Your email is not valid
Recipient's email is not valid
Submit Close

Your email has been sent.

Click here to send another

Books

A World Without Jews

An exhilarating new intellectual history argues that anti-Judaism is at the heart of Western culture

By Adam Kirsch|February 13, 2013 7:00 AM|105comments
Print Email
A mosaic featuring St Paul is displayed over the chapel of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls on December 12, 2006 in Rome, Italy. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)
Related Content

Faustian Bargain

The singular horror of the Holocaust is being lost in exchange for enshrining rare moments of inspiration and universal narratives of suffering
By Ron Rosenbaum

Our Abraham, Not Theirs

Inheriting Abraham, by Jon Levenson, expertly dismantles the idea of the patriarch as the father of three religions
By David P. Goldman

The title of David Nirenberg’s new book, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, uses a term pointedly different from the one we are used to. The hatred and oppression of Jews has been known since the late 19th century as anti-Semitism—a label, it is worth remembering, originally worn with pride by German Jew-haters. What is the difference, then, between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism? The answer, as it unfolds in Nirenberg’s scholarly tour de force, could be summarized this way: Anti-Semitism needs actual Jews to persecute; anti-Judaism can flourish perfectly well without them, since its target is not a group of people but an idea.

Nirenberg’s thesis is that this idea of Judaism, which bears only a passing resemblance to Judaism as practiced and lived by Jews, has been at the very center of Western civilization since the beginning. From Ptolemaic Egypt to early Christianity, from the Catholic Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation, from the Enlightenment to fascism, whenever the West has wanted to define everything it is not—when it wants to put a name to its deepest fears and aversions—Judaism has been the name that came most easily to hand. “Anti-Judaism,” Nirenberg summarizes, “should not be understood as some archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought. It was rather one of the basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.”

This is a pretty depressing conclusion, especially for Jews destined to live inside that edifice; but the intellectual journey Nirenberg takes to get there is exhilarating. Each chapter of “Anti-Judaism” is devoted to an era in Western history and the particular kinds of anti-Judaism it fostered. Few if any of these moments are new discoveries; indeed, Nirenberg’s whole argument is that certain types of anti-Judaism are so central to Western culture that we take them for granted. What Nirenberg has done is to connect these varieties of anti-Judaism into a convincing narrative, working with original sources to draw out the full implications of seminal anti-Jewish writings.

The main reason why Judaism, and therefore anti-Judaism, have been so central to Western culture is, of course, Christianity. But Nirenberg’s first chapter shows that some persistent anti-Jewish tropes predate Jesus by hundreds of years. The Greek historian Hecataeus of Abdera, writing around 320 BCE, recorded an Egyptian tradition that inverts the familiar Exodus story. In this version, the Hebrews did not escape from Egypt but were expelled as an undesirable element, “strangers dwelling in their midst and practicing different rites.” These exiles settled in Judea under the leadership of Moses, who instituted for them “an unsocial and intolerant mode of life.” Already, Nirenberg observes, we can detect “what would become a fundamental concept of anti-Judaism—Jewish misanthropy.” This element was emphasized by a somewhat later writer, an Egyptian priest named Manetho, who described the Exodus as the revolt of an impious group of “lepers and other unclean people.”

As he will do throughout the book, Nirenberg describes these anti-Jewish texts not in a spirit of outrage or condemnation, but rather of inquiry. The question they raise is not whether the ancient Israelites were “really” lepers, but rather, why later Egyptian writers claimed they were. What sort of intellectual work did anti-Judaism perform in this particular culture? To answer the question, Nirenberg examines the deep history of Egypt, showing how ruptures caused by foreign invasion and religious innovation came to be associated with the Jews. Then he discusses the politics of Hellenistic Egypt, in which a large Jewish population was sandwiched uneasily between the Greek elite and the Egyptian masses. In a pattern that would be often repeated, this middle position left the Jews open to hostility from both sides, which would erupt into frequent riots and massacres. In the long term, Nirenberg writes, “the characteristics of misanthropy, impiety, lawlessness, and universal enmity that ancient Egypt assigned to Moses and his people would remain available to later millennia: a tradition made venerable by antiquity, to be forgotten, rediscovered, and put to new uses by later generations of apologists and historians.”

With his chapters on Saint Paul and the early church, Nirenberg begins to navigate the headwaters of European anti-Judaism. Paul, whose epistles instructed small Christian communities in the Near East on points of behavior and doctrine, was writing at a time when Christianity was still primarily a Jewish movement. In his desire to emphasize the newness of his faith, and the rupture with Judaism that Jesus Christ represented, he cast the two religions as a series of oppositions. Where Jews read scripture according to the “letter,” the literal meaning, Christians read it according to the “spirit,” as an allegory predicting the coming of Christ. Likewise, where Jews obeyed traditional laws, Christians were liberated from them by faith in Christ—which explained why Gentile converts to Christianity did not need to follow Jewish practices like circumcision. To “Judaize,” to use a word Paul coined, meant to be a prisoner of this world, to believe in the visible rather than the invisible, the superficial appearance rather than the true meaning, law rather than love. More than a theological error, Judaism was an error in perception and cognition, a fundamentally wrong way of being in the world.

The problem, as Nirenberg argues in the richest sections of his book, is that this is an error to which Christians themselves are highly prone. Paul and the early Christians lived in the expectation of the imminent end of the world, the return of Christ, and the establishment of the new Jerusalem. As the end kept on not coming, it became necessary to construct a Christian way of living in this world. But this meant that Christians would have need of law and letter, too, that they would need to “Judaize” to some degree.

Continue reading: The power of ‘Judaism’

1 2View as single page

Adam Kirsch is a contributing editor for Tablet Magazine and the author of Benjamin Disraeli, a biography in the Nextbook Press Jewish Encounters book series.
More In:
  • Cynthia Morris

    Jew-baiting alert: This book review will serve as red meat in attracting the population of rabid “anti-Judaists” that frequent Tablet who will argue that anti-Judaism has been a natural outgrowth of the “fact” that throughout history, Jews have been unsocial, intolerant, obsessed with money and commerce, and enablers of feudal oppression.

  • CygnusA81

    Sad observation, but most likely true.

  • CygnusA81

    “When the Puritan revolutionaries in the English
    Civil War thought about the ideal constitution for the state, they
    looked to the ancient Israelite commonwealth as described in Judges and
    Kings.”

    This could help explain why the hard-left hates the United States of America at a fundamental and philosophical level.

  • Habbgun

    Definitely a book worth reading. Americans were well aware that anti-semitism was used in Europe as a means of promoting certain viewpoints and did their best to remove it from the USA early. Unfortunately it manages to thrive quite well in the University system which is an anachronistic Old Europe institution. Hopefully this book can shine some light on how academics think as well.

  • Monkish

    An yet the very fact that they spend any of their time trolling on a jewish website bespeaks a profound malaise – a loathing of Jews that comes from an equally intense yet strongly repressed desire to possess some intrinsic quality that they imagine all Jews to possess (such as the ability to survive for over millennia, in spite of brutal oppression and the charms of assimilation). The twisted psychological mechanisms of the anti-semite are fascinating to behold!

  • Monkish

    “The University system” is an “anachronistic Old Europe institution”? Where on earth do you think the author of this book got the financial, intellectual and logistical resources required to write to such a book?

    “David Nirenberg is the Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor
    of Medieval History and Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
    His work focuses on the interactions of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
    cultures in history.”

    On are you one of those people who like the Maoists in the 60s and 70s would dismantle any institution that contained ideological elements he didn’t like?

  • gwhepner

    EMANCIPATION OF MANKIND FROM
    JUDAISM

    Emancipation of mankind from Judaism, Marx’s goal

    was also that of Paul about two thousand years before.

    You don’t need human beings in this adversary role

    in order to express how very greatly you deplore,

    not Jews, of course, for anti-Semitism isn’t cool,

    but Judaism, which when it’s regarded through a prism,

    reveals a coat of many colors good men ridicule

    as so uncivilized it even leads to Zionism.

    gwhepner@yahoo.com

  • Edward Cohen

    Freud had a theory about Christian Antisemitism (as postulated by Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cardozo of Jerusalem): It was not because the Jews refused to accept Jesus, but rather because they were responsible for giving them Jesus. They had been quite happy to be pagans, but Jesus converted them to Monotheism, and for that the Jews can not be forgiven.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    I find some of this to be historically questionable.

    I think the thesis in general has a good deal of merit. Many cultures partially form themselves based off an “other”, and at least for the Christian period Judaism makes sense as an other.

    But talking about it in Egypt? That’s a MAJOR stretch. First, you’re assuming the Exodus ever happened, which isn’t a done deal, and the evidence is against it. Second, you’re presuming that those references apply to ancient Hebrews, rather than one of dozens of semi-migratory peoples that came and went in Egypt’s delta region for times. Even ancient Alexandria is being oversimplified, the Jewish community there was fairly powerful, and sometimes initiated riots and violence of it’s own against others.

    I’d be interested in reading the book itself, since I understand the author is a historian and perhaps this review is the one making leaps and bounds the author does not. But this seems to me to be one of those “popular” histories that tries to answer a question too large to actually be answered, where too many things that disagree with your thesis are forced out in the name of simplicity. It’s too broad, too grand by design, and that makes it fail historically.

    That said, I think you could make a good case that Medieval European Christian culture was partially based off of using Jews as the “other”, especially before that designation was partially taken over in the 1500s by the Turks or “Saracens”, and that it continued in some forms right up to the rise of secular anti-Semitism.

  • CygnusA81

    Sadly, it seems one of those trolls GearoidMacConfhiachlaigh seems to have stumble upon Tablet. He is usually trolling around The Atlantic Monthly’s website ranting about how ‘racist’ Israel is and if you don’t agree his is demented views on Israel then you too are a racist. Sigh.

  • Habbgun

    You are mistaking a means of production for a necessity of production. The basis of the University is to use rational, scientific methods to further and test knowledge. Only the true sciences can operate that way. The principles of science are readily proved by any engineered object such as a light bulb. The University instead has a self created, self administered mission of somehow representing Western Civilization. Western civilization is an abstract idea which is under attack especially within these universities.

    They are a self appointed guardian of civilization whose basis in America is a continuance of the Universities of Europe. These Universities were originally theological institutions as were the original American Universities. Their very nature is one of bias. It is no accident that the prejudices and conceits of Europe find their biggest support among academia. The high cost of tuition, the ideological excesses and the hypocrisy of sports being a profit center even though they are supposedly amateur is the sign of an institution that is filled with contradiction and a complacent sense of its own historical relevance.

    By the way. Maybe it is worthwhile to see how China rebuilt their centers of higher learning. They are obviously working to some extent. I wouldn’t tear something down as a Maoist but I certainly would love to be a reformer. After all, not saddling entire generations with debt might be a worthwhile goal.

  • http://twitter.com/BlueJewEgg The Jew Egg

    “the Jewish community there was fairly powerful, and sometimes initiated riots and violence of it’s own against others.” [citation needed]

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    I would start with the ancient accounts surrounding the death of Hypatia.

    That’s not to suggest that the Jewish community there was the majority, nor free from persecution or violence, which was not the case. But neither were they the much weaker type of communities that existed in Medieval England or Germany. In Alexandria, depending on the period, the Jewish community was political powerful, and capable of organizing it’s own mob violence (generally between them and Christians). I believe Socrates Scholasticus’s Historia Ecclesiastica is the main (and most respected) classical source on it.

    Again, it seems oversimplification is the problem, not the thesis itself. Though I see a severe lack of knowledge on the current understanding of ancient Israeli history as well, which I find odd.

  • Robert Starkand

    It’s been my thinking that at the root of antisemitism/ anti-Judaism is the fact that Judaism undermines Man’s power because we all are humble before God and answerable to God.

  • http://twitter.com/BlueJewEgg The Jew Egg

    So we are using a Christian church’s account, an organization that, as documented in pretty much yah know, everything ever, was rabidly anti Jew. Ok, that makes sense.

  • http://twitter.com/BlueJewEgg The Jew Egg

    So we are using a Christian church’s account, an organization that, as documented in pretty much yah know, everything ever, was rabidly anti Jew. Ok, that makes sense.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    No, it’s an account from a Christian, who wrote a history of the Church.

    He’s pretty widely considered to have been an even-handed writer. I haven’t seen any historians significantly suggest otherwise.

    Moreover, his references to the Jewish community of Alexandria are not direct. He does mention violence that came from communal disputes, when Jews attacked Christians, but he doesn’t demonize them for it, he simply relates that it happened (I believe in response to provocation from the Christians).

    If you’re going to be immature enough to off-handedly ignore a source like that you have no business in this conversation. Worrying about potential biases is fair. Not bothering to learn about the source in question is intellectually weak.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    I’ve read Tablet off and on for some time thank you. Not that it’s any of your business. But this is a historical book, something within my interest and specialty.

    You however, are defaming me when ALL I did was come here and comment on the book in question. That is childish sir.

    Is this how people like you treat others? Mischaracterizing my issues with Israel and turning me into some rabid anti-Semite even though I criticized a book on historical grounds (while recognizing the validity of it’s thesis). It’s childish and rude. That’s no way to defend anything.

  • Monkish

    You conflate issues having to do with the economic utility of a university degree, the financial viability of higher education system and academic bias/intellectual integrity. There’s an important debate to be had about the first two issues, but I fail to see any meaningful connection with the last. In fact, you seem to have tacked the economic argument against universities onto your real gripe, which is the alleged bias of academia. Or is it? I detect several poorly thought out and muddled ideas here, on top of a totally unhistorical narrative of continuity between theological seminaries and the modern university.

    But let’s leave the history of the institution to one side. From what I gather, your argument seems to be the following: universities are now primarily centres for teaching in the humanities. The humanities are inexact, and inherently biased. Like theology, of which they are the 21st century equivalent, they grounded on unverifiable assumptions. Ergo, we should do away with universities or turn them into technical colleges.

    >>I’m not going to bother addressing your implied scientism as that’s been debunked by so many before me (ever heard of Lysenko?). If this is your argument then surely the political inclination of academics is strictly irrelevant as any work in the humanities (history, politics, literature, philosophy etc.) is inherently biased and therefore futile/unverifiable/pointless. Factual, empirical history can be collapsed into pseudo-history as the rules of “true science” can only be successfully applied in the physical realm and in design. The Holocaust didn’t happen is as valid a proposition as the holocaust was a genocide. But isn’t this exactly the sort of relativist trash you were decrying? If you are adopting the position that all that can’t be crammed into a narrow “light bulb” model of science is worthless, then surely you should have no beef with those who trash such an abstract and empirical notion as “Western civilization.” If that is your position i’m puzzled that you would consider any book that isn’t a technical manual or pure science “worth reading” (c.f. your first post). Please clarify…

  • JacobArnon

    Is that what you think Cynthia Morris?

  • JacobArnon

    I was looking for the book under review but it doesn’t seem to have been published yet.

    The reviewer probably got a desk copy to review.

    It is hard to comment on this superb review before having read the book.

    Still I am familiar with the work of Norman Cohn whose pursuit of the millennium and warrent for genocide were superb studies of Jew hatred. If David Nireberg’s study is as good as those of Professor Cohn than it should become required reading for anyone who is interested in this topic.

    I am glad Nirenberg brought Western anti semitism up to date by including a study of antiZionism which is the form antisemitism has taken in our day.

    Great review, Adam.

    If

  • CygnusA81

    Why yes I will ‘defame’ you.

    To anyone who is Jewish and reads Tablet, this is more or less Gearoid’s stance on Israel.

    Israel is an evil occupier.

    Israel is a human rights abuser.

    Israel mistreats its Arab citizens.

    Israel has no right to defend itself.

    Israel is the aggressor in the Palestinian and wider Arab-Israel conflict.

    And if you don’t agree with Gearoid, you are either, loon, racist, or a fascist.

    And like Cynthia and Monkish have stated, this guy trolls the internet for Jewish topics it seems, so he can opine his two cents.

    Engage him at your own peril, if you don’t agree with his views regarding Israel, the conversation will turn ugly…fast.

  • Habbgun

    All fair and good points. My point is this. The muddle you detect is that the University has now become an institution of contradictions yet given the huge amount of tuition and indirect funding by government through student loans an immensely profitable one. Any corrupt institution can be exploited. I feel the anti-semitism and anti-zionism on campuses is real and pernicious but they are symptoms of an overall decline that must be reformed. I don’t think Universities should be reformed because of how they view Israel. Just the opposite. We do have the problem that the bias is so extreme that it shows the very non-thinking, ahistoric aspects that the modern University shows in many fields. It shows a failure in the very kinds of thinking they purport to build and support. It is happening in economics, etc. Without the brake that real laboratory work provides it is easy to go in this direction. Now add a corrupt atmosphere and you have a real, though expensive decline.

    Secondly although the modern university is different from its theological roots if you think traditional Judaic thinking will ever be accepted by it you are wrong. The Yeshiva and the University are mostly incompatible. Jews will always be on the defensive in the University and the more corrupt the University system the more this can be exploited (such as we see today). Many Jews have used the University as a kind of escape from their heritage and have increased and not lessened the bias.

    I myself am not a fan of so-called Western Civlization since I believe it is more of a construct than a reality except in cases such as the US Constitution which used specific ideas to build a state. Most of what is thought of as Western Civilization is a series of isolated writers in different time periods and locales. Europe itself spawned two world wars, some genocides and communism and fascism. As such we should have a jaundiced view of all institutions having its roots (even remotely so) on that continent.

    I do not believe a four year University is the only way to deliver knowledge. That would confuse the process with the knowledge itself. I do believe that the traditional four year college needs to face some real competition and and alternative means of education. If people want it and are willing to pay for it fine. It is now a monopoly with all the pitfalls a monopoly naturally has.

    As for myself my aptitudes tend towards verbal and not scientific. I know from experience those aptitudes only go so far and I suspicious of anyone who is very proud of having them.

  • CygnusA81

    She’s right, we have one of these trolls posting in this thread right now.

  • abunudnik

    Toynbee said that it was unfortunate that Marcion was unable to sever the OT from Christianity but that there wasn’t enough material in the NT upon which to create a body of Christian law. I’ll say! “Had it not been for the Law, I never would have known sin… the law breeds sin,” wrote Paul. Christianity is anti-legal in its essence and has had to depend upon the basic notion of the Covenant, a Jewish idea, to have any semblance of civilized life. The New Covenant is, in fact, not a covenant at all: it is grace through love and faith. There is no agreement whatsoever and therefore no relationship between the creator and creature, no structure, no hierarchy, no order. This is impossible in a real world and thus, Christianity needing Judaism for life, despises Jews as all who are dependent hate those upon whom they depend. It wants the fruit of the tree but can only think of getting it by hacking away at the root.

  • abunudnik

    Yes, why don’t you read the book? Why don’t you read it before you comment on it? Why comment on what you haven’t read? Worse, why make judgements on a book you haven’t read? This is odd.

  • FifthHorseman

    Does not man kill off what he either fears or do not understand. My God is better than your God is always used and it is do not our God but how we worship that God. We worship God in the right way while you on the other hand have the same God, but you does not worship God like we do so you are wrong.
    Just look at the 5500 plus Christian denomations in the USA. Not what the Catholic Church wants to hear. Each one with their own way to pray to their God even with in the branches there are splinter groups who do their own thing.
    Have always wonder that if man does not worship will God go away, be forgotten as something that never was? Just think of all the old Gods that are just but picture on dusty tomb walls.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    I’m making a judgement based off the review?

    What is the problem you seem to have with questioning a book on historical grounds? Not even all of it, but specifically the ancient parts, part of which is specifically explained in the review. THAT is what I have an issue with.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    Don’t pretend to speak for me, you have no right.

    I’m here to talk about history. Not engage with some rude fool like yourself.

  • CygnusA81

    I finally figured you out. You really think of yourself as some sort of amateur intellectual. Amazing. Your prose gave it away.

    But in reality, you are the quintessential pseudo-intellectual; your thought process is weak, your theories are pedestrian, and your grasp of complex subjects are pathetic at best.

    We both know that you have a fragile ego that can’t handle ideas that differentiate from your early/mid 20th century view of the world, hence the attacks from the get-go.

    Please keep on posting your ‘arguments.’ From now on, I’ll just take out the popcorn and watch you blow up with the next person who takes you down a notch or two or three.

  • Hans Vonfusse

    From Wikipedia: “According to the only contemporary source, Hypatia was murdered by a Christian
    mob after being accused of exacerbating a conflict between two
    prominent figures in Alexandria: the governor Orestes and the Bishop of
    Alexandria.[8 “

  • Leone Hull

    To be brutally honest, “Anti-Judaism” is a good thing. As the basis of Abrahamic religion, no ideology has poisoned minds of the last standing bipedal humanoids as much as this monotheistic meme.

  • CygnusA81

    What a stupid argument. Monotheism is the reason why humans kill? What type of fantasy world do you live in? People don’t need a belief in a single higher being to massacre other people.

    Pagans massacre other pagans. Idolatrous murdered different idolatrous.

    Finally, the modern secular religion of Communism murdered over 100 million people.

    The only thing that stands out in your comment, is that you’re an anti-Semite. So keep on scapegoating Jews. That’s what you people do.

  • herbcaen

    every morning millions of euopeans wake up, sigh, and contemplate how much better the world would be if Hitler had killed all the Jews. As they wake up at around noon, thumb thru the Guardian, they contemplate how much they have fallen, in that they no longer have the 15 seconds of energy needed for reproduction, and hope that the virile Pakistanis, Somalis, Iranians and Arabs among them will have the energy to complete Hitlers dream

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    Yes? I don’t see your point? I was never suggesting she wasn’t murdered by a Christian mob, that’s well known.

    I’m saying if you read the account you get an indirect picture of the Jewish community at the time.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    I know more about history than some apologist like you ever will.

    Early 20th century? Coming from the man that whitewashing a colonialist venture? The irony is palpable.

    Again, I’m not here to deal with idiots like you. I came here to read the review of a historical book, and to make note of what sounds like, from the review, inaccuracies in at least part of the book. Something I find odd considering the scholarly work on ancient Egypt and the Hebrew kingdoms is both numerous and relatively easy to find.

  • SherwoodRobin

    Whenever a new group, nation, party, association of street gang appears they must have an agenda, a bonding message, that’s rule number 1, rule number 2 is they must declare that they will protect their members interests, families, jobs, finances and welfare. Since no one ever believes they will accomplish this then they introduce an underground culture of hate, violence and fear towards others. If your white then they choose negro’s or Jews to hate, if your black then whites and negro’s get the raw deal, and if your Jewish you’re too sensible to be bothered hating anyone (hates so time consuming if it’s done properly) so you hate all that’s phony in the world and who could be better than Jesus. a fictitious mythical person who did not exist, the Catholic Church who turned the other way as the mythical Jesus advised them to do so, and Hitler (the boy corporal and suitcase carrier at Vienna Rail station). Well that the chess board set out, now you can start moving your players around it. The other rules you’ll learn the hard way, rich people are disliked, poor people cannot be tolerated, and Mrs Astors 400 club is still an object of veneration.

  • oaklandj

    I love that anti-Semites of the atheist flavor believe that mankind would be loving, peaceful, and rational at all times if it hadn’t been for the Jews. As if mankind were all those things before Jews came to the scene.

  • oaklandj

    I think it’s that Judaism was the first faith (and maybe the only one) that puts mankind on a trajectory. Others that want us to return to a circular history, or even a regressive one, hate Judaism.

  • Frank Messmann

    Despite what Prof. Nirenberg seems to believe, there is no evidence that Jews were in Egypt about 1200 BC or that Moses existed. At that time there were Canaanites and Hebrews, but the word “Jew” was not used until about 400 BC in the Book of Esther.

  • Null

    Amusingly, though, the reviewer omits one thing–the Puritans were using the ancient Israelites as a positive model, rather than a negative. Similarly, the Anglo-Israelites, alone among the groups pretending to be the ten lost tribes, were not hostile to the extant Jews. Why doesn’t England hate Jews as much as other European countries?

  • Null

    The Puritans tried to imitate Israel? Doesn’t sound anti-Judaic to me…it’s a strange exception. what’s up with that?

  • oaklandj

    Semantics.

  • oaklandj

    “Why doesn’t England hate Jews as much as other European countries?”

    That’s not true. http://archive.adl.org/Anti_semitism/adl_anti-semitism_presentation_february_2012.pdf

  • Frank Messmann

    Yes… but … The artifacts found in Jerusalem, for example, dating from about 1000 BC, are not Jewish but rather Canaanite. This is more than semantics. Canaanites and the Jews had different gods, different beliefs etc.

  • ned jacobson

    to all discussants( and poet): Great back and forth. Thank you

  • Elon

    Some, perhaps most, of them are Canaanite, but others are clearly Israelite.

  • Elon

    Right, people would be peace-loving like Caesar, Alexander, and Ghenghis Khan. Though, Gheghis, admittedly, might have been a monotheist. But he was also a Shamanist, which in New Age terms, is the ultimate peaceful religion.

  • Elon

    Freud also said the Jews invented their religion because they were guilty about killing Moses, and his idea of the Oedipus complex has never been borne out. He was a whacky guy, and I wouldn’t take anything he said too seriously.

  • CygnusA81

    LAMO!!!

    Whatever you say GearoidMacConfhiachlaigh, Ph.D ( Underwater basket weaving). Since you are a super smart guy, you might realize Tablet Magazine is a left-leaning Jewish publication; but Tablet is still a Zionist supporting website. So keep on calling me a ‘colonialist,’ for supporting Jewish self-determination and Israel’s right to exist.

    The only people who will take you seriously here at Tablet, are your fellow Gentile trolls.

  • Fartig

    So, let me see. Western culture is based on jew-hatred for sure. And since Roncevalles, on hatred of Islam. Its hatred of people of color is well documented and goes back more than half a millennium. In other words, pagan and then Christian culture is predicated on exclusion. This is not news though it is a sad fact about culture in general, not just “western” culture. It is only exhilarating if it reinforces our sense of exclusive victimhood, which has been our bane–and increasingly the basis of TABLET’s sense of its identity–since the dawn of our emancipation.

  • CygnusA81

    I really wished Adam explored pre-revolutionary America in his review, unless for some reason Prof Nirenberg doesn’t go into detail himself in his book.

    But what I do know about pre-revolutionary America, was that they were all fascinated with ancient Israel, but in a positive way. Not only did our elite universities of time maintain that their students know Greek and Latin, many also required to study Hebrew as well. Yale probably being the most famous of them all at the time.

    While, there has been mild antisemitism here in America, is has always paled in comparison to Europe or the Middle East.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    I called you a colonialist for being an occupation apologist.

    Supporting Israel doesn’t mean supporting an immoral occupation. I would think you were intelligent enough to know that.

    But sure, you can go ahead and try and insult me if it helps your fragile little ego. I really don’t care. Fact is fact, and the fact is you are wrong.

  • http://www.facebook.com/srharder Stan Harder

    It does.

  • stevesailer

    “anti-Judaism is at the heart of Western culture”

    Or, is anti-Gentilism at the heart of Jewish culture?

  • Luke Lea

    Haven’t read the article but the headline is wrong. Anti-semitism was never primarily about religion, at least in the West, where Jews enjoyed a protected and sometimes (as in Poland) a legally privileged status. Rather it was more sociological/genetic in origin — a result of generations of inbreeding in relatively small, endogamous, self-segregating population groups with a distinctive in-group/out-group moral code. Obviously we don’t have a very good vocabulary to discuss these things honestly and accurately.

  • Jerzy Kaltenberg

    “Anti-Semitism needs actual Jews to persecute; anti-Judaism can flourish perfectly well
    without them, since its target is not a group of people but an idea.”

    As a polish Jew & a child of holocaust survivors, brought up in communist Poland, having lived in Poland before and since the fall of communism I can only marvel at the logic exhibited above; Anti-Judaism is merely another euphemism for antisemitism. Antisemitism functions just fine in the absence of actual Jews; when a Jew is needed as a target of odium or for political convenience, a Jew is manufactured by the simple expedient of making up fictitious genealogies, supposedly suppressed surnames, etc.

    The Polish internet and even the world of print is full of ‘lists’ of supposed Jews who permeate the elites, antisemitic pamphlets are openly sold in churches, the very name of Jew is considered an insult…that is the reality of modern Poland, a country in which the last census shows circa 8 thousand people identifying as Jewish out of 38 511 824.

    Anti Judaism? a sorry attempt to divorce the essence of Antisemitism from its well known brand.

  • Andrea Ostrov Letania

    Jews say there’s only one God and all other gods are false. Such arrogance and contempt have marked Jewish attitudes for 1000s of years. If Jews had outnumbered pagan goyim, Jews would have wiped them out like Hitler tried to get rid of Jews.

    Indeed, Christian intolerance has been the extension of Jewish arrogance and intolerance. Ohhhhh, Jews are THE chosen of God!

    Infected with the monotheistic Judaic bug, the Christian West destroyed polytheistic pagan cultures and killed countless people who clung to their indigenous pagan faiths.

    So, why don’t you sanctimonious and self-righteous Jews shut the fuck up. Your whole fucking history has been one of intolerance, hatred, arrogance, subversion, and genocide. Ask the Canaanites(if you can still find one alive). Ask the Palestinians huddled in ghettos. Ask Russians and Ukrainians killed in the millions by Jewish communists whose arrogant know-it-all attitude was the psychological legacy of 1000s of yrs of Jewish hatred and arrogance.

  • rameshraghuvanshi

    People donot hate without reason.What is wrong with Jews or Judaism?They worshiped different God or doing different rituals?They think themselves superior from other people?I ask many religious scholars but not received satisfied answer.

  • Hard Little Machine

    Of course the genteel far left version of Tablet’s own antisemitism should escape no one’s attention. The Tablet more or less embrace’s Marx’s view on the subject which was ‘the problem with antisemitism is that there’s still Jews to hate.’

  • Bernecky

    At what point, and how, did things change for the better, and remain that way long enough for the parents of the Framers of the Constitution to raise decent children?

    Adam Kirsch: “At the same time, being the public face of royal power left the Jews exposed to the hatred of the people at large.”

    I would suggest that “being the public face of royal power” today is the role of those who’re zeroed in upon, and damned, by MSNBC’s evening gang of four. There they were: Matthews, Maddow, Schultz and O’Donnell, oblivious to the fact that their royalty was now responsible for racking up American losses in a war (in favor of which there still existed no Yellowcake), all but running out of town on a rail the mother of an active-duty soldier.

  • Tommy Glick

    Jews are superior to Jewhating ignoramuses like yourself. Deal with it.

  • Tommy Glick

    Jews (for Judaism) and gentiles for Judaism are the only ones that don’t parrot the stupidity and moronic propaganda of lying fascist leaders. So yes, this does mean that the supporters of Judaism are more enlightened, smarter, and better able to objectively view the world than those unable to do anything beyond parroting the nonsense of lying, warmongering ruling elites.

  • Tommy Glick

    Right–which is why the ancient Jews wrote absurd stories of the gentiles that begged Jewish leaders to kill righteous Jews, thus giving Jews a reason to slaughter and hate goyim til this day.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Eliyahu-Ben-Abraham/1534644655 Eliyahu Ben Abraham

    there is evidence for several of the plagues that preceded the Exodus in the Ipuwer papyrus [or document], which is an Egyptian document. But since there is no reliable chronology for ancient Egypt, only a scholarly construct made up in the late 19th century-early 20th century by amateur Egyptologists –they were all amateurs at that time– like Flinders Petrie, Sayce, Breasted, etc., the Ipuwer document is assigned to a period long before the Exodus in order to avoid this confirmation of the Biblical account. Petrie, Sayce, Breasted and the others were mainly racists [against giving credit to the Ethiopian dynasty of Egypt] and Judeophobes. So the ancient history of Egypt is a big mess, due in large part to the prejudices of these racists. They did not want to have any confirmation of the Biblical account because of their Judeophobia.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Eliyahu-Ben-Abraham/1534644655 Eliyahu Ben Abraham

    This article shows how the “leftist” Judeophobia of today has certain Christian roots through the ideas of Marcion and later the philosophy of Kant, Hegel and Voltaire passed down to Marx.

    http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/10-issue/green-10.htm

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Eliyahu-Ben-Abraham/1534644655 Eliyahu Ben Abraham

    Dear MacCornflakes, Hans pointed out that Hypatia was lynched by a Christian mob. I was taught that the mob was made up of gentle monks. In any event, this happened in the early 5th century, in the year 415. She was the last of the philosopher teachers In Alexandria. She ran the last philosophical school there. Now, the most notorious pogrom against Jews in Alexandria took place in the first century CE, as far as I know. So what does Hypatia’s death have to do with it, since she died about 350 years later have or take a few decades. Are you saying that one or more writers about her death also wrote about the pogrom hundreds of years earlier?
    Be that as it may, I advise you to read the Stromata of the Church Father, Clement of Alexandria, who had some favorable things to say about the Jews and unfavorable things to say about some of the Christian sects of his day.
    But back to your annoying obsession, why are you so concerned to have an accusation to throw at the Jews? Are you so insecure as to need to see the Jews as guilty of something or other in order to validate yourself?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Eliyahu-Ben-Abraham/1534644655 Eliyahu Ben Abraham

    So Andrea is blaming the Jews for Christian intolerance and crimes? So the Jews infected the Christians with the “bug” of intolerance which never existed before? BTW, you sound like that British imperialist Toynbee. So the Jewish communists were not imbued with Communism, a creed and cult originating in Germany in the misconceptions of Kant and Hegel, but those Communists were really Jewish in character underneath their Communist skin? Is your claim of “1000s of years of Jewish hatred and arrogance” meant to wipe out the guilt of the Ukrainian nationalists who massacred the Jews in Proskurov in 1919?
    As to Canaanites, the Bible indicates that those living in the Israelite territory were assimilated in the periods of the Judges and Kings. The Arabs now fashionably called “palestinians” do not live in ghettos in Israel. Some of them are my neighbors on my street in Jerusalem.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Eliyahu-Ben-Abraham/1534644655 Eliyahu Ben Abraham

    slow down Frank. King David conquered Jerusalem about -1000 BCE. Hence artifacts found in Jerusalem from after that date are likely to be Jewish.

  • Cynthia Morris

    Hate resides in the reptilian brain and is driven by primal instinct intended to protect the individual from “the other”. From there, it bubbles up to the cerebral cortex and is rationalized with the most fantastic storytelling.

    There is no “reason” in hate whatsoever.

  • Frank Messmann

    There is no scientific evidence that a King David ever lived. Alright — there is one rock discovered with the word “David” inscribed on it.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    Are you simply blind, or illiterate?

    Nothing you’ve said disagrees with ANYTHING I said. Yes, one of the most notorious pogroms was earlier. They Jewish community rebuilt, though never again to that level. They were, however, a player in Alexandria’s politics in the time of Hypatia.

    Yes, they had nothing, as far as any source has said, to do with her death. I don’t allege they do. It’s called using a source for INDIRECT information. I explicitly stated that.

    I don’t like to go into the early Church fathers, being a non-Christian the debates get a little dull. But I’m familiar with Clement off the top of my head. I, once again, don’t see your point here. I’m not disputing what you said, what you said it irrelevant to my points, though adding extra sources in fact strenghtens my original assertion, that the Jewish community in Alexandria was at times a major player in local politics.

    An accusation? What accusation? Did you READ what I wrote? I suggested part of this book seems historically questionable to me, based on the review, specifically the parts dealing with Ancient Egypt, because the author is using a series of assumptions that are demonstrably false. I think the authors general thesis is likely correct, and I’d expect when talking about say Medieval Europe is extremely well researched, but the early period in Egypt relies on a poor reading of documents and assumptions that aren’t supported by modern scholarship on ancient Egypt or the ancient Levant.

    So please, before insulting and accusing me of something, please pay attention to what I actually wrote. If you’d like me to explain my specific objections on historical grounds then I will. But it seems to me you have some confused interpretation of what I said. I never accused Jews of anything.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    No one without a serious interest in “proving” the Bible has ever suggest the Ipuwer papyrus supports the Exodus. I’d like to see your evidence for why it should not be dated to the 13th dynasty, as that is the modern number (compared to the older scholars you mention that suggested the 6th or 7th I think).

    Moreover, the archaeological evidence is completely missing. Essentially, despite people looking, there is none. Certainly not for the numbers used in the story. Combine that with the archaeological picture of the formation of the Hebrew kingdoms, which allows for no large outside “invasion” into the region, and you’re somewhat stuck.

    The Biblical account doesn’t become reliably historical until the 7th century BCE. The further back you go, the less sense it makes compared to the facts on the ground. That’s why most people date the composition of it’s major parts, or at least a major editing, to that time period.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    Not even David on it’s own, but rather “bytdwd”.

    I’d say the stories themselves are a fair indication that SOMEONE with that name lived, and was important in the highland region that later become Judah. The stories are simply too prevalent.

    That said, it’s clear there wasn’t a United Monarchy, and that Jerusalem at the time was tiny, barely more than a palace structure.

    However, I wouldn’t draw such a clear distinction between Hebrews (I don’t think it’s right to discuss Jews until after the reforms of Josiah, maybe even until during the Captivity when monotheism really took hold) and Canaanites. In most places their material cultures aren’t wildly different. Ancient Hebrews seem to have formed out of the Canaanites, and circa 1000 BCE you wouldn’t find much of a difference. Even when the Kingdom of Israel rose to power circa 850 BCE they had more in common with the kingdom of Aram-Damascus and other north Levantine states than with the Biblical United Monarchy. It was a Hebrew elite, with a Hebrew population in the highlands with a cult centre in that region, and that Hebrew elite also ruled over Phoenicians, Aramaic peoples, Canaanites, etc (based on the continuity in material cultures).

  • Frank Messmann

    Yes, my understanding is that the Hebrews “formed out of the Canaanites” about 1000 BC. You credit them with more influence over surrounding peoples than I realized they had.

  • saksin

    I noticed the same thing. On Nirenberg’s thesis that would seem to make the Puritans non-Western, or non-European…

  • saksin

    To judge by Adam Kirsch’s review, the general drift of Nirenberg’s argument is a peculiar one.
    Take the Romani. Like the Jews they have maintained
    themselves as recognizable minorities among a variety of nations and
    cultures ever since migrating from India in pre-medieval times. I do not
    know Romani history in detail, but I am under the impression that they
    are typically and rather consistently depicted in an unfavorable light
    in European sources wherever they show up in their peregrinations, and have received their share of discrimination and persecution. Does
    that mean that in a more than trivial sense Western culture defines itself as non-Romani
    culture? It obviously is not Romani, just as any of the cultures in contact with Jewish minorities are not Jewish. We know this from the simple fact that they do not practice Jewish rites, and do not hold Jewish beliefs, just as they do not adhere to Romani customs or talk their language. We know this, and can tell this, because the Jews and the Romani maintain their customs, and beliefs, and traditions in the midst of these other cultures. That is what makes them minorities, and recognizably different from the majority. Jews have presumably played a larger role as a recognizably different minority in Western culture than the Romani for reasons related to the origin of the “Western world religion” (Christianity) in events in ancient Palestine, the longer presence of Jews as a recognizable minority in Europe, and the greater prominence of Jews at various times and places of European history than that of the Romani. And by the way, were the ancient Egyptians cited by Nirenberg somehow “Western” for denigrating Jews? Of course not! The common denominator in all this is the regrettable xenophobia that seems endemic to the human mind, and can be found in the most diverse cultures around the earth, from tribal to industrial. Its most acute manifestations often occur in relations between immediately neighboring cultures. My guess is that the continuity of animus against the Jews that Nirenberg apparently traces through history reflects the continuity of separate cultural and ethnic identity on the part of the Jews amidst other cultures and ethnicities in the various epochs and arenas he analyzes on the one hand, and the xenophobia endemic to the human mind on the other. I do not see that there is much of a mystery here, however unfortunate the circumstances that attend Jewish history. Doing something about those circumstances would seem to require an accurate diagnosis, first and foremost, and I am not sure that Nirenberg has quite managed that as yet, at least as far as is apparent from the Kirsch review.

  • Anthony Nassar

    That clearly doesn’t explain left anti-Semitism, since it’s the Jewish insistence on a historically defined particularity that interferes with whatever utopian project.

  • jonmonroe

    I have another theory: self-absorption lies at the heart of western civilization. That’s why we have to endure these banal little inflatable theories propagated by people who, stunningly, lack self-awareness right when you would want them to have it — when they begin to conflate the particular with the universal. Cleverness trying to pass itself off as profundity. Reading history with all the subtlety and even-handedness of a wingnut or a crank, and then selling the resulting “big idea” into some welcomingly uncritical echo chamber of similarly compromised intellects. How much must history be shrunk, reduced, clipped at the edges, to satisfy such a paltry theory? How much psychology must be ignored? How many great intellectual achievements must be cornered and sneered at? How much must the significance of others be denied before we can even begin to take seriously such a paltry little idea as the one celebrated here. All of which is merely to elaborate upon my original and most succinct reaction: Yuck.

  • Luke Lea

    Nicely put.

  • rameshraghuvanshi

    I agree with you neuroscience explanation but sir why white Jews of Israel hated to black Jews who migrated for economic prosperity from India..In first b.c.some Jews were migrated in India.People of India wholeheartedly welcome them India is only country in the world where not a single religion people prosecuted.These migrated Jews adopted.all Indian customs, language, but kept their religion as it is.Indians behaved them most respectfully.Some become writer in Marathi language when they found out there is prosperity migrating in Israel they went there but white Jews are not treated them as a brother hated them, can you explain this abnormal behavior of White Jew of Israel?

  • stevesailer

    Good reality check.

    UC Berkeley historian Yuri Slezkine’s otherwise brilliant “The Jewish Century” starts out with a strained attempt to come up with the similarities of Jews and Romani, but the latter are really the anti-Ashkenazis. The part-Jewish, part-Gypsy American author Isabella Fonseca reported:

    “The Gypsies have no heroes. There are no myths of origin, of a great liberation, of the founding of a ‘nation,’ of a promised land. . . . They have no monuments, no anthem, no ruins, and no Book. Instead of a sense of a great historical past, they have a collective unease, and an instinctive cleaving to the tribe.”

  • Ron Lewenberg

    Egypt is part of the West but Jerusalem is not? Is that a joke?
    I wont deny that we have been the classical “other” in Western civilization, but we have also been part of it from the beginning.

  • Bernecky

    What about film, Quentin Tarantino’s movies in particular. So often, regardless of the setting, they seem to have anachronisms as their subject. Consider Django Unchained:

    There was no law. There were no liberals.

    Every town was Southern; every sheriff, a Confederate.

  • TakuanSoho

    I would disagree with the author’s premise that Christianity was the “main reason” for either anti-Judaism or antisemitism. As briefly alluded to in the above article, Ptolemaic Egypt was hideously anti-Jewish (read about the trampling of the elephants for a sampling), and this Egyptian hatred (which became Greek hatred) was transmitted to Europe during the Judea Revolt. Indeed it was probably the hatred of Jews from these two revolts that drove the Christians out of the “Jewish” Fold (and led to the teachings of Marcion). I find it uncreditable to cite Christianity as the “main reason” for something that existed several centuries (indeed half a millennium) before the establishment of state sponsored Christianity.

    The “main” reason for anti-Jewish sentiment is the eternal problem of being a notable minority between two major powers (between the Greeks and Egyptians from 300 B.C. to 500 A.D., and then between Islam states and Christian States between 600-1600 A.D.). Jews became the convenient scapegoat from the set backs of the losers, and were viewed as potential traitors by the winners).

    Another “main” reason is simple tribalism (and its modern form Nationalism (which takes us from the 1600s through 1945, and even until today)). Minority outsiders are never appreciated by the majority. One only has to see the history of the Chinese in South East Asia to see that racial hatred has very little to do with religion.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lane-Silberstein/783840563 Lane Silberstein

    But that’s anti-semitism masking itself as philo-semitism: they love to study us, but they won’t let us in. Even Einstein wasn’t allowed to work at Princeton for some time.

  • CygnusA81

    They certainly do. The thing I hate the most is when people state that Einstein came up with Theory of Relativity while being a patent clerk. He was only a patent clerk because that was the only job he could get since no university would hire him because he was Jewish.

    But the troll I was fighting with on the thread is a real piece of work.

  • http://profiles.google.com/hugodetoronja Hugo De Toronja

    When you consider only the Jewish experience in China and India, you get a strong sense that Nirenberg is exploring what will probably be many different, new, and fascinating approaches for investigating the history of anti-Jewishness/anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism.

    Please note that there is a strong, and entirely mainstream, current within Christian theology that argues that Christianity is the culmination, or “satisfaction,” not only of Judaism, but of the *pagan* faiths, specifically Semitic and Greco-Roman, that preceded Christianity.

    If these pagan faiths carried within them notable anti-Jewish sentiment, it’s easy to see how Christianity, as their “satisfaction,” or culmination, might have easily, even unwittingly, encoded these animosities within itself and carried them forward.

    The faiths of the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Taoists, etc., on the other hand, don’t seem to have held any latent or “built-in” anti-Jewishness, and so the Jews who lived as adherents of a minority religion in those majority-religion societies seem to have enjoyed a high level of comparative tolerance.

    A shaynem dank to Mr. Nirnberg for pioneering a novel way of reconsidering Jewish history. I’ve a hunch that this is only the beginning of lots of interesting stuff to come.

  • CygnusA81

    Well they have gotten slightly better over the past 6 months or so.

  • http://www.facebook.com/john.steindel.3 John Stell

    If not at the heart certainly the liver. Just one more reason to believe the Bible. Jews still around as a people where are the Perrizites, Hittites, Ammonites, et al? They tried to off them too.

  • Baba_Metzia

    Don’t forget Heidegger!

  • Jacob Arnon

    “The knowledge of the Holocaust was wide spread, but those willing to act
    were few. One who refused to do anything was FDR, and yet Jews
    remained loyal to this evil man and his party. A true mystery”

    FDR
    was no savior, but anyone who thinks a Republican President would have
    done better is deluding themselves. Besides a Republican President would
    never have gone to war against Germany.

    Antisemitism was as
    strong among among Republican voters as among Democratic ones with this
    difference. The antisemitism in the Republican Party was at the top
    while among Democrats it was at the bottom.

  • https://me.yahoo.com/a/OQaShFoBmOWsMI_jNzUgT9fnxbau0cxz7A--#cb093 Dick Mulliken

    Judging from the review alone, I find the ideas put forth in each section to be persuasive, while the over-arching notion of a permanent anti Judaism leaves me in doubt. Not that there hasn’t been a serious motif of antiJewish feeling throughout the ages; I simply don’t thing the author has illuminated it well.

  • https://me.yahoo.com/a/OQaShFoBmOWsMI_jNzUgT9fnxbau0cxz7A--#cb093 Dick Mulliken

    Actually it was George Steiner who said that.

  • http://twitter.com/Hardy_Canute John Patterson

    I agree – though the ‘reified’ and ‘profound’ are a bit indigestible – and I hope you carry the idea further. There is certainly a type or exoticism or orientalism in how antiJudaists look at Jews. In our anomic, modern societies, Judaism is seen as an affront of sorts. Its traditions and exceptionalist claims arouse envy. The strength of bonds between Jews, especially the devotion to family, only remind others of what they do not have, or have lost. That may help explain why the new left Western intellectuals (so called) have turned against Israel, and against Jews.

  • http://twitter.com/Hardy_Canute John Patterson

    Ar aghaidh leat, Gearoid, agus na bi ag caint raimeas. Go maire muintir an Israel go deo.

  • GearoidMacConfhiaclaigh

    I don’t understand why all of you are so bloody sensitive to a slight criticism of a book based on historical problems.

    Take your nationalistic statements elsewhere. I really don’t care. If having your views challenged is a threat to the state of Israel, then I suggest you all give up.

  • Marcy Fleming

    Just what we need, another rationale for us Jews to feel sorry for ourselves ! No thanks, I’ll pass.

  • Gloria Rhea Grante

    I’ll be re-reading Orietta Ombrosi’s “Anti-Semitism: A Portrait of Civilization, According to Horkheimer and Adorno,” in her The Twilight of Reason (2012) tonight.

    But as a response to what I’ve read so far in the ensuing discussion by readers and non-readers of David Nirenberg’s new book, I thought I’d mention her clearly elucidated understanding (and with which I generally concur) that anti-Semitism is “the end of a process that is social, psychological and philosophical at the same time; a process that took shape in the dialectic of the Enlightenment itself and culminated in totalitarian order….in this process, the Jews seem ‘predestined’ to attract projection: ‘no matter what the makeup of the Jews may be in reality, their image, that of the defeated, has characteristics which must make totalitarian rule their mortal enemy: happiness without power, reward without work, a homeland without frontiers, religion without myth.’ Put another way, the characteristics that the Jews embody are rejected by totalitarian domination because, deep down, anti-Semites—dominated, manipulated, and subjugated themselves, first by the domination of nature, then by the domination of civilization and finally by totalitarian terror—secretly aspire to them and ‘turn what they yearn for into an object of hate.’ Projection therefore plays a fundamental role in this metamorphosis from object of desire to object of hate, as the ‘ruled’ achieve it thanks to this fusion: ‘hatred leads to union with the object—in destruction’ (Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 164-165). Anti-Semites therefore turn the world into the hell they have always suffered” (44).

    In this one paragraphs, Ombrosi encapsulates much of what has been written here in the discussion about Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. Freud may have had something after all.

  • noshaus

    Haven’t there been “difficulties” between Hindus and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs . . .?

  • rameshraghuvanshi

    Yes there are difficulties between Hindus and Muslims ,Hindus and Sikhs but Sir They are different religious group.Indian Jews migrated to Israel on invitation of white Jews,there is religious bonds between them .Why White Jews treating very badly to black Jews?White Jews have no right to grumbled against White Christans

  • Guest

    People like you??

  • Phill Entropic

    This whole thesis exists in a deliberate asphyxiating vacuum.

    There is no discussion on what jewish thought consitutes that allows the reader to explore the possibility that the prejudices mentioned in the article may be causal in nature.

    The author wold have us think that for over three thousand years these fears have been utterly based on irrationality and devoid of any substance. This line of reasoning is easy to claim as fact when any discussion of ‘Jewishness’ is taboo in our society if you are not yourslef jewish first and ocassionaly, even if you are.

    The mere mention that this subject is taboo is in itself taboo!

    Saddly, thats how much of a strangelhold Judaism and the Jewish people have on modern thought.

  • Scumbag Goyim

    Israel is not racist?………..really?

  • Charles Steiner

    This book uses a lot of Jewish strategies to make the West the target for justified hatred for the Jews since they are wholly innocent victims of all wrongdoing — once again. The same old twaddle as in ancient times. if history is written by the victors, this book — written by a Jew in defense of the Jews — says it all.

Thank You!

Thank you for subscribing to the Tablet Magazine Daily Digest.
Please tell us about you.

A World Without Jews

An exhilarating new intellectual history argues that anti-Judaism is at the heart of Western culture