Antisemitism

"Exhilarating . . . a scholarly tour de force. The story Nirenberg has to tell is not over."--Adam Kirsch, Tablet This incisive history upends the complacency that confines anti-Judaism to the ideological extremes in the Western tradition. With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West. Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world. The thrust of this tradition construes Judaism as an opposition, a danger often from within, to be criticized, attacked, and eliminated. The intersections of these ideas with the world of power--the Roman destruction of the Second Temple, the Spanish Inquisition, the German Holocaust--are well known. The ways of thought underlying these tragedies can be found at the very foundation of Western history.

Antisemitism: A History offers a readable overview of a daunting topic, describing and analyzing the hatred that Jews have faced from ancient times to the present. The essays contained in this volume provide an ideal introduction to the history and nature of antisemitism, stressing readability, balance, and thematic coherence, while trying to gain some distance from the polemics and apologetics that so often cloud the subject. Chapters have been written by leading scholars in the field and take into account the most important new developments in their areas of expertise. Collectively, the chapters cover the whole history of antisemitism, from the ancient Mediterranean and the pre-Christian era, through the Medieval and Early Modern periods, to the Enlightenment and beyond. The later chapters focus on the history of antisemitism by region, looking at France, the English-speaking world, Russia and the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Nazi Germany, with contributions too on the phenomenon in the Arab world, both before and after the foundation of Israel. Contributors grapple with the use and abuse of the term 'antisemitism', which was first coined in the mid-nineteenth century but which has since gathered a range of obscure connotations and confusingly different definitions, often applied retrospectively to historically distant periods and vastly dissimilar phenomena. Of course, as this book shows, hostility to Jews dates to biblical periods, but the nature of that hostility and the many purposes to which it has been put have varied over time and often been mixed with admiration - a situation which continues in the twenty-first century.

Robert S. Wistrich examines the long and ugly history of anti-Semitism, from the first recorded pogrom in 38 BCE to its shocking and widespread resurgence in the present day. --from publisher description

This book offers a history anti-Jewish animosity from antiquity to the present; a discussion of the difficulties of defining antisemitism - arguably one of the most contentious issues in the contemporary discourse on the subject - and three case studies illustrating the diverse and wide-ranging nature of the phenomenon in the present day, including examples from the political far right, the political hard left, and radical Islamism.

In this provocative book, Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer analyze the lies, misperceptions, and myths about Jews and Judaism that anti-semites have propagated throughout the centuries. Beginning with antiquity, and continuing into the present day, the authors explore the irrational fabrications that have led to numerous acts of violence and hatred against Jews. The book examines ancient and medieval myths central to the history of anti-semitism: Jews as 'Christ-killers', instruments of Satan, and ritual murderers of Christian children. It also explores the scapegoating of Jews in the modern world as conspirators bent on world domination; extortionists who manufactured the Holocaust as a hoax designed to gain reparation payments from Germany; and the leaders of the slave trade that put Africa in chains. No other book has focused its attention exclusively on a thematic discussion of historic and contemporary anti-semitic myths, covering such an expansive scope of time, and allowing for such a painstaking level of exemplification. Anti-semitism is an essential book that will serve as a corrective to bigotry, stereotype, and historical distortion.

In the summer of 2006, the author received a message that read, Love the Nazis, and KILL THE JEWS DEAD. And that was the trigger that launched internationally known scholar Falk into work on this book. Anti-Semitism has once again become a worldwide phenomenon, growing largely during the last decade of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. Among the spurs for this are the migration of Muslim populations and the ongoing Israeli-Arab wars. In this far-reaching and comprehensive volume, Falk delves deeply into the current events, history, and literature on anti-Semitism, integrating insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and political science. The result is an absorbing exploration of one of the oldest scourges of humanity, spotlighting the irrational and unconscious causes of anti-Semitism. In the summer of 2006, the author received a message that read, Love the Nazis, and KILL THE JEWS DEAD. And that was the trigger that launched internationally known scholar Avner Falk into work on this book. Anti-Semitism has once again become a worldwide phenomenon, growing largely during the last decade of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first. Among the spurs for this are migration of Muslim populations and the ongoing Israeli-Arab wars. In this far-reaching and comprehensive volume, Falk delves deeply into the current events, history and literature on anti-Semitism, integrating insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and political science. The result is an absorbing exploration of one of the oldest scourges of humanity, spotlighting the irrational and unconscious causes of anti-Semitism. This book also features chapters on the psychodynamics of racism, fascism, Nazism, and the dark, tragic, and unconscious processes, both individual and collective, that led to the Shoah. Holocaust denial and its psychological motives, as well as insights into the physical and psychological survival strategies of Holocaust survivors, are explored in depth. There are also chapters on scientific anti-Semitism including eugenics.

One picture may save a thousand words but we will never know how many hundreds of thousands of lives were not saved, how many millions of lives were not even lived, because of the climate of fear and of hate prompted and promoted by the anti-Semitic pictures of Satanic horned Jews.  From the 12th to the 21st century, these cartoons, simplifying and intensifying fears and hatreds, were powerful tools in the spread of anti-Semitism. These images first appeared in medieval Christianity, reappeared in 19th and 20th century Racialism, Fascism and Marxism, and today are part of the visual images of contemporary Islam; four absolutely different belief systems with different life cycles all sharing the exact same indelible meme with its exact same visual expression targeting the exact same expiatory victim. For a thousand years, the power of this fabrication has erased existential realities and, with devastating consequences, the fear generated by the image of the demonised Jew has been reflected onto the real Jew. Some of the cartoons in this book may shock our sensibilities; to many they are a vital shared social truth, to others a vile experienced reality.

"The 7 Deadly Myths traces antisemitism from its earliest origins to the present day and uncovers the dangerous conspiracy theories that have corrupted reasoning and led people and nations to diabolical acts. Exploring some of the most significant events in history and uncovering little-known villains, this book answers the questions of how antisemitism takes hold, how it is transmitted and how it inspires violence to the present day.

This book articulates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of Jew hatred as a metaphysical aspect of the human soul. Proceeding from the Jewish thinking that the anti-Semites oppose, David Patterson argues that anti-Semitism arises from the most ancient of temptations, the temptation to be as God, and thus to flee from an absolute accountability to and for the other human being.