort of intolerance typically practiced by Canada’s far right – and therefore nothing dramatically new. And the far right hate was not restricted to Jews alone, either: in the wake of September 11, Canadian Muslims have also been placed near the top of the haters’ victim list.

But in Canada, and other Western democracies, anti-Semitism has received an unexpected boost from an unlikely source: the ideological Left. In 1967, no less than Martin Luther King wrote that “anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so.” That has not stopped academics and supposed thinkers from dressing up Jew hatred in “anti-Zionist” rhetoric. Even Canadian stalwarts like lawyer Clayton Ruby and union leader Jeff Rose have written that anti-Semitism has grown to be “a powerful force” in parts of Canada’s Left.

As the Jerusalem Post noted, “anti-Zionist” agitation has captured headlines on a number of Canadian campuses, where progressive thought is supposed to trump reactionary causes. It was most vividly on display at Concordia University in September 2002, when an attempted speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu degenerated into a riot.

Anti-Semitic themes have permeated other parts of the Left, as well. Opponents of globalization have permitted odious anti-Semitic screeds – such as the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which attempts to supply “proof” of an international Jewish conspiracy – to be posted on well-used anti-trade news services such as www.indymedia.org. The problem is not unique to Canada. Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers has warned that some academics are “taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.”

Meanwhile, traditional allies of the Jewish community from within the notional Left – including African-Americans, unions, aboriginals and environmentalists – have embraced (or shown profound indifference to) the new global anti-Semitism. From the Nation of Islam, to the American Indian Movement (to Canadian aboriginal leaders like David Ahenakew), to the Green Party – all have had well-documented dalliances with anti-Semitism that disingenuously refers to itself as “anti-Zionism.”

It hardly bears mentioning that not every criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. And nor is anti-Semitism as prevalent now as it was in medieval England, or 16th century Spain, or 20th century Germany. But, as noted by the young friend traveling in Israel (and now safely home): Jews – and therefore all of us – live in dangerous times.

“Only together are we strong,” she wrote in her e-mail, providing the best ending of all. “Only together can we prevail against terrorism.”

As e-mails go, it was one to remember.