Modern Anti-Semitism - Jewish Studies - Oxford Bibliographies-2

10/5/2015 Modern AntiSemitism Jewish Studies Oxford Bibliographies
Modern AntiSemitism
Jonathan Judaken
LAST REVIEWED: 30 JUNE 2015
LAST MODIFIED: 29 MAY 2014
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/97801998407310072
Introduction
The term “antiSemitism” was coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr to distinguish his brand of racialized and politicized Jewhatred
from earlier religious contempt of Jews and Judaism. Modern antiSemitism (defined as denigration of Judaism, defamation of
the Jewish character, or demonization of Jews) was a response to Jewish emancipation (the legal equality of Jews), which was
first explored as a possibility by Enlightenment thinkers and first effected during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic
Wars. As the map of Europe was carved up into nationstates over the course of the 19th century, and as legal equality was
entertained or made manifest within states, prior distinctions and stereotypes between Christian and Jew, white and black, and
civilized and barbarian were grafted onto the development of national cultures as they were shaped under the strains of
modernization (characterized by industrialization, capitalism, and urbanization). How this was enacted differed depending upon
the sociopolitical and intellectual differences across the European continent. The organization and mass mobilization of anti
Semitism crystalized in the 1880s, and its first major eruption took place in the context of the Dreyfus affair in France. The
abatement during the buildup and slaughterhouse of the Great War gave way to an eruption in its aftermath caused by the
massive dislocation and devastation of the war and the threat of revolutionary communism, which came to fruition in Russia,
where 40 percent of the world’s Jews then lived. The interwar years gave rise to conservative authoritarian and fascist regimes,
in no small part due to antiSemitism, which helped solder together their revolution against the Russian revolution and their bid
for national regeneration after the Peace of Paris (1919). The rise of the National Socialists in Germany, with antiSemitism as
their central animating idea, led to the annihilation of more than 60 percent of European Jewry. AntiSemitism was taboo in the
aftermath of the Holocaust, but it arose again in the aftershock of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it has spiked with each major
flareup in the ArabIsraeli conflict.
General Overviews
The earliest historical studies of antiSemitism appeared around the period of the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906). But the rise of the
Nazi Party to power began a critical historiography not much evident in prior approaches, since for the first time writers did not
blame Jews or insist that they change, but began to focus on the antiSemites themselves as the cause of the problem. A new
explosion of research began as the Holocaust ramped up, including works of history, social science, and psychology. Having
written the first comprehensive history of the Holocaust, Bréviaire de la haine, in 1951 (translated as Harvest of Hate and cited
as Poliakov 1979, cited under Nazi AntiSemitism), Léon Poliakov authored the mammoth fourvolume History of AntiSemitism
(Poliakov 1974–1985, first published in French beginning 1955), which became the first global history of the topic, effectively
creating the archive of the field. Poliakov’s work established the baseline for historical approaches that have dominated our
understanding of antiSemitism. Beller 2007 is a useful short introduction to the modern period, since Beller emphasizes what
distinguished modern antiSemitism from its predecessors. The subtitle of Wistrich 1991, The Longest Hatred, has become
shorthand for the longterm understanding of antiSemitism, even as Wistrich treats regional differences in the modern period.
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Lindemann and Levy 2010 is an excellent scholarly overview of this long history, reflecting the most recent scholarship. Katz
1980 examines how Jewish/nonJewish interaction was a source of conflict. Brustein 2003 considers the different factors at work
in different national contexts.
Beller, Steven. Antisemitism: A Short History. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Beller argues that modern antiSemitism has an undeniable relationship to the backlash against modernization. Therefore, while
the long history of Christian hostility provides a foundation for modern antiSemitism, it also differs from it in crucial respects. The
work focuses on the history of antiSemitism from the 19th century to the 21st century, providing insights into the relationship
between modernity and antiSemitism.
Brustein, William. Roots of Hate: AntiSemitism in Europe before the Holocaust. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
The book looks at four types of antiSemitism—religious, racial, economic, and political—and traces each of these from 1899 to
1939 in France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and Romania. Brustein links the differences in national contexts over time to levels
of economic recession, eastern European Jewish immigration, support for the revolutionary Left, and identification of its leaders
with Jews.
Katz, Jacob. From Prejudice to Destruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Katz traces the development of Jewish social and political identity from 1700 to 1933 in the face of antiJewish opposition,
arguing that the political strength and economic success of Jews caused friction with nonJews that culminated in the creation
and success of Aryan propaganda. The work offers insight into Jewish interaction with the development of the social and
political forces that underpin modern antiSemitism.
Lindemann, Albert, and Richard S. Levy, eds. Antisemitism: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
The essays contained in this volume provide an introduction to the history antiSemitism from the ancient period to the present
by leading scholars in each era. The chapters focused on the modern period cover it by region, looking at France, the English
speaking world, Russia and the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, and Nazi Germany, with contributions on the Arab and Islamic
worlds, both before and after the foundation of Israel.
Poliakov, Léon. The History of AntiSemitism. 4 vols. Translated by Richard Howard, Natalie Gerardi, Miriam Kochan, and
George Klin. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974–1985.
Poliakov’s fourvolume history is foundational. Ranging “From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews” (Vol. 1), “From Mohammed
to the Marranos” (Vol. 2), “From Voltaire to Wagner” (Vol. 3), up to “Suicidal Europe” (Vol. 4 covering 1870–1933), Poliakov
traces the whole history of antiSemitism from its origins to its climax on the eve of the Nazi assumption of power. First published
in English in 1965 by Vanguard Press.
Wistrich, Robert. Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred. New York: Schocken, 1991.
Wistrich’s volume begins with an overview of antiSemitism from its pagan roots, but locates its hardcore origins in the rise of
Christianity. He traces this legacy through Hitler’s Final Solution and into postwar Europe, examining national differences (Part
2), and the JewishMuslim conflict (Part 3).
Reference Works
The best reference work on the subject is Levy 2005, which has expansive entries, but Michael and Rosen 2007 is useful for
very brief thumbnails on topics.
Levy, Richard, ed. A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCClio, 2005.
Containing 612 articles authored by more than 200 scholars from 21 countries, this encyclopedia includes alphabetically
arranged entries ranging from a few paragraphs to several pages in length on just about every subject imaginable in this field.
Included throughout are images, which are key to showing the iconography of antiSemitism. This is the best comprehensive
reference work available on the topic.
Michael, Robert, and Philip Rosen. Dictionary of Antisemitism: From the Earliest Times to the Present. Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow, 2007.
This work offers more than 2,500 entries covering the history of antiSemitism, with each entry containing a bibliographic
reference for further research. Topics include individuals, concepts, and historical events, and range from ancient to modern
times.
Primary Text Anthologies
There are hundreds of individual works that belong in the pantheon of the history of antiSemitism. But anthologies of key works
are not common. Levy 1991 is out of print, but it is the best collection on the modern period. MendesFlohr and Reinharz 1980 is
an important supplement with many key works. Perry and Schweitzer 2008 is overly teleological in its orientation, seeing
everything from the view of the Holocaust and invariably selecting the harshest statements rather than the most representative
samples. Burns 1999 offers a good set of sources on the Dreyfus affair.
Burns, Michael. France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.
This wellchosen set of documents is framed throughout by Burns’s commentary, which does not always allow the primary
sources to speak for themselves. Ranging from newspapers and diaries that highlight the concerns of the epoch, the selection is
ordered chronologically and covers the whole affair. Going beyond France, it also documents international opinion and the
legacy of the affair.
Levy, Richard, ed. Antisemitism in the Modern World: An Anthology of Texts. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1991.
This anthology includes texts by Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, Richard Wagner, Adolf Stoecker, Henrich von Treitschke,
Wilhelm Marr, Edouard Drumont, Henry Ford, and Adolf Hitler, as well as other frequently overlooked writings that represent the
diffusion of antiSemitism in Hungary, France, Austria, the United States, Poland, and Germany. A collection of illustrations, most
of them quite rare, offers additional documentation of antiSemitic propaganda.
MendesFlohr, Paul, and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1980.
The best collection of sources on Jews in the modern world, it includes chapters on “Political and Racial Antisemitism” and “The
Holocaust,” with influential antiSemitic texts from the 18th through the 20th centuries on topics ranging from the Damascus affair
and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Holocaust.
Perry, Marvin, and Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds. Antisemitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
This anthology contains sources from medieval through modern times, focusing on the development of key antiSemitic myths.
The shortcoming of the book is that the authors’ contextualize and interpret the selections for readers within an optic that
constantly foreshadows the Holocaust.
Bibliography
For a far more comprehensive bibliography, consult the Felix Posen Bibliographic Project on Antisemitism, which contains more
than 50,000 entries and deals with works on every country, written in every language, and covering all periods.
The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Felix Posen Bibliographic Project on Antisemitism.
Search the database here. This is the largest bibliographic database on antiSemitism in the world, and it is constantly growing,
with many articles and books that are annotated.
Curriculum Development
With its genesis as a 1991 workshop on teaching about antiSemitism organized by the International Center for the University
Teaching of Jewish Civilization at Hebrew University, Brown 1994 considers how to teach antiSemitism in the contemporary
college setting.
Brown, Michael, ed. Approaches to Antisemitism: Context and Curriculum. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1994.
After discussing issues of definition, chapters survey the historiography of antiSemitism in the United States, Canada,
Argentina, Germany, the Arab world, Japan, Britain, France, South Africa, and Poland. What follows is a discussion of how to
integrate the teaching of antiSemitism into these differing national contexts and into different disciplinary perspectives other
than history, including sociology, political science, literature, and religious studies.
Theories
With the rise of the Nazis and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, accounts that sought to offer an underlying explanation for the
causes of antiSemitism were led by the Institute of Social Research (often known as the Frankfurt School) and sponsored by the
American Jewish Committee. Their investigations were significantly abetted by the psychologists Daniel Levinson and Else
FrenkelBrunswik, among others, resulting in the most ambitious work in the Studies in Prejudice series, Adorno, et al. 1950,
alongside Horkheimer and Adorno 2000. In the shadow of the Holocaust, a set of other philosophers and social theorists
developed the major theoretical approaches that have come to define how we understand antiSemitism: Sartre 1948 offered an
existentialist analysis; Parsons 1993 is a collection of writings from 1938 to 1945 that pioneered sociological approaches; and
Arendt 1973, first published in 1951, called for the historicization of antiSemitism by understanding the interaction between
Jews and the dominant society of which they were a part. The civil rights movement eclipsed the focus on Jews, as social
theorists interested in racism shifted their attention to antiblack animus. Historians henceforward dominated the methodologies
tackling antiSemitism. Volkov 1978 and Langmuir 1990 are by two historians and have had an enduring influence. With the rise
of postmodern theory, Bauman 1989 drew together social theory and history.
Adorno, Theodor, Else FrenkelBrunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. The Authoritarian Personality. New
York: Harper & Row, 1950.
The authors published this hybrid work of experimental psychology and sociological theory as a way to help identify the roots of
fascist and antiSemitic personalities. They proposed that by examining a series of traits and measuring responses to a series of
questions they could identify personality traits that tended toward authoritarianism.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.
Arendt’s magnum opus, first published in 1951, begins with the development of antiSemitism (Part I) in western and central
Europe and relates that development to colonial imperialism (in Part II), and ultimately to totalitarianism (Part III). National
Socialism and Marxism are linked through the use of terror in the service of an ideology that is used to control the masses. Total
domination was realized in their camps.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.
In this important contribution to postmodern social theory, Bauman examines the Holocaust as a byproduct of modernity rather
than as an outcome of antiSemitism, which he explains was itself related to modern processes. In doing so, he provides a new
conceptual vocabulary for thinking about antiSemitism. He also reconsiders social ethics in light of his interpretation of the
Holocaust.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. New York: Continuum,
2000.
Originally published in 1947, with the concluding segment on the “The Elements of AntiSemitism” added in 1949, Horkheimer
and Adorno consider antiSemitism within the development of Western rationality and the administered society of modernity.
Against this longterm theoretical backdrop, they conclude with a discussion of eight intertwined theses about the underlying
causes of antiSemitism that are unified by their sociopsychoanalytic approach.
Langmuir, Gavin. “Toward a Definition of Antisemitism.” In Toward A Definition of Antisemitism. By Gavin Langmuir, 311–
352. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
This is an important work of theory because Langmuir wrestles with a whole series of definitional questions that underpin the
vocabulary for understanding antiSemitism, insisting that antiSemitism per se, which he terms “socially significant chimerical
assertions,” only emerged in the 12th and 13th centuries with ritual murder and blood libel accusations. He distinguishes these
from xenophobic constructions, and from the stereotypes created from conflict arising from a scarcity of resources (that he terms
“realistic assertions”).
Parsons, Talcott. Talcott Parsons on National Socialism. Edited by Uta Gerhardt. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993.
This collection brings together a diverse set of essays and previously unavailable materials by one of the preeminent
sociologists working in America from the late 1930s to the postwar period. Parsons submits the virulent authoritarianism and
antiSemitism of National Socialism to a sociological analysis. In doing so, he developed a theoretical framework that continues
to be a foundation for sociological analyses of antiSemitism.
Sartre, JeanPaul. AntiSemite and Jew. Translated by George J. Becker. New York: Schocken, 1948.
Sartre’s existentialist analysis maintained that the antiSemite displayed what he termed “bad faith.” Rather than dealing with his
ontological freedom, the antiSemite projects onto his fantasies of “the Jew” everything that he defines himself against. Sartre
also criticized the Enlightenment tradition that defined Jewish emancipation. He ultimately saw socialism as the means to
overcome antiSemitism, which would be swept away with other forms of oppression, all grounded upon bad faith.
Volkov, Shulamit. “AntiSemitism as a CulturalCode.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 23.1 (1978): 25–46.
Volkov’s groundbreaking article combined a historiographical overview of modern German antiSemitism with a theoretical
suggestion for how it ought to be studied. Drawing from the work of Clifford Geertz, she suggests that it should be understood as
a “cultural code” that interconnects thoughts, structures of feeling, and practices, and she shows how this works in relation to
Wilhelmian antiSemitism, which differed from its later reworking under Nazism.
Enlightenment
The 18thcentury Enlightenment was the crucible that developed the core ideas about civil and political rights and citizenship,
the malleability of human nature, and the role of religion in the modern world that led to Jewish emancipation. The avantgarde
were British Deists, especially John Toland, German reformers like Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, and supporters of the French
Revolution who extended the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen to the Jews in the midst of the French Revolution, like
Abbé Gregoire. Nonetheless, there were negative, even hostile, statements about Jews and Judaism made by almost every
leading Enlightened thinker. The reasons for this were first considered in the abstract by key works like Sartre 1948, Horkheimer
and Adorno 2000, and Arendt 1973, all cited under Theories. They have subsequently been considered in the concrete by
historians who have debated whether this was a result of the impossibility of directly criticizing Christianity under the Old Regime
when censorship reigned, or whether Enlightenment attitudes expressed an older ambivalence about Jews and Judaism in a
new secularized idiom, which has emerged as the new consensus. Hertzberg 1968 overturned the prevailing consensus by
insisting that modern, secular antiSemitism was fashioned not as a (conservative) reaction to the Enlightenment and the French
Revolution, but within the Enlightenment and Revolution themselves. Schechter 2003 nuances Herzberg, while Sepinwall 2005
focuses on one of the key figures in the French context. Sutcliffe 2003 treats the Enlightenment beyond the borders of France.
Hertzberg, Arthur. The French Enlightenment and the Jews. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.
A wideraging social and intellectual history that goes back to the resettlement of Jews in France in the 17th century and the
intellectual preoccupations of Colbert, Spinoza, Bossuet, and Bayle forward to “The Men of the Enlightenment” (chapter IX, 268–
313) and “The Revolution” (chapter X, 314–368), showing the links between the origins of the emancipation of the Jews and the
sources of modern antiSemitism.
Schechter, Ronald. Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2003.
This work stretches across the century that witnessed the political emancipation of Jews in France, which was extended by
Napoleon’s armies. Schechter’s book considers why such a tiny community of Jews (about 40,000) resulted in so much spilled
ink by Enlightenment philosophes, social reformers, revolutionaries, and even Napoleon, maintaining that thinking about Jews
enabled them to reflect more broadly on religion, human nature, national identity, and citizenship.
Sepinwall, Alyssa Goldstein. The Abbé Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Gregoire was one of the outstanding exponents of not only Jewish emancipation, but the liberation of peasants from feudalism
and blacks from slavery, and Sepinwall’s innovative biography explores Grégoire’s intellectual and political activities, as well his
life and times. Focusing on Grégoire’s idea of “regeneration”—that people could literally be made anew—Sepinwall argues that
revolutionary universalism also entailed the effacement of Jewish and black difference.
Sutcliffe, Adam. Judaism and Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
This is arguably the most important synthetic account of the philosophical and political significance of Judaism in the intellectual
life of 17th and 18thcentury Europe. Sutcliffe reveals the underlying ambivalence of the Enlightenment by showing how
theologians, philosophers, and historians painted Jews and Judaism in contrasting hues, generally positive up to 1650, and
generally negative thereafter, as Judaism, especially the Talmud, came to embody the superstitions Enlightenment philosophes
sought to overcome.
Emancipation
Emancipation is the term used to describe the collective liberation of groups; Jewish emancipation specifically concerns the
legal equality of Jews as well as their social parity. While emancipation in Russia was only effected by the Bolshevik Revolution
and in the reconstituted nationstates of eastern Europe after World War I, the two main paths in western and central Europe
were defined by the French and German experience. The first was brought about from the top down (a revolutionary model), and
the second was created through struggle from the bottom up (an evolutionary model). These models were determinative for their
respective regions. In the first half of the 19th century, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain emancipated Jews, while other
countries gradually eliminated legal discrimination. The Revolutions of 1848–1849 were a watershed moment when Jews
actively participated in revolts animated by liberal and democratic values. While initially squashed, in much of central and east
central Europe, Jewish emancipation was established in the 1860s. Political antiSemitism in the 1880s sought to overturn
Jewish emancipation and defined itself against the liberalism and modernization that bolstered it. In discussing this history, Katz
1964 lays the groundwork, Rürup 1969 has been formative, Sorkin 1987 is a key work on Germany, and Birnbaum and
Kaznelson 1995 as well as Brenner, et al. 2003, offer an overview on the latest scholarship.
Birnbaum, Pierre, and Ira Kaznelson, eds. Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
This volumes offers a comparative overview of the entry of Jews into state and society by eight leading historians and historical
sociologists who analyze the course of Jewish emancipation in Holland, Germany, France, England, the United States, Italy,
Turkey, and Russia, producing a systematic study of the highly diverse paths to emancipation and exploring their different
impacts on Jewish identity, dispositions, and patterns of collective action.
Brenner, Michael, Vicki Caron, and Uri R. Kaufmann, eds. Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered: The French and German
Models. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2003.
The work is a collection of essays comparing the experiences of modern French and German Jews. The authors cover topics
such as the Jewish enlightenment in Berlin and Paris, the origins of academic approaches to Judaism, the respective struggles
for emancipation and integration, and responses to modern antiSemitism ranging across the long 19th century.
Katz, Jacob. “The Term ‘Jewish Emancipation’: Its Origin and Historical Impact.” In Studies in NineteenthCentury Jewish
Intellectual History. Edited by Alexander Altmann. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964, 1–25.
The article focuses on the history of the construct “emancipation” itself, locating its origins in 1828, tracing where the expression
came from, and how the new term was indicative of shifting mores on the issue.
Rürup, Reinhard. “Jewish Emancipation and Bourgeois Society.” Leo Baeck Year Book (1969): 67–91.
Rürup’s article traces the two main phases of Jewish emancipation, from 1780 to 1815 and from 1840 to 1870, corresponding to
the ebbs and flows of bourgeois society. He maintains that when bourgeois society underwent a crisis as a result of the Great
Depression of the 19th century (1873–1896), this provoked the rise of political antiSemitism.
Sorkin, David. The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Sorkin’s study is an important cultural history of emancipation in Germany. He explores the emergence of an ideal that came to
define the GermanJewish experience, which traded on a quid pro quo that the regeneration of Jews in accord with this ideal
would lead to their political rights and social integration.
The Damascus Affair
The Damascus affair was the first important international flashpoint in the 19th century involving attacks on Jews. Precipitated by
the disappearance in Damascus, Syria, of an Italian monk, Father Thomas, a number of Jews were charged with ritual murder
and blood libel, imprisoned, and tortured, clearly indicating the persistence of medieval attitudes in the modern world. The case
became a cause célèbre and led to diplomatic interventions, indicative of the great power rivalries of Western powers in the
Middle East. A delegation led by Adolphe Crémieux and Moses Montefiore, whose role is detailed in Green 2010, helped effect
the release of the surviving Jewish prisoners. For some, their success reinforced the idea that Jews wielded great power behind
the scenes. But it also indicated to Jewish leaders the need for international cooperation to assist vulnerable Jews around the
world. In France this resulted in the establishment of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860. Frankel 1997 is a standard work,
and Florence 2004 a more recent overview.
Florence, Ronald. Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
The author investigates the Damascus affair, examining the importance of international political circumstances both in its
development and in its conclusion. The work correlates the origins of the Damascus affair to the spread of the ritual murder myth
and the rising importance of conflict in the Middle East to the Great Powers, considering its longterm impact in the region.
Frankel, Jonathan. The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Frankel examines the Damascus affair, arguing for its longterm impact in both galvanizing the Jewish community and in
strengthening antiSemitic sentiment, as well as its pivotal role as a political event. He considers the reaction of the Western
world, noting that while the release of the accused was celebrated, the Damascus affair did inestimable damage by perpetuating
the myth of the blood libel.
Green, Abigail. Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
This excellent biography of Moses Montefiore (b. 1784–d. 1885) details his relentless defense of his coreligionists in many
countries, including the key role he played during the Damascus affair.
Intellectual Movements
AntiSemitism has been parasitic on cultural shifts, reflecting intellectual fashions as they change. It has an ideological strain that
merits consideration on its own terms, even as this has contributed to shaping political movements and specific national
contexts. The studies discussed in this section explore the changes in antiSemitism over the modern age in key thinkers or
intellectual groupings. Maccoby 2006 is a helpful place to begin for important thinkers. Wilson 1978 discusses the first
Dreyfusard, Bernard Lazare, and findesiècle France, while Stern 1961 addresses the same period in German culture. Mosse
1985 is a classic overview of the development of racial thought, while Mosse 1981 indicates the elaboration of Volkish ideology,
the most important strain in Nazi thought. Weinreich 1999 highlights the role of academics in the Nazi cause. Volovici 1991
concentrates on Romanian intellectuals in the 1930s, while Rossman 2002 focuses on Russian intellectuals in the post
Communist era.
Maccoby, Hyam. Antisemitism and Modernity: Innovation and Continuity. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
The final version of this work was put together posthumously, and some of Maccoby’s chapters are dated in their approach, but
his survey of modern antiSemitism from the Spanish Inquisition through Luther, Voltaire and the Enlightenment, Karl Marx,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Shakespeare’s Shylock, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, ending with reflections on Hitler and Nazism and
Muslim antiSemitism, is nonetheless a useful starting point.
Mosse, George. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York: Schocken, 1981.
This groundbreaking work, first published in 1964, traces the development of Volkish ideology in Germany from its origins in the
Romanticism of the 19th century to its interaction with Nazism in the 20th. Mosse examines the cultural progression of Volkish
and antiSemitic ideologies as well as their propagation in German institutions and society via literature and art, the youth
movement, in the universities, and in conservative parties.
Mosse, George. Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
Starting in the age of Enlightenment with a focus on the role of how aesthetic ideals were coupled to the nascent systems of
racial classification that became the basis of a science of race in the 19th century, and then following the evolution of anti
Semitism through the 19th and 20th centuries, Mosse dissects the scientific, ideological, and political currents that fed the growth
of European racism that culminated in the Holocaust.
Rossman, Vadim. Russian Intellectual Antisemitism in the PostCommunist Era. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
2002.
Rossman investigates the development and influence of antiSemitic thought in various strains of the Russian intelligentsia,
examining both racial and religious forms. He argues that because the postSoviet states have lost their sense of identity, anti
Semitism works as a means of selfdefinition through exclusion.
Stern, Fritz. Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of German Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1961.
Stern traces the development of a Weltanschauung in Germany from the 19th century to the rise of National Socialism, focusing
on the writings of Paul de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, and Moeller van den Bruck. He interprets the thought of these German
intellectual neoromantics as exemplary of a form of “cultural despair” provoked by the conditions of modernity, and provides an
account of how this ideological “despair” played into the rise of Nazism.
Volovici, Leon. Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s. Oxford:
Pergamon, 1991.
Volovici examines the links between Romanian nationalism and antiSemitic thought, and considers how this impacted the
structures of Romanian society in the 1930s. He investigates the rise of antiSemitism in the political sphere before moving to the
rise of an antiSemitic nationalist intelligentsia.
Weinreich, Max. Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People. Reprint ed.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
Weinreich investigates the importance of academics in Hitler’s rise to power and in the planning and execution of the Holocaust.
He gives numerous examples of philosophers, historians, and scientists who supported and helped to advance the cause of the
Third Reich.
Wilson, Nelly. Bernard Lazare: Antisemitism and the Problem of Jewish Identity in Late Nineteenth Century France.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Wilson traces Bernard Lazare’s early career, his defense of the Symbolist aesthetic, and his passion for social justice. She then
focuses on Lazare’s analysis of antiSemitism and his role in the Dreyfus affair, exploring its impact on Lazare’s Zionism, which
was quite different from that of Herzl, the founder of political Zionism.
Modern Christian AntiSemitism
The central debates about modern Christian antiSemitism include its origins in Christian antiJudaism, as well as its
adaptations in the modern world. Today, the preponderance of scholars in this area have questioned the hard distinction
between antiJudaism and antiSemitism that held sway in the aftermath of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt 1973,
cited under Theories). Along with others, Jules Isaac, in a series of works, including Isaac 1964, ignited the debate, and
Flannery 1965 moved it forward, especially in Catholic circles. Carroll 2001 is an impassioned contemporary account that picks
up from Flannery, as does Kertzer 2001. Michael 2006 distills a great body of scholarship into a short account that details the
role of both Catholics and Protestants. Bergen 1996 and Heschel 2010 each focus on the role of Protestants in aiding and
abetting the Nazi movement.
Bergen, Doris L. Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1996.
Bergen examines the rise and role of the German Christian movement under the Nazi regime. She argues that German
Christians were extremely influential, holding key positions in the Protestant Church. She investigates the goals and ideology of
the movement, providing primary source documents, including photographs that situate the Christian movement within the
political atmosphere during Hitler’s rule.
Carroll, James. Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews; A History. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Carroll presents a personal history of antiSemitism in the Catholic Church, registered as a reckoning with his own conscience
and the unconscious of Western Christian civilization. He discusses the church’s dark side from the Gospels to the Crusades,
through the Inquisition, to Hitler, seeking to rebut Arendt’s claim that religious hatred was vastly different than Nazi anti
Semitism.
Flannery, Edward. The Anguish of the Jews: TwentyThree Centuries of Antisemitism. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
Flannery, a Roman Catholic, was the first priest to address this history, which begins in the ancient world and goes through the
Holocaust and into the postwar years. He lays out the origins and development of antiSemitism, arguing that Christians are
often unaware and uneducated when it comes to the long history of the religious persecution of Jews and how this demonization
impacted antiSemitism under the conditions of modernity.
Heschel, Susannah. The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian antiSemitism,
redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939 these theologians established the
Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, which became the most important
propaganda organ in the Protestant community promoting antiJewish sentiment and support for the war among Protestants.
Isaac, Jules. The Teaching of Contempt. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964.
In a series of works beginning with Jesus and Israel (written between 1943 and 1946) and including this synthetic book, whose
title became shorthand for the problem he illuminated, Isaac investigated antiSemitism as rooted in Christian teachings. Isaac’s
publications and interfaith work were a precursor to the changes in Catholic theology distilled in the papal declaration Nostra
Aetete (1965), which had an impact on changing the doctrine of other Christian churches as well.
Kertzer, David. The Popes against the Jews. New York: Knopf, 2001.
Kertzer examines the role of the Catholic Church in paving the way for the Holocaust, beginning in the 19th century and ending
with the Second World War, based upon source documents from the Vatican archives. He argues that the church helped to
create and sustain modern antiSemitism through its own laws and practices.
Michael, Robert. Holy Hatred: Christianity, AntiSemitism, and the Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Michael argues that the two millennia of Christian ideas and prejudices and their impact on Christians’ behavior were the major
basis of antiSemitism, reaching their apex in the Holocaust. The first three chapters focus on the general argument, the Church
Fathers, and medieval violence, followed by Michael’s reprisal of the LuthertoHitler thesis.
Kant through Wagner
The German intellectual tradition from Kant through Wagner was formative in the secularization and racialization of anti
Semitism, and this was responded to by GermanJewish thinkers. Lang 1990 focuses specifically on Kant. Hess 2002 discusses
a number of the key figures who addressed the Jewish Question in its formative years. Rose 1990 takes these debates through
the 19th century. Mack 2003 examines many of the same philosophers as Rose 1990 but also considers GermanJewish
responses in detail. Smith 1991 considers Hegel’s views on Jews, Yovel 1998 addresses both Hegel and Nietzsche, and
Rotenstreich 1959 considers the Young Hegelians, specifically Bruno Bauer and the young Karl Marx. Coming out of an
intellectual milieu that included Marx and Wagner, Zimmerman 1986 is a biography of Wilhelm Marr, who coined the term “anti
Semitism.”
Hess, Jonathan M. Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
Hess examines the intellectual conflicts of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Germany over the position of Jews and
Judaism in modernity, focusing on Wilhelm Dohm, Johann David Michaelis, Immanuel Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, and Johann
Gottlieb Fichte. He looks at debates between Jewish and German scholars, arguing that Jewish intellectuals played an
extremely important role in the formation of German modernity.
Lang, Berel. “Genocide and Kant’s Enlightenment.” In Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide. By Berel Lang, 165–206.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Lang’s essay seeks to trace the historical effects of the Enlightenment in general, and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy in particular,
on Nazi thought. He argues that Enlightenment ideas like Kant’s created the grounds of “historical possibility” for the atrocities of
Germany in the 20th century.
Mack, Michael. German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner AntiSemitism of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Mack uncovers the deep roots of antiSemitism in the German philosophical tradition by countering the notion that German anti
Semitism was a reaction against Enlightenment philosophy. He shows how the fundamental thinkers in the German idealist
tradition—including Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner, among others—defined their idealism against the debased Jewish
Other. The second part of the book examines GermanJewish responses.
Rose, Paul Lawrence. The GermanJewish Question: Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Rose proposes that Martin Luther created a particularly German critique of Judaism that carried through to the 19th century and
set the stage for the Holocaust, thus advancing his own version of the LuthertoHitler thesis, discussing key figures like Marx
and Wagner along the way.
Rotenstreich, Nathan. “For and Against Emancipation: The Bruno Bauer Controversy.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 4
(1959): 3–36.
This is a key article on Bruno Bauer’s infamous essay on the Jewish Question, which outlines Bauer’s basic premises, the reply
by the Jewish and nonJewish champions of emancipation, as well as those by Abraham Geiger and Samuel Hirsch.
Rotenstreich then considers Marx’s more famous early essay On the Jewish Question, which responded to Bauer and the
ramifications of the controversy in later periods.
Smith, Steven B. “Hegel and the Jewish Question: In Between Tradition and Modernity.” History of Political Thought 12.1
(1991): 87–106.
Smith identifies the key works addressing Hegel’s views on Jews and Judaism and argues for a new interpretation that sees
Hegel’s perspective as undergoing a “paradigm shift” from his early writings, which echoed the Enlightenment in general and
Kant more specifically, to a more mature Hegelian stance that situated Judaism within the dialectic of world cultures, aiming at
the realization of freedom. He then parses Hegel’s views in relation to liberalism.
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1998.
Yovel argues that antiJewish prejudice can exist alongside a philosophy of reason (as it does in the work of Hegel), while
Nietzsche’s philosophy of power was far more ambivalent, dignifying the ancient Hebrews, condemning Jewish priests as the
originators of Christianity, and believing that modern avantgarde Jews could aid in the regeneration of a decadent civilization,
one symptom of which was the rise of modern antiSemitism.
Zimmerman, Moshe. Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Antisemitism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
A historical biography of the radical writer and activist Wilhelm Marr, the man who introduced the term “antiSemitism” into
politics when he founded the AntiSemitic League. Zimmermann follows Marr’s interactions in the political, literary, and artistic
circles of his day, which included Marx and Wagner, and he reveals the diverse ways that antiSemitism came to permeate
German thought.
Socialism
There is no unified position among Socialists on the Jewish Question, nor is there a uniform approach in countries with
successful Social Democratic parties. Socialism defined the Left in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. While many of
the founders of socialism used antiSemitic discourse, by the late19th century, most Social Democratic parties denounced anti
Semitism as “the socialism of fools” (August Bebel). Lichtheim 1968 remains a classic overview of the French socialists, while
Schapiro 1945 covers Proudhon in more detail, and Silberner 1946 covers Fourier. Carlebach 1978 focuses on Marx and his
intellectual and cultural context. Fischer 2007 covers the social democrats in Germany, including Marx’s influence on them.
Jacobs 1992 covers intellectuals in both Germany and Austria, as well as the Russian intelligensia. Traverso 1994 covers a
number of figures not discussed by Jacobs, while Wistrich 2012 is the most expansive overview of the topic.
Carlebach, Julius. Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
Carlebach examines Marx’s critique of Jews and Judaism and the relationship of Marx’s work to his historical context and to
other leftwing intellectuals of the time. He situates this work within the struggle for Jewish emancipation in Germany and the
broader intellectual milieu of leftoriented thinking on Judaism.
Fischer, Lars. The Socialist Response to Antisemitism in Imperial Germany. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2007.
Reappraising prior work on the topic, Fischer examines the influence of Marx’s early writing on the Jewish Question on the
Social Democratic movement in Germany, and focuses on the cases of Hans Leuss, the revisionist Eduard Bernstein, and the
city of Dresden.
Jacobs, Jack. On Socialists and “the Jewish Question” after Marx. New York: New York University Press, 1992.
Jacobs examines the relationship between Jewish intellectuals and socialism, focusing on the ideas of Karl Kautsky, Eduard
Bernstein, and Rosa Luxemburg, and on the Austrian Social Democrats’ views on the Jewish Question in relation to socialist
theory. He also considers the reception of these socialist ideas by the RussianJewish intelligentsia.
Lichtheim, George. “Socialism and the Jews.” Dissent (July–August 1968): 314–342.
An influential assessment of the attitudes of the French Left toward the Jews from Charles Fourier through Alphonse Toussenel
and PierreJoseph Proudhon. The Dreyfus affair was a transformative moment, when Jean Jaurès helped to change French
socialist attitudes to antiSemitism by insisting that they were a threat to democracy. But his views were opposed by the Sorelian
anarchosyndicalists who revived the tradition of Proudhon.
Schapiro, J. Salwyn. “Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism.” American Historical Review 50.4 (July 1945): 714–
737.
Beginning with a biographical sketch of the French anarchist socialist PierreJoseph Proudhon, Schapiro controversially casts
Proudhon’s dissent from the conservative and radical political forces of his time as a forerunner of the fascist ideologies of the
20th century. Schapiro characterizes Proudhon as a racist, a “glorifier of war for its own sake,” and an advocate of militarism and
dictatorship in a manner that prefigured later reactionary writings.
Silberner, Edmund. “Charles Fourier on the Jewish Question.” Jewish Social Studies 8.4 (October 1946): 245–266.
Silberner provides an overview of the treatment of the Jewish Question within Fourier’s published works, as well as providing a
rudimentary sketch of Fourier’s biography as it intersects with his relationships with Jews. Silberner places Fourier’s abuse of
the Jews in the context of his broader critique of liberalism, as well as the historical circumstances of Jewish emancipation in
19thcentury France.
Traverso, Enzo. The Marxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate, 1843–1943. Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities, 1994.
Despite the Jewish backgrounds of several Marxists, an increasingly virulent antiSemitism affecting sections of the working
class became a problem that numerous Marxist thinkers were compelled to consider, including Marx, Karl Kautsky, Leon
Trotsky, Ber Borokhov, Abram Leon, and figures associated with the Frankfurt School. Traverso not only considers these
intellectuals, he also investigates the actual policies in the socialist and communist movements in various countries.
Wistrich, Robert. From Ambivalence to Betrayal: Israel, the Jews and the Left. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
2012.
Wistrich’s summa on this topic traces the relationship of the Left to Jews, Israel, and Zionism, beginning with the origins of
socialism in the 1830s. The book has three parts, which focus on the founding of socialism and social democracy; how Marxists
understood the question of nationalism, and specifically Zionism; and the contemporary Left.
Modernism
The term modernism is used here loosely to address the cultural movements (visual arts, literature, social theory, and
philosophy) that reflected and responded to modernization in the period from the end of the 19th century through World War II.
Gilman 1993 discusses Freud and psychoanalysis, while Maidenbaum and Martin 1991 focuses on Jung, and Gilman 1986
emphasizes the internalization of antiJewish attitudes by Jews. Gilman 1991 covers a number of intellectual figures, but it
concentrates on the development of Jewish stereotypes of the Jewish body in high and popular culture, along with the role
played by medical discourse. Martin Heidegger is indicted in Farias 1989, which set off a firestorm of responses. Judaken 2006
evaluates Sartre as a central figure in debates about Jews and Judaism in France from the 1930s, and Nochlin and Garb 1995
covers a wide number of modernists in art and literature. Herf 1984 discusses reactionary social theorists in Germany.
Farias, Victor. Heidegger and Nazism. Translated by Dominic di Bernardi. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
This controversial work examines the evolution of Heidegger’s relationship to Nazism. Farias argues that Heidegger was an
antiSemite throughout his life, and that he joined the Nazi party freely rather than as a result of duress or social pressure. He
offers insight into Heidegger’s personal and political values and raises questions about the relationship of his political ideas to
his philosophical work.
Gilman, Sander. Jewish SelfHatred: AntiSemitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Gilman considers writers from Haim ben Bezalel to Heinrich Heine, and from Karl Marx to authors of Holocaust memoirs, trained
on the issue that Jewish writers taint language, write and think differently, and ultimately deploy a language that is contaminated
by their Jewishness, which is sometimes internalized by Jews themselves.
Gilman, Sander. The Jew’s Body. London: Routledge, 1991.
Gilman examines the representations of the Jewish body as deviant and pathological. He draws on a wealth of medical and
popular literature to examine the works of high culture from Heine to Freud, among others, and into the contemporary period,
detailing the antiSemitic depictions of Jewish difference, and focusing on the Jewish mind, voice, feet, and nose.
Gilman, Sander. Freud, Race, and Gender. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Sigmund Freud was forced to cope with racism even within the medical literature of the fin de siècle, which described Jews as
inherently pathological and sexually degenerate. Gilman argues that Freud’s internalizing of these images shaped the
questions of psychoanalysis, and that Freud dealt with his anxiety about himself as a Jew by projecting it onto other cultural
“inferiors,” such as women.
Herf, Jeffrey. Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Herf discusses the contradictory relationship between the love of technology and the rejection of the rationalism of the
Enlightenment within the elaboration of German rightwing thought, maintaining that what he terms “reactionary modernism” was
a key strand in the works of thinkers like Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, and
Martin Heidegger.
Judaken, Jonathan. JeanPaul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Antiantisemitism and the Politics of the French
Intellectual. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
Judaken examines Sartre’s reflections on the Jewish Question as a means to reinterpret Sartre’s philosophical work, as well as
serving as a lens into French cultural attitudes about Jews and Judaism from the Dreyfus affair to the end of the 20th century.
Maidenbaum, Aryeh, and Stephen A. Martin, eds. Lingering Shadows: Jungians, Freudians, and AntiSemitism. Boston and
London: Shambhala, 1991.
This is a collection of essays by both historians and psychologists that addresses the debate over Carl Jung’s relationship to
antiSemitism. It includes personal memoirs as well as bibliographic information on the subject.
Nochlin, Linda, and Tamar Garb, eds. The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1995.
Ranging from fiction, to painting and prints, to film, and from caricature and propaganda to medical journals, and addressing a
variety of modern works by authors and artists as different as Charles Dickens, ToulouseLautrec, Marcel Proust, John Singer
Sargent, James Joyce and JeanPaul Sartre, this collection demonstrates how representations of the Jew are addressed by
some of the bestknown cultural figures in the world of modern literature, art, theater, and film.
Postmodernism
An umbrella term sometimes used synonymously with poststructuralist or even postHolocaust, postmodernism refers narrowly
to the group of French philosophers whose work became widely recognized in the 1970s, and that centrally concerned a
rethinking of Western thought, in part on the basis of their understanding of how Western culture could lead to the Holocaust.
More generally, postmodernism concerns a set of theoretical considerations of the social, cultural, and epistemological shifts
that followed in the wake of the Holocaust. Bellamy 1997 and, more recently, Hammerschlag 2010 are solid guides to the
philosophy. Still, their works are dense, even if more lucid than the very difficult theorists whose theories they elucidate.
Cheyette and Marcus 1998 also considers social theorists, but it goes beyond them to assess literature and issues of memory.
Kritzman 1995 contains chapters not only on French philosophy, but also on French literature, art, autobiography, and memory.
Friedländer 1992 primarily addresses historiographical concerns, but also questions other modes of representing the Holocaust,
for example in poetry, literature, and cinema, as well as its impact on philosophy.
Bellamy, Elizabeth J. Affective Genealogies: Psychoanalysis, Postmodernism, and the “Jewish Question” after
Auschwitz. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Bellamy examines how the Holocaust and Jews have been represented in a wide range of French poststructuralist works,
focusing on the French debates about Heidegger and the work of Jacques Derrida, JeanFrançois Lyotard, Philippe Lacoue
Labarthe, and JeanLuc Nancy.
Cheyette, Bryan, and Laura Marcus, eds. Modernity, Culture, and “the Jew.” Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1998.
The work is a collection that offers a rich and wideranging analysis of Jewish history and culture, relating it to theories of
modernity and postmodernity and to recent debates on ethnicity and postcolonialism, including important essays by Homi
Bhabha, Gillian Rose, and Zygmunt Bauman. The topics addressed range from psychoanalysis and gender to literary anti
Semitism, postmodernism, and the memory of the Holocaust.
Friedländer, Saul, ed. Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard
This volume gathers together a set of reflections on the theoretical issues involved in the representation of the Holocaust in
history, poetry and literature, cinema, and philosophy.
Hammerschlag, Sarah. The Figural Jew: Politics and Identity in Postwar French Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2010.
Hammerschlag examines how a cluster of postwar French thinkers (JeanPaul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot,
and Jacques Derrida) represented Jews and Judaism in their thought. She focuses on the trope of the wandering Jew and how
these philosophers turned this antiSemitic image into a positive icon, connected to their own notions of politics.
Kritzman, Lawrence D., ed. Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture, and “the Jewish Question” in France. London: Routledge,
1995.
A wideranging volume that treats Holocaust denial and antiSemitism in contemporary France; the literature of Jews writing in
French; the literature of the French writing on Jews; images of the Nazi occupation in the films of Ophuls, Chabrol, Truffaut, and
Malle; war memories and autobiographical writing; and the postAuschwitz philosophy of Sartre, Aron, LeviStrauss, Finkielkraut,
Blanchot, Derrida, Levinas, and Lyotard.
Nationalism in the 19th and Early20th Century
Animated by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe was repartitioned from empires and citystates into
nationstates over the course of the 19th century. This redrawing of boundaries and contest of identities was done in opposition
to outsiders, but also against internal minorities, with the Jewish body often serving as the symbolic site against which the body
politic was to be reconstructed. Almog 1990 gives an overview of this history.
Almog, Shmuel. Nationalism and Antisemitism in Modern Europe, 1815–1945. Oxford: Pergamon, 1990.
Almog examines romantic nationalism, revolutions and counterrevolutions, and political antiSemitism in the AustroHungarian
Empire, Russia, Romania, and France; the rise of Jewish nationalism; and World War II and the Holocaust. He explores the
intellectual and political weight of antiSemitic thought and action, providing insight into the historical development of the
Holocaust.
France
Since France was the first nation to legally emancipate Jews, antiJewish animus in French history was little treated by historians
even in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Beginning in the May events of 1968, when the French governments’ collaboration with
Nazi fascism was raised, and continuing in the 1970s with the rise of ethnicized minority identities taking on significance in the
aftermath of global decolonization struggles, a critical history of Jews in France emerged, examining the ongoing struggles of
Jews for social acceptance, despite their legal equality. Hyman 1998 and Birnbaum 2000 give an overview of the history from
the French Revolution to the end of the 20th century. Berkovitz 1989 covers just the 19th century. Other works discuss certain
epochs in more detail: Kalman 2010 focuses on the period 1815–1848; Isser 1991 surveys the years that follow (1850–1870);
and Byrnes 1950 discusses the era that preceded the Dreyfus affair. Carroll 1995 addresses key figures from the end of the 19th
century and examines their influence on French literary fascism. Soucy 1995 discusses the Fascist parties and intellectuals in
the 1930s.
Berkovitz, Jay. The Shaping of Jewish Identity in NineteenthCentury France. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
Berkovitz examines the impact of modernization and emancipation on French Jewry, arguing that antiJewish sentiment
nonetheless persisted throughout the 19th century. As a result, he provides insight into the continuing struggles of the Jewish
population in France after emancipation.
Birnbaum, Pierre. Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France. Translated by Arthur
Goldhammer. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000.
An outstanding overview of key debates and personalities that have shaped the history of Jews in modern France. The work
examines the major flashpoints in modern French history from the French Revolution to dawn of the new millennium. Birnbaum
maintains that antiSemitism and assimilation have a complex and entwined past in France, directly related to the shifting nature
of the Republican state and its relation to minorities.
Byrnes, Robert F. Antisemitism in Modern France: The Prologue to the Dreyfus Affair. New York: H. Fertig, 1950.
Byrnes examines the social and political context that defined the antiSemitism immediately preceding the Dreyfus affair. He
centers the book on Drumont, the chief antiSemitic writer and agitator, and his most important followers. He investigates the
success of Drumont’s antiSemitic work in different classes and in both urban and rural contexts.
Carroll, David. French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, AntiSemitism, and Ideology of Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Carroll considers nationalist and fascist French writers and connects their work to antiSemitism, starting with the turn of the
century before moving to fascist intellectuals in the 1930s. He argues that there is an undeniable connection between the
aesthetic perspective of the subjects of his book and their identification with fascist ideology, indicating the links between
fascism and literature.
Hyman, Paula. The Jews of Modern France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Hyman’s masterful social history of the Jews of France from the eve of the French Revolution to the late 20th century synthesizes
the historical research on all the key historical events, exploring the ongoing struggle with lingering antiSemitism even after
emancipation. She maintains that Jews have continued to reconcile their religious and ethnic identity with a French national
identity, but they have also shifted their selfunderstanding over the course of time.
Isser, Natalie. Antisemitism during the French Second Empire. New York: Peter Lang, 1991.
Surveying the 19th century, but focused on the years 18521870, Isser examines the history of antiSemitism, covering not only
politics, but also its expression in the press and in French literature, to understand the development of French antiSemitic
thought.
Kalman, Julie. Rethinking Antisemitism in NineteenthCentury France. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Kalman explores the period from the Restoration to the Revolution of 1848, showing that despite their emancipation, there was a
shared discourse of antiJudaism that established continuities between the French Revolution and the Dreyfus affair. These anti
Jewish motifs derived from the depths of the Catholic imaginary and were shared by Ultras/Legitimists as well as by
Republicans.
Soucy, Robert. French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
An important social and cultural survey of French fascism. Soucy not only introduces the historiographic debate, but he also
assesses both the minor and major parties and personalities in France during these years, including the Jeunesses Patriotes,
the Action Française, the Cagoule, the Greenshirts, and focusing on the Solidarité Française, the Croix de Feu/Parti Social
Français, and Parti Populaire Français.
Western Europe
Covering the continent from the Iberian Peninsula to the Netherlands, these works survey key communities from the 19th century
through the years of the Holocaust. Avni 1982 covers Spain, concentrating on the years of the Franco regime. Kertzer 1997
focuses on Italy in the 19th century and the widely discussed Mortara affair, while both Michaelis 1978 and De Felice 2001
center on the period of Mussolini’s regime in Italy (1922–1945). Blom, et al. 2002 and Israel and Salverda 2002 cover a wider
chronology, from the early modern period forward, in the Netherlands.
Avni, Haim. Spain, the Jews, and Franco. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1982.
Avni’s book offers an overview of the treatment of Jews in Spain through the 19th and 20th centuries, with a focus on the era of
fascism.
Blom, J. C. H., R. G. FuksMansfeld, and I. Schöffer, eds. The History of the Jews in the Netherlands. Translated by A. J.
Pomerans and E. Pomerans. Oxford and Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002.
This is a collection of essays examining the lives of Dutch Jews from the Middle Ages to the present. The essays address the
struggles and successes of the Jewish communities in the Netherlands, including the tensions raised in the attempts to be Dutch
and maintain Jewish cultural traditions. The work also addresses the German occupation and the postwar period.
De Felice, Renzo. The Jews in Fascist Italy. Translated by Robert L. Miller. New York: Enigma, 2001.
This book examines the history of Jews in Italy’s Fascist period and during Italian involvement in World War II (1922–1945),
covering the history of Jews and antiSemitism on the eve of the Fascist assumption of power, the impact of Hitler and Italian
imperialism in Ethiopia on Mussolini’s policies, and the implementation of Fascist persecution.
Israel, Jonathan, and Reiner Salverda, eds. Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill,
2002.
This collection examines Jews in the Netherlands and Antwerp over the past five hundred years, neatly divided into two parts,
focused on early modern and modern history, and addressing the distinctiveness of the various Jewish communities that came
to reside in the Netherlands, as well as some of the literary and cultural creations of the Dutch Jewish community, which was
decimated at the highest rate in western and central Europe by the Nazis.
Kertzer, David I. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. New York: Knopf, 1997.
Kertzer examines the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, a sixyearold Jewish boy, in 1858, after his covert baptism by a Catholic
servant. Done with the support of the Papal States, the event is treated as a pivotal point in the political history of Italy and as an
international controversy. Kertzer argues that the public outrage over the event helped to diminish greatly the secular power of
the church.
Michaelis, Meir. Mussolini and the Jews: GermanItalian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy, 1922–1945. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1978.
Michaelis examines the history and role of antiSemitism under Mussolini’s Fascist regime. He calls into question the idea that
Mussolini adopted antiSemitism to foster his political relationship with Nazi Germany and Hitler, maintaining instead that
Mussolini had a complex political relationship with the Jews, which he traces over this tumultuous period.
Germany
The last forty years have seen an explosion of scholarly writings on the subject of German and Austrian antiSemitism, in
contrast to the paucity of such publications in the preceding decades. While some interpretations, like Massing 1949, which
derived from a Marxist methodology, have declined in favor, there has been an increase in sophisticated studies of local
developments and on the role of antiSemitism in political party, associational, and especially cultural life. Aschheim 1982 and
Wertheimer 1987 each consider the response of German Jews to Ostjuden, Jews from eastern Europe migrating to Germany.
Pulzer 1966 and Levy 1975 each focus on political parties. Tal 1975 examines not only politics, but also Catholic and Protestant
groups. Volkov 1978 centers on the role of artisans as a key social group. Hoffmann and Smith 2002 concentrates on a series of
violent episodes across the 19th and early20th centuries.
Aschheim, Steven. Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness,
1800–1923. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
Aschheim maintains that the conflicts between German Jews and Jews from eastern Europe was based on the inner conflicts of
German Jews attempting to reconcile their national and Jewish identities. For some, Ostjuden were an unpleasant reminder of
the past and, as such, a threat to the present, while for others they were the embodiment of an ancient Volk who might serve as
the center of Jewish revival.
Hoffmann, Werner Bergmann, and Helmut Walser Smith, eds. Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German
History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
This collection of essays covers the “Hep Hep” riots in 1819, pogroms in 1848, antiSemitic riots in Pomerania and West Prussia,
ritual murder charges and violence in Konitz in 1900, the Scheunenviertel riots in Berlin in 1923, and Kristallnacht in 1938,
along with theoretical and methodological reflections on antiJewish violence in modern Germany.
Levy, Richard. The Downfall of the AntiSemitic Political Parties in Germany. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.
Levy’s book investigates antiSemitic political parties and organizations in Wilhelmine Germany, questioning the continuity
between the antiSemitic politics of the Imperial period and Hitler’s war on the Jews. Central to his analysis is his distinction
between “conventional” and “revolutionary” antiSemitism. He shows the complete failure of political antiSemitism in prewar
Germany at the parliamentary level.
Massing, Paul W. Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political AntiSemitism in Imperial Germany. New York: Harper,
1949.
A pioneering history of the development of antiSemitism in Germany from 1871 to 1914. Massing was part of the Frankfurt
School, and so works within a broadly Marxist framework of historical interpretation, demonstrating that antiSemitism was
interwoven into the economic, political, and social fabric of Germany as a burning issue for a generation or more before Hitler
stepped onto the scene.
Pulzer, Peter. The Rise of Political AntiSemitism in Germany and Austria. New York: Wiley, 1966.
Pulzer focuses on the rough half century from 1867 to 1914 in Imperial German and the AustroHungarian Empire as the vital
period for the circulation of antiJewish sentiment, tying the rise of antiSemitism in Germany and Austria to the political and
social failure of liberalism, as well as the effects of the economic and social dislocations of modernity.
Tal, Uriel. Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870–1914. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell, 1975.
Tal examines the role of the Jewish Question within national politics, including the intricate relationship between Jews and
German Liberalism, as well the debates surrounding the conception of the Second Reich as a Christian state. He also explores
various manifestations of antiSemitism, including religious Judeophobia in its Catholic, conservative Protestant, and liberal
Protestant incarnations, as well the Jewish political and intellectual reaction to these developments.
Volkov, Shulamit. The Rise of Popular Antimodernism in Germany: The Urban Master Artisans, 1873–1896. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton, 1978.
Set in the era of the Great Depression of the 19th century (1873–1896), Volkov examines the links between social and economic
developments, on the one hand, and organized politics, on the other, demonstrating how some sectors of artisans prospered
while others declined, and arguing that a popular shift from Liberalism to antimodern politics tended to flourish wherever modern
social and economic structures coexisted with traditional ones.
Wertheimer, Jack. Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany. New York: Oxford University Press,
1987.
When East European Jews migrated westward in everlarger numbers between 1870 and 1914, both German government
officials and the leaders of German Jewry were confronted by a series of new challenges. Wertheimer considers the behavior of
Germans toward strangers in their midst, the status and selfperception of emancipated Jews in preNazi Germany, and the
responses of “privileged” Jews to needy, but alien, coreligionists.
Austria
As is the case with Germany, the last two decades have been privy to a wideranging set of new studies on Imperial Austria, with
a number of works concentrating on Vienna. Pauley 1992 covers the longest chronological span. Beller 1989 concentrates on
the varieties of antiSemitic ideology and the different kinds of Jewish responses to it. Boyer 1981 and Boyer 1995 center on the
key role played by the Christian Social movement and Karl Lueger, while Hamann 1999 keys in on the forces in Vienna that
influenced Adolf Hitler.
Beller, Steven. Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Beller discusses the concomitant growth of biological racism and Christian antiSemitism as a means of unification of various
factions in Vienna. Surveying the response of Viennese Jewish intellectuals to this growth, Beller argues that a multifaceted
series of responses, ranging from assimilation to selfhatred to a return to Jewish roots, resulted from the changes in the cultural
status of Jews.
Boyer, John. Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: The Origins of the Christian Social Movement, 1848–1897.
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981.
Boyer traces the rise of Christian Socialism, focused on Karl Lueger, in late imperial Vienna, arguing that the social and political
context of Vienna at the time is essential to understanding how he came to serve as mayor and the role antiSemitism played in
this.
Boyer, John. Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power, 1897–1918. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1995.
This work continues where Boyer 1981 ends, following Lueger and Christian Socialism through their rise to power. It offers
insight into the importance of Christian Socialism in the development of social and political trends in Vienna into the First World
War.
Hamann, Brigitte. Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hamann argues that the cultural and political atmosphere in Vienna shaped Hitler’s understanding of racial purity and anti
Semitism, despite Hitler having positive relationships with Jews in the years he lived in Vienna (1908–1913). The book
discusses the radical movements that demonized the Jews and emphasized the noble German Volk, which are set against the
forms of cultural modernism developed by Viennese Jews, including Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Pauley, Bruce. From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian AntiSemitism. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina, 1992.
Pauley’s book explains why Austrians were so overrepresented in the worst aspects of National Socialism by providing a history
of Austrian antiSemitism and Jewish responses to it from the Middle Ages to the present, with a particular focus on the period
from 1914 to 1938. His account identifies many sources and varieties of the antiSemitic sentiment that pervaded Austrian
society on the eve of the Holocaust.
Russia
While there were pioneering works of Russian Jewish history earlier, the historiography was largely stifled in the Soviet period.
With the opening of the archives, a spate of new works began appearing, presenting a more nuanced view of antiSemitism in
Russia. Löwe 1993 is a good overview from the 18th century until the beginning of the Soviet period, while Gitelman 2001 is a
useful starting point for the period from 1881 to the present. Stanislawsky 1983 examines the years of Tsar Nicolas I (1825–
1855). Klier 1995 picks up from there through 1881. Rogger 1986 focuses on the years from 1881 to the end of the rule of the
tsars. Klier and Lambroza 1992 covers pogroms over the course of modern Russian history; the worst of these took place during
the Russian Civil War (1917–1920). Vaksberg 1994 covers the era of Stalin and its later impact on Krushchev and Brezhnev.
Gitelman, Zvi. A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. 2d exp. ed.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
This useful textbook is a good starting point, since it narrates the uneasy relationship of the Jews of Russia and the Soviet
Union, showing how Jews were torn between a love for the land of their birth and loyalty to their own heritage, while contending
with the vicious prejudices of the majority population and the continually shifting policies of the government: tsarist and
communist.
Klier, John D. Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855–1881. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Klier examines the attitudes of all sectors of Russian educated society toward the Jews during the reform era in Russia (1855–
1881), which witnessed the emancipation of the serfs and a variety of social and economic upheavals. He also explores how a
new group—the Russian Jewish intelligentsia—sought to define a modern Jewish identity in the midst of a multiethnic empire.
Klier, John D., and Shlomo Lambroza, eds. Pogroms: AntiJewish Violence in Modern Russian History. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
The contributors look at the role of violence in Russian society; the prejudices, stereotypes and psychology of both the educated
society and rural masses; the work of the Tsarist regime, especially the police and army as agents of order and control; and the
impact of the pogroms on the sense of Jewish identity and security in the empire. The final chapter compares Russian pogroms
to those elsewhere.
Löwe, HeinzDietrich. The Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction and Antisemitism in Imperial Russia, 1772–1917.
Reading, UK: Harwood Academic, 1993.
Löwe explores how antiSemitism became an ideological weapon in which Russian Jews appeared as the embodiment of
change, modernization, and uprooted life. The English translation incorporates the results of Löwe’s most recent research,
extending the coverage of the book backwards into the 18th century to give the whole background to tsarist Jewish policy and
Russian antiSemitism.
Rogger, Hans. Jewish Policies and RightWing Politics in Imperial Russia. London: Macmillan, 1986.
A collection of articles in which Rogger attempts to explain the persistence and tenacity of policies that saddled Russia’s Jews
with an onerous system of legal disabilities and discrimination. He explores how a range of social, political, economic,
diplomatic, intellectual, and cultural factors shaped the thinking of the statesmen who determined the government’s policies
toward Russian Jewry, accounting for its inconsistency.
Stanislawsky, Michael. Tsar Nicholas and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855.
Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983.
Stanislawsky’s study reassesses Russian Jewry’s experience under Nicholas I by emphasizing continuity between the
traditional historical epochs of “reaction” and “reform.” It questions the widespread assumption that the “modernization” of the
empire’s Jews commenced with Alexander II, arguing that it was under Nicholas that the insularity of Jewish communal life was
breached by the state, intent on inclusion of Jewry in the general polity of the empire.
Vaksberg, Arkady. Stalin against the Jews. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
The Russian journalist Vaksberg’s exposé documents Stalin’s relentless antiSemitism, maintaining that his schemes against
the Jews began earlier than previously thought. He also documents the revival of statesanctioned antiSemitism under
Krushchev and Brezhnev and the hate mongering of contemporary ultranationalist groups.
Poland
A significant uptick in publishing began in the 1980s as the Soviet state withered. Polonsky 2010–2012 updates the
groundbreaking work of Dubnow, covering the history from 1350 to the contemporary era. Blobaum 2005 ranges across the
modern epoch in a series of articles. Porter 2000 covers the 19th century, examining the mobilization of Polish patriotism against
the Jewish Other. Weeks 2006 discusses the deterioration in PolishJewish relations in the years 1850–1914. Ury 2012 covers
the end of this period in the era that straddles the revolution of 1905. Michlic 2006 overlaps these two works, focusing on how
the image of Jews circulated from 1880 to the end of the 20th century. Gross 2001 focuses on the controversial Jedwabne
massacre as a means to discuss Poland in the years of the Holocaust, while Gross 2006 focuses on the postHolocaust period.
Blobaum, Robert, ed. Antisemitism and its Opponents in Modern Poland. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.
This collection of essays by leading scholars covers the full gamut of PolishJewish relations in the modern period: assimilation,
nationalism, modernization; Jews as middlemen; pogroms; the role of Catholicism and the clergy; the antiZionist campaign in
1968, among others. It concludes with a useful bibliography of works on the subject since 1990.
Gross, Jan. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Gross’ controversial study explores the July 1941 Jedwabne massacre committed against Polish Jews in the Jedwabne village
in Nazioccupied Poland by their nonJewish neighbors. Gross discusses JewishPolish relations, the Holocaust, and human
responses to occupation and totalitarianism.
Gross, Jan. Fear: AntiSemitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation. New York: Random
House, 2006.
Gross explores the issues concerning incidents of postwar antiJewish violence in Poland, with particular focus on the 1946
Kielce pogrom. He argues that postwar Polish antiSemitism cannot be understood simply as a continuation of prewar attitudes,
but rather developed in the context of the Holocaust and the Communist takeover.
Michlic, Joanna Bata. Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2006.
Michlic interrogates the myth of the Jew as Poland’s foremost internal “threatening other,” analyzing the nature and impact of
antiJewish prejudices on modern Polish society and culture as it developed into a more exclusivist ethnic nationalism.
Polonsky, Antony. The Jews in Poland and Russia. 3 vols. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010–2012.
In this massive threevolume history, Polonsky provides a comprehensive survey—sociopolitical, economic, and religious—of
the Jewish communities of Russia and Poland from 1350 to 2008. Until the Second World War, this was the heartland of the
Jewish world: nearly three and a half million Jews lived in Poland alone, and nearly three million more lived in the Soviet Union.
Porter, Brian. When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Politics in Nineteenth Century Poland. New York: Oxford
Porter explains the emergence of xenophobic, authoritarian nationalism in Poland. Focusing on the 19th century, he traces the
transformation of revolutionary patriotism into a violent antiSemitic ideology, arguing that the language of hatred was central to
the way “modernity” was defined by findesiècle intellectuals.
Ury, Scott. Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2012.
Ury examines the impact that semidemocratic politics had on relations between Poles and Jews in early20thcentury Warsaw.
He argues that the advent of popular elections engendered a series of electoral conflicts between the liberal and national camps
in the Polish political sphere, and that Polish national parties responded to these by introducing, and thereby legitimizing, a
series of antiJewish tropes, motifs, and concepts.
Weeks, Theodore. From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850–1914. DeKalb: Northern
Illinois University Press, 2006.
Weeks examines how the ideal of Jewish assimilation in Poland was gradually replaced by more exclusionary and aggressive
ideologies, culminating in the early 20th century in widespread Polish antiSemitism. He argues that several longterm factors—
economic change, political and cultural repression, the general intensification of national consciousness at the time, and the
Revolution of 1905—played a part in the deterioration of PolishJewish relations.
Eastern Europe
Ranging from the Balkans through the Czech lands and into the Baltic, these works focus on the 19th century through the Cold
War. Greenbaum 1995 covers the longest chronological period, starting in the medieval era and chronicling Lithuanian Jewry
through the Holocaust. Abramson 1999 studies the neighboring Ukraine in the years of the Russian Civil War. Covering Poland
and Hungary, as well as Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, Mendelsohn 1983 considers the whole of eastern Europe in
the period between the world wars. Freidenreich 1979 considers Yugoslavia, Kieval 2000 examines the Czech lands, Kramer
2000 discusses the case of Hungary, and Moskovich, et al. 2004 discuss the diverse Balkan experience. Lendvai 1972
considers Eastern Europe during the postHolocaust Cold War.
Abramson, Henry. A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Abramson covers the tumultuous period at the end of World War I and during the Russian Civil War in the Ukraine, home to 3.5
million Jews. It was a period of continuous violence, shifts in political authority, and simmering resentments between Ukrainians
and Jews that resulted in repeated pogroms.
Freidenreich, Harriet Pass. The Jews of Yugoslavia: A Quest for Community. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of
America, 1979.
A study of a littleknown part of the modern Jewish world that is at once unique and a microcosm of European Jewry as a whole.
Freidenreich covers the Yugoslav Jewish communities from the AustroHungarian era through the rise of Tito’s regime in the
postwar period.
Greenbaum, Masha. The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable Community, 1316–1945. Jerusalem: Grefen, 1995.
A popular history of this remarkable Jewish community, from its beginnings in the early part of the 14th century until its virtual
destruction during the Holocaust. The book deals with the various movements and personalities that played a role in the
community’s formation.
Kieval, Hillel J. Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000.
Kieval examines the contours and distinctive features of Jewish experience in the lands of Bohemia and Moravia (the present
day Czech Republic), from the late18th to the late20th century, where Jews have needed to navigate group identity, cultural
loyalty, memory, and social cohesiveness, particularly during the period of modernizing absolutism after 1780.
Kramer, T. D. From Emancipation to Catastrophe: The Rise and Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry. Lanham, MD: University
Press of America, 2000.
Kramer examines the history of Hungary’s Jewish community between 1848 and 1945. Despite significant contributions to the
development of the nation, and intense patriotism in times of national peril, Kramer finds that Jews remained perennial aliens.
The final chapter focuses on the Holocaust.
Lendvai, Paul. Antisemitism in Eastern Europe. London: MacDonald, 1972.
A comparative study of the political uses of antiSemitism in four Communist Eastern European countries: Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Lendvai outlines the historical position of Jews in the societies of eastern Europe,
including the role of Jews in the communist underground and during the Holocaust. Against this background he provides four
case studies illustrating the exploitation of antiSemitism by postwar Communist elites.
Mendelsohn, Ezra. The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1983.
A study of the demographic, cultural, and socioeconomic condition of East Central European Jewry, the book focuses on the
internal life of Jewish communities in the region and on the relationships between Jews and gentiles in a period of intense
nationalism.
Moskovich, Wolf, Oto Luthar, and Irena Šumi, eds. Jews and AntiSemitism in the Balkans. Jews and Slavs 12. Ljubljana:
Scientific Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2004.
Central and eastern European scholarly contributors explore topics such as antiSemitism in the national contexts of Yugoslavia,
Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Greece, and the restitution of Jewish property in postwar Eastern Europe.
Great Britain
Given the depth of the liberal tradition in England, studies of antiSemitism in British history only took off in the 1970s.
Discussions have more recently shifted away from a comparison with attitudes toward Jews in western and central Europe and
an emphasis on issues of social integration and Jewish exclusion alongside economic advancement. The focus in more recent
work is on the social and psychological effects of antiSemitism personally and within the cultural sphere and toward ambivalent
attitudes toward Jews. Works like Holmes 1979 have thus been challenged by a new generation. Endelman 2002 provides a
broad overview of the history of Jews in Britain from resettlement in the 17th century to the close of the 20th century. Julius 2010
goes back to the Middle Ages and forward to the contemporary period and focuses squarely on antiSemitism. Felsenstein 1995
covers cultural attitudes from the early modern era into the early19th century (1660–1830). Feldman 1994 picks up where
Felsenstein leaves off, focuses more on social history, and continues the narrative into the early 20th century. Cheyette 1993
covers literary modernism from 1875 to 1945. Valman complements the work of Cheyette by a focus on the image of the Jewess
in 19thcentury literature, providing a gendered dimension. Lebzelter 1978 covers the high tide of political antiSemitism in the
interwar years.
Cheyette, Bryan. Construction of the “the Jew” in English Literature and Society, 1875–1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Cheyette combines a complicated theoretical approach to engage in close readings of works by Arnold, Trollope and George
Eliot, Buchan and Kipling, Shaw and Wells, Belloc and Chesterton, and T. S. Eliot and Joyce, arguing that the figure of the Jew
lies at the heart of modern English literature and society, not as a stable stereotype, but as the embodiment of ambivalence and
indeterminacy.
Endelman, Todd M. The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Endelman devotes chapters to the resettlement after the expulsion of 1290; to integration and acculturation in the 18th century;
to the economic transformation of AngloJewry between 1800 and 1870; to the tide of immigration from eastern Europe between
1870 and 1914 and the antiSemitic backlash; and to the turbulent 20th century.
Feldman, David. Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840–1914. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1994.
Feldman provides an overview of Jews in England—and English attitudes toward them—during the 19th and early20th
centuries. His chapters span political, religious, economic, and social history, dealing with arguments between Whigs and Tories
over Jewish emancipation and with the turbulent political life of the Jewish East End of London, with antiSemitic assaults on
Disraeli and with the travails of the immigrant sweatshop workers.
Felsenstein, Frank. AntiSemitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1660–1830. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Felsenstein focuses on English cultural attitudes toward Jews during what is known as the “longer” 18th century, from roughly
1660 through 1830. He describes the persistence through the period of certain negative biases that can be traced back at least
to the late Middle Ages. With the advent of the 19th century, however, he sees a gradual development of more liberal attitudes in
English society, transforming these medieval beliefs concerning Jews.
Holmes, Colin. AntiSemitism in British Society, 1876–1939. London: Edward Arnold, 1979.
A synthetic work, Holmes’s book was very influential, examining many examples of antiSemitism in the period, including during
the crisis over the Eastern Question, the Boer War, sweatshop labor, and various antiSemitic tendencies within the British labor
movement.
Julius, Anthony. Trials of the Diaspora: A History of AntiSemitism in England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Julius’s major study focuses on four distinct versions of English antiSemitism: the antiSemitism of medieval England, literary
antiSemitism, modern antiSemitism, and contemporary antiSemitism that treats Zionism and the State of Israel as illegitimate
Jewish enterprises.
Lebzelter, Gisela C. Political AntiSemitism in England, 1918–1939. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978.
In this analysis of British antiSemitism of the interwar years, Lebzelter considers the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy, militant
hooliganism, social discrimination, fascist and antiSemitic organizations, as well as opposition to antiSemitism among law
enforcement, AngloJewry, and the radical Left.
Valman, Nadia. The Jewess in NineteenthCentury British Literary Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2007.
Focused on literature, Valman explores representations of the Jewess as virtuous, appealing, and sacrificial, revealing how
negative images of Jews were accompanied by pity, identification, and desire. She thereby examines the instability of 19th
century religious, racial, and national identity as evidenced in Romantic, evangelical, and realist literature.
Anglophone World
Linking transnational conversations across the Englishspeaking world, Rubinstein and Rubinstein 1999 consider responses to
international antiSemitic affairs; Freedman 2000 considers shared stereotypes in England and America within literary culture,
as well as the efforts to counter them; Shain examines the foundational period when antiSemitism took root in South Africa, from
the end of the 19th century through World War II.
Freedman, Jonathan. The Temple of Culture: Assimilation and AntiSemitism in Literary AngloAmerica. Oxford: Oxford
Freedman’s book begins by looking at images of the stereotypical Jew in the literary culture of 19th and 20thcentury England
and America, and then considers the efforts on the part of Jewish critics and intellectuals to counter this image in the public
sphere.
Rubinstein, William D., and Hilary L. Rubinstein. Philosemitism: Admiration and Support in the EnglishSpeaking World for
Jews, 1840–1939. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999.
The Rubinsteins draw attention to the persistent tradition of philoSemitism in Britain and elsewhere in the Englishspeaking
world after 1840, constructing a typology of varieties of support for Jews. They discuss the Damascus affair of 1840, the Mortara
affair of 1858–1859, the tsarist pogroms, the Dreyfus, Frank, and Beilis affairs, and the rise of Nazi persecution in the 1930s, with
each subject being explored in terms of the response of Anglophone philoSemites.
Shain, Milton. The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994.
Milton Shain argues that antiSemitism was an important element in South African society long before the political turmoil of the
1930s. Using previously unmined sources, such as novels, plays, caricatures, and even jokes, he demonstrates that the roots of
antiJewish outbursts of the 1930s and early 1940s are to be found in a widely shared negative stereotype of the Jew that had
evolved from the late19th century.
United States of America
Debates in America concern the depth of antiSemitism socially and culturally. The subject was little treated when diplomatic,
military, and political history dominated the discipline through the 1960s. Scholarship has tended to skim methodologically on
the rise of the “new social history,” and more recently on the “new cultural history.” Disputes veer between maximalists arguing
that incidents like General Grant’s order to expulse the Jews during the Civil War or the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 or figures
like Henry Ford are exemplary, while minimalists emphasize that political antiSemitism and legal mechanisms of discrimination
have played only a small role in American history. Sarna 1986 is a balanced overview; much more detailed is Dinnerstein 1994.
While Gerber 1987 lacks the same coherence, since it is a collected work, it has chapters that cover many of the important
issues. Sarna 2012 discusses Grant’s infamous expulsion order, Dinnerstein 2008 examines the Leo Frank case, Baldwin 2001
covers Henry Ford, and Carr 2001 examines the role of Hollywood in propagating American stereotypes of Jews.
Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. New York: Public Affairs, 2001.
Baldwin focuses on the climate of intellectual antiSemitism that Ford experienced as a child and young adult, and how this
shaped Ford’s views about Jews. He also describes how Ford promoted these antiSemitic views in The Dearborn Independent
and other publications, and he examines the response of the Jewish community in America as well as Ford’s impact on the
spread of antiSemitism in Europe before World War II.
Carr, Steven. Hollywood and AntiSemitism: A Cultural History up to World War II. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2001.
Carr’s book explores the ways Jews were portrayed in film and the various ethnic stereotypes to which American moviegoers
were exposed, revealing a powerful set of assumptions concerning ethnicity and role of the media in influencing these
assumptions.
Dinnerstein, Leonard. AntiSemitism in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
A comprehensive history of prejudice about Jews in the United States from colonial times to the present. Dinnerstein traces
American antiSemitism from its roots in the dawn of the Christian era and arrival of the first European settlers, to its peak during
World War II, as well as its presentday permutations, with separate chapters discussing antiSemitism in the South and among
AfricanAmericans. He is a maximalist on the subject, maintaining that antiSemitism stalks the breadth and depth of American
history. This is a summa of one of the leading scholars in the field.
Dinnerstein, Leonard. The Leo Frank Case. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008.
Dinnerstein offers a critical account of the events surrounding the lynching of Leo Frank, which he calls “one of the most lurid
displays of intolerance in the Progressive Era.” The book is a comprehensive account of Mary Phagan’s murder and Frank’s trial
and lynching, including the sensational newspaper coverage, situating the case within the broader history of antiSemitism in
the American South.
Gerber, David, ed. AntiSemitism in American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
This wideranging collection covers primarily the 19th and 20th centuries, including discussions of prevalent stereotypes; Jews
on stage; contempt for Jews within the State Department; quotas at American universities; attitudes within the feminist movement
and on the Left, as well as by Catholics in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Sarna, Jonathan. “American AntiSemitism.” In History and Hate: The Dimensions of AntiSemitism. Edited by David
Berger, 115–128. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986.
Sarna gives a balanced overview of the role of antiSemitism in American culture and politics from its foundation through the
20th century.
Sarna, Jonathan. When General Grant Expelled the Jews. New York: Schocken, 2012.
An account of Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War decision to expel Jewish citizens from the territory under his command. Sarna
explains the conditions under which the decision was made, its impact on Grant’s political career, and the response of the
JewishAmerican community.
Dreyfus Affair
There are many studies on the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), but few go beyond merely chronicling the story of Captain Dreyfus’s
false accusation for selling military secrets to the Germans and how his case became a sensation that tore France apart. Bredin
1986 is the best chronological narrative. Harris 2010 provides a balanced account of both sides. Wilson 1982 places the
unleashing of antiJewish sentiments and movements during the affair into the context of the response to modernization in
France. Kleeblatt 1987 has a number of original essays that document the social, political, legal, and cultural history of the affair.
Fitch 1992 shows the rural dimension, Marrus 1980 the Jewish dimension, and Burns 1991 the affair from the viewpoint of its
victim.
Bredin, Jean Denis. The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus. Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman. New York: George Braziller,
1986.
AntiSemitism, Bredin maintains, was wound into discussions of the recent defeat of the French Army in the FrancoPrussian
War, which led to an obsession with espionage and declining birth rates, the cult of the army, hopes for martial revenge, the
resurgence of traditional values, and an emphasis on patriotism. Bredin also shows that the impact of the Dreyfus case carried
well beyond its time.
Burns, Michael. Dreyfus: A Family Affair, 1789–1945. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
Through a history of the Dreyfus family and its response to the affair, Burns provides a history of French Jewry from
emancipation to the acculturation that made possible upward mobility and integration. The Dreyfus family espoused French
Republicanism and the importance of citizenship that was emblematic of French Jews. Burns considers the fate of this family
during the Dreyfus affair and, later, the Holocaust.
Fitch, Nancy. “Mass Culture, Mass Parliamentary Politics, and Modern AntiSemitism: The Dreyfus Affair in Rural France.”
American Historical Review 97.1 (February 1992): 55–95.
Fitch argues that the Dreyfus affair was especially important in rural France, where it served as a means of disseminating anti
Semitic sentiment and uniting a variety of political factions. The work traces the impact of the affair through the use of novel
primary source documents, such as political cartoons, offering insight into the development of antiSemitism on the politics of
rural France.
Harris, Ruth. Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010.
Harris examines both sides in the Dreyfus affair, showing that there were tensions within the military, competing conceptions of
justice and nationalism, and a tangled web of friendships and family connections.
Kleeblatt, Norman, ed. The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
This book is the catalog of an exhibit mounted in 1987–1988 by The Jewish Museum in New York on the visual record of the
Dreyfus affair, offering useful essays on the affair itself, French antiSemitism, the political role of artists, and what the visual
evidence tells us about French society and culture.
Marrus, Michael R. The Politics of Assimilation: The French Jewish Community at the Time of the Dreyfus Afffair. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1980.
Jews were deeply surprised by the antiSemitism that exploded in the course of the Dreyfus affair and responded largely by
reiterating their French patriotism, except for a small minority led by Bernard Lazare who would forge a form of French Zionism
that appealed to anarchists and revolutionaries already predisposed to shed the assimilationist ethos. First published 1971.
Wilson, Stephen. Ideology and Experience: Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair. Rutherford, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982.
In his analysis of French antiSemitism, Wilson discusses its connections to anticapitalism, Catholicism, and sexuality, and he
explores it in the cultural and intellectual spheres, in which antiSemitism acted as a vehicle for the expression of the fears in
reaction to the experience of rapid changes in modernity, which were often depicted as leading to decadence.
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The mostly widely disseminated work in the history of antiSemitism, translated into many languages and published in numerous
editions, the Protocols is a fake document that purports to describe the Jewish conspiracy for world domination. First forged in
the period of the Dreyfus affair in France by a publicist working for the Russian secret police, it achieved fame as part of the
vision of the coming of the AntiChrist in an apocalyptic work by Sergei Nilus. Russian refugees spread it worldwide after World
War I when they fled the success of the Bolshevik Revolution. Cohn 1970 set the standard for scholarly works on the subject and
has been followed by numerous others, but few with the level of detail of de Michelis 2004.
Cohn, Norman. Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1970.
Cohn reconstructs the origins of the myth of world domination in the development of a demonological tradition that coalesced in
the 12th century and was resuscitated by Abbé Barruel in 1797 as the seed of the modern form of the Jewish worldconspiracy
trope, which was picked up to create modern antiJewish pamphlets from the middle of the 19th century and into the Protocols.
de Michelis, Cesare G.. The NonExistent Manuscript: A Study of the Protocols of the Sages of Zion. Translated by Richard
Newhouse. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
De Michelis uses the techniques of literary analysis to illuminate the original authors and the circumstances of production of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His research unveils the differing texts that made up the Protocols and the presumed date of the
first forgery. It also yields a greater understanding of the milieu in which the forgery was produced and the identity and
motivations of its authors.
Nazi AntiSemitism
The historiography of the Holocaust is massive. The selections included here are intended to flag works key to debates about
Nazi antiSemitism. Poliakov 1979 (first published 1951) was a groundbreaking history based on the Nuremburg Tribunal
sources, emphasizing ideology, and usefully distinguishing between Nazi antiSemitism and Nazi racist ideology. Poliakov’s
contributions were eclipsed by the influence of Raul Hilberg, who used sources beyond those of the Nuremburg tribunal and
whose study, Hilberg 1961, concentrates on the “machinery of destruction” and its phases by the Nazi state and bureaucratic
entities and those of collaborationist powers; he did not focus much on ideology. Two key explanatory approaches came to
dominate the field by the 1980s: Intentionalists maintain that the destruction of European Jewry was the central goal of the
Nazis, as evidenced in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and that it was carried out as soon as the levers of state power were in their hands
(see Dawidowicz 1975). Functionalists question this teleological perspective, arguing that the Nazi genocide did not follow a
linear sequence, and that it was significantly a result of the contingencies of war, population resettlement policy, and local
bureaucrats competing for the attention of the Fuhrer. Today the consensus leans in the direction of moderate intentionalists, as
seen in works such as Friedlander 1997–2007 or Herf 2006, and moderate functionalists, as in Browning 1992. Goldhagen
1997 contested Browning’s work based on similar sources but reprising an intentionalist approach, to much public acclaim but
to some scholarly distain.
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York:
HarperPerennial, 1992.
Browning questions the role of antiSemitism as a general motivator for every German soldier in the war. He argues that the
psychological capabilities of the human mind to inflict pain, the tendency to follow orders, and the need to belong might carry
more importance than ideological fervor in explaining even the actions of those who hunted and killed Jews during the
Holocaust.
Burleigh, Michael, and Wolfgang Wippermann. The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Emphasizing ideas of social hygiene and eugenics, the authors trace the implementation of racist policies across German life,
from education to health care, arguing that antiJewish policies were part of a racial utopia that linked all aspects of Nazi social
policy from the persecution of Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuality, the mentally ill and physically handicapped, women, and
criminality.
Dawidowicz, Lucy. The War against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Bantam, 1975.
Dawidowicz argues that the Nazis under the leadership of Adolf Hitler waged an unrelenting war against the Jewish people that
was concurrent with the military war against the Allies. Her argument is that the extermination and annihilation of the Jews was
at the center of the overall Nazi agenda.
Friedlander, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. 2 vols. New York: HarperCollins, 1997–2007.
This chronological narrative navigates a multidimensional account of the Holocaust, incorporating accounts from diaries, letters,
and memoirs, which is novel for the emphasis it places on the voices of the victims. Key in Friedländer’s account is his notion of
“Redemptive AntiSemitism,” (chapter 3 of Vol. 1), which bridges debates about the influence of medieval antiSemitism and
modern scientific and eugenic racial science in Nazi antiSemitism. Volume 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939; Volume 2,
The Years of Extermination : Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945.
Furet, François, ed. Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews. New York: Schocken, 1989.
A collection of essays by leading scholars, including Friedländler, Browning, Karl Schleunes, Hilberg, Mendelsohn, Marrus and
Robert Paxton (on “The Nazis and the Jews in Occupied Western Europe, 1940–1944”), Yehuda Bauer (on “Jewish Resistance
and Passivity in the Face of the Holocaust), Amos Funkenstein (on “Theological Interpretations of the Holocaust”), Pierre Vidal
Naquet (on Holocaust denial), and Shulamit Volkov (“On the Gap between Pre1914 and Nazi AntiSemitism”).
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997.
Goldhagen argues that antiSemitism made an impact on ordinary Germans long before the rise of the Nazi party, and that it
pervaded German society to the extent that what he terms “eliminationist antisemitism” was the “common sense” of German
society during the Nazi period (see chapter 3). This is why ordinary German citizens were willing to participate in the hunting
and killing of Jews in police battalions, as camp guards, and on death marches.
Herf, Jeffrey. The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Rather than racial science, Herf maintains it was works like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that were the keystone in the Nazi
worldview. An important contribution of Herf’s book is to show how pervasively this was disseminated to the masses through
control of the press, a network of media and propaganda agencies, using modern methods of opinionformation, which enabled
the widespread diffusion of the Nazi narrative.
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1961.
Hilberg’s foundational treatise examines the bureaucratic machinery of destruction, showing how the Nazi system of annihilation
evolved from the definition of Jews as enemies of the state, to their discrimination and disenfranchisement and expropriation, to
their concentration in ghettos and camps, and eventually to their utter destruction. Hilberg’s focus on the administrative
organization of mass death deemphasizes ideology, and specifically modern antiSemitism.
Poliakov, Léon. Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe. Rev. and exp. ed. New York:
Holocaust Library, 1979.
First published in 1951, Poliakov’s history was groundbreaking, providing the first overarching analysis of the Nazi program to
exterminate the Jews. Based on access to the full cache of archival material at Nuremberg, it details the origins of the anti
Semitic movement in Germany and outlines the histories of the ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps. Translated into
many languages, it had a huge impact on the subsequent field of Holocaust studies.
The New Judeophobia
This is a fraught area of scholarship, since it is hard to distinguish political viewpoints from scholarly perspectives on
contemporary antiSemitism, especially as the ArabIsraeli conflict forms the backdrop to the interpretation of the spike in attacks
on Jews and Judaism in the new millennium. There are maximalists (Taguieff 2004, Wistrich 2010) and minimalists (Finkelstein
2005), with a group of scholars who seek to reframe the discussion (Bunzl 2007, Judaken 2008). Rosenbaum 2004 contains
important articles by many of the key interlocutors in the contemporary debate. Herf 2007 focuses on the overlap between anti
Zionism and antiSemitism. Lipstadt 1994 does not directly address antiSemitism, but this overview of Holocaust denial details
one important facet of this problem.
Bunzl, Matti. AntiSemitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2007.
According to Bunzl, antiSemitism was invented in the late19th century to police the ethnically pure nationstate. Islamophobia,
by contrast, is a phenomenon of the present, marshaled to safeguard a supranational Europe. Arguing against the common
impulse to analogize antiSemitism and Islamophobia, he instead offers a framework that locates the two phenomena in two
different projects of exclusion.
Finkelstein, Norman. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of AntiSemitism and the Abuse of History. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2005.
The first part of the book examines a growing tendency of proIsrael commentators to use spurious charges of antiSemitism to
deflect and discredit legitimate criticism of Israel. The second part is a rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz’s claims concerning Israel’s
human rights record, citing human rights organizations to document Israeli abuses. The work is important as a rejection of the
argument that the new millennium ushered in a new antiSemitism.
Herf, Jeffrey. AntiSemitism and AntiZionism in Historical Perspective: Convergence and Divergence. New York and
London: Routledge, 2007.
This is a collection of essays by historians from Israel, Europe, Canada, and the United States concerning the similarities and
differences between antiZionism and antiSemitism. Spanning the past century, the essays explore the continuum of critique
from early challenges to Zionism up to the present and includes studies of England, France, Germany, Poland, the United
States, Iran, and Israel, as well the broader Arab and Islamic worlds.
Judaken, Jonathan. “So What’s New? Rethinking the ‘New Antisemitism’ in a Global Age.” Patterns of Prejudice 42.4–5
(Autumn 2008): 531–560.
Judaken challenges the “new antiSemitism” thesis by arguing that this claim has followed every major struggle in the Arab
Israeli conflict since 1967. He also maintains that the various strands that twist together to forge “new antiSemitism,” including
Holocaust denial, the antiSemitism of the extreme left, antiSemitism in the Islamic world, antiZionism as antiSemitism, and
antiracism as antiSemitism, each have a long history, but these have now been reshaped in light of new informational
technologies and the forces of globalization.
Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. Reprint ed. New York: Plume, 1994.
Lipstadt shows how Holocaust denial became an international movement, undergirded by “independent” research centers and
official publications that promote a “revisionist” view. She maintains that Holocaust denial thrives in the current atmosphere of
value relativism, and that this attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but undermines the very tenets of objective
scholarship that undergird historical knowledge.
Rosenbaum, Ron, ed. Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of AntiSemitism. New York: Random House, 2004.
An important collection with dissident voices in the debate about whether there is a “new antiSemitism” (e.g., Judith Butler,
Edward Said) but stocked with key figures who are arguing that a new phenomenon is on the rise (e.g., Robert Wistrich, Ruth R.
Wisse). Chapters discuss various contexts, but also explore the line between antiZionism and antiSemitism, the shift from its
prevalence on the Right to the Left, and the rise of Muslim antiSemitism.
Taguieff, PierreAndré. Rising from the Muck: The New AntiSemitism in Europe. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Chicago:
Ivan R. Dee, 2004.
Taguieff surveys the new wave of antiSemitism spreading around the world, which he argues is based on a fanciful amalgam of
Jews, Israelis, and “Zionists” as representatives of an evil power. The old European antiSemitism, Taguieff notes, was a
particular kind of racism directed against Jews, whereas the new worldwide antiSemitism seeks to turn the charge of racism
against the Jews.
Wistrich, Robert. A Lethal Obsession: AntiSemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. New York: Random House, 2010.
Wistrich’s massive summa on the new Judeophobia sets it against the background of what he terms elsewhere the “longest
hatred,” referring to the history of antiJewish animus from the ancient period to Hitler. He documents the rise of its contemporary
forms from Stalin to the jihadi movement, addressing its formations in different national and regional contexts.
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