Barbra Streisand says she will address anti-Semitism in memoir

US singer says anti-Jewish hatred ‘one of the most vexing, terrifying issues of our times’

By Gabe Friedman 30 July 2019, 9:24 am

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Presenter Barbra Streisand speaks onstage during the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 7, 2018, in Beverly Hills, California. (Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via JTA)

JTA — Barbra Streisand has been “writing a lot” about modern anti-Semitism in her memoir, which she has been working on for years.

“It’s an extremely complex topic, and there’s not enough room in this interview to adequately cover it,” the US show business icon said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune last week.

“So I’ll just say, as [a] person who is proud of my Jewish heritage, it’s deeply concerning. It’s undeniable that anti-Semitism is one of the most vexing, terrifying issues of our times.”

She continued, “But this anger and hatred has actually been here for 3,500 years. It just reveals itself in different ways through the millennia, but it’s ever-present. Jews have always been the scapegoats, blamed for the ills of the world.”

Viking Books announced in 2015 that Streisand’s memoir would come out in 2017, but she hadn’t turned in a rough draft as of 2018.

“It will come out when it comes out,” a Viking source told the New York Post last year. “The support for her autobiography is undiminished. It’s worth waiting for.”