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Throughout the history of the Western world, Jews have suffered various forms of exclusion, stigmatisation, and discrimination that have forced them always to be aware of their very particular situation. The Jews became a community under siege and, as Shlomo Sand argues, Judaism was shaped by the hostile gaze of Christian civilization. While the forms of hostility endured by the Jews have varied over the centuries, it is impossible to understand twentieth century anti-Judaism, or Jewish identity itself, without taking account of the sediments of mental hatred, fuelled by religious belief, which have survived the passage of time.
While antisemitism is the term commonly used today, Sand prefers 'Judeophobia', which predates the appearance of 'antisemitism' and is more precise. Looking back over the centuries, he seeks to identify some of the stages in the age-old, incandescent hatred of the Jews and tries to understand what remains today of this trenchant hostility. He also questions whether Zionism, born as a distressed response to modern Judeophobia, has ended up mirroring it. To what extent has Zionism inherited the ideological foundations that have always been characteristic of the persecutors of the Jews?
This concise history of anti-Jewish hatred will be of great interest to anyone concerned with one of the most insidious and persistent features of Western civilization.
1. A Subjective Text
2. Curbing Jewish Proselytism
3. 'People-Race' or Religious Community?
4. The Origins of 'Judeo-Christian' Europe
5. Humanism and Foreigners, from Erasmus to Voltaire
6. Revolution, Emancipation, and Nationality
7. The Jews, between Capitalism and Socialism
8. Racialization, Democratization, and Emigration
9. The Dreyfus Affair and the Birth of Zionism
10. The Extermination of the 'Jewish Race'
11. The Rebirth of the 'Jewish Race'?
12. Who is Jewish? From Fingerprints to DNA
13. The 1967 War and 'Ancestral Rights'
14. Judeophobia on the Wane?
15. Is Anti-Zionism the New 'Anti-Semitism'?
Afterword
Description
Throughout the history of the Western world, Jews have suffered various forms of exclusion, stigmatisation, and discrimination that have forced them always to be aware of their very particular situation. The Jews became a community under siege and, as Shlomo Sand argues, Judaism was shaped by the hostile gaze of Christian civilization. While the forms of hostility endured by the Jews have varied over the centuries, it is impossible to understand twentieth century anti-Judaism, or Jewish identity itself, without taking account of the sediments of mental hatred, fuelled by religious belief, which have survived the passage of time.
While antisemitism is the term commonly used today, Sand prefers 'Judeophobia', which predates the appearance of 'antisemitism' and is more precise. Looking back over the centuries, he seeks to identify some of the stages in the age-old, incandescent hatred of the Jews and tries to understand what remains today of this trenchant hostility. He also questions whether Zionism, born as a distressed response to modern Judeophobia, has ended up mirroring it. To what extent has Zionism inherited the ideological foundations that have always been characteristic of the persecutors of the Jews?
This concise history of anti-Jewish hatred will be of great interest to anyone concerned with one of the most insidious and persistent features of Western civilization.
