Antisemitism Here & Now: No Place For Hate

This volume contains a selection of essays based on papers presented at a conference organized at Yale University and hosted by the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) and the International Association for the Study of Antisemitism (IASA), entitled "Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity." The essays are written by scholars from a wide array of disciplines, intellectual backgrounds, and perspectives, and address the conference's two inter-related areas of focus: global antisemitism and the crisis of modernity currently affecting the core elements of Western society and civilization.

This volume traces the history of antisemitism from antiquity through contemporary manifestations of the discrimination of Jews. It documents the religious, sociological, political and economic contexts in which antisemitism thrived and thrives and shows how such circumstances served as support and reinforcement for a curtailment of the Jews' social status. The volume sheds light on historical processes of discrimination and identifies them as a key factor in the contemporary and future fight against antisemitism.

In Socialism of Fools, Michele Battini focuses on the critical moment during the Enlightenment in which anti-Jewish stereotypes morphed into a sophisticated, modern social anti-Semitism. He recovers the potent anti-Jewish, anticapitalist propaganda that cemented the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in the European mind and connects it to the atrocities that characterized the Jewish experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning in the eighteenth century, counter-Enlightenment intellectuals and intransigent Catholic writers singled out Jews for conspiring to exploit self-sustaining markets and the liberal state. These ideas spread among socialist and labor movements in the nineteenth century and intensified during the Long Depression of the 1870s. Anti-Jewish anticapitalism then migrated to the Habsburg Empire with the Christian Social Party; to Germany with the Anti-Semitic Leagues; to France with the nationalist movements; and to Italy, where Revolutionary Syndicalists made anti-Jewish anticapitalism the basis of an alliance with the nationalists. Exemplified best in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous document that "leaked" Jewish plans to conquer the world, the Jewish-conspiracy myth inverts reality and creates a perverse relationship to historical and judicial truth. Isolating the intellectual roots of this phenomenon and its contemporary resonances, Battini shows us why, so many decades after the Holocaust, Jewish people continue to be a powerful political target.

s it possible to talk about antisemitism in the Middle Ages before the appearance of scientific concepts of "race"? In this work, François Soyer examines the nature of medieval anti-Jewish sentiment and violence. Analysing developments in Europe between 1100 and 1500, he points to the tensions in medieval anti-Jewish thought amongst thinkers who hoped to convert Jews and blamed Talmudic scholarship for their obduracy and yet who also, conversely, often essentialized Judaism to the point that it transformed into the functional equivalent of the modern concept of race. In a nuanced manner, he argues that, just as many historians now refer to "racisms" in the plural, we should not consider antisemitism as a monolithic concept but accept the existence of independent historical meanings and thus of antisemitisms (plural), including "medieval antisemitism" as distinct from anti-Judaism.

This volume provides a compendium of the history of and discourse about antisemitism - both as a unique cultural and religious category. Antisemitic stereotypes function as religious symbols that express and transmit a belief system of Jew-hatred, which are stored in the cultural and religious memories of the Western and Muslim worlds, migrating freely between Christian, Muslim and other religious symbolic systems.

Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Ways of Seeing the Religious Other, edited by Emma O'Donnell Polyakov, examines the hermeneutics of interreligious encounter in contexts of conflict. It investigates the implicit judgments of Judaism and Islam that often arise in response to these conflicts, and explores the implications of these interpretations for relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Addressing antisemitism and Islamophobia through the tools of interreligious hermeneutics, this volume brings together three distinct discourses: the study of ancient and new tropes of antisemitism as they appear in today's world; research into contemporary expressions of fear or suspicion of Islam; and philosophical reflections on the hermeneutics of interreligious encounters.

At the close of the twentieth century the stereotyping and demonization of 'others', whether on religious, nationalist, racist, or political grounds, has become a burning issue. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to how and why we fabricate images of the 'other' as an enemy or 'demon' to be destroyed. This innovative book fills that gap through an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural approach that brings together a distinguished array of historians, anthropologists, psychologists, literary critics, and feminists. The historical sweep covers Greco-Roman Antiquity, the MIddle Ages, and the MOdern Era. Antisemitism receives special attention because of its longevity and centrality to the Holocaust, but it is analyzed here within the much broader framework of racism and xenophobia. The plurality of viewpoints expressed in this volume provide fascinating insights into what is common and what is unique to the many varieties of prejudice, stereotyping, demonization, and hatred.

This Very Short Introduction examines and untangles the various strands of antisemitism seen throughout history, from medieval religious conflict to 'new' antisemitism in the 21st century. Steven Beller reveals how the phenomenon grew as a political and ideological movement in the 19th century, how it reached it its dark apogee in the worst genocide in modern history - the Holocaust - and how antisemitism still persists around the world today.

Antisemitism is generally thought to derive from chimerical images of Jews, who became the victims of these projections. Some scholars, however, allege that the Jews own conduct was the main cause of the hatred directed toward them in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Olaf Blaschke takes up this provocative question by considering the tensions between German Catholicism and Judaism in the period of the Kulturkampfe. Did Catholic resentments merely construct their secular Jew? Or did their antisemitism in fact derive from their perceptions of the conduct of liberal Jewish offenders during a period of social stress? Blaschke s deeper look at this crucial period of German history, particularly as revealed in the Catholic and Jewish presses, provides new and sometimes surprising insights."

Antisemitism on the Campus: Past & Present, edited by Eunice G. Pollack, is the first book of a multidisciplinary series on Antisemitism in America to be published by Academic Studies Press. In this volume, twenty-one leading scholars explore the roots and manifestations of antisemitism and anti- Zionism and the efforts to combat them at American, British, and South African colleges and universities in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics such as antisemitism and anti-Zionism on individual campuses, in black militant groups, on the Far Left, and in academic organizations; students' exposure to antisemitism and anti-Zionism through popular culture and the internet; discrimination against Jewish faculty, students and organizations; the anti- Israel boycott/divestment movement, among others, are covered.

This book examines the role of American Jews in the entertainment industry, from the turn of the century to the outbreak of World War II. Eastern European Jewish immigrants are often credited with building a film industry during the first decade of the twentieth century that they dominated by the 1920s. In this study, Steven Carr reconceptualizes Jewish involvement in Hollywood by examining prevalent attitudes towards Jews among American audiences. Analogous to the Jewish Question of the nineteenth century, which was concerned with the full participation of Jews within public life, the Hollywood Question of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s addressed the Jewish population within mass media. This study reveals the powerful set of assumptions concerning ethnicity and media influence as related to the role of the Jew in the motion picture industry.

Modern antisemitism and the modern discipline of sociology not only emerged in the same period, but--antagonism and hostility between the two discourses notwithstanding--also overlapped and complemented each other. Sociology emerged in a society where modernization was often perceived as destroying unity and "social cohesion." Antisemitism was likewise a response to the modern age, offering in its vilifications of "the Jew" an explanation of society's deficiencies and crises.   Antisemitism and the Constitution of Sociology is a collection of essays providing a comparative analysis of modern antisemitism and the rise of sociology. This volume addresses three key areas: the strong influence of writers of Jewish background and the rising tide of antisemitism on the formation of sociology; the role of antisemitism in the historical development of sociology through its treatment by leading figures in the field, such as Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Theodor W. Adorno; and the discipline's development in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust. Together the essays provide a fresh perspective on the history of sociology and the role that antisemitism, Jews, fascism, and the Holocaust played in shaping modern social theory.   Contributors: Y. Michal Bodemann, Werner Bonefeld, Detlev Claussen, Robert Fine, Chad Alan Goldberg, Irmela Gorges, Jonathan Judaken, Richard H. King, Daniel Lvovich, Amos Morris-Reich, Roland Robertson, Marcel Stoetzler, and Eva-Maria Ziege.  

Deciphering the New Antisemitism addresses the increasing prevalence of antisemitism on a global scale. Antisemitism takes on various forms in all parts of the world, and the essays in this wide-ranging volume deal with many of them: European antisemitism, antisemitism and Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and efforts to demonize and delegitimize Israel. Contributors are an international group of scholars who clarify the cultural, intellectual, political, and religious conditions that give rise to antisemitic words and deeds. These landmark essays are noteworthy for their timeliness and ability to grapple effectively with the serious issues at hand.