Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: A Historical Perspective

An End to Antisemitism!

Edited by
Armin Lange, Kerstin Mayerhofer, Dina Porat,
and Lawrence H. Schiffman

Volume 3
Comprehending Antisemitism
through the Ages:
A Historical Perspective

Edited by
Armin Lange, Kerstin Mayerhofer, Dina Porat,
and Lawrence H. Schiffman
ISBN 978-3-11-058232-1
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Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements IX

Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 1

Comprehending Antisemitism in Antiquity and Late Antiquity

Leonard Rutgers
Early Christian Anti-Judaism 31

Armin Lange
Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms of
Antisemitic Persecution 41

Erich S. Gruen
The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 79

Paula Fredriksen
Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity: “Religion” as a Political Category in
Christian Antiquity 101

Comprehending Antisemitism in the Middle Ages

Robert Chazan
The Evolution of Anti-Jewish Imagery in Medieval Christian Europe 123

Kerstin Mayerhofer
Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions
of Identity and Difference 135

Sara Offenberg
“All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals in Medieval Christian
Art and Drama 161
VI Table of Contents

Birgit Wiedl
Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 183

Comprehending Antisemitism in Modern Times

Michael Wladika
Georg Ritter von Schönerers Radikalisierung zum Rassenantisemiten vom
Linzer Programm 1882 bis zur Gründung des „Verbandes der
Deutschnationalen“ 1885 219

Richard S. Levy
The Defense against Antisemitism: Minor Victories, Major Defeats,
1890 – 1939 233

Doron Rabinovici
The Jewish Response to Antisemitism in Austria Prior to the
Anschluss 245

Matthias Küntzel
Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East and its Repercussions in the
Postwar Period 257

Comprehending Shoah and Post-Shoah Antisemitism

Dina Porat
Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? A Debate between Two Pillars of
Holocaust Research and its Impact on the Study of Antisemitism 275

Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 295

Gennady Estraikh
Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship in the
Soviet Union, 1953 – 1967 325

Alan Silberstein
Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 347
 Table of Contents VII

Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Antisemitism in Today’s America 367

Haim Fireberg
Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish Sense of Belonging 393

Comprehending Anti-Zionism as a Virulent Form of

“New Antisemitism”
Matthias J. Becker
The German Left and Israel 411

Linda Giesel
Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany in Contemporary
German Discourse 443

Florian Markl
“Israel Threatens to Defend Itself”: The Depiction of Israel in the
Media 465

Editorial Board 479

List of Contributors 481

Acknowledgements 483
Preface and Acknowledgements

Antisemitism has an age-old tradition. The “longest hatred”¹ can be traced back
into ancient times, continued through the Middle Ages into modernity and
reached its peak during the Nazi era. While one might assume that the atrocities
of the Shoah would have resulted in an ideological about-face, antisemitism, on
the contrary, is on the rise globally yet again. Today, the unfathomable tradition
of discrimination against Jews, insults, and antisemitic hate crimes is carried out
by political, religious, and lay groups from all sides of the political spectrum.
Many of them are drawing on historical traditions of antisemitic discrimination
and of stereotyping Jews as the scapegoats for a multitude of past and present
societal problems. Given this unacceptable reality, in February 2018, approxi-
mately one thousand scholars, activists, decision makers, and influencers met
in Vienna at the conference “An End to Antisemitism!” The conference was joint-
ly organized by the European Jewish Congress, New York University, Tel Aviv Uni-
versity, and the University of Vienna to study antisemitism with an unprecedent-
ed interdisciplinary breadth and historical depth. Over 150 presenters from all
over the world engaged with all forms of antisemitism from a variety of perspec-
tives. The present series, An End to Antisemitism!, documents the conference’s
output and research results from various fields. Leading experts in religious
studies, history, political studies, social sciences, philosophy, psychology, peda-
gogy, and cultural studies shed light on antisemitic traditions from all their re-
spective viewpoints. Together, they help to shape a discourse of understanding,
knowing, and recognizing various forms of antisemitism in order to confront and
combat them.
One of the aims of the conference “An End to Antisemitism!” was, therefore,
to create concrete policy recommendations regarding how to effectively combat
antisemitism. These have been collected and published in a separate Catalogue
of Policies,² a document of practical impact. They also form one of the bases of
the first volume of the present series.³ All subsequent volumes are addressed to
an academic audience. They document the research leading to these policy rec-
ommendations.

 R. S. Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (London: Methuen, 1991).

 A. Lange, A. Muzicant, D. Porat, L. H. Schiffman, and M. Weitzman, An End to Antisemitism! A
Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism (Brussels: European Jewish Congress, 2018).
 A. Lange, K. Mayerhofer, D. Porat, and L. H. Schiffman, eds., Comprehending and Confronting
Antisemitism: A Multi-Faceted Approach, vol. 1 of An End to Antisemitism! (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2019).

OpenAccess. © 2021, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-001
X Preface and Acknowledgements

The present volume focuses on the history of antisemitism. Its contributions

document historical traditions that have fed contemporary antisemitism and un-
earth different motivations for antisemitic persecution through the ages. As such,
they scrutinize antisemitism’s versatile nature and multiple transformations. Fol-
lowing a five-part chronological structure, the articles in the present volume
trace antisemitism from antiquity to the Middle Ages, from the eighteenth centu-
ry to the Nazi era and the Shoah, from the end of World War II to the founding of
the State of Israel, and well into our present time where the internet and modern
media have contributed beyond measure to the increase of Jew-hatred.
The contributors’ theoretical approaches vary in accordance with the topics
and research fields their articles engage with and come from. Some contribu-
tions follow a classical historiographical path, working with original sources
to trace historical traditions of antisemitism or document historical events and
incidences. Other articles, however, chose a more metatheoretical approach,
going beyond a documentation alone. Rather, they investigate historical mani-
festations of antisemitism to find answers to questions about pre-modern per-
ceptions of race and racism as well as to learn about different motivations for
antisemitic discrimination in order to establish means for combatting current-
day Jew-hatred. A general introduction to the volume brings together these differ-
ent approaches as well as theoretical aspects of the history and historiography of
antisemitism.
A project like this volume, and the whole series, surely cannot be completed
without the assistance of other individuals. Therefore, we would like to express
our deepest gratitude to a list of people who have supported us in shaping this
volume and bringing it to life.
First, we would like to give a word of thanks to all our colleagues who have
contributed to the present volume. Their research documents a vast interdiscipli-
narity of fields that makes not only the present volume but the complete series
An End to Antisemitism! an unparalleled publication.
We are grateful to De Gruyter Publishers for accepting our five-volume series
of conference proceedings for publication. The support that Albrecht Döhnert,
Sophie Wagenhofer, and Alice Meroz gave us in preparing these mammoth pro-
ceedings for publication has been exemplary. The same gratitude is due to Anna
Cwikla. As with all previous volumes, she has made an enormous effort in proof-
reading, copyediting, and English stylizing.
The other editors are especially grateful to Kerstin Mayerhofer for taking the
lead in editing our proceedings. Her commitment has been unparalleled, and
without her, neither the present volume nor the other outcomes of the confer-
ence would exist.
 Preface and Acknowledgements XI

Of course, a project like this requires significant funds, which are often sur-
prisingly difficult to raise. It is therefore more than a pleasure to express our grat-
itude to our main sponsor Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Con-
gress. Moshe Kantor provided much needed financial support not only for the
conference “An End to Antisemitism!” in 2018 but also for all its printed out-
comes. At the same time, we would also like to take the opportunity to convey
words of thanks to all other sponsors as listed on pages 485–86.
Many more people have been involved in the project. They participated in
the conference in 2018 and have supported us in the preparation of the confer-
ence proceedings. All their names are listed in volume one of An End to Antisem-
itism! ⁴

New York, Tel Aviv, and Vienna, November 17, 2020

Armin Lange
Kerstin Mayerhofer
Dina Porat
Lawrence H. Schiffman

 Lange, Mayerhofer, Porat, and Schiffman, Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism, xi–
xvii.
Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange
Comprehending Antisemitism through the
Ages: Introduction
Robert Wistrich’s definition of antisemitism as the “longest hatred”¹ carries as
much weight now as it did thirty years ago, when Wistrich published his land-
mark study. Today, in our contemporary societies and culture, antisemitism is
on the rise, and its manifestations are manifold. Antisemitic hate crimes have
spiked in recent decades, and antisemitic stereotypes, sentiments, and hate
speech have permeated all parts of the political spectrum. In order to effectively
counteract the ever-growing Jew-hatred of our times, it is important to recognise
the traditions that have fed antisemitism throughout history. Antisemitism is an
age-old hatred deeply embedded in societies around the globe. While the inter-
net and modern media have contributed beyond measure to the increase of Jew-
hatred in all parts of the world, the transformation processes that antisemitism
has been undergoing through the ages remain the same. A core condition of an-
tisemitism is its versatile nature and adaptability, both of which can be traced
through all periods of time. Current-day antisemitism is shaped and sustained
not only by powerful precedents but also reflects common fears and anxieties
that our societies are faced with in a world that is ever changing and where
the changes run even faster today than ever before. Historical awareness of
the nature of antisemitism, therefore, is more important than ever. The present
volume, thus, wants to help raise this awareness. Its articles trace the history
of antisemitism and the tradition of antisemitic stereotypes through the ages.
It documents various manifestations of antisemitism over time and reflects on
the varying motivations for antisemitism. As such, these contributions shed
light on socio-cultural and socio-psychological processes that have led to the
spike of antisemitism in various periods of time and in varying intensity. In
this way, they can help to establish methods and policies to not only to counter
current antisemitic manifestations but also to combat them.

Terminology and Historiographical Delineation

The usage of the term antisemitism is much debated in historical scholarship.
Various scholars claim that the term reflects a conceptualisation of Judaism as

 R. S. Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (London: Methuen, 1991).

OpenAccess. © 2021 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange, published by De Gruyter.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-002
2 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

a race, which can only be understood in the context of nationalism and racial
theory in the early nineteenth century.² Earlier forms of Jew-hatred are therefore
mostly referred to as “anti-Judaism,” therein reflecting theological concepts.
Christian religious stereotypes of Jews are largely connected to doctrines of
false beliefs and practices competing with Christianity. However, much of Chris-
tian polemic directed against Jews expresses negative images and attitudes in a
way that reaches far beyond the scope of religious alterity. The frequent claim
that calling pre-modern Jew-hatred antisemitic is an anachronism can only be ac-
cepted with regards to terminology. In fact, the term antisemitism did not come
into existence and has not been used to describe Jew-hatred before the nine-
teenth century. Various forms of persecution of the Jews not solely based on re-
ligious grounds, however, can be traced back well into ancient times.
Despite the conference being based on the IHRA’s Working Definition of An-
tisemitism,³ several contributions employ different definitions of antisemitism.
While some essays perceive all forms of Jew-hatred and anti-Jewish discrimina-
tion as antisemitic, others are more restrictive in their use of the term antisemit-
ism as mentioned above.
A volume that tries to trace the historical roots of antisemitism cannot do so
without a delineation of the historical periods it discusses. The history of antise-
mitism evolves in accordance with socio-political processes as well as alongside
certain cultural events shaping the histories of thought and culture. The editors
of the present volume have chosen to structure the volume accordingly:
(1) Ancient and Late Ancient Times, from the end of the Iron age, ca. 550
B.C.E., to the period of early Muslim conquests in Western Europe ca. 630 –
800 C.E. (2) Medieval Times until the invention of the printing press, c. 1440,
as a technique that had a significant influence on both the history of thought
and the history of socio-cultural and socio-political ideologies. (3) Modern
Times starting with the American and the French revolutions of the years
1775 – 1783 and 1789 – 1799, respectively. (4) An era of “New Antisemitism” follow-

 Cf. e. g. W. Bergmann, Geschichte des Antisemitismus (München: C. H. Beck, 2002); C. Guillau-

min, L’idéologie raciste: Genèse et langage actuel (Paris: Gallimard, 1972); J. Heil, “‘Antijudais-
mus’ und ‘Antisemitismus’: Begriffe als Bedeutungsträger,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusfor-
schung 6 (1997): 92– 114; G. I. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990); T. Nipperdey and R. Rürup, “Antisemitismus,” in Geschicht-
liche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. O.
Brunner, W. Conze, and R. Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972), 129 – 53.
 For further detail, refer to volume 1 of the present series, A. Lange, K. Mayerhofer, D. Porat,
and L. H. Schiffman, eds., Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism: A Multi-Faceted Ap-
proach, vol. 1 of An End to Antisemitism! (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 565 – 67.
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 3

ing the Shoah, with a subdivision (5) about Anti-Zionism as a most virulent man-
ifestation of this “New Antisemitism.”
Two insufficiencies have to be admitted in this structure. First, certain histor-
ical periods and events are not addressed, for example, early modern times or
the Spanish Inquisition. This is mainly due to the fact that several colleagues
who covered these fields at the conference were not able to contribute to the pre-
sent volume. Second, the perspective from which contributors to the present vol-
ume reflect on the history of antisemitism is rather Eurocentric. Much of the his-
tory of Jew-hatred documented in the present volume focuses on the
geographical regions of Western Europe. Discussions of antisemitism in the Unit-
ed States and reflections on anti-Zionism directed against Israel are a geograph-
ical exception. However, these articles too are based largely on a European dis-
course of thought. Unfortunately, a single volume can hardly take all global
aspects into consideration. Therefore, several of the missing topics, such as
Islam or a variety of manifestations of “New Antisemitism,” are addressed in vol-
umes 2 and 5 of the present series.⁴ Still, the editors of the present volume are
aware that the historical picture of antisemitism in this volume is by necessity
incomplete and, thus, sometimes ambiguous.

Claiming Authority and Appealing to Emotions

When working on the history of antisemitism, two different aspects need to be
taken into consideration with regards to the transmission and evaluation of an-
tisemitic stereotypes and traditions. Antisemitic stereotypes and traditions can be
transmitted in the form of an authorizing re-writing, that is, with references to
older source material. Early modern and modern thinkers who fostered antisemitic
sentiments were keen on attributing their own antisemitic polemic to a pseudo-sci-
entific discourse. In referencing a canon of antisemitic stereotypes and traditions,
which had been transmitted from late ancient and medieval times, early modern
writers ensured continuity for their own antisemitic thoughts and claims. An impor-
tant example for this practice can be found in Antonius Margaritha’s (1492/8 – 1542)
treatise of 1530, titled The Entire Jewish Faith.⁵ Having once experienced doubt in

 Cf. A. Lange, K. Mayerhofer, D. Porat, and L. H. Schiffman, eds., Confronting Antisemitism from
the Perspectives of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and ibid., Confronting Antisemitism in Mod-
ern Media, the Legal and Political Worlds, vols. 2 and 5 of An End to Antisemitism! (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2020 and 2021).
 Cf. Antonius Margaritha, Der gantz Jüdisch Glaub mit sampt ainer gründtlichen und warhafften
Anzaygunge … (Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1530).
4 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

his own faith, as a convert from Judaism to Christianity, Margaritha was able to turn
both to doubting Christians in an effort to strengthen their belief but also to Jews in
an attempt to convince them to follow his own path to Christianity. His depiction of
Jewish rituals, customs, and ceremonies in The Entire Jewish Faith is accurate. How-
ever, Margaritha’s main objective is a presentation of Judaism as a religion that had
failed to understand and accept God’s true revelation and, thus, poses a danger to
the Christian faith. For this purpose, Margaritha drew on a vast canon of medieval
polemic against Jews, on antagonistic narratives, motifs, and imagery of Jews as
friends of the devil, aggressors against Christ’s body, and as murderers of Christian
children. Superstitions and further stereotypes, some theologically motivated and
some not, were used to demonstrate the Jews’ ongoing religious inferiority as
proof and reason for their socio-economic and legal marginalisation.
Many early modern thinkers and writers followed Margaritha’s example and
support a discourse of religious and socio-cultural superiority of one religio-
cultural group over another. An example is the ongoing conflict between Catho-
lics and Protestants in early modern and modern times and their fight for polit-
ical supremacy, which motivates an extensive engagement with the Jews as their
common age-old opposite. Whether within the frame of the doctrinal battle be-
tween Catholics and Protestants or not, Judaism was regarded as inferior, and
Jews were subjected to discrimination, marginalisation, and subordination.
Theological and, increasingly, sociological and pseudo-scientific disputes corro-
borated processes of identity formation—first, on a religious level but subse-
quently also within the contexts of nation and race. These contexts gained im-
portance especially at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
when new theories on human thought and race had emerged. Social Darwinism
and racism greatly influenced antisemitic thinkers such as Carl Wilhelm
Friedrich Grattenauer (1773 – 1838), Achim von Arnim (1781– 1831), and Clemens
Brentano (1778 – 1842) who found their own antisemitic beliefs confirmed by
these theories and, subsequently, referenced them to increase the authority
and significance of their polemics. Concepts of social norms were established
and projected back onto specific ways of life, expressions of thought and
signs of the body. Notions of a distorted and diseased “Jewish body,” which is
considered the result of a false religious, cultural, and social lifestyle, were shap-
ed extensively during this period but stand in the tradition of medieval Christian-
Jewish polemic. During modern times, however, they were considered less as the
result of divine punishment, but were rather interpreted as reflecting a specific
mindset and lifestyle as well as anthropological conditions.
Referencing earlier sources and incorporating pseudo-scientific theories of
nation, race, and biology into polemical writing helped to create authority
when appealing to one’s audience. Methods like these were and are used to
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 5

file specific socio-political or socio-economical claims and support processes of

formation or strengthening of specific group-identities vis-à-vis a proclaimed in-
ferior opposite. They shape political processes and legal regulations directed
against such alleged inferior groups. Antisemitic agitation, however, can take
yet another form—as an appeal to emotion. Stereotypes and discriminatory
claims about the Jews’ corrupt nature and diseased bodies, for example, are
shaped as “arguments from passion” that aim to manipulate a recipient’s emo-
tions in order to convince them of polemical content. Antisemitic polemic ap-
peals especially to feelings of fear and anxiety as well as of anger and pride.
This becomes rather apparent when antisemitic stereotypes are mutually exclu-
sive and shift radically across time and space—examples include the condemna-
tion of Jews as radical communists and as avaricious capitalists at the same
time. In cases like these, Jews become a target for the projection of a non-Jewish
group’s fears arising especially during times of social disruption. Antisemitism
as a social phenomenon appealing to emotions can be witnessed throughout
the ages from the fall of the Roman Empire, to the time of the Crusades, from
the era of the Black Death to the Franco-Prussian War, following World War I,
during the Depression in the United States or in the Soviet Union throughout
the Cold War years. In the last decades, the spike of Muslim antisemitism, too,
can be connected to social and political changes in the Arab world that lead
to increased fear, anxiety, and anger among their civil societies.
Processes of claiming authority and of appealing to emotions can be wit-
nessed among antisemitic thinkers until today. Leading figures of openly an-
tisemitic groups tend to authorise their polemic claims in reference to earlier
sources. They try to legitimise contemporary antisemitic discrimination and per-
secution by referencing ancient and medieval stereotypes of the Jews as econom-
ic exploiters and as antisocial, evil members of society. Pseudo-scientific argu-
ments of the Jews as a “lesser race” in accordance with modern racist and
nationalist thinking conflate with these groups’ own emotionally charged reser-
vation against Jews. Such polemics become all the more dangerous when coming
from a person who claims scholarly authority, as in the case of Thomas Dalton.
Dalton claims to be a professor of humanities at a major US university and has
published extensively on the history of antisemitism, the Shoah, and the Nation-
al Socialist era from a clearly antisemitic point of view. His publications appear
in white nationalist presses and journals. He has translated multiple works from
National Socialist thinkers, among them also Hitler’s Mein Kampf and contempo-
rary pro-Nazi historians. In conflating his alleged scholarly knowledge with his
own emotionally charged polemics against Jews, Dalton reaches many followers
who are willing to attribute a great importance and historical diligence to both
his work and his antisemitic polemic. On the other hand, antisemitic agitators
6 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

such as the website smoloko.com, poisoned their followers’ minds without any
need for further academic, scientific, or historical accuracy and authority. Cari-
catures, graphics, memes, and short polemical texts were often radical and sen-
sational, sometimes even including pornographic elements, and appeal to their
recipients’ emotions of fear, anxiety, anger, and pride to create an atmosphere of
resentment which, in turn, also functions as the shared feeling to keep the hate
group together. Both processes—claiming historical and scholarly authority and
appealing to emotion—often intersect and link to take extreme forms in violent
attacks against Jewish life and institutions. This has recently been the case with,
for example, Robert G. Bowers who was responsible for the Pittsburgh synago-
gue shooting in 2018. His terrorist attack was both religiously motivated and fu-
elled by consuming both emotionally charged polemics online and pseudo-sci-
entifically authorised writing.

Definition, Transformation, Motivation

Based on these aspects of antisemitic traditions through the ages, in addressing
the history of antisemitism the present volume has a triple focus. As a first major
topic, its contributions address the definition of antisemitism itself. As men-
tioned above, different articles in the present volume apply different definitions
of antisemitism understanding it as a form discrimination based on religion,
race, or an intersectional canon of determinatory categories of identity. The arti-
cles of this volume apply their terminology accordingly. However, what unifies
the articles dealing with the definition of antisemitism is a historiographical ap-
proach. They do not only theoretically reflect on questions of identity and racism
but also discuss their historical beginnings, transmission, and transformations.
The latter is the present volume’s second major focus.
The history of antisemitism is characterised by multiple transformations and
its overall versatile nature. Religiously motivated resentments against Jews as
adherents to an outdated faith who allegedly murdered Christ helped to shape
European Christian identities. Ideas of hereditary inferiority of certain groups
of people have greatly contributed to this process of identity formation, not
only within Christianity. Antisemitism has taken different forms accordingly,
from religious to cultural hatred and persecution in the beginning, and resulting
in increased socio-political persecution and the curtailment of economic, politi-
cal, and legal advancement of Jews beginning already in pre-modern times.
Physical aggression and violence against Jews and their institutions, such as
synagogues and other places of Jewish life, have always been an expression of
Jew-hatred. All of them are manifestations of antisemitism in different varieties,
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 7

corroborated by religious doctrine, by pseudo-scientific theories, by referencing

earlier sources, and by appealing to emotions of fear, anxiety, anger, and pride in
the respective non-Jewish group opposing Judaism. Documenting these manifes-
tations and, thus, tracing the transformational processes of antisemitism, is one
of the aims and major focuses of the present volume. Modern and contemporary
transformations of antisemitism in accordance with significant changes in mod-
ern information technology, especially with the rise of the internet, are dealt with
in volume 5 of the present series in more detail and more extensively.⁶ Contribu-
tions to volume 5 are concerned with the question of what has enabled the trans-
formation of contemporary antisemitism into a sentiment that is not only com-
monly accepted in all parts of all societies around the world but also is ever
increasing. This increase in antisemitism is an imminent danger not only for Jew-
ish communities around the globe but also questions and threatens the system
of societal norms and values on a wholesale scale. While volume 5 focuses large-
ly on the internet and modern media as the most important and main multipliers
of contemporary Jew-hatred, contributions to the present volume deal more with
the historical processes that have led to the current transformation of Jew-hatred
into this new form of antisemitism in recent decades.
A third and last major topic of this volume, finally, is the question of what
motivates antisemitism. As a response to societal or political changes, the moti-
vations and intentions of antisemitic discrimination and persecution vary in dif-
ferent periods of time. They can only be understood as a combination of cultural
reasons, for example, following certain societal or political ideological discours-
es, and of socio-psychological reasons, such as with regards to the above-
mentioned appeal to emotions like fear and anxiety. Opportunism and pressures
to conform can also support the generation of a sentiment directed against an
opposite socio-cultural group to strengthen one’s self-identity. Socio-economic
conditions, too, are an important factor and the curtailment of socio-economic
advancement for certain groups within a society is a prevalent means to margin-
alise the group’s overall influence onto a society. The mutability of motivations
for antisemitism runs parallel to its history of constant transformation. This is
why many of the contributions to the present volume reflect on manifestations
of antisemitism and its intentions from an integrational perspective.
The multiple focuses of the present volume are also reflected in its structure.
Contributions to the present volume fall into two different categories that call for
a separate understanding and contextualisation. Some articles reflect on an-

 Cf. A. Lange, K. Mayerhofer, D. Porat, and L. H. Schiffman, eds. Confronting Antisemitism in Mod-
ern Media, the Legal and Political Worlds, vol. 5 of An End to Antisemitism! (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).
8 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

tisemitism and its historical tradition using a metatheoretical perspective. They

try to comprehend antisemitism as cultural concept and unearth its origins,
which can reach as far back as antiquity but still impact present times. These ar-
ticles try to build bridges from contemporary to historical times in order to better
understand current-day situations and events. Such metatheoretical articles can
mostly be found in parts 1 and 2 on pre-modern times. On the other hand, the
present volume features articles using classical historiographical approaches.
They do not try to establish links between the present and the past, rather,
they aim to document historical events and processes that have led to certain an-
tisemitic incidents. Contributions with such a historiographical approach fall
mostly into parts 3 and 4 of the present volume. Scholars of modern and contem-
porary history are faced with a multitude of sources and material that needs to
be documented carefully in a first step to ensure accurate interpretation. The pre-
sent volume represents both scholarly approaches and therein also aims at mir-
roring processes within the academic community scrutinizing the history of an-
tisemitism. Recent trends in historical scholarship of antisemitism with regards
to the understanding of new forms of antisemitism expressed in new media,
such as the internet, are represented in the fifth and last part of the present vol-
ume. All of the various scholarly approaches reflected in the present volume lay
the foundation for the three major topics that the present volume focuses on.

Comprehending Antisemitism in Antiquity and

Late Antiquity
Antiquity and late antiquity are often neglected periods in the study of the his-
tory of antisemitism. Historical surveys of Jew-hatred mostly dedicate only brief
chapters to it, and larger studies of the history of (late) ancient antisemitism are
rare. This neglect is largely grounded in the claims that antisemitism is a modern
invention and that Jew-hatred only played a marginal role in antiquity. The con-
tributions in this part of the present volume thus address the question of wheth-
er antisemitism already existed in ancient and late ancient times and find differ-
ent and diverse answers. Results vary in accordance with the understanding of
antisemitism as a distinct form of racism and, more importantly, in accordance
with the definition of racism itself. Many historians claim racism to be a concept
closely connected to the history of trans-Atlantic slave trade and to the notion of
biological differences between groups of people. Accordingly, they query the ex-
istence of antisemitism in ancient times as a form of hatred encompassing early
concepts of identity that linked categories of both religion and race (Gruen).
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 9

However, if racism and race are understood as resulting from the creation of a
hierarchy between groups as their constitutional element, even early forms of
Jew-hatred can be considered to be a form of racism, or, more precisely, antisem-
itism. Already in antiquity, Jews were subjected to different forms of cultural and
physical persecution resulting from an overall claim about their general inferior-
ity with regards to both their religion and nature.⁷ Most of the contributions to
this part of the present volume try to shed more light onto this controversy.
Based on contemporary source material from various backgrounds, these contri-
butions engage with questions about the construction of a Christian identity in
both antiquity and late antiquity (Rutgers). Dissociated from “real” Judaism,
Christianity created a “hermeneutical” Judaism that was depicted as a demonic
power of the past to empower a Christian supersessionist identity and the “True
Israel.” When Christianity gained power in the Roman Empire, Christian antise-
mitic ideology enabled the legal and physical persecution of Jews in an effort to
construct and maintain an orthodox Christian identity against Jews and heretics
being depicted as Jews. Accordingly, the articles in this part demonstrate that
cultural, legal, and physical persecution as the three basic forms of antisemitic
persecution existed already in antiquity. This points to the creation of a system of
antisemitic traditions that since antiquity served to identify the Jewish “Other”
(Lange). Therein, Jew-hatred served the construction of a Christian identity sig-
nificantly. Additionally, the concept of a “hermeneutical Jew,” discussed by
Cohen⁸ and Nirenberg⁹ as a figure that assumed distinctive character and bodily
characteristics and narrative significance in pre-modern thought and culture,
can already be found in early Christian literature (Rutgers). A last contribution
provides an important perspective for the study of medieval and modern antise-
mitism in identifying Visigothic canon law as laying the groundwork of racist an-
tisemitism (Fredriksen).
Engaging with Early Christian Anti-Judaism, Leonard Rutgers deals with the
questions about what it was that ancient Christian antisemites were afraid of and
why. He further investigates how ancient Christian Jew-hatred affected Jewish-
Christian relations in antiquity generally and what were its structural and
long-term effects. Regarding Jew-hatred, Rutgers finds four characteristics in an-
cient Christian texts: (1) antisemitic sentiments are “always there, humming in
the background constantly” (33) as they can already be found in the earliest lay-

 Cf. B. Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2004), 1– 52.
 Cf. J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1999), 10 – 19.
 Cf. D. Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Norton, 2013).
10 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

ers of the New Testament and have influenced Christian thought ever since.
(2) Notions directed against Jews appear in virtually all genres of ancient Chris-
tian literature. (3) Antisemitic thought was geographically evenly spread in an-
cient Christianity from Mesopotamia to Spain and expressed in all languages an-
cient Christians used. And, finally, (4) the Jews that ancient Christian texts
agitate against are disconnected from real Jews and represent a hermeneutical
construct. These “hermeneutical Jews” were constructed based on biblical exege-
sis and are thus “figments of scriptural imagination” (33). Christian theologians
engaged with this kind of antisemitic negative-identity formation out of internal
needs and aim thus mainly at internal consumption. The self-referential early
Christian antisemitism was aimed mainly at a Christian in-group for purposes
of identity construction. This supersessionist identity construction changed dra-
matically when Christianity became an official religion in the fourth century C.E.
and thus had to deal with their Jewish neighbours on a manifest real-life level.
While this experience did not lead ancient Christianity to question their concept
of hermeneutical Judaism, it led to an explosion of antisemitic rhetoric and even
antisemitic violence trying to communicate the hermeneutical construct of a
theological obsolete Jewish “Other” into a historical reality. In this way, “the Fa-
thers of the early Church were doing little else than laying the groundwork for
letting anti-Jewish notions enter into the capillaries of Christian theology in
ways that would profoundly influence and, in fact, spoil Jewish-Christian rela-
tions for much of the remainder of European history” (38).
In his article Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms of
Antisemitic Persecution, Armin Lange provides an exemplary survey of Jew-
hatred in antiquity. In this survey, he engages with three questions: (1) Did an-
tisemitism exist in antiquity? (2) What forms of antisemitic persecution occurred
in antiquity? (3) What relevance does ancient Jew-hatred have for latter forms of
antisemitism? Lange argues that not only did Jew-hatred exist in antiquity, but it
was even a popular theme in ancient Christian literature with prevalence in most
Christian texts. From an ancient viewpoint, the absence of antisemitism can
therefore only be argued if antisemitism is restricted to racist Jew-hatred
alone. Racist Jew-hatred, however, is evident at least with the Visigothic king-
dom in Spain. Already in antiquity, the three basic forms of how Jews were per-
secuted can be observed. Physical forms of persecution targeted the physical
well-being of individual Jews or large Jewish groups and included (mass) killing
of Jews, sometimes even on a regular basis. Legislative and judicial persecution
discriminated against Jews by judicial means or by creating laws suppressing
Jewish life and curtailing their social, economic, and political advancement. Cul-
tural persecution aimed ultimately at the destruction of the cultural and reli-
gious identity of Jews and Judaism in antiquity and thus wanted to achieve a cul-
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 11

tural genocide. Antisemites continue to practice all three forms of antisemitic

persecution through today. These three forms of antisemitic persecution did
not solely lay the ground work of medieval and modern antisemitism already
in antiquity. Ancient pagan and Christian antisemites also created a system of
antisemitic religious symbols, which, as Lange argues, served as guidance for an-
tisemites and others on how to comprehend and perceive Jews. Communicated
through various Christian channels, the antisemitic symbol system grew until
today and is largely responsible for the reinvention of Jew-hatred in each
epoch of history. Ancient pagan and Christian antisemites, thus, laid the ideolog-
ical foundations on which even contemporary antisemites build.
Focusing on The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism?,
Erich S. Gruen does not want to deny the existence of suspicion, disdain, and
antipathy toward Jews in antiquity but thinks that they did not rise “to the
level of antisemitism” (96). According to Gruen, the examples of the blood
libel and the leper libel corroborate the claim that the impact of ancient Jew-
hatred was “far less consequential than is often realized” (96). As neither
blood libel nor leper libel had any traction in the pagan world, Gruen regards
Jew-hatred as a marginal phenomenon in pagan antiquity that cannot be de-
scribed as antisemitism. This would be all the more true as antisemitism
would be racist in nature and thus alien to antiquity.
In her article Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity: “Religion” as a Political Category in
Christian Antiquity, Paula Fredriksen points to the ethnic affiliation of religion
in antiquity as a point often overlooked in the study of (ancient) antisemitism:
“cult was an ethnic designation, and ethnicity was a cult designation” (102).
In some cases, the scruples of Jews regarding the participation in a public cult
irritated pagan ethnographers resulting in complaints about “Jewish atheótēs
(‘atheism’) or asebeia (‘impiety’) or amixia (avoidance of others)” (106). While
the cultural importance of pagan groups faded with the rise of Christian ortho-
doxy to the Roman state religion, polemics against Jews continued to exist and
were repurposed for use by the later gentile churches. In addition, all non-
Orthodox Christians became heretics and were regarded as a security threat to
the Roman Empire. While gentile Christian polemical rhetoric targeting Jews
served before to separate the gentile Christian from a demonised Jew in a binary
system, the rhetoric contra Iudaeos was now applied to Christian heretics, which
likened them to “the Jews.” Jews, heretics, and pagans became thus “the objects
of unwanted popular attention, legal harassment, and urban violence” (110). The
reasons for the blooming Jew-hatred of late antiquity had thus “nothing directly
to do with real Jews and everything to do with imperial efforts to define, man-
date, and control ‘orthodoxy’” (111). In this transition from the practical plural-
ism of antiquity to the statutory definition of religion in late antiquity, the legal
12 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

situation of pagans, heretics, and Jews became thus permanently destabilised as

religion was no longer an ethnic patrimony but a political choice. The next para-
digm shift in the history of Jew-hatred followed with the conversion of the Visi-
gothic Arian church to Roman Christianity in the years 587– 589 C.E. The conver-
sion was aimed at unifying an ethnically and religiously mixed kingdom. In
uniting the Visigothic Spanish state with the Nicene Catholic church, the Visi-
goths reinterpreted the ancient ethnic affiliation of religion thus defining by
legal means “the Goth” as a new ethnic identity for Hispano-Romans. In this
process, the Jewish Romans of the Spanish Peninsula lost their legal and social
standing and were forced to either convert or to become pariahs that were even-
tually banished. However, in later Visigothic canon law, converted Jews were not
regarded as Christians but as “baptised Jews” or simply “Jews.” Visigothic canon
law thus created a racist approach to Jew-hatred that had devastating conse-
quences in the history of Judaism.

Comprehending Antisemitism in the Middle Ages

Most of the contributions in this part of the present volume deal less with histor-
iographical descriptions of Jewish life in Medieval Western Europe. Rather, they
inquire into medieval perceptions and, often times, imaginations of Jews from a
pre-modern Christian perspective (Chazan, Mayerhofer, Offenberg). They operate
with the concept of the “hermeneutical Jew.” Antisemitic imagery in Medieval
Christian Europe evolved much around this hermeneutical Jew who was imag-
ined to represent every form of aberration from Christian doctrine. Jews were
considered to be and, subsequently, constructed and described as blind believers
in the wrong faith, stubbornly clinging to their scripture’s literal and ultimate
meaning, as hostile toward the saving role of Jesus Christ and the Virgin
Mary’s mercy, as economic exploiters in their roles as money-lenders, as asocial
and members of a secluded group plotting against their Christian neighbours,
and as wicked evil-doers, well-poisoners, and child murderers. In all of these
stereotypes, commonly known from the Middle Ages even today, the link be-
tween emotionally charged aversion against a non-Christian “Other” and the
process of rationalisation in various forms—theologically, scientifically, and le-
gally—is apparent. Like in the previous part of this volume, the articles in this
part, too, are concerned with the construction of Christian identity vis-à-vis
their Jewish opposite who was claimed to be inferior, both on a spiritual and
a manifest corporeal, societal, and political level. Aiming at unearthing the proc-
esses underlying this construction of Christian identity, the articles engage with
medieval sources from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries and analyse trans-
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 13

mitted imagery, motifs, and narratives. A fourth article (Wiedl), in turn, takes a
more historiographical approach in documenting medieval legislation that was
directed against Jews and that curtailed their socio-economic advancement in
a Western Christian society. However, this contribution too is based on the wide-
ly accepted assumption that antisemitic thoughts and actions were prevalent
throughout the Middle Ages at all times and in all parts of society with medieval
legislation being only one contributor to and manifestation of medieval Jew-
hatred, based on the understanding of Jews and Judaism as inferior and, thus,
as subject to social, political, and legal subordination.
Robert Chazan traces the Evolution of Anti-Jewish Imagery in Medieval Chris-
tian Europe. Christian images of the Jews as a general threat to the societal order
generated and fostered radical stereotypes directed against Jews which, even
today, function as one of the foundations of modern and contemporary antisem-
itism. In his overview article, Chazan draws a line from Paul and his role in the
Jesus movement to Augustine. Both had considered Jews and Judaism an aber-
ration from the “True Israel,” based on their misunderstanding and active rejec-
tion of God’s revelation to them. Both positions, however, had hardly influenced
Jewish daily life. It was not until the end of the first millennium that “western
Christendom transformed itself from the weakest of the medieval religio-political
power blocs into the strongest” (127) and brought about vast changes for the Jew-
ish communities in North-Western Europe. The growing Christian communities
in the European West and North pressed for a delineation of socio-political
and socio-economic boundaries vis-à-vis their Jewish neighbours who had
come to new parts in the Western world to find social and economic advance-
ment. The Jewish “newcomers” were viewed with disfavour and as dissenting
with Christian faith, followed by the evolution of a “new and baneful imagery
of Judaism and Jews” (128) and resulting in a set of radically new negative ster-
eotypes: a previous purported “deleterious Jewish religious impact” now trans-
formed into notions of Jewish “societal harmfulness” beyond the religious
sphere (130). The danger of these new stereotypes, however, lied, and continues
to lie, in their intersectional power. Notions of economic exploitation in money-
lending, or even more horrendous charges such as ritual murder linked with tra-
ditional Christian doctrine of the Jews as erroneous in their beliefs and guilty of
the death of Jesus Christ. As such, these images laid the foundation for modern
antisemitism and continue to flourish.
Kerstin Mayerhofer engages with the role of cultural narratives in the proc-
ess of formation of identity. She scrutinises the discourse of embodied inferiority
and uses the example of the motif of Jewish “male menstruation” for her reflec-
tions on Inferiority Embodied: The “Men-struating” Jew and Pre-modern Notions of
Identity and Difference. Based on the concept of racism and race as grounded in
14 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

a proclaimed hierarchy of one group of people over another, Mayerhofer presents

the “men-struating” Jew as one motif in a canon of imagery surrounding the
“Jewish body,” which, in turn, reflects back on pre-modern understandings of
sex, gender, and, ultimately, race. In the example of the “men-struating” Jew,
that is, the figure of a Jewish man afflicted with a regular flow of blood from
his body, pre-modern Christian notions of difference and inferiority are reflected
both on a cultural and on a “scientific” level. The example shows that pre-
modern formation of identity is not solely based in culture or religion. Corporeal
aspects, too, “served the construction as categories [of identity],” however, they
were always “deeply connected with faith” (156). In presenting three sources
from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries from a clerical, medical, and
legal background, Mayerhofer uncovers the mechanisms that lie at the core of
the establishment of the theme of an aberrant and inferior “Jewish body”: uni-
versalisation, naturalisation, and normalisation. These mechanisms linked,
first theologically, to mark all generations of Jews as responsible and guilty for
the death of Jesus Christ, secondly, and “scientifically,” to embody this heredi-
tary guilt in images using somatic markers of distortedness conveying inferiority,
and, finally, to “normalise and institutionalise the socio-political and socio-
economic marginalisation and discrimination” (153) of the Jews.
In her article “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals in Medieval
Christian Art and Drama, Sara Offenberg addresses blood libels and host des-
ecration allegations with a special focus on their imagined character in art
and drama. She argues that the public sphere, that is, visual representations
of antagonist allegations against Jews, such as images, poems, or plays, helped
them gain currency. She focuses on two examples in vernacular languages, the
first being Alfonso X’s Cántigas de Santa Maria (1284), a compilation of stories
and songs, sometimes beautifully illustrated. The Cántigas provide scholars
with much information “about the anti-Jewish attitude of Christian Castilian so-
ciety” (165) grounded in the vast prevalence of stories about icon profanation
and host desecration. A second example is given with the Croxton Play of the
Sacrament (1461) which, too, deals with a story about host desecration. In com-
paring both examples, Offenberg comes to the conclusion that although the nar-
rative content of the stories and its transmitted themes do not vary much, the
intentions of both sources differ with regards to their places of origin. While Jew-
ish communities were still large and flourishing in late thirteenth-century
Castile, medieval England could only report about Jews from a distant perspec-
tive, as Jews were no longer present on the British Isles since 1290. However, in
both cases, Offenberg concludes, “the performance is intended for a Christian
audience with a clear agenda,” (177) and while it tells us less about the actual
Jewish rituals of the time and place, it can help us to understand how Jewish
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 15

daily life and ritual practice were perceived by the contemporary Christian ma-
jority society.
As mentioned above, Birgit Wiedl, in her article, takes a different approach.
She engages with Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages as a significant “part
of medieval anti-Jewish thought and agenda to which it contributed both ideas
and measures to act upon” (183). Her article is divided into three parts, the
first deals with church law pertaining to the Jews. While church law had only
limited effects on Jewish daily life, it can be identified as one of the most impor-
tant transmitters of antisemitic stereotypes and narratives and supported their
tradition well beyond the Middle Ages. In the second part about legislation of
secular rulers, Wiedl carves out different strands of socio-political developments
in different countries of the Christian Western Europe, which have led to a plu-
rality of laws pertaining to the Jews. Countries that were influenced more strong-
ly by church and canon law, such as England and France, also showed much
tighter control of their Jewish communities. On the other hand, territories that
would benefit from prospering Jewish communities, mostly financially but also
in terms of imperial protection, such as in the Holy Roman Empire, were hesitant
to incorporate anti-Jewish ideas into their legislation. In the last part of her ar-
ticle, Wiedl focuses on municipal and customary law, in which the Jews’ status
is “even more diverse” (200). The few written sources demonstrate especially
hostile thoughts against Jews, often expressed in the most emotive language
and accompanied by gruesome illustrations. All in all, Wiedl concludes, medie-
val laws pertaining to the Jews significantly contributed to the retention of age-
old antisemitic stereotypes in both the legislation of the church and of emerging
modern states. As such, they “prepared the ground for policies of later centuries,
such as the church’s demands of segregation and separation of Jewish and Chris-
tian living spaces, which, while only rarely carried out in the Middle Ages, were
translated into the reality of the ghettos from the sixteenth century onwards”
(209).

Comprehending Antisemitism in Modern Times

As stated above, the present volume, unfortunately, lacks contributions focusing
on the turn of the Middle Ages into the early modern age. Renaissance and early
modern engagement with Judaism however, is grounded largely in pre-modern
tradition. Pre-modern sources were scrutinised, re‐interpreted, and employed
to corroborate modern humanist claims about religion, culture, economy, poli-
tics, and society in general. Still, efforts were taken to establish a specific cultur-
al, religious, and social identity often by focusing on one’s opposite. Christian
16 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

identity in the Middle Ages, as we have seen, was very much shaped through a
process of delineation from a non-Christian, mostly Jewish, “Other.” Early mod-
ern thinkers largely followed this path, referencing earlier sources to authorise
their own antagonist claims. As such, early modern writing is not a novel pro-
duction but rather a re-production and re-shaping of earlier narratives of Jew-
hatred.
At the end of the eighteenth century, antisemitism gains momentum—a proc-
ess that runs parallel with a response to the emancipation of the Jews in Western
European societies. Modern Jew-hatred takes the form of a pseudo-scientific rac-
ism, corroborated by contemporary racist theories and nationalism and follow-
ing the structural changes in and the advent of civil society. Discrimination
against and persecution of Jews based on racial claims reached their highpoint
in the National Socialist era and continued well beyond that time. The contribu-
tions in this part of the present volume scrutinise the processes that have led to
the rise of antisemitism starting with the eighteenth century. As such, they take a
more historiographical approach than the articles in the previous sections. How-
ever, they do not document socio-political processes from a systematic and gen-
eral position only, rather, they also focus on individual influences (Wladika). An-
other focus lies on the Jewish perspective—how Jews have responded to socio-
political changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how they have
tried to oppose them (Levy, Rabinovici). This section also sheds light onto the
influences of modern European racist propaganda onto non-European societies,
much of which laid the foundations for current-day Jew-hatred, especially in the
Arab world (Küntzel).
Michael Wladika analyses Georg Ritter von Schönerers Radikalisierung zum
Rassenantisemiten vom Linzer Programm 1882 bis zur Gründung des “Verbandes
der Deutschnationalen” 1885. The antisemitic agitation by Georg Ritter von
Schönerer propagated pan-Germanism and German nationalism in Austria and
influenced Adolf Hitler’s antisemitism significantly. In his paper, Wladika traces
the process of radicalisation that turned Schönerer from a purely far-right poli-
tician and opposer of political Catholicism into a racial antisemite. Five factors
contributed to this transformation: (1) Schönerer’s thorough engagement with
Eugen Dühring’s theories of Judaism as an inevitable enemy to all cultural na-
tions, who in turn had to fiercely oppose this imminent threat. (2) This increas-
ingly racial antisemitic notions that Schönerer took up led to his breach with the
traditional nationalism and national socialism of his political predecessors.
(3) Subsequently, other antisemites like Karl Lueger supported Schönerer in
his political agitation, for example, in the case of the “Nordbahnskandal.”
(4) Schönerer’s engagement in campaigns surrounding the election of the
“Reichsrat” in 1885 served as a stage for his already increased racial antisemit-
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 17

ism in delineation from German nationalism. (5) Finally, the formation of the So-
cial Democratic as well as the Christian Social Party contributed to Schönerer’s
radicalisation as he feared these parties’ threat to German nationalist efforts.
In his article, Richard S. Levy documents The Defense against Antisemitism:
Minor Victories, Major Defeats, 1890 – 1939. He traces Jewish responses against
antisemitic attacks starting in the 1880s until their vast silencing with the rise
of Nazi ideology. Especially in the early years, a collective defence was difficult
to mount since Jewish communities were scattered around Germany, and it was
mostly individuals who spoke out against antisemitic oppression, among them
Theodor Mommsen. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, a first asso-
ciation for defence against antisemitism took shape in the Centralverein deutsch-
er Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens [Central Association of German Citizens of Jew-
ish Faith]. To ensure successful opposition against antisemitic ideology,
associations like the Centralverein aimed at respectability through vast publica-
tion, at intervention into electoral politics, supporting candidates actively oppos-
ing antisemitism, and at judicial pursuit of antisemitic accusations and discrim-
ination. These strategies helped to win some important victories before the
outbreak of World War I. However, when antisemitism was radicalised by the
lost war, their tools lost much of their power. Even though the Centralverein
was among the first to recognise the growing and imminent Nazi threat, it
found itself “relatively helpless” vis-à-vis a growing organisation and structural-
izing of antisemitism. Using the example of the Centralverein, Levy concludes
that the pressing danger of antisemitism lies first and foremost in its nature,
which is a conflation of superstitions and stereotypical prejudice and systematic
manifestation of such prejudice. He therefore calls for an alliance with anti-
antisemitic efforts from within the oppressed Jewish groups to stand up against
oppression and discrimination in such a “prejudicial environment […] from all
walks of society” (242).
Doron Rabinovici scrutinises The Jewish Response to Antisemitism in Austria
Prior to the Anschluss. To properly understand the Jewish response to Austrian
antisemitism, Rabinovici opens his article with an overview about Jewish life
in Austria from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, focusing on Vienna as home for the largest Jewish community in the Habs-
burg monarchy. Prejudices surrounding Viennese Jews at the time radically fuel-
led contemporary antisemitism with their images of “the ‘Jew’ […] as the leading
representative of social change, a symbol of modern times as well as of old
monotheism” (245), all corroborated by various nationalist efforts and forced as-
similation. In this environment, Jewish political parties like the Union of Austrian
Jews had formed to, first, “counter antisemitism in the courts of law, or through
interventions and appeals to politicians” (246). Increasingly, however, they were
18 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

considered not proactive and not Zionist enough and active Zionist Socialists
soon gained power. They called for a “search for Jewish self-awareness” (248) in-
stead of proving their loyalty to Austria and Germany and mobilized for a Jewish
state in Palestine. Orthodox association on the other hand “tried to counter
Christian Social antisemitism by stressing religious values and explaining that
Judaism was […] merely a faith” (250). At the advent of the “Anschluss,”
Austria’s annexation into Nazi Germany, all of the parties, however, saw their ef-
forts coming to a halt as Austrian antisemitism shifted from a “tacitly agreed gen-
eral mood […]” to “the overt credo of the bourgeois parties” (253). As a conclu-
sion, Rabinovici calls for a better understanding of the situation prior to 1938 to,
similarly, better understand the situation in Nazi Vienna following the “An-
schluss.” The “distinctive ambiance in Nazi Vienna” (254) had its foundation
in antisemitic discrimination and legally corroborated the curtailment of the
Jews’ status way before the annexation into Nazi Germany, and the Jewish com-
munity’s attempt to “safeguard its existence through patriotic compliance and
loyalty” (254) had been in vain.
Matthias Küntzel engages with Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East and its
Repercussions in the Postwar Period. The tradition of Islamic antisemitism is
deeply rooted in European ideological models. In his article, Küntzel focuses
on narratives of Jewish world conspiracy and their transfer from Nazi propagan-
da to the Muslim world which took place between 1937 and 1945. He understands
Islamic antisemitism as a particular form of Jew-hatred “based on the fusion of
Islamic anti-Judaism from the old scriptures with modern European antisemit-
ism” (000). His article demonstrates how this particular form of Islamic antisem-
itism subsequently became popularised within the Arab world. The booklet
Islam and Jewry, issued in 1937 and often attributed to the Grand Mufti of Jeru-
salem Mohammed Amin el-Husseini, serves Küntzel as one example for this
transmission process. The Arabic-language program broadcast on Radio Zeesen
outside of Berlin between 1939 and 1945 is a second example and considered the
“most effective vehicle of Nazi propaganda” (263), as it helped to strengthen a
reading of Islamic scripture that aimed at antisemitic agitation against Zionist
ambitions. Both examples effectively demonstrate “Nazi Germany’s efforts to in-
cite Arabs against the Jews changed the perception of the Jews within Islamic
societies” (270). Their aftereffects for the Arab world did not only pave the
way for Islamic opposition against the Jews of Mandatory Palestine in 1948;
they still prevail in today’s Middle East as antisemitic rhetoric on both a political
and a socio-cultural level.
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 19

Comprehending Shoah and Post-Shoah

Antisemitism
The articles in this part of the present volume deal with Shoah and post-Shoah
antisemitism in Europe and in the United States. They are based on a larger ques-
tion of whether the Shoah has to be regarded as a unique historical event or,
rather, an event unprecedented with unique foundations. Understanding the
Shoah as unprecedented and unique with regards to its totality and universality
(Porat), efforts have been made to combat antisemitism and other forms of rac-
ism following World War II and its atrocities. While societies that have not been
influenced by the experiences of World War II and the Shoah foster antisemitic
attitudes in an undaunted continuity, antisemitism has been a taboo after the
Nazi era for a long time, especially in societies that had suffered greatly from
the crimes of the Nazi regime. In other countries, antisemitism has survived as
a form of internalised self-hatred among Jewish communities themselves. This
is largely grounded in political instalment of notions of nationality that pressed
for the assimilation of religious and cultural diversity into a socio-political ma-
jority society (Cohen, Estraikh).
On the flip side of the coin, both history and the contributions in this part of
the present volume document that as time passes and as countries and genera-
tions of people lose their understanding of the history of the Shoah and a direct
connection to it, antisemitism became less of a taboo (Rosenfeld). This cannot
only be observed in the United States but also in many countries around the
world that have been home to Jews throughout history. Violent antisemitic inci-
dents have significantly increased during the last half of a decade in connection
with frustration from political establishments, ruling parties, and social inequity
(Fireberg). While, following the Shoah, many efforts have been taken to combat
institutionalised antisemitism, for example, in the Catholic Church (Silberstein),
its permeability in all parts of society and its overall versatile nature and multi-
ple transformations resulted in an overall atmosphere that is hostile toward Jews
in any given part of our societies, regardless of whether or not a society had suf-
fered more or less intensively during World War II.
In the first article of this section, Dina Porat lays the foundation for further
discussions as she asks the question Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event?
A Debate between two Pillars of Holocaust Research and its Impact on the Study of
Antisemitism. Porat follows the debate that has been ongoing for the past two
decades in research around the world regarding the question of “whether the
Holocaust was a unique historical event—meaning, an event possessing unique
attributes that are characteristic of it alone—or a genocide that, although ex-
20 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

treme, should nonetheless be located on the continuum of genocides that occur-

red before and after it” (275). To answer this question, Porat examines the views
of two of the most prominent Israeli Holocaust researchers, Israel Gutman
(1923 – 2013) and Yehuda Bauer (1926). She takes into consideration Gutman’s
and Bauer’s personal family history as Holocaust survivors and Zionist activists.
The assertion of the Holocaust’s uniqueness, as proposed by Gutman, is often
interconnected with Zionist efforts and served the latter “to reinforce the feeling
that a unique Jewish society was being built in Israel in its aftermath, and that
the world needed to recognize the terrible injustice” (288) that had been inflicted
on European Jewry. Bauer, on the other hand, has argued that the Holocaust is
not unique but an unprecedented event with unique foundations. The totality
and universality of the Holocaust enterprise, as well as the “absence of rational
motivating factors” (285), the amalgamation of racial theory and notions of the
nature of the victim that resulted in the industrialisation of murder are compo-
nents unique to the Holocaust in their combination albeit also appearing sepa-
rately in other events of mass murder such as in Rwanda and in the Balkans.
Concluding, Porat therefore strives to find a synthesis between the two different
approaches and argues that there “is no fundamental contradiction between
these two” (276). Rather, she calls for an understanding of the Holocaust as an
unprecedented event which, however, should not serve to “disrespect or detract
from the severity of other murders and atrocities or to exclude them from the dis-
cussion” (288). On the contrary, she argues that a “deeper exploration of the his-
tories of other genocides and their outcomes, and their comparison to the Holo-
caust, can result in empathy for the suffering of the other” (288) and into shared
efforts to combat antisemitism and other forms of racism.
In their article, Florette Cohen-Abady and Daniel Kaplin focus on Carib-
bean Jewry as a possible Model of Tolerance or Assimilation. While Jews had
lived on Caribbean islands since the early sixteenth century, little is commonly
known about their communal lives and, especially, about possible antisemitic
hatred they face. Cohen and Kaplin, therefore, trace the history of Jewish com-
munities on the islands of Cuba, Haiti, and on the Netherland Antilles, from
their first settlements following expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula to the
twenty-first century. Many of the Caribbean communities grew and flourished
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A special example is given
with the Jewish community of Suriname as the “oldest Jewish community in
the Western Hemisphere” (300), where Jews had been granted full religious
and economic freedom already during the seventeenth century. Yet, Jewish life
today is sparse in Suriname and most of the other places in the Caribbean.
The decline had started in the late 1800s, following a large wave of emigration
to the United States. As a second factor for the increasing disappearance of Jews
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 21

in the Caribbean, immigration from Holocaust refugees is mentioned, who had

no intention of establishing Jewish communities but rather gave in to the diffi-
culties surrounding them in their new homes and ceased to maintain a Jewish
way of life. Following emigration and assimilation, “classic antisemitism” (313)
is largely absent in the Caribbean, a “conglomerate of islands and a multi-cultur-
al society that favors tolerance and acceptance of all regardless of race or reli-
gion” (313). Concluding, Cohen and Kaplin, however, call for an investigation
of the processes that led to the disappearance of Caribbean Jewry in the first
place, which they see grounded in a differentiation “between tolerance/accept-
ance of difference and tolerance/acceptance of assimilation” (318). Caribbean
Jews were largely invited to assimilate, rather than be accepted as different
and had thus, subsequently, ceased to exist.
Gennady Estraikh traces Jewish-Related Scholarship in the Soviet Union,
1953 – 1967, based on the example of Sholem Aleichem and Qumran. His article
reveals how the ideological apparatus of the Soviet Union restricted and de-
formed Jewish-related academic scholarship following their political strategy
of assimilating Jews into their own culture. This practice led to the vast loss of
cultural memory with contemporary Jewry in post-Soviet countries and a lack
of Jewish self-confidence. The missing access to books especially compounded
the fostering of Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish national pride and identity. Addi-
tionally, “suppression of cultural memory by applying a straightjacket or an out-
right ban to works on ethnic history was seen as a way to dispel the rising tide of
emigration,” (342) starting in the 1970s and continuing until today. An even more
important factor was the “glass ceiling” (342) that faced Jews with regards to
their access to education, professional diversity, and social advancement. The ex-
amples of Sholem Aleichem and Qumran, however, show that Soviet efforts and
oppressive policies against Jews, Judaism, and Jewish-related scholarship was
not comprehensively effective. Both subjects were among the little aspects of
Jewish cultural identity and memory that managed to survive and formed the
basis for a new establishment of Jewish studies in the 1990s. Of course, however,
they left and still leave little trace in Russian academia, and many Jewish schol-
ars left Russia and other post-Soviet states to continue their studies elsewhere.
This is why, sadly, Russian and post-Soviet Jewish studies “struggle to this day
to put down roots through the layers of wasteland left from the Soviet period”
(343).
Documenting Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism, Alan
Silberstein presents an example of an individual heartfelt desire to combat in-
stitutionalised antisemitism that society can still learn from even today. As a
member of the Dominican order, Sister Rose Thering (1920 – 2006) devoted
much of her life to the fight against injustice and discrimination against Jews
22 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

in the Roman Catholic Church. For her PhD thesis, she had investigated the treat-
ment of minorities in Catholic textbooks with a focus on the Jews, which in 1965
directly impacted the Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the Relation of
the Church with Non-Christian Religions, more commonly known as Nostra Aetate.
Sister Rose had spoken of “the importance of mutual respect among the citizens
of the American democracy” (354), which was taken up by members of the
American Jewish Committee present at Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.
While she acknowledged that antisemitism had not been a policy of the church,
she pointed out that, rather, the antisemitism of the Roman Catholic Church was
rooted in age-old Christian doctrine, teaching and preaching with its blaming of
the Jews, pejorative mentioning of the term “Jew,” with its “unjust or inaccurate
comparisons of the Jewish religion with Christianity” (355) and its omissions of
facts like Jesus Christ’s Jewish ancestry. All of Sister Rose’s examples found their
way into Nostra Aetate, which now called for a “fraternal encounter” (357) be-
tween Christians and Jews. Subsequently, guidelines were issued for the chang-
ing of traditional teaching and preaching to rid textbooks of the portrayal of Jews
and Israel as inferior to Christianity and, thus, illegitimate. Seeing her theories
come into action, after Nostra Aetate, Sister Rose started to focus on Holocaust
Education and on Education in Jewish-Christian Studies in the USA and Israel.
Even today, her calls for the encouragement of dialogue, of academic rigor,
and strategic commitment to the learning about antisemitism and unlearning
of racist prejudices and judgements remain valid. Most of all, as Silberstein con-
cludes, Sister Rose can serve as an example for courage, as she never lost hers
during her long battle against antisemitism.
Alvin H. Rosenfeld investigates Antisemitism in Today’s America demon-
strating that it has been on the rise, especially during the last thirty years. He
recognises that social antisemitism has always been part of the country’s history
and that American Jews have continuously been faced with discrimination and
exclusion as well as with aggression and physical violence. During the 1930s,
1940s, and 1950s, American Jews had generally felt accepted and were mostly
“fully integrated in virtually all strata of American life” (368). During the second
half of the twentieth century, however, “America was entering a new and more
threatening era, one marked by the emergence of a reenergized antisemitism to-
gether with overt forms of intolerance, bigotry, and hostility directed against oth-
ers” (368 – 69). As a result, Jews were starting to feel more vulnerable, and this
general disease is fuelled by contemporary attacks against them. A major part of
Rosenfeld’s article is therefore devoted to the three main areas of American so-
cial and political life where Jews are faced with antisemitic hatred and crimes:
(1) general terror attacks that put the Jews at the centre of their attention;
(2) anti-Zionism and antisemitism on university campuses; and (3) societal
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 23

changes with the rise of White Nationalism, the Alt-Right, and White Supremacy,
which gained momentum especially during the Trump era. Concluding, Rose-
nfeld calls to action in all these three fields, for recognizing antisemitism and
developing strategies to monitor its manifestations, sponsoring academic re-
search institutions to study contemporary antisemitism, scrutinizing the use of
the internet to spread antisemitism, and protection of Jews by American legisla-
tion. All of these measures need to be brought together to avert what is happen-
ing to the Jews in America, which is a “newly agitated and more threatening sit-
uation” (386) than ever before. These present trends will have a “significant
impact on the future of Jews, not only in America but around the world” (386).
In his article, Haim Fireberg reviews Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish
Sense of Belonging. Following the general observation of the rise of antisemitic
violence around the globe, but especially also in the European Union, Fireberg
draws a comparison of contemporary antisemitism in four EU member states, be-
tween two from the west, France and the UK, and between two from the east,
Hungary and Latvia. While the comparison between these four states results in
a variety of differences, an overall finding is that the level of antisemitism
“does not necessarily indicate the state of antisemitic perceptions” (404). In
the UK and France, which record the highest number of violent antisemitic inci-
dents, Jewish communities mostly have a strong self-confidence and feel largely
“at home” in these countries. The same is true for Hungary and Latvia, albeit
from an opposite angle—violent antisemitism is low, however, also Jewish self-
perceptions are rather negative. Antisemitic perceptions are also strongly con-
nected to national identity and the level of confidence in civil order. Frustration
from political decision-making, ruling, and from social inequality, however, as
Fireberg finds out, “are the major factors in adopting harsh perceptions about
antisemitism” (404). Jews, in turn, feel especially insecure and abandoned wher-
ever there is no political perspective to ensure their wellbeing in a country. With-
out a country’s effort to recognise “that Jews are an important component of its
society,” levels of trust toward the country’s government drop significantly, as
the case of France has shown. The same can be observed in the United States
in accordance with Trump presidency. Thus, the bigger picture reveals that an-
tisemitism has significantly worsened in most of the countries all over the
world during the last half decade. For the Jews, the “feelings of insecurity led
to an increasing disbelief in the future of the community and has weakened
the sense belonging to the nation” (400), especially in countries like France
and Hungary. But also the examples from the UK and Latvia call to action, to
confront and combat antisemitism to ensure secure living for Jews in countries
where they have dwelled for centuries and have made themselves a proper
home as proper members or European civic society.
24 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

Comprehending Anti-Zionism as a Virulent Form

of “New Antisemitism”
Forms of antisemitism that focus on Israel and its politics have already reached
mainstream thinking. Anti-Zionism is one of the most eminent and most virulent
forms of “New Antisemitism” that emerged in accordance with historical and
socio-political changes in a world following both World Wars. Until today, how-
ever, its claims and narratives are deeply rooted in age-old perceptions, such as
the hostility and greed of Jews. Antisemitic sentiments stay the same, even if
they are framed as legitimate criticism against the politics of Israel. The articles
in this part of the present volume therefore place a special focus on anti-Zionism
and its dangers as a form of antisemitism that is easily adaptable and fits into
every part of the political spectrum (Becker). The historical narrative of antisem-
itism, its versatile nature and motivation, as well as its multiple transformations
are traced impressively in this last part of the present volume (Giesel). However,
this volume can offer only limited room for studies focusing on this new form of
antisemitism. As both anti-Zionism and other forms of “New Antisemitism” are
often inextricably connected to modern media, especially to the internet (Markl),
contributors to the present series have taken an effort to engage with these new
forms more intensively in volume 5, Confronting Antisemitism in Modern Media,
the Legal and Political Worlds. It is important, however, to understand, that
these new forms of antisemitism do not represent a turning point in the history
of antisemitism. Rather, they confirm antisemitism’s consistent mutability and
adaptability throughout time by attesting to one of its latest transformation.
Matthias J. Becker engages with The German Left and Israel. Based on the
general societal assumption that antisemitism is a phenomenon of the political
right, Becker scrutinises the reproduction of traditional antisemitic stereotypes
and the use of antisemitic metaphors in the German left, often covered as
anti-Zionism. He uncovers two “demonizing maneuvers” (411): (1) The general
association of Israel with colonialism and imperialism since the late 1960s.
Both colonialism and imperialism are despised by the left, and subsequently
left-wing European politics have shown a lot of solidarity with the Palestinians
as Israel’s oppressed opposite. Anti-Americanism, too, is an important factor,
and contributes to the leftist’s claim of Israel being “the bridgehead for the
United States into the Arab world and partly interpret American support as
the expression of the alleged Jewish global power” (411). (2) The German left
has constructed a particular regional narrative of Israel as the “new Nazis”
and compares the conflict in the Middle East with the Holocaust. This is both
a political and psychological practice as through such “demonizing analogies,
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 25

German atrocities are trivialized and identification with the German in-group
takes place” (411). The identification of the Mideast conflict with the Holocaust
helps Germans to emphasise their own history and sensitivity toward it with
the result of feeling morally superior. Both anti-Zionist approaches are clearly
antisemitic in a way that J. Améry has called “honourable,”¹⁰ since it opposes
general anti-social behaviour such as colonialism and oppression. In his analy-
sis, however, Becker demonstrates how the perceptions of Israel and the Mideast
conflict vary in accordance with the socio-political background and motivation
of those who reproduce these perceptions. While the motif of colonialism is es-
pecially important for the far-left, centre-left milieus, on the other hand, argue
for human rights and call for Israel’s secularisation. The varying rhetoric and
its general mutability is one of the key factors not only for the popularity of
new antisemitism but also for its special position and danger: when antisemit-
ism is framed as legitimate criticism against the politics of Israel, it becomes
easily acceptable in all parts of society.
In her article, Linda Giesel analyses Comparisons between Israel and Nazi
Germany in Contemporary German Discourse. She defines these comparisons
as “communicative strategies to express defamation against individuals or
groups of people and to generate outrage in the space of public communication”
(443). The historical awareness of their recipients is exploited to file updated
claims about Israeli politics and societal changes. This conflation of anti-Zionism
and Nazi rhetoric in German discourse can be traced back to the beginning of the
1980s and functions in three different ways: (1) to dereference their own Nazi
past; (2) to defame the State of Israel as a continuity of Nazi politics; and
(3) to relativise Germany’s guilt for the oppression of their victims, who, accord-
ing to the discourse, now have turned into perpetrators themselves. To uncover
these processes, Giesel has undertaken a linguistic corpus study including more
than ten thousand emails addressed to the Embassy of Israel in Berlin and the
Central Council of Jews in Germany, analysing their verbal antisemitic Nazi com-
parisons. A subsequent analysis reveals that “analogies between Israel and the
German Nazi regime were realized predominantly as utterances without typical
comparative connectives” (444). This means that, for example, the Israeli govern-
ment is addressed with references to Hitler, Goebbels, the Wehrmacht, or the SS,
therein focusing on the political agents and establishing a purported continuity
between perpetrators of the past and present. Concomitantly, Palestine and Gaza
as the targets of Israeli oppression are often connected to images of the Warsaw

 J. Améry, “Der ehrbare Antisemitismus,” in Werke: Aufsätze zur Politik und Zeitgeschichte, ed.
S. Steiner (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2005 [1969]), 131.
26 Kerstin Mayerhofer and Armin Lange

Ghetto or Auschwitz. What is especially dangerous about these comparisons, Gie-

sel concludes, is their frequency and nonchalance. Without being challenged, ut-
terances like these will subsequently pass with less frequent notice and habitu-
ation will set in.
Florian Markl addresses The Depiction of Israel in the Media, often with
catchphrases like “Israel Threatens to Defend Itself.” Realizing that “the way Is-
rael is depicted in the media’s reporting exerts a tremendous influence on Euro-
peans’ attitude toward Israel” (465), Markl presents an analysis of Austrian
media since 2011 as one example. This analysis shows how the coverage of
news concerning Israel and Israeli politics often does not follow classic journal-
ist standards. Rather, they “often draw a picture of Israel that is based on imbal-
anced and misleading reporting; the selective omission of facts; the application
of double standards when judging Israeli behavior compared to that of other
countries; and the presentation of their own biased attitudes toward Israel as
if they were plain facts” (456 – 66). This leads to a general de-realisation in the
media coverage concerning Israel that forms the foundation for a subsequent de-
monization of Israel and claims for its political de-legitimization. Attacks against
Israel from the side of Palestine are often ignored in the media contributing to an
image of Israel as ruthless in its own aggression without any legitimate motiva-
tion. Aggression and military action are subsequently claimed to be rooted in
Israeli or Jewish “nature” and fuel narratives of the Jews and Israel as a world-
wide danger.

Kerstin Mayerhofer is a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna’s Institute of

Jewish Studies and is co‐advised at Queen Mary University of London. Her research
focuses on perceptions of Jews in pre‐modern Christian narrative with regards to
representations of the Jewish body and gender. She has been working for the proj-
ect “An End to Antisemitism!” since 2017 and has been serving as the managing
editor of its multivolume conference proceedings.

Armin Lange is Professor of Second Temple Judaism at the University of Vienna’s

Institute of Jewish Studies as well as a corresponding member of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences. His research specialises in ancient Judaism, the Dead Sea
Scrolls, the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, ancient antisemitism, and the cul-
tural and religious histories of antisemitism. He has published widely in all of these
fields.
 Comprehending Antisemitism through the Ages: Introduction 27

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Comprehending Antisemitism in Antiquity
and Late Antiquity
Leonard Rutgers
Early Christian Anti-Judaism
I would like to start my reflections with a quote from Isaac Asimov. In the first of
his Foundation novels, this Russian-born American biochemist and science fic-
tion writer has one of his characters remark that “violence is the last refuge of
the incompetent.”¹ It is a keen observation—one that, I believe, can be of use
when studying the anti-Jewish sentiments that surface frequently in early Chris-
tian literature of first few centuries of the Common Era.²
Now, of course, it goes without saying that it would be wrong generically to
qualify the emergence of the advanced literary culture that accompanies the rise
of Christianity and that, in fact, is one of its defining characteristics, as a sign of
incompetence. Even so, there is no denying that there is something deeply unset-
tling about this literature all the same, specifically in the way it deals with others
in general, and with Jews and Judaism in particular. Early Christian discussions
in this area raise fundamental questions. Such questions do not just concern the
rationale for the invectives that emerge over the course of early Christian discus-
sions that deal with Jews and Judaism. They also prompt us to reflect on the larg-
er mechanisms that underlie these debates, as well as on the social ramifications
of the rhetoric strategies that characterize early Christian thinking on the Jews.
Before trying to highlight what I believe to be the crucial features in all of
this, let me begin by stating that in this paper my thinking on these matters

 I. Asimov, Foundation (New York: Bantam Dell, 1951), 71, 90, 117.
 See further e. g. R. R. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism
(New York: Seabury, 1979); J. G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism
in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); R. L. Wilken, John
Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century, vol. 6 of The Transfor-
mation of the Classical Heritage, ed. P. Brown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); G. I.
Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); C.
A. Evans and D. A. Hagner, Anti-Semitism and Early Christianity: Issues of Polemic and Faith
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993); K. R. Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); W. Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism: A History of
Hate (Lanham: J. Aronson, 1993); I. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and
Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. B. Harshav and J. Chipman (Berkley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2006); L. V. Rutgers, Making Myths: Jews in Early Christian Identity For-
mation (Leuven: Peeters, 2009); D. Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W.
W. Norton, 2014); R. Chazan, From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian
Constructions of Jewish History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); R. S. Kraemer,
The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2020).

OpenAccess. © 2021 Leonard Rutgers, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-003
32 Leonard Rutgers

has been fueled by a very simple realization: namely that aggression, in either its
verbal or physical manifestations, is almost never an expression of strength.
Rather, as psychiatrists have pointed out time and again, anger, as well as the
acts of aggression that result from it, are typically brought about by two factors
that at first blush may seem to be quite alien to it but that, in reality, are at the
very core of such emotions, namely, pain and fear.³
It is this understanding of human behavior that brings me to the question I
would like to address: if anti-Jewish ideas and verbal abuse of the Jews are such
a recurrent feature in early Christian literature, what was it that Christian writers
were so afraid of and why? What sort of pain did they experience and why did
they feel the need to take it out on the Jews? And, last but certainly not least,
how did the emotional turmoil in which early Christian writers transparently
found themselves, affect Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity more gener-
ally? What were the more structural and long-term effects of their incompetence
to move beyond feelings of pain and fear in this particular area?
Before trying to find an answer to these questions, let us not get ahead of
ourselves, however, and start at the beginning. If we want to gain a deeper un-
derstanding of anti-Jewish sentiments within early Christianity at large, literary
sources are our most important guide. When we look at this literature and at the
ways in which it deals with Jews and Judaism, one can discern at least the fol-
lowing four salient characteristics.⁴
First of all, ideas that were not all congenial to Jews emerge from the very
start, that is, they may already be found in the earliest layers of the New Testa-
ment, at which point they become a standard feature in early Christian literature
to the extent that they rear their ugly head again and again, all the way down the
end of antiquity and beyond.⁵ Even when there are large tracts in early Christian
literature that do not talk about Jews and Judaism at all, one encounters anti-
Jewish sentiments in the writings of many fathers of the early church, that is,

 Cf. e. g. L. Berkowitz, “Pain and Aggression: Some Findings and Implications,” Motivation and
Emotion 17, no. 3 (1993): 277– 93.
 Cf. e. g. S. G. Wilson, ed., Separation and Polemic, vol. 2 of Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, ed.
P. Richardson and S. G. Wilson (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986); A. L. Williams,
Adversus Judaeos: A Bird’s-Eye View of Christian Apologiae Until the Renaissance (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012).
 Cf. e.g. A. R. Eckhardt, Elder and Younger Brothers: The Encounter of Jews and Christians (New
York: Scribner, 1967); S. G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70 – 170 C.E. (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1995); J. D. Dunn, “The Question of Anti-Semitism in the New Testament Writings of the
Period,” in Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways, A.D. 70 to 135, ed. J. D. Dunn (Michigan:
Eerdmans, 1999), 177– 212; T. L. Donaldson, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision
Points and Divergent Interpretations (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010).
 Early Christian Anti-Judaism 33

in the works produced by major as well as by minor figures.⁶ Besides and no less
importantly, such ideas can surface any time, even when we, as modern readers,
feel that the larger context in which such remarks suddenly pop up, does not
warrant it all at. In short, in early Christian literature anti-Jewish sentiments
are like white noise, that is, a sound that, even when it is scarcely audible, is al-
ways there, humming in the background constantly.
Second, from a literary perspective, anti-Jewish ideas come in all shapes and
sizes. They appear in virtually all literary genres, from exegetical commentaries
and sermons to historiographical works and treatises designed specifically to en-
gage and combat the Jews. Given their pervasiveness it hardly comes as a sur-
prise to note that the phraseologies that were used in these variegated literary
contexts run the full gamut too, from occasional and off-hand observations
that occur when one least expects them, to systematic reflections and elabora-
tions, as in such cases where early Christian thinkers went through their thinking
process in a step-by-step fashion, producing fully-fledged monographic treat-
ments about the Jews and Judaism in the process.
Third, and along similar lines, early Christian anti-Jewish thinking seems to
have been spread fairly evenly through the Greco-Roman world in geographical
and cultural terms, with such ideas surfacing in Syria, Egypt, or Asia Minor as
well as in France or Spain and in virtually all the lands in between, and with
the respective sources being composed in a variety of languages including
Latin, Greek, and Syriac. Clearly, the ventilation of anti-Jewish ideas on the
part of early Christians was far from being reserved to a single cultural group,
set of theologians, or one or more specific, clearly delineated geographical
areas. Yet, perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of all is the fourth one.
As scholars have consistently argued over the last twenty to thirty years, the
Jews that appear in the writings of the fathers of the early church are frequently
not flesh and blood people at all.
Instead, the Jews we encounter in patristic literature are the direct outcome
of the fathers’ engagement with the texts of the Bible, meaning the Hebrew Bible
as well as the New Testament. As a result of this, the Jews that emerge over the
course of this process are not historical personalities but figments of scriptural
imagination, which is why they are often appropriately called “hermeneutical

 Cf. e. g. O. Limor and G. G. Stroumsa, eds., Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics be-
tween Christians and Jews (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996); H. Schreckenberg, Die christlichen
Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (1.–11.Jh.) (Frankfurt/Main:
Peter Lang, 1990).
34 Leonard Rutgers

Jews.”⁷ It is exactly in contexts where such literary inventions and artificial con-
structs surface that early Christian thinking on “the Jews” expands most dramat-
ically in terms of the verbal aggression and abuse that gets formulated then and
there.
If it is true, then, that much of the evidence at our disposal is textual in na-
ture to the point that crucial passages are primarily the result of exegetical med-
itations and an extended internal monologue, how do we move beyond the pure-
ly textual and hermeneutical toward a deeper understanding of the larger
historical mechanisms that were at work here?
Interestingly enough, it is exactly the self-centeredness of our texts that
helps us see what is going on, that is, as soon as we attempt historically to con-
textualize the evidence a bit further. On the most basic of levels, early Christian
texts dealing with the Jews are often not about the Jews at all but about Chris-
tians in search of their own distinct identity. Having begun its life as an offspring
of Judaism and as a Jewish sect that accepted the same writings as sacred, early
Christianity was facing a set of major, almost unsurmountable challenges when
it came to delineate its self-identity. Clearly etched boundaries became crucially
important because it was through them that Christian theologians needed to suc-
ceed in highlighting the fact that Christianity was something altogether different
and new, rather than just the incarnation of Judaism’s younger, yet still identical
twin. As they tried to sever all ties from the Jewish past that had produced them,
early Christianity’s theological champions could do little but engage in a consid-
erable amount of negative identity-formation. This meant, rather inevitably, that
Judaism ended up at the receiving end of the hostile rhetoric that this process of
dissociation, separation, and identity formation entailed and engendered.⁸
The fact that the ideas that surfaced in this process appear to have devel-
oped without much reference to actual Jews and Jewish communities is not real-
ly surprising either. Religious sects that start out on their own, in the way that
early Christianity did, are almost always high-tension religious movements. As
such, these movements have a tendency to cut themselves off from society at
large. Instead they prefer to focus exclusively on the internal dynamics of the
group. In addition to thinking about which social norms to embrace and enforce,
this naturally also includes self-centered efforts to arrive at a formulation of the
group’s ideology including one’s own identity.⁹ In our case, this explains why

 J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1999). Cf. also A. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Chris-
tian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Rutgers, Making Myths.
 Cf. Rutgers, Making Myths.
 Cf. W. S. Bainbridge, The Sociology of Religious Movements (New York: Routledge, 1997).
 Early Christian Anti-Judaism 35

Christianity was so self-referential when it talked about Jewish traditions from

which it sought to dissociate itself.
If we are correct in concluding that a significant portion of early Christian
thought concerning Jews and Judaism had been produced in response to internal
needs and for the purposes of internal consumption only, we still must pose the
crucial question of whether these writings had an effect that went beyond the
narrow audience for whom they were intended. Did they affect Jewish-Christian
intragroup relations at large? And did these early Christian efforts to define their
own, distinctive selves vis-à-vis the Jews provide them with the necessary tools to
interact competently with their significant Jewish “Other” in real life?
To answer those questions, it is instructive to glance briefly at the infamous
sermons known as Against the Jews that John Chrysostom delivered in the cathedral
of the provincial capital of Syrian Antioch in 386 and 387 C.E.¹⁰ When we look at
these eight lengthy sermons using the notion of “violence as a measure of incom-
petence” with which I began my reflections, we see violence and incompetence
manifest themselves at three different yet interrelated levels that are very informa-
tive from the larger historical perspective that we are interested in here. First there
is incompetence in the aggression and verbal abuse that occurs throughout these
discourses—clearly evidence for someone who is utterly and disconcertingly inca-
pable of reigning himself in, an uncompromising bully. There is also incompetence
that is practical in nature and that relates to Chrysostom’s inability to fully control
Antioch’s early Christian community, that is, a group where some people were not
bothered in the least by the cordial and organic relationship they cultivated with
the local Jewish community.
Yet, the most disturbing form of incompetence is conceptual or theological
in character. It arises out of the discrepancy between John Chrysostom’s core
message on the one hand and the reality on the ground on the other.
Chrysostom’s core message is that Christianity had replaced Judaism entirely.
Yet it was precisely on that score that reality was very different from what
Chrysostom was saying: even in the late fourth century C.E., Antioch’s Jewish
community was so alive and kicking that many Christians were attracted to it
to the extent that they participated in its rituals freely and joyfully. It was pre-
cisely this situation that helps explain John Chrysostom’s repetitive insistence
on selected passages from the Hebrew Bible. These he adduced in an attempt
to show that the Jews had ceased to be the people of the covenant a very long

 Cf. J. Chrysostom, Eight Homilies Against the Jews / Adversus Judaeos, vol. 68 of Patrologia
Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1862); P. W. Harkins, Saint John Chrysostom: Discourses Against Ju-
daizing Christians, vol. 48 of The Fathers of the Church (Washington: Catholic University of Amer-
ica Press, 1979). Cf. also Rutgers, Making Myths, 19 – 48.
36 Leonard Rutgers

time ago already, that is, even before the historical emergence of Christianity it-
self. It was a scenario that was the exact opposite of what most contemporaries
of John Chrysostom knew to be the case in Antioch. Even when Chrysostom em-
ploys an exegetical strategy that others had used before him, its reiterative na-
ture indicates, therefore, that there is quite a bit of special pleading going on
here, almost as if Chrysostom is not merely trying to convince his audience
but himself as well.
Whatever the real reasons for John Chrysostom’s exegetical exuberance and
the violently anti-Jewish conclusions he drew from it all too consistently, it is
clear, in any case, that in these sermons we encounter an interesting amalgam
of what we have already talked about before, namely (a) the fear of not being
able to fully control one’s own community in the way that the author of these ser-
mons saw fit; (b) the pain of having to do so on the basis of a theology that
preached a reality that did not exist and therefore did not and could not convince
the Christian masses; which (c) then leads to all of this getting translated into mas-
sive amounts of verbal aggression that one cannot but see as a sign of weakness
rather than of strength. Here there is verbal violence of a kind that one can easily
qualify as “a final refuge of incompetence.”
And yet, it is precisely this that makes John Chrysostom’s sermons so very
interesting from a historical point of view. What we are witnessing here is
what I have already highlighted, namely that as soon as Christianity became a
societal force to be reckoned with, over the course of the fourth century C.E.,
it had to negotiate the shockwaves caused by a reality check that resulted
from a thorough discrepancy. This discrepancy consisted of, on the one hand,
Christianity’s self-centered self-image, which had been developed in almost ex-
clusive reference to the in-group and which posited that Judaism was now a
thing of the past. And, on the other hand, the reality of a Jewish outgroup
that was doing really well for itself during precisely this period—with Jews build-
ing monumental synagogues all over town, fulfilling their civic duties high up
the social ladder as they were serving on the city’s councils, and participating
in the cultural life of their times through attending theaters and hippodromes.
From a Christian point of view, such a discrepancy was insufferable in that it
called into question core notions within early Christian theology concerning
the Jews and Judaism, namely ideas about early Christian supersessionism, in
the most serious of fashions.¹¹

 Cf. T. L. Donaldson, “Supersessionism and Early Christian Self-Definition,” Journal of the

Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 3 (2016): 1– 32.
 Early Christian Anti-Judaism 37

When such a view of things helps us to explain why there is so much anger,
that is, powerlessness in John Chrysostom’s words, it is important to stress all the
same that his hot-tempered perorations cannot therefore be taken to have been
ineffective or without consequence. Rather, they were volatile and dangerous
enough, particularly when we consider that there is strong empirical evidence
to suggest that hate speech of the kind that we encounter here can easily trans-
form into a hate spin, that is, into forms of manufactured indignation geared to-
ward the emotional exploitation and manipulation of the masses, for the pur-
pose of propelling them into action.¹²
Not surprisingly and perhaps inevitably, this is exactly what then happened
in those very same years, meaning in the late fourth and early fifth century C.E.
Both literary and archaeological evidence indicates that during this period, syn-
agogues, that is, actual buildings, came under attack by Christian mobs, often
for the purposes of transforming them into churches. While several factors con-
tributed to this process, there can be little doubt that centuries of anti-Jewish
sentiments on the part of early Christian theologians created the necessary con-
ditions for such events to take place. Once early Christian thinkers began to iden-
tify the synagogue as the very site where Judaism manifested itself in this world,
as John Chrysostom did amongst others, it became possible for the verbal anger
they had vented for so long to attach itself to concrete and identifiable sites and
buildings. Late Roman lawgivers did not like that much, but insofar as the Jewish
community that gathered in such places was concerned all bets were now off.
They had to suffer the ultimate and violent consequence of the utter incompe-
tence we see reflected in early Christian writings including the sermons of
John Chrysostom.
Much more than is possible here could be said about the interrelationship
between early Christian theology and the history of Jewish-Christian relations
in late antiquity. However, it is time to stop here and pose ourselves the question:
Can we really maintain that there exists a direct and causal relationship between
the anti-Jewish verbal rhetoric we encounter in much of early Christian literature
on the one hand and the deeds of aggression against actual Jewish communities
on the other?
I think we can and we must. By concluding that I certainly do not mean to
imply that violence was the only way in which Christians related to Jews from the
late antique period onwards: our sources indicate that there was considerably
more nuance to that relationship than just that. What I want to stress, however,

 Cf. B. J. Bushman, R. D. Ridge, and E. Das, “When God Sanctions Killing: Effect of Scriptural
Violence on Aggression,” Psychological Science 18, no. 3 (2007): 204– 7.
38 Leonard Rutgers

is that with the rise of Christianity there occurred a systemic change in how Jews
were to be viewed within society at large. With orthodox Christianity becoming
the single most important identifier in the identity politics of the period and
with the Jews becoming Christianity’s primary significant “Other,” a set of new
conditions were created that, once combined with the anti-Jewish rhetoric that
permeates much of early Christian literature, led to a new default position vis-
à-vis the Jews. That position was fundamentally different from what had been
customary before, during the times of the pagan Roman Empire. This new
state of affairs can be summed up by saying that within Christian theological cir-
cles, anti-Jewish sentiments now became the new normal. To this should be
added that the real problem with such an attitude was not that it was necessarily
shared by all theologians equally and all of the time, let alone by the population
at large. The problem was that these ideas, and the rhetoric that went with it,
could be called upon and put into action at any time in such a fashion that ac-
tual acts of intimidation and violence against the Jews seemed nothing but a log-
ical, even an inevitable, step in the unfolding of one’s own Christian identity.
All of this is also precisely why I think there is little that is innocuous about
anti-Jewish sentiments in early Christian literature. When seen against the larger
systemic changes I just mentioned, the fathers of the early church were doing lit-
tle else than lay the groundwork for letting anti-Jewish notions enter into the ca-
pillaries of Christian theology in ways that would profoundly influence and, in
fact, spoil Jewish-Christian relations for much of the remainder of European his-
tory.
While it is already sad enough that Jewish-Christian relations should have
evolved in this way and along these lines, insofar as the Christian side of this
relationship was concerned, it is, finally, quite ironic that the main drivers in
this process were not strength or newly found self-confidence but fear, pain,
and, in fact, and a significant dose of incompetence. In light of the above, I prob-
ably do not need to stress that in my view, incompetence does not set either a
person, a group, or a literature free.

Leonard V. Rutgers is Professor of Late Antiquity, holds the Chair in Ancient History
and Classical Civilization at Utrecht University, and is a corresponding member of
the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia. His research focuses on the his-
tory and archaeology of Diaspora Judaism and on Jewish-Christian relations. He is
particularly well known for his groundbreaking interdisciplinary work in the field of
radiocarbon dating and stable isotope analysis. An award-wining columnist, he
also writes for the Dutch Financial Times.
 Early Christian Anti-Judaism 39

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Armin Lange
Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal,
and Physical Forms of Antisemitic
Persecution
Jew-hatred in antiquity and late antiquity has been subject to several studies
with varying degrees of scholarly quality and widely differing appreciations of
the extent and character of the rejection and persecution of Jews in these peri-
ods.¹ Furthermore, Jew-hatred in antiquity and late antiquity has been surveyed
in albeit mostly brief chapters in various overall histories of antisemitism.² Al-
though ancient and late ancient Jew-hatred is not in the center of most of an-
tisemitism studies,³ there is ample scholarly literature engaging with the phe-

 The following are just a few examples for studies of high scholarly quality: A. Cuffari, Juden-
feindschaft in Antike und Altem Testament: Terminologische, Historische und Theologische Unter-
suchungen (Hamburg: Philo, 2007); J. G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward
Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); V. Herholt,
Antisemitismus in der Antike: Kontinuitäten und Brüche eines historischen Phänomens (Gutenberg:
Computus, 2009); B. Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2013); K. L. Noethlichs, Die Juden im christlichen Imperium Romanum (4.–
6. Jahrhundert) (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2001); P. Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the
Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); M. Simon, Verus Israel:
A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (AD 135 – 425),
trans. H. McKeating (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); C.-P. Thiede and Stingelin, Die Wur-
zeln des Antisemitismus: Judenfeindschaft in der Antike, im frühen Christentum und im Koran
(Basel: Brunnen-Verlag, 2002); Z. Yavetz, Judenfeindschaft in der Antike: Die Münchener Vorträge
(München: Beck, 1997).
 Cf. e. g. D. Berger, History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1997); T. B. Eriksen et al., Judenhass: Die Geschichte des Antisemitismus
von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019); W. Laquer, The
Changing Face of Anti-Semitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Cary: Oxford University
Press, 2006); M. Perry and F. M. Schweitzer, Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the
Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan, 2005); L. Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, 4 vols.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); H. Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adver-
sus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld, 3 vols. (Frankfurt/Main: Peter
Lang, 1982– 1994); R. Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (New York: Pantheon, 1992);
R. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Ran-
dom House, 2010).
 An indicator of the marginalization of ancient Jew-hatred is the Handbuch des Antisemtismus,
ed. W. Benz (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010) which does not engage with either epoch on a comprehen-
sive level.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Armin Lange, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-004
42 Armin Lange

nomenon. Scholars differ significantly in the appreciation of ancient Jew-hatred.

Some claim that it was at best a marginal phenomenon and that antisemitism
did not exist in (late) antiquity.⁴ Others argue that Jew-hatred was an important
aspect that determined the relationship of both the pagan and Christian worlds
with Judaism.⁵
Given these diverse appreciations of and attitudes to ancient Jew-hatred in
scholarly literature, it might be appropriate to survey the history of persecution
of Judaism in antiquity. Such a survey might be able to provide answers as to
whether antisemitism existed in antiquity and how marginal or mainstream it
was in ancient societies and cultures. The answer to both questions depends sig-
nificantly on how antisemitism is defined and how antiquity is delineated. Next
to such terminological clarity, a survey of antisemitism in antiquity also has to
ask which principal forms of the persecution of Jews existed in this period.

1 What is Antisemitism and What is Antiquity?

If the term antisemitism is defined as a description of exclusively modern (racist)
Jew-hatred,⁶ no antisemitism could have existed in either antiquity or late antiq-
uity. If antisemitism is understood as a hatred, the modern and contemporary
expressions of which are just the latest form of an age-old phenomenon, then
(late) ancient Jew-hatred could very well have been an expression of antisemit-
ism. If late antiquity ends with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476
C.E. or with the end of the reign of Justinian in 565 C.E., the racial characteristics
of Visigothic legislation against the Jews of Spain becomes part of the Middle
Ages, and those who define antisemitism as purely racist could argue that an-

 See for instance the article by E. Gruen, “The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient An-
tisemitism?” in the present volume, or B. Bar-Kochva’s The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature:
The Hellenistic Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). Cf. also Isaac, Invention of
Racism.
 Cf. e. g. Yavetz, Judenfeindschaft, or Simon, Verus Israel.
 Cf. e. g. W. Bergmann, Geschichte des Antisemitismus (München: C.H. Beck, 2002); C. Guillau-
min, L’idéologie raciste: Genèse et langage actuel (Paris: Gallimard, 1972); J. Heil, “‘Antijudais-
mus’ und ‘Antisemitismus’: Begriffe als Bedeutungsträger,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusfor-
schung 6 (1997): 92– 114; G. I. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990); T. Nipperdey and R. Rürup, “Antisemitismus,” in Geschicht-
liche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. O.
Brunner, W. Conze, and R. Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972), 129 – 53.
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 43

tisemitism began only in Medieval times.⁷ If, however, the Arab conquest of the
seventh and eighth centuries C.E. marks the end of late antiquity, the Visigothic
antisemitic legislation would be part of late antiquity.
The above examples show that definitions of antisemitism and the delinea-
tion of the periods of antiquity and late antiquity impact the question of whether
antisemitism existed in either one of these periods significantly. It is therefore
important to explain how I delimit antiquity on the one hand, and how I define
antisemitism on the other hand.
A common delineation of antiquity is to set its beginnings ca. 800 B.C.E. and
its end with the end of the Arab conquest of much of the Roman world in the sev-
enth and eighth centuries C.E.⁸ Inside this time window of more ca. 1500 years, it is
now common to distinguish between antiquity and late antiquity. The beginning of
late antiquity is often identified as the reign of Emperor Diocletian (284– 305 C.E.).
However, for the history of Judaism, the so-called Constantinian shift in the year
313 C.E. was a much more incisive event. It was in this year, that by way of the
edict of Milan, Emperors Constantine (ruled 306 – 337 C.E.) and Licinius (ruled
308– 324 C.E.) paved the way for Christianity to become the state religion of the
Roman world in the 380 C.E. In my opinion, the end of late antiquity is marked
by the Arab conquest of the Spanish Visigothic kingdom during the years 711–
725 C.E. At the latest at this point, the Roman Empire was reduced to a regional
power in Eastern Mediterranean with the Frankish and Langobard kingdoms as
the only surviving Germanic successor states.
Focusing on antiquity, my present survey addresses thus the ancient period
until its end with the reign of Diocletian and the so-called Constantinian shift in
313 C.E. but not late antiquity. There can be no doubt that during this time Jews
suffered from various forms of discrimination and persecution and that they
were subject to cultural and religious ridicule. Is it appropriate though to de-
scribe these ancient expressions of Jew-hatred as antisemitism?
As I have argued above, the answer to this question depends heavily on how
antisemitism is defined. However, to the question “What is Antisemitism?” as
many answers are given as there were and are researchers asking it. The present
article is clearly not the place for an extensive discussion of this issue. However,
a few brief remarks are in order.

 See e. g. R. Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1997), Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism; R. I. Moore, The Forma-
tion of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950 – 1250 (Oxford: Black-
well, 1987).
 The Arab conquest began 642 C.E. with invasion of the Roman provinces of Palestine and
Syria and ended in the year 711– 725 C.E.
44 Armin Lange

The word antisemitism, derives from the terms Semite and Semitism. Both
have been present since the eighteenth century in scholarly literature and
were mostly used with regard to linguistic distinctions. Examples include August
Ludwig von Schlözer who described in 1781 Hebrews, Arabs, and African
Abyssinians as “Semites”⁹ and Franz Bopp who distinguished in 1816 between
Indo-Germanic and Semitic languages.¹⁰ However, already Christian Lassen
and Ernest Renan employ the term “Semite” with clearly racist connotations
in 1847¹¹ and 1857,¹² respectively. In criticism of Renan, the Jewish scholar Moritz
Steinschneider introduced already in 1860 the concept of “antisemitic prejudi-
ces.”¹³
The term antisemitism became prominent by the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Wilhelm Marr¹⁴ is commonly claimed to have been the first to use it in his
book The Victory of Judaism over Germanism: Regarded from a Non-confessional
Point of View: Vae Victis! ¹⁵ However, already Moshe Zimmermann has shown that
the term antisemitism cannot be found in this book.¹⁶ Marr’s pamphlet is clearly
antisemitic in nature but does not use the word. Whoever coined the word an-
tisemitism is beside the point, though.

 A. L. Schlözer, “Von den Chaldäern,” Repertorium fuer biblische und morgenlaendische Liter-
atur 8 (1781): 161.
 Cf. F. Bopp, Ueber das Konjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der
griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache (Frankfurt/Main: Windisch-
mann, 1816).
 Cf. C. Lassen, Indische Altertumskunde, 4 vols. (Bonn: H. B. König, 1847– 1861), 1:494– 96.
 Cf. E. Renan, Études d’histoire religieuse (Paris: Lévy, 1880).
 M. Steinschneider, Review of “Zur Charakteristik der semitischen Völker” by Heymann Stein-
thal, Hamaskir: Hebräische Bibliographie: Blätter für neuere und ältere Literatur des Judenthums 3
(1860): 16. The article by Steinthal was published in Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprach-
wissenschaft 1 (1860): 328 – 45 and reprinted in a collection of Steinthal’s collected essays: Über
Juden und Judenthum: Vorträge und Aufsätze, ed. G. Karpeles (Berlin: Verlag von M. Poppelauer,
1906), 91– 104.
 For W. Marr, see M. Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1986).
 W. Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum: Vom nicht confessionellen Stand-
punkt aus betrachtet: Vae Victis! (Bern: Rudolph Costenoble, 1879). For examples for this attribu-
tion of the word antisemitism, see F. R. Nicosia, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 23.
 Cf. e. g. M. Zimmermann, “Aufkommen und Diskreditierung des Begriffes Antisemitismus,”
in Ideologie—Herrschaftssystem—Wirkung in Europa: Festschrift für Werner Jochmann zum 65. Ge-
burtstag, vol. 1 of Das Unrechtsregime: Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus,
ed. U. Büttner (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1986), 63.
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 45

More important is how antisemitism should be defined. A popular distinc-

tion that is often made in the study of Jew-hatred is to discern religiously moti-
vated Jew-hatred from racist Jew-hatred, the former would need to be classified
as anti-Judaism while only the latter would need to be regarded as antisemit-
ism.¹⁷ In this line of argument, all Jew-hatred before the predominance of racist
Jew-hatred in the (late) nineteenth century would have to be described as anti-
Judaism while all racist Jew-hatred would be antisemitism.
This distinction is problematic for three reasons: (1) That racism and racist
antisemitism begins only in the (late) nineteenth century needs to be questioned
given the existence of racist or proto-racist forms of Jew-hatred long before this
time. (2) While the term antisemitism is clearly modern in origin and in addition
a misnomer that distorts an originally linguistic term, it is not unusual in histor-
iography to describe ancient or medieval realities with modern terms. (3) That
racist antisemitism is void of religious contents and meaning makes a particular
European form of racist radical right-wing Jew-hatred absolute and elevates it to
the paradigm of all other forms of antisemitism.
Two examples show how problematic the distinction between religiously
motivated anti-Judaism and racist antisemitism is. My first example goes back
to the alleged inventor of the term antisemitism, Wilhelm Marr. Marr himself
uses the word antisemitism in describing the religiously driven Jew-hatred of
the infamous court chaplain Adolf Stoecker and claims in this quote even that
modern antisemitism began with Stoecker in the year 1878:

Modern antisemitism exists since the year 1878 when court chaplain Stoecker approached
the Jewish question for the first time from his “Christian-social” point of view.¹⁸

Marr’s description of the religiously motivated Jews-hatred of Stoecker shows

that even the supposed inventor of the word antisemitism regarded religious
Jew-hatred as much as antisemitism as his own racially driven version of it.
The claim that in its origin the term antisemitism was reserved for racist Jew-
hatred is thus clearly wrong.

 Cf. J. Heil, “‘Antijudaismus’ und ‘Antisemitismus’: Begriffe als Bedeutungsträger,” Jahrbuch

für Antisemitismusforschung 6 (1997): 105 – 6.
 W. Marr, “Antisemitische Wucht und Verluste,” in Österreichischer Volksfreund (1891). Pre-
served as a fragment in the estate of Marr. Quoted according to Zimmermann, “Aufkommen
und Diskreditierung,ˮ 71, and Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr, 112: “Der moderne Antisemitismus
besteht seit dem Jahre 1878, als der Hofprediger Stoecker die jüdische Frage zum ersten Mal
von seinem ‘christlich-sozialen’ Blickpunkt aus anging.” Translation by the author of this article.
46 Armin Lange

A second example can be found in a passage from a speech that Hitler’s

deputy, Rudolph Hess, gave on May 14, 1935, for the German-Swedish society
in Stockholm. Hess stated:

I myself was until then not an antisemite, but on the contrary defended the Jews based on
the usual historical theory against their adversaries and persecutors. The facts of 1918 and
later were so eye-catching that I was forced to convert to antisemitism, even though inward-
ly I was rather reluctant to revise my hitherto conviction about the innocence of persecuted
Judaism.¹⁹

In this quote, several points deserve attention. First, Hess views his change of
mind toward antisemitism as a movement from one belief system to another.
Hess describes this movement from one belief system to another in both rational
and religious terms. That he was “forced” to change his perspective mirrors the
forceful emotional experience of conversion from one religion to another. It is
thus no surprise that Hess refers to his change from philosemite to antisemite
as a conversion. When Hess claims that “the facts of 1918 and later” would
have changed his mind, this refers only seemingly to a rational analysis of histor-
ical events. It was, after all, not Germany’s Jews who were responsible for its de-
feat at the end of World War I, and it was not Germany’s Jews that caused the eco-
nomic and political crisis following this defeat. Hess describes thus a much less
rational thought-process. His interpretation of Germany’s defeat and the crisis re-
sulting from it was based on age-old prejudices about Judaism, which provided an
interpretative grid that allowed Hess to make religious sense out of an existential
crisis. Hess’ sense that “the facts of 1918 and later were so eye-catching” shows
furthermore that they captured his thought process emotionally, that they led
him from one set of perceptions to a very different set. This is not a process of ra-
tional education but rather one of emotional—religious—transformation.
The two examples show that religious and racist antisemitism cannot easily
be separated from each other. However, not only can a person like Rudolph Hess,
whose antisemitism was clearly racist in character, describe his racist Jew-hatred

 R. Hess, “An die Ausländer guten Willens,” in Reden (München: Zentralverlag der NSDAP,
Franz Eher Nachf., 1938), 104: “Ich selbst war bis dahin kein Antisemit, sondern nahm in Gegen-
teil auf Grund der üblichen Geschichtslehre die Juden gegenüber ihren Widersachern und Ver-
folgern in Schutz. Die Tatsachen von 1918 und später waren aber so in die Augen springend, daß
ich mich zum Antisemitismus bekehren mußte, so sehr ich mich auch innerlich dagegen
sträubte, meine bisherige Überzeugung von der Unschuld des verfolgten Judentums berichtigen
zu müssen.” Translation and emphasis by the author of this article.
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 47

in religious terms. Together with Maxine Grossman I have elsewhere argued that
antisemitism in itself is a religious phenomenon.²⁰
Given the complicated history of how the word antisemitism developed, it
can come hardly as a surprise that scholars and activists in the fight against
Jew-hatred define the term differently. A quotation by Steven Beller brings the
range of definitions to the point:

Antisemitism is a hatred of Jews that has stretched across millennia and across continents;
or it is a relatively modern political movement and ideology that arose in Central Europe in
the late 19th century and achieved its evil apogee in the Holocaust; or it is the irrational,
psychologically pathological version of an ethnocentric and religiocentric anti-Judaism
that originated in Christianity’s conflict with its Jewish roots—and achieved its evil apogee
in the Holocaust; or it is a combination of all of these.²¹

As stated, the present article does not offer room for an extensive discussion on
how to define antisemitism. While the term is clearly a misnomer deriving from a
linguistic category, it is nevertheless too established to describe any form of Jew-
hatred otherwise. In many countries of the world, governments have accepted
the so-called working definition of antisemitism proposed by the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA):

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward

Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish
or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions
and religious facilities.²²

While the IHRA’s definition comes out of a political and diplomatic process,
scholarly discourse was carefully incorporated and considered when it was
phrased.²³ Although the working definition of antisemitism is not legally bind-

 Cf. A. Lange and M. Grossman, “Jews and Judaism between Bedevilment and Source of Sal-
vation: Christianity as a Cause of and Cure against Antisemitism,” in Comprehending and Con-
fronting Antisemitism: A Multi-Faceted Approach, vol. 1 of An End to Antisemitism!, ed. A. Lange
et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 133 – 64.
 S. Beller, Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1.
 “Working Definition of Antisemitism,” International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, is-
sued July 19, 2018, accessed September 7, 2020, https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/
sites/default/files/press_release_document_antisemitism.pdf.
 See M. Weitzman, “The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism,” and D. Porat, “The Work-
ing Definition of Antisemitism: A 2018 Perception,” in Comprehending and Confronting Antisem-
itism: A Multi-Faceted Approach, vol. 1 of An End to Antisemitism!, ed. A. Lange et al. (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2019), 463 – 73 and 475 – 87.
48 Armin Lange

ing, it provides nevertheless an internationally recognized and accepted com-

mon ground on how to define antisemitism and is thus applied in my present
survey on antisemitism in antiquity as well.
This is all the more appropriate as the working definition consciously avoids
distinctions of racially and religiously motivated Jew-hatred by not even men-
tioning these terms. For the working definition, all forms of Jew-hatred are an-
tisemitism, be it the religious demonization of Jews since antiquity or their racist
discrimination and persecution by the Nazis or any variety of enmity against
Jews.²⁴

2 In Which Ways Were Jews Persecuted?

To better understand the history of the persecution of Jews, it is helpful to under-
stand the different forms of how Jews were persecuted. This is all the more im-
portant as such categorizations allow us to better perceive the interconnected-
ness of devaluating Jewish culture and religion on the one hand and
antisemitic pogroms and genocide on the other hand. I distinguish between
three principle forms of antisemitic persecution in antiquity: (1) cultural perse-
cution, (2) legal persecution, and (3) physical persecution.
Between each of these forms of persecution large grey zones exist, and they
often are deeply intertwined. An example for such a grey zone would be the ban-
ishment of a Jewish population from a country or city as it involves both physical
violence and legislative as well as judicial acts. Furthermore, the above forms of
persecution are not privy to antisemitism but can be observed with the discrim-
ination and persecution of other minorities and groups as well. While the con-
cepts of physical and legal persecution do not need much explanation, the con-
cept of cultural persecution is rarely used in the study of antisemitism.
1. In the history of antisemitism, physical persecution involved and involves all
acts of physical violence against Jewish individuals, groups, institutions, or
items owned by such persons or entities. Such acts of violence include phys-
ical attacks on Jewish individuals, the burning of a synagogue or the looting
of a Jewish shop. The Nazi concentration camps represent of course the sad
climax of the physical persecution of Jews.

 For my own view on the religious character of all forms of antisemitism, see Lange and
Grossman, “Jews and Judaism between Bedevilment and Source of Salvation”; A. Lange and
M. Grossman, “The Religious Nature of Antisemitism: The Examples of the Pittsburgh and
Poway Shooters,” in Europäische Werte, Rechtsstaat, Sicherheit (forthcoming).
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 49

2. Antisemitic legal persecution uses both legislative and judicial means to tar-
get Jews and discriminate against making Jewish life either impossible or
very difficult. One of the most notorious examples of the legal persecution
of Jews are the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws of the Nazis. For the period
under investigation in this essay, Christians had neither legislative nor judi-
ciary powers. The legal persecution of Jews was thus restricted in antiquity
to pagan Jew-hatred. While I will demonstrate below that legal persecutions
of Jews happened in the pagan antiquity, sources documenting such inci-
dents are rare and much of this part of the persecution history of Judaism
is lost in the mists of time.
3. While the concepts of physical and legal persecution are easy to compre-
hend, the term cultural persecution can be understood as any form of
non-violent and non-legal/judicial discrimination against Jews targeting
their cultural heritage and/or cultural identity.

The concept of cultural persecution is not a common one and is rarely used. To
my knowledge the earliest attestation is in an article by Grunfeld who uses the
term “cultural persecution” to describe the eradication of the German intelligent-
sia during the Nazi period.²⁵ Connected to the idea of cultural persecution but
more common is the concept of cultural genocide. Although not using the
term cultural genocide, Raphael Lemkin included this concept even in his defi-
nition of genocide:

By “genocide” we mean the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group … Generally speak-

ing, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except
when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to sig-
nify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential founda-
tions of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The
objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of
culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups,
and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the
individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as
an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual
capacity, but as members of the national group.²⁶

 F. V. Grunfeld, “Cultural Persecution: The First Step Towards Genocide,” The UNESCO Couri-
er: A Window Open on the World 38 (1985): 6 – 7.
 R. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Pro-
posals for Redress (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Division of Inter-
national Law, 1944), 79, emphasis by the author of this article. For Lemkin and the coining of the
term “genocide,” see e. g. J. B. Quigley, The Genocide Convention: An International Law Analysis
(Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006).
50 Armin Lange

As the cultural aspect of genocide was already seen by the creator of the term
“genocide,” cultural genocide²⁷ was an integral part of the first drafts of the Unit-
ed Nations genocide convention. In these drafts, the concept of cultural genocide
referred to acts of forced assimilation or “acts intended to destroy the language,
religion or culture of a national, racial or religious group.”²⁸ However, the term
“cultural genocide” was omitted in the 1948 genocide convention of the United
Nations itself.²⁹
The history of the terms cultural genocide and cultural persecution shows
thus already: The concept of cultural genocide pertains to acts of discrimination,
to acts of law and law enforcement, as well as to acts of physical violence. Cul-
tural persecution on the other hand describes acts against the intangible cultural
heritage of a people, group, culture or religion.³⁰ Antisemitic cultural persecu-
tion includes thus all forms of agitation against and discrimination of Jews
that are not necessarily connected with legal, social, and economic measures
or physical violence.
The above discussion should not imply that other forms of antisemitic per-
secution, such as economic or social persecution, did not exist in antiquity as
well. Already my brief discussion of the three forms of antisemitic persecution
still evident for antiquity shows that to cover the physical, legal, and cultural
persecution of Jews in antiquity exceeds what is possible in one brief article.
The vastness of this period, the large amount of sources from this period espe-
cially for the cultural persecution of Jews, and the different historical events
that would need to be addressed render comprehensiveness an impossible
goal in one article. I will therefore approach my subject in the present contribu-
tion by way of select examples. For this purpose, I will first address the cultural,

 For the concept of cultural genocide, see e. g. E. Novic, The Concept of Cultural Genocide: An
International Law Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) and L. Bilsky and R. Klags-
brun, “The Return of Cultural Genocide?” European Journal of International Law 29, no. 2 (2018):
373 – 96. More recently, the idea of cultural genocide became also a part of contemporary anti-
Zionist propaganda and even scholarship. An example for the latter is the book by L. Davidson,
Cultural Genocide (Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012), esp. 65 – 88.
 UN ECOSOR, 3rd sess., Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide 5 April to 10 May 1948,
Supp. (No. 6), 6; UN Doc. E/794 (1948). Quoted according to Quigley, Genocide Convention, 9.
 “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” United Nations,
issued December 9, 1948, accessed November 2, 2020, https://www.un.org/en/genocidepre
vention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%
20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf.
 Novic, The Concept of Cultural Genocide, 143 and passim. For the idea of cultural persecu-
tion, see esp. 142– 68.
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 51

legal, and physical persecution of Jews in pagan antiquity before engaging with
the cultural persecution of Jews by ancient Christians.

3 Pagan Jew-Hatred in Antiquity

When studying Jew-hatred in the ancient Mediterranean world, Jew-haters can
be clearly divided into two camps, that is, the pagan world and Christianity.
1. The pagan world was shaped by a whole range of polytheistic religions
which normally tolerated each other. At least in the case of the Roman Em-
pire, the official state religion has to be distinguished from all other cults. As
long as Roman citizens venerated the Roman gods—and during the time of
the principate—also the Emperor, they were free to worship as many other
deities as they wanted to. This basic polytheistic tolerance did not exclude
the ridicule and discrimination of other cultures and religions, though.³¹
As Jewish monotheism made the participation in the polytheistic plurality
of the Hellenistic world of the Roman Empire difficult, the Jewish belief in
one God turned Judaism into a target for such ancient polytheistic contempt.
However, pagan Jew-hatred had many causes and any monocausal explana-
tion for it falls short of understanding the pagan enmity against Jews in the
ancient Mediterranean world.
2. Christianity, however, was shaped by the same idea of religious exclusivity
and election as Judaism. Christian monotheism claimed, though, the God
of the Jewish parent religion for itself and declared itself as the new benefi-
ciary of the promises of salvation the God of Judaism made to his chosen
people. When Christianity separated from Judaism, the Christian monotheis-
tic claim to the God of Judaism inspired the Christian rejection of Judaism on
religious grounds. Early Christians formed thus a religious group identity
that constructed the essence of Christian existence as being not Jewish. In
other words, Christian group identity was constructed in rejection of Judaism
while at the same time appropriating the Jewish idea of the chosen people
for Christianity itself.

A further significant difference between pagan and Christian Jew-hatred in the

ancient Mediterranean world was that until the Constantinian shift, Christians
did not have any state authority, while pagan Jew-hatred could and did express

 Cf. e. g. Isaac, The Invention of Racism.

52 Armin Lange

itself during the same time period repeatedly by way of state violence against
Jews.
Because of these principal differences between pagan and Christian Jew-
hatred, in this essay, I will first discuss pagan Jew-hatred through the Constan-
tinian shift before I will turn to Christian Jew-hatred. Both topics are very big and
can thus be discussed only by way of selected examples. For reasons of space, I
will also have to restrict my elaborations to the ancient Mediterranean world and
cannot engage with any form of ancient Jew-hatred beyond this geographical re-
gion.
The conquest of Persian Egypt by Alexander the Great in the late fourth cen-
tury B.C.E. and the founding of a Hellenistic Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt in 305
B.C.E. as one of the most important successor states of Alexanders realm mark
two important turning points in the history of the ancient Mediterranean
world. After these momentous events, the cultural and physical persecution of
Jews increased significantly. Ptolemaic Egypt was governed by a small Greco-
Macedonian elite, which ruled over a large indigenous Egyptian population.
The relationship between Greeks and Egyptians was tense, and even after sever-
al generations the Greeks were recognized as foreign conquerors by the indige-
nous population of Egypt.
To maintain their power and secure tax revenue from Egypt, the Ptolemaic
foreign rulers brought various groups of people from other parts of the Eastern
Mediterranean into Egypt. They deployed these immigrants as policemen, sol-
diers, and state officials. Among them, Jews formed a particularly large and visi-
ble group. Jews became thus the public face of Ptolemaic state authority and
state violence and were therefore appreciated neither by the indigenous popula-
tion of Egypt nor by its Greco-Macedonian inhabitants. Until the downfall of
Ptolemaic Egypt in the year 30 B.C.E., the hatred which should have targeted
the Greco-Macedonian ruling class or the Greco-Macedonian government of
Egypt was thus directed by both Greeks and Egyptians toward the Jews of Egypt.
With its museum and library—the latter famous even today—Alexandria was
the cultural capital of the ancient Mediterranean world. However, Alexandria
was also a center of Jew-hatred in the Hellenistic world, and a significant num-
ber of Alexandrian scholars were invested in antisemitic polemics. Given the
city’s cultural importance and recognition, Greco-Egyptian Jew-hatred spread
from Alexandria all over the ancient world with ease. The Jew-hatred exported
from Ptolemaic Egypt merged with local traditions of Jew-hatred elsewhere in
the ancient world making them even more potent.
After Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, the Ptolemaic military and
police became defunct. The Jewish elements in the Ptolemaic military seized
with them to exist and were thus unable to provide continued protection for
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 53

the Jews of the region. While with the demise of the Greco-Macedonian govern-
ment, the original cause for Greco-Egyptian Jew-hatred did not exist anymore,
the lack of protection for the Jews of Egypt allowed for an escalation of antisem-
itism in Egypt.³²

3.1 Cultural Persecution of Jews in Pagan Antiquity

Having guessed, for the number of those expelled, the same figure as Lysimachus (he says
there were 110,000), he offers an amazing and persuasive reason for how, he says, the sab-
baton got its name. When they had travelled for six days, he says, they contracted swellings
in the groin and for this reason rested on the seventh day, after arriving safely in the land
that is now called Judea; and they called that day sabbaton, preserving the Egyptian lan-
guage, for the Egyptians call the inflammation of the groin sabbatōsis. ³³

This Sabbath polemic was part of the now lost work of the Egypto-Alexandrian
writer and scholar Apion. It is preserved as a quotation fragment in Josephus’
apology Against Apion. That Josephus compares Apion’s report about Israel’s
time in the desert and its arrival in Judea with the one by Lysimachus, demon-
strates already that Apion was by far not alone in his antisemitic attitude toward
Judaism. Other Greek and Latin authors of whom antisemitic passages are pre-
served include Agatharchides of Knidos, Apollonius Molon, Chaeremon,
Diodorus Siculus, Manetho, Mnaseas, and Plutarch on the Greek side and Am-
mianus Marcellinus, Cicero, Juvenal, Martial, Petronius, Seneca, and Tacitus
on the Latin side.
Apion’s Sabbath polemic is not only particularly disgusting but also partic-
ularly perfidious. Apion satirizes the Exodus, desert, and conquest narratives
and in doing so attacks the Sabbath as a central institution of Jewish religious
identity. Different from the biblical narrative, in a distorted caricature, Apion de-
picts the Jews not as the chosen people but as a group which suffered during its
flight from Egypt from a venereal disease. In this way, Apion wants to contest Is-
rael’s claim to be the chosen people and thus to disqualify all Jews as human
beings, who are especially despicable as proven by their venereal disease. Dis-
ease was regarded not only in Judaism but also in other ancient religions as
an indicator of impurity. That the Torah contains a whole range of purity legis-
lation demonstrates how important the issue of religious purity was for ancient

 Given the survey character of the following overview, I will not engage in a discussion with
scholarly literature.
 Translation according to J. M. G. Barclay, Against Apion: Translation and Commentary
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), 178 – 79.
54 Armin Lange

Judaism. With his polemic, Apion negates thus not only the key narrative that
establishes Jewish religious identity but also the special significance of religious
purity in Judaism. Even worse, Apion claims that a venereal disease forced the
Jews to rest at the seventh day after the Exodus from Egypt. The Sabbath
would thus not memorialize the resting of God after six days of creation but a
resting that was forced on Israel by a venereal disease. Apion connects in this
way one of the most important religious institutions of (ancient) Judaism with
an inflammation of the groin. Thus, Apion negates and ridicules both key Jewish
scriptures and a key ritual of the Jewish religion. This exposure to ridicule hap-
pens on a scale that both institutions become inacceptable to anyone believing
Apion.
Apion’s approach is even more perfidious than a modern human being can
imagine. A large part of the ancient population could neither read nor write.
Even those humans who were able to read and/or write had very limited access
to libraries and thus written texts. To verify Apion’s claims was thus simply im-
possible to most ancient audiences. Most of Apion’s readers thus would have ac-
cepted his slander and would have helped to spread Apion’s message of Jew-
hatred without questioning it.
If one tries to abstract from Apion’s approach theoretically, it becomes evi-
dent that with his retelling of the Exodus, desert, and conquest narratives,
Apion wants to anchor not only a negative depiction of these key religious Jewish
legends but also a negative perception of Judaism in the cultural memory of the
Greco-Roman world. As explained above, I characterize this approach as cultural
persecution. The intertextual strategy which Apion employs for his cultural per-
secution of Judaism, that is, the way in which he rewrites Jewish texts, can best
be described as counter narrative.
Apion reinterprets the Torah and the Sabbath in a specifically antisemitic
way. With the interpretative rewriting of the Exodus, desert, and conquest narra-
tives, Apion creates a new intertext, which he speaks into both the Jewish and
Hellenistic culture to anchor them in their respective cultural memories. In the
Hellenistic cultural memory, Apion’s counter narrative is supposed to create a
memory space that evokes hatred and disdain for the Jewish cultural memory
and thus for Judaism. In the Jewish cultural memory, Apion wants to change
with his counter narrative the desert and Sabbath narratives to such an extent
that Judaism would begin to hate itself. This attempt on the cultural persecution
and the cultural genocide of Judaism could succeed in antiquity all the more
easily as even the Jews themselves had only limited access to written copies of
their scriptures. Falsification of Apion’s slander was therefore difficult to ach-
ieve. With respect to the Jewish cultural memory, Apion’s slander can be com-
pared to an aggressive computer virus that can destroy a computer with ease.
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 55

The example of Apion has shown that antisemitic cultural persecution em-
ploys intertextual strategies to achieve its goal. It wants to shape
1. the perception of another culture or minority in the cultural memory of its
own culture in a distinctly negative way,
2. in order to influence the self-perception of this alternate culture or minority
in its own cultural in such a negative way that self-rejection becomes un-
avoidable.

However, in antiquity, cultural persecution was neither restricted to counter nar-

rative, nor did it always derive from Hellenistic scholarship. Discriminating jokes
are a further example for the ancient cultural persecution of Jews. Defamation
and discriminating interpretations of the Jewish scripture all want to achieve
the same goal, that is, the cultural genocide of Judaism. That this strategy was
successful is demonstrated by, for example, an Egyptian papyrus from the first
century B.C.E. (C.Pap.Jud. I:141):

Herakles to the manager of Ptolemaios many greetings and good wishes of good health. I
have asked Iap[…] in Memphis, about the priest of Tebtunis, to write a letter for him, in
order that I may know how things stand. I ask you to take care that he does not fall into
a trap and take him by the hand; when he will have need of anything, do for him as
you do for Artemidoros and, in particular, give me the pleasure of finding the same lodg-
ings for the priest: you know that they despise (A. L.) the Jews. Greet […]ibas, Epimenes and
Tryphonas, … and take care of yourself.³⁴

Beyond the effectiveness of the cultural persecution of Jews, this papyrus illus-
trates also that Jews were discriminated against in Egyptian daily life and had to
live in fear of antisemitic acts of violence.

3.2 Physical Persecution of Jews in Antiquity

The sources documenting the physical persecution of Jews in antiquity are

sparse and often difficult to analyze. In many cases, these sources confine them-
selves to brief remarks notifying the mass slaughter or banishment of the Jewish
population of a given city. Due to the abbreviate nature of these reports, what
motivated such acts of violence remains unclear. Were Jews persecuted and
even killed, because of their Judaism or, for example, because they instigated

 J. Mélèze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian, trans. R.
Cornman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 154– 55.
56 Armin Lange

a revolt against the Roman Empire? Did a violent response to the Jewish refusal
to venerate other deities go back to a polytheistic lack of understanding or was it
motivated by antisemitism? Were individual acts of violence against Jews isolat-
ed events that were detached from Jew-hatred or were they motivated by the vic-
timizers’ antisemitism? The grey areas between the implied answers to the above
questions are of course significant and even more difficult to evaluate given the
nature of the ancient sources.
Next to the abbreviate nature of ancient reports about violence against Jews,
texts about ancient physical persecution of Jews were often embellished and few
details about the historical events can thus still be gained beyond such embel-
lishments. Especially difficult is the source situation for the second and third
centuries C.E. Until more sources are discovered and/or identified, it remains
simply unknown if physical persecutions of Jews happened in this time period.
The complicated source situation does however not imply that no physical
persecution motivated by ancient Jew-hatred happened in antiquity. It only
means that in most cases of physical persecution of Jews in antiquity, we simply
do not know whether it was motivated by the perpetrators’ antisemitism or by
other factors.
In view of the difficult source situation, the list of possible physical persecu-
tion of Jews in antiquity is more than alarming. This is all the more the case as
the below list does not even recognize minor incidents of violence against Jews
in antiquity:
– 410 B.C.E., Egypt: Destruction of the Jewish temple on Elephantine—an is-
land in the Nile river in today’s southern Egypt
– 331 B.C.E., Babylon: Jews refuse to participate in the rebuilding of the Mar-
duk temple in Babylon ordered by Alexander the Great. Alexander responds
with state-organized persecution of Babylonia’s Jews. These events might
provide the historical context for the Purim Story in the book of Esther.
– 175 – 164 B.C.E., Jerusalem and Judea: The persecutions connected with the
so-called Hellenistic religious reforms of Antiochus IV Epiphanes
– 139 B.C.E., Rome: Banishment of all Jews from Rome by the senate
– 19 C.E., Rome: Banishment of all Jews from Rome by Emperor Tiberius
– 31 C.E., Rome: Persecution of the Jews from Rome by the pretorian prefect of
Rome, Sejanus—tolerated by Emperor Tiberius
– Ca. 35 C.E., Babylonia: Pogrom in Seleucia on the Tigris
– 38 – 41 C.E., Egypt: The Flaccus pogrom in Alexandria (see below for details)
– 49 C.E., Rome: Banishment of all Jews from Rome by Emperor Claudius
– 66 – 70 C.E., Judea, Syria, and Egypt: Riots and pogroms during the First Jew-
ish War in Ashkelon, Antiochia, Caesarea, Damascus, Gadara, Hippos,
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 57

Ptolemais, Scythopolis, Tyrus, and in a group of Syrian cities as well as in

Egypt

The arguably best-known physical persecution of Jews in antiquity is the so-

called Flaccus pogrom³⁵ in Alexandria during the years 38 – 41 C.E. Given that
an eyewitness account of the events is preserved, I will discuss the Flaccus pog-
rom as an example for the physical persecution of Jews in antiquity.
Since Egypt became a part of Roman Empire in the year 30 B.C.E., the influ-
ence and importance of the country’s Jews declined. With the abrogation of the
Ptolemaic army, the Jews of Egypt had no military function anymore. The Jews of
Egypt lost thus a key safety factor. It was this loss of protection that made the
Flaccus pogrom possible.
Aulus Avilius Flaccus (d. 39 C.E.) was a Roman eques who served between
32– 38 C.E. as the Roman prefect of Egypt. Flaccus was a confidante of Emperor
Tiberius who got into disapproval during the reign of Caligula. Philo describes in
his essay In Flaccum, how the Greek inhabitants of Alexandria used these cir-
cumstances to incite Flaccus against the Jews of the city:

(21) All of them united in developing a plot that was most grievous to the Jewish commu-
nity. In a private conversation with Flaccus they said: (22) “Gone are the expectations you
had of the boy Tiberius Nero; gone too is your next hope, your friend Macro, and what you
can expect from the emperor does not look very favorable either. For this reason, we have to
find a very powerful intercessor by whom Gaius may be propitiated. (23) That intercessor is
the city of Alexandria, which has been honored from the beginning by the entire imperial
family, especially by the present master. Intercede it will, if it receives some present from
you. And you can give it no greater bonus than by handing over and abandoning the
Jews.” (Philo, In Flaccum 4.21– 23)³⁶

 The application of a modern term like “pogrom” to a persecution of Jews in antiquity is de-
bated. However, to use modern terms for the study and description of ancient history is unavoid-
able. Important is not that the word “pogrom” is modern and that it derives from the Russian
word погром [pɐˈgrom] (“mayhem, carnage”) which was used to describe the persecution of
Jews in the 1880s. Instead, it needs to be asked if a given incident of violence against Jews
fits the scholarly definition of a pogrom as outlined, for example, by W. Bergmann, “Pogrom,”
in Begriffe, Theorien, Ideologien, vol. 3 of Handbuch des Antisemitismus, ed. W. Benz (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2010), 269 – 70. Cf. ibid., “Pogrome: Eine spezifische Form kollektiver Gewalt,” Kölner
Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 50 (1998): 644– 65; and W. Bergmann, “Pogrome,”
in Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung, ed. W. Heitmeyer and J. Hagan (Wiesbaden:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002), 441– 60. In my opinion, the latter is the case with the Alexandrian
Flaccus pogrom.
 English translations according to Philo, Philo’s Flaccus: The First Pogrom: Introduction,
Translation, and Commentary, trans. P. W. van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 58, 65, 66 – 67.
58 Armin Lange

When Flaccus ordered that idols of the Emperor should be erected in Alexandria’s
synagogues, riots arose because the veneration of idols is prohibited in Jewish law,
and the veneration of a human as a deity is a grave offense against Jewish religious
law (Exod 20:4– 5; 22:19; 34:14; Deut 12:30; m Sanh. 7:6; b Sanh. 60b; 61b; cf. Sanh.
60b; 63a). In response to the Jewish riots, Flaccus gave the Jews of Alexandria the
legal status of foreigners. As a consequence, those Jews of Alexandria who in part
for generations held the status of citizens as well as those Jews who were classified
as Hellenes lost important (tax) privileges.
When on his way to Judea the Jewish king Herod Agrippa I made a stopover
in Alexandria in 38 C.E., the Greeks of the city slandered him with antisemitic
satire. They dressed a well-known madman in doormats and gave him a crown
and scepter made of papyrus. Furthermore, they addressed the madman as
“marin,” using the Aramaic word for “Lord.” In response to this satire, the incit-
ed Greeks of Alexandria stormed the synagogues of the city and erected statutes
of the Emperor in them. They plundered Jewish homes and stores, evicted, mal-
treated, and murdered Jews. Philo describes this pogrom as carefully planned,
prepared, and executed:

He himself became everything: accuser, enemy, witness, judge, and executioner. But he
then added to the first two (crimes) a third one, namely, he gave permission to those
who wanted to plunder the Jews, as at the sacking of a city. (55) Well, what do people
do when they get this license? The city has five districts, named after the first letters of
the alphabet as we used to write it. Two of the districts are called the Jewish quarters be-
cause the majority of the inhabitants are Jews. In the other quarters there are also quite a
number of Jews, although scattered about. So, what did they do then? They expelled the
Jews from four of the five quarters and drove them together into a very small corner of
the one left. (56) Because of their great numbers they (the Jews) flooded the beaches,
the dunghills and the tombs, deprived of all their belongings. The enemies, however, ran
to the houses left empty and plundered them; they divided the booty among themselves
as if it were war. Since no one hindered them, they broke into the workshops of the
Jews, even though these were closed because of the mourning for Drusilla, and they
brought out all they found there, which was quite a lot. They carried it to the middle of
the marketplace, handling other people’s property as if it were their own. (57) The unem-
ployment, which was the consequence of this, was an evil that was even more unbearable
than the plundering. The financers had lost their capital and no one was permitted to prac-
tice his usual business, neither farmer, nor shipper, nor merchant, nor artisan. So, poverty
was brought down on them from two sides: first they were robbed, because in one day they
were stripped of all their property and lost all they had, and second they were no longer
able to make a living from their regular jobs. (Philo, In Flaccum, 8.55 – 57)

In addition, large parts of Alexandria’s population participated spontaneously in

the pogrom. Next to all the Jew-hatred that is evident in Philo’s report, Philo
leaves no doubt that economic factors motivated this ancient pogrom as well:
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 59

(69) If the persons who were called to collect brushwood were too slow, they would burn
the owners using their own furniture taken from the spoil, thus robbing them first of their
most costly articles and then setting on fire anything that was not very useful to serve in-
stead as timber. (70) Many also they bound by one foot at the ankle and dragged them
around while still alive, meanwhile leaping on them and crushing them to pieces, thus de-
vising the most cruel form of death. (71) Even when they were dead, the endless fury of
their enemies did not come to an end; they inflicted still worse outrages on their dead bod-
ies. They dragged these through—I would almost say—every lane of the city until the corp-
ses had lost their skin, their flesh and muscles because these had been pulverised by the
unevenness and toughness of the ground and were totally destroyed because all the con-
stituent parts of the organism had been separated and dispersed in all directions. (Philo,
In Flaccum 9.69 – 71)

After these events, Flaccus ordered that the Jews of Alexandria had to live in the
city’s Delta quadrant. Although the Delta quadrant was a traditional home to
many of Alexandria’s Jews, they had never before been restricted to it, and many
Jews had lived in other parts of the city as well. With his edict Flaccus created
thus the first Jewish ghetto in world history. The plundered Jews of Alexandria
had to suffer starvation as they were not allowed to work outside the Delta quad-
rant. Jews who left the Delta quadrant were stoned, slayed, burned, or killed in
other ways. Even crucifixions are reported to have occurred in one of Alexandria’s
arenas. In this situation and in celebration of the Emperor’s birthday, Flaccus ar-
ranged for a public flogging of the thirty-eight members of Alexandria’s Jewish
council of elders on August 31, which was a Shabbat. The flogging was so brutal
that many of the elders died from it.
In October of the year 38 C.E., Flaccus was deposed by Emperor Caligula.
One year later he was executed on the island of Andros. In terms of how far
Caligula responded with these measures to a letter from Herod Agrippa remains
an open question.³⁷
In response to the events described above, the Jewish and Greek inhabitants
of Alexandria sent two delegations to Rome to negotiate about the pogrom and
the continued persecution of Alexandria’s Jews with the Emperor. The negotia-
tions came to a conclusion only during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41– 54
C.E.) after Emperor Caligula was murdered on January 24, 41 C.E. In a public let-
ter to the prefect of Egypt, of which at least one copy is preserved today (P.Lond.
1912), Claudius summarizes the results of the negotiations and prohibits his di-
vine worship in Alexandria and elsewhere. The papyrus makes clear that the Em-
peror would respond to renewed violence in Alexandria with the deployment of

 Cf. Philo, On the Embassy to Gaius. General Indexes, trans. F. H. Colson (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1962), 269 – 75, 333.
60 Armin Lange

Roman legions, regardless of which party instigated it. The Jews of Alexandria
are entitled to the special cooperative rights that they had enjoyed before the
Flaccus pogrom. However, they are denied the citizenship of Alexandria for all
times. The latter applied also to those Jews who had held Alexandria’s citizen-
ship before the Flaccus pogrom—in some cases for many generations. The
Jews of Alexandria became thus guests of the city which were protected by
the Emperor and had special legal rights. That Jews had lived in Alexandria
since the founding of the city, that they represented a large part of its population,
and that they contributed greatly to the city’s wealth and prosperity all did not
matter.

3.3 The Legal Persecution of Jews in Pagan Antiquity

The topic of the legal persecution of Jews in antiquity is subject to many prob-
lems and is much more difficult to address than it appears. The earliest collec-
tions of ancient law that are still preserved today date to late antiquity. From an-
tiquity itself only few reports about laws that concern Jews are preserved and not
all of these ancient laws about Jews discriminate against them. If an ancient reg-
ulation that discriminates against Jews is preserved, we know often so little
about it that it is difficult to determine whether a law that disadvantages Jews
is of antisemitic character or not.
Despite these caveats, it can be assumed with a reasonable degree of certain-
ty that already during the early Roman principate, large parts of the Jewish dia-
spora were confronted with antisemitic regional legislation or antisemitic legal
practices. An example of how Roman Emperors responded to this kind of
legal persecution and discrimination against Jews in the Greek cities of their
realm is the Jewish legislation of Augustus.
Josephus Flavius describes in his historical work, Jewish Antiquities, how
Herod the Great (73 – 4 B.C.E.) met with Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (63 – 12
B.C.E.) in Ionia in the year 13 B.C.E. Agrippa was a close friend of Augustus
and was responsible for the eastern provinces of Rome during the years 23 – 13
B.C.E. The Ionian Jews seem to have used the opportunity of this meeting to com-
plain about the legal discrimination they experienced from the administration of
the Greek cities they lived in. Josephus reports:

But now, when Agrippa and Herod were in Ionia, a great multitude of Jews, who dwelt in
their cities, came to them, and laying hold of the opportunity and the liberty now given
them, laid before them the injuries which they suffered, while they were not permitted to
use their own laws, but were compelled to prosecute their law-suits, by the ill usage of
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 61

the judges, upon their holy days, and were deprived of the money they used to lay up at
Jerusalem, and were forced into the army, and upon such other offices as obliged them
to spend their sacred money; from which burdens they always used to be freed by the Ro-
mans, who had still permitted them to live according to their own laws. (Josephus A.J.
16.27– 28)³⁸

The Roman Empire did not only permit its Jews to live according to their own
customs but granted them their own jurisdiction as well as to pay the yearly tem-
ple tax. The Greek authorities of the Ionian cities denied their Jews exactly these
privileges. Beyond that, they forced their Jews to prosecute their lawsuits on Jew-
ish holidays and on Shabbat, that is, on days for which Jewish religious law pro-
hibited such activities. Furthermore, Greek authorities forced them to serve in the
army which meant participation in religious rites that Jews considered idolatry.
Herod obtained from Agrippa the abolition of these discriminatory legal practi-
ces against Ionia’s Jews.
What Josephus describes for the year 13 B.C.E. regarding the case of the
Ionian cities, he repeats later on for all Jews of Asia Minor and the Cyrenaica
in a lengthy excursus, which he inserted into his description of the reign of
Herod the Great.

Now the cities ill-treated the Jews in Asia, and all those also of the same nation which lived
ill Libya, which joins to Cyrene, while the former kings had given them equal privileges with
the other citizens; but the Greeks affronted them at this time, and that so far as to take away
their sacred money, and to do them mischief on other particular occasions. When therefore
they were thus afflicted, and found no end of their barbarous treatment they met with
among the Greeks, they sent ambassadors to Caesar on those accounts, who gave them
the same privileges as they had before, and sent letters to the same purpose to the gover-
nors of the provinces, copies of which I subjoin here, as testimonials of the ancient favour-
able disposition the Roman emperors had towards us. (Josephus A.J. 16.160 – 161)

The main point of contention between the Jews of Cyrenaica and Asia Minor on
the one hand and the authorities of the Greek cities they lived in on the other
hand seems to have been the Jewish temple tax. Beyond the obstruction of col-
lecting the temple tax, other forms of legal persecution seem to have taken place
as well. Emperor Augustus responded by way of a decree that was valid every-
where in the Roman Empire and that was intended to end all Greek legal perse-
cutions of Jews (see Josephus, A.J. 16.162– 165). Augustus not only guaranteed the

 English translations of book sixteen of Josephus’s Antiquities and Josephus’ Jewish War are
according to W. Whiston, The New Complete Works of Josephus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1999).
62 Armin Lange

collection of the temple tax but also put various legal practices directed against
Jews under penalty.

Caesar Augustus, high priest and tribune of the people, ordains thus: Since the nation of
the Jews hath been found grateful to the Roman people, not only at this time, but in
time past also, and chiefly Hyrcanus the high priest, under my father Caesar the emperor,
it seemed good to me and my counselors, according to the sentence and oath of the people
of Rome, that the Jews have liberty to make use of their own customs, according to the law
of their forefathers, as they made use of them under Hyrcanus the high priest of the Al-
mighty God; and that their sacred money be not touched, but be sent to Jerusalem, and
that it be committed to the care of the receivers at Jerusalem; and that they be not obliged
to go before any judge on the sabbath day, nor on the day of the preparation to it, after the
ninth hour. But if any one be caught stealing their holy books, or their sacred money,
whether it be out of the synagogue or public school, he shall be deemed a sacrilegious per-
son, and his goods shall be brought into the public treasury of the Romans. And I give order
that the testimonial which they have given me, on account of my regard to that piety which
I exercise toward all mankind, and out of regard to Caius Marcus Censorinus, together with
the present decree, be proposed in that most eminent place which hath been consecrated to
me by the community of Asia at Ancyra. And if any one transgress any part of what is above
decreed, he shall be severely punished. (Josephus, A.J. 16.162– 165)

Josephus quotes further decrees of Roman officials implementing the one of

Augustus in the various cities and provinces of the Empire (Josephus, A.J.
16.166 – 173). Josephus names specifically Ephesus, Cyrene, and Sardis. These de-
crees emphasize not only the legality of the temple tax and prohibit its theft but
mention also further antisemitic legal practices. According to them, Jews were
forced to appear before a judge on Shabbat (Josephus, A.J. 16.168), were slan-
dered by informants, and were forced to pay additional illegal duties (Josephus,
A.J. 16.170). Furthermore, the city of Sardis forbade its Jews to meet and congre-
gate (Josephus, A.J. 16.171). The latter had to weigh particularly heavy, as it also
made visiting a synagogue impossible. All in all, the various decrees suggest that
Greek legal persecution of Jews was sparked by the issue of the temple tax, but
with further legal harassments the various Greek cities went far beyond the pro-
hibition of confiscation of the temple tax.
In the various edicts mentioned by Josephus, the Roman authorities—above
all the Emperor—appear as guarantors that enabled the Jews to live according to
their religion in the face of Greek legal persecution. At the end of his report about
protective legislation for Jews by Roman authorities during the reign of Augustus
(A.J. 16.174– 176), Josephus emphasizes that he had included the decrees in ques-
tion as examples convincing the Greeks of his time to refrain from similar perse-
cution. One can thus assume that the decrees of Augustus and his officials had
only a limited impact and that the Greek speaking population of the Roman east
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 63

continued to discriminate against Jews by legal and judicial means even until the
end of the first century C.E. when Josephus wrote his Antiquities.
Josephus’ last remark shows thus that the antisemitic legislations of Greek
cities were not isolated events in the Roman Empire. Even a law passed by a
Roman Emperor can and should be questioned regarding its antisemitic nature.
I am referring to the so-called fiscus Iudaicus.
The revolt against the Roman Empire during the years 66 – 70 C.E. is called
the First Jewish War. This war counts among the most significant crises of Juda-
ism. Its consequences were more than dramatic. At the end of the First Jewish
War, Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed, the Sanhedrin and the Temple
cult ceased to exist, tens of thousands of Jews died during the war or were
sold into slavery. Given that up to a third of its Jewish population was killed,
the demography of Judea shifted significantly in favor of its non-Jewish inhabi-
tants. Of the large religious Jewish groups, only the Pharisees survived. Under the
leadership of Yohanan ben Zakkai, they founded a Rabbinic academy at Yavneh.
There they began to lay the foundation for a new Jewish existence and identity
that was shaped not so much by the Jerusalem Temple cult but by Jewish reli-
gious law, that is, the Halakha. The focus of Jewish life shifted inexorably
from Judea to the diaspora.
With the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, the temple tax came to its
end as well. Emperor Vespasian decreed that this tax should now be paid by all
Jews to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome:

He also laid a tribute upon the Jews wheresoever they were, and enjoined every one of them
to bring two drachmae every year into the Capitol, as they used to pay the same to the tem-
ple at Jerusalem. (Josephus, B.J. 7.218)

Egyptian papyri show that in comparison to the original temple tax, Vespasian
reduced the age from which the tax had to be paid by three years and also in-
cluded Jewish women and slaves in it. Under these conditions, the two Drachma
tax could amount to a huge burden for an average family. For Egypt, tax receipts
that survived from antiquity show that the tax for one person was roughly equiv-
alent to the value of five days’ wages for a normal worker. This means that a Jew-
ish family had to raise a whole month’s income for this special levy that was
soon to be known as the “Jewish tax” (fiscus Iudaicus).³⁹

 Cf. E. M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian: A Study in Po-
litical Relations (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 371– 74.
64 Armin Lange

A mention of the fiscus Iudaicus by the church father Origen, who lived in
the first half of the third century C.E., shows that this “Jewish tax” existed at
least into the third century C.E.:

But you say, How could they who were in captivity pass sentence of death? asserting, I
know not on what grounds, that Susanna was the wife of a king, because of the name Joa-
kim. The answer is, that it is no uncommon thing, when great nations become subject, that
the king should allow the captives to use their own laws and courts of justice. Now, for in-
stance, that the Romans rule, and the Jews pay the half-shekel to them, how great power by
the concession of Cæsar the ethnarch has; so that we, who have had experience of it, know
that he differs in little from a true king! (Origen, Ep. Afr., 14)⁴⁰

The fiscus Iudaicus introduced by Vespasian points to an important reason for

many legal persecutions of Jews, that is, the financial greed of states and rulers
as well as the desire for economic and professional advantages over the Jewish
population. Vespasian’s law was to find many imitators in medieval and (early)
modern times through the Nazi period and had thus a lasting impact on the his-
tory of the legal persecution of Jews.

4 Christian Jew-Hatred in Antiquity

As argued above, the Jew-hatred among early Christians differed in two ways
from the Jew-hatred of ancient pagan religions. On the one hand, the Christian
communities of the first three centuries C.E. did not have any state power that
would have made legal persecutions or physical persecutions organized by offi-
cial authorities possible. Early Christians were rather themselves repeatedly vic-
tims of persecutions by Romans or even the Roman Empire as a whole. On the
other hand, Christianity developed out of Judaism and was thus compelled to
construct its own religious group identity in contrast to Judaism. There is hardly
a book in the New Testament and hardly an ancient Christian author whose
ideas are not shaped by this need for demarcation from Judaism.
The sad reality of this wealth of sources for ancient Christian antisemitism
can by no means be dealt with exhaustively in the space of this brief paper. In
the following I would like to restrict myself to the discussion of two authors

 Trans. F. Crombie, Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Part First and
Second, vol. 4 of Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buf-
falo, NY: Christian Literature, 1885).
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 65

who I believe are representative for the cultural persecution of the Jews by an-
cient Christians, Paul of Tarsus and the church father Lactantius.

4.1 The Jew-Hatred of Paul of Tarsus as Evident in 1 Thess

2:13 – 16
The New Testament includes the earliest Christian literature containing passages
whose text is antisemitic.⁴¹ Many parts of the New Testament are more than
harsh in their polemics against Jews and Judaism. The Gospel of John, for exam-
ple, describes the Jews as children of the devil: “You are from your father, the
devil, and you choose to do your fathers desire”⁴² (John 8:44). Luke attacks
the Pharisees as money-grubbing: “The Pharisees who were lovers of money
heard all this and they ridiculed him” (Luke 16:14). Paul describes his Jewish ex-
istence in Phil 3:8 as σκύβαλα—a word designating excrements—and attacks the
Jews in 1 Thess 2:15 as not acceptable to God and as “hostile against all human
beings.”
The letters that Paul of Tarsus sent to various early Christian communities
are among the earliest Christian literature known today. As Paul’s letters contain
antisemitic slanders and have an antisemitic reception history, they are the ear-
liest Christian literature that is at least in part antisemitic.
But who was Paul? Concerning Paul’s life, his letter to the Galatians and the
book of Acts contain important information. While Acts was written decades
after Paul died, Gal 1:10 – 24 is autobiographical in character. What is known is
that Paul was born into a Jewish family in the Cilician metropolis Tarsus. He
was a Roman citizen and by occupation a tent maker. Paul was a member of
the Pharisaic movement (Phil 3:5; Acts 23:6; 26:5) and a staunch Jew. In Galatians
1, he describes his Jewish past as follows:

 For a more detailed argumentation of the following and a discussion with scholarly litera-
ture, see A. Lange, “Intra- und extrajüdische Polemiken: Ein Vergleich von Essenern und Ur-
christen,” in The Separation between the Just and the Unjust in Early Judaism and in the Sayings
Source/Die Scheidung zwischen Gerechten und Ungerechten in Frühjudentum und Logienquelle,
vol. 1 of Q in Context, ed. M. Tiwald (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2015), 61– 81; and A. Lange,
“Inner- and Extra-Jewish Polemics: The Parting of the Ways Once Again,” in Sibyls, Scriptures,
and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, ed. J. Baden, H. Najman, and E. Tigchelaar (Leiden: Brill,
2017), 2:727– 46.
 English translations of New Testament texts are according to the NRSV unless otherwise
noted.
66 Armin Lange

You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the
church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among
my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.
(Gal 1:13 – 14)

The book of Acts claims that Paul was educated in Jerusalem by Gamaliel:

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, edu-
cated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are
today. I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women
and putting them in prison, as the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify
about me. From them I also received letters to the brothers in Damascus, and I went there in
order to bind those who were there and to bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment.
(Acts 22:3 – 5)

For an unknown period of time after his training, Paul appears to have been
charged with the persecution of early Christians. According to his own informa-
tion, on the way to Damascus, Paul converted to Christianity because of a vision-
ary experience. This conversion event can be dated between the years 31 and 32
C.E. Afterwards, Paul began to missionize the non-Jewish population of Syria.
After the apostolic council of 48 C.E., on several long trips, Paul developed active
missionary activity mainly in Asia Minor and Greece. Disputes in or conflicts
with the Christian communities he founded, Paul tried to solve with the help
of letters. Some of these letters (Romans, 1– 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philip-
pians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon) are still preserved in the New Testament.
Because Paul’s letters responded to specific occasions, they do not give a coher-
ent and systematic description of his theology. It is therefore not surprising that
Paul articulates his position on Judaism in many different ways emphasizing var-
ious facets of his ideas.
The first letter to the Thessalonians is widely regarded as the earliest pre-
served letter of Paul. Paul founded the Christian community of Thessaloniki
most likely in the year 49 C.E. It consisted mainly of gentile Christians. Paul
wrote 1 Thessalonians in the year 50 C.E. The letter addresses different questions
which the Christians of Thessaloniki asked Paul by way of a letter of their own.
According to the book of Acts, Paul had a conflict with the Jews of
Thessaloniki when he founded the Christian community of that city (Acts
17:1– 9). Given the sharp polemics against Jews in 1 Thess 2:13 – 16, it is likely
that the report of Acts 17:1– 9 goes back to a real conflict between the Christians
and Jews of the Thessaloniki. One of the questions of the gentile Christian com-
munity of Thessaloniki aimed thus most likely on the significance of Judaism as
related to Christianity. This is all the more likely as 1 Thess 2:14 could imply that
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 67

the Christians of Thessaloniki perceived the Jewish community of this city as a

threat to their preaching of the gospel:

And because of this we thank God constantly, that when you received the word of God by
way of preaching from us you accepted it not as a word of humans but as what it truly is,
the word of God, which is having an effect in you as believers. 14 Because you, brothers, be-
came imitators of the churches of God, that are Judea in Christ Jesus, because you as well
suffered from same things from your own compatriots as they did also from the Jews
(ὑπὸ τῶν Ἰουδαίων), 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and (who)
drove us away, and who are not acceptable to God (καὶ θεῷ μὴ ἀρεσκόντων) and are hostile
against all human beings (καὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐναντίων), 16 who denied us to speak to the
Gentiles that they may be saved, in order to fill up the measure of their sins constantly. But
(God’s) wrath came over them repeatedly in the end. (1 Thess 2:13 – 16)⁴³

Paul gives the reason for this terrible polemic against the Jews in v. 16: “who de-
nied us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved.” Paul accuses thus the
Jews of Thessaloniki to have denied him the preaching of the Christian gospel in
their city. First Thessalonians 2:14 suggests that the Jews of Thessaloniki contin-
ued to act against the missionary work of the newly founded Christian commu-
nity after Paul’s departure as well.
Out of this situation, Paul constructs in 1 Thess 2:14– 16 a principal antithe-
sis between Jews and Christians, Judaism and Christianity.
First Thessalonians 2:15a claims that the Jews would have murdered Jesus
and the Prophets and that they persecuted the Christians of Thessaloniki and
other cities. First Thessalonians 2:15a is the earliest preserved reference to the
Christian deicide slander. The deicide slander is the false accusation that the
Jews would have crucified Jesus of Nazareth who is regarded in Christianity as
the son of God. This polemic was to develop a devastating reception history
and became one of the main antisemitic accusations, Christianity slandered Ju-
daism with. Only the famous declaration Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican
Council officially abolished this slander on October 28, 1965. However, many
Christians all over the world are still convinced today that the Jews perceived
as a collective would have crucified Jesus.⁴⁴ First Thessalonians 2:15b infers

 Translation by the author of this article.

 The Anti-Defamation League included the deicide slander in its antisemitism surveys of the
US-American population until the year 2016. In the years 2007 through 2016, between 25 and 31
percent of US-Americans claimed that the Jews were responsible for the execution of Jesus, cf. “A
Survey about Attitudes towards Jews in America,” Anti-Defamation League, issued October 2016,
accessed October 29, 2020, https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/ADL_MS_Survey_
Pres_1_25_17.pdf, 21. A survey by M. Gottschlich and O. Gruber shows that 8.6 percent of Austria’s
population similarly holds the Jews responsible for the death of Jesus, cf. M. Gottschlich and O.
68 Armin Lange

from the deicide slander and the slander that the Jews would have killed the
prophets and persecute Christians that they “are not acceptable to God
(καὶ θεῷ μὴ ἀρεσκόντων, kai theō mē areskontōn) and are hostile against all
human beings (καὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐναντίων, kai pasin anthrōpois enantiōn).”
Similar to Greco-Egyptian and Roman antisemitism, Paul describes Judaism here
as a negative anti-divine force, which would persecute truly religious peoples in
their alleged godlessness and misanthropy. While it remains uncertain if Paul
knew the writings of pagan antisemites that are extant today, there can be little
doubt that during his Hellenistic education Paul came into contact with Greek
antisemitic ideas. Whomever Paul might have read, the influence of Greco-
Egyptian antisemitism on his argumentation in 1 Thess 2:15 is difficult to deny.
Paul employs the topics of pagan antisemites to slander the Jews of Thessaloniki
with his Christian addressees. Paul employs thus in 1 Thess 2:15 a Jewish and a
pagan tradition that interpret each other in support of his accusation of Jewish
deicide. He uses the pagan antisemitic slander of Jewish godlessness to interpret
the Jewish tradition of the murder of the prophets to his pagan audience.
In turn, the Greek gentile readers of Paul’s letter had to understand 1 Thess
2:15 in the sense of Greek antisemitic polemics. The slanders of deicide and god-
lessness had to remind the gentile Christians of Thessaloniki of polemics like
Manetho and Apion voiced them. Both authors claimed that Jews would have
systematically acted against the religion of Egypt, slaughtering sacred animals
of Egypt and destroying its altars. The assertion that the Jews would not please
God had to remind the Thessalonians of polemics which connected the Jews with
the Greco-Egyptian chaos deity Seth-Typhon. Similarly, the Thessalonians had to
associate Paul’s accusation that the Jews would be the enemy of all people with
accusations of misanthropy by Greek antisemites.
Not only did Paul employ thus in 1 Thess 2:13 – 16 a traditional pattern of
Greek antisemitic thought, he also had to know which antisemitic associations
he was evoking with these traditions in the Greek Christians of Thessaloniki.
When Paul speaks of “the Jews” (τῶν Ἰουδαίων, tōn Ioudaiōn) in 1 Thess
2:14 and contrasts them with the Christians as their persecutors, Paul clearly sep-
arates himself and all other Christians from Judaism. The fact that he uses motifs
of pagan antisemitism in his polemics against Jews confirms this self-delimita-
tion of Christianity from Judaism and reveals the antisemitic character of the pas-
sage. First Thessalonians 2:14– 16 does thus not document the conflict of one

Gruber, Waldheims Erbe: Antisemitische Einstellungen der österreichischen Bevölkerung: Ergebnis-

se einer Repräsentativbefragung 2010/2011, unpublished study, 2011. Results of the Austrian sur-
vey are included in M. Gottschlich, Die grosse Abneigung: Wie Antisemitisch ist Österreich? Kriti-
sche Befunde zu einer sozialen Krankheit (Wien: Czernin, 2012).
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 69

Jewish group with another one but attests to the polemics of one religious group
against another one with the help of traditional antisemitic stereotypes.
Already in the earliest preserved work of Christian literature, Christian iden-
tity is thus constructed by way of an antisemitic dissociation from the Jewish pa-
rent religion of Christianity. Paul began a long history of antisemitic construc-
tions of Christian and other (religious) group identities that continues as of
today and marks one of basic causes of antisemitism.⁴⁵

4.2 The Jew-Hatred of Lactantius

While Paul was arguably the first Christian thinker of whom writings are still pre-
served, Lactantius’ work marks the transition from antiquity to late antiquity.
Not only did Lactantius experience the last persecution of Christians by the
Roman Empire but also how Constantine the Great made Christianity the prefer-
red religion of the Roman state in 313 C.E.
Lactantius’ real name was Lucius Caecilius Firmanius. The epithet Lactantius
is first attested in the writings of Jerome (De viris illustribus 80). Lactantius was
born around 250 C.E. in the Roman province of Africa and died around 320 or
325 C.E. in Trier. He was the official rhetorician for Emperor Diocletian in
Nicomedia and resigned from this position after his conversion to Christianity
on February 24, 303 C.E. shortly before the Diocletian persecution of Christians.
Lactantius later became an advisor to Emperor Constantine and the teacher of
his son Crispus, with whom he went to Trier in 317 C.E. The main work of Lactan-
tius is the apology Institutiones Divinae or in English “Divine Institutions,” of
which he himself has compiled a summary: Epitome divinarum institutionum
(“The Epitome of the Divine Institutions”). In the Middle Ages, Lactantius’ prop-
agandistic work De mortibus persecutorum (“On the Deaths of the Persecutors”)
was particularly valued. In this book, Lactantius tells the stories of how ten
Roman emperors suffered and died.
Like most patristic authors, Lactantius was convinced of the deicide slander.
A brief remark in De mortibus persecutorum 2 shows that for Lactantius the Jew-
ish guilt for the death of Jesus was beyond question:

 Cf. A. Lange and K. Mayerhofer, “Introduction,” in Confronting Antisemitism from the Per-
spectives of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, vol. 2 of An End to Antisemitism!, ed. A. Lange et
al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 13 – 22; and the introduction in the present volume, 1–27.
70 Armin Lange

In the latter days of the Emperor Tiberius, in the consulship of Ruberius Geminus and Fu-
fius Geminus, and on the tenth of the kalends in April, as I find it written, Jesus Christ was
crucified by the Jews.⁴⁶

In the Epitome of the Divine Institutions (§45), Lactantius can even describe in
great detail how the Jews would have killed Jesus because he was hailed as
the son of God as would have been foretold in the Wisdom of Solomon
2:12– 22. Lactantius claims that not Pilate but the Jewish people and the Jewish
authorities captured Jesus and sentenced him to death by crucifixion. Before
Jesus’ execution, the Jews mocked, beaten, scourged, and tortured Jesus. He fur-
ther claims that the (Jewish) executioners cast lots over Jesus’ tunic and mantle
and then crucified him. Lactantius’ report in the Epitome of the Divine Institutions
is clearly a distorted version of the biblical passion narrative that tries to empha-
size the alleged Jewish killing of Jesus even more than the New Testament does.
Already the deicide slander suggests that Lactantius was hostile to Judaism.
In line with his antisemitism and in extending the idea of deicide in the seventh
book of the Divine Institutions, Lactantius claims that the Jews would await the
coming of the Messiah but in vain, as Jesus would bring salvation to the Chris-
tian with his second coming but suffering and punishment for the Jews. Both
would correspond to all their sins and account for the holy blood they would
have shed when murdering the Jesus.

I will now come to the remaining part of the subject, that an end may be put to the work.
But this remains, that we should treat of the judgment of God, which will then be establish-
ed when our Lord shall return to the earth to render to every one either a reward or punish-
ment, according to his desert. Therefore, as we spoke in the fourth book concerning His first
advent, so in this book we will relate His second advent, which the Jews also both confess
and hope for; but in vain, since He must return to the confusion of those for whose call He
had before come. For they who impiously treated Him with violence in His humiliation, will
experience Him in His power as a conqueror; and, God requiting them, they will suffer all
those things which they read and do not understand; inasmuch as, being polluted with all
sins, and moreover sprinkled with the blood of the Holy One, they were devoted to eternal
punishment by that very One on whom they laid wicked hands. But we shall have a sep-
arate subject against the Jews, in which we shall convict them of error and guilt. (Divine
Institutions 7:1.23 – 25)

 All translations of Lactantius’ works are according to A. Cleveland Coxe, Lactantius, Venan-
tius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, 2 Clement, Early Litur-
gies, vol. 7 of Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (New
York: Christian Literature, 1886).
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 71

Lactantius explains in more details what the offenses of the Jews were and what
their punishments look like in his Epitome of the Divine Institutions. There,
Lactantius describes the history of Judaism as characterized by divine caring
for the chosen people and by Jewish rejection of that caring. Similar to Paul, Lac-
tantius uses thus the stereotype of Jewish godlessness to rewrite Jewish history
into a history of idolatry and murder of the prophets.
Like pagan antisemites, Lactantius constructs a counter-narrative of the his-
tory of Israel. However, in contrast to pagan antisemites, Lactantius’ goal is not
to destroy the Jewish cultural memory. Like many Christian authors before him,
with his counter-narrative, Lactantius wants to appropriate the Jewish cultural
memory and turn it into a Christian one. Lactantius does thus not aim at the in-
tertextual destruction of Jewish identity but rather at an intertextual expropria-
tion of the cultural memory by which Jewish cultural identity is constructed.
However, with his history of the Jewish rejection of God, Lactantius wants to
achieve even more. He wants to explain to his Christian audience why key pas-
sages of the Jewish Holy Scriptures would not foretell salvation for the Jews but
would announce Jesus as the Messianic savior of the gentiles. Through Jesus
Christ would God have given salvation to the Christians and would have taken
it away from the Jews. Christianity would have therefore replaced Judaism in sal-
vation history. This model of thought is called supersessionism or replacement
theology and is another classic component of ancient Christian Jew-hatred
that unfortunately still shapes the thinking of many Christians up to the present
day.

Therefore they served God, being bound by the chains of the law. But they also, by degrees
going astray to profane rites, undertook the worship of strange gods, and, leaving the wor-
ship of their fathers, sacrificed to senseless images. Therefore God sent to them prophets
filled with the Divine Spirit, to upbraid them with their sins and proclaim repentance, to
threaten them with the vengeance which would follow, and announce that it would
come to pass, if they persisted in the same faults, that He would send another as the bearer
of a new law; and having removed the ungrateful people from their inheritance, He would
assemble to Himself a more faithful people from foreign nations. But they not only persist-
ed in their course, but even slew the messengers themselves. Therefore He condemned
them on account of these deeds: nor did He any longer send messengers to a stubborn peo-
ple; but He sent His own Son, to call all nations to the favour of God. Nor, however, did He
shut them out, impious and ungrateful as they were, from the hope of salvation: but He
sent Him to them before all others, that if they should by chance obey, they might not
lose that which they had received; but if they should refuse to receive their God, then,
the heirs being removed, the Gentiles would come into possession. Therefore the supreme
Father ordered Him to descend to the earth, and to put on a human body, that, being sub-
ject to the sufferings of the flesh, He might teach virtue and patience not only by words, but
also by deeds. Therefore He was born a second time as man, of a virgin, without a father,
that, as in His first spiritual birth, being born of God alone, He was made a sacred spirit, so
72 Armin Lange

in His second and fleshly birth, being born of a mother only, He might become holy flesh,
that through Him the flesh, which had become subject to sin, might be freed from destruc-
tion. (Epit. 43)

That God would have rejected the Jews and would have freed the gentiles “from
the darkness of this present life and from the chains of demons,” would leave no
doubt about the salvific exclusivity of Christianity which would represent the
only way to salvation. An example for this antisemitic argument of Lactantius
can be found in Epitome 49 (cf. also Epit. 48).

If therefore the Jews have been rejected by God, as the faith due to the sacred writings
shows, and the Gentiles, as we see, brought in, and freed from the darkness of this present
life and from the chains of demons, it follows that no other hope is proposed to man, unless
he shall follow true religion and true wisdom, which is in Christ, and he who is ignorant of
Him is always estranged from the truth and from God.

5 Conclusions
My above survey leaves no doubt that Jew-hatred existed antiquity. Whether it
was widespread or not does not qualify as an argument to claim that antiquity
was free of antisemitism. A low number of antisemitic incidents in a given
time period can only imply that Jew-hatred might not have been a mainstream
phenomenon but not that it did not exist. Given the incredibly large gap of
knowledge all studies of the ancient world suffer from, I would not argue that
the source situation for Jew-hatred is any different than for many other phenom-
ena in antiquity. That not much evidence is preserved from antiquity points nor-
mally only to the huge amount of ignorance about the ancient world the study of
antiquity always suffers from. Furthermore, it must be emphasized that as com-
pared to pagan literature from antiquity, ancient and late ancient Christian liter-
ature is an unwelcome treasure trove of Jew-hatred with hardly a Christian au-
thor from these periods not polemizing against Jews and Judaism as the
parent religion of Christianity.
Whether ancient Jew-hatred qualifies as antisemitism or not is a matter of
definition. Those who argue that only racist Jew-hatred is antisemitism will
most likely deny the existence of ancient antisemitism.⁴⁷ However, as argued
above, this narrow definition of antisemitism, misconceives the heterogenous

 See e. g. Gruen, “The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism?,” in the present
volume, 79–99.
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 73

nature of antisemitism itself which cannot easily be limited to one particular

form of hatred and intolerance. For this reason, IHRA’s working definition of an-
tisemitism is based on a more inclusive understanding of antisemitism that
qualifies all forms of Jew-hatred as antisemitism. If the working definition of an-
tisemitism is applied to ancient pagan and ancient Christian texts, the contents
of these texts qualify as much as antisemitism as texts of Christian white su-
premacists in the US or of Islamic extremists do today.
Despite its temporal remoteness, the study of ancient antisemitism is impor-
tant for many reasons. I hope to have shown above that these three forms of an-
tisemitic persecution existed already in antiquity. Next to legal persecution via
regional legislative and judicial measures, and next to physical persecution in
various geographical regions, Jews were target by way of cultural persecution
in their culture and religion to destroy or appropriate their cultural memory.
Both the destruction and appropriation of the Jewish cultural memory would
have resulted in a cultural genocide if successful. While ancient attempts at cul-
tural genocide failed, the system of religious symbols that ancient pagan and
Christian antisemites created influences the perception of Jews as of today.
An example is 1 Thess 2:13 – 16 discussed above. In this text, Paul employed
the idea of Jewish godlessness from pagan texts to interpret the crucifixion of
Jesus as the latest murder in a long line of the Jewish killings of prophets.
This is all the more significant as due to his Jewish education, Paul must have
known that crucifixion was a Roman but not a Jewish form of capital punish-
ment and that Romans reserved the death penalty in their provinces for their
own jurisdiction.
My example of Lactantius shows how Paul’s antisemitic interpretation of the
crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth provided not only an antisemitic interpretation
of the death of Jesus but created an antisemitic religious tradition of deicide
which serves since antiquity as an interpretative key enabling antisemites ever
since to read Jews and Judaism as godless murders of the son of God.
An example for how such ancient Christian texts provided and provide inter-
pretative keys that form preconceptions through which even modern Jews and
Judaism are interpreted is the statement of an Austro-German politician from
the first half of the twentieth century.

However, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people; if necessary he
even grabbed a whip to this adversary of humanity out of the temple of the Lord, who as
always regarded religion at that time as a means for business. For this, Christ was of course
nailed to the Cross, while today’s (political) Party-Christianity demeans itself to beg for Jew-
74 Armin Lange

ish votes during election and later seeks to negotiate backstairs politics with atheistic Jew
parties, namely against (their) own nationhood.⁴⁸

The above quote comes out of Hitler’s infamous book Mein Kampf. It shows that
even Hitler’s ideas about Judaism where very much influenced by antisemitic tra-
ditions such as the deicide that were created by ancient Christians. While it must
remain unclear which ancient source influenced Hitler in his understanding of
Jesus’ crucifixion as a Jewish murder, it cannot be doubted that Hitler argues
not only a (fiscal) world-conspiracy theory but clearly perceives Jews as murders
of the son of God.
Next to the impact that ancient antisemitic traditions have on modern an-
tisemitism, there are other ways in which ancient Jew-hatred laid the ground-
work for even contemporary antisemitism. For instance, ancient Christianity con-
structed its own religious group identity in dissociation from its Jewish mother
religion. For this purpose, ancient Christians employed pagan traditions of Jew-
hatred and developed new antisemitic traditions. The construction of antisemitic
group identities by way of Jew‐hatred is a pattern that can be observed in almost
all forms of antisemitism ever since.

Armin Lange is Professor of Second Temple Judaism at the University of Vienna’s

Department of Jewish Studies as well as a corresponding member of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences. His research specializes in ancient Judaism, the Dead Sea
Scrolls, the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, ancient antisemitism, and the cul-
tural and religious histories of antisemitism. He has published widely in all of these
fields.

 A. Hitler, Hitler, Mein Kampf: Eine Kritische Edition, ed. C. Hartmann, O. Plöckinger, and R.
Töppel (München: Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 2016), 1:799: “Freilich machte dieser aus seiner Ge-
sinnung dem jüdischen Volk gegenüber keinen Hehl, griff, wenn nötig, sogar zur Peitsche, um
aus dem Tempel des Herrn diesen Widersacher jedes Menschentums zu treiben, der auch damals
wie immer in der Religion nur ein Mittel zur geschäftlichen Existenz sah. Dafür wurde dann
Christus freilich an das Kreuz geschlagen, während unser heutiges Parteichristentum sich her-
abwürdigt, bei den Wahlen um jüdische Stimmen zu betteln, und später mit atheistischen Ju-
denparteien politische Schiebungen zu vereinbaren sucht, und zwar gegen das eigene Volk-
stum.” Translation by the author of this article.
 Jew-Hatred in Antiquity: Cultural, Legal, and Physical Forms 75

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Erich S. Gruen
The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel:
Ancient Antisemitism?
Was there a “Jewish problem” in antiquity?¹ Did Jews make themselves sufficient-
ly offensive to generate resentment, fear, or hostility? Or, regardless of Jewish ac-
tions or intentions, were they perceived as distasteful, objectionable, or danger-
ous? Discussions of antisemitism in the Greco-Roman world are legion, and the
bibliography seems to grow monthly. I make no effort to summarize it all, let
alone to engage with any of it in detail in the short space available. Nor will I
endeavor to construct a definition of “antisemitism” which would inevitably
be arbitrary, disputable, and probably unhelpful. One can, of course, always re-
sort to the comfortable evasion of saying what was said of pornography, “I can’t
define it but I know it when I see it.” On any reckoning, Jews, at least those in the
diaspora, were outside the mainstream, usually marginal, and often separatist.
That could get them into trouble on occasion, for they were conspicuous, con-
spicuously different, and, in the event of turbulent circumstances, vulnerable.
Scholarship on the subject, which began as early as the eighteenth century,
featured by luminaries like Johann Gustav Droysen, Theodor Mommsen, Eduard
Meyer, and Elias Bickerman, has labored mightily to identify reasons why gen-
tiles might have found Jews to be odious or menacing.² The most common rea-
sons postulated by researchers are the social non-conformism of the Jews, their
supposed shunning of the majority culture, their isolationism which slid into
xenophobia and misanthropy, their monotheism that scorned civic cults, not
to mention emperor worship, their peculiar customs like circumcision, dietary
laws, and observance of the Sabbath that pagans found especially bizarre and
subject to mockery, their religious beliefs that set them apart from the rest of so-
ciety, their claim to be a chosen people, their proselytism that threatened the co-
herence and stability of traditional Greco-Roman values, indeed their fundamen-
tal ethnocentricity which, as the influential Israeli scholar Victor Tcherikover put
it a generation ago, made their very existence a foreign body among other peo-

 See A. S. Lindemann, “The Jewish Question,” in Antisemitism: A History, ed. A. S. Lindemann

and R. S. Levy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 17– 33. W. Schmitthenner, “Kennt die hel-
lenistisch-römische Antike eine Judenfrage?” in Die Juden als Minderheit in der Geschichte, ed. B.
Martin and E. Schulin (Munich: Dt. Taschenbuch Verlag, 1981), 9 – 29, questions the applicability
of the term to the Jews of classical antiquity.
 See the excellent study of C. Hoffmann, Juden und Judentum im Werk deutscher Althistoriker
des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Brill: Leiden, 1988).

OpenAccess. © 2021 Erich S. Gruen, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-005
80 Erich S. Gruen

ples. These have loomed as the principal elements identified by scholars as

grounds for the animosity toward Jews that manifests itself in classical litera-
ture.³ Some moderns, however, have questioned the extent of Judenhass in the
pagan world or sought to balance pro- and anti-Jewish sentiments in the surviv-
ing texts.⁴
A brief study cannot possibly profess to resolve the larger problem of wheth-
er or how far antisemitism played a role in the perceptions of Jews by Greeks and
Romans. It represents only a step in that direction but a not insignificant one.
This essay looks at perhaps the two most celebrated or notorious slanders per-
petrated by pagans on the Jews and seeks to deconstruct their implications
and their reverberations. The first is the so-called blood libel, the allegation
that Jews indulged in the practice of sacrificing human victims to their god,
even engaging in ritual cannibalism. That accusation, ostensibly initiated in an-
tiquity, proceeded to haunt Jews as a toxic smear throughout much of the Middle
Ages and beyond.⁵ The second is what one might call the leper libel. It refers to

 The scholarship on this subject is vast and cannot possibly be summarized here. Among the
more important contributions in recent decades are R. R. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theo-
logical Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York: Seabury, 1974); J. N. Sevenster, The Roots of Pagan Anti-
Semitism in the Ancient World (Leiden: Brill, 1975); J. L. Daniel, “Anti-Semitism in the Hellenistic-
Roman Period,” Journal of Biblical Literature 98 (1979): 45 – 65; N. de Lange, “The Origins of Anti-
Semitism: Ancient Evidence and Modern Interpretations,” in Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis, ed.
S. L. Gilman and S. T. Katz (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 21– 37; J. G. Gager, The
Origins of Anti-Semitism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); L. H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile
in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Z. Yavetz, “Judeophobia in
Classical Antiquity: A Different Approach,” Journal of Jewish Studies 44 (1993): 1– 22; P. Schäfer,
Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993); B. Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2004), 440 – 91; D. Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Nor-
ton, 2013), 13 – 47. On Tcherikover, see D. R. Schwartz, “Antisemitism and Other-isms in the
Greco-Roman World,” in Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism, and Xenophobia, ed. R.
S. Wistrich (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1999), 73 – 75.
 See, e. g., Ruether, Faith and Fratricide; Gager, Origins of Anti-Semitism, 39 – 88; L. H. Feldman,
“Pro-Jewish Intimations in Anti-Jewish Remarks Cited in Josephus’ Against Apion,” Jewish Quar-
terly Review 78 (1988): 187– 251; Feldman, Jew and Gentile, 84– 287; E. S. Gruen, “Was There Ju-
deophobia in Classical Antiquity,” in Constructs of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism: Essays on Early
Jewish Literature (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 313 – 32.
 On the subsequent history of the blood libel, see G. I. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Anti-
semitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 263 – 81; D. Biale, Blood and Belief: The
Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2007), 111– 17; J. Cohen, “The Blood Libel in Solomon Ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah,” in Jewish
Blood: Reality and Metaphor in History, Religion, and Culture, ed. M. B. Hart (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2009), 116 – 35; Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism, 202– 7.
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 81

the notion that the origins of the nation did not derive from a bold exodus from
Egypt by heroic rebels who thwarted the Egyptian oppressors and went on to set-
tle the promised land but from ignominious flight by a bunch of wretched lepers
and purveyors of disease who were expelled from Egypt as a scourge and pro-
ceeded to ravage and plunder wherever they could. That defamatory story, in var-
ious versions, found echoes in a number of narratives by Egyptian, Greek, or
Roman writers. To what degree did the mud-slinging exemplified by these two
slanders actually stick?⁶

I
The idea that Jews practiced human sacrifice first surfaces in a most unlikely
source: the fourth-century B.C.E. Greek philosopher and most famous pupil of
Aristotle, Theophrastus. The relevant passage is puzzling and provocative. It
comes to us secondhand, from a treatise On Piety composed by Theophrastus
but transmitted by the Neoplatonist Porphyry more than five centuries later.⁷
That is not very reassuring. The quotation, if accurate, has Theophrastus say
that the Syrians, of whom Jews were a part, sacrifice live victims. They do not
eat them but burn them whole at night, pour honey and wine on them, and
quickly destroy them, lest they be seen by day. They fast in the course of it,
and, he adds, they were the first to conduct sacrifices both of animals and of
themselves, thus evidently of other human beings.⁸ How telling a claim was
this? The passage is packed with problems.
Theophrastus is evidently not very well informed about Jews. They do not, in
fact, eat their sacrificial victims, they don’t pour honey on them, they don’t burn
them at night to avoid being observed, and they don’t fast in the performance of
the ritual. The reliability of Theophrastus or of the transmission of his text is thus
doubtful. And that doubt carries over to the statement about the performance of

 I omit here a third notorious accusation, the so-called “ass libel,” which surfaces in diverse
versions as the statue of an ass or the golden head of an ass or a representation of Moses seated
on an ass, evidently as an object of worship in the Temple. Not only is the allegation absurd on
the face of it, reported only in a few and contradictory stories, but pagans, who themselves made
images of their deities, would hardly find this a damaging charge to be levelled against others.
On the “ass libel,” see now the treatment, with full bibliography, of B. Bar-Kochva, The Image of
the Jews in Greek Literature: The Hellenistic Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010),
206 – 49.
 Theophrastus, in Porphyry, De Abstinentia, 2.26 = M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews
and Judaism (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974), 1:10 – 12.
 κατήρξαντο γὰρ οὗτοι πρῶτοι τῶν τε λοιπῶν ζῷων καὶ σφῶν αὐτῶν.
82 Erich S. Gruen

human sacrifice. Why should we believe it? To reconstruct Theophrastus’ sources

requires pure guesswork. But it appears that the philosopher himself was not
fully comfortable with the idea that Jews indulged in human sacrifice. For he
adds the statement that they did so under compulsion and not because they
had any enthusiasm for it.⁹ Just what kind of compulsion he might have imag-
ined is beyond conjecture. But by tacking on this form of exculpation,
Theophrastus signals clearly enough that he is not delivering an antisemitic ti-
rade. That conclusion is reinforced by the fact that in the immediately preceding
sentence, Theophrastus had called the Jews philosophers by race (φιλόσοφοι τὸ
γένος, philosophoi to genos). Coming from a philosopher, that is surely high
praise. This does not mean that he was an advocate for Jewish ways or an admir-
er of the nation, as some have claimed.¹⁰ But it does take the whole passage out
of the category of antisemitic rants. Theophrastus adds that Jews, philosophers
as they are, also converse with each other about the deity, observe the stars at
night, and call upon god through prayer. The passage is ethnographic rather
than polemical.¹¹ Reference to human sacrifice may be confusion or an error.¹²
On any reckoning, there is no hint that it served as a blood libel that branded
Jews in pagan eyes.
In fact, the charge, in that form, does not recur again in our evidence. In a
rather different form, indeed a much more dramatic scenario, it resurfaced, at
least in our information, more than four hundred years later. The tale is reported
by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in his treatise Contra Apionem com-
posed near the end of the first century C.E. That work contains a lengthy defense
of Jewish values and accomplishments in response to calumnies (or at least what
is represented as calumnies) leveled against them by a variety of Greek and
Egyptian writers. A chief target of Josephus’ wrath is the learned Homeric schol-
ar, grammarian, and historian Apion, an Alexandrian intellectual steeped in
Greek culture, although Josephus seeks to stigmatize him as an Egyptian.¹³

 ἀνάγκῃ καὶ οὐκ ἐπιθυμίᾳ τοῦτο πράξαντες.

 So, W. Jaeger, “Greeks and Jews: The First Greek Records of Jewish Religion and Civilization,”
Journal of Religion 18 (1938): 137– 43; Feldman, Jew and Gentile, 203 – 4.
 For the fullest and best discussion of the passage, see Bar-Kochva Image of the Jews, 22– 39,
with bibliography. His claim, however, that the allusion to human sacrifice was a major negative
statement is not justified.
 It has even been suggested that that the idea arose in Theophrastus’ mind because he knew
the story in Genesis of the would-be sacrifice of Isaac and he extrapolated from there; Jaeger,
“Greeks and Jews,” 143. That would be a stretch.
 On Apion, see the excellent treatment by K. R. Jones, “The Figure of Apion in Josephus’ Con-
tra Apionem,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 36 (2005): 278 – 315, with extensive bibliography.
Briefer recent discussions by P. W. van der Horst, “Who was Apion?” in Japheth in the Tents of
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 83

Josephus has a number of quarrels with Apion, laced with caustic and barbed
vitriol. The most damaging of Apion’s hostile aspersions upon Jews is a revival
(at least an ostensible revival) of the blood libel.
This time it comes with a narrative, a rather hair-raising one. The tale in-
volves Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a most notorious figure in Jewish history. As
ruler of Syria, Antiochus defiled the sacred Temple in Jerusalem, thereby spark-
ing the rebellion of the Maccabees and engendering the holiday of Hanukkah,
celebrated ever thereafter. According to Apion, in Josephus’ account, Antiochus
entered the Temple and discovered a lamentable fellow languishing on a couch,
surrounded by heaps of food, fish, fowl, and meat, which the man gawked at in a
daze. Once the king entered, the man fell to his knees before him, extended his
right hand, and begged to be set free. Antiochus, sympathetic to his plight,
asked what was going on, and why he was being plied with gobs of food. The
hapless character, weeping and moaning, then poured out the whole story. He
identified himself as a Greek who had been kidnapped by foreigners (presuma-
bly Jews) and confined to the Temple in Jerusalem, where he had been fattened
up by sumptuous meals for almost a full year. That seemed quite hospitable at
first, but then he learned about the insidious plan that lay behind it. It was Jew-
ish practice, he was told, to abduct a Greek on a fixed day annually, stuff him
with food lavishly for a full year, and then offer him up as a human sacrifice,
have a taste of his innards, and, while engaging in the sacrifice, would utter
an oath of hostility to Greeks generally, before they took his remains and tossed
them in a pit. A pretty grisly tale. This potential victim greeted king Antiochus
with enormous relief, stating that only a few days remained in his year before
the sacrifice would take place. He called upon Antiochus with a plea to honor
the gods of the Greeks and to deliver him from the wicked plots of the Jews
that threatened his very lifeblood.¹⁴
The tale, as we have it, stops there. Whether Apion concluded it at that point
or Josephus chose to cut it off we cannot know. In any case, Antiochus
Epiphanes, archvillain in Jewish tradition, comes off as a sympathetic character
in this story, and any reader would expect him to rescue the corpulent and pitiful
victim. Where did this malicious canard come from, and what ends did it serve?
Josephus alleges that Apion was a spokesman for others, but he identifies no

Shem: Studies on Jewish Hellenism in Antiquity (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 207– 21, and J. Dillery,
“Putting Him Back Together Again: Apion Historian, Apion Grammatikos,” Classical Philology
98 (2003): 383 – 90.
 Josephus C. Ap. 2.91– 96; cf. 2.121. We do not possess the original Greek of Josephus’ text here
and have to rely on a Latin translation from the sixth century C.E.
84 Erich S. Gruen

sources here.¹⁵ He does, however, postulate a motive for the dramatic narrative.
The authors of this fanciful fiction, in his view, were apologists for Antiochus IV.
They invented this insidious lie in order to clean up the tradition that Antiochus
committed perfidy and sacrilege in entering the Temple because his treasury was
empty. In short, it was a cover-up.¹⁶
That explanation has attracted some strong support among modern schol-
ars: the blood libel was manufactured by supporters of Antiochus IV and the re-
gime of the Seleucid kings that he represented. The charge of temple robbery and
unlawful penetration into the holy sanctuary needed to be counteracted. Hence
propagandists of the Seleucid monarchy fabricated the fiction of the unfortunate
Greek and the dastardly deed by bloodthirsty Jews. In this scenario, the depreda-
tions by Antiochus in Judea were fully justified. Instead of the wicked oppressor
portrayed by the Jews, he came to rescue innocent Greeks victimized by a mur-
derous society.¹⁷
The theory, however, leaves much to be desired. How likely is it that a Seleu-
cid propaganda machine was revved up to produce a justification for Antiochus’
actions in Judea? The king was indeed vilified by the Jews whose Temple he had
polluted and whose traditions he had trampled upon. But an apologia would cer-
tainly not have been directed to the Jews. Who else would have taken Antiochus’
entrance into the Temple amiss? His Seleucid subjects would hardly have
blanched at temple robbery or oppression of Jews. And how many would have
been mollified by this wildly implausible tale of a Greek fattened up for a year
in preparation for slaughter? The details alone would have caused any self-
respecting reader to question the seriousness of this drama. An annual kidnap-

 Josephus C. Ap. 2.91: propheta vero aliorum factus est Apion. Josephus earlier claimed that
Posidonius and Apollonius Molon had supplied Apion with material for his calumnies; C.
Ap. 2.79. But it is not clear that they are responsible for this tale, and the accuracy of Josephus’
citation of them here is itself subject to debate. See J. M. G. Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Against
Apion, vol. 10 of Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, ed. S. Mason (Leiden: Brill,
2007), 211– 12; Bar-Kochva, Image of the Jews, 441– 57, 490 – 91.
 Josephus C. Ap. 2.90: volentes enim Antiocho praestare et infidelitatem ac sacrilegium eius te-
gere, quo circa gentem nostram est usus propter egestatem pecuniarum, detrahentes nobis etiam
quae in futuro sunt dicenda mentiti sunt.
 The classic formulation of this theory is E. Bickerman, “Ritualmord und Eselkult: Ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte antiker Publizistik,” in Studies in Jewish and Christian History, ed. E. Bickerman
(Leiden: Brill, 1980), 238 – 45. Followed, with variations, by Bar-Kochva, Image of the Jews,
254– 59, 271– 79. See also J. Rives, “Human Sacrifice Among Pagans and Christians,” Journal
of Roman Studies 85 (1995): 71. Doubts expressed by Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 412; Schäfer,
Judeophobia, 65; E. S. Gruen, “Greeks and Jews: Mutual Misperceptions in Josephus’ Contra Apio-
nem,” in Ancient Judaism in its Hellenistic Context, ed. C. Bakhos (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 47;
Barclay, Flavius Josephus, 217.
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 85

ping on the same day each year? How could they be sure that a convenient Greek
would turn up at the appropriate time for the abduction? And if it were intended
as exculpation of Antiochus, the story should have had him break into the Tem-
ple to save the helpless captive from the fate imposed on him by wicked and
bloodthirsty Jews whose evil conspiracy was foiled by the heroic king. That
would be a splendid scenario in itself. Instead, the narrative has Antiochus com-
pletely unaware of the plight of the victim until he entered the Temple. And, if he
did anything about it, the tale, as we have it, does not include the outcome. We
doubtless do not have the full story, but in present form it would do little for An-
tiochus’ reputation.¹⁸ Josephus has given us just enough to discredit the story
and to discredit Apion in the process.
This tale hardly qualifies as an authentic reflection of ancient antisemitism.
Its very absurdity undermines any effectiveness it might have had. Modern schol-
ars have assiduously dissected it, finding a number of different motifs and exca-
vating two separate compositions, one on the kidnapping and fattening of the
victim for the kill, the other on a conspiracy to sacrifice a Greek in the Temple
as part of Jewish hostility against all Greeks. Just how and when they were com-
bined in a single version is beyond knowing.¹⁹ And further speculation would
bear little fruit. The tale that Josephus transmits served the principal purpose
of allowing the historian to shoot it full of holes with ease and with vitriol. In-
deed he had a field day denouncing Apion for inventing a fanciful tale more
akin to dramatic tragedy than to history, internally inconsistent, exaggerated
to the point of being preposterous, and exhibiting either complete ignorance
of Jewish institutions or contemptible malice in distorting them.²⁰ Apion is the
principal target and the concocted yarn a major stick with which Josephus
could beat him. The ingenious deconstructions of the tale by modern scholars
overlook or downplay the rhetorical character of Josephus’ presentation here
as elsewhere in the Contra Apionem. ²¹

 Josephus himself castigates the tale partly on this ground, pointing out caustically that it
fails to acquit Antiochus of sacrilege as its creators planned because it has the king totally sur-
prised upon discovering the captive in the Temple; C. Ap. 2.97: non tamen a sacrilegio privat An-
tiochum, sicut arbitrati sunt qui haec ad illius gratiam conscripserunt; non enim praesumpsit ali-
quid tale, ut ad templum accederet, sed sicut aiunt invenit non sperans.
 Bickerman’s ingenious reconstruction (“Ritualmord,” 225 – 38) is the indispensable starting
point for this view, accepted by most scholars; cf. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 412; Schäfer,
Judeophobia, 62– 65; Barclay, Flavius Josephus, 217– 18. Building upon this, Bar-Kochva produced
a more elaborate and overly complex construct, Image of the Jews, 263 – 71.
 Josephus C. Ap. 2.97– 111.
 See Gruen, “Greeks and Jews,” 31– 51. On Josephus’ use of rhetoric generally in Contra Apio-
nem, see J. W. van Henten and R. Abusch, “The Depiction of the Jews as Typhonians and
86 Erich S. Gruen

That is not to say that Apion invented the tale out of whole cloth or that
Josephus manufactured it simply to discredit the Alexandrian scholar. But it is
well to remember that we have only a portion of the narrative, the portion
that Josephus chose to provide, we lack the context in which it appeared in
Apion’s work, and we are left to guess what objectives he may have had in retail-
ing it. Personal motivation may well have played a part. Apion, as a prominent
Alexandrian intellectual, was chosen as member of a delegation to the Roman
emperor Gaius in 40 C.E. to address the recent violence and upheaval among
Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians in Alexandria. Jews sent a rival embassy to present
their case, and the resultant clash provoked some nasty remarks by Apion, in-
cluding the charge that Jews failed to pay adequate honors to the emperor.²² Fric-
tion between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria had issued in serious violence in 38
C.E., and Apion had evidently earned a reputation as a prime opponent of Jewish
privileges in the city. It is not surprising that he might sponsor slanderous cal-
umnies about his foes.²³ The riots in Alexandria were dramatic and divisive, a
logical prod for Apion’s acrimony. That is not, however, equivalent to pagan anti-
semitism.
What deserves emphasis here is the noteworthy inference that Josephus
made about the original authors of the blood libel. As we have seen, he identi-
fied the perpetrators as those who sought to stand up for Antiochus and to cover
up the perfidy and sacrilege that he inflicted upon Jews for no other reason than
that he needed to replenish his treasury.²⁴ Never mind that this explanation may
be fraudulent or mendacious. The fact that Josephus conveyed it is itself reveal-
ing. By pinning the blame on Seleucid propagandists endeavoring to justify An-
tiochus’ expropriation of Temple funds, he sets the tale outside the category of
antisemitism. Its authors had political motives, to rescue the reputation of the
king, not a matter of ingrained prejudice against the nation. Most of Josephus’
blasts against Apion concern his alleged errors, distortions, and ignorance,

Josephus’ Strategy of Refutation in Contra Apionem,” in Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in its
Character and Context, ed. L. H. Feldman and J. R. Levison (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 271– 309; S.
Mason, “The Contra Apionem in Social and Literary Context: An Invitation to Judean Philoso-
phy,” in Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in its Character and Context, ed. L. H. Feldman
and J. R. Levison (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 187– 228; R. G. Hall, “Josephus’ Contra Apionem and His-
torical Inquiry in the Roman Rhetorical Schools,” in Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in its
Character and Context, ed. L. H. Feldman and J. R. Levison (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 229 – 49.
 Josephus, Ant. 18.257– 259.
 Cf. Rives, “Human Sacrifice,” 71.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 2.90, quoted above, n. 16.
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 87

not his prejudice against Jews.²⁵ This so-called blood libel hardly stands as an
exemplar of widespread anti-Judaism.
Was it indeed spread widely at all? We possess only one other instance of
this slander. It appears in a very late source and is ascribed to an otherwise un-
known author named Damocritus, whose date, nationality, and motivation evade
inquiry. We are told only that he was a historian and that he wrote a book “On
the Jews.” From that work we are treated to just a single brief excerpt which par-
allels in small part the so-called blood libel in Apion. According to that quota-
tion, Damocritus claimed that the Jews worship the golden head of an ass (an
allegation also found in Apion), and that they hunt down and offer up (as a sac-
rifice) a foreigner every seven years, shred his flesh piece by piece and thus kill
him.²⁶ There is obvious overlap with Apion’s narrative, but also differences, in
that Damocritus has the ritual take place every seven years (an evident allusion
to the Jewish sabbatical year) instead of annually, adds some grisly details about
the manner of execution, and omits explicit reference to cannibalism. It is per-
fectly possible, even probable, that both stories derive from a single source,
with each author spicing it up with his own lurid particulars. There need not
have been two separate and independent traditions.²⁷
What merits stress is that this constitutes the extent of our evidence on the
“blood libel.” It does not rear its ugly head elsewhere. It makes no appearance
even in Tacitus’ long list of hostile comments, even if many of them are ironic.²⁸
He could have paraded the blood libel as prime exhibit of Jewish villainy or as an
object of mockery, as his contemporary Josephus did. But he passes over it in si-
lence. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the slander of Jews capturing,
fattening, and sacrificing an innocent gentile had little or no traction in the
pagan world. “Antisemitism” would be a misnomer.

 Gruen, “Greeks and Jews,” 45 – 47. Cf. Jones, “The Figure of Apion,” 305 – 7.
 Suda s.v. Δαμόκριτος = Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 530 – 31: κατὰ ἔπταετίαν ξένον ἀγρεύ-
οντες προσέφερον καὶ κατὰ λεπτὰ τὰς σάρκας διέξαινιον, καὶ οὕτως ἀνῄρουν.
 On the Damocritus story, see the cautious and sensible remarks of Barclay, Flavius Josephus,
217– 18. Bar-Kochva, Image of the Jews, 259 – 63, employs Damocritus to fill in gaps in Apion’s
version and thus to piece together an original version, an ingenious but ultimately speculative
task. The tale of worshipping the head of an ass also comes in different versions but constitutes
a separate strand not directly pertinent here.
 On Tacitean irony in his treatment of Jews, see E. S. Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 179 – 96.
88 Erich S. Gruen

II
A second comparably gruesome libel appears in a number of sources and seems
to have earned greater attention: the identification of Jews with lepers, that is,
persons of impure and disgusting characteristics. The earliest reference to that
dubious designation comes from Manetho, the learned Egyptian scholar and
priest, writing at the beginning of the third century B.C.E., who composed a
three-volume work on the history of Egypt in Greek, which included the chrono-
logical division into thirty dynasties that remains the standard framework for
Egyptian history to this very day. In the course of it, he had reason to remark
on Jews who played a part in the ongoing story of the Egyptians.²⁹ The three vol-
umes, alas, do not survive, but two noteworthy extracts were preserved by
Josephus who, as we have seen, was keen to refute slanders against his people.
The first, an account of the invasion of Egypt and oppression of its inhabitants
by the Hyksos, is largely irrelevant for our purposes. Josephus attempts to find
an indirect link to the Jewish experience by concluding the tale with the eventual
departure of the invaders (after five centuries!) to Syria where they built the city
of Jerusalem.³⁰ But there is nothing in Manetho’s quoted text here that makes ex-
plicit reference to Jews.
The second extract from Manetho is a different matter. Josephus maintains
that this one comes not from sober Egyptian priestly chronicles but from ficti-
tious concoctions and hearsay delivering untrustworthy tales about Jews.³¹ He in-
troduces his summary of the narrative accusing Manetho of wrongly mixing up
the Jews with a mob of Egyptian lepers and those with other maladies who were
expelled from Egypt.³² Having impugned the tale in advance, Josephus proceeds
to recount it as ascribed to Manetho. In brief, it has the Egyptian king Ameno-

 On Manetho, see the important recent treatments of I. S. Moyer, Egypt and the Limits of Hel-
lenism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 84– 141, and J. Dillery, Clio’s Other Sons:
Berossus and Manetho (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), passim, especially vii–
xxxiii, 301– 47.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.73 – 90. The reference to Jerusalem may be Josephus’ own addition.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.228 – 229. The complex question of where the boundary lies between the
authentic text of Manetho and the spurious Ps. Manetho has received much discussion and
needs no further treatment here. See the valuable summary of the issue with bibliography by
Barclay, Flavius Josephus, 335 – 37. For present purposes no decision is required. See, more re-
cently, the discussions of Moyer, Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism, 116 – 25; Dillery, Clio’s
Other Sons, 201– 13. The second extract, whether or not it is genuine Manetho, does show that
the leper libel was in circulation.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.229: ἀναμῖξαι βουλόμενος ἡμῖν πλῆθος Αἰγυπτίων λεπρῶν καὶ ἐπὶ ἄλλοις
ἀρρωστήμασιν, ὥς φησι, φυγεῖν ἐκ τῆς Αἰγύπτου καταγνωσθέντων.
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 89

phis (an invented character, according to Josephus) express a desire to gain di-
rect vision of the gods and was told that, in order to do so, he would have to
purge the land of all lepers and other polluted people. The king proceeded to
expel all such persons from Egypt and to herd them into the city of Avaris.
The exiles, however, managed to organize themselves, selected a leader, a cer-
tain Osarsiph, and joined with shepherd peoples who had earlier been expelled
from Egypt and settled in Jerusalem. The combined forces made a joint assault
on Egypt, causing the king to gather all the sacred animals and a multitude of
Egyptians and flee to Ethiopia. The triumphant invaders punctuated their victory
by plundering the land, robbing and pillaging, and even using the very sanctua-
ries of the gods to roast the sacred animals, an unspeakable sacrilege. They ruled
for an unspecified time until driven out by the former king, his son, and the
forces that they had assembled.³³ The most noteworthy item in that narrative
is the statement that Osarsiph, leader of the lepers and the diseased, having
been named for the god Osiris, changed his name to Moses.³⁴
So did Manetho then lay the leper libel upon the Jews? It looks bad on the
face of it. Manetho has been regarded by many scholars as the arch antisemite,
purveyor of the purportedly polluted Jews, banished from the land, only to return
under the murderous Moses, who, together with Jerusalemites, ravaged the coun-
tryside and wreaked havoc upon Egyptian towns, temples, and divinities.³⁵
Yet the matter is not so simple. Manetho’s account defies reductive analysis
as sheer antisemitism. On closer inspection some serious reservations arise
about Manetho’s supposed animosity toward Jews. Jews in fact receive no men-
tion in the text of Manetho as cited by Josephus. The lepers and other diseased
persons whom he castigates are explicitly referred to as Egyptians. Josephus says
simply that Manetho wished to mix the Jews up with that polluted crowd.³⁶
When king Amenophis expelled lepers and others and sent them to the quarries,
Manetho clearly identifies them as Egyptians, some even as Egyptian priests,
who were now to be separated out from the rest of the Egyptians.³⁷ To be

 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.230 – 251.

 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.250.
 So, e. g., Sevenster, Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism, 186 – 88; Stern, Greek and Latin Authors,
64; C. Aziza, “L’utilisation polémique du recít de l’Exode chez les ecrivains alexandrins,” Auf-
stieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.20.1 (1987): 54– 55; D. Mendels, “The Polemical Char-
acter of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca,” Studia Hellenistica 30 (1990): 103 – 9; M. Pucci Ben Zeev, “The
Reliability of Josephus Flavius: The Case of Hecataeus’ and Manetho’s Accounts of Jews and Ju-
daism,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 24, no. 2 (1993): 233.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.229; quoted above, n. 32.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.233: τῶν ἄλλων Αἰγυπτίων εἶεν κεχωρισμένοι.
90 Erich S. Gruen

sure, their ranks were subsequently swelled by inhabitants of Jerusalem who

joined in the retaliatory assault on Egypt. But Manetho refrains from calling
them Jews and does not indict them as a nation. That would be excessive re-
straint if he were conducting an antisemitic campaign. The connection between
Jews and lepers is made by Josephus and imputed to Manetho but does not ap-
pear in the latter’s text. The sole link comes in the statement that Osarsiph
changed his name to Moses. But that is a weak link indeed. Josephus tacks it
on at the end of his quotation of Manetho, heading it with the notation “it is
said” (λέγεται).³⁸ That this is a Josephan insertion is clear enough from the
fact that he introduces Osarsiph here as if for the first time. In fact, however,
he had already appeared in much the same words in Manetho’s own text.³⁹ It
looks very much as if Josephus has fastened the leper libel upon Manetho, so
as to have a handy target to shoot down. The motif of expulsion from Egypt of
undesirable and contaminated persons had already enjoyed a long history in
Egyptian literature, a frequent feature of texts that brand the enemy as sacrile-
gious and villainous ravagers until ejected by champions of the nation.⁴⁰ It
was not nurtured in antisemitic soil.
A variant on the narrative ascribed to Manetho appears in a fragment of an-
other Egyptian intellectual fluent in Greek who composed a history of Egypt,
Chaeremon, possibly identical with the Stoic philosopher of that name and a
tutor of Nero, thus a figure of the early first century C.E.⁴¹ Chaeremon’s version
overlaps with that of Manetho but includes a number of aberrant details and dis-
crepancies. He has Amenophis swing into action after the goddess Isis appeared
to him in a dream and advised him, through a sacred scribe, to rid the country of
its impure population, 250,000 of them, which he proceeded to do with an edict
of banishment. Leadership of the exiles was taken by two sacred scribes named,
interestingly enough, Moses and Joseph, both of whom also had Egyptian
names. They subsequently joined forces with another 380,000 persons who
had been left by the king at Pelusium on the Egyptian border and forbidden
to enter the land. The combined peoples then invaded Egypt and caused Ameno-

 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.250.

 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.238. Rightly noted by A. J. Droge, “Josephus Between Greeks and Barbar-
ians,” in Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in its Character and Context, ed. L. H. Feldman and J.
R. Levison (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 134– 36; Schäfer, Judeophobia, 20.
 See J. Yoyotte, “L’Égypte ancienne et les origines de l’antijudaïsme,” Revue de l’histoire des
religions 163 (1963): 133 – 43; D. B. Redford, Pharaonic King-lists, Annals and Day-books: A Contri-
bution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History (Mississauga: Benben, 1986), 276 – 83.
 See Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 417– 18; van der Horst, Chaeremon; Barclay, Flavius Jo-
sephus, 153.
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 91

phis to flee to Ethiopia, from which he and his son would later reinvade and re-
store Egyptian rule.⁴² The parallels with Manetho’s tale are palpable, although
the divergences suggest a somewhat different tradition. Josephus links the two
as comparable purveyors of narratives hostile to Jews. Yet even the abbreviated
fragment that he chooses to quote, out of context, from a large history of Egypt,
contains no explicit mention of Jews. We may be sure that if Chaeremon had
mentioned them, Josephus would not have omitted it. Only the names Moses
and Joseph hint at a Jewish connection, and both of them sport Egyptian
names as well. Even the term “leper” does not surface in the Chaeremon frag-
ment; Josephus has to introduce it in his criticism of Charemon’s account.⁴³ It
is hard to escape the conclusion that the selection of this fragment had more
to do with Josephus’ agenda of knocking over straw men than of any vilification
of Jews by the pagan author.
We can turn now to the irrepressible Apion. He too had something to say rel-
evant to this subject. And the surviving remarks reveal once more the insidious
selectivity of Josephus who reshapes the message for his own purposes. The quo-
tation he supplies from Apion, once more snatched out of a context that we are
not privy to, presents some peculiar and largely inexplicable remarks. Apion as-
cribes to Moses the institution of open-air prayer houses in each district of his
home town Heliopolis, where he erected pillars instead of obelisks, and installed
the relief of a boat evidently to serve as a sundial.⁴⁴ Just what this means is large-
ly opaque but not obviously hostile. Nevertheless, it caused Josephus to go on a
rant. He ripped Apion for a whole range of errors, including the malicious sug-
gestion that Moses carved a graven image, which, of course, no Hebrew would
ever do.⁴⁵ Probably not. But no pagan would be likely to complain about graven
images, since they made them all the time. Josephus has once more distorted the
intent of an author whom he wishes to use as a whipping boy. And where is there
reference to Jews as lepers? Not in any quoted text of Apion. They appear only in
Josephus’ commentary on the text where he discusses the date of the Hebrews’
exodus from Egypt which, according to him, Apion got wildly wrong.⁴⁶ Here
Josephus claims that Apion’s account refers to an exodus of the lepers, the
blind, and the lame under Moses’ leadership.⁴⁷ One need not infer that the des-

 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.290 – 292.

 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.298, 1.302.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 2.10 – 11. See the notes of Barclay, Flavius Josephus, 174– 75.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 2.12– 14.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 2.13 – 19.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 2.15: φησι τὸν Μωσῆν ἐξαγαγεῖν τοὺς λεπρῶντας καὶ τυφλοὺς καὶ τὰς βάσεις
πεπηρωμένους.
92 Erich S. Gruen

ignation as lepers actually represents Apion’s wording or, if it did, that he made
anything of it at all. Josephus blasts him for a host of inaccuracies, implausibil-
ities, and fictive inventions. Jews as lepers were not among them. For Apion it
was evidently a non-issue.
The leper libel does emerge more blatantly in a fuller and grimmer story as-
cribed to a certain Lysimachus. We know very little about him. Josephus chooses
to provide no details, so we are ignorant of his date and provenance.⁴⁸ For our
purposes what matters is Lysimachus’ connection of Jews with lepers expelled
from Egypt which appears more unequivocal and more direct than what we
found in Manetho or Apion. Or is it?
Lysimachus’ exposition in brief summary, as we read it in Josephus, has the
Jewish people, afflicted with leprosy, scabs, and other diseases, seek refuge in
the temples, and since many persons contracted these sicknesses, one of the
consequences was crop failure in Egypt. The situation prompted the king,
named Bocchoris in this version, on advice of the god Ammon, to drive the im-
pure and impious out of the shrines and into the desert and to drown those with
scabs and leprosy, thereby to purify the sanctuaries. The latter were duly packed
into lead sheets and sunk in the sea, the former left in the desert to die. But they
were determined to survive and pleaded with gods to save them. Thus began the
long trek under Moses until they reached inhabited territory. On Moses’ instruc-
tions, they mistreated and abused the people, plundered and burned all the tem-
ples and altars they came across, and built their own city of Jerusalem.⁴⁹ The ac-
count, in this form, is thoroughly hostile and the most graphic association of
Jews with lepers and the diseased—not to mention identification with temple
robbers and destroyers.
Yet even this tale carries ambiguity. The text does not lend itself as readily as
the others to a dissection that separates reproduction of the original from Jose-
phan intrusion. Here Josephus appears to engage in paraphrase rather than di-
rect quotation. He is eager to lump Lysimachus with other writers, namely
Chaeremon and Manetho, who spread lies about lepers and those scarred by dis-
ease, but he singles out Lysimachus as going beyond them in the incredibility of

 Barclay, Flavius Josephus, 159, provides the essentials and the most important bibliography.
Bar-Kochva, Image of the Jews, 307– 16, 333 – 37, makes an extensive case for identifying Lysima-
chus with a Greek Alexandrian writer of the same name and places him in the later second cen-
tury B.C.E. The argument for the date is not implausible, but it relies heavily on the presumption
that Lysimachus’ references to Jewish destruction of temples and altars reflects the actions of the
Hasmoneans, a highly speculative proposition.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.305 – 311.
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 93

his inventions which grow out of deep animosity.⁵⁰ Josephus has nicely set the
stage—or rather loaded the dice. When he turns to the actual paraphrase of
Lysimachus’ text, matters are not quite so straightforward.
The Jewish people are indeed identified with those suffering from leprosy,
scabs, and other diseases.⁵¹ But the infliction of punishment by king Bocchoris
fell upon two separate groups. The first were the impure and impious ones who
were driven out of the holy shrines and banished into the wilderness, the others,
afflicted with leprosy and scabrous disease, were to be immediately drowned.⁵²
But, of course, it was the wilderness goers, not the lepers, who went on to Judea,
plundered temples, and established Jerusalem. So, were Jews lepers or not?
Lysimachus introduced them as such, but his story then separated them from
the leprous characters who were plunged into the sea. Either Lysimachus has
been quite clumsy in his presentation or Josephus mangled it, whether inadver-
tently or deliberately. Scholars have detected two separate traditions or two lay-
ers of the tale awkwardly fitted together.⁵³ The two groups of offenders, the im-
pious and the leprous, stemmed from independent sources that were sewn
together but whose seams are still showing. Whether Lysimachus or Josephus
did the stitching, the confused result would not effectively advance the cause
of labeling Jews as lepers.
The remainder of Lysimachus’ story has Moses and his followers move res-
olutely through the wilderness, reach inhabited land, oppress the inhabitants,
and destroy the religious shrines. As Josephus himself pointed out in his caustic
criticism of Lysimachus, how could people who were in such bad shape manage
to cross the desert, conquer the land, found a city, and build a great temple?⁵⁴
The criticism is valid, but the story’s deficiencies may owe less to Lysimachus’
failings than to Josephus’ manipulation. And the leper libel carries little weight.
Its staying power, in fact, is rather questionable. A possible allusion to it oc-
curs in the work of Pompeius Trogus, a Roman historian of Gallic extraction writ-
ing in Latin in the age of Augustus, an epitome of whose work is preserved by the
much later and, to us, rather obscure intellectual Justin. Trogus’ lengthy survey

 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.304.

 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.305: τὸν λαὸν τῶν Ἰουδαίων, λεπροὺς ὄντας καὶ ψωροὺς καὶ ἄλλα νοση-
ματά τινα ἔχοντας.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.306: τὸν θεὸν δ’ἀναιρεῖν τὰ ἱερὰ καθάραι ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων ἀνάγνων καί δυσ-
σεβῶν, ἐκβαλόντα αὐτοὺς ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν εἰς τόπους ἐρήμους, τοὺς δὲ ψωροὺς καὶ λεπροὺς
βυθίσαι.
 See Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 385 – 86; Barclay, Flavius Josephus, 160; Bar-Kochva,
Image of the Jews, 320 – 29.
 Josephus, C. Ap. 1.315, 1.318.
94 Erich S. Gruen

of Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman history included a brief excursus on the Jews.
His sketch has Jews originate from Damascus, but he has some slight awareness
of biblical traditions, among them the Hebrews’ sojourn in Egypt in the time of
Joseph and Moses, even though he telescopes the generations by having Moses
as son of Joseph. In the short narrative excerpted by Justin, Trogus does mention
that Egyptians were afflicted with scabs and skin disease, with the result that
Moses and others were driven out of Egypt so as to prevent further spread of
this plague.⁵⁵ Leprosy is not specified here, but scaly skin disease may imply
it. More important, this notice does not appear in a text hostile to the Jews,
nor is leprosy or its equivalent ascribed to them as some heinous component
of their existence. Trogus’ account has the afflicted expelled simply to contain
the contamination, has Moses lead the exiles to their destination, and explains
their subsequent preference for holding themselves apart by memory of the con-
tagion and unwillingness to have a similar cause spoil relations with their neigh-
bors.⁵⁶ That is very different from an enduring leper libel.
The issue of Jewish isolationism and its connection with the taint of leprosy
appears also in another source, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily, writing in
the late first century B.C.E. Diodorus narrates the troubling tale of the siege of
Jerusalem by the Seleucid king Antiochus VII Sidetes ca. 135 B.C.E.⁵⁷ In Diodorus’
account, when the besieged were prepared to capitulate, many of the king’s
friends urged him to take the city by force and utterly wipe out the race of the
Jews because they alone of all nations held themselves apart, refusing to mingle
with other peoples and regarded all as their enemies. The king’s friends proceed-
ed to underscore their point by reminding Antiochus that the ancestors of the
Jews had been driven out of Egypt as men who were impious and hated by
the gods.⁵⁸ And they noted further that the expulsion targeted those who had
white or leprous marks on their bodies, thus forced across the border as polluted
persons, so as to purge the nation.⁵⁹ The advisers of the king evidently drew
upon hostile reports about the Jews and included a number of other vicious ru-

 Justin, 36.2.12: Sed Aegyptii, cum scabiem et vitiliginem paterentur, responso moniti eum cum
aegris, ne pestis ad plures serperet, terminis Aegypti pellunt. On Trogus’ excursus on the Jews, see
J. G. Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 48 – 56.
 Justin, 36.2.15: et quoniam metu contagionis pulsos se ab Aegypto meminerant, ne eadem
causa invisi apud incolas forent, caverunt, ne cum peregrinis conviverent.
 On the siege, see most recently K. Atkinson, A History of the Hasmonean State: Josephus and
Beyond (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 55 – 59.
 Diodorus Siculus, 34/5.1.1: μόνους γὰρ ἁπάντων ἐθνῶν ἀκοινωνήτους εἶναι τῆς πρὸς ἄλλο
ἔθνος ἐπιμιξίας καὶ πολεμίους ὑπολαμβάνειν πάντας.
 Diodorus Siculus, 34/5.1.2: τοὺς γὰρ ἀλφοὺς ἤ λέπρας ἔχοντας ἐν τοῖς σώμασι, καθαρμοῦ
χάριν ὡς ἐναγεῖς συναθροισθέντας ὑπερορίους ἐκβεβλῆσθαι.
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 95

mors that might help persuade Antiochus Sidetes to eradicate the nation.⁶⁰ How
large a role did the leper libel play in their importuning and how central was it to
their case? Very hard to say. What we do know, however, is that Antiochus reject-
ed all their arguments, ended the siege, and absolved the Jews of the accusations
leveled against them.⁶¹ In short, whatever significance the leper libel may have
possessed amidst the welter of charges, it certainly did not carry the day. The
slander was summarily dismissed.⁶²
One last author picked up the tale of the Jews’ expulsion from Egypt and
made apparent allusion to the leper libel. The great Roman historian Tacitus
at the end of the first century C.E. devoted a long excursus in his Histories to
a discussion of Jewish practices, experiences, and characteristics, mostly with
a cynical and jaundiced eye.⁶³ He evidently had access to some of the variant tra-
ditions that appeared in authors like Manetho, Apion, Chaeremon, Lysimachus,
and Trogus. Most writers agree, he observes, that a pestilence prompted the ex-
pulsion of the Jews from Egypt. He sets that event in the reign of Bocchoris on
the advice of the oracle of Ammon, a close parallel to Lysimachus’ version. As
Tacitus reports it, when a plague broke out in Egypt which disfigured the
body, Ammon instructed the king to purge his kingdom by ridding it of that
race of men who were hateful to the gods.⁶⁴ There followed the familiar story
of Hebrews herded into the desert and then guided out of it by Moses. Here
too the leper libel is there but quite muted. The term itself does not appear, al-
though the “pestilence” that “disfigures bodies” can certainly lend itself to that
interpretation. What stands out here, however, is that the allusion does not serve
as a campaign of vilification against Jews. They are, to be sure, characterized as

 Diodorus Siculus, 34/5.1.3 – 4.

 Diodorus Siculus, 34/5.1.5: ἀπέλυσε τῶν ἐγκλημάτων τοὺς Ἰουδαίους.
 A closely similar story about the siege of Jerusalem is told by Josephus who gives a fuller
version of the events but a briefer account of the king’s advisers’ efforts to press for genocide
on the grounds of the Jews’ alleged isolationism; Ant. 13.236 – 248. He makes no mention how-
ever, of the leper libel. The similarity of the two versions has induced many to postulate a com-
mon source, namely Posidonius of Apamea. But there are good reasons to question that conclu-
sion. See Bar-Kochva, Image of the Jews, 440 – 57.
 See the extensive treatment by R. Bloch, Antike Vorstellungen vom Judentum: Der Judenex-
kurs des Tacitus im Rahmen der griechisch-römischen Ethnographie (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Ver-
lag, 2002). An analysis of Tacitean irony in this excursus may be found in Gruen, Rethinking the
Other, 179 – 96.
 Tacitus, Hist. 5.3.1: plurimi auctores consentiunt orta per Aegyptum tabe quae corpora foeder-
at, regem Bocchorim adito Hammonis oraculo remedium petentem purgare regnum et id genus
hominum ut invisum deis alias in terras avehere iussum.
96 Erich S. Gruen

“hateful to the gods,” but the gods in question are the Egyptian gods, not divin-
ities whom the good Roman historian would have found admirable.
Moreover, Tacitus describes with admiration, whether begrudging or not,
Moses’ leadership in urging his flock, abandoned in dire straits by men and
gods, to rely on their own resources which in fact served not only to get them
through the desert but allowed them to conquer a land, found a city, and conse-
crate a temple.⁶⁵ Whatever taint the scabrous body might have implied was heav-
ily outweighed by the achievements of the people. Even the sardonic and scorn-
ful Tacitus refrained from fastening the leper libel on a banner of antisemitism.⁶⁶
To conclude, this paper does not endeavor to whitewash pagan critics of
Jews in antiquity. Suspicion, disdain, and antipathy toward Jews certainly did
exist. Discomfort with their reclusiveness, mockery of their peculiar customs,
misunderstanding of their religious beliefs, irritation with their ethnocentricity
all played a role in marginalizing the Jews. Whether any of it rose to the level
of antisemitism, however, is more questionable. This essay has fastened upon
the two most malicious and pernicious charges leveled against Jews, the blood
libel and the leper libel, and has endeavored to show that, troubling as they
might seem, their impact and significance were far less consequential than is
often realized. The accusation of human sacrifice makes only the rarest appear-
ance in our texts and seems never to have caught on as a serious complaint. In
its most virulent form, it owes more to the agenda of Josephus seeking to discred-
it its perpetrator than to any genuine conviction. The association of Jews with
lepers and the unclean, although conveyed by more sources in diverse versions,
emerges only in connection with the exodus from Egypt. And even there the tales
are either manipulated by Josephus for his own ends, riddled with ambiguity, or
too muted in significance to be effective means of defamation. None of them
amounts to anything resembling what we might regard as genuine antisemitism.
For those who seek models or precursors of contemporary expressions of racist
hostility against Jews will not easily find them in antiquity. Tolerance was far
more prevalent than persecution. It is time to stop hanging the wicked label
of antisemitism upon the Greeks and the Romans—who already have enough
wickedness to answer for.

 Tacitus, Hist. 5.3.2– 3. Gager (Moses, 127– 28, and Origins of Anti-Semitism, 63 – 64) recognizes
the positive features in the description of Moses but sees them as indicating the rebellious char-
acter of the Jews. Schäfer, Judeophobia, 31– 33, sees only the negative aspects; similarly, Bloch,
Antike Vorstellungen, 88 – 89; cf. Feldman, Jew and Gentile, 192– 94.
 We ignore here three brief later references to leprous spots on Moses. These are all derivative
from the exodus story and have no pejorative connotation. See Gager, Moses, 129 – 32.
 The Blood Libel and the Leper Libel: Ancient Antisemitism? 97

Erich S. Gruen is Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics Emeritus
at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author or editor of 16 books, more
than 125 articles, and over 100 reviews in the areas of Roman History, Hellenistic
History, and Second Temple Judaism. He is a member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and an Honorary Member
of the Roman Society of Great Britain.

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Paula Fredriksen
Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity: “Religion” as a
Political Category in Christian Antiquity
In the mid-fifth century, ruling a rump Roman Empire from Constantinople, the
emperor Theodosius II decided to collect and to catalogue into one body the ear-
lier and very varied records of Roman legal rulings. The fruits of his initiative, the
Codex Theodosianus, embodies Late Roman culture’s concerns with ordering
specialist knowledge, politics, and power.¹ This is especially true for Book 16
of the Codex, “On Religion.” Like many of the legal archives upon which it
draws, Book 16 is concerned with regulating relations between heaven and
earth in order to ensure the wellbeing of the empire. Heaven’s denomination
might have changed after 312 C.E., but the goal of religion remained the same:
to secure divine patronage for the common weal. Thus, when Theodosius II, con-
vening the Third Ecumenical Council in 429, expressed the hope that “the con-
dition of the church might honor God and contribute to the safety of the Empire,”²
he echoed the kind of practical piety expressed almost half a millennium earlier
by Cicero, who likewise opined that proper cult “is not only of concern to reli-
gion, but also to the well-being of the state.”³ In other words,

the basic conception [of this late imperial religious legislation] was Roman rather than
Christian. Constantine wished to maintain the pax deorum as his predecessors had done;
but he looked to a new divinity and for new procedures to maintain it.⁴

The conceptualization of and the motivation for Book 16 of the Codex, as for its
preceding fifteen books, may indeed be “Roman.” But the precisions of its new
legal taxonomies are exactly and characteristically “Christian.”⁵ Book 16 does

 Cf. C. Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmondian Constitutions (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1952).
 Acta consiliorum oecumenicorum, ed. E. Schwartz and J. Straub (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1914),
I:1,1,114
 Cicero, De legibus, ed. N. Rudd (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1987), I:1.12.30.
 J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1979), 292.
 On the “Christianization” of epistemology in the Theodosian period (c. 380 – 450 C.E.), see
now M. Letteney, “Christianizing Knowledge: A New Order of Books in the Theodosian Age”
(PhD diss., Princeton University, 2020). On the way that Book 16’s repurposing earlier rulings
against divination and magical practices takes aim at current pagan liturgical traditions, see
I. Sandwell, “Outlawing ‘Magic’ or Outlawing ‘Religion’? Libanius and the Theodosian Code

OpenAccess. © 2021 Paula Fredriksen, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-006
102 Paula Fredriksen

more than establish correct protocols for the imperial (thus, “orthodox” and ka-
tholika) church—regulating priestly personnel, liturgical practices, financial ar-
rangements, and so on. It also defines “deviance.”⁶ Who are these deviants?
In what ways are they deviant?
According to the Codex, such persons are:
1. Those who contend about religion
2. Heretics
3. Apostates
4. Jews, Caelicolists, and Samaritans
5. Pagans

Religious deviance is dangerous. It undermines the safety and prosperity of the

Empire. And, in accordance with the categories of the Codex Theodosianus, “re-
ligious deviance” flirts with being “illegal.” We must emend, then, our sense of
similarity between our two Roman authorities. The pagan Cicero and the Chris-
tian Theodosius II might seem to express a similar pietas or eusebeia; but the
new, later legal taxonomies of deviance both create and witness to the Late Em-
pire’s redefining of diplomatic relations between heaven and earth: it invents the
idea of “illegal” religion. To see how this is so, we should glance backwards to-
ward the Greco-Roman world in those centuries between Alexander the Great (d.
323 B.C.E.) and Constantine (d. 337 C.E.).
An embarrassing fact of my discipline—the study of ancient “religion”—is
that “religion” as we in the twenty-first century envisage it did not actually
exist in antiquity. What modern people think of as “religion,” ancient people ar-
ticulated and experienced as family inheritance, “ancestral custom”: paradoseis
tōn paterōn, ta patria, mos maiorum, hoi patrioi nomoi. ⁷ “In the Roman world,
religion and ethnic loyalties were inseparable.”⁸ To state this idea otherwise:
One’s ethnos defined one’s ethē and, thus, one’s gods and one’s inherited prac-
tices to please those gods. To put it a third way: cult was an ethnic designation,
and ethnicity was a cult designation. To put it a fourth way: in pre-Christian an-

as Evidence for Legislation against ‘Pagan’ Practices,” in The Spread of Christianity in the First
Four Centuries: Essays in Explanation, ed. W. V. Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 87– 123.
 I draw here in part on J. Rüpke, Religious Deviance in the Roman World: Superstition or Indi-
viduality?, trans. D. M. B. Richardson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
 On these distinctions and their importance for the study of gods and humans in antiquity, see
esp. B. Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2013).
 B. Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004), 500.
 Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity 103

tiquity, gods ran in the blood. Peoples and their pantheons shared a family con-
nection.⁹
“Ethnicity”—“people-ness”—organized relations between heaven and earth.
We see this identification of peoples, places, language, rites and gods in ancient
definitions that cluster land, language, family relations, and ancestral custom. A
prime biblical example of this “ethnic reasoning” occurs at Genesis 10, supple-
mented by Deut 32:8 – 9. Right after the flood and the survival of Noah and his
family, Genesis 10 speaks of the renewal of humanity through Noah’s three
sons. The “Table of Nations” in this chapter traces out the descent of seventy
“people groups” (‫גויים‬, goyim, / ἔθνη, ethnē) “according to their lands, their lan-
guages, their families, and in their nations.” Please note: “gods” (‫אלהים‬, elohim)
are conspicuously missing from this bundle of ethnic identifiers. At this point in
the biblical narrative, other gods have yet to assume a major role (though cf.
Gen 6:2– 4). At Deut 32:8 – 9, however, when Moses reprises this episode, he
speaks of God’s dividing humanity “according to the number of the gods”
(NRSV; benei elohim).¹⁰
Herodotus (fifth c. B.C.E.) offers a similar concept-cluster when defining τὸ
‘Eλληνικὸν (to hellēnikon), “Greekness.” He lists shared blood (ὅμαιμόν, omai-
mon), a “family” and descent connection. Like the writer of Genesis, he signals

 I speak here of “normal” ancient gods, the gods of people-groups. Philosophy as a cultural
meta-discourse, by contrast, reformatted the idea of theos. “God” or “Divinity” served as one
of the categories shaping a discourse aimed at rationally organizing the elements of the
“real”: theos, cosmos, anthrōpos, psychē, noûs (“rational mind”), and so on. Philosophy as
meta-discourse stood to the side of traditional piety. It was not inherited and communally enact-
ed so much as voluntarily chosen, taught, and learned among elites. Some philosophies were
non-theistic; others (like that of the much-maligned Epicurus) featured divine powers that
were less emotionally invested in human behaviors than were those ethnic gods who filled tradi-
tional narratives, who lived in local social space, and who engaged, along with their humans, in
inter-city politics, diplomacy, and war. For theistic philosophies, especially the Platonic genre,
the single, highest god was literally in a class by itself: radically transcendent, non-gendered,
non-city-specific—indeed, beyond cosmos itself—and, thus, non-ethnic as well. Eventually, in
the second century C.E., the god of the Bible/LXX will lose his Jewish identity, as some gentile
Christian theologies identify him with the high god of philosophical paideia.
 The LXX gives “angels” as the divine appointees, ἀγγέλων θεοῦ (angelōn theou) interpreting
the ‫( בני אלהים‬benei elohim, “sons of God”) of 4QDeutj, whereas the MT has ‫( בני ישראל‬benei Israel,
“sons of Israel”). In Jub 15:31, these “ruling spirits” deceive the nations: they are descended from
the watchers; cf. Jub 10:2– 9. See P. Sanders, The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32 (Leiden: Brill,
1996), 154– 60; on the plurality of divinities in Jewish scriptural traditions, see further W.
Horbury, “Jewish and Christian Monotheism in the Herodian Age,” in Early Jewish and Christian
Monotheism, ed. L. T. Stuckenbruck and W. E. S. North (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 16 – 44
(esp. 20 – 21 for many primary references in Jewish sources to other gods).
104 Paula Fredriksen

shared language as an ethnic identifier (ὁμόγλῶσσα, homoglōssa). The vertical

silo of heaven/earth lines up around shared divinities, sanctuaries and sacrifices
(θεῶν ἱδρύματα κοινά καὶ θυσίᾳ, theōn idrymata koina kai thysia); and, governing
these, the heritage of shared customs (ἔθεα ὁμότροπα, ethea homotropa).¹¹ Fam-
ily, language, locality and divinity (the shared sanctuaries), and inherited cus-
tom: these make a Greek “Greek.”¹²
My third example of ancient constructs of ethnicity comes from the apostle
Paul in Rom 9:3 – 5. Paul in this passage lists the identifiers of his kinship group,
Israel, his syngeneis. To members of this descent group belong divine “son-
adoption,” υἱοθεσία (hiothesia).¹³ This sonship expresses the family connection
between heaven and earth: the god of Israel is also Israel’s “father.” To them
is the δóξα (doxa) translated “glory” in the RSV and in the NRSV. This vague-
sounding attribute refers both to heaven and to earth, that is, both to the glorious
presence of Israel’s god and to the place of that presence, Jerusalem or, more
specifically, the temple, his earthly dwelling (cf. Matt 23:21). To Israel belong
the covenants (διαθῆκαι, diathēkai), the giving of the Law (νομοθεσία, nomothe-
sia), and the “worship.” This last item, λατρεία (latreia) “cult,” again indicates
place—the altar of Jerusalem’s temple—as well as the inherited or ancestral prac-
tices and traditions for enacting that cult (what Paul elsewhere calls αἱ πατρικαὶ
μου παραδόσεις, hai patrikai mou paradoseis, Gal 1:14).¹⁴

 Cf. Herodotus, Hist. 8.144.2– 3.

 See esp. I. Malkin, ed., Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Washington, D.C.: Center for
Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, 2001).
 Paul’s word choice is very deliberate here—as we should expect of a Pharisee. Divine/human
syngeneia for pagans assumed biological lineage: Mediterranean gods took human sexual part-
ners, from which unions civic populations might spring. People-groups, especially their leaders,
sprang from these unions. These peoples shared with their gods specific languages and loca-
tions, and received from them preferred protocols for showing respect (which moderns would
designate “religion”). So realistically was this divine-human relationship imagined that it sup-
ported networks of inter-city diplomacy, on which see esp. C. P. Jones, Kinship Diplomacy in the
Ancient World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). Israel’s god took no human sexual
partner. Israel’s “sonship” thus was affective and covenantal, not biological, hence Paul’s de-
ployment of the Roman legal term for “son-making” or “son-adoption” here, to express this bib-
lical commonplace of Israel as God’s “son.” Note, too, that, unlike the gentiles, Paul maintains
that Israel’s sonship is not mediated through Christ, or Christ’s pneuma (cf., e. g., Gal 3:26, 4:5 – 7;
Rom 8:14– 17).
 On the ethnicity of Israel’s god, see P. Fredriksen, “How Jewish is God? Divine ethnicity in
Paul’s Theology,” Journal of Biblical Literature 137, no. 1 (2018): 193 – 212. Unlike most of his
Greco-Roman colleagues, however, Israel’s god was both local (present especially in Jerusalem’s
temple, Matt 23:21) and radically trans-local.
 Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity 105

These distinctive privileges echo the shared blood, sanctuaries, sacrifices,

and customs listed by Herodotus. Both sets of protocols, pagan and Jewish,
bind the human ethnic groups to each other trans-temporally (across genera-
tions) and contemporarily (within current group), as well as to their god(s).
Note too that, unlike Genesis 10 and Herodotus, Paul cannot use ὁμόγλῶσσα (ho-
moglōssa, “shared language”) as a linguistic marker for his people who, in his
lifetime, were broadly divided between Semitic languages (Hebrew and/or Ara-
maic) and Greek. But Paul does lift up ethnic language—God’s no less than Isra-
el’s—as a family/ethnicity identifier in a very important connection. Within
Paul’s branch of this mid-century messianic movement, pagans can be “adopt-
ed” into the family of Israel’s god through infusion with divine pneuma, having
Christ “in” them while being themselves “in” Christ.¹⁵ God’s newly adopted ex-
pagan sons are thereby enabled to address him with his Jewish family name
in the Jewish family tongue: baptized gentiles, teaches Paul, can now call God
“Abba” (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15).
These correspondences between heaven and earth, imagined as syngeneia
(“kinship”), held true at the micro-level (the oikos or domus) of family gods
and ancestors, and true at the macro-level of city gods. For this reason, Jews
who lived abroad in Greco-Roman cities were sometimes put in an awkward sit-
uation. Citizenship could be configured as membership in an urban genos—this,
recall, was a prime mechanism for effecting inter-city kinship diplomacy. Being a
citizen required the public display of respect to the gods who presided over the
city’s welfare. Ancient cities, in other words, were “family”‐based religious insti-
tutions. The Jewish god, however, was famously particular about his people’s not
giving cult to other deities.¹⁶ Jewish town councilors, ephebes, and athletes all
managed, somehow, to honor their city’s god(s) while avoiding (or being thought
to avoid) sacrifice; but our inscriptions and papyri reveal none of the details.
Jews and, later, Christians knew that these other gods truly existed. Idols
might be “nothing,” but the power represented by the idol was definitely “some-
thing” (often a daimonion: not “demon” but, rather, a “godling,” cf. Ps 95:5 LXX).
One’s obligations to heaven were configured according to what was due, first, to
one’s own god(s). Eusebeia or pietas (“piety”) did not measure what moderns
think of as sincerity or strength or authenticity of “belief” (and interior, mental
act). Rather, “piety” indexed attentiveness in the execution of inherited protocols
of worship: So also pistis and fides. Often translated as “belief,” pistis indicated

 The theological meditations on Paul’s meanings here are endless. For an anthropology-
inflected understanding as spirit-possession, see G. B. Bazzana, Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit
Possession and Exorcism in the Early Christ Groups (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).
 Cf. Josephus, C. Ap. 2.65; Josephus, A.J. 12.125 – 26.
106 Paula Fredriksen

conviction, that is, confidence that the ancestral protocols in fact pleased the
god; fides (often translated “faith”) attested to loyalty to ancestral traditions
and scrupulousness in performing them. “Allegiance” might better translate
the terms.¹⁷
In the crowded ancient geo-centric Mediterranean cosmos, all gods existed,
their existence witnessed in part by the existence of their humans. Diaspora Jews
managed somehow to show respect to their divine neighbors—and thus, to their
human ones—while drawing the line, most of the time, at full participation in
public cult. Their scruples occasionally irritated pagan ethnographers, who com-
plained of Jewish atheótēs (“atheism”) or asebeia (“impiety”) or amixia (avoid-
ance of others). But classical ethnographers made such complaints about all
“other” ethnic groups, generalizing egregiously while lumping together in a
swamp of common insult Egyptians and Celts, Germans and Phoenicians, Persi-
ans and Jews.¹⁸ In Mediterranean cities of the early Empire, however, people gen-
erally seemed to have known that the Jew’s god was cultically particular, and
that this was one of the ancestral oddities of this particular group.¹⁹ Eventually,
the cultural importance of these other groups will fade: the anti-Jewish insults
lived on and on, repurposed, for their own reasons, by later gentile churches.
That different peoples had their own gods and, thus, customs was a com-
monplace of ancient ethnography and a fact of ancient culture. “In [the
Roman] empire,” notes the second-century Christian apologist Athenagoras,
“different nations have different customs, and no one is hindered by law or by
fear of punishment from following his ancestral customs, no matter how ridicu-
lous these may be.”²⁰ Similarly, the pagan Celsus comments that Jews “observe a

 On these issues of interpretation and inference, see esp. T. Morgan, Roman Faith and Chris-
tian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2015).
 For analysis of these various insults and complaints see Isaac, Invention of Racism, 440 – 91.
Primary texts plus excellent commentary in M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Juda-
ism, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Dorot Press, 1974– 1994).
 Apion complained that Jews wanted Alexandrian citizenship without honoring Alexandrian
gods, Josephus, C. Ap. 2.65; A.J. 12.125 – 26, where the pagan Ionians speak of citizens as synge-
neis, “kinsmen” who worship the same gods. For an overview of the legal history that Josephus
preserves, see M. Pucci Ben Zeev, Jewish Rights in the Roman World: The Greek and Roman Docu-
ments Quoted by Josephus Flavius (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998). Further on inscriptions about
Jewish town councilors, P. Trebilco, “The Christian and Jewish Eumeneian Formula,” in Negoti-
ating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire, ed. J. M. G. Barclay (London: T&T Clark,
2004), 66 – 88, at 79 – 80. See also The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation, ed. and trans. A.
Linder (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), where, pre-312, superstitio with respect to
Judaism should be understood as “foreign cult.”
 Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, ed. M. Marcovich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), leg. 1.
 Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity 107

worship which may be very peculiar, but at least it is traditional. In this respect
they behave like the rest of mankind, because each nation (ethnos) follows its
particular customs.”²¹
If we accept these two descriptions of ancient divine/human relations—
shared syngeneia (kinship) and ethē (ancestral custom)—then we can venture a
third, extending to power politics. An anthropological definition of empire,
“the greatest number of peoples under a single government,” can be restated
theologically: “the greatest number of gods under a single government.” What
we think of as “religion”—relations between heaven and earth—was inflected
along ethnic lines (with individual cities construing their citizens as composing
their own genos or ethnos, “people-group”).
Mediterranean empires, whether Hellenistic or Roman, were in consequence
extremely commodious in terms of what we think of as “religion.” To label all of
this breathing space as “religious tolerance” is to misdescribe it with a word
drawn from our own, later, civil societies. Ancient empire embodied pragmatic
pluralism. If every people had its own god(s), if all gods exist,²² if cult makes
gods happy, and—perhaps the most important point of all—if any god is more
powerful than any human, then such a posture simply made good sense. War-
fare, of course, always tested the military mettle of gods no less than of men:
gods were defeated when their peoples were defeated by the gods of the other
side. This commonsense construal of contesting divine powers caused some em-
barrassment for those second-century gentile Christians who claimed the Jewish
scriptures in Greek as their own sacred texts: after 70 C.E., with Titus’s destruc-
tion of Jerusalem, outsiders inferred that the god of the Jews had been defeated
by the gods of Rome.²³
With the eventual formation of gentile Christianities in the second and third
centuries, however, this practical pluralism failed. In various circumstances and
in different places, some gentile Christians resisted a public display of honor to
their native gentile deities. How such people came to the attention of govern-

 Origen, Contra Celsum, ed. H. Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 5.25.
 Unlike its modern usage, “monotheism” in antiquity presupposed the existence of many
gods: those other divinities were simply lower than the single “highest” god. On the congested
world of ancient divinity, even in its monotheist iterations, see P. Fredriksen, Paul. The Pagans’
Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 12, 68 – 69, 187 nn. 9 and 12, 237 n. 14, 241 n. 29.
 Minucius Felix repeats this jibe, Octavius, ed. B. Kytzler (Leipzig: Teubner, 2012), 10.4; cf. Ter-
tullian, Apologeticum, ed. C. Becker (Munich: Kösel, 1952), 26, and 25.14– 16 on other defeated,
ethnic gods; Origen, Cels. 4.32; Augustine, Answer to Faustus, a Manichaean (Contra Faustum
Manichaeum), introduction, translation and notes by R. Teske (New York: New City Press,
2007), 15.1.
108 Paula Fredriksen

ment authorities is a confounding question.²⁴ Local catastrophes—fire, flood,

famine, earthquake, or plague—were never theologically neutral events but reg-
isters of divine displeasure. Sacrifice to appease the gods and to restore and
maintain good relations between heaven and earth was the remedy of choice.
Perhaps some gentile Christians refused to join in these pious apotropaic activ-
ities. Ancient culture had no mechanisms in place to monitor participation; but
those (ex-pagan) pagans, now Christians, could easily become the targets of local
resentments and anxieties. Who were they to put the whole community at risk?
Who dare insult the gods?²⁵
The mid-third century represents a very specific inflection point in the inter-
action of “government,” “ethnicity,” and “religion.” Worn down through pan-
demic, dire environmental shifts and harrowing military defeats, the imperial
government became proactively involved in attempting to reestablish good rela-
tions with the divine.²⁶ As noted by Caroline Humfress:

According to the emperor Decius (249 C.E.), maintaining correct relations between the
human and the divine necessitated an empire-wide supplicatio of the gods, a legal require-
ment that effectively marked out Christians and Jews in different ways, and formed a fur-
ther precedent for subsequent prosecutions concerning religious beliefs and practices.²⁷

On account of their well-known ancient and ancestral ethē, Jews were excused
from such initiatives. Gentile Christians, however, had no such legitimating eth-
nic, thus ancestral, allegiances: to the Roman eye, in the crisis of the mid-third
century, gentile Christians were simply and obviously just deviant pagans and
might be coerced accordingly. This effort at superintending respect for the
gods resulted in an administrative nightmare: tax forms had to be adapted to reg-

 The correspondence between Pliny (ep. 10.96) and Trajan on this issue is illuminating but not
generalizable. On this vexed question, see esp. the essays assembled in G. E. M. de Ste. Croix,
Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, ed. M. Whitby and J. Streeter (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006).
 Especially C. Moss has revolutionized the historiography of martyrdom since W. H. C. Frend’s
(unfortunately still classic) Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford: Blackwell,
1965). Cf. C. R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012); C. R. Moss, The Myth of Persecution (New York: Harper
Collins 2013), on martyr stories as discursive identity construction rather than historical report-
age
 On this convergence of misery, see K. Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the
End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).
 C. Humfress, “Ordering Divine Knowledge in Late Roman Legal Discourse,” in Emperors and
the Divine – Rome and its Influence, ed. M. Kahlos (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced
Studies, 2016), 169.
 Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity 109

ister citizen sacrifices.²⁸ And these mandated pieties left in their wake a trail of
“lapsed” Christians, both clerical and lay, who had complied with the govern-
ment’s demand. The result was a crisis of community discipline for churches,
which had to devise ways to reintegrate the lapsed, while controlling the unoffi-
cial charisma of those who, though imprisoned as willing martyrs, had managed
to survive.
These imperial initiatives came and went in fits and starts. Diocletian, in
302, led one last effort to suppress Christian communities.²⁹ The initiative
ended, a decade later, in a very consequential if unintended denouement: the
victorious western strongman, Constantine, decided to invest his personal alle-
giance and powerful patronage in one particular sect of the Christian church.
Its bishops, happily availing themselves of their new access to power, guided
Constantine’s coercive efforts against ecclesiastical rivals.
Thus began the final stage of the Roman imperial persecution of Christians.
More Christians were persecuted, and persecuted more thoroughly, after the con-
version of Constantine than before.³⁰ Our later Theodosian taxonomies shed
light on why: Sectarians were now “heretics,” and their deviance from “the
true Church” (howsoever that was imperially defined) represented a security
threat to the empire. Pagans, too, were coercively importuned: temples closed,
destroyed, or re-purposed; public latreia curtailed or forbidden; public monies
diverted from municipal celebrations.
And the toxic vocabulary of two centuries of gentile Christian rhetoric and
theology adversus Iudaeos—defining and deriding intra-Christian competitors
by likening them to “the Jews”—metastasized into the legal language of the

 Cf. J. Rives, “The Decree of Decius and the Religion of the Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies
89 (1999): 135– 54.
 On the political/cultural/religious Umwelt accounting for Diocletian’s decision, see esp. E. D.
Digeser, A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2012).
 “Religious coercion on a large scale was mainly practiced by Christians on other Christians,”
P. Brown, “Christianization and Religious Conflict,” in Cambridge Ancient History XIII: The Late
Empire, A.D. 337 – 425, ed. A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 642. So too G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, “Heresy, Schism and Persecution in the Later Roman
Empire,” in Christian Persecution, Martyrdom and Orthodoxy, ed. M. Whitby and J. Streeter (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 201– 29. B. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and
Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), conveys
in impeccable, oppressive detail the ways that Augustine orchestrated the imperial suppression
of dissident North African Catholics, through mobilizing the laws against “heresy.”
110 Paula Fredriksen

state.³¹ The painful irony is that it was originally (Hellenistic) Jewish texts—Paul’s
letters, the gospels, and behind them, a bottomless font of anti-Jewish invective,
the Septuagint’s texts themselves—that sourced and fed Christian traditions ad-
versus Iudaeos. Once the ethnicity of readership shifted from Greek-speaking
Jews to Greek-speaking ex-pagan gentiles, intra-Jewish polemic became anti-
Jewish polemic. Originally, historically Jewish foundational figures such as
Jesus, or Peter, or Paul were seen by second century gentile Christians in their
own image: not as “Jews” but as “Christians” (that last term itself of late first/
early second-century coinage).³² And within this binary system, if “gentile”
and “Christian” were “good,” then Jews and Judaism were bad—which is why
calling another Christian gentile a “Jew” packed the rhetorical punch that it
did.³³ By the year 312 C.E., rhetoric contra Iudaeos had become a drive-wheel
of “orthodox” Christian identity. Constantine’s patronage only expanded the op-
portunities for its deployment (see just below). By the early fifth century, what
Brent Shaw has called “a fixed geometry of hatred”³⁴—heretics, pagans, and
Jews—came to legally define the contours of religious deviance.
In the view of the mid-fifth century editors of Theodosius’s Codex, “here-
tics,” though Christian, were false insiders. “Pagans” were wayward outsiders.
As such, members of either group, from the fourth century on, might find them-
selves the objects of unwanted popular attention, legal harassment, and urban
violence. The deployment and, in the case of “pagan,” the very creation of the
term itself as a new religious idiom, attest to the fact that no category for “illegal
religion”—or, for that matter, for “legal religion”—ever preceded Constantine’s
early fourth-century shift of theological allegiance. Religio licita, the phrase de-
rived from Tertullian’s pungent rhetoric, is a modern academic confection in-
tended to explain pagan Rome’s anti-Christian persecutions. The state went
after the church (which was, supposedly, illicita) but left the synagogue alone
(because Judaism was certe licita ³⁵). So goes the argument; but it is frustrated

 On the origins, development, and deployment of anti-Jewish rhetoric against intra-Christian

rivals, see P. Fredriksen and O. Irshai, “Christianity and Judaism in Late Antiquity: Polemics and
Policies, from the Second to the Seventh Centuries,” in The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, vol. 4 of
The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. S. T. Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),
977– 1035.
 Cf. J. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian
Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) gives a clear orientation to the social dynam-
ics contributory to this invective.
 Cf. e. g. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, ed. E. Kroymann (Turnholt: Brepols, 1954), lib. 3
passim.
 Shaw, Sacred Violence, 276.
 Tertullian, Apol. 21.1
 Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity 111

by historical evidence. Religio licita was never was a term of law, because “reli-
gion”—traditional cult; ancestral practices—was simply a normal aspect of any
subject gens or natio or genos or ethnē. ³⁶ Peoples and gods formed family groups.
Heaven itself was individuated along ethnic lines.
The Jews, in this early fourth-century changeover from pagan to Christian
empire, were a special case. Like everyone else, Jews could find themselves on
the receiving end of mob violence. But pre-Christian Roman legal tradition in
general prevailed, and Judaism—unlike paganism and heresy—even when
marginalized, was nonetheless never actually outlawed. Jewish communities
not only remained protected by legislation framed at the highest levels of gov-
ernment; they also continued to attract sympathetic attention and social support
at a popular level.³⁷ Indeed, the hostility of ecclesiastical writers, their repeated
efforts to delegitimize and disallow Christian involvement (both clerical and lay)
in synagogue activities, and their insistence that Judaism itself represented the
ultimate anti-type of the True Faith, obliquely witness to a positive orientation
toward Jews and Judaism on the part of many in their own congregations
whom they were attempting to convince.³⁸
And yet, in exactly this period, anti-Jewish invective grew and bloomed. The
reasons had nothing directly to do with real Jews and everything to do with im-
perial efforts to define, mandate, and control “orthodoxy.” Emperors sought con-
sensus through sponsoring creeds and underwriting trans-imperial councils.
Their efforts led only to further fracturing, with all sides (especially during the
Christological convulsions of the fifth century) accusing their Christian rivals
of being “just like the Jews,” “in league with the Jews,” or “worse than the
Jews.” The greater the church’s internal diversity, the louder the anti-Jewish rhet-
oric, and the more ubiquitous the “rhetorical Jews” of intra-Christian polemic. Its
tropes found full expression in the commentaries, treatises, church histories, and

 So too Isaac, Racism, 449; P. Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Chris-
tian Origins whose Time Has Come to Go,” Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 35 (2006):
231– 39.
 The donor inscription from Aphrodisias, if dated to the mid-fourth to late fifth century, would
be further evidence of this, A. Chaniotis, “The Jews of Aphrodisias: New Evidence and Old Prob-
lems,” Scripta Classica Israelica 21 (2002): 209 – 42. For the comfortably chaotic intra-communal
mixing in Chrysostom’s Antioch, see C. Shepardson, “Between Polemic and Propaganda: Evok-
ing the Jews of Fourth-Century Antioch,” JJMJS 2 (2015): 151– 82.
 For both ecclesiastical and imperial efforts to enforce separation between Christians and
Jews, see the two important compendia of legal materials by A. Linder, ed., The Jews in the
Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997) and A. Linder,
ed., The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987).
112 Paula Fredriksen

especially (and most dangerously) in the fourth- and fifth-century equivalent of

social media, the sermons of voluble churchmen.
These literatures index, first of all, the vituperation lavished by bishops on
their Christian rivals. But it also betrays the “push” of clerical disapproval
against the synagogue’s “pull” of popular attraction. (Chrysostom’s high holiday
sermons, delivered in Antioch in 387, provide a premier example.³⁹) During
roughly the same period, church councils repeatedly published canons that at-
tempted to establish and enforce a separation of Christians, both clerical and
lay, from Jews. These prohibitions reveal the situation on the ground: some gen-
tile Christians kept the Jewish Sabbath as a day of rest, and worked on Sundays
(Laodicea, c. 29); they received festival gifts from Jews and heretics (c. 37), ac-
cepted matzah and participated in Jewish “impieties” (c. 38). They shared in Jew-
ish fasts and feasts (Apostolic Canons, c. 69); tended lamps in synagogues on
feast days (c. 70); joined with Jews and heretics in prayer (c. 63), and gave
their children to Jews in marriage (Chalcedon, c. 14).⁴⁰ And the lunar Jewish cal-
endar—especially the date of Pesach relative to Easter—continued to influence
Christian communal celebration, Constantine’s pointed efforts at Nicaea not-
withstanding.⁴¹
Orthodoxy’s efforts against the synagogue were further complicated by its
own canon. Unlike several of its various rivals, the church backed by Constantine
had laid claim to the Septuagint: scriptures enjoining and praising fidelity to
Jewish law were, as the Old Testament, part of the church’s own sacred texts,
thus read aloud regularly whenever the community gathered for worship. Fur-
ther, what went on in the synagogue (not least the public readings in the vernac-

 These sermons catalogue the Jewish practices of John’s gentile Christian congregation, who
attend synagogue on the Sabbath and the high holy days (1.5; 8.8), go to hear the “trumpets”
(Rosh haShanah; 1:5), fast on Yom Kippur (1.2), and join in “pitching tents” (that is, erecting suk-
kot, 7.1). Wilken notes that John, Theodoret of Cyrus, and the Apostolic Constitutions likewise
criticize gentile Christians for frequenting mikvaot, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric
and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 75; J. N.
D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom, Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (London: Cornell
University Press, 1995), 63 – 66.
 Cf. Linder, Legal Sources; still valuable, too, is J. Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the
Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society
of America, 1961; orig. pub. 1934), 174– 77.
 See esp. Wilken’s comments on this “dispute about religious and communal identity” in the
year 387, when 14 Nisan fell on Easter Sunday, Chrysostom, 76 – 79. For Constantine’s fulmina-
tions against Quartodecimans, see Eusebius, De vita Constantini / Über das Leben Konstantins,
ed. H. Schneider (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 3.18 – 19; see too notes in A. Cameron and S. G. Hall,
Eusebius: Life of Constantine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 269 – 72.
 Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity 113

ular from the Pentateuch and the prophets, and recitation of psalms) could not
be alien to Greek-speaking Christian visitors. As a matter of theological principle,
this church identified its high god, through the pre-incarnate Christ, with the god
of Israel. And in the four canonical gospels, read regularly in Christian commu-
nity service, Jesus of Nazareth was portrayed as an observant Jew (Matt 5:17– 19),
worshiping in the synagogue, keeping the great Jewish pilgrimage festivals, recit-
ing the Sh’ma (Mark 12:29), wearing tzitziot (the kraspeda of Mark 6:56), giving
instruction on fasting and prayer, on offerings at the Temple (Matt 5:23 – 24)
and the appropriate dimensions of tefillin (Matt 23:5). The supersessionist rhetor-
ic of the contra Iudaeos tradition notwithstanding, then, many gentile Christians
evidently perceived Jewish practice as continuous from the Old Testament
through the New Testament to their contemporary Jewish neighbors. Indeed,
some Christian Judaizers justified their voluntary observance of Jewish law by
pointing precisely to the example of Christ, whose practices they wanted to imi-
tate.⁴²
Finally, though both traditional polytheism (in Paul’s letters) and “deviant”
Christianity (in, e. g., Matt 7:21– 23, the Johannine epistles, and several deutero-
Paulines) were roundly condemned in the New Testament itself, Judaism as such
was not. The orthodox had to settle for condemning the Jewish practice of Juda-
ism, complaining that Jews interpreted and observed in a “fleshly” way a Law
meant to be understood and kept “spiritually,” that is, according to (orthodox,
gentile) Christian interpretation. And by holding not Romans (who were re-
deemed by their conversion to Christianity) but Jews (who continued to preserve
their own ancestral practices) as particularly responsible for the death of Jesus
Christ, ecclesiastical tradition focused, fueled, and justified continuing, annually
aggravated anti-Jewish hostility. Nonetheless, Judaism was never and could
never be in the same relation to the church that paganism and heresy were, if
only for the reason that Judaism, as the Hebraica veritas of orthodoxy’s own
self-understanding, was incontrovertibly the source of (true) Christianity. As
Augustine observed, though the Church was the bride of Christ, the synagogue
was his mother.⁴³ The imperial church’s rise to power did little to resolve the tra-

 Christians justify their Judaizing by arguing that they should be imitators of Christ, Origen,
Commentary on Matthew / Commentarii in Evangelium Matthaei, ed. T. P. Scheck (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 79; similarly Epiphanius of Salamis, The Pana-
rion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I (Sects 1– 46), trans. F. Williams (Leiden: Brill, 1987), Haer.
28.5.1; on keeping Pesach because Jesus did, John Chrysostom, Eight Homilies Against the Jews /
Adversus Judeaus, in Patrologia Greaca 48, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1862), 3.4 and 866; references
with discussion in Wilken, Chrysostom, 92– 94.
 Cf. Augustine, Faust. 12.8.
114 Paula Fredriksen

dition’s abiding and intrinsic ambivalence—an ambivalence visible in the impe-

rial laws themselves.
Law is prescriptive, not descriptive. With the exception of North Africa’s
Donatists, I cannot venture with any security how the anathemas of Book 16
translated into the social experience of Late Roman subjects. Heretics, pagans,
and Jews continued to live within the Empire, but their legal situation (and, de-
pending on the temperament of the closest orthodox bishop, their local situa-
tion) was permanently destabilized. The precisions of Book 16’s taxonomies, in
brief, witness to Mediterranean empire’s transition from practical pluralism, to
statutory definitions of religious and, thus, of social deviance, to an inconstant,
unstable, occasionally abusive “tolerance.” Relations between heaven and earth
were no longer primarily an ethnic patrimony but rather, and consequentially, a
political choice. And—again depending on the temperament of the local bishop
—sometimes violent liturgical rhetoric led to actual “hard” violence: the seizure
of synagogues, the intimidation of Jewish populations, the coercive forcing of
Jews to choose between baptism or exile.⁴⁴
One last turn of this particular screw: the re-ethnicization of land, people-
hood, governance, and divinity in the post-Roman West. After 456 C.E., Visigoth-
ic warriors established themselves as a military ruling class in southern France
and in central and eastern Spain. The newcomers’ religious distinctiveness un-
derscored their notional ethnic otherness: these Goths were Arian Christians,
whose customs, liturgical practices, doctrines, and language marked them off
from the far more numerous catholic, “Roman” population over whom they
now ruled.⁴⁵
Editing a digest of Roman laws for his subjects in 506, the Gothic king Alaric
distilled ten laws concerning Jews from the fifty-three contained in Theodosius
II’s compendium. Alaric’s Breviary aimed to ensure that Jews could not find
themselves in positions of power over Christians, whether as masters to slaves,
as husbands to wives, or as magistrates to plaintiffs. No law interfered with tra-
ditional Jewish observances internal to the community.
In 587 C.E., however, the Gothic King Reccared converted to Roman Chris-
tianity. Arian prelates prudently followed in 589. A long period of cooperation
between monarchs and bishops began, aimed at unifying the ethnically and re-

 On this whole coercive turn in Christian-Jewish relations, see esp. the comprehensive anal-
ysis by R. S. Kraemer, The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity cost the
Jews (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
 The experience of Jews within the kingdoms of the post-Roman West varied enormously. For
an overview of this destabilized social terrain, see the essays collected in Y. Hen, Barbarians and
Jews (Turnholt: Brepols, 2018).
 Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity 115

ligiously mixed kingdom. Toward this goal, Bishop Isidore of Seville (560 – 636),
a major conduit of Augustinian theology to the later European Middle Ages,
wrote de fide catholica contra Iudaeos. Isidore took Augustine’s theological jus-
tification for the coercion of heretics (originally aimed at Augustine’s contempo-
rary North African Catholic rivals, the Donatist church) and knowingly redirected
it against Iberian Jews—the sole religious minority that the Bishop of Hippo had
specifically exempted from such muscular pastoral care.⁴⁶ Striving to unite re-
gnum and ecclesia, Iberian kings and bishops reinterpreted the ancient synony-
my of ethnicity and religion. Visigoths assumed that form of Christianity most
identified with Hispano-Romans—namely, Nicene Catholicism—while Hispano-
Romans assumed a new ethnic identity, Goth, while claiming historic roots in
Spanish soil. The new (or renewed) Iberian kingdom would be supported by
the three pillars of gens, rex, and patria Gothorum.
As a result, Jewish Romans lost their legal and their social footing. Early on,
Jews could either be “naturalized” as catholic Goths through conversion (the in-
clusive option) or isolated and treated as pariah (the exclusive option). Eventu-
ally, however, notions of “blood” trumped every other category: even converted
Jews, in later Visigothic canon law, were designated as baptizati Iudaei or simply
as Iudaei, never as Christiani—and, thus, never as “Goths.” These particular His-
pano-Romans, residents of the peninsula long before the Visigoths ever wan-
dered so far south, became both by “blood” and by belief strangers in a strange
land, an abiding “other,” an easy and defenseless target for local resentments, a
settled population of resident aliens.
It is difficult, in the hindsight of history, not to draw a line from this seventh-
century ontology of Jewishness to the twentieth century’s obsessive, denomina-
tionally ecumenical murder of European Jews. The former expressed the ethnic
essentialism native to Mediterranean ethnographies; the latter combined centu-
ries of religious prejudice bolstered by pseudo-scientific racism. And the vio-
lence that both forms of antisemitism sparked, sponsored, and excused was
fed, as well, by simple human greed: from exploiting Iberian Jews’ economic

 On Augustine’s theology pro Iudaeos, see P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian
Defense of Jews and Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 213 – 366; for his rhetoric
contra Iudaeos (aimed, predictably, against Donatists), Shaw, “Ravens Feeding on Death,” in Sa-
cred Violence; for the darkening Visigothic story, see P. Fredriksen, “Jewish Romans, Christian
Romans, and the Post-Roman West: The Social Correlates of the contra Iudaeos Tradition,” in
Conflict and Religious Conversation in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honour of Ora Limor, ed. I.
J. Yuval and R. Ben-Shalom (Turnholt: Brepols, 2014), 23 – 53.
116 Paula Fredriksen

and physical vulnerability in the seventh century, to the twentieth century’s pan-
European feeding frenzy of theft, from high art to village huts.⁴⁷
I was born in America, in 1951, in what I am coming to realize was a histor-
ically conditioned bubble. Post-Holocaust, outright antisemitism in America was
simply not admissible in polite public society. Within one generation, I have al-
ready seen that change. The existence of the state of Israel (since 1948) has given
excuse for the murder of Jews, Israeli or otherwise, throughout the globe. The in-
ternet has added massively, incalculably, to the metastasis of fantaisiste antisem-
itism. Pseudo-scientific biologies of racial supremacy and of racial degeneracy
feed the resentful fantasies of untold numbers of internet users.
Even though the Shoah succeeded—Europe is a place of Jewish ghosts—and
even though, in many ways, the Jews are no longer there, European antisemitism
thrives. In the fall of 2019, marches in Europe and in England commemorating
Kristallnacht ended with loud calls from protesting others to “Kill the Jews.” Pla-
ces of worship and of higher education have been defaced with Nazi graffiti;
some have been strafed with bullets. Donald Trump, in his role as president of
the United States, has insisted on the moral equivalence of White Supremacist
gangs and anti-racism counter protesters. (“There are good people on both
sides.”) And just one day after the massacre in a Pittsburgh synagogue, this
same US president obliquely bolstered an internet rumor that George Soros,
the liberal Jewish financier, might very well be providing occluded support to im-
migrant “caravans” of Latin Americans threatening the “whiteness” of the Unit-
ed States’ southern border.
This list is virtually endless, but I need to conclude. And my conclusion is
that antisemitism is the most plastic, resilient, and versatile of anti-social fanta-
sies. It coheres with the political Right and equally well with the political Left.
American Black Nationalists, in 2020 New Jersey, murdered Jews for their
being too “white,” while the same year, a white supremacist shot up a California
synagogue, murdering a Jewish woman, because Jews are not “white” enough.
And anti-Zionism has continued to give respectable cover to good old-fashioned
antisemitism.
Antisemitism, like any kind of racism, is at root irrational. Can it be over-
come, then, by reason? As much as I would like to think so, I must confess
that I fear not. But I nonetheless still hope so.

 Jews returning from the camps after 1945 were slaughtered by neighbors unwilling to give
them back their property.
 Divinity, Ethnicity, Identity 117

Paula Fredriksen, Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University, cur-

rently teaches in Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. She is
a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds honorary doc-
torates from universities in the USA (Iona), Sweden (Lund), and Israel (Hebrew
University). Focusing on the social and intellectual history of ancient Christianity,
and pagan-Jewish-Christian relations in the Roman Empire, her most recent study,
When Christians were Jews: The First Generation (Yale 2018), places this Jewish
messianic message within the wider world of ancient Mediterranean culture, poli-
tics, and power.

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Comprehending Antisemitism in the Middle Ages
Robert Chazan
The Evolution of Anti-Jewish Imagery in
Medieval Christian Europe
The horrific results of modern antisemitism during the Holocaust have given rise
to extensive efforts to trace the history of this modern anti-Jewish thinking. These
efforts have inevitably included considerable focus on the impact of traditional
Christian imagery of Judaism and Jews on modern antisemitism, despite the con-
viction in many quarters that modern antisemitism was either non-Christian or
perhaps even anti-Christian. The role of Christianity in the evolution of modern
antisemitism has been analyzed extensively by many observers, pre-eminently
by Jules Isaac.¹
Of late, a number of researchers in medieval Jewish history have proposed
that medieval Christian Europe introduced a new turn in Christian anti-Jewish
sentiment. These scholars have suggested that traditional anti-Jewish motifs
were bent in increasingly radical directions under the special circumstances of
medieval Christian Europe.² Thus, while traditional Christian anti-Judaism
played a role in the evolution of modern antisemitism, it was the innovative
and radical anti-Jewish imagery produced in medieval Christian Europe that
most immediately and most tellingly laid the foundations for the extreme anti-
Jewish stereotypes purveyed by modern antisemites. This innovative medieval
anti‐Jewish imagery very much fostered the creation of the radical anti-Jewish
stereotypes of the antisemitic thinkers and movements; perhaps even more im-
portantly, this legacy from the European Middle Ages predisposed the European
population at large to embrace the extreme anti-Jewish stereotypes disseminated
by the antisemites. We shall examine briefly this new sense of the role of medi-
eval Christian Europe in providing much of the foundation of modern antisem-
itism, beginning with pre‐medieval Christian thinking and then proceeding to
the medieval innovations.

 The broad conclusions reached by Jules Isaac are nicely summed up in his The Teaching of
Contempt, trans. H. Weaver (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964).
 These researchers include: G. I. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1990) and Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990); A. Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance
(London: Routledge, 1995); and R. Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) and From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

OpenAccess. © 2021 Robert Chazan, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-007
124 Robert Chazan

Jesus and his immediate followers were clearly members of the fractious
Jewish community in first‐century Palestine. Where precisely they stood during
this tumultuous period is unclear. Politically, were they for rebellion against
Rome or against it? Where did they stand on the religious and spiritual issues
that divided first-century Palestinian Jews? These questions cannot be answered
in the absence of sources from the group itself. The only secure knowledge is that
they surely perceived themselves and were perceived by others as Jews, attempt-
ing to live according to the covenant between God and Israel. In their own eyes,
they certainly constituted the Jewish group that understood correctly that cove-
nant; in the eyes of others, they were one of a number of Jewish groups that mis-
read that covenant.³
Paul very much complicated the nature of the Jesus movement and its rela-
tionship to Judaism and Jews.⁴ Paul, a diaspora Jew who came to Jerusalem
seemingly to study and became an active opponent of the Jesus movement, even-
tually embraced that movement and became a leader with a unique vision of
Jesus and his mission. According to Paul, the advent of Jesus set in motion a
new and more universal stage in the relationship between God and humanity.
In the prior stage, Israel was God’s messenger to the rest of humanity; in this
new stage, there was an opportunity for all of humanity to enter directly into
the divine-human covenant through belief in Jesus. In Paul’s view, Jesus had ap-
pointed him to the special role of apostle to the gentiles, in order to apprise them
of their new and direct access to the divine-human covenant. While Jesus’ orig-
inal followers disagreed with this view of his mission, Paul’s perspective won out
and shaped the subsequent church.

 There is a vast literature on the earliest stages of the Jesus movement, and much of it seeks to
identify the stances taken by Jesus toward the rest of Palestinian Jewry. Of this vast literature, I
have found the following most helpful: G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gos-
pels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981); P. Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Tes-
tament Images of Jesus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); J. D. Crossan, The Historical
Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); and E. P.
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993).
 There is likewise a vast literature on Paul, again with considerable focus on Paul’s views of
Judaism and Jews. The literature on Paul benefits from a body of sources from Paul himself.
Helpful recent perspectives on Paul can be found in: J. G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000); F. Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007); and J. D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2008). Daniel Boyarin’s A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1994) is useful for Boyarin’s mastery of the Jewish sources that influ-
enced Paul.
 The Evolution of Anti-Jewish Imagery in Medieval Christian Europe 125

The Pauline perspective refashioned the earlier Jesus movement convictions

as to who constituted the correct interpreters of the divine revelation to Israel. In
the earlier stage of the movement, one group of Jews—Jesus and his followers—
constituted the True Israel; those Jews who rejected Jesus were not the True
Israel. The Pauline innovation complicated this straightforward dichotomy.
Jews who rejected Jesus remained errant; however, both Jews and gentiles who
accepted Jesus were now the True Israel. To be sure, Jews who rejected Jesus
were still Israel but only in physical terms. Gentiles who accepted Jesus were
not biologically Israel, but more importantly they were spiritual Israel. Thus,
what eventually became a largely gentile church was projected as the True Israel,
while Jews who continued to reject Jesus and his message were Israel in physical
terms only.
This complicated perspective translated into a complex view of Judaism and
Jews. On the one hand, the early history of the Jews was projected in very positive
terms. God had chosen the Jews for the exalted mission of bringing knowledge of
him to humanity. Divine revelation was vouchsafed to this group. On the other
hand, many in this group subsequently misread the revelation granted to
them and failed to recognize the new stage in human history introduced by
Jesus. Indeed, these Jews did more than simply fail to recognize his signifi-
cance—they actively persecuted him. Thus, a once-noble people reached the
depths of error and sin. This error and this sin were punished by God through
Roman suppression of the rebellion of 66 C.E., destruction of Jerusalem and
its temple, and exile of the Jews from the land promised to them (in fact, exile
at the hands of the Romans was a theological construct—it did not take
place).⁵ Ultimately, Jews would grasp the truth and return to become part of
the New and True Israel. What results is classic Christian anti-Judaism, which
is a complex combination of veneration for early Israel, denigration of post-
Jesus Jewry, and certainty of an eventual reconciliation.
During the first few centuries of the Common Era, Christian attitudes toward
Jews and Judaism did not impact Jewish life significantly. The church was ex-
panding rapidly, thanks largely to the Pauline innovation. This rapid growth fu-
eled concern on the part of the Roman authorities, who recurrently initiated per-
secutions of the movement. Given these persecutions, the young church was
hardly in a position to focus attention and energy on the Jews. Moreover, dem-
ographically the centers of church expansion and the centers of Jewish life did

 On the realities of suppression of the rebellion of 66 – 70 C.E. and the lack of an expulsion by
the Romans, see R. Chazan, Refugees or Migrants: Pre-Modern Jewish Population Movement (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), chaps. 4 and 6.
126 Robert Chazan

not coincide. Church expansion was concentrated in the western sectors of the
Roman Empire, while the centers of Jewish population were in Palestine and
Mesopotamia.⁶
This lack of impact changed dramatically with Constantine, the Roman em-
peror who ended the policy of persecution of the church and subsequently made
Christianity the state religion.⁷ At this point, the views of the church began to
impinge in a significant way on Jewish life. An official church perspective on Ju-
daism and Jews and official church policy vis-à-vis Judaism and Jews were fully
articulated by the influential church father Augustine.⁸ Augustine considered
himself a disciple of Paul and viewed Judaism and the Jews in Pauline fashion.
For Augustine, the early history of the Jews was highly distinguished. God chose
them as his human partners and blessed them with divine revelation. At a later
point, the Jews failed to grasp the obvious meaning of the revelation bestowed
upon them, rejected Jesus, and persecuted him. Like Paul, Augustine envisioned
eventual reconciliation between God and his original human partners.
This reconstruction of the Jewish past, present, and future led Augustine to
propose a three-part policy vis-à-vis Jews: (1) In recognition of their past distinc-
tion, Jews are not to be randomly persecuted in Christian societies; (2) in view of
their present error, they are to be limited so that they inflict no religious harm on
their Christian hosts; (3) Christians bear the obligation of preaching their truth to
Jews regularly and sympathetically, in hopes of bringing closer the future return
of the Jews to the true faith of Israel.
The Augustinian policy formed the foundation for generally peaceful Jewish
existence in the traditional areas of Jewish settlement under Christian control,
which for the Roman Church meant the Mediterranean Basin. With the passage
of time, the external circumstances of Jewish life evolved markedly, eventually
bringing about new stances on Judaism and Jews. The first major change in Jew-
ish circumstances began early in the seventh century, with the birth of Islam and
the rapid conquests of the Muslim armies. Islam exhibited none of the harshness
we have discerned in Christian-Jewish relations. According to Muhammed, the

 The rich Adversus Judaeos literature is sometimes taken as an indication of considerable

Christian-Jewish contact during this period. However, this literature seems largely directed at
Christian and not Jewish readers.
 This turning point is emphasized by James Carroll in his popular Constantine’s Sword: The
Church and the Jews: A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).
 On Augustine and his stance toward Judaism and Jews, see J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law:
Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), chap. 1,
and P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York:
Doubleday, 2008).
 The Evolution of Anti-Jewish Imagery in Medieval Christian Europe 127

one God in the universe granted two prior revelations—one to Jews and one to
Christians. He then decided to grant a third and full revelation to a third and dif-
ferent human community. The first two revelations were genuine, albeit incom-
plete. The fact that there was a third revelation did not mean failure on the part
of the Jews and the Christians—this was simply an inscrutable divine decision.
Thus, the key complicating elements in Christian views of Judaism and Jews—
contention over one and the same divine legacy and failure on the part of the
Jews—are absent in Islamic views of Jews and Christians.⁹
As a result of the remarkable Muslim conquests, the overwhelming majority
of Jews in the world during the first half of the Middle Ages lived in the sphere of
Islam. The Jewish population in Christian areas—meaning eastern and western
Christendom—was quite small. Thus, the impact of Christian views on Jewish
life was limited. Moreover, the small Jewish population in eastern Christendom
and the southern sectors of western Christendom remained in the traditional
areas of Jewish settlement, and thus Christian-Jewish relations showed little
change from what they had been in late antiquity.
The second major external change in Jewish circumstances involved yet an-
other alteration in the overall patterns of Western life. Beginning about mid-way
in the Middle Ages—that is to say toward the end of the first millennium, western
Christendom transformed itself from the weakest of the medieval religio-political
power blocs into the strongest. By the year 1500, western Christendom had be-
come the dominant force in the West, and its dominance would in fact grow
over the course of the early modern and modern centuries.¹⁰ This new-found
power in western Christendom was largely the result of the vitalization of the
heretofore backward and unproductive areas of northern Europe—the areas
that stretched from England in the west through northern France, Germany,
and Poland in the east.
Down through the end of the first millennium, northern Europe was an
under-populated and under-developed area of western Christendom. For reasons
that are not at all clear, at the turn of the millennium northern Europe began to
progress dramatically. Beginning slowly and unremarkably at the end of the first
millennium, the backward areas of northern Europe began to develop in every
respect: The population grew; arable land expanded; trade and industry devel-

 For authoritative descriptions of the Islamic stance toward Judaism and Jews, see S. D.
Goitein, Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts through the Ages (New York: Schocken, 1955), and B.
Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
 For two outstanding analyses of this vitalization, see R. W. Southern, The Making of the Mid-
dle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), and J. Fried, The Middle Ages, trans. P. Lewis
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015).
128 Robert Chazan

oped; cities emerged out of villages; governance became increasingly effective;

the institutions of religion and culture became better organized and more crea-
tive. A robust and relatively homogeneous civilization emerged across northern
Europe, with its most powerful centers located in the western sectors of the
north, with somewhat less mature centers in the middle sectors of the north,
and with the eastern sectors lagging behind.
The vitalization of northern Europe had enormous impact on the history of
the Jews, in ways not sufficiently acknowledged. As a result of this process, a
sector of the world devoid of Jews quietly attracted a few early Jewish immi-
grants and then increasing numbers of Jewish settlers. Despite significant obsta-
cles, this growing community of Jews took advantage of the remarkable develop-
ments occurring across northern Europe, contributed significantly to these
developments, multiplied, and slowly emerged as the world’s largest, most pro-
ductive, and dominant Jewry.¹¹ One of the results of the development of this new
center of Jewish life was the emergence of new and baneful imagery of Judaism
and Jews. In effect, the anti-Judaism of late antiquity evolved under these new
circumstances into what emerged as a set of radically new negative stereotypes
of Judaism and Jews that would become the foundations of modern antisemit-
ism.¹²
The emergence and growth of northern-European Jewry was hardly an easy
process. Northern Europe was a sector of the West in which the Jews were pre-
viously unknown. None of the familiarity that softened the growing size and cen-
trality of the Jews of the Islamic sphere was in evidence across northern Europe.
Instead, northern Europe was an area emerging fitfully from backwardness, an
area dominated by the Roman Church, an area unaccustomed to religious diver-
sity, an area undergoing rapid change with the resistance to change that often
develops in such circumstances.
Jews came into this young society as a disruptive element. They were first
and foremost newcomers, and newcomers are never enthusiastically welcomed
into new societal settings. These newcomers were prized by the ruling authorities
for the economic stimulation they might provide. However, this economic stim-
ulation involved innovation and thus once again evoked resentment in many
sectors of society that were resistant to change. Yet worse, these newcomers dis-
sented from the Christian faith of the majority; indeed they were the descendants

 In an overview of the history of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe, I have emphasized
the differences between the older Jewry of southern Europe and the newer Jewry of northern
Europe. See R. Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, 1000 – 1500 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
 See Chazan, From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism.
 The Evolution of Anti-Jewish Imagery in Medieval Christian Europe 129

of those depicted in the Gospels as the enemies of Jesus. For all these reasons,
the Jewish immigrants were widely viewed with disfavor—often intense
disfavor—and regularly encountered resistance. That the Jewish population of
northern Europe could continue to grow despite this resistance is a tribute to
the vitality and attraction of this rapidly developing area and to the resourceful-
ness of its new Jewish population.
The initial resistance to the new Jewish settlers limited their economic diver-
sification. Most of them came as traders, and few further options emerged for
them. A curious development in the early twelfth century opened up a new
and problematic economic opportunity for these Jews. As western Christendom
and especially its northern sectors underwent rapid development, the increas-
ingly powerful Roman Church began to agitate for observance of long-neglected
prohibitions. One of these involved Christians taking usury from fellow Christi-
ans.¹³ Since flow of capital was critically important in rapidly developing north-
ern Europe, the church’s successes in this anti-usury initiative opened the way
for Jewish specialization in moneylending. This new economic outlet was critical
to maintaining the flow of capital across the north and to expanding Jewish pres-
ence in northern Europe. At the same time, it served to deepen popular animos-
ity. While human societies recognize that banking and exchange of capital are
critical to all economies, the people engaged in this activity are never popular.
Jewish moneylending became yet another element in the increasingly negative
imagery of northern Europe’s Jews.
As we have seen, traditional Christian anti-Judaism projected the possibility
of deleterious Jewish religious impact, and Augustinian policy insisted on limi-
tation of this potential negative impact as one of the pillars of Christian policy
vis-à-vis Jews. Moreover, the Gospel imagery of the Jewish opponents of Jesus
deepened the perceptions of Jewish religious hostility to Christianity and Chris-
tians. In the new Jewish settlement area of northern Europe, perceptions of po-
tential Jewish harmfulness were expanded far beyond the religious sphere. Po-
tentially negative Jewish impacts on the Christian majority were perceived as
extending into wide-ranging facets of societal life. To an extent, these percep-
tions were rooted in the realities of Jewish life. At the simplest level, Jews
were agents of change. It is for this reason that they were supported by ruling
authorities intent on fostering economic change and growth. Nonetheless, agents
of change are never popular with certain strata of society, and so it was with the

 The biblical source for this prohibition is Deuteronomy 23:20 – 21, which distinguishes be-
tween taking interest from a countryman, which is forbidden, and taking interest from a foreign-
er, which is permitted.
130 Robert Chazan

new Jews of northern Europe. Moreover, the new Jewish specialization in money-
lending—also supported by the authorities—exacerbated the sense of Jewish so-
cietal harmfulness.
Out of this expanded sense of potential Jewish harmfulness emerged a series
of new, extreme, and highly damaging stereotypes of Jewish hatred of and ma-
levolence toward Christianity and Christians.¹⁴ Jews traditionally perceived as re-
ligiously harmful and then in northern Europe as economically harmful, initially
as a result of their involvement in economic change and subsequently as a result
of their moneylending, were slowly perceived as deeply hostile and malevolent
toward their Christian neighbors and moved to inflict devastating physical dam-
age on these Christian neighbors whenever and wherever possible.
The initial form of this new perception was an alleged tendency on the part
of Jews to murder groundlessly Christian contemporaries. Murder out of conflict
of many kinds is lamentable but understandable and appears in all societies.
However, the new sense that emerged in mid-twelfth-century northern Europe
was that Jews killed Christian contemporaries without any specific grievance.
Rather, it was simply hatred of all Christians that moved individual Jews to
kill individual Christians. The groundlessness of these killings was emphasized
by identifying the victims as children, who could not have done sufficient harm
to their Jewish killers to warrant violence. A number of claims of groundless kill-
ing of Christian youngsters surfaced across northern Europe during the second
half of the twelfth century.¹⁵
This sense of gratuitous Jewish murder was quickly embellished with reli-
gious motifs. The first such embellishment emerged in the English town of
Norwich during the middle of the twelfth century. The Norwich chronicler Tho-
mas of Monmouth claimed that eyewitness accounts of the murder of the saintly
lad William indicated that the malevolent Jews took the youngster’s life by cru-
cifying him, in effect reenacting their historic crime.¹⁶ Thus the groundless mur-
der of William was made yet more heinous by the form it took. Subsequently, the
notion of murder in a ritualized format shifted from the allegation of Easter-re-
lated crucifixion to the Passover-related claim that Jews utilized the blood of

 See especially the works of Langmuir and Chazan cited above in n. 2.

 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism, chap. 4.
 See the classic study by G. I. Langmuir, “Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder,”
Speculum 59 (1984): 822– 46, reprinted in Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism,
209 – 36.
 The Evolution of Anti-Jewish Imagery in Medieval Christian Europe 131

their Christian victims for Jewish holiday rituals. This powerful motif became a
staple of anti-Jewish imagery down to the present.¹⁷
The notions of implacable Jewish hatred of Christians and the commitment
of Jews to harming their Christian contemporaries took further forms, most no-
tably the allegation of poisoning the wells of Europe in order to murder Christian
neighbors. When in 1348 – 1349 Europe was devastated by the spread of the bu-
bonic plague, Jews suffered the ravages of the plague along with everyone else.
At the same time, in many places Jews were accused of creating the devastation
by poisoning the water supply, and in some places these allegations resulted in
popular massacres of Jews.
Traditional Christian anti-Judaism clearly played a role in these new medie-
val anti-Jewish calumnies, spawned initially in the areas of northern Europe
where Jewish presence was new and resented. As we have seen, one of the sour-
ces of this resentment was Jewish deviation from the fundamentally Christian
nature of the northern-European population. The notion of the murder of
William of Norwich involving crucifixion and the later claim that Jews—via
their moneylending—gained control of host wafers and subjected them to
abuse all bespeak the impact of Christian thinking.¹⁸ At the same time, these
new medieval calumnies clearly went far beyond traditional Christian anti-Juda-
ism. Indeed, as these slanders emerged and spread, major church leaders regu-
larly took a principled stance against them. For example, when the notion of Jew-
ish ritual use of Christian blood emerged in the early thirteenth century, a series
of popes denounced the claim and convened Christian experts in Jewish law to
prove that the alleged Jewish behaviors were unthinkable.¹⁹ These new medieval
allegations went far beyond traditional Christian anti-Judaism and in fact elicited
church condemnation.
The new medieval slanders—grounded to an extent in traditional church
thinking but extending far beyond that traditional thinking—were eventually ab-
sorbed into Western popular culture and played a significant role in the modern

 See A. Dundes, ed., The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).
 See M. Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999).
 Note the reaction of Pope Innocent IV to the emergence of the blood libel accusation in the
late 1240s—see S. Grayzel and K. R. Stow’s two volumes on The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth
Century (Philadelphia and New York: Dropsie College and Jewish Theological Seminary, 1933 –
1989), esp. 1:113 – 14, 262– 67. Shortly thereafter, Pope Innocent IV added a new paragraph to
the traditional Constitutio pro Judeis, prohibiting acceptance of the new allegation, see ibid.,
1:118, 274– 75.
132 Robert Chazan

racist antisemitism that resulted in the murder of millions of Jews during the
twentieth century. Traditional Christian anti-Judaism laid a foundation for mod-
ern antisemitism; this traditional Christian anti-Judaism was expanded in new
and radical directions in the innovative circumstances of medieval Christian Eu-
rope. These new and radical directions constituted the more immediate backdrop
to the extreme anti-Jewish imagery of modern antisemitism, which developed in
much the same European areas that had spawned the more radical medieval
anti-Jewish canards.

Robert Chazan has served as Scheuer Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at
New York University for the past three decades. The focus of Prof. Chazan’s re-
search has been the history of the Jews in medieval western Christendom. His
most recent books are: From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism (Cambridge Universi-
ty Press, 2016) and Refugees or Migrants: Pre-Modern Jewish Population Move-
ment (Yale University Press, 2018).

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Fried, Johannes. The Middle Ages. Translated by Peter Lewis. Cambridge: Harvard University
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Kerstin Mayerhofer
Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’
Jew and Pre-Modern Notions of Identity
and Difference
The generation and tradition of cultural narratives is one of the bases in the
process of formation of identity. During the Christian Middle Ages, starting
with Augustine’s doctrine on the Jews, the so‐called “hermeneutical Jew” was
fashioned—a figure that assumed distinctive character, bodily characteristics,
and narrative significance in Christian thought and culture.¹ In dealing with
the specific traits of this hermeneutical Jew, Christians sought to strengthen
their own core beliefs and values, which they thought superior to their Jewish
‘Others.’ Narratives of Jewish false understanding of the Scripture, of their cus-
toms, or of ritual murder were discussed and disputed widely. These narratives
convey larger discourses on Jewish hereditary inferiority vis-à-vis Christian spiri-
tual and socio-cultural superiority. Various motifs support these narratives, from
the Jew’s stubbornness and blindness to uncover the Scripture’s true and ulti-
mate meaning, their economic wickedness as usurers and money-lenders, to
the repeated claim of Jewish usage of Christian blood for magical practice.
The discourse of Jewish inferiority manifests itself also in a second category
of narratives and motifs that focus on the ‘Jewish body.’ Following Paul’s depic-
tion of the Jews as carnal and in sharp contrast to the new and spiritually ad-
vanced Christian who could free himself from fleshly desires in his covenant
with Christ, the Jews’ bodies were claimed to differ fundamentally from the bod-
ies of Christians. They were marked by weakness and pallor, were diseased and
distorted, especially with regards to their sex and gender. All of these somatic
markers were considered a reflection of the Jews’ spiritual impurity and inferior-
ity. Pre-modern narratives and motifs surrounding the ‘Jewish body’ can be inter-
preted as transmitting a notion of religious identity and difference that is not
solely rooted in culture. Rather, they point to the formation of proto-racial con-
cepts of identity, which equated particular kinds of religious belief with particu-
lar kinds of bodies.² One of the motifs in this canon is the “men-struating”³ Jew—

 Cf. J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1999), 10 – 19.
 This article uses the terms “proto-racial” and “proto-racist” following the example of M. L.
Kaplan, Figuring Racism in Medieval Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
The terms are used as a delineation from the modern understanding of race and racism often

OpenAccess. © 2021 Kerstin Mayerhofer, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed

under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-008
136 Kerstin Mayerhofer

a notion of a regular flow of blood that Jews were considered to be afflicted with,
marking their religious, social, and somatic difference.
The motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ was established and shaped during
the twelfth and thirteenth century. Until the early sixteenth century, these voices
were usually clerical, discussing the very idea of the ‘men-struating’ Jew. How-
ever, already in the fourteenth century, contemporary medical knowledge and
scientific findings had brought forth a first somehow ‘scientific’ discussion of
Jewish ‘male menstruation.’ The ‘men-struating’ Jew left his purely figurative
context and the doctrine of spiritual inferiority embodied in this figure subse-
quently translated into social and legal spheres. The most prominent example
can be found in the establishment of the concept of “purity of blood”⁴ at the
Iberian Peninsula. Forced conversions of Jews (and Muslims) in Reconquista
Spain took place since the middle of the thirteenth century and intensified in

connected to the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and to the notion of biological differ-
ences between groups of people. Often times it is considered anachronistic to use the terms
“race” and “racism” when dealing with pre-modern sources and histories, based on the claim
that the pre-modern understanding of diversity was rooted in culture rather than in nature. In
order to avoid this contradiction, the usage of “proto-racial” and “proto-racist” is suitable as
it still acknowledges the fact that, indeed, ancient and pre-modern racism is not solely a cultural
concept. The present article operates with a definition of racism and race that draws on the cre-
ation of a hierarchy between groups as its constitutional element. According to this definition,
we can speak of racism and defining races whenever one group represents itself as superior to
another group of people. This hierarchy is persistent as is the claim of subordination grounded
in it. Other features, however, such as somatic markers or permanence of physiological and cul-
tural traits of identity, might vary. B. Isaac has shown that the defining element of ancient and
pre-modern understandings of racial difference, rooted both in religion and nature, however, is
the postulation of superiority and inferiority in relation to one another. Cf. B. Isaac, The Inven-
tion of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 1– 52.
Proto‐racial distinctions can function both with and without biological references and notions
about culture and nature do often intersect. According to A. Loomba, religion and theological
doctrine, too, have always played a central role in the proto-racist formation of identity based
on hierarchy. Cf. A. Loomba, “Race and the Possibilities of Comparative Critique,” New Literary
History 40, no. 3 (2009): 501– 22. Isaac’s and Loomba’s theories on pre-modern constructions of
race and on pre-modern racism and their continuation by Kaplan lie at the core of this article.
The same theories apply to gender as a pre-modern category of determination and identity and
both categories, race and gender, do strongly intersect in the figure of the ‘men-struating’ Jew.
 The term “men-struation” was coined by Gloria Steinem in her famous essay “If Men Could
Menstruate,” in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York: New American Library,
1983).
 Cf. M. Diemling, “‘Mit Leib und Seele?’ Überlegungen zum Körperbild jüdischer Konvertiten in
der Frühen Neuzeit,” Aschkenas 15, no. 2 (2006): 411.
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 137

the violence of 1391.⁵ The large number of “conversos” or “New Christians,” as

the Jewish converts were called, led to a belief that Jews were insincere in
their conversion, and pressed for a delineation of boundaries between ‘Old’
and ‘New Christians.’
In this article, I trace the Christian concept of Jewish hereditary inferiority
mapped onto the Jews’ bodies using the example of the ‘men-struating’ Jew. I
demonstrate how religion, physiology, sex, and gender as categories of social de-
termination intersect to create a notion of identity and difference, which can be
regarded as proto-racial. To do so, I will scrutinise the image of a bleeding Jewish
man with regards to the formation of a larger motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’
in sources from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century from theological, med-
ical, and political backgrounds.

What is Jewish ‘Male Menstruation’?

A corpus of texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth century describes a male Jew
suffering from a spontaneous and anomalous bleeding that reappears at regular
intervals. The bleeding is neither the result of injury nor of a chronic illness. If
physiological details are provided, they usually refer to the bleeding’s source
in the genital or anal region. Most of the sources associate this regular bleeding
in Jewish men with menstruation and use a broad vocabulary and imagery to
frame this notion. The association itself can be both explicit, by referring back
to women or the biological process of menstruation, and implicit, by alluding
to religio-cultural understandings of sex and gender.
The term Jewish ‘male menstruation’ itself was coined by Salo W. Baron
(1895 – 1989). In his magnum opus A Social and Religious History of the Jews,
he addressed the account of a ‘men-struating’ Jew by the Dominican Thomas
de Cantimpré (1201– 1270/2).⁶ Baron concluded that “few of Thomas’ readers
doubted the existence of such a Jewish malady often appearing as a sort of

 Jews on the Iberian Peninsula had experienced compulsory or forced conversions already
under Visigothic rule in the fifth century. P. Fredriksen’s article in the present volume suggests
that a notion of the Jews as an inferior ‘race’ is already established in Visigothic canon law
which had never fully accepted Jewish converts who, as a result, would always rank on a
lower legal and social level than “gothic” Christians. Cf. P. Fredriksen, “Divinity, Ethnicity, Iden-
tity: ‘Religion’ as a Political Category in Christian Antiquity,” 101– 20 of the present volume.
 Cf. Thomas Cantipratanus, Bonum Universale De Apibus, ed. G. Colvenere (Douai: Baltazar
Beller, 1627), II, 29.
138 Kerstin Mayerhofer

male menstruation […].”⁷ Thomas indeed reports of the spontaneous effusion of

blood from a Jew’s body that he traces back to a “vein of evildoing,” a “congen-
ital defect in the blood.”⁸ He established a genealogy of impurity associated with
the Jews’ alleged responsibility for the killing of Christ. According to Thomas, all
Jews are “tormented importunately by this [blood] flow without expiation.”⁹ The
term ‘male menstruation,’ however, does not appear in the original source. Tho-
mas only speaks of a “macula sanguinis” (“stain of blood”) without reference to
(female) menstruation.
Other sources provide us with a more distinct image. An anonymous treatise
titled Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre ierosolimitane ¹⁰ mentions a “fluxus
sanguinis” in Jewish men, which appears “singulis lunationibus”—“with every
[changing of the] moon.”¹¹ What the text must have in mind here is indeed fe-
male menses, which is linguistically linked both to month (lat. mensis) and
moon (gr. mēnē). It draws on ancient medical theory that linked the female men-
strual cycle with the lunar cycle.¹² What is especially important with regards to

 S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1967), 11:153.
 M. L. Kaplan, “‘His Blood Be on Us and on Our Children’: Medieval Theology and the Demise
of Jewish Somatic Inferiority in Early Modern England,” in The Cultural Politics of Blood, 1500 –
1900, ed. K. A. Coles et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 109.
 Cited from I. M. Resnick, “Cruentation, Medieval Anti-Jewish Polemic, and Ritual Murder,” An-
tisemitism Studies 3, no. 1 (2019): 104. The Latin original reads: “[…] ex maledictione parentum
[referring here to Matt 27:25 and the blood curse] currat adhuc in filios vena facinoris, per mac-
ula sanguinis; ut per hanc importune fluidam proles impia inexpiabiliter crucietur, quousque se
ream sanguinis Christi recognoscat poenitens, et sanetur,” ibid., 120 – 21.
 Cf. B. Z. Kedar, “The Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre ierosolimitane,” in The Crusades
and Their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. J. France and W. G. Zajac
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 111– 34.
 “Tractatus de locis,” app. 1, De Iudeis: “Quorum primi sunt Judei, homines obstinati, plus-
quam mulieres imbelles, ubique servi, singulis lunationibus fluxum sanguinis patientes,” ed.
Kedar, 130. Translation: “Like this, however, are the Jews, obstinate men, unwarlike, even
more than women, everywhere servants, with any [rise of the new] moon suffering from a
flux of blood.” Unless otherwise stated, all translations are mine. Cf. also Jacques de Vitry, His-
toria Orientalis, 82.160: “Imbelles enim et imbecilles facti sunt quasi mulieres. Unde singulis lu-
nationibus, ut dicitur, fluxum sanguinis patiuntur,” ed. Donnadieu, 328. Translation by I. M.
Resnick, On Roots of the Myth of Jewish Male Menses in Jacques de Vitry’s History of Jerusalem
(Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan-University Press, 1998), 22: “They are unwarlike and weak weak even as
women, and it is said that they have a flux of blood every month,”
 Cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 11.140: “The menstrual flow is a woman’s superfluous
blood: it is termed ‘menstrual,’ menstrua, because of the phase of the light of the moon by
which this flow comes about. The moon is called MENE in Greek.” Translation by W. D. Sharpe
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 139

the Tractatus de locis is the fact that this text has generally been considered to
the be the oldest mention of Jewish ‘male menstruation,’ dating roughly to 1170.
Even though we encounter the Jewish “fluxus sanguinis” in different varieties in
the various sources, the Tractatus de locis and its transmission by Jacques de
Vitry, which we shall turn to later, contributed largely to the conceptualisation
of the Jewish blood flow as a sort of ‘male menstruation,’ especially in modern
scholarship.
Yet, even when a medieval source uses the term ‘menstruation,’ we cannot
be sure what the authors really wanted to denote with this term. Menstruation
as a vaginal discharge, following a fixed cycle during the fertile lifespan of an
individual with respective reproductive organs (specifically the uterus and ova-
ries)—this pragmatic picture is certainly not what the contemporary authors
had in mind when attributing some sort of ‘menstrual’ bleeding to a Jewish
man. However, taboos surrounding the biological process of menstruation and
the menstrual cycle were important in conveying the meaning of some authors
who used the term.¹³ With regards to these issues, throughout this article, the
idiom Jewish ‘male menstruation’ and the ‘men-struating’ Jew will be applied

in Isidore of Seville: The Medical Writings, ed. W. D. Sharpe (Philadelphia: The American Philo-
sophical Society, 1964), 48.
 A variety of taboos surround blood and, especially, menstrual blood. The most common mi-
sogynist stigmas concerning menstruation are known from Pliny the Elder, “Remarkable Circum-
stances Connected with the Menstrual Discharge,” in Natural History, ch.13, 2151– 2. Among
other taboos, Pliny claimed sexual intercourse with a woman would produce stillborn, sick,
or otherwise monstrous offspring. This notion lies behind commonly known blood taboos in
both Jewish and Christian religious law. Both forbid sexual relations with a menstruant and un-
derstand menstruation itself as one of the ten curses of Eve. This led to an increased marginal-
isation of the menstruant regulated in the Mishna and Talmud’s Niddah laws, rendering the
menstruant unclean and impure for a specific timeframe before, during, and after the bleeding.
Church fathers like Jerome perpetuated the Talmudic laws and subsequently banned menstru-
ants from participation on church services. Cf. Jerome, “Against Helvidius,” in Saint Jerome: Dog-
matic and Polemical Works, vol. 53 of The Fathers of the Church, ed. J. N. Hritzu (Washington:
Catholic University of America Press, 1965); Theodore of Canterbury, The Penitential of Theodore
and the Iudicia Theodori, ed. T. Charles-Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Even today, menstrual taboos are exploited as the main causes for the exclusion of women from
religious positions of authority in both Judaism and (Catholic) Christianity. In addition, pre-
modern medical texts emphasised the notion of menstruosity, that is, a body’s ability to menstru-
ate, in comparison with monstrosity, that is, the production of a defective child. Menstrual blood
played a central, yet passive, role in conception and gestation, and any imperfection in a human
being was traced back to the defect of menstrual blood and thus, ultimately, to the imperfection
the menstruant altogether. Cf. J. Cadden, “‘Just Like a Woman’: Passivity, Defect, and Insatiabil-
ity,” in Nothing Natural Is Shameful: Sodomy and Science in Late Medieval Europe (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2014), 122– 28.
140 Kerstin Mayerhofer

as technical terms only (and are thus always put in quotation marks). Further
technical terms or terminology that has been coined in early modern or modern
scholarship (e. g., “biology”) without, terminologically, linking to the pre-
modern times, will be marked similarly.
We can understand the various manifestations of Jewish ‘male menstruation’
in pre-modern sources within the context of literary narrative and as parts of lit-
erary motif. A motif as the “minimal thematic unit”¹⁴ of a text is characterised by
repetitious intratextual and intertextual recurrence. It conveys a larger theme
that is mostly abstract and implicit in the more concrete figurative motif. Focus-
ing on the identification and analysis of motifs assists our interpretation of a
work as they point to a motivation, intention, or meaning outside of the text it-
self. For our corpus of sources, the image of a bleeding Jewish man supports the
motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation.’ This, in turn, contributes to the theme of
Jewish ‘Otherness,’ a deviation from Christian normative morality and physical-
ity that manifests itself in the aberration of the ‘Jewish’ body.
The theme of the ‘Jewish body,’ in turn, can be interpreted within the narra-
tive context of the individual human body as a symbol for a larger bound unit
like a religious or cultural community.¹⁵ Corporeal images and constructions
are useful means for the representation of social or religious values. The Jews
are not part of the Christian communal body, which is bound together by rituals
and shared hope for salvation. Figuratively, they were represented with lewd-
ness, sickly pallor, timidity, melancholy, and a bleeding ailment, all of which
helped to shape the ‘Jewish body’ which differs significantly from the Christian
body. As menstruants were generally believed to be uncontrollable and their
bodies unbound,¹⁶ the hermeneutical ‘men‐struating’ Jew too had to be pushed
to the margins of Christian society and could not be a member of a spiritual com-
munal Christian body. Jewish ‘male menstruation’ thus serves as a marker for al-
terity and inferiority inscribed into the Jewish body. Lastly, it alludes to many
more cultural narratives surrounding the body, gender, and sexuality promoted
by the importance of blood. The ‘men-struating’ Jew crosses two borders alike—
between male and female as well as between Jew and non-Jew. Both Jews and

 G. Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 55.

 Cf. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept[s] of Pollution and Taboo
(London: Routledge, 2002), 141– 59.
 Cf. e. g. B. Bildhauer, Medieval Blood (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006); idem, “Blood,
Jews and Monsters in Medieval Culture,” in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. B. Bildhauer and R.
Millis (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 75 – 97; and idem, “Medieval European Concep-
tions of Blood: Truth and Human Integrity: Medieval European Conceptions of Blood,” Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (2013): 57– 76.
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 141

women are considered inferior when measured against a discursive and norma-
tive image of humankind being Christian and male.
The category of gender is entwined with a proto-racial understanding of dif-
ference in the ‘men‐struating’ Jew. Both female menstruation and Jewish ‘male
menstruation’ are considered the result of divine punishment following an orig-
inal spiritual misdeed or sin. As such, they are transmitted from generation to
generation. Their inherited character becomes both congenital, indicated in its
‘biology,’ and genealogical. The ‘biological’ nature of the bleeding as well as
its cultural foundation conflate and result into the idea of spiritual inferiority in-
scribed in the body. As such they are used as reasoning and reinforcement of so-
cial oppression and political discrimination. Jews and women alike could thus
not fit into their societal order and had to be subordinate. Motifs like Jewish
‘male menstruation’ support the legal curtailment of the Jews’ social status ex-
erted by both church and secular authorities.

Foundations for and Perceptions of the

‘Men-Struating’ Jew
We encounter the ‘men-struating’ Jew in sources of four different genre groups:
sermon collections and exempla, medical texts, natural philosophical treatises,
and historiographical and hagiographical material. Representations of Jewish
‘male menstruation’ are mostly connected to a source’s generic intention and
use varying imagery.¹⁷ Terminology, that is, how the motif of Jewish ‘male men-
struation’ is verbalised, too, varies accordingly. Some sources use more implicit
terminology and abstract images, as we have encountered in Thomas de
Cantimpré’s Bonum Universale de Apibus. Other texts use vague vocabulary, al-
beit evoke clear images when juxtaposing the description of Jews with the
image of a weak woman, therein marking a moment of clear feminisation, as,
for example, in the Tractatus de Locis. Later sources express the notion of a
‘men-struating’ Jew more openly and describe Jews as “menstruosi […] quam
mulieres,”¹⁸ (“menstruous […] like women”) or claim that “omnes homines

 This observation is based on S. Gaunt, Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), who argues that genre is inextricably linked
with assumptions about gender. The same can be assumed about the representation of the
‘men-struating’ Jew in our corpus sources.
 “The Computus Iudaicus of 1342,” in Medieval Latin Christian Texts on the Jewish Calendar: A
Study with Five Editions and Translations, ed. C. P. E. Nothaft (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 427.
142 Kerstin Mayerhofer

Iudei ut mulieres menstrua patiuntur”¹⁹ (“all Jewish men, like women, suffer
from menstruation”). Especially the sources stemming from a more ‘scientific’
background, medical and natural philosophical treatises alike, established the
notion of a permanence of ‘Otherness’ through the continuity of the body.
All of the sources, including ‘scientific’ ones, are influenced by contempo-
rary Christian theology and doctrine. The mention of the ‘men-struating’ Jew
is inextricably linked to an exegesis of the so‐called “blood curse” from the Gos-
pel of Matthew. The phrase “His blood be on us and on our children,”²⁰ in
Matt 27:25, alludes to the Jews’ willingness to accept liability for Jesus’ death.
It is this scriptural passage that serves as foundation for linking the Jew’s sinful-
ness with the symbol of blood—as the Jews had spilled Christ’s blood, they were
now afflicted with a bleeding from their bodies in return. In referencing those
Jews present at the crucifixion, the notion of the hereditary nature of the bleed-
ing as well as of genealogical guilt is emphasised. The understanding of the
bleeding as shameful and humiliating is amplified in a subsequent exegesis of
Matt 27:25 in reference to Ps 78:66. Many sources cite Ps 78:66 [Vulgate 77:66]
and the account of God’s punishment of the Philistines with some sort of anal
disease verbatim: “et percussit hostes suos retrorsum obprobrium sempiternum
dedit eos”—“And he smote his enemies in the hinder parts: he put them to a per-
petual reproach.” This passage, in turn, has previously often been read in light of
1 Sam 5:6, and the mentioned disease in Ps 78:66 is often interpreted as bleeding
haemorrhoids.²¹ Subsequent varieties of the motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation,’
evoking images of bleeding haemorrhoids, take their basis in this specific read-
ing of Matt 27:25. Regardless of the number of scriptural passages used as spiri-
tual proof-texts, all sources conclude that Jewish ‘male menstruation’ is the re-
sult of divine punishment in vengeance for the passion of Christ. The
bleeding, however it may be specified, is considered congenital and “brought
on by the Jews’ participation in the crucifixion, as the source of the bleeding dis-
ease.”²² In the further course, it is regarded as the source of the Jews’ physical

 Cecco d’Ascoli, “Cicchi esculani viri clarissimi in Spheram Mundi enarratio,” in The Sphere
of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators, ed. L. Thorndike (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1949), 409.
 Unless otherwise stated, all English translations are from KJV.
 1 Sam 5:6 (KJV): “But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he de-
stroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.” While the
Hebrew ‫‘( עפלים‬ofalim) simply means something growing where it shouldn’t, for example, a
lump or a tumour, most passages in the Hebrew Bible using the term are commonly read as re-
ferring to haemorrhoids (throughout 1 Sam and in Deut 28:27).
 Kaplan, “‘His Blood Be on Us and on Our Children’,ˮ 109.
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 143

weakness,²³ their sickly pallor,²⁴ and specific ‘Jewish’ ailments such as dysentery
and dropsy, all of which are equally shameful.
Images like these underline pre-modern proto-racist notions of difference.
Particular faiths are equated with particular somatic attributes and both are as-
sociated with distinct moral qualities. While the qualities of faith are hidden in-
side and unseen, somatic markers help to render them visible. In the case of the
‘men-struating’ Jew, a discourse of hereditary guilt and genealogical inferiority is
embodied in a physiological process that, as such, too, is considered humiliat-
ing, shameful, and impure. The repetition of particular motifs and stereotypes
reinforced the theme of the Jews as misguided enemies to good Christians.
Body-related motifs, such as Jewish ‘male menstruation,’ aimed at emphasising
the Jews’ carnality in contrast to the spiritually disembodied Christian. The mo-
ment of feminisation, manifested in the equation of the Jewish “fluxus sangui-
nis” with (female) menstruation also played a key role: the Jewish male appears
as uncontrollable and melancholic, unfit to exert his male authority hence sub-
ordinate—like women. The ‘men-struating’ Jew serves as a hermeneutical figure
embodying discourses of ungodliness as well as of spiritual and societal inferi-
ority.
In the following, I turn to two pre-modern sources from both a clerical and a
medical background. Both of these were known and used widely and had multi-
ple translations and reprints way into the modern times. They promote two dif-
ferent varieties of the motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation,’ which, as we shall
see, resonate largely with their genres. Both sources, however, also help us to
understand how various notions surrounding the ‘men-struating’ Jew, both on
a theological and a ‘scientific’ level, intersected to fit a larger narrative frame
and support the proto-racial discourse of hereditary inferiority. Taking a look
onto early modern sources from the Iberian Peninsula as a third example will
document the translation of this doctrine into social and legal spheres. All of
these sources demonstrate how the proto-racial notion of difference manifested
in the ‘men-struating’ Jew is shaped using three ideological mechanisms: (theo-
logical) universalisation, (‘scientific’) naturalisation, and (socio-political) nor-
malisation.

 Cf. Caesarius Heisterbacensis, Caesarii Heisterbacensis monachi ordinis Cisterciensis dialogus

miraculorum, Distinctio Secunda, capitulum XXIII (II: 23), ed. J. Strange (Cologne: Sumptibus J.
M. Heberle, 1851), 1:92.
 Cf. Hugo Cardinalis, Repertorium apostillarum utriusque testamenti domini Hugonis Cardina-
lis (Basel: Ioannes Amerbachius, Ioannes petri & Ioannes froben, 1504), 2:187v.
144 Kerstin Mayerhofer

Universalisation: Jacques de Vitry’s History of

the East (1216 – 1221)
The idea of the ‘men-struating’ Jew is best known from a mid-thirteenth century
source by French Dominican and later Bishop of Acre Jacques de Vitry (c. 1160/
70 – 1240). Jacques de Vitry has been described as “one of the great medieval cul-
tural historians,”²⁵ and played a crucial role in reporting about the crusades to
the Holy Land, as well as on religious trends in Europe. His Abbreviated History
of Jerusalem (Historia Hierosolimitana abbreviata) was commissioned by Pope In-
nocent III aiming at an account of the progress of the Fifth Crusade and an over-
all historiography of the Holy Land. Originally intended as a tripartite work,
Jacques managed to finish only two volumes, the History of the West (Historia Oc-
cidentalis) and the History of the East (Historia Orientalis). The widespread dis-
semination and reception of the History of the East was a response to the
large demand for information about the East. In offering detailed descriptions
of the foreign lands, peoples, their rituals and wonders, Jacques satisfied his
readers’ curiosity concerning ‘Others.’ His work also served a reconfirmation
of his readers’ own Christian or regional identity, with his “descriptions of devi-
ant rites and doctrines to reaffirm their [sc. the Christian readers’] own identity
as orthodox Latin Christians or to compare with domestic heresies against which
crusades were often waged.”²⁶
In books HOr 74– 83, Jacques deals at length with all different peoples living
and dwelling in the Holy Land, starting with the various Christian denomina-
tions (HOr 74– 81) and concluding with the non-Christians and “other Jewish
people who are dispersed in all lands of the world”²⁷ (HOr 82). These Jews
were descendants of the people present at Christ’s crucifixion who had taken
the liability for his death as Matthew claims in his account of the scene.
These, according to Jacques de Vitry, would have consequently lost their “appe-
tite for combat” and would have become “weak and faint like women” as well as
being “afflicted with a loss of blood” at every changing of the moon:

Finally, there are other Jews, the descendants of those who have cried out “His blood be
upon us and upon our children!” […] They are unwarlike and weak even as women, and
it is said that they have a flux of blood every month. God has smitten them in their hinder

 J. F. Hinnebusch, The Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry (Fribourg: University Press,

1972), 11.
 Ibid., 59.
 Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. J. Donnadieu (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 82, 324.
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 145

parts [Ps 78:66], and put them to perpetual opprobrium. After they slew their true brother,
Abel, they were made wanderers and fugitives over the earth, cursed like Cain, with a trem-
bling head, that is, a quaking heart, fearing both day and night, not believing in his life.
(HOr 82, 160)²⁸

We can see from this passage why Jacques’ claim lies at the core of the notion of
Jewish ‘male menstruation,’ documenting a clear conflation of theology and
medicine, which shapes the image of ‘the Jew’ as inherently different from the
predominantly Christian male majority society. It is necessary for Jacques to
add that the Jewish “fluxus sanguinis” occurs monthly, like in women. Therein,
he firmly establishes the connection between a particular Jewish ailment and a
general physiological condition associated with the female. Evoking all the ster-
eotypes surrounding menstruation, such as uncontrollability, physical and men-
tal weakness, and general sinfulness resulting from Eve’s original misdeed,
serves as a widely accepted theological foundation for Jacques’ further explica-
tions. By bringing into context not only Ps 78:66 but also Cain and Abel
(Gen 4:15), Jacques clears up any doubts that the regular Jewish blood flow,
like menstruation, is a divine punishment. As the Jews had spilled Christ’s
blood (who, typologically, is often represented by the figure of Abel), they
were now condemned to suffering the regular loss of blood. All of the mentioned
somatic details—the bleeding’s monthly periodicity, its link to divine punish-
ment, and Cain’s restless wandering “with a trembling head”—corroborate the
image of feminised and, thus, spiritually and physiologically inferior Jew. His
feminine traits, both physiological and psychological with the reference to faint-
ness and melancholia in the image of Cain’s trembling head, push the Jew into a
gender grey zone at the margins of Christian society. His spiritual inferiority and
general ‘Otherness’ had become visible.
Jacques’ is the only thirteenth-century description of a bleeding that recurs
monthly and is linked to the lunar cycle. The popularity of his text helped convey
the image of a feminised Jew. The most influential source to follow Jacques de
Vitry’s depiction is the Dominican Thomas de Cantimpré’s Bonum Universale

 Cited in Resnick, On Roots, 22. The original reads: “Alii autem Iudaei de quibus patres eorum
clamaverunt: Sanguis eius super nos et super filios nostros [. . .] Imbelles enim et imbecilles facti
sunt quasi mulieres. Unde singulis lunationibus, ut dicitur, fluxum sanguinis patiuntur. Percus-
sit enim eos Deus in posteriora et opprobrium sempiternum dedit illis. Postquam enim fratrem
suum, verum Abel, occiderunt, facti sunt vagi et profugi super terram sicut maledictus Cain, ha-
bentes caput tremulum, id est cor pavidum, die ac nocte timentes et vite sue non credentes.”
Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, 328.
146 Kerstin Mayerhofer

de Apibus. ²⁹ For Jacques too, the Jews’ bodily abjection is of divine origin, how-
ever, it is the analogy to the bleeding of female bodies which promotes a notion
of impurity and shamefulness. In Christian understanding of the time, ‘female’
served as much as a hermeneutical category of determination as ‘Jew’ did. Scho-
lastic and patristic literature had shaped a notion of women using a number of
ideological mechanisms. Stereotypical traits like fragility and fickleness were at-
tributed to the female supported and reinforced by reading of the Scripture. Ex-
egesis of Genesis 3 and Eve’s first ‘sin’ served as basis for the notion of female
spiritual weakness and malleability and women were subsequently identified
with the individual woman Eve. This resulted in an amalgamation and general-
isation of spiritual character traits assigned to the female which, in turn, were
claimed to be reflected also in the female body. This universalisation was thus
subsequently corroborated by a naturalisation of the specific processes of a fe-
male body—menstruation, conception, and gestation. All of these processes
were understood as divinely inflicted, since, again, Eve had been the first ever
woman to experience all of them as a result of divine punishment. ‘Natural’
and ‘God‐given’ were largely understood as synonyms. Subjection of women to
men, therefore, was claimed to be a logical consequence and an equally ‘natural’
phenomenon.
In the case of the ‘men-struating’ Jew, notions of both the hermeneutical Jew
and the hermeneutical woman align. Themes of alterity and aberration from a
male Christian norm reflect in the motif of the bleeding body, be it Jewish or fe-
male. In both cases, the bleeding is the result of divine punishment and points to
a discursive understanding of both Jews and women as spiritually inferior, he-
reditarily guilty, and subjected to servitude. Jacques text juxtaposes Jews and
women and conflates the regular bleeding in Jewish man with (female) menstru-
ation. Brought together with the stereotypical image of the weak woman, Jacques
offers a derogatory description of the Jews that is universally applicable, ground-
ed in authoritative theology, and can thus serve both as proof and reason for
manifest legal restrictions against the Jews.³⁰ This image also stands in a

 Cf. J. L. Bird, “The Historia Orientalis of Jacques de Vitry: Visual and Written Commentaries
as Evidence of a Text’s Audience, Reception, and Utilization,” Essays in Medieval Studies 20,
no. 1 (2003): 58. Thomas, however, had not gone as far as to associate the regular Jewish
blood flow with menstruation, as we have seen. His allusion to Matt 27:25 and a sermon by
Augustine himself sufficed for Thomas to understand the bleeding ailment as proof for the
Jews’ hereditary guilt and spiritual inferiority.
 Jacques wrote only a few years after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which aimed at re-
forms, curtailing Jews’ socio-political advancement and at crusade.
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 147

sharp contrast to the normative image of Christian identity—morally and spiritu-

ally edified, and, above all, male.

Naturalisation: Bernard de Gordon’s Lily of

Medicine (1303/5)
The increase in ‘scientific’ knowledge and medical writing in urban and univer-
sity contexts during the thirteenth and fourteenth century led to a translation of
the ‘men-struating’ Jew into another theoretical sphere. Contemporary medical
writing appealed largely to authoritative writings of the past and thus brought
forth a corpus of texts that are also deeply rooted in theologisation. Theological
tropes and doctrine powerfully influenced the pre-modern understanding of the
human body and of somatic diversity. Most of the medical treatises that mention
the ‘men-struating’ Jew consider his bleeding a natural phenomenon with natu-
ral causes. These were based on the theory of the four humours as it was devel-
oped by Hippocrates and Galen. Being hot or cold, moist or dry were the essen-
tial qualities of every body. Health depended on keeping these four humours in
balance. A hot and dry body was the most desirable as it allowed food to be easi-
ly turned into bodily fluids. The qualities of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness
were connected to the four humours of yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and black
bile, which contributed to the formation of fluids like mucus, urine, menstrual
blood, or semen. Each of these discharges was also connected to proper diges-
tion, with semen being the most refined of bodily fluids, resulting from men’s
better concoction of food. Menstrual blood was also processed from food but re-
mained less pure due to women’s general cold and moist condition. Its flow out
of the body served as means of purging the body of excess cold and moisture.
Men who suffered from regular bleeding (usually resulting from haemorrhoids)
like women, were believed to be too cold to properly digest foods. As Jews
were generally believed to have a more melancholic complexion, resulting
from a spicy diet and a more sedentary lifestyle, regular (haemorrhoidal) bleed-
ing was thought to be not only common among them but most natural.³¹ There-
fore, medical sources hardly ever describe Jewish ‘male menstruation’ as unclean
or shameful leakage as female menstruation was. They also, mostly, do not en-

 Cf. P. Biller, “Views of Jews from Paris around 1300: Christian or ‘Scientific’?” in Christianity
and Judaism: Papers Read at the 1991 Summer Meeting and the 1992 Winter Meeting of the Eccle-
siastical History Society, ed. D. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 197– 99; P. Biller, “A ‘Scientific’
View of Jews from Paris around 1300,” Micrologus 9 (2001): 137– 68.
148 Kerstin Mayerhofer

gage with theological reasoning for Jewish ‘male menstruation’ and are more
concerned with explanations grounded in practical medicine. Regardless of its
physical location, the bleeding is called “fluxus sanguinis,” or even simply
“fluxus,” and was compared to female menses. A poor diet could cause a super-
fluity of melancholic discharges that the body had to purge. As means of purg-
ing, haemorrhoidal and menstrual bleeding were often interchangeable in med-
ical discussions.³² Yet, some sources paint a more colourful and a more
theologically motivated and reinforced picture of Jewish ‘male menstruation.’
Most notably among these is Bernard de Gordon’s Lily of Medicine (Lilium Medic-
inae).
Little is known about Bernard de Gordon’s early life and education, but he
became an influential teacher of medicine at the University of Montpellier be-
tween 1283 and roughly 1308. During that time he compiled the Lily of Medicine.
Written between 1303 and 1305, the Lily of Medicine is a compendium of diseases
with their symptoms, causes, and treatments, Bernard deals with illnesses such
as scabies, splenic and pestilential fever, and leprosy. Its comprehensiveness and
clarity made the Lily of Medicine “a prized encyclopedia that was aimed at giving
broad access to medicine.”³³ It served as a standard textbook at Montpellier and
Vienna universities well into the early modern times.
The compendium’s seven sections follow a clear structure from a definition
of the disease to its causes, symptoms, treatment, and, if questions remained, a
further clarification. Such clarification appears in Bernard’s discussion of the
‘men-struating’ Jew in his chapter on haemorrhoids and fistulae. According to
Bernard, Jews

[…] suffer an immoderate flow of blood from hemorrhoids, for three reasons: generally, be-
cause they are in idleness, and for that reason the melancholic superfluities are gathered.
Second, they are generally in fear and anxiety, and for this reason melancholic blood is in-
creased, according to this [saying] of Hippocrates: “Fear and timidity, if they have a lot of
time [to work], generate the melancholic humor.” Third, this occurs as a divine punish-
ment, according to [the text], “And he struck them in their posteriors and gave them
over to perpetual opprobrium.” (Lily of Medicine, 5.21)³⁴

 Cf. e. g. Albertus Magnus, Sancti doctoris ecclesiae Alberti Magni Ordinis Fratrum Praedicato-
rum episcopi opera omnia, vol. 12, ed. B. Geyer (Münster: Aschendorff, 1955); or Theodoricus de
Cervia, The Surgery of Theodoric: Ca A.D. 1267, ed. E. Campbell and J. Colton, 2 vols. (New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955–1960).
 L. Demaitre, “Bernard de Gordon,” in Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Ency-
clopedia (New York: Routledge, 2005), 85.
 “Iudei ut plurimum patiuntur fluxum haemorrhoid. propter tria, et quia communiter sunt in
ocio, et ideo congregantur superfluitates melancholicae. Secundo, quod communiter sunt in
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 149

Bernard follows the classical Hippocratic teaching about the four humours here
according to which a superfluity of the melancholic humour needs to be purged
from the body by means of bleeding. Containment of these superfluous melan-
cholic humours would result in a variety of ailments, from skin diseases to lep-
rosy, and from dropsy to consumption. Many of these diseases were associated
with the Jews, which Bernard understands as proof for his claim about the super-
fluity of melancholic blood in Jews. He draws on two strands of earlier scientific
traditions regarding haemorrhoids and the regular bleeding resulting from them.
Like many of his predecessors, Bernard traces the bleeding haemorrhoids to an
accumulation of melancholic blood resulting from lack of motion and bad diges-
tion. However, he describes the Jews’ melancholic condition as arising from im-
mobility, timidity, and a constant state of apprehension. This lifestyle, according
to Bernard but following Hippocrates, resulted in an imbalance of the bodily flu-
ids. While other medical treatises saw bleeding haemorrhoids in all men as nat-
ural, Bernard argues that the condition is natural, yet found especially in Jews as
a result of divine punishment. He alludes is to Ps 78:66 and references God’s
punishment of the Philistines with an anal disease, commonly interpreted as
haemorrhoids. While Bernard omits Matt 27:25 as the standard exegetical
proof-text for the so-called “Jewish flux,” the textual tradition, which we have
already encountered in Jacques de Vitry’s report, suggests a clear allusion here
to the motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation.’ Thus, for Bernard, and for his read-
ers, the Jews’ haemorrhoidal bleeding was no longer a result of humoral compo-
sition alone; it was a punishment for their religious failings that had culminated
in the crucifixion of Christ. We see here how theories of ‘nature’ intersect with
theological notions. Again, as in the example of physiological processes of the
female body such as menstruation, ‘nature’ is understood and works as a syno-
nym for ‘God-givenness.’ Medical and ‘scientific’ underpinning however, aimed
at the mechanism of naturalisation in terms of ‘biologisation,’ that is, connected
to the human body and its functions.
Bernard de Gordon was a physician and teacher of medicine not an exegete.
His text shows that a motif like Jewish ‘male menstruation’ reached beyond theo-
logical debate alone. Theological understandings of physiological processes
were inextricably linked with medical knowledge and natural philosophical
ideas of the human body and its functions. Pre-modern concepts of digestion,
excretion, and reproduction had theological and physiological dimensions.

timore et anxietate, ideo multiplicatur sang. melancholicus, iuxta illud Hipp. Timor et pusilani-
mitas si multum tempus habuerint, melancholicum faciunt hum. Tertio quia hoc ex ultione div-
ina, iuxta illud. Et percussit eos in posteriori dorsi, opporbrium sempiternum dedit illis.”
Demaitre, Doctor Bernard de Gordon, 9.
150 Kerstin Mayerhofer

The Lily of Medicine was widely used by medical practitioners and notions like
Jewish ‘male menstruation’ thus moved into a medical domain. The ‘men-
struating’ Jew gained in currency and became naturalised as a consequence.³⁵
On the other hand, Bernard’s example also demonstrates how Christianity per-
vaded every aspect of culture and knowledge of the period. Physicians and nat-
ural philosophers wrote on the basis of their predecessors and reiterated their
theological preconceptions, stereotypes, and universalisations. Bernard’s expla-
nation for Jewish ‘male menstruation’ reads much like a “suppressed tautology”:
theological notions about Jewish somatic alterity are understood as a ‘natural’
phenomenon, that is both a biological and a divinely inflicted condition. This
condition, in turn, is explained within a exegetical framework to support themes
of Jewish hereditary guilt and inferiority. It thus “functions both as a projection
onto and a lens for reading Jewish bodies as rendered inferior through the pun-
ishment and its attendant shame.”³⁶ Again, we see a parallel with female bodies
punished with distinct somatic processes, like menstruation, to shame them for
the ‘sin’ of the first woman Eve. In both examples we can also see how the mech-
anisms of universalisation and naturalisation intersect to support this discourse
of hereditary guilt, shame, and inferiority.

Normalisation: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew on the

Iberian Peninsula
By the end of the fifteenth century, the motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ had
gained momentum in various literary contexts. The figure of the ‘men-struating’
Jew had entered a canon of motifs supporting the theme of Jewish ‘Otherness.’
The correspondence of spiritual and somatic inferiority could now be deployed
also on a real and material level. Reconquista Spain serves as an example of how
the motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ was employed within the discourse of
blood purity, genealogical lines, and ultimately, a new understanding of race,
which contributed to the normalisation of discrimination against Jews on a so-
cial, political, and legal level.

 Cf. G. Pomata, “Menstruating Men: Similarity and Difference of the Sexes in Early Modern
Medicine,” in Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History
from Antiquity through Early Modern Europe, ed. V. Finucci and K. Brownlee (Durham: Duke Uni-
versity Press, 2001), 109 – 52.
 Kaplan, “‘His Blood Be on Us and on Our Children’,” 113.
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 151

In the course of the fifteenth century, belief in conversion and baptism de-
clined as more Iberian Jews (and Muslims) converted to Christianity. Now that
it was no longer possible to draw clear lines between community borders,
means of distinguishing one from the other in terms of somatic aspects and ‘bio-
logical’ facts became a necessity. The doctrine of “purity of blood,” formalised
by the Inquisition in the limpieza de sangre decrees by the end of the fifteenth
century, proclaimed that “purity of faith” was manifested in the “purity of
blood” and hence tried to trace back “Jewish blood” in New Christians. Follow-
ing these decrees, only people with a purely “Old Christian” lineage could hold
civic offices. Conversos were considered to be culturally and socially inferior and,
subsequently, unclean on a ‘biological’ level. Their uncleanliness and inferiority
was considered inherited in connection with their religious descent. ‘Biological’
notions and a proto-racial understanding of difference were the result of mass
conversions, which “heightened anxieties of Christian identity.”³⁷ Conversos
were increasingly considered an “ever-present danger to the faith, […] which
all but excluded the chance of conversion and incorporation.”³⁸ The notion of
“purity of blood” served a proto-racist construction of social identity in which
the “New Christians,” conversos and “Judaisers,” that is, conversos who were
claimed to secretly adhere to their old Jewish faith, were painted as initiators
of political and social anarchy. The limpieza de sangre decrees following this
ideological discourse were designed to systematically curtail the Jews’ (and Mus-
lims’) social advancement and prevent the Christian majority society from pur-
ported socio‐political danger. The ‘men-struating’ Jew figures in a number of
texts from the Iberian Peninsula from the fifteenth until the seventeenth centu-
ries with his bleeding as a sin of somatic difference and general sinfulness.
Among the first to mention the ‘men-struating’ Jew is Alonso de Espina in
his Fortalitium Fidei of 1460. The Franciscan Catholic Bishop, preacher, and writ-
er de Espina reflects on the reasons for ritual murder and draws back to Thomas
de Cantimpré’s report of 1267. He cites Thomas almost verbatim, mentioning the
“stain of blood” with which Jews would be marked through all generation.³⁹ Con-
versos, who clung to their old faith, bore this sign. The Fortalitium was highly in-
fluential in discussions of conversos for centuries. In the seventeenth century, the
motif was increasingly combined with legal language, seeking to create “a no-

 Loomba, “Race and the Possibilities of Comparative Critique,ˮ 506.

 M. Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1999), 28.
 Cf. de Espina, Fortalitium Fidei, III, cons. VII, 3:5.
152 Kerstin Mayerhofer

tion of ‘impure blood’ as referring to one’s family or caste.”⁴⁰ Medical treatises,

like in the fourteenth century, tried to bring together theological reasons and
physiological explanations for Jewish ‘male menstruation.’ The bleeding, espe-
cially in Judaisers, would serve as a sign and revelation of their “hidden, rejected
religion.”⁴¹ While in Central Europe, during the sixteenth century, medical writ-
ing had already very much distanced itself from religion, this was not the case in
Iberia. In 1495, Bernard de Gordon’s Lily of Medicine was translated into Castilian
and provided the basis of many following claims about Jewish ‘male menstrua-
tion’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, again linking theological and
‘scientific’ theories of identity.
The ‘men-struating’ Jew figures most prominently in the work of Spanish
court physician and jurisconsult Juan de Quiñones de Benavente (d. 1646). Fol-
lowing the auto-da-fé in Madrid in 1632, Quiñones issued a treatise on Jewish
‘male menstruation.’ Francisco de Andrada, a twenty-eight year old converso
from Portugal who was convicted of Judaising, was said to suffer from a “flow
of blood which nature had given to the women and which is called menstrua-
tion.”⁴² Quiñones draws on his predecessors to provide both theological and
medical reasons for Jewish bleeding.⁴³ Jewish ‘male menstruation’ supported
the concept of Jewish impurity and inferiority, which could not be eradicated
by baptism. Quiñones concludes accordingly that “when they [sc. the Jews] are
baptised, the [stain of] blood is removed and when they fall back to their errors
[sc. erroneous beliefs], the ignominious stain, which they bear will return.”⁴⁴
Quiñones was the first to also combine the motif’s theological reasoning
with legal language. He lobbied for freeing the medical profession—his own—

 J. L. Beusterien, “Jewish Male Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century Spain,” Bulletin of the

History of Medicine 73, no. 3 (1999): 447.
 Ibid., 449.
 J. Quiñones de Benavente, Relación del auto de la fee que se celebro en la villa de Madrid
Corte de su Magestad domingo quarto de Jullio de mill y seiscientos y treinta y dos años, s.a.
[1632?], 1r–1v. The original Spanish reads: “[…] fue Francisco de Andrada, de quien se dixo,
que padecia todos los meses el fluxo de sangre, que naturaleza dio a las mugeres, que llaman,
Menstruo.”
 Julia Gebke offers a thoroughly executed close reading of Quiñones’ Memorial, identifying
his sources and placing it into the context of the biologisation of Christian anti-Jewish and, in-
creasingly, proto-racist antisemitic polemic. Cf. J. Gebke, (Fremd)Körper Die Stigmatisierung der
Neuchristen im Spanien der Frühen Neuzeit (Wien: Böhlau, 2019), 198 – 219.
 J. de Quiñones, Memorial de Juan de Quiñones dirigido a F. Antonio de Sotomayor, Inquisidor
General. Sobre el caso de Francisco de Andrada, sospechoso de pertenecer a la raza judía, discu-
tiendo sobre los medios de conocer y perseguir a ella, s.l. s.a. [1632], 21r–21v. The original Spanish
reads: “que baptizandose se les quita la sangre: y si bueluen a reincidir en sus errores, les buel-
ue de nueuo esta infame macula que padecen.”
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 153

from conversos by accusing them of impurity of blood. Motifs like Jewish ‘male
menstruation’ were useful in this context and were applied in inquisitorial
cases.⁴⁵ This general assumption of a genealogical impurity of Jewish blood
was thus subsequently transferred to the social sphere of kinship and class sta-
tus. This development of a cultural and ‘biological’ understanding of identity on
the Iberian Peninsula is rooted in socio-political anxiety. Christians, Jews, and
Muslims had lived next to each other in Reconquista Spain, and it was largely
impossible to distinguish between members of the communities on physical
terms. Visible markers of faith, such as a distorted body image, were no longer
sufficient. Especially following the possibility and reality of conversion, it was
necessary to find a means of distinction “that lay deeper inside.”⁴⁶ Religion as
a cultural category of identity was now not only connected to physical appear-
ance but came to reside within the body. As such, it could no longer be separated
from it and resulted in the classification of communities, families, and individ-
uals on an increasingly ‘racial’ level. Inheritance was equated with ‘biology’
and the processes of universalisation and naturalisation intersected to normalise
and institutionalise the socio-political and socio-economic marginalisation and
discrimination of these groups of people.

Conclusion
The ‘men-struating’ Jew serves as one example of how the ancient Christian
claim of Jewish spiritual inferiority, of their hereditary guilt, and perpetual ser-
vitude were associated with a distinct somatic image beginning in the twelfth
century. Theological differences were mapped onto the body to gain outward ap-
pearance and visibility. An image of ‘the Jew’ was created that is inherently dif-
ferent from the image of ‘the Christian,’ translating both spiritual and physiolog-
ical aberrations. Somatic differences and anomalies were used as motifs to
transmit the theme of Jewish ‘Otherness’ and serve a discourse of their overall
inferiority vis-à-vis Christian superiority. This doctrine was subsequently trans-
lated into both social and legal spheres throughout pre-modern Europe. The
motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ was applied in sources of various genres
to support and reinforce the legal and socio-economic subjection of Jews.
While images surrounding the motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ may vary ac-
cording to the sources’ generic intention and their authors’ motivation, as we

 Cf. Beusterien, “Jewish Male Menstruation,” 456.

 Loomba, “Race and the Possibilities of Comparative Critique,ˮ 506.
154 Kerstin Mayerhofer

have seen, the motif’s underlying discourse was firmly established and trans-
ported self-evidently through the ages.
An important aspect of the motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ is the cultur-
al importance of blood. It had been promoted by theology across a range of cul-
tural and theological narratives, from Christ’s bleeding at the cross to Mary’s im-
maculate conception, from blood lineage denoting kinship to martyrdom in
battle. With regards to the ‘men-struating’ Jew, blood serves both as marker
and binding element to reflect the Jews’ heredity guilt: as they took the liability
for the spilling of Christ’s blood at the crucifixion, they are condemned to suffer
from a similar blood loss. Evoking scriptural personae like Cain, who is marked
by blood as a result of his shedding of blood, serves to corroborate the notion of
the hereditary nature of Jewish servitude grounded in their spiritual inferiority.
It does not come as a surprise that the Jewish “fluxus sanguinis” was asso-
ciated with menstruation. The images surrounding the motif of Jewish ‘male
menstruation’ vary from haemorrhoidal bleeding to an uncontrollable regular
purging of the body. All of these images are associated with embarrassment
and shame—stereotypes that draw back to ancient Christian exegesis concerned
with the female and creating a distinct image of ‘women.’ Its construction fol-
lowed specific ideological mechanisms—stereotyping, universalising, and natu-
ralising. The church fathers discuss women’s inferior status based on their ster-
eotypic traits such as weakness and fickleness. These topoi could easily be used
as a “shaming device”⁴⁷ also for men who would not fit into the normative frame
of the Christian male. We encountered this practice in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia
Orientalis, which explicitly associates the Jews with female weakness. The theme
of women’s spiritual inferiority manifested itself in the church fathers’ call for
the subjection of women to men, a claim which is corroborated also by their ex-
egesis of Genesis 3. Eve’s ‘sin’ was understood as proof for women’s spiritual and
mental weakness and resulted in a “limitation of women’s activities and sphere
of authority.”⁴⁸ Here, the process of universalisation becomes apparent as all
women are identified with the first woman Eve and her ‘weakness’ and ‘sinful-
ness’—a process very similar to the identification of the Jews present at Christ’s
crucifixion with all following generations who inherit their ancestors guilt. Last-
ly, Christian exegesis claimed that the subjection of women to men, based on
their stereotypic weakness and corroborated by the amalgamation of all
women to one ‘woman’ identified with Eve, was thus a ‘natural’ phenomenon.

 E. A. Clark, “Ideology, History, and the Construction of ‘Woman’ in Late Ancient Christian-
ity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2, no. 2 (1994): 169.
 Ibid., 168.
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 155

It set by the side of many other categories designating bodily necessities, such as
food, sexual relations, reproduction and bodily emissions. ‘Nature’ often reflect-
ed back to God as the reason for and initiator of all of these matters concerning
the body, sex, and gender. Menstruation as one of these processes too is God-
given and thus ‘natural,’ but since it is also the result of the first ‘sin’ it is some-
thing shameful and impure. Jewish ‘male menstruation’ too is divinely inflicted
and undisputable in the same way. As we have seen in Bernard de Gordon’s Lily
of Medicine, a ‘scientific’ understanding of a regular blood flow as means of
purging shifted from a natural to a supernatural and, ultimately, aberrant phe-
nomenon when linked to the idea of divine punishment. Both Jewish and female
bodies are characterised subsequently by this abjection, their bleeding is now
considered humiliating and shameful. It serves as an image for the transmission
of the theme of alterity grounded in their spiritual inferiority.
The somatic marking of the Jews could and came to serve increasingly as a
means of reinforcing theological doctrine and supporting legal and social restric-
tions. The example from the Iberian Peninsula showed that when the church
failed to exert power over the Jews, ‘scientific’ narratives were developed to
map the Jews’ discursive inferiority onto their bodies. The limpieza de sangre de-
crees sought to ensure “purity of blood” in terms of blood lineage, however, the
notion of kinship is clearly conflated with age-old themes of alterity and motifs
of a distinct and diseased body. Rendering the Jews’ inferiority visible helped to
fix the ideological discourse, especially when Jews posed a threat to the Christi-
an majority community in their social and political advancement.⁴⁹ The con-
struction of a visible identity with certain somatic features inextricably linked
to it also shows, however, how alterity and diversity were understood in
proto-racial terms already in pre-modern times. Based on a figural interpretation
of scriptural personae such as Cain or later appearances such as the ‘men-
struating’ Jew, a proto-racial idea was established that linked everyone non-
Christian, non-white, and predominantly, non-male to notions of ‘Otherness,’
shamefulness, and wholesale inferiority. The discourses that had developed in
theology already in late ancient times in scholastic and patristic literature

 Kaplan has shown that as a counter-example, the ‘men-struating’ Jew figures less prominent-
ly in early modern English sources and links this observation to the absence of “threatening Jew-
ish presence.” Jewish communities in early modern England were hardly existent, and where
Jews did dwell their communities were small in number and mostly illegal. This already subor-
dinate position in England did not call for the need of a more distinct delineation of Jews and
Christians to ensure the latter’s social and legal superiority. Motifs of somatic inferiority visual-
ising a general discourse of Jewish wholesale inferiority had thus become obsolete. Cf. Kaplan,
“‘His Blood Be on Us and on Our Children’,” 119 – 22.
156 Kerstin Mayerhofer

were easily attached to the body and linked to further pre-modern perceptions of
physiology, biological processes, and notions of sex and gender. Subsequently,
they materialised in concrete images of faint women and bleeding Jewish men
both of which were too weak to fulfil a proper societal role. Figural understand-
ing as well as cultural narratives had and have multivalent possibilities. As such,
they “enable the translation of hereditary inferiority from one group to anoth-
er,”⁵⁰ as is apparent in the case of the ‘men-struating’ Jew where religion,
race, sex and gender intersect in a polyvalent form of discrimination based on
the theologically established notion of ontological inferiority.
Jewish ‘male menstruation’ is part of a catalogue of somatic markers of the
‘Jewish’ body and can be understood as one of the characteristics of the herme-
neutical Jew. Authors who apply the figure of the ‘men‐struating’ Jew do so in
different variations of the motif mostly connected to their text’s generic inten-
tion. Their motivation, however, is to shape, round out, and reinforce Christian
identity as an identity inherently distinct from both Jews and women. While re-
ligious identity has traditionally been understood as constructed culturally, the
motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ suggests that corporeal aspects served the
construction as categories deeply connected with faith. It demonstrates how cul-
ture and nature are fluctuant categories and can link to shape “the (il)logic of
both religious and pseudo-biological racism.”⁵¹ Theological notions of perpetual
inferiority, based on hereditary guilt, work as their underpinning.
The ‘men-struating’ Jew can be used as an attempt to challenge ideas of
purely religiously motivated Jew-hatred in pre-modern times and can help to
identify proto-racial and, thus, proto-racist constructions of religious and cultur-
al identity. Studying pre-modern sources and motifs like Jewish ‘male menstru-
ation’ from this point of view can support our understanding of how racism
has functioned and continues to function and how to successfully challenge, dis-
mantle, and reject its underlying discourses.

Kerstin Mayerhofer is a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna’s Institute of

Jewish Studies and is co‐advised at Queen Mary University of London. Her research
focuses on perceptions of Jews in pre‐modern Christian narrative with regards to
representations of the Jewish body and gender. She has been working for the proj-
ect “An End to Antisemitism!” since 2017 and has been serving as the managing
editor of its multivolume conference proceedings.

 Kaplan, Figuring Racism, 168.

 Ibid., 4.
 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 157

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 Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 159

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Sara Offenberg
“All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish
Rituals in Medieval Christian Art and
Drama
In many written and artistic Christian sources, we find an anti-Jewish portrayal of
an alleged Jewish costume of desecrating the Host or blood libels. The stories
and images are so common that we find, for example, the story of Simon of
Trent being used as a joke in a Facebook post from April 3, 2015, wishing a
“Happy Passover.”
Following Miri Rubin’s methodology,¹ where she ties together blood libels
and accusations of host desecration in texts, images, and drama, in this paper
I wish to further discuss the issue of “staging” or the public sphere of the accu-
sations, with a focus on images and texts written in the vernacular language.

Fig. 1: A Facebook post using the image of Simon of Trent, April 3, 2015. Screenshot by the
author of this article.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/TheoriesOf/, accessed October 7, 2020. [No longer acces-
sible.]

 Cf. M. Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), and idem, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

OpenAccess. © 2021 Sara Offenberg, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-009
162 Sara Offenberg

First, I will address the Castilian thirteenth-century Cántigas de Santa Maria and
the Jewish response to it. In a second step, I will confront the English fifteenth-
century Play of the Sacrament from Croxton and briefly analyze a contemporary
demonstration of the play.

The Cántigas de Santa Maria

The reign of Alfonso X was characterized by cultural and political develop-
ments.² He was renowned as a learned king and thus received the title: “El
Sabio,” the wise.³ Hundreds of poems are ascribed to him, mainly those dedicat-
ed to the Virgin Mary entitled the Cántigas de Santa María; Alfonso X compiled
this book of stories and songs, accompanied by illuminations, over a period of
three decades, completing it in the year 1284,⁴ and we shall refer mainly to
the performance aspect of the Cántigas. ⁵ Two history books bear his name as
the author: Estoria de Espanna, on the history of Spain,⁶ and General Estoria,
a world history intended to reach his own era but actually ending at the period
of Jesus.⁷
The non-Christian residents of Castile, that is, the Muslims and the Jews, en-
joyed religious freedom but were also legally discriminated against; the ban on
Muslims and Jews ruling over Christians prohibited them from serving in govern-

 Cf. R. I. Burns, ed., The World of Alfonso the Learned and James the Conqueror: Intellect and
Force in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), and J. F. O’Callaghan, A
History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 538 – 81.
 R. I. Burns, “Stupor Mundi: Alfonso X of Castile, the Learned,” in Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X
the Learned of Castile and his Thirteenth-Century Renaissance, ed. R. I. Burns (Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 1– 13. According to Burns, it is doubtful that Alfonso X ac-
tually wrote the entire corpus ascribed to him.
 Cf. Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa María, ed. W. Mettmann, 3 vols. (Coimbra: Por ordem da Uni-
versidade, 1959 – 1964), and the translation by K. Kulp-Hill, Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, The
Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 2000). Cf. also P. A. Patton, “The Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Jews
of Castile,” in Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 135– 69.
 Cf. J. E. Keller, “Drama, Ritual, and Incipient Opera in Alfonso’s Cantigas,” in Emperor of Cul-
ture: Alfonso X the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance, ed. R. I. Burns
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 72– 89.
 Cf. D. Catalán, La Estoria de España de Alfonso X: Creación y evolución, 5 vols. (Madrid: Ed.
Gredos, 1992).
 Cf. P. Sánchez-Prieto Borja, ed., Alfonso X el Sabio: General Estoria, 10 vols. (Madrid: Funda-
ción José Antonio de Castro, 2009).
 “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals 163

mental institutions. According to Yitzhak Baer, some Jews ranked as high, key
officers in the kingdom but not in the army or in the high courts.⁸ In keeping
with the decision of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, although Jews were
not obligated to wear an identifying badge,⁹ they were made to wear special
clothes separating them from the Christians. In Alfonso X’s extensive seven-
part book of law entitled Las Siete Partidas, it states that the Jews had to wear
special headgear in order to be distinguished from the Christians.¹⁰
The Cántigas de Santa Maria appeared in some illuminated manuscripts in
the last quarter of the thirteenth century (around 1283), and some of the manu-
scripts that were written and illuminated under the supervision of Alfonso X still
remain. We have four original manuscripts, two of them illustrated with over two
thousand miniatures: Códice Rico, El Escorial, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, Ms.
T.I.1,¹¹ made in 1283 and entirely decorated and Biblioteca Nazionale at Florence,
Banco Rari 20, which was also decorated, but whose illuminations were not all
completed; Códice de Toledo, Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid 10069, which con-
tains one hundred poems; and the fourth manuscript, J.B.2 (Escorial E), which
contains over four hundred poems, including all of those that appear in the
other three manuscripts as well as unique poems that appear only here. It was
made in the years 1281– 1282, with decorated initials, and on every tenth poem
an illustration of a musician appears.¹² The Cántigas de Santa Maria is written

 Cf. Y. Baer, From the Age of Reconquest to the Fourteenth Century, vol. 1 of A History of the Jews
in Christian Spain (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961), 111– 30; T. F. Glick,
“Introduction,” in Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. V. B. Mann, T.
F. Glick, and J. D. Dodds (New York: Braziller, 1992), 1– 9; D. E. Carpenter, Alfonso X and the Jews:
An Edition of and Commentary on Siete Partidas 7.24 “De los Judíos,” (Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 1986), 30, 36, 67– 69, 99 – 101; J. F. O’Callaghan, The Learned King: The Reign of
Alfonso X of Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 102, 108 – 13.
 Cf. S. Grayzel, A Study of their Relations during the Years 1198 – 1254, Based on the Papal Letters
and the Conciliar Decrees of the Period, vol. 1 of The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1966), 61, 307– 11; G. Kisch, “The Yellow Badge in Histo-
ry,” Historia Judaica 19 (1957): 89 – 146; R. Straus, “The ‘Jewish Hat’ as an Aspect of Social His-
tory,” Jewish Social Studies 4 (1942): 59 – 72.
 Cf. Carpenter, Alfonso X and the Jews, 99 – 101.
 See the facsimile edition: Alfonso X El Sabio, Las Cantigas de Santa María: Códice Rico, Ms.
T-I-1 Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, ed. L. Fernández Fernández
and E. Fidalgo Francisco, 2 vols. (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2011).
 W. Mettmann discusses the differences between the manuscripts: Cantigas de Santa Maria,
1:25 – 40; cf. also J. E. Keller and A. G. Cash, Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria
(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1998), 1– 2; C. L. Scarborough, “Introduction,” in
Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, The Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, trans. K.
Kulp-Hill (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000), xix–xxxvi.
164 Sara Offenberg

in the vernacular Galician-Portuguese common in Castile,¹³ and some of the

poems in it were designed to be read and sung aloud, as they are accompanied
by musical notes, thus the performative aspect is clear.
The book’s anti-Jewish illustrations and stories have been discussed in pre-
vious research. Louise Mirrer addressed the portrayal of the bodies of Jews in the
book’s text and illuminations.¹⁴ Albert Bagby characterized five main subjects re-
garding the Jews in this text: the Jew as the enemy of Christianity; the Jew as the
Devil’s disciple; the Jew as a symbol of avarice; the traitorous Jew; and the con-
verted Jew.¹⁵ Bagby studied Alfonso X’s attitude toward the Jews by comparing
the songs that refer to Jews in the Cántigas de Santa Maria with other contempo-
rary popular songs that also referred to the Jews that were circulating in Europe.
According to Bagby, of thirty songs in Alfonso X’s book, only eight are familiar in
other collections of stories. Thus, according to him, the rest of the songs must
have been composed by Alfonso X. Bagby claims that even in the only three
songs in which the Jew does not receive malicious characteristics, the only pos-
itive aspect of the Jew’s behavior consists of his pleas for Mary’s help. Vikki
Hatton and Angus MacKay suggest that the attitude toward the Jews in the Cán-
tigas de Santa Maria was ambivalent, as the anti-Jewish phrases balance the
more neutral phrases regarding the Jews, especially in comparison to other
anti-Jewish stories of the time.¹⁶
Dwayne E. Carpenter offered five categories different from those proposed by
Bagby regarding the Jews in the Cántigas de Santa Maria: Jewish culpability for
the death of Jesus; Jewish disparagement of the Virgin, Jesus, and Christianity;
Jews as allies of the Devil; Jews as avaricious; and the rescue and salvation of
Jews. Carpenter studied the amount of hostility against the Jews in the Cántigas
de Santa Maria by researching the poems that mention the Jews. He relates not
only to stories where the Jews are mentioned as main characters but also to in-

 Cf. A. Doron, “On the Affinity between the Hebrew Creation in Toledo and its Literature En-
vironment: The Prolog of Alfonso el Sabio’s Cántigas de Santa Maria and the Personal Poems of
Todros Ha-Levi Abulafia,” [in Hebrew] Biqoret U-parshanut 32 (1998): 82– 83.
 Cf. L. Mirrer, “The Jew’s Body in Medieval Iberian Literary Portraits and Miniatures: Exam-
ples from the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Cantar de mio Cid,” Shofar 12, no. 3 (1994): 17– 30.
 Cf. A. I. Bagby, “The Jew in the Cántigas of Alfonso X, El Sabio,” Speculum 46, no. 4 (1971):
670 – 88.
 Cf. V. Hatton and A. MacKay, “Anti-Semitism in the Cantigas de Santa Maria,” Bulletin of His-
panic Studies 60, no. 3 (1986): 189 – 92.
 “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals 165

cidental references where, he claims, the true nature of the attitude toward the
Jews is more clearly revealed.¹⁷
Pamela Patton suggests studying the image of the Jew in Alfonso X’s book
not as a measure of the king’s hostility toward the Jews but rather in order to
learn about the anti-Jewish attitude of Christian Castilian society.¹⁸ This notion
is apparent in the poems, whether it is the king’s position or not. Therefore,
the illustrations are less representative of Alfonso X’s attitude toward the Jews
and more reflective of the social atmosphere around him, so although the manu-
scripts were produced in his court, they represent ideas prevalent in society at
the time. The illuminations in Alfonso’s book not only illustrate the text but
also interpret it; in some instances, the artists added information to the poem,
so even if the Jew did not participate as a main character in a story, the artist
portrayed him in most scenes and emphasized his grotesque nature.
Patton points to an example of this phenomenon in the illuminations of Cán-
tiga 3, which tell the story of Theophilus. Although the Jew in the song is men-
tioned in only a single verse, the illustrations nonetheless portray the Jew in two
scenes out of six. The text states that Theophilus acted on the advice of a Jew:
“per conssello dun judeu,”¹⁹ and the scenes portray the Jew as associated with
and resembling the Devil in his grotesque appearance.²⁰ Hatton and MacKay,
on the other hand, claim that in comparison to the story Milagros de Nustra Se-
ñora, written by Gonzalo de Berceo (c. 1198–after 1252), the Jew’s presence is
minor, and he is mentioned as merely a consultant.²¹ However, the negligible
mention of the Jew implies the anti-Jewish nature of the text in the Cántigas
de Santa Maria, for the audience needed no further information to understand
the close relationship and supposed alliance between the Jew and the Devil. It
seems that there was a public demand for such depictions, since most of the sto-

 Cf. D. E. Carpenter, “The Portrayal of the Jew in Alfonso the Learned’s Cantigas de Santa
Maria,” in In Iberia and Beyond: Hispanic Jews between Cultures, ed. B. D. Cooperman (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1998), 16 – 18, 31– 34.
 Cf. P. A. Patton, Art of Estrangement, and idem, “Constructing the Inimical Jew in the Can-
tigas de Santa Maria: Theophilus’s Magician in Text and Image,” in Beyond the Yellow Badge:
Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture, ed. M. B. Merback
(Leiden: Brill, 2008), 234– 35.
 Cántiga 3, l.19, Mettmann, Cantigas de Santa Maria, 1:62.
 Cf. Patton, “Constructing the Inimical Jew,” 241– 52. Cf. also D. Jackson, “The Influence of the
Theophilus Legend: An Overlooked Miniature in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria and its
Wider Context,” in Under the Influence: The Concept of Influence and the Study of Illuminated
Manuscripts, ed. J. Lowden and A. Bovey (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 75 – 87.
 Cf. Hatton and MacKay, “Anti-Semitism in the Cantigas,” 189 – 92.
166 Sara Offenberg

ries in the book were already familiar in western Europe, and only a few of them
were original.
I would like to focus on Cántiga 34 of the Cántigas de Santa Maria where we
read the story of a Jew desecrating an icon of the Virgin Mary.
The story takes place on the streets of Constantinople, the location of an un-
usual, beautiful wooden panel painting of Mary and Child. One night a Jew steals
the icon and hides it under his mantle. He brings the icon to his house, throws it
into the lavatory, and contaminates it. Mary allows the Devil to kill the Jew as
punishment for his crime, and nothing remains of the Jew. Meanwhile, a good
Christian finds and rescues the icon from the impure place and carefully cleans
it. Afterwards, he places the icon in a worthy location in his home, offering it a
tribute as a means of securing his salvation, and the icon emits a pleasant
scent.²²
Like most of the illustrated poems in the Cántigas de Santa Maria, the story
is portrayed in six scenes, and the Jew occupies three of them. In the first scene
on the left, the Jew appears in grotesque profile,²³ walking by the city’s build-
ings, dressed in a red garment and a pointed hat as he raises the icon in his
right hand. In the next scene, we notice that the garment reaches his knees
and thus shows his pointed red shoes, part of the distinguishing mark required
in the Siete Partidas 7.24.11.²⁴ In this scene, we notice the Jew throwing the icon
into the lavatory, while a devil stands next to the door behind him. In the third
scene, we observe two demons carrying the Jew’s body. All three characters are
portrayed in profile, showing their grotesque noses and pointed chins. The next
three scenes portray the good Christian’s acts. In all but one of the scenes, the
viewer can clearly see the icon of the Virgin and Child, so viewing the Jew’s
theft and contamination of the icon must have had a shocking impact on Chris-
tian audiences.

 Cf. Bagby, “The Jews in the Cántigas,” 676; Keller and Cash, Daily Life Depicted, 15; Kulp-Hill,
Songs of Holy Mary, 45; Mettmann, Cantigas de Santa Maria, 1:143 – 44; Patton, Art of Estrange-
ment, 88 – 89, 160. We find a similar story in the book De Locis Sanctis, written around 683 – 686
by Adamnan (ca. 625 – 704) the abbot of Iona. Cf. P. Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Im-
ages of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002),
191– 95. Similar stories are found also in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France and Germany,
see: I. G. Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultures
of the Jews: A New History, ed. D. Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 2:176 – 82; M. Camille,
The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 186.
 On the Jewish nose and appearance in Christian art, see S. Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval
Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014).
 On the distinguishing mark, see Carpenter, Alfonso X and the Jews, 99 – 101.
 “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals 167

Fig. 2: Códice Rico, El Escorial, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, Ms. T.I.1, fol. 50r.
Source: Alfonso X El Sabio, Cantigas de Santa María, vol. 2: Códice Rico, Ms. T-I-1, ed. L.
Fernández Fernández and J. C. Ruiz Souza (Madrid: Patriomonio Nacional, 2011).
168 Sara Offenberg

The similarities between Alfonso X and some of the characters in Rabbi

Isaac Ibn Sahula’s Meshal Haqadmoni written in 1281 Castile,²⁵ have already
been pointed out by Yitzhak Baer and Raphael Loewe.²⁶ Thus, let us now turn
to a discussion of Meshal Haqadmoni and connect it to the Cántigas. The book
is divided into five main chapters (On Wisdom, On Penitence, On Sound Counsel,
On Humility, On Reverence), each opening with the vices of a given character
and ending with the author’s praise of the virtues of the respective trait. Every
chapter opens with a polemic dialog between the cynic and the author, with
both of them referring to scientific knowledge of nature, medicine, and philoso-
phy, all disguised in fables.²⁷ The stories all begin with the perspective of the

 On the text and images of Meshal Haqadmoni, see Y. Ayalon, “The Illustrations to Meshal ha-
Qadmoni of Ishaq ibn Sholomo ibn Sahulah” [in Hebrew] (MA thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2002);
S. Gronemann, “Extant 15th Century Ashkenazi Illuminated Manuscripts of Meshal hakadmoni
by Isaac ibn Sahula” [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2006). Grone-
mann’s research offers an in depth comparison between the illuminations in all five manuscripts
and the earliest printed copy of Meshal Haqadmoni, and all the illustrations are reproduced in
the dissertation’s second volume. Cf. also U. Schubert and K. Schubert, Jüdische Buchkunst, 2
vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1983 – 1992), 1:108 – 109; A. Oettinger-
Salama, “‘I Place with Texts the Illustrate, Should Point/ The Moral’: Exploring the Connection
Between the Verbal art and the Visual Art in the Book Meshal Haqadmoni by Isaac ibn Sahula,”
[in Hebrew] Dapim le-Mehkar be-Sifrut 13 (2001– 2002): 229 – 56; S. Offenberg, “Expressions of
Meeting the Challenges of the Christian Milieu in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature” [in He-
brew] (PhD diss., Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2008); R. Refael-Vivante, Treasury of Fa-
bles: Isaac ibn Sahula’s Meshal Haqadmoni (Castile, 1281): Text and Subtext [in Hebrew] (Ramat
Gan: Hebrew University Press, 2017).
 Two of the characters in the fables are a lion and an eagle, both rulers of the animal king-
dom. Scholars have agreed that the lion and the eagle are allegorical figures of King Alfonso X,
therefore we find a direct connection between Meshal Haqadmoni and Alfonso’s book. Cf. Baer,
A History of the Jews, 1:199 – 200; Isaac Ibn Sahula, Meshal Haqadmoni: Fables from the Distant
Past: A Parallel English-Hebrew Text, ed. R. Loewe, 2 vols. (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civ-
ilization, 2004), xv–xvii, xci–xcii; R. Loewe, “Who Was the Fox in the Court of Alfonso X?” Do-
naire 6 (April 1996): 50. See also: J. F. O’Callaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa Maria: A
Poetic Biography (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 162– 65; O’Callaghan, The Learned King, 215 – 29.
 In addition to being a doctor, Ibn Sahula was also a Kabbalist; on possible kabbalistic ideas
in Meshal Haqadmoni, see: H. Lachter, “Spreading Secrets: Kabbalah and Esotericism in Isaac
ibn Sahula’s ‘Meshal ha-kadmoni’,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100, no. 1 (2010): 111– 38. For
more on Ibn Sahula’s kabbalistic writings, see Baer, A History of the Jews, 1:422, n. 12a, and
see also the bibliography in the Hebrew translation published in Tel Aviv 1986, 508 – 509, n.
61a; A. Green, “Rabbi Isaac ibn Sahola’s Commentary on the Song of Songs,” [in Hebrew] Jeru-
salem Studies in Jewish Thought 6, nos. 3 – 4 (1987): 393 – 491; A. Green, “The Song of Songs in
Early Jewish Mysticism,” Orim 2, no. 2 (1987): 57– 59; B. Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky: Chap-
ters in the Reception History of the Zohar and the Construction of its Symbolic Value [in Hebrew]
(Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2008), 46 – 47; G. Scholem, “The First Citation from ha-Midrash ha-
 “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals 169

cynic, whose goal is to undermine the author’s faith through fables which seem
to prove that virtues are not beneficial but rather, harmful. All of the chapters
contain fables, mainly about animals. Some of these begin in the middle of a
given story, when one of the characters (usually an animal) starts to tell the
fable. Only following a long discussion does the plot return to the original
tale, which is outside the main frame of the story. This literary motif is character-
istic of the structure of the maqama and books such as Kalila wa-Dimna. ²⁸ Both
the humans and the animals in the fables can be characterized as Jewish on ac-
count of their words and customs; furthermore, they use biblical verses, the Tal-
mud, and the Midrash to deliver moral messages, even when they are not iden-
tified as Jewish but as members of other religions.²⁹
None of the original manuscripts of Meshal Haqadmoni remain, nor any that
were produced during the author’s lifetime or in his homeland; however, we do
have five fully illuminated manuscripts from Germany and Italy, all from the fif-
teenth century: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 154, produced in 1450, Germa-
ny;³⁰ Munich, Bavarian State Library, MS Heb. 10, produced in 1458, Germany;³¹
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Can. 59, produced in 1470 – 1480, Italy;³² Rothschild
Miscellany, Jerusalem, Israel Museum, MS 180/51, produced in 1470 – 1480, Italy,
fols. 298 v-371 r;³³ Milano, Ambrosian Library, MS X 112 sup, produced in 1483,

Ne‘elam,” [in Hebrew] Tarbiz 3 (1932): 181– 83; S. M. Stern, “Rationalists and Kabbalists in Me-
dieval Allegory,” Journal of Jewish Studies 6, no. 2 (1955): 73 – 86.
 On the relations with this genre of literature and its connection to Meshal ha-Qadmoni, see
Ayalon, “The illustrations to Meshal ha-Qadmoni,” 8 – 32; D. Pagis, Change and Tradition in the
Secular Poetry: Spain and Italy [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1976), 225 – 30; J. Schirmann, The
History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995), 244– 50,
347– 50.
 Cf. Schirmann, The History of Hebrew Poetry, 351– 58.
 See the entire manuscript online on the Oxford, Bodleian Library website: www2.odl.ox.ac.
uk/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?e=d-000 – 00—0orient02–00 – 0 – 0 – 0prompt-10—4––dtt–0 – 1 l–1-en-
50—20-about-meshal–00001– 001– 1– 1isoZz-8859Zz-1– 0&a=d&cl=search&d=orient002-aav.1.1.
 See the entire manuscript online on the Munich, Bavarian State Library website: daten.digi-
tale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00034081/images/.
 See the entire manuscript online on the Oxford, Bodleian Library website: viewer.bodleia-
n.ox.ac.uk/icv/thumbs.php?book=ms._canon._or._59&page=1.
 See the facsimile edition: The Rothschild Miscellany, ed. I. Fishof and M. Beit-Arie (London:
Facsimile Editions, 1989); I. Ta-Shma, “The Literary Content of the Manuscript,” in The Roths-
child Miscellany, ed. I Fishof and M. Beit-Arie (London: Facsimile Editions, 1989), 80 – 82; cf.
also L. Mortara-Ottolenghi, “The Illuminations and the Artists,” in The Rothschild Miscellany,
ed. I. Fishof and M. Beit-Arie (London: Facsimile Editions, 1989), 220 – 41.
170 Sara Offenberg

Italy. The book was first printed in Brescia by Gershom Soncino ca. 1491 and
wood cuts replaced the manuscripts’ illuminations.³⁴
I would like to focus on one of Meshal Haqadmoni’s fables, from the first
chapter: “The Lion upon whom attend Companions.”³⁵ In the story we find a
connection to the Jewish-Christian polemic, so we shall examine the fable’s
text from this perspective. The fable tells the story of a kingdom ruled by a
lion, who has two companions and advisors: the hart and the fox, who are facing
a serious problem in the kingdom. At the beginning, we learn that the animals
are complaining that the lion eats them, so they decide to unite and rebel against
the king.³⁶ The author’s approach is to emphasize the notion that there should be
no rebellions against the kingdom.³⁷
After the animals leave the kingdom, the lion has no more animals to eat, so
the fox, in a cunning gesture of flattery, offers him his own flesh but immediately
informs him that his flesh is not as tasty as that of the hart (his rival courtier).
Thus, the fox ostensibly offers his own flesh to be eaten by the lion, yet at the
same time makes it clear that it is not good enough for the king. The scene ap-
pears in the same way in all the manuscripts: the fox and hart are standing in
front of the lion. Despite the fox’s words, the lion refuses to harm the hart,
since doing so would be a violation of the alliance between them. The fox speaks
badly of the hart and claims that the hart has no noble genealogy, unlike the fox.
This claim leads the lion to call upon all his ministers and investigate the hart’s
pedigree. The fox represents the anti-Jewish stance in King Alfonso X’s court,
when, according to Loewe, he demands to inspect the hart’s limpieza de sangre
(purity of blood), while the hart represents the Jewish courtiers.³⁸

 See a scan of the printed book online on the Jerusalem National Library web site aleph.n-
li.org.il/nnl/dig/books/bk001021249.html. This is the first printed Hebrew book with a full
cycle of illustrations, and it seems that Soncino ordered these illustrations specifically for this
book. Cf. E. Beinenfeld, “Meshal Ha-Kadmoni by Isaac b. Solomon ibn Sahula [Brescia: Gershom
Soncino, ca. 1491]: The Book and its Illustrations” (MA thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusa-
lem, 1991), 79.
 Ayalon, “The Illustrations to Meshal ha-Kadmoni,” 128 – 42; Loewe, Meshal Haqadmoni, 55 –
114; Offenberg, “Expressions of Meeting the Challenges,” 166 – 74.
 Scholars have already pointed that this story reflects the actual historical event in which the
nobles in Alfonso X’s court rebelled against him in 1271. Loewe, Meshal Haqadmoni, lxxviii–
lxxx; O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain, 371– 75; O’Callaghan, The Learned King, 215 – 29.
 On the notion that it is prohibited to rebel against the kingdom, see S. Albeck, “‘Dinno
D’malchuso Dinno’ in the Jewish Communities of Medieval Spain,” [in Hebrew] in The Abraham
Weiss Jubilee Volume: Studies in His Honor Presented by His Colleagues and Disciples on the Oc-
casion of His Completing Four Decades of Pioneering Scholarship, ed. S. Belkin (New York:
Abraham Weiss Jubilee Committee, 1964), 109 – 25.
 Cf. Loewe, Meshal Haqadmoni, ci–cvii; Loewe, “Who Was the Fox,” 52.
 “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals 171

I would like to examine another historical aspect of the story that mainly
concerns the Jewish-Christian polemic as it is reflected in the hart’s sermon de-
livered before the lion. The hart begins to clarify the vices of the wicked soul that
speaks against the Talmud and insults it:

On scholarship [Talmud]³⁹ she loads insults obscene/ Her hart full of contempt; precepts
she spurns/ And from their highway into byways turns/ To roam, her outrages past num-
bering/ All the commandments from her back to fling/ The holy law of God dishonoring.

It seems that here we find criticism against the Jews who have drifted from the
Holy Scriptures, prefer foreign literature, and even convert to Christianity. The
hart declares that the penalty of the wicked is that they will not have a part in
the afterlife and goes on to explain:

I catalogue here those who, by their sin/ Have forfeited all claim to share therein/ Ones
who, unorthodox, affirm a lie/ All unbelievers; those who would deny/ The law, the resur-
rection of the dead/ Or the Messiah’s coming; all these, led/ Into apostasy, with those who
lead/ Astray the public; those, too, that secede/ From laws which the community maintain/
Insurgents; those who trespass in disdain/ Defiant: all informers; those whose lies/ Spread
slander, or by surgery disguise/ Their covenantal seal.⁴⁰

We hear in these words an echo of the blessing of the apostates (Birkat Hami-
nim), part of the Amidah prayer.⁴¹
The hart elaborates on the punishment of the wicked, noting that in addition
to being deprived of an afterlife, they are doomed to “excrement that seethes.”
This phrase is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57a:

He then went and raised Balaam by incantations. He asked him: Who is in repute in the
other world? He replied: Israel […] He said: What is your punishment? They replied: With
boiling hot excrement, since a Master has said: Whoever mocks at the words of the
Sages is punished with boiling hot excrement.⁴²

Furthermore, in the hart’s words we may find an utterance regarding the public
polemics, such as the Paris Talmud Trial in 1240 between Rabbi Yehiel of Paris

 Loewe translated the word Talmud as scholarship, however as we shall see later on, it is im-
portant to follow the accurate meaning of the word, which here refers to the rabbinic writings.
 Loewe, Meshal Haqadmoni, 104– 6, and see Loewe’s notes there.
 Ibid., 106 – 7, n. 47. On Birkat Haminim, see: R. Langer, Cursing the Christians?: A History of
the Birkat Haminim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 83 – 101, 217– 20.
 Translation taken from I. Epstein, ed., The Babylonian Talmud (London: Soncino, 1936).
172 Sara Offenberg

and the converted Nicolas Donin.⁴³ The Paris Talmud Trial of 1240 was the first of
three public disputes initiated by converted Jews, where the Talmud was the
main focus of discussion. The aftermath of the 1240 trail was the burning of
the Talmud in 1242. In 1263 Barcelona R. Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides) de-
fended the Talmud against the converted Pablo Christiani, who also disputed
with R. Abraham in the second Paris trial in 1271/1273.⁴⁴

 We have Hebrew accounts of the “Talmud Trial” and a Latin text, see: J. D. Galinsky, “The
Different Hebrew Versions of the ‘Talmud Trial’ of 1240 in Paris,” in New Perspectives on Jew-
ish-Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger, ed. E. Carlebach and J. J. Schacter (Leiden:
Brill, 2012), 132– 37. The Latin text was originally published by I. Loeb, “La controverse de
1240 sur le Talmud,” Revue des études juives 3 (1881): 39 – 57. For an English translation of
the Latin text, see: H. Maccoby, Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle
Ages (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1982), 163 – 67.
 Cf. S. L. Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 70 – 99; S. Grünbaum, Sefer Vikkuah R. Yehi’el [in Hebrew]
(Thorn, 1873); P. L. Rose, “When Was the Talmud Burnt at Paris? A Critical Examination of the
Christian and Jewish sources and a new dating: June 1241,” Journal of Jewish Studies 62 (2011):
324– 39; R. Margaliot, ed., R. Yehiel of Paris’ Dispute [in Hebrew] (Leviv, 1910); G. Dahan and
E. Nicolas, eds., Le brûlement du Talmud à Paris, 1242 – 1244 (Paris: Les èditions du cerf,
1999); R. Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992); R. Chazan, “Christian Condemnation, Censorship, and Ex-
ploitation of the Talmud,” in Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein, ed. S. Liber-
man Mintz and G. M. Goldstein (New York: Center for Jewish History, Yeshiva University Museum,
2005), 53 – 59; R. Chazan, “From Friar Paul to Friar Raymond: The Development of Innovative
Missionizing Argumentation,” Harvard Theological Review 76 (1983): 289 – 306; J. Cohen, Living
Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999), 319 – 42; J. Cohen, “The Second Paris Dispute and the Jewish Christian Polemic
in the Thirteenth Century,” [in Hebrew] Tarbiz 68 (1999): 557– 79; S. Eisenberg, “Reading Medi-
eval Religious Disputation: The 1240 ‘Debate’ between Rabbi Yehiel of Paris and Friar Nicholas
Donin” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008); H. J. Hames, “Reason and Faith: Inter-Reli-
gious Polemic and Christian Identity in the Thirteenth Century,” in Religious Apologetics—Phil-
osophical Argumentation, ed. Y. Schwartz and V. Krech (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004),
267– 84; W. C. Jordan, “Marian Devotion and the Talmud Trial of 1240,” in Ideology and Royal
Power in Medieval France: Kingship, Crusades and the Jews (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 61– 76;
D. Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000 – 1250
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); D. Müller, “Die Pariser Verfahren gegen den Talmud
von 1240 und 1248 im Kontext von Papsttum und französischem Königtum,” in Interaction Be-
tween Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art and Literature, ed. M. Poorthuis, J.
Schwartz, and J. Turner (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 181– 99; U. Ragacs, Die zweite Talmuddisputation
von Paris 1269 (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2001); J. Shatzmiller, La deuxième controverse de
Paris: un chapitre dans la polémique entre chrétiens et juifs au Moyen âge (Louvain: Peeters,
1994); H. Soloveitchik, “Catastrophe and Halakhic Creativity: Ashkenaz—1096, 1242, 1306 and
1298,” Jewish History 12 (1998): 71– 85.
On Birkat Haminim and the Talmud Trial, see Langer, Cursing the Christians?, 85 – 88.
 “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals 173

According to the Hebrew account of the 1240 Talmud Trial, the punishment
of the wicked to be doomed to “excrement that seethes” is also mentioned.
Nicolas Donin claimed that the Jews wrote in the Talmud that Jesus was con-
demned to boiling hot excrement, and on the basis of the Talmud, Balaam’s pun-
ishment is ascribed to Jesus.⁴⁵ In the Jewish tradition, Balaam is sometimes re-
placed with Bela ben Beor, the first king of Edom. Therefore, Balaam is
identified both with Esau and Jesus. Hence, when the Talmud mentions the pun-
ishment of Balaam and the criminals of Israel as being punished “with boiling
hot excrement,” it refers to Jesus.⁴⁶
Therefore, we can see in this statement in Meshal Haqadmoni a reference to
the Paris Talmud Trial and to the punishment of Balaam/Jesus. Even if this no-
tion was not actually raised in the Talmud Trial itself and is recorded only in the
later written text, there is important value to its inclusion in the Hebrew account.
While it may have been written some decades after 1240,⁴⁷ nonetheless it had
been written (and probably widespread) by 1280, when Ibn Sahula wrote Meshal
Haqadmoni. Hence, whether or not these exact words were mentioned in the ac-
tual Talmud Trial is of less importance to our discussion than the fact that they
appear in the account written before Ibn Sahula wrote his book.
Returning to the illumination of Cántiga 34, the fact that the icon of Virgin
and Child is desecrated by being thrown into the lavatory seems to indicate a
Jewish intention to punish Jesus and Mary with “excrement that seethes.” This
kind of abuse could show the punishment that the Virgin and Child deserve
in the eyes of the Jews, when at the end of the story the Jew is condemned to
hell. The story in Cántiga 34 is not the only one in the Cántigas de Santa
Maria to display Jewish mockery of Christian symbols. The Christian notion in
this book is that the Jews are allegedly already trying to implement the Talmud’s
ideas about the punishment of the wicked.
In Cántiga 12 we are told that the Jews of Toledo were caught by the Arch-
bishop and his congregation as they were spitting at and cursing a wax image

 Cf. G. Dalman, Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar and the Liturgy of the Synagogue
(New York: Arno Press, 1973), 10, 12, 17– 18; Eisenberg, “Reading Medieval Religious Disputa-
tion,” 84– 88; Galinsky, “The Different Hebrew Versions,” 122; Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Sym-
biosis,” 176 – 82; P. Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 82– 94.
 Cf. G. Cohen, “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought,” in Jewish Medieval and Renais-
sance Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 19 – 48.
 Cf. Eisenberg, “Reading Medieval Religious Disputation,” 38 – 40; Hames, “Reason and
Faith,” 276 – 77, 281, n. 39.
174 Sara Offenberg

of Jesus and later placing him on an improvised cross.⁴⁸ The idea of Jews mock-
ing a wax crucifix appears also in Alfonso X’s book of law, Las Siete Partidas,
7.24.2,⁴⁹ where the king wrote that he had heard that in some places the Jews ab-
duct Christian children on Good Friday and place them on a cross, but if they do
not find such children, they create a wax image and crucify it. Alfonso X men-
tions that if these incidents turned out to be true in his kingdom, the Jews
who carried them out would be executed. He also orders the Jews to stay behind
closed doors on Good Friday.⁵⁰ Elliot Horowitz discusses at length cases in which
Jews were accused of mocking the cross and testimonies of such actions appear
in Jewish texts.⁵¹
The king’s reference to this issue in his law book and in the Cántigas de
Santa Maria indicates the prevalence of such stories. The fact that these inci-
dents appear both in a popular illuminated book of poetry and in a book of
law reinforces the notion that it is not merely a legend or rumor and suggests
that they are true. Although Alfonso X wrote that he had heard rumors of
such accusations, and did not report actual incidents in his kingdom, the fact
that he enacted a law to be used in case such events occurred strongly suggests
that the story represents a situation that could conceivably be faced.
Now let us turn to an altarpiece image from Catalonia, c. 1400, where we find
an illustration to the well-known Paris Tale of 1290, where a Christian woman
stole the Host and gave it to the Jewish pawn-man, who is seen here stabbing
the Host and after throwing it into a boiling cauldron the image of Christ ap-
pears.⁵²
The image here portrays simultaneous phases of the story, and notice how the
Jewish boy resembles Jesus, as opposed to his dark skinned father. At the end,
the mother and son convert and the father is executed. A similar story is
found in a fifteenth-century liturgical drama; the Croxton Play of the Sacra-
ment was written in the East Midland dialect of Middle English not long after
1461, the year in which the event that is the central topic of the play is supposed

 Cf. Carpenter, “The Portrayal of the Jew,” 19 – 20; Kulp-Hill, Songs of Holy Mary, 19; Mett-
mann, Cantigas de Santa Maria, 1:88 – 89; O’Callaghan, The Learned King, 111; Patton, Art of Es-
trangement, 88 – 91.
 Cf. Carpenter, Alfonso X and the Jews, 63 – 66.
 In 408 Theodosius II forbade the Jews from burning a figure like Haman on Purim, as it was
understood to be mockery on the Crucifixion.
 Cf. A. M. Haberman, Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz ve-Zarfat [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1945), 13 – 15;
E. S. Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2006), 149 – 85. See also: R. Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 18.
 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 95 – 96.
 “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals 175

Fig. 3: Altarpiece of the Virgin by Jaume Serra (1358 – 1389/95), Catalonian painter, dated 14th
century (detail).
Source: “Retaule de la Mare de Déu/Altarpiece of the Virgin.” Inventory number: 015916-CJT.
Website of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya of Barcelona, www.museunacional.cat. Ac-
cessed March 18, 2021.

to have taken place. The Play of the Sacrament is set in Aragon and tells the story
of a miracle in which a rich Jewish merchant named Jonathas and his compan-
ions purchase the consecrated Host from a Christian merchant called Aristorius,
and they subject it to a series of tests in order to determine the truth of the Chris-
tian claim that Christ is present in it, then the Jews convert.⁵³
The local priest dines with Aristorius, suggestively on red wine and light
bread, then retires to bed, leaving the church key with Aristorius, who promptly
enters, steals the Host, and hands it over to Jonathas and his men. Jonathas and
his colleagues rehearse the articles of Christian belief—Christ at the Last Supper,
the establishment of the church, the virgin birth, the kingship and resurrection of
Jesus, the apostolic mission. Then they stab the Host as it lies on a table and in-
flict the five wounds of Christ—reenacting the torture of Jesus. As Jonathas gives
the fifth wound, in the center, the Host begins to bleed. Jonathas calls for help.
He tries to throw the Host into a cauldron of boiling oil; it will not leave his hand,

 Cf. A. Bale, The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms 1350 – 1500 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010).
176 Sara Offenberg

so they nail it to a board (thus mocking the cross). When they pull Jonathas
away, his hand is torn off and left hanging with the crucified Host. Then enters
a quack doctor, Magister Phisicus with his company, and offers their services to
the Jews, who beat them away.
The Jews then pluck out the nails and throw both hand and Host, now co-
alesced, into the boiling oil. Jonathas, asked for his advice, Jonathas kneels be-
fore him, as do the others, and they address Jesus in the language of poetic pen-
ance. He accepts their conversion and restores Jonathas’ hand to his arm.
Afterwards Jonathas and his men go to the bishop and proclaim the miracle,
and the bishop goes to their house and sees the image of Christ change back
into bread, the Host. The merchant Aristorius confesses his unlawful bargain
to the priest. All go to church with the bishop, who lays the Host on the altar.
He then baptizes the Jews, and all sing the Te Deum. ⁵⁴
According to David Bevington, the play was probably performed during the
Feast of Corpus Christi and that the last scene takes place in church, thus the au-
dience could have felt like experiencing an actual liturgical ceremony instead of
a merely a play. He even mentions a demonstration of the Mass at the medieval
conference in Kalamazoo, where

the many members of religious orders who were there all stood or knelt at the appropriate
times as the Mass was sung, so that one could never be sure whether one was beholding a
Mass or a theatrical event.⁵⁵

He compares the modern experience to that of the medieval audience.

Now let us move beyond the medieval period to the twenty-first century. As
part of the production of the Blood Project,⁵⁶ the play was staged in Oxford on
January 10, 2004. Here we start with an opening of a puppet show, where the
Jew wears a yellow star and the players performing the role of the Jew all
wear black with yellow gloves. This stereotypical color to portray the Jews reveals
more on the modern audience rather than the medieval past.
According to the director in the program:

Our aim in staging the Croxton Play of the Sacrament is not to endorse its objectionable and
fantastical images of Jews, but to expose them. In order to expose the Jewish caricature we
have followed its exaggeration in the Croxton Play. We have adopted a self-consciously the-

 Cf. D. A. Lawton, “Sacrilege and Theatricality: The Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 287– 88.
 D. Bevington, “Staging and Liturgy in The Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” in Staging Scrip-
ture: Biblical Drama 1350 – 1600, ed. P. Happé and W. Hüsken (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 241.
 http://www.thebloodproject.net/performance/ (no longer available).
 “All the World’s a Stage”: Imagined Jewish Rituals 177

atrical style in acting and costumes, which also play on medieval Christian symbolism: yel-
low, the colour of perfidy, was frequently used in portrayals of Jews.

The play was reviewed by Angie Johnson in The Oxford Times:

It’s a curious piece. In this apparently anti-Semitic play the secular Christian characters are,
in my opinion, much more wicked, and when this was written the Jews had long been ex-
pelled from England. This leads to some dubious characterisations—at one point the Jews
thank Mohammed!⁵⁷

Both in Alfonso X’s book and in the play, the actual story happens in a city or a
country far from the origin of the place where the story/play was written. This
could hint at a larger understanding of the so called “Jewish conspiracy” to
harm the body of Jesus and to desecrate the Host in a reenacting a ritual similar
to the crucifixion and the church Mass. We need to point at an important differ-
ence between the two, and that is that while in Castile the Jews were very much
present in Alfonso X’s court, the Jews of England were expelled in 1290, and
there was not a single Jew living in England during the time the play was written.
Hence, in the English play the imagined rituals of the Jews are received as facts
known from outer sources and the “hermeneutical Jew,” to use Jeremy Cohen’s
term,⁵⁸ is intended to better reinforce the stance of the “Real Presence of Christ
in the Mass” at the time and place where it was written. A similar understanding
of the play is articulated in Anthony Bale’s comments on it, in his summary of
the play’s modern production. In both cases, the performance is intended for a
Christian audience with a clear agenda, and it may teach us nothing about ac-
tual Jewish rituals, but we do realize how they were perceived.

Sara Offenberg is an associate professor at the Department of the Arts at Ben-Gurion

University of the Negev. She has published in books of collected articles and in sev-
eral journals. Her major publications include Illuminated Piety: Pietistic Texts and
Images in the North French Hebrew Miscellany (2013) and Up in Arms: Images of
Knights and the Divine Chariot in Esoteric Ashkenazi Manuscripts of the Middle
Ages (2019). Between 2014 and 2017, she was co-editor of the journal Ars Judaica.
Her research specializes in Jewish-Christian relations in medieval art and literature,
German Pietists, Piyyut Commentary, and Hebrew illuminated prayer books.

 A. Johnson, “Miracle Play Proves a Curious Piece—Croxton Play of the Sacrament,ˮ Oxford
Mail, January 16, 2014, https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/leisure/theatre/theatre/reviews/10941353.
Miracle_play_proves_a_curious_piece___Croxton_Play_of_the_Sacrament/.
 Cohen, Living Letters of the Law.
178 Sara Offenberg

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Birgit Wiedl
Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages
In contrast to today’s conception of a unified and uniting legal system, it was
common for medieval societies to have several legal systems “at work” at the
same time. Some of these legal authorities followed an hierarchical order,
such as imperial/royal law that stood above the legislation enacted by territorial
princes (at least in theory), who, as town lords, in return could change, overturn,
or dictate municipal law. Parallel to these secular legal systems, church law was
enforced by an equally graded system of hierarchies, while the vast field of cus-
tomary laws is particularly difficult to grasp due to its vast diversity and mostly
oral tradition. Inhabitants of medieval cities and rural communities were there-
fore subjected to several legal systems: the general law of the country (often a
non-codified customary law), the municipal law of the respective city, several
sets of ecclesiastical regulations, and depending on their profession, they
could be subjected to regulations of a specific organisation (e. g., universities
or craft guilds).
This legal pluralism applied to Jews as well—they were granted their main
legal standing from the respective ruler (see below); furthermore, they were per-
mitted to enact their own halachic legislation within their communities. Their
particular legal status, however, did not mean that Jews were exempt from
other jurisdictional systems. They bought and sold their estates and properties
according to the respective municipal and/or customary laws, paid and received
dues and rents, and appeared as plaintiffs and defendants before all kinds of
courts, showing them as more than passive recipients: they were active players
who were not only aware of their legal circumstances but were also able to nav-
igate within these frameworks.¹
Anti-Jewish legislation is therefore only a part of medieval Jewry laws, and a
part that existed parallel, and often in contrast to a neutral, or even positive leg-
islation. It is also only a part of medieval anti-Jewish thought and agenda to
which it contributed both ideas and measures to act upon. This essay cannot
and does not claim to cover anti-Jewish legislation in medieval Europe exhaus-
tively; in particular, the very diverse municipal and customary laws will be pre-
sented with a focus on the Ashkenazi regions of the Holy Roman Empire.

 Cf. B. Wiedl, “…und kam der jud vor mich ze offens gericht. Juden und (städtische) Gerichtso-
brigkeiten im Spätmittelalter,” Mediaevistik. Internationale Zeitschrift für Interdisziplinäre Mitte-
lalterforschung 28/2015 (2016): 243 – 68.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Birgit Wiedl, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-010
184 Birgit Wiedl

Church Legislation
Based on the Pauline concept of the Jews’ special role in Christian salvation his-
tory, their role as witnesses of the past and their forthcoming conversion that
would announce the end of times meant that their survival was necessary
until Doomsday, a concept that was mainly stipulated by Church Father
Augustine (d. 430).² Thus, papal protection of the Jews was deemed essential al-
ready by the sixth-century’s Pope Gregory I in his condemnation of forced bap-
tism, who, in the form of the Sicut Iudeis bull, would grant the Jews the right to
practise their religion uninhibited and would shield them from forced baptism,
from violence against their lives, synagogues, and cemeteries, as well as (added
later) from ritual murder accusations (blood libel).³ The second concept is rooted
in the damnation of the Jews in St. John’s Gospel: in the refusal of Christ, Jews
had proved to be the eternal enemies of Christ and Christendom and had thus
been condemned to perpetual servitude.⁴ These two contradictory positions
and their potential reconciliation were discussed in theological writing from
late antiquity onwards, such as by Augustine who emphasised the Jews’ function
as witness bearers for the Old Testament but also underlined their (deliberate)
obduracy and blindness toward Christ.
Many of the anti-Jewish sentiments that found their way into canon law and
ecclesiastical legislation had their roots in late antique and early medieval syn-
ods and councils⁵ as well as papal decrees and letters. Up until the twelfth cen-
tury, ecclesiastical legislation did not claim immediate jurisdiction over Jews
(and other non-Christians) but tried to achieve control over them by regulating
the Christians’ conduct: by inducing fear of the scheming and malevolent Jews

 For the vast literature on Augustine, see the fundamental study by J. Cohen, Living Letters of
the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999);
and the two contributions by T. Raveaux, “Das Judenbild bei Augustinus,” and C. Cluse, “‘Töte
sie nicht!’ Echos der Augustinischen Theologie über die jüdische ‘Zeugenschaft’ im Mittelalter,”
both in Augustinus – Christentum – Judentum: Ausgewählte Stationen einer Problemgeschichte,
ed. C. Müller and G. Förstner (Würzburg: Augustinus bei echter, 2018), 49 – 80 and 113 – 55,
both with further literature.
 First issued by Pope Callixtus II in ca. 1120, most medieval popes re-issued the Sicut iudeis
bull, cf. S. Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents, 492 – 1404 (Toronto: Pontif-
ical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988), 68, 143, 211, 242, 245 – 46, 249, 254, 260, 265, 396, 430,
507.
 Cf. A. S. Abulafia, Christian-Jewish Relations, 1000 – 1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Chris-
tendom (London: Routledge, 2011).
 Cf. F. J. E. Boddens Hosang, Establishing Boundaries: Christian-Jewish Relations in Early Council
Texts and the Writings of Church Fathers (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 185

but also by threatening those Christians who kept company with the Jews with
dire consequences up to excommunication.
In the mid-twelfth-century Decretum Gratiani, a compilation of canon law,⁶
the many articles concerned with Jews⁷ cover a wide range of regulations that
could be in some parts inconsistent, and even contradictory, due to the collec-
tion’s compiled nature. The Jews’ continuous existence and the necessity of
their protection is affirmed. The topics of Christian slaves in Jewish households
and conversion are treated with the interest of the church in mind (e. g., award-
ing child custody to the converted spouse) and forbid (and, if, occurring, sanc-
tion) apostasy. In particular, conversion was a main concern of the church in
many aspects—the (il)legality of forced baptism and whether to allow those af-
fected to return to their old faith; whether converted Jews should, as per Jewish
law, lose their possessions, and who was to care for them if they did; and wheth-
er to regard recidivists as heretics: all these questions would remain key issues
for ecclesiastical thought and legislation until and beyond the Late Middle Ages.⁸
While not all of these discussions were inherently anti-Jewish, they perpetuate
the Christian fantasies of lapsed converts or even fake conversions, as well as

 In addition to the basic survey by H. Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte

und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld, 3 vols. (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1991– 1999),
F. Lotter has given an overview over ecclesiastical legislature concerning Jews from the Merovin-
gian era to the High Middle Ages, published posthumously in Aschkenas 28, no. 2 (2018): “Die
Stellung der Juden im Merowingerreich nach dem Zeugnis der Synodalakten,” 175 – 216; “Die
Juden im Decretum Gratiani,” 217– 81; “Die Juden in den späteren kanonistischen Rechtssamm-
lungen,” 282– 336. Cf. also A. S. Abulafia, “Gratian and the Jews,” Jaarboek Thomas Instituut te
Utrecht 36 (2017): 9 – 39. Medieval canon law and its manifold concerns with Jews (as well as
Pagans and Muslims) has become a core source for studies on post-colonialism and othering,
for example, J. Lopez, “Beyond Eurocentrism and Orientalism: Revisiting the Othering of Jews
and Muslims through Medieval Canon Law,” Review of International Studies 42, no. 3 (2016):
450 – 70.
 See the tabellary overviews by Lotter, “Juden im Decretum Gratiani,” 265 – 81, with references
to earlier regulations.
 Much has been published on both Jewish conversion itself and the Christian concepts, see
among many S. Goldin, Apostasy and Jewish Identity in High Middle Ages Northern Europe:
‘Are you still my brother?’, trans. J. Chipman (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014);
A. Haverkamp, “Baptised Jews in German Lands during the Twelfth Century,” in Jews and Chris-
tians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. M. A. Signer and J. Van Engen (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2001), 255 – 310; J. Shatzmiller, “Jewish Converts to Christianity in Medieval
Europe 1200 – 1500,” in Cross Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented
to Aryeh Grabois on His Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. M. Goodich, S. Menache, and S. Schein (New
York: Peter Lang, 1999), 297– 318. On return and conversion to Judaism, see more recently P.
Tartakoff, Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
186 Birgit Wiedl

Jewish proselytism. The fateful late medieval view of forced baptism as legiti-
mate, and the subsequent damnation (and execution) of returned converts,
had its roots in these earlier discussions.
However, the decretum also incorporated central anti-Jewish ideas, which
had been previously discussed in theological writings, such as the Jews’ obdura-
cy and deliberate blindness toward Christ,⁹ a concept that was translated into
visual renditions in form of the blindfolded, defeated Synagoga who, together
with the triumphant Ecclesia, would grace numerous medieval churches and
manuscripts and thus made it accessible to and understandable for the popu-
lace.¹⁰ The decretum warned against any too-close Jewish-Christian interaction,
such as consulting with Jewish doctors, and simply living and dining together.
Particularly the consumption of “Jewish” (i. e., kosher) food by Christians had al-
ready been a major concern of councils and synods of the early Middle Ages and
would reappear in later councils and synods that cautioned Christians against
buying or accepting wine and meat from Jews, with the warning that the Jews
would seek to poison them.¹¹ Ample room is given to the concept of the Jews
as the killers of Christ, dealing not only with the theological idea of the Jews’
perpetual damnation as a just punishment for their inexcusable misdeed but
also its “real-world” translation: that this punishment should be meted out by
another people, namely God’s new people, that is, the Christians.¹² Together
with excommunicated individuals, heretics, slaves, and heathens, Jews were
subsumed under the dishonourable who were denied the right to sue against
clerics/Christians, under the proposition that plaintiffs had to be of equal or
higher standing to the defendant, a concept that ties in with the idea that

 See particularly Peter the Venerable’s Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews, trans. and
annotated by I. M. Resnick (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013).
 Literature on Ecclesia and Synagoga, particularly as statues, is vast; see N. Rowe, The Jew,
the Cathedral, and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); A. Weber, “Glaube und Wissen—Ecclesia et Syn-
agoga,” Wissenspopularisierung: Konzepte der Wissensverbreitung im Wandel, ed. C. Kretsch-
mann (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003), 89 – 126; B. Wiedl, “Jews and Anti-Jewish Fantasies in
Christian Imagination in the Middle Ages,” in Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages
and Early Modern Time: Projections, Dreams, Monsters, and Illusions, ed. A. Classen (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2020), 578 – 84, 589 – 95.
 Cf. C. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stetˮ: Der Status der Juden in spätmittelalterlichen
deutschen Rechtsbüchern (Gö ttingen: Wallstein, 1999), 332– 43; D. M. Freidenreich, “Sharing
Meals with Non-Christians in Canon Law Commentaries, Circa 1160 – 1260: A Case Study in
Legal Development,” Medieval Encounters 14 (2008): 41– 77; I. M. Resnick, “Dietary Laws in Jew-
ish-Christian Polemics: A Survey,” Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations 6 (2011): 1– 15.
 Lotter, “Juden im Decretum Gratiani,” 250 – 52.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 187

Jews should not hold power over or assume higher positions than Christians.¹³
Several of the conclusions presented in the decretum are openly hostile: Jews
were not the sons of Abraham but of the devil—if not in blood, then in their
deeds; they are not merely as bad as sodomites but worse.¹⁴
From the late twelfth century onwards, papal legislation expanded its claim
to include non-Christians living among Christianity in their jurisdiction.¹⁵ The
provisions of the Third Lateran Council (1179) show the transition state: Christi-
ans living in Jewish households were to be excommunicated and Jews were not
allowed to employ Christian servants. To emphasise the higher standing Christi-
ans had, Christian testimony in court should be of higher value than Jewish tes-
timony. The secular authorities were charged with protecting converts who were
not to lose their possessions.
With the rule of Pope Innocent III (1198 – 1216), the Augustinian concept of
the Jews’ perpetual servitude was transferred from its theological into the
legal, economic, and social domain where it would be put into practice within
the framework of Jewish-Christian interaction.¹⁶ This new interpretation was
first verbalised in a letter from Innocent III to two French bishops in which he
not only emphasised the yoke of Jewish servitude, which they were never al-
lowed to discard, and the need for their gratitude, but translated these ideas
into political reality by employing the French king and his nobility to carry
out the regulations and curb the Jews’ excesses.¹⁷ This shift in interpretation,
along with the church’s newfound attempts of jurisdiction over the Jews,
would serve to enhance the conflict between church and secular rulers who
themselves lay claim to the lordship over the Jews.
Perhaps the most fateful milestone in anti-Jewish church legislation were the
regulations of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), in the course of which the doc-
trine of transubstantiation was defined, which would impact the anti-Jewish nar-
rative of host desecration. Whereas many of the council’s provisions were drawn
from older legislation, such as the prohibition of entrusting Jews with public of-

 The various canons compiled in the Decretum are somewhat inconsistent, some of them in-
clude the right to sue if said person had suffered damage in person, cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der
iuden recht stet,ˮ 210 – 13.
 Lotter, “Juden im Decretum Gratiani,” 253.
 On the development of this idea, see Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 23 – 26; cf.
also A. Fidora, “Latin Talmud and the Extension of Papal Jurisdiction over Jews,” medieval
worlds: comparative & interdisciplinary studies 11 (2020): 159 – 60.
 Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 21; Abulafia, Christian-Jewish Relations, 74.
 Cf. Schreckenberg, Adversus Judaius, 2:408 – 11; J. Heil, “Gottesfeinde”—“Menschenfeinde”:
Die Vorstellung von jüdischer Weltverschwörung (13. bis 16. Jahrhundert) (Essen: Klartext,
2006), 189 – 90.
188 Birgit Wiedl

fices¹⁸ that should prevent Jews from holding power over Christians, Lateran IV
aimed directly at the Jews themselves, their behaviour, and their public appear-
ance: Jews were forbidden to demand excessive interest rates and any interest
from crusaders; they were to stay indoors during Holy Week to refrain from
mocking the mourning Christians; voluntary converts should not return to
their Jewish faith (implying though that forced baptism was still considered in-
valid); and Jews as well as Muslims were required to wear distinguishing cloth-
ing, mainly to prevent “involuntary” sexual encounters with Christians.¹⁹ The
canons of Lateran IV were included in the Liber Extra (1234), the canonical col-
lection of Pope Gregory IX that was to replace all former collections as a legal
textbook of canon law.
After Lateran IV, regional councils and synods disseminated and further dif-
ferentiated the canons and translated their rather general and still somewhat ab-
stract concepts into practical advice on how to control (or, ideally, prevent) Jew-
ish-Christian personal, social, and neighbourly interaction, thus immediately
interfering with Jewish daily life.²⁰ Christians were forbidden to work and partic-
ularly live in Jewish households; they were warned against taking medicine from

 The regulation dates back to the Third Council of Toledo (598), see Schreckenberg, Adversus
Judaius, 1:418 – 19. Jews were (much to the church’s chagrin) active in various capacities, see M. J.
Wenninger, “Juden als Münzmeister, Zollpächter und fürstliche Finanzbeamte im mittelalterli-
chen Aschkenas,” in Wirtschaftsgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Juden: Fragen und Einschätzun-
gen, ed. M. Toch (München: Oldenbourg, 2008), 121– 89; for Jews as mint-masters, cf. E.
Haverkamp, “Jüdische Münzmeister und ihre Münzen im Kontext von Handel und Geldhandel,”
in Geprägte Bilderwelten der Romanik: Münzkunst und Währungsräume zwischen Brixen und
Prag, ed. F. Hofer et al. (Bolzano: Athesia Tappeiner Verlag, 2017), 155 – 91; E. Haverkamp, “Jew-
ish Images on Christian Coins: Economy and Symbolism in Medieval Germany,” Jews and Chris-
tians in Medieval Europe: The Historiographical Legacy of Bernhard Blumenkranz, ed. P. Buc, M.
Keil, and J. Tolan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 189 – 226; and as tax collectors at the Hungarian and
Austrian courts, cf. N. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medi-
eval Hungary, c. 1000–c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 101– 8, 127– 31; E.
Brugger, “Von der Ansiedlung bis zur Vertreibung: Juden in Österreich im Mittelalter,” in Ge-
schichte der Juden in Österreich, ed. E. Brugger et al. (Wien: Ueberreuter, 2013), 141– 42.
 Specific clothing was often used as a distinguishing and/or social marker, cf. R. Jütte, “Stig-
ma-Symbole: Kleidung als identitätsstiftendes Merkmal bei spätmittelalterlichen und frühneu-
zeitlichen Randgruppen (Juden, Dirnen, Aussätzigen, Bettler),” Saeculum 44, no. 1 (1993):
65 – 89.
 Cf. the collection Corpus der Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden im spätmittelalterlichen Reich,
coord. A. Haverkamp and J. Müller, Trier, from 2011 onwards, http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.
org/quellen/1273 -1347/sk01.html. All further quotations of SK01 (plus the respective number)
refer to this collection, the corresponding entries have been authored by R. Richtscheid.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 189

or visiting Jewish doctors,²¹ buying the Jews’ (poisoned) meat and, of course,
from having sexual intercourse with Jews.²² Jewish space and movement within
a city was limited and controlled: Jews were banned from places of particular
close encounters, namely bath houses and taverns, and from social acts that
carry a strong ritual connotation, such as dining, celebrating, and dancing
with Christians.²³ On Good Friday,or whenever the Eucharist (i. e., the Host
wafer) was carried past, Jews were forbidden to leave their houses, or even to
look through their windows, and during Lent, they were not allowed to transport
meat. The limitations of public appearance reflects several anti-Jewish ideas: the
spiteful Jew who mocks the Christians during their high holidays but also the
Jewish seducer who tries to con Christians into breaking their religious rules.
The Christian fantasy of Jews seducing Christians appears also in the church’s
mistrust concerning conversion that went two ways: Jews were suspected of hin-
dering baptisms and were thus ordered to not interfere, particularly with female
and juvenile converts, but were also thought to actively proselytize. To prevent
any doubt of their own faith in Christians (and, ultimately, conversion to Juda-
ism), Jews were forbidden to conduct religious debates with “simple” Christians,
including illiterate priests.²⁴ In addition to regulating Jewish life and behaviour,
the church extended its grasp onto the synagogues. Communities were barred
from erecting new synagogues and were forbidden to alter the height or size
of those already in existence.²⁵
Lateran IV had introduced the mandatory distinguishing marker that Jews
(and Muslims) had to wear to canon law, yet had lacked any specific description
of this item. In central Europe, most provincial and regional synods took up this
idea of a “Jewish” attribute to make them distinguishable from Christians.²⁶ Any
“disguise” was seen as particularly improper and audacious: the “blasphemers

 Councils of Wroclaw and Vienna 1267, cf. E. Brugger and B. Wiedl, Von den Anfängen bis 1338,
vol. 1 of Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden in Österreich im Mittelalter (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag,
2005), 59 – 61, no. 45; Trier [1278], SK01, no. 2.
 Wroclaw and Vienna 1267, cf. Brugger and Wiedl, Regesten, 1:59 – 61, no. 45; Trier 1310 (sexual
intercourse of a Christian man with a Jewish, Saracen, or Pagan woman) SK01, no. 9.
 Wroclaw and Vienna 1267, Brugger and Wiedl, Regesten, 1:59 – 61, no. 45. For Christians as
guests at Jewish festivities cf. M. J. Wenninger, “als etlich kristen lüt…mit dien Juden getanzet
hant: Über die Teilnahme von Christen an jüdischen Festen im Mittelalter,” Aschkenas 26,
no. 1 (2016): 37– 67.
 Wroclaw and Vienna 1267, Brugger and Wiedl, Regesten, 1:59 – 61, no. 45, Mainz 1274/75 and
1310, SK01, no. 1, no. 10, illiterate priests: Trier [1278], SK01, no. 2.
 Wroclaw and Vienna 1267, Brugger and Wiedl, Regesten, 1:59 – 61, no. 45, Bressanone 1318,
SK01, no. 11, and possibly Wroclaw 1331, SK01, no. 12a (unclear due to loss of text).
 Aschaffenburg 1292, SK01, no. 5, Bressanone 1318, SK01, no. 11.
190 Birgit Wiedl

of Christ” even dared to wear cowls like clerics, the constitutions of the bishop of
Wroclaw complained in 1331, and explicitly forbade Jews who wore such a cowl
to participate in the public space of the market.²⁷ While most of these synods
merely refer to “distinguishing garbs,” the Councils of Wroclaw and Vienna,
held a few months apart in 1267 by the papal legate Guido, defined the object
in detail: the pileus cornutus, the pointed Jewish hat, a headgear the Jews had
“worn in earlier times in these regions, but had dared to discard.” While the Jew-
ish hat therefore acquired the more derogatory connotation of a mandatory at-
tribute in the context of church law and was used as a symbol of shame also
in Christian context,²⁸ it is important to note that the hat appears to have stem-
med from Jewish traditional costume,²⁹ and served in central European Christian
art also as a neutral, even appreciatory indicator of a person’s Jewishness (e. g.,
the famous depiction of the “Jewish” poet Süßkind of Trimberg);³⁰ it was also
used by Jews as a self-identifier in manuscripts and on seals.³¹

 Wroclaw 1331, SK01, no. 12a.

 It was common to “mark” Christian women who had sexual relationships with Jewish men,
cf. N. Schnitzler, “‘Contra Naturam’—Sexuelle Devianz und jüdisch-christliche Koexistenz im
Mittelalter,” in Wechselseitige Wahrnehmung der Religionen im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen
Neuzeit, ed. L. Grenzmann et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 275; S. Burghartz, “Juden – eine
Minderheit vor Gericht (Zürich 1378 – 1436),” in Spannungen und Widersprüche: Gedenkschrift
für František Graus, ed. S. Burghartz et al. (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1992), 235.
 The debate to what extent Jews wore any headgear as part of their daily apparel is still on-
going, cf. S. Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (New York: Met-
ropolitan Books, 2014), 16 – 45; E. Baumgarten, Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men,
Women, and Everyday Religious Observance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2014), 176 – 78.
 Cf. UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, fol. 355r, https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/
cpg848/0705.
 E. g., in the famous zoocephalic Birds’ Head Haggadah, https://www.imj.org.il/en/collec
tions/199815, and in the Leipzig Machsor, see K. Kogmann-Appel, A Mahzor from Worms: Art and
Religion in a Medieval Jewish Community (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), and illus-
tration here: http://davidkultur.at/artikel/das-8222ritual-des-ersten-lernens-zu-schawuot-im-mit
telalter (M. Keil, “Das ‘Ritual des ersten Lernens’ zu Schawuot im Mittelalter,” David. Jüdische
Kulturzeitschrift 18, no. 69 [2006]: 5 – 7). For a Jewish seal with a Jewish hat, see the seals of
the Regensburg Jew Peter bar Mosche, A. Lehnertz, Corpus der Quellen, 2014, JS01, no. 1,
http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.org/JS01/CP1-c1- 02q7.html, and the Augsburg Jew Lamblein,
JS01, no. 8, http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.org/JS01/CP1-c1- 02q2.html. A. Lehnertz, Judensiegel
im spätmittelalterlichen Reichsgebiet: Beglaubigungstätigkeit und Selbstrepräsentation von Jüdin-
nen und Juden, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020).
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 191

In western Europe and Hungary,³² the synods opted for a much more dis-
criminatory identifier: in 1227, the Synod of Narbonne prescribed a distinguishing
marker in the form of an oval badge, one finger in width and half a palm in
height. In several shapes, and partly with the addition of the mandatory yellow
(and sometimes red), the badge soon made its way into royal legislation: in 1228,
King James I of Aragón ordered the Jews to wear it in public, more closely de-
fined by John I in 1393 as a yellow and red wheel along with specific garments;³³
similarly, Alfonso X of Castile and Leon demanded distinguishing markers in
1263/65 (which were implemented only later). King Louis IX of France imposed
a fine on all Jews who appeared in public without a rouelle (wheel) on their
clothing in 1269 (which was reconfirmed in several church councils), while Eng-
land’s Jews were ordered by both royal (see below) and church law to wear a
badge of yellow felt in the shape of two joined tables, mimicking those on
which Moses had received the commandments. Hungarian Jews were required
to wear a red, round cloth sown onto the left side of their outer garment
(while Muslims and other non-Christians should wear a yellow mark) according
to the Council of Buda in 1279.³⁴ While depictions of Jews in French, Spanish,
and English art show these identifying markers, it is however unclear whether
it actually had been translated into the Jews’ everyday appearance. Already
the Council of Zamora (1313) complains about the order not having been en-
forced in Castile; and in many instances, Jews were given special permission
to discontinue wearing it. With (Anti‐)Pope Benedict XIII, the badge was intro-
duced into papal legislation in 1415, defining it as a yellow and red badge,
which Jewish men were required to wear on their breast and Jewish women on
their forehead. The bull of Benedict XIII (who was of Spanish origin and at
the time back in Aragón) had limited influence in central Europe: the synod
of Salzburg in 1418 reconfirmed the Jewish hat as compulsory (and added a
bell for Jewish women), and even the Council of Basel/Florence, which during
its long term (1431– 1449) shifted from the more pro-Jewish stance of Martin V
to a stricter policy (perhaps under the influence of Spanish delegates),³⁵ again
referred to an unspecified “garment that distinguishes them from Christians.”
However, in the course of the fifteenth century, the Jewish hat would disappear
from central Europe and be replaced with the yellow badge (often introduces by

 The oft-cited “badge” for Erfurt in 1294 refers to the dress code implemented in the synod of
Aschaffenburg (see above) of 1292 that only refers to “signs or garments” Jews should be re-
quired to wear.
 Schreckenberg, Adversus Judaius, 3:412.
 Ibid., 3:279 – 80.
 Ibid., 3:494.
192 Birgit Wiedl

secular rulers); its appearances in German art at around 1470 clearly illustrate
this change.³⁶
Among the many anti-Jewish stereotypes ecclesiastical (and other) authors
disseminated, the image of the Jewish usurer appears surprisingly scarcely in
canon law and church legislation (but had a great influence on French and Eng-
lish royal policy, see below). Despite the canonical ban on interest-taking,³⁷
Christian moneylending business, both official and concealed, existed and
drew scathing criticism from ecclesiastical authors. In that context, Jews were
used as a negative foil, particularly in, but not limited to (polemical) preaching,
where the Christian usurer was depicted as even more despicable than his Jewish
counterpart.³⁸ With the late twelfth century, anti-usury agitation not only gained
momentum but turned to direct attacks against the Jews, who with their pre-
sumed greed and lack of mercy toward their Christian victims literally embodied
the equation of usura with robbery and fraud. Yet, regulations concerning Jewish
interest-taking were rarely introduced in canon law: Lateran IV complained
about the Jews’ “grave and excessive interest rates” but sanctioned only their
Christian business partners while the Second Council of Lyon (1274) promoted
the expulsion of foreign usurers regardless of their faith (but was nevertheless
utilised as a justification for the expulsion of Jews).³⁹ Likewise, the provincial

 For example, on the broadsheet that illustrated the alleged host desecration in Passau (1477/
78), see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Host_desecration1.jpg., and on
a portable altar from Lower Austria, cf. Wiedl, “Jews and Anti-Jewish Fantasies,” 596 – 97, with
fig. 6.
 For a summary of this vast topic, see S. Schima, “Die Entwicklung des kanonischen Zinsver-
bots. Eine Darstellung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Bezugnahmen zum Judentum,”
Aschkenas 20 (2010): 239 – 79.
 Cf. C. Cluse, “Zum Zusammenhang von Wuchervorwurf und Judenvertreibung im 13. Jahrhun-
dert,” Judenvertreibungen in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. F. Burgard, A. Haverkamp, and G.
Mentgen (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1999), 135– 63; C. Cluse, “Jewish Moneylending
in Dominican Preaching, Confession, and Counselling: Some Examples from Later Medieval Ger-
many,” in Dominikaner und Juden. Personen, Konflikte und Perspektiven vom 13. bis zum 20. Jahr-
hundert/Dominicans and Jews: Personalities, Conflicts, and Perspectives from the 13th to the 20th
Century, ed. E. Füllenbach and G. Miletto (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 195 – 23; G. Mikosch, Von
alter ê und ungetriuwen Juden: Juden und Judendiskurse in den deutschen Predigten des 12. und
13. Jahrhunderts (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2010).
 Such as the (in)famous canon Usurarum voraginem of the Second Council of Lyon (1274), cf.
R. Dorin, “Canon Law and the Problem of Expulsion: The Origin and Interpretation of Usurarum
Voraginem (VI 5.5.1),” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abtei-
lung 99, no. 1 (2013): 129 – 61.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 193

synods of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries mostly resorted to a general

damnation of usurers and their clientele.⁴⁰
The imperial privilege for the Jews to clear themselves of the suspicion of
having accepted stolen goods as pledges by taking an oath (“Statute of the Mar-
ket,” see below), drew fierce criticism from the church primarily for one reason:
popes Innocent III and Alexander IV, along with theologians, had been enraged
by the idea that this “very old but truly diabolic law” would allow Jews to “be
fattened and revel in luxury” (Peter the Venerable) since it enabled them to ac-
cept (stolen) liturgical objects as pledges.⁴¹ Worries that sacred objects (and, with
them, Christ himself) would suffer horrible mistreatment at the hands of the
Jews, already expressed by sixth-century’s Gregory I,⁴² were linked with scathing
critiques of the Jews’ greed and the unjust law that made it impossible to de-
mand the object back. Provincial synods more closely defined the objects that
were under no circumstances to be pawned to Jews: particularly chalices,⁴³
but also crucifixes, books, and vestments⁴⁴ yet only rarely tried to abolish the
statute itself.⁴⁵

 Trier [1278], SK01, no. 2. St. Pölten 1284, Brugger and Wiedl, Regesten, 1:79, no. 65, only the
synods of Wroclaw and Vienna repeated Lateran IV’s canon and added the secular rulers’ duty
to protect his Christian subjects against the Jewish frauds. The synod of Lüttich 1288 forbade
advocates to represent usurers, heretics, and Jews against Christians unless explicitly ordered
to do so by a judge, SK01, no. 4.
 Cf. J. Shatzmiller, “Church Articles: Pawns in the Hands of Jewish Moneylenders,” in Wirt-
schaftsgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Juden: Fragen und Einschätzungen, ed. M. Toch and E.
Müller-Lackner (München: Oldenbourg, 2008), 93 – 102, with examples from France; J. R.
Müller, “Zur Verpfändung sakraler Kultgegenstände an Juden im mittelalterlichen Reich: Norm
und Praxis,” in Pro multis beneficiis—Festschrift für Friedhelm Burgard: Forschungen zur Ge-
schichte der Juden und des Trierer Raums, ed. S. Hirbodian et al. (Trier: Kliomedia, 2012),
190 – 93; Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 361– 66; on Peter the Venerable cf. Schreck-
enberg, Adversus Judaius, 2:180 – 96, quote on page 190; Cohen, Living Letters, 245 – 70; I. M. Re-
snick, “Peter the Venerable on the Talmud, the Jews, and Islam,” Medieval Encounters 24 (2018):
510 – 29.
 Cf. Shatzmiller, “Church Articles,” 95 – 97.
 Cf. Müller, “Verpfändung,” 190 – 93. Synods of Liegnitz 1285, SK01, no. 3a, Mainz 1302, SK01,
no. 7, and Strasbourg [1341] and 1345, SK01, no. 13, no. 14.
 Mainz 1302, SK01, no. 7. Books were a particularly sensitive topic for both sides, cf. Müller,
“Verpfändung,” (throughout the article); B. Wiedl, “Sacred Objects in Jewish Hands: Two Case
Studies,” Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe: The Historiographical Legacy of Bernhard Blu-
menkranz, ed. P. Buc, M. Keil, and J. V. Tolan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 72– 75, from a Jewish
perspective cf. M. Keil, “Heilige Worte, Schriften des Abscheus: Der Umgang mit Büchern als
Paradigma des jüdisch-christlichen Spannungsverhältnisses,” Text als Realie, ed. K. Brunner
and G. Jaritz (Wien: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2003), 49 – 61.
 Liegnitz 1285, SK01, no. 3a.
194 Birgit Wiedl

So that no Christian or Jew could plead ignorance, the council of Aschaffen-

burg ordered any rector of the province of Mainz should on four Sundays a year
promulgate these ordinances in the vernacular during Mass.⁴⁶ Did those procla-
mations, however, mean that canon law had a huge impact on the living condi-
tions and everyday life of medieval Jews? Repeated complaints about a lack of
compliance (from both Christians and Jews) with the regulations suggest other-
wise, yet the role of anti-Jewish resolutions in church law in the perpetuation of
negative preconceptions of the Jews should not be underestimated, even if anti-
Jewish sentiment was more successfully transmitted for the general public by
means of narratives such as ritual murder allegations (blood libels) and accusa-
tions of host desecration. Later councils of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
added only a few new ideas, such as the council of Basel (1431– 1449), that in
their canones regarding the Jews of 1434, subjected the Jews to missionary ser-
mons they had to listen to on a regular basis. A particular emphasis was put
on as complete a separation as possible of Jewish and Christian lives: apart
from the (already much repeated) ban on social encounters such as bathing
and dining, Jewish living quarters were to be segregated from those of the Chris-
tians and as distant from churches as possible. In the thirteenth century, Jewish
living space was, and remained, in the city centres, and the idea of a complete
spatial separation had appeared only once, in the Council of Wroclaw in 1267
that even stipulated a physical barrier in form of a fence, wall, or trench between
the two areas.⁴⁷ After the pogroms of the mid-fourteenth century, however, a ten-
dency to relocate the Jews’ allocated quarters to the fringes of the urban area is
noticeable in several European towns.⁴⁸

 Aschaffenburg 1292, SK01, no. 5.

 J. Heil, “Die propagandistische Vorbereitung des Ghettos: Diskussionen um Judenquartiere,”
in Frühneuzeitliche Ghettos in Europa im Vergleich, ed. F. Backhaus et al. (Berlin: trafo, 2012), 155
points to an interesting bull by Pope Clement IV of the same time that only cautioned the Jews of
Gniezno against erecting higher and more luxurious houses but clearly acts on the assumption
that they remained in their living quarters. Cf. also H.-J. Becker, “Die Stellung des kanonischen
Rechts zu den Andersgläubigen: Heiden, Juden und Ketzer,” in Wechselseitige Wahrnehmung der
Religionen im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. L. Grenzmann et al. (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2009), 117– 18.
 Cf. H.-J. Gilomen, “Spätmittelalterliche Siedlungssegregation und Ghettoisierung, insbeson-
dere im Gebiet der heutigen Schweiz,” in Abgrenzungen—Ausgrenzungen in der Stadt und um die
Stadt, vol. 3 of Stadt- und Landmauern, ed. Institut für Denkmalpflege an der ETH Zürich (Zürich:
Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH Zürich, 1999), 85 – 106; Heil, “Vorbereitung des Ghettos,”
159 – 60.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 195

Legislation of the Secular Rulers

From the ecclesiastical standpoint of the mid-twelfth century onwards, secular
rulers would be obliged to carry out papal and other church regulations, thus
recognising the church’s supreme claim to lordship over the Jews. Many secular
rulers were therefore reluctant to concede to the church’s claim of supremacy,
both as a tool in the ongoing power struggle between secular and ecclesiastical
power, and because several of the church’s provisions would run against their
primary interest in the Jews, that is, their financial gain. Therefore, secular rulers
not only procrastinated in carrying out the church’s regulations but openly coun-
teracted them, including a not-too-small number of ecclesiastical princes who,
acting as rulers of their territory and (secular) lords over their Jews, followed
their primary interest in the well-being of their country. The archbishop of
Mainz, for example, abrogated his own command of a Jewish dress code in
1294, which he had enacted at the provincial council of Aschaffenburg only
two years earlier, in order to facilitate an agreement between the municipality
of Erfurt and the local Jewish community.⁴⁹
The legal standing granted to medieval Jews by their respective secular rul-
ers had a far more immediate impact on their everyday life since it defined the
framework within which Jewish existence was possible. Its main features, devel-
oping both under the influence of and in competition with ecclesiastical regula-
tions, were far more positive toward the Jews. Already in the Carolingian era, pro-
tection privileges were granted to individual Jews (but also other individuals).
The imperial privileges of the late eleventh century to Rhineland communities⁵⁰
granted wide-ranging protection of Jewish life, property, and business, integrat-
ed ideas of Jewish law and adapted the general idea of protection as a core ideal
of the ruler’s duties toward his subjects.
In the wake of a ritual murder accusation in Fulda in 1235, Emperor
Frederick II extended the privilege to all Jews of the Holy Roman Empire and de-
fined the Jews’ status as servi camerae nostri (“servants of our chamber”), mak-
ing them part of the imperial treasure, as did, in his legal succession, the terri-

 Cf. M. Lämmerhirt, Corpus der Quellen, 2015, TW01, no. 58, http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.
org/TW01/CP1-c1- 00os.html; R. Richtscheid, “Judenbetreffe in Synodal- und Konzilsstatuten
(1237– 1347),” Corpus der Quellen, issued 2011, accessed October 27, 2020, http://www.medie
val-ashkenaz.org/SK01/einleitung.html.
 Granted to the Jews of Speyer (1180, by Bishop Rudolf) and Worms (1090, by Emperor
Heinrich IV), cf. M. Toch, Die Juden im mittelalterlichen Reich (München: Oldenbourg, 2013),
46 – 47.
196 Birgit Wiedl

torial princes who obtained the “right to the Jews” (Judenregal) in the course of
the fourteenth century.⁵¹ The Jews of France and England remained more closely
bound to their respective kings due to the limited development of territorial
lords. The majority of regulations enacted by secular rulers were protective priv-
ileges and aimed at promoting settlements by providing living conditions under
which the (subsequently taxed) Jewish communities could flourish; anti-Jewish
ideas can therefore rather be found in the rulers’ political actions than in their
legislation, in selective measures that were often directed at specific individuals
or groups and were, at least up until the mid-fourteenth century, predominantly
(though not exclusively) politically and/or economically motivated. Thus, the po-
litical and economic development of the respective territory should be factored
in in an analysis of these measures. Anti-Jewish decrees or actions of a ruler
do not necessarily signify a general anti-Jewish disposition or policy: the same
ruler could agree to a persecution in one city whose loyalty he wanted to gain
and punish another for “damaging” his Jews (and thus his income), or annul
an allegiant noble family’s debts and assist the Jews to collect their debts
from another he deemed disloyal. With the late thirteenth century, the focus
on promotion and protection shifted toward a more openly expressed economic
interest which, in the course of the following century, turned into financial ex-
ploitation that was executed with measures of increasing violence, such as by
the Habsburg dukes who incarcerated their Austrian Jews in 1377 and only re-
leased them after receiving ransom, or by a series of debt annulments issued
by King Wenceslaus I in 1385 and 1390 that had devastating consequences for
Jewish business.⁵²
The dependency on the ruler’s protection placed all European Jews in a par-
ticularly precarious position should this protection wane, end, or even be turned
against them. Whereas in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire, the rulers’
predominant financial interest—and thus an interest in thriving Jewish commun-
ities—made them the target of ecclesiastical polemics, which accused them of fa-
vouring the Jews in order to profit off their usury, the royal policy in France and
England was more in accordance with church opinions and, while not exclusive-
ly aimed at the Jews, sought to limit moneylending. In France, the longstanding
Capetian anti-usury policy reached its peak under the reign of exceedingly (and

 The discussion on Jewish service and Kammerknechtschaft is vast, cf. Toch, Die Juden im mit-
telalterlichen Reich, 48 – 49 (also on Judenregal) and 104– 7.
 Cf. Brugger, “Ansiedlung,” 220; K. Hruza, “Anno domini 1385 do burden die iuden … gevan-
gen. Die vorweggenommene Wirkung skandalöser Urkunden König Wenzels (IV.),” in Wege zur
Urkunde, Wege der Urkunde, Wege der Forschung: Beiträge zur europäischen Diplomatik des Mit-
telalters, ed. K. Hruza and P. A. Herold (Wien: Böhlau, 2005), 117– 67.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 197

demonstratively so) pious King Louis IX whose fierce anti-Jewish stance also
brought a heightened urgency to the crown’s efforts to encourage the conversion
of Jews (and Muslims)⁵³ and promoted the Disputation of Paris with its ensuing
damnation and burning of the Talmud in 1242.⁵⁴ While (re)structuring France’s
financial management under a tight control of the crown, Louis reinforced his
anti-usury policy by severely cutting down moneylending. The king’s hostile pol-
icy culminated in the 1252 eviction decree for those Jews who would not abandon
moneylending, the second expulsion of the French Jews after 1182 (after ritual
murder accusations).⁵⁵ When the king’s advisors contradicted the banishment,
arguing that since moneylending itself was necessary, it would be better if the
Jews, who were condemned anyway, did it than the Christians, Louis countered
that the Jews’ presence in France was his responsibility, and thus their usury
would affect his soul.⁵⁶ In the following years, several confiscations of Jewish
property filled the royal treasury, and as of 1269, French Jews were required to
wear an identifying marker in shape of a yellow wheel (see above). After having
been expulsed for financial reasons in 1306, King Louis X allowed the Jews to
return in 1315 under his protection of their lives and property, albeit with severe
restrictions on settlement (limited to twelve years individually) and behaviour
according to the ideas of canon law: a mandatory badge, no disputing matters
of faith, and the continuing damnation of the Talmud. Similar inconsistencies
resulting from a mixture of secular with church law can be seen in several of
the western European countries, such as, Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas for his King-
doms of Castile and Leon (1263/65, achieving legal status in 1348) that included
protection provisions as well as anti-Jewish regulations from canon law (no
Christian servants, no shared meals, baths, and sexual encounters, no new syn-
agogues).⁵⁷
The Jews of England were not only under a tight royal control but incorpo-
rated into the crown’s administration (which surpassed any secular administra-
tion on the continent in terms of efficiency and literacy). As early as late twelfth

 Cf. W. C. Jordan, The Apple of His Eye: Converts from Islam in the Reign of Louis IX (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2019).
 Cf. Cohen, Living Letters, 317– 25 on the church’s part, particularly that of Nicolas Donin and
Pope Gregory IX; cf. also Fidora, “Latin Talmud.”
 Cf. R. Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, 1000 – 1500 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 146 – 50.
 For a survey, still see the fundamental study by W. C. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the
Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1989); further R. Chazan, Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2010), 130 – 31.
 Schreckenberg, Adversus Judaius, 3:287– 90.
198 Birgit Wiedl

century, Jewish taxes and legal cases were administered by a specific office, the
royal Exchequer of the Jews, and while not anti-Jewish in its purpose, its tallage-
rolls house is one of the most strikingly anti-Jewish visual renditions: the infa-
mous drawing of the Norwich Jews Isaac, Mosse-Mokke, and Abigail surrounded
by demons.⁵⁸ Having been granted privileges in the course of the twelfth centu-
ry⁵⁹—the right to their own oath and their own court, the right to move around
freely, along with economic provisions—the English Jewry flourished, which
lay in the interest of the King: having defined them as his own property enabled
him to tax them without permission of the Parliament. While the growing anti-
Jewish sentiments, particularly the emerging blood libel, which led to mob vio-
lence against Jewish communities, were still countered by royal protection orders
up until the early 1200s, the influence of anti-Jewish legislation, mainly imported
from canon law, grew. Already in 1218, the Council of Regency, under pressure
from the papal legate, ordered the Jews to wear a distinguishing garb (yet al-
lowed dispensations to be bought), which was repeated in the Statute of Jewry
(1253) of King Henry III. This Statute clearly demonstrated the dominating influ-
ence of ecclesiastical canons. While defining the Jews’ rights of settlement as
only in effect if (economically) beneficial for the crown, for the most part it re-
peated (and specified) Lateran IV’s regulations and included measures that, in
other territories, were rather found in regulations of post-Lateran IV synods: sep-
aration in order to prevent any close contact, no hindering of conversions, no
new synagogues, no religious debates and disparaging remarks regarding Chris-
tianity, no buying and consumption of meat during Lent. In addition, the statute
reprimanded the English Jews to lower their voices in the synagogue so that
Christians could not hear them, an instruction King Henry translated into reality
in 1272, when he gave a confiscated London synagogue to the Friars of the Sack
who had complained about the “continuous wailing” from their Jewish neigh-

 The cartoon (British National Archives, Kew, E.410/1565, Rolls of the Issues of the Exchequer,
Hilary Term 1233) can be seen here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/medie
val-mystery/; A. Bale, The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms, 1350 – 1500
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2– 4. On Bale’s not entirely unproblematic dif-
ferentiation between medieval anti-Judaism and antisemitism and the role of actual presence of
Jews as a distinguishing element, cf. ibid., 1– 21. On the caricature, see also Lipton, Dark Mirror,
178 – 82.
 In the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, a collection of laws attributed to mid-eleventh century Ed-
ward I but not compiled until a century later, Henry I grants a series of rights to the London chief
Rabbi Joseph and his followers. Translations and/or summaries of English Jewry-law have been
provided in J. G. Hillaby and C. Hillaby, The Palgrave Dictionary of Medieval Anglo-Jewish History
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 17– 37.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 199

bours.⁶⁰ Jews were forbidden to enter churches and those Jews who lived outside
of established communities had to obtain a royal licence. Henry’s reinforced un-
dertaking to promote conversion led to the foundation of the Domus converso-
rum, a London-based royal institution that took care of the newly converted.⁶¹
Henry’s successor Edward I, also in the light of a declining economic importance
of the Jews (who had been financially exploited by both Henry and Edward) took
up a royal anti-usury policy that had until then only been preached by synods
and clerics: in his Statute of 1275, he demanded that since “he had seen that div-
ers evils and the disinheriting of good men of his land have happened by the
usuries which the Jews have made in time past,” Jews should completely aban-
don moneylending, even if this would hurt the crown’s revenues. Under continu-
ing ecclesiastical influence, he also enforced the separation of Jewish and Chris-
tian living spaces by banning Christians from living among Jews while restricting
Jewish settlement to royal cities only, and confirmed the mandatory yellow felt
marker in form of two joined table.⁶² Coin-clipping had become a major accusa-
tion against Jews (and Christians) over the past decades, and in 1278, all Jews of
England were incarcerated due to this allegation, and many were subsequently
executed.⁶³ Twelve years later, in his eviction decree, Edward cited the unwilling-
ness of the Jews, “maliciously deliberating among themselves,” to comply to the
1275 terms and depressing his subjects even further so that he “by reason of their
errors and to the honour of Christ, has caused the Jews to leave his realm as per-
fidious men.”⁶⁴
The absence of anti-Jewish topics in (most of) the secular legislation of the
Holy Roman Empire should not be taken for an absence of these ideas within

 Cf. R. Stacey, “King Henry III and the Jews,” Jews in Medieval Christendom: “Slay Them Not,”
ed. K. T. Utterback and M. L. Price (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 121– 22. Jewish voices and the Hebrew
language was frequently likened to a dog’s bark; fifteenth-century German author Michael
Behaim, among others, pretended to hear “wailing, hellish cries, and dogs’ barks” from the syn-
agogue, cf. Heil, “Gottesfeinde”—“Menschenfeinde,” 113; B. Wiedl, “Anti-Jewish Polemics in Busi-
ness Charters from Late Medieval Austria,” Medieval Worlds: Comparative & Interdisciplinary
Studies 7 (2018): 61– 79.
 Cf. L. Fogle, The King’s Converts: Jewish Conversion in Medieval London (Lanham: Lexington
Books, 2019). The English royal policy toward Jews has been interpreted in the context of post-
colonial and race studies, mainly by G. Heng, England and the Jews: How Religion and Violence
Created the First Racial State in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), and an
outtake of her encompassing study The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 55 – 109.
 Hillaby and Hillaby, Dictionary, 46 – 47.
 Hillaby and Hillaby, Dictionary, 103 – 9; Fogle, King’s Converts, 41– 42, 45; Heng, England,
39 – 41, with further literature. Christians too were accused of coin-clipping.
 Hillaby and Hillaby, Dictionary, 36 – 37.
200 Birgit Wiedl

secular rule. The expulsion decrees clearly demonstrate how permeated the
Christian mindset was with anti-Jewish ideas, how easily these accusations,
from counterfeiting to ritual murder and host desecration, were utilised as weap-
ons, as was blatant financial gain. When (later) Emperor Maximilian I gave in to
the pressure of the Styrian Estates and his financial desires and evicted the
Styrian Jews in 1497, he listed all the anti-Jewish stereotypes that had caused vi-
olence against the Jews throughout the Middle Ages: their crimes and duplicity,
the ritual murders and host desecrations they continued to commit, their coun-
terfeiting and deceitful business practises that had caused many a noble family
to perish. A few years earlier, a host desecration allegation had resulted not only
in the deaths of twenty-seven Sternberg Jews but was followed by the expulsion
of the Jews from the north-eastern territories—apart from the dukes of Mecklen-
burg in whose territory Sternberg was located, also the duke of Pomerania, the
archbishop of Magdeburg (who had served as a judge in the trial at Sternberg)
and his suffragans,⁶⁵ and the margrave of Brandenburg seized the opportunity,
while circulating woodcuts, broadsheets, and incunables⁶⁶ spread the “reason”
for their anti-Jewish policy.

Customary and Municipal Law

Customary Law

The status of Jews in medieval customary law(s) is even more diverse than in
other legislation and, due to an at best fragmentary tradition of written records,
even less traceable. Therefore, single law codes will serve as examples of how
anti-Jewish legislation was represented in customary law in the realm of the
Holy Roman Empire. Customary law was recorded from the late thirteenth cen-
tury onwards in Rechtsbüchern (legal codices) and Weistümern (collections of

 Cf. F. Backhaus “Die Hostienschändungsprozesse von Sternberg (1492) und Berlin (1510) und
die Ausweisung der Juden aus Mecklenburg und der Mark Brandenburg,” Jahrbuch für Branden-
burgische Landesgeschichte 39 (1988): 7– 26; V. Honemann, “Die Sternberger Hostienschändung
und ihre Quellen,” in Literaturlandschaften: Schriften zur deutschsprachigen Literatur im Osten
des Reiches, ed. V. Honemann (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2008), 187– 216.
 Already in 1492, the year of the alleged desecration and the trial, Magdeburg-based publisher
Simon Koch printed an extensive rendition of the events, http://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.
de/dms/werkansicht/?PPN=PPN656982853&DMDID=DMDLOG_0000. The story became popular
quickly and was included in the Schedelsche Weltchronik (Nuremberg Chronicle), an illustrated
encyclopedia of world history, cf. B. Posselt, Konzeption und Kompilation der Schedelschen Welt-
chronik (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015).
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 201

oral legal traditions), compilations of a mostly “private” nature⁶⁷ that reflect the
customs of a locally restricted area in varying degrees of elaborateness; many of
these codes exist in several renditions, which do not necessarily tally in their
texts.⁶⁸ Most of these compilations drew from a variety of legal codes: canon
and ecclesiastical law as well as secular law was combined with customary
laws of the respective territory, in addition to that, older compilations were cop-
ied and rearranged. Topics covered in ecclesiastical and secular law were com-
mented on, in addition to that, customary law also deal in more detail with so-
cial, legal, and economic matters which were only touched upon in “official”
legislation. In her standard work on the Jews’ status in Rechtsbüchern, Christine
Magin has categorised four main subject areas that are discussed in the legal co-
dices: the social status of Jews; questions regarding conversion; procedural law;
and Jewish trade and moneylending. All these topics were particularly controver-
sial between ecclesiastical and secular legislation.⁶⁹
Not all topics were presented with anti-Jewish intent, and compilers would
deal with the same topic with varying attitudes. Already the question of the
Jews’ general status was discussed with various approaches: the Sachsenspiegel,
perhaps the most influential “German” legal code, stressed the Jews’ menial sta-
tus yet also emphasised that harming a Jew would break the Imperial Peace. This
refers to the inclusion of Jews in the First Imperial Peace of Mainz of 1103 that
had put unarmed Jews,⁷⁰ together with clerics, women, merchants, and other
vulnerable groups, under the heightened protection of the emperor. In the Sach-
senspiegel, this specific status is connected with a legendary origin—Josephus
and the healing of Titus—that drew from both Christian and Talmudic sources.⁷¹
While other receptions focus on the anti-Jewish aspect of this legend and put it
in context with the general idea of the Jews as a target of divine retaliation, the
Sachsenspiegel links it with imperial legislation, and in further receptions of the
Sachsenspiegel, this legend serves as the core explanation of the Jewish servitude

 For a critique of this term and the problematic opposition of private and official, cf. Magin,
“Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 42– 44, who emphasises that the compilations were often seen
as official, valid law (with references to royal or imperial privileges and ordinances) and that the
authors intended for their collections to be used and have a public impact.
 Cf. ibid., 41– 42.
 Cf. ibid., 114.
 On the debunking of the old perception that Jews were not allowed to bear arms, cf. the ar-
ticles by C. Magin, “‘Waffenrecht’ und ‘Waffenverbot’ für Juden im Mittelalter: Zu einem Mythos
der Forschungsgeschichte,” and M. J. Wenninger, “Von jüdischen Rittern und anderen waffentra-
genden Juden im mittelalterlichen Deutschland,” both in Aschkenas 13, no. 1 (2003): 17– 33 and
35 – 82.
 Cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 117– 18.
202 Birgit Wiedl

(although with some variations and inconsistencies): the Jews saved by Josephus
were transferred to the royal treasury by Titus, where they remained in perpetual
servitude, an interpretation that ascribes the origin of the Jews’ legal status
Roman emperors and puts the Holy Roman Emperor in their direct legal succes-
sion. Other compilations draw explicit connections between the Jews’ (and in
some, also the heathens’) “guilt” that made them property of the ruler, and
the rulers’ interest in economic gain.⁷²
Particularly references to a perceived favouritism of the Jews, mainly with re-
gard to legal and economic privileges, were delivered with a clear anti-Jewish in-
tent: the discussion surrounding the Statute of the Market, the right of the Jewish
pawnbrokers to clear themselves of the suspicion of having accepted stolen
goods as pledges by taking an oath.⁷³ This right had first been granted in Emper-
or Henry IV’s privilege for the Jews of Worms in 1090 and had been adapted by
most territorial rulers of the Holy Roman Empire throughout the Middle Ages.⁷⁴
Theologians had for a long time been labelling the statute particularly unjust
since it allowed the Jews’ business practices for which Christians were hanged
(see above).⁷⁵ These sentiments were reflected in several legal codes of custom-
ary law⁷⁶ that focused on this perceived injustice of the Jews’ preferential rights,
which the kings had “against justice” (wider recht) granted to them.⁷⁷ “The
cursed Jews have much better rights towards the Christians than the Christians
towards the Jews,” the Viennese Stadtrechtsbuch, a privately commissioned com-
pendium of Viennese customary law, ducal privileges, and decisions of the city
council mixed with passages from the Schwabenspiegel from before 1360, de-
scribes the situation: Lawful it might be, yet not proper and fair, and by the
use of emotive language, the author follows to paint the Christian as the impe-
cunious victim and the Jewish moneylender as the rapacious predator, utilising
anti-Jewish stereotypes that were common in both narratives and imagery.⁷⁸ Il-
lustrations could add another layer of anti-Jewish sentiment: the Jew who is

 Cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 124– 35.
 Cf. Toch, Die Juden im mittelalterlichen Reich, 109 – 10, also on the potential references to Jew-
ish law and a Jewish participation in composing the privileges (with further literature).
 For the ample discussion on the topic, see the overview by Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden
recht stet,ˮ 352– 400.
 Cf. R. Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1997), 51. Shatzmiller, “Church Articles,” 95 – 97 with examples from France; Müller,
“Verpfändung sakraler Kultgegenstände,” 190 – 93.
 Cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 366 – 72.
 Schwabenspiegel, cf. Müller, “Jüdische Pfandleiher,” 453; Abulafia, Christian–Jewish Rela-
tions, 55.
 Wiedl, “Anti-Jewish Polemics,” 67– 68.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 203

shown hanged or with his hand chopped off and a chalice next to him in several
copies of the Sachsenspiegel evokes an image of a Jew being punished for his
crime, lacking the qualifier of the written text (the possibility to present a war-
rantor).⁷⁹ The Jews’ right to appear as plaintiffs in cases of bodily harm was
not denied (or even seen as understood),⁸⁰ whereas the topic of Jewish testimony
was mostly discussed in the (everyday) context of moneylending and pawn-brok-
ing. While most compliers merely gave an account of the possibilities of Jewish
witness-bearing, several customary laws tried to exclude, or at least limit, Jewish
testimony, and subsumed it under their criticism of the statute: the Jews had
bought better rights for themselves from the king, summarizes the Schwabenspie-
gel. ⁸¹ Apart from the Statute of the Market, the selling of specific goods, namely
meat, by Jews was a main topic discussed in both customary and municipal law
(and its broad intersections, see below).
Court procedures often included the taking of an oath as a means of proof
and corroboration, and Jews were required to participate in this.⁸² As is the
case with many other topics, the Judeneid cannot per se be seen as an element
of Christian anti-Jewish action, as earlier studies have done. Oath-taking was
common within the Jewish community (meaning, among Jews only),⁸³ and

 E.g. the Heidelberger Sachsenspiegel, UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 164, fol. 13v, http://digi.
ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg164/0040; see Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 55; J.
Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Marketplace (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2013), 37– 38; M. J. Wenninger, “Die Juden in den Bilderhandschriften
des Sachsenspiegels,” in Integration und Ausgrenzung: Studien zur deutsch-jüdischen Literatur-
und Kulturgeschichte von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart. Festschrift für Hans Otto
Horch, ed. M. H. Gelber, J. Hessing, and R. Jütte (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2009), 12. The Sach-
senspiegel depicts Jews in both neutral and derogatory contexts: while the aforementioned
armed Jew does not carry any anti-Jewish associations, a Jew is utilised to impersonate
doubt/bad faith to illustrate the reason of “doubts of rightful belief” in the context of reasons
for a legitimate papal excommunication of the emperor, see Wenninger, “Juden in den Bilder-
handschriften,” 12– 13.
 Cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 234.
 Cf. ibid., 261.
 Cf. G. Mentgen, “Judeneid,” Handwörterbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Berlin: Erich
Schmidt Verlag, 2011), 2:1409 – 11; A. Schmidt, “so dir got helfe. Die Judeneide,” in Juden in
der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. Religiöse Konzepte—Feindbilder—Rechtfertigungen, ed.
U. Schulze (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2002), 87– 105. For a brief summary on the vast dis-
cussion and its many remaining questions, cf. A. Lehnertz, “The Erfurt Judeneid between Prag-
matism and Ritual: Some Aspects of Christian and Jewish Oath-Taking in Medieval Germany,” in
Ritual Objects in Ritual Contexts, ed. C. D. Bergemann and M. Stürzebecher (Erfurt: Bussert &
Stadeler, 2020), 12– 31.
 Cf. Lehnertz, “Erfurt Judeneid,” 16 – 18.
204 Birgit Wiedl

also the specific set phrases Jews used in context of oath-taking at Christian
courts had to draw from both Christian (customary) law and Jewish halachic
law and custom to make the oath binding for both parties; rituals such as touch-
ing the doorknob of the synagogue had their counterpart in Christian ceremo-
nies.⁸⁴ Neither ecclesiastical nor secular legislation occupied themselves much
with the subject, the former occasionally doubting a Jew’s oath’s validity, the lat-
ter including the Jews’ right to swear on the Torah in their privileges.⁸⁵ Several
texts of Jewish oaths, as they were used in everyday practise, have been trans-
mitted,⁸⁶ and many legal codes and municipal laws from the mid-thirteenth cen-
tury onwards included both the wording of the oath (as it was custom in the re-
spective town or region) and descriptions of the accompanying ceremony. While
most of these renditions were neutral, particularly the latter served as a medium
for anti-Jewish derisions: the Jew shall stand on a sow’s hide, stipulates the
Schwabenspiegel,⁸⁷ and illustrations in manuscripts⁸⁸ not only translated the
written word into visual stimuli but emphasised the connotation with one of
the major anti-Jewish images of the Middle Ages, the Judensau. ⁸⁹ Other codes,
such as the Weichbildvulgata, added specific clothing, often stressing that the
Jew be barefoot, and a hat soaked in lamb’s blood (or the sow’s hide).⁹⁰ An
early sixteenth-century rendition of the Sachsenspiegel (that in its medieval
text versions does not contain the oath) even specifies the sow’s hide: it should

 Cf. ibid., 12.

 Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 280 – 87.
 In addition to the Erfurt Judeneid, see the Jewish oaths of Krems and Vienna, cf. H. Voltelini,
“Der Wiener und Kremser Judeneid,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Wien 12
(1932): 64– 70. The Judeneid of Frankfurt exists in both a neutral and a derogatory version, cf.
G. Grebner, “Haltungen zum Judeneid: Texte und Kontexte der Frankfurter Eidesformeln im
14. und 15. Jahrhundert,” in ‘…Ihrer Bürger Freiheit.’ Frankfurt am Main im Mittelalter, ed. H.
Müller (Frankfurt/Main: Waldemar Kramer, 2004), 141– 73; D. Schnur, Die Juden in Frankfurt
am Main und in der Wetterau im Mittelalter: Christlich-jüdische Beziehungen, Gemeinden, Recht
und Wirtschaft von den Anfängen bis um 1400 (Wiesbaden: Kommission für die Geschichte der
Juden in Hessen, 2017), 272– 77.
 Cf. Schmidt, “Judeneide,” 89 – 102; Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 291– 97.
 Schwabenspiegel, KBR Royal Library of Belgium, ms. 14689 – 91, c. 1425/50, fol. 204r, https://
uurl.kbr.be/1065739.
 Cf. I. Shachar, The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and its History (London: Warburg
Institute, 1974); B. Wiedl, “Laughing at the Beast: The Judensau: Anti-Jewish Propaganda and
Humor from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period,” in Laughter in the Middle Ages and
Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning, and Conse-
quences, ed. A. Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 325 – 64.
 Weichbildvulgata, Schmidt, “Judeneide,” 102– 3; Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ
307– 8; the majority of manuscripts do not contain this paragraph.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 205

stem from a sow that had farrowed within the past fortnight, and the hide should
be cut along the back and spread out with the teats on the upper side.⁹¹ But,
were these deeply humiliating and ridiculing rituals ever enacted? Dis ist ein fan-
tasey, “this is fantasy,” a commentator criticises the paragraph in his gloss to the
Weichbildvulgata in 1557,⁹² and between the two versions of the Jewish oath of
Frankfurt, only the one without the addition of the sow’s hide was in actual
use.⁹³
Some legal codes discuss topics that are barely touched upon in others: for
example, sexual relationships are not only discussed broadly in the Schwaben-
spiegel, its author also stipulates a much harsher punishment than the church:
under canon law, only the female Christian offender is severely punished (flog-
ging and expulsion) while the male Jew is due a monetary fine, the Schwaben-
spiegel wants both male Jew/female Christian and Jewess/male Christian to be
bound together and burnt as a punishment for their adultery. In case of the
Christians involved, disavowal of the Christian faith was added to the accusa-
tions; in doing so, the author linked sexual intercourse with a Jew/Jewess to her-
esy (which was punishable by burning).⁹⁴
To prevent these and any other close contacts, canon law had as of 1215 re-
quired the Jews to wear a distinguishing marker. In western Europe, royal legis-
lation took on the topic (see above), while in the Holy Roman Empire, secular
legislators did not include any such regulations.⁹⁵ However, both distinguishing
garbs in general and the common Jewish attribute of the area specifically, the
Jewish hat, appeared in customary law in a variety of contexts. The Sachsenspie-
gel mentions—rather neutrally—Jews and clerics who were excluded from the Im-
perial Peace if they bore arms and did not wear their hair “according to their
law”: the cleric’s tonsure and the Jew’s beard and hat, as the accompanying il-
lustration shows.⁹⁶ The Schwabenspiegel demanded that Jews wear the Jewish

 Cf. Schmidt, “Judeneide,” 101– 2.

 Cf. ibid., 103 – 4; Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 316 – 17.
 Cf. Schnur, Juden in Frankfurt, 272– 77.
 Cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 160 – 61, n. 162.
 Cf. ibid., 158.
 Heidelberger Sachsenspiegel, UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 164, https://digi.ub.uni-heidel
berg.de/diglit/cpg164/0038; Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 158; Wenninger, “Juden in
Bilderhandschriften.” Sexual relationships between Jews and Christians did of course occur, cf.
the examples given by Burghartz, “Juden—eine Minderheit;” Schnitzler, “‘Contra Naturam’;” and
J. Müller, “Sexual Relationships between Christians and Jews in Medieval Germany, According to
Christian Sources,” in History of the Jewish People and Contemporary Jewish Society, vol. 2 of
Iggud: Selected Essays in Jewish Studies, ed. G. Bacon et al. (Jerusalem: Gefen Books, 2009),
19 – 32.
206 Birgit Wiedl

hat at all times and in all cities, while some copies of the Weichbildvulgata
(Magdeburg, late thirteenth, early fourteenth century), and the legal code of Mei-
ßen (1357/87) that Jews were not allowed to leave the synagogue without wearing
the Jewish hat,⁹⁷ and the Jews of Augsburg had to wear the hat when selling their
goods at the market (see below).

Municipal Law

The differentiation between customary law, municipal law, and laws of a secular
ruler is vague at best—customary laws of a city were recorded from oral tradition,
while codified municipal law was often issued by the lord of the town who
would either pander to the citizens’ wishes or put up a strict set of regulations
to control them. Similar to customary law, the (anti‐)Jewish topics dealt with
in municipal law mainly concerned legal and economic issues, yet often with ad-
ditional agendas of the citizenry as a emerging political player from the thir-
teenth century onwards. Regulations concerning Jewish behaviour and contact
between Jews and Christians were imported from church law, such as the provi-
sion of the municipal law of Jihlava that forbade Jews and Christians to meet on
Good Friday.⁹⁸
These qualms were outrivalled in importance by concerns that had a more
immediate impact on municipal politics: Jewish testimony, moneylending
(with a particular focus on interest rates), and pawn-broking, many of which
emerged from, or resulted in direct conflict with the respective town lord.
Many of these regulations were not necessarily anti-Jewish in their primary intent
but strove at monitoring and controlling the Jews’ legal status and Jewish eco-
nomic activities; generally, cities sought to achieve as encompassing a control
as possible over all the diverse groups, citizens and others, living within the mu-
nicipality. While in church law, ideas stemming from late antiquity were trans-
ported into the Late Middle Ages and beyond, municipal law often removed reg-
ulations that were no longer deemed relevant: for example, by the late thirteenth
century, the banning of Jews from public offices had disappeared from municipal
legislation, since these jobs were already filled with Christian office-holders any-
way.⁹⁹

 Cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 158 – 60.
 Cf. Schreckenberg, Adversus Judaius, 3:144– 45.
 Cf. the examples provided by Haverkamp, “Jüdische Münzmeister,” and Wenninger, “Juden
als Münzmeister.”
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 207

Apart from (attempts at) undermining and mitigating the Statute of the Mar-
ket and regulating the objects legal for pawning (see above), the limitation of the
interest rate taken by Jews was a core issue for many cities. Since a diminished
interest rate usually went against the interest of the respective ruler, cities went
about in different ways: some tried to simply limit the interest rates, or at least
limit compound interest,¹⁰⁰ other cities took a more circumspect way, such as the
citizens of Ulm, who sued their Jewish moneylenders on the basis of usury before
the episcopal court.¹⁰¹ Among the many different efforts (and an equal variety of
outcomes), a particularly drastic example shall illustrate the possibilities of mu-
nicipal and limits of, in this case, ducal policy: in the wake of persecutions trig-
gered by an alleged host desecration in 1338, and quickly expanding throughout
Lower Austria and south of Bohemia and Moravia, the city of Vienna seized the
chance to make use of the persecution to their own advantage. In return for pro-
tection, they forced the Jewish community to agree to a reduction of interest rates
from eight (as granted in the ducal privilege from 1244) to three pennies per
pound a week on loans for Viennese citizens. The Austrian dukes had to consent
to the reduction due to the precarious situation the Jews in their territories were
in, and the reluctance of the three leaders of the Jewish community is evident in
the epithets the poor, the miserable, and the most ashamed they added to their
signatures respectively.¹⁰²
The ecclesiastical reservations against Jews testifying in Christian courts and
their right to sue Christians were translated into everyday practice in many mu-
nicipal legal codes, combining the church’s idea of a Jew’s testimony being
worth less (or even invalid) than a Christian’s with the citizenry’s aim at
strengthening the municipal jurisdiction over the Jews (and, in many cases,
thus weakening the ruler’s). While the general right of Jews to take Christians
to court was rarely disputed,¹⁰³ the Jews’ position before court was weakened

 E.g., Wiener Neustadt, Villach, cf. Wiedl, “Codifying Jews: Jews in Austrian Town Charters of
the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” in Jews in Medieval Christendom: “Slay Them Not,” ed.
K. T. Utterback and M. L. Price (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 213; Frankfurt, cf. Schnur, Juden in Frankfurt,
456 – 58.
 Cf. C. Scholl, Die Judengemeinde der Reichsstadt Ulm im späten Mittelalter: Innerjüdische
Verhältnisse und christlich-jüdische Beziehungen in süddeutschen Zusammenhängen (Hannover:
Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2012), 184– 85.
 Cf. Wiedl, “Codifying Jews,” 213 – 14.
 An exception is the legal code for Freising (Bavaria), which in some of its copies state that if
a Christ killed a Jew, the judge, not the Jew’s relatives, should act as plaintiff, cf. Magin, “Wie es
umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 226 – 27.
208 Birgit Wiedl

by, for example, exchanging Jewish with Christian witnesses,¹⁰⁴ or demanding

Jewish witnesses against a Jewish plaintiff.¹⁰⁵ Only a few municipal legal
codes included a prohibition of Jewish testimony, in most cases, this regulation
is contradicted within the manuscript by ordinances allowing it (stemming from
other referential texts); in neither of these codes, the inconsistencies within the
text were commented on (if the author was even aware of them).¹⁰⁶
Already in its early medieval councils, the church had cautioned Christians
against Jewish food, and in connection with the cities’ economic regulations,
Jews were often banned from professions concerned with food, among which
the selling of “Jewish” meat turned out to be the most disputed one. While
some of the regulations merely intended to target a presumed Jewish competition
and thus put additional charges on Jewish meat or ordered them to sell their
meat at home, many cities arranged for a clear identification of the stalls
where Jewish meat was sold: Jews were assigned a specific booth that was either
at the fringe of the market, thus removing Jews from a major public space, and/
or used for the sale of “bad” meat (i. e., foul, trichinous meat or meat from sick
or injured animals); if not, Jews were obliged to wear the Jewish hat (Augsburg)
or had to alert potential Christian customers that they were about to buy “Jewish
meat” (Bolzano).¹⁰⁷ It has been debated whether these assignments automatical-
ly meant an anti-Jewish association with “rotten” and “foul,” labelling Jewish
meat as inferior not because of its actual quality but its provenance, or whether
the permission to sell the meat at all (which was an exclusive right of the butch-
ers’) was in fact a privilege.¹⁰⁸ In many towns, Jewish and Christian butchers co-
operated: in Wroclaw, where in 1267 the synod had warned the Christians about
the Jews’ poisonous food, Jewish and Christian butchers had, after several con-
flicts, actually agreed on a collaboration that guaranteed both groups their safe
income (which in return angered the bishop).¹⁰⁹

 Cf. Wiedl, “Codifying Jews,” 211– 12 (Wiener Neustadt and St. Veit); Magin, “Wie es umb der
iuden recht stet,ˮ 270 – 73 (Magdeburg).
 Cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 261– 62 (Freising).
 Cf. ibid., 268 – 270 (Meißen, Goslar).
 Cf. Wiedl, “Codifying Jews,” 215 – 16.
 Cf. Magin, “Wie es umb der iuden recht stet,ˮ 348; G. Maier, Wirtschaftliche Tätigkeitsfelder
von Juden im Reichsgebiet (ca. 1273 bis 1350) (Trier: Kliomedia, 2010).
 Cf. ibid., 68 – 69.
 Anti-Jewish Legislation in the Middle Ages 209

Conclusion
It is tantamount to a commonplace to stress that medieval anti-Jewish thoughts
and actions were prevalent at all times and in all parts of society, to which me-
dieval legislation, or rather its manifold variations, was but one contributor. For
the populace, anti-Jewish narratives and visual images disseminated stereotypes
and prejudices much more efficiently and engrained a deep-rooted mistrust into
the common mind-set, however, the influence of medieval legislation should not
be underestimated. Secular, municipal, and—to a certain extent—customary
laws provided the framework inside of which medieval Jewish life could exist
in Christian-dominated territories. Its anti-Jewish propensities varied greatly:
while in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire, ideas of (imperial) protection
and the financial gain from prospering Jewish communities for a long time pre-
vented anti-Jewish thought from entering legislation (which, however, did not
hinder many rulers to participate in the loot after persecutions), the Jews of Eng-
land and France, under much tighter royal control, were subjected to a royal leg-
islation that showed a stronger influence of canon and church law. Church law
was, despite its limited impact on actual Jewish living conditions and daily life,
one of the main mediums by which anti-Jewish ideas could persist from antiqui-
ty throughout the Middle Ages (and beyond), and worked as a catalyst for more
commonly understandable narratives (e. g., the transubstantiation dogma and
the ensuing host desecration accusations). Furthermore, medieval anti-Jewish
laws, even if not implemented at the time, made sure that stereotypes not
only prevailed but were deeply anchored in the legislation of both the church
and the emerging modern states; they prepared the ground for policies of later
centuries, such as the church’s demands of segregation and separation of Jewish
and Christian living spaces, which, while only rarely carried out in the Middle
Ages, were translated into the reality of the ghettos from the sixteenth century
onwards.

Birgit Wiedl is a research fellow at the Institute for Jewish History in Austria
(St. Pölten) and a lecturer at the Universities of Salzburg and Klagenfurt. She is
the co-editor of the Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden in Österreich (four volumes
to date) and specialises in medieval Jewish history, Jewish-Christian interaction,
and medieval anti-Judaism, on which she has published extensively. The article
was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P 32396 and its preceding proj-
ects.
210 Birgit Wiedl

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Comprehending Antisemitism in Modern Times
Michael Wladika
Georg Ritter von Schönerers
Radikalisierung zum Rassenantisemiten
vom Linzer Programm 1882 bis zur
Gründung des „Verbandes der
Deutschnationalen“ 1885
Dieser Beitrag ist auf jene drei Jahre im politischen Leben Georg von Schönerers
fokussiert, die stellvertretend für ein Anwachsen der Judenfeindschaft im Wien
der 1880er Jahre stehen. Nach einer kurzen Vorstellung Schönerers und des Linzer
Programms stellt er einen Versuch dar, seine Wandlung zum Rassenantisemiten
vom Jahr 1882 bis 1885 anhand von fünf Punkten zu verdeutlichen.
Wer war Georg Heinrich Ritter von Schönerer? Im Juli 1842 in Wien geboren,
wurde er 1873 in den Reichsrat gewählt, nachdem er Gut und Schloss Rosenau im
Waldviertel von seinem prominenten Vater, dem Eisenbahningenieur Matthias
Schönerer, übernommen und sich dort für die Bauern eingesetzt hatte. Im Par-
lament schloss er sich zunächst den Deutschliberalen an. Es war vor allem
Schönerers Eintreten für einen Sparkurs und eine Steuerreform, womit er gegen
die Säulen des Reiches, nämlich gegen die Befreiung der Kirchen von der Ge-
bäudesteuer und gegen die Steuerfreiheit des Kaiserhauses Stellung bezog, mit
denen er kleinere Skandale provozierte. In einer Rede im Dezember 1878 kritisierte
Schönerer die Regierung auf das Schärfste und schloss mit dem Ruf: „Wenn wir
nur schon zum Deutschen Reich gehören würden!“ 1879 wiedergewählt, trat er am
10. Dezember 1880 für das allgemeine, gleiche und direkte Wahlrecht ein.¹
Als von ihm ausgearbeitete Parteiprogramme allesamt wegen ihrer Radika-
lität von den Liberalen abgelehnt wurden, reifte ihn ihm der Entschluss, selber
eine deutschnationale Partei zu gründen. Daher hielt Georg von Schönerer am
28. Februar 1882 im Reichsrat seine berühmt-berüchtigte Abschiedsrede von der
liberalen Verfassungspartei, der er vorwarf, staatliche vor nationale Interessen zu
stellen. Von ihr wollte er sich in einer Erklärung, in der er seine eigene Kompro-
misslosigkeit rechtfertigte, „reinigen“: „Jene Deutschen, welche sich bisher den
Feinden des Deutschtums als Helfershelfer zugesellten, haben den Namen als

 Zur Gesamtproblematik cf. M. Wladika, Hitlers Vätergeneration: Die Ursprünge des National-
sozialismus in der k. u. k. Monarchie (Wien et al.: Böhlau, 2005) 67– 77.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Michael Wladika, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-011
220 Michael Wladika

Deutsche verwirkt und sind für alle Zeit als Abtrünnige zu brandmarken,“ lautete
die Resolution, die er dazu verlas.²
Georg Schönerer begann nun außerhalb des Parlaments in den Burschen-
schaften und in den studentischen Lesevereinen umtriebig zu werden und warb
für seine Ideen. Das erste greifbare Ergebnis war die Gründung der Halbmo-
natsschrift „Deutsche Worte,“ vom symbolbehafteten Schönerer nach dem Lied
„Deutsche Worte hör’ ich wieder …“ benannt, welche erstmals am 1. Mai 1881
erschien.³ Als erster Chefredakteur fungierte der Burschenschafter Engelbert
Pernerstorfer. In einer „Einladung zum Abonnement,“ erklärte er Sinn und Zweck
der neuen Zeitung:

Wer deutsch ist und treu und ehrlich ist, an den treten wir heran … Was wir sehnlichst
wünschen, das ist die Bildung einer (echten) volkstümlichen deutschen Partei.⁴

Am 2. Juni 1882 gründete Georg von Schönerer den mehr nationalbetonteren

Deutschnationalen Verein, der sofort rund 70 Mitglieder umfasste und nach seinen
Vorstellungen eine elitäre Kaderorganisation sein sollte. Der Verfasser der ersten
kurzen Schönerer-Biographie, der Journalist Franz Masaidek, stellte in der
Gründungsversammlung den Antrag, diesen „ersten politischen deutschnatio-
nalen Verein judenrein zu halten.“⁵ Der spätere Arbeiterführer Viktor Adler, der
beitreten wollte, teilte man aus diesem Grund mit, dass er unerwünscht sei.⁶ Er ist
im Februar 1884 den marxistisch orientierten Sozialdemokraten beigetreten und
ging damit den Weg vieler – auch assimilierter – Juden, die vom deutschnatio-
nalen Lager ausgeschlossen wurden und mit einem klerikalen Antisemitismus im
christlichsozialen Lager noch weniger umgehen konnten. Für ihre Reformtätigkeit
fanden sie nur im sozialistischen Lager eine neue Heimat. Für Schönerer aber, wie
später für Adolf Hitler war diese „Elastizität“ Beweis genug, dass jüdische Intel-
lektuelle für die Verbreitung des Marxismus und des Internationalismus verant-
wortlich wären, was beides den deutschen Interessen zum Nachteil gereiche.⁷

 Stenographische Protokolle der Sitzungen des Abgeordnetenhauses des österreichischen

Reichsrates, IX. Session, 200. Sitzung vom 28. Februar 1882, 7059 f.
 Wladika, Hitlers Vätergeneration, 150.
 Deutsche Worte 4, 16. Juli 1881.
 F. F. Masaidek, Georg von Schönerer und die deutschnationale Bewegung (Wien: Schalk, 1898),
13.
 Cf. J. Moser, „Von der Emanzipation zur antisemitischen Bewegung. Die Stellung Georg Ritter
von Schöneres und Heinrich Friedjungs in der Entwicklungsgeschichte des Antisemitismus in
Österreich (1848 – 1896),“ PhD diss., Universität Wien, 1962, 85.
 Cf. Wladika, Hitlers Vätergeneration, 157 f.
 Georg Ritter von Schönerers Radikalisierung zum Rassenantisemiten 221

Am 1. September 1882 wurde schließlich die Endfassung des Parteistatutes,

das „Linzer Programms der Deutschnationalen,“ in den „Deutschen Worten“
veröffentlicht.⁸ Es war dies eine Unternehmung von mehrheitlich aus kleinbür-
gerlichem Milieu stammender Burschenschafter, an der an prominenter Stelle mit
Viktor Adler (Arminia), Heinrich Friedjung (Concordia-Prag) und Serafin Bondy
auch drei Juden mitgewirkt haben, bis sie ausschieden.⁹ Die Widersprüche, die an
manchen Stellen so eklatant sind, dass das Programm unleserlich wird, lässt es
als Konglomerat mehrerer Ideen erscheinen.
Die beiden wichtigsten Forderungen des „Linzer Programms“ führten daher
auch zu den verschiedensten Auslegungen. Das Verlangen nach einer Personal-
union mit Ungarn schon alleine wegen der finanziellen Kosten eines „miserablen
Ausgleichs“ war nicht neu. Auch wenn man Dalmatien, Bosnien-Herzegowina,
Galizien und die Bukowina keiner Sonderstellung zuführen, sondern genauso aus
Kostengründen mit Ungarn vereinigen wollte, um damit einen festgefügten Block
zu schaffen, war auch dies nur eine Weiterentwicklung bereits bestehender Pro-
gramme. In wenig geschönter Form ließ es damit aber das Verlangen nach einer
Diktatur über die nicht deutschen Völker erkennen, oder zumindest eine Politik
rücksichtsloser Germanisierung. Durch den Wunsch nach Abtretungen wäre
Österreich jedoch dermaßen geschwächt worden, dass es als Verbündeter des
hochgelobten Deutschen Reiches diesem eben keinen militärischen Beistand
hätte leisten können. Wenn das Programm auch an keiner Stelle den Antisemi-
tismus zu einem Forderungspunkt erklärte, so könnte man es dahingehend aus-
legen, dass die Judenfeindschaft in dem Verlangen nach einer Abtretung der völlig
„undeutschen“ Provinzen Galiziens und der Bukowina an Ungarn doch indirekt
zum Ausdruck kam, denn diese Separationen von der österreichischen Reichs-
hälfte hätten einen Zustrom der dort lebenden eine Million Juden jäh unterbro-
chen.
Sieht man nun das Linzer Programm unter der Prämisse der Unterdrückung
anderer Volksgruppen als undemokratisch an, so muss auch die Forderung nach
dem direkten Wahlrecht unter Punkt 3 in diesem Licht gesehen werden. Dies umso
mehr, als es gleich darunter „Staatsbeamte“ und „alle, die mit dem Staat Ge-
schäfte machen,“ von genau diesem ausschloss. Dass darüber hinaus nur
„deutsche Männer“ gewählt werden sollten, daher ein rein deutsches passives
Wahlrecht gefordert wurde, erklärt von selbst, dass ein direktes Wahlrecht nur

 Abgedruckt in: K. Berchtold, ed. Österreichische Parteiprogramme 1868 – 1966 (Wien: Verlag für
Geschichte und Politik, 1968), 195.
 Cf. Die Wartburg 2 (Februar 1901): 5; F. Benda, Der deutsche Turnerbund 1889: Seine Entwicklung
und Weltanschauung (Wien: Verband wissenschaftlicher Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1991), 124.
222 Michael Wladika

solange ein Programmpunkt war, solange es auch ein Primat der Deutschen zu
sichern vermochte.
Nicht neu hingegen waren die Forderungen, „den Staatsgrundgesetzen die
volle Geltung zu verschaffen,“ das bestehende Steuerwesen zu ändern, nämlich
eine progressive Einkommenssteuer anstelle der direkten Steuer einzuführen, was
auch Auswirkungen auf das Wahlrecht gehabt hätte, Gewerkschaften zuzulassen,
die Gewerbeordnung zu reformieren und vor allem die Eisenbahnen zu ver-
staatlichen, eine Forderung, die gleich zweimal im Programm aufscheint.
Isoliert, gleichsam als Programm im Programm, stehen die möglicherweise
auf Viktor Adler zurückgehenden Teile – in der Endredaktion Schönerers – mit
dem Verlangen nach einer Reform der Fabrikgesetzgebung, besonders nach der
Senkung der Normalarbeitszeit, der Beschränkung der Kinder- und Frauenar-
beitszeit und nach der Haftpflicht für Arbeitgeber nach Unfällen. Sie fanden
später allesamt Eingang in sozialdemokratische Programme. Eine Urheberschaft
Adlers wird deshalb angenommen, weil Schönerer diese Forderungen vorher und
nachher nicht erhoben hat.
Das Programm stand durchaus auf demokratischem Boden. Auf der anderen
Seite war es von einer deutlichen Ablehnung von Dynastie und Regierung ge-
tragen. Niemand konnte jedoch an einen Totalumbau des Staates glauben, auch
Schönerer nicht, weswegen das Programm wieder viel von seinem Grundsatz-
charakter erhält. Als einziger Ausweg wäre an eine „sanfte Revolution“ zu denken
gewesen, oder mittels verschärfter politischer Propaganda den deutschen Na-
tionalismus so zu stärken, dass man zumindest auf eine Veränderung des
Staatsgebildes hinarbeiten konnte, eine Taktik, die Schönerer in den nächsten
Jahren auch tatsächlich verfolgte, ehe er für eine kleine irredentistische Kader-
partei eintrat.
Aber auch beim Antisemitismus bestand damals noch so etwas wie ein
Grundkonsens, wenn er auch von zwei verschiedenen Wurzeln gespeist wurde. In
diesem Zusammenhang erscheint die Frage falsch formuliert, warum Schönerer
Adler und Friedjung „an seinem Programm mitarbeiten ließ,“ die zwar jüdischer
Abstammung, aber nicht Angehörige der jüdischen Religion waren. Beide streb-
ten einen wirtschaftlichen Antisemitismus an. Die meisten politisch radikalen
Juden wollten mit Schönerer zusammenarbeiten und nicht umgekehrt, weil seine
preußenfreundliche und antisemitische Weltanschauung vom jungen radikalen
Flügel des deutschen Lagers als sensationeller Aufruf zur Gründung einer de-
mokratischen „Deutschen Volkspartei“ (miss)verstanden wurde, während
Schönerers Antisemitismus – und hier liegt der bedeutende Unterschied – zwar
von den deutschen Studenten entfacht, vorwiegend aber in dieser Phase durch
den starken jüdischen Einfluss in der Wiener Presse genährt wurde. Diese Zu-
sammenarbeit mit drei Programmgestaltern jüdischer Abstammung gibt ande-
 Georg Ritter von Schönerers Radikalisierung zum Rassenantisemiten 223

rerseits Aufschluss auch darüber, dass sich Schönerers Wandlung zum Rassen-
antisemiten erst in den nächsten Jahren vollzog und erst 1885 abgeschlossen
war.¹⁰
Von 1882 bis 1885 vollzog Georg von Schönerer eine Wandlung hin zum
Rassenantisemiten, daher zu einem radikalen Antisemitismus, der Juden auch
nach der Taufe und ihrer Assimilation das Recht absprach, Christen oder „Deut-
sche“ zu sein. Ausschlaggebend für diese Radikalisierung sind mehrere, in diese
Zeitspanne fallende Entwicklungen, die sich in fünf Punkten festmachen lassen:
(1) Für wesentlich wird die Herausgabe des Buches von Eugen Dühring, „Die
Judenfrage als Racen-, Sitten- und Culturfrage mit einer weltgeschichtlichen
Antwort“ erachtet, die in der 2. Auflage 1881 auch in Österreich erhältlich war. Der
1833 in Berlin geborene Dühring war anfänglich Jurist und als Rechtsanwalt tätig,
bis er 1859 erblindete und seinen Beruf aufgeben musste. Trotz seiner Behinde-
rung setzte er seine Studien in Nationalökonomie, Mechanik, Logik, Ethik und
Literatur fort. 1863 habilitierte sich Dühring in Philosophie, 1864 in National-
ökonomie. Im selben Jahr erhielt er eine Dozentenstelle an der Friedrich-
Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. Als er in Konflikte mit Professorenkollegen geriet,
verlor er 1877 seine Lehrbefugnis und wirkte von da an bis zu seinem Tod 1921 als
Privatgelehrter. Dühring war überzeugter Rassenantisemit. Er beschrieb die „Ju-
denfrage“ mit wissenschaftlichem Anspruch als Ausdruck eines unaufhebbaren
Rassengegensatzes: Das Judentum sei von Natur aus unvermeidbar der Feind aller
Kulturvölker, die sich gegen diesen wehren müssen, um nicht selbst unterzuge-
hen.¹¹
Georg von Schönerer hat dieses Buch gekannt. Das ist deswegen belegt, weil
er Stellen daraus im Reichsrat während der Auseinandersetzung mit dem
Floridsdorfer Rabbi Bloch zitierte.¹²
(2) Entscheidend für die Entwicklung der alldeutschen Bewegung sollte der
Bruch mit dem Georg von Schönerer ideologisch am nächsten stehenden
Engelbert Pernerstorfer werden, der ein Protagonist eines nationalen Sozialismus

 Cf. Wladika, Hitlers Vätergeneration, 154– 7. Siehe auch dazu R. Kann, Das Nationalitäten-
problem der Habsburgermonarchie: Geschichte und Ideengehalt der nationalen Bestrebungen vom
Vormärz bis zur Auflösung des Reiches im Jahre 1918 (Graz: Böhlau, 1964), 1: 100 ff; F. L. Carsten,
Faschismus in Österreich: Von Schönerer zu Hitler (München: Fink, 1978), 13 ff.
 Cf. A. Kruse, „Dühring, Eugen,“ in Neue Deutsche Biographie, ed. Bayerische Akademie der
Wissenschaften (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1959), 4: 157– 8, https://www.deutsche-biographie.
de/pnd118527797.html#ndbcontent; A. Bain, Die Judenfrage: Biographie eines Weltproblems
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), 1: 224.
 Cf. Stenographische Protokolle der Sitzungen des Abgeordnetenhauses des österreichischen
Reichsrates, IX. Session, 331. Sitzung vom 12. Februar 1884, 11465.
224 Michael Wladika

war. Der Bruch vollzog sich im Laufe des Jahres 1883, da über die Frage des An-
tisemitismus ein „Fraktionsstreit“ entstanden war, der sich auch auf die Stu-
dentenschaft ausweitete. Der Anlass dazu war eine antisemitische Reichsratsrede
Schönerers am 16. April 1883, die Pernerstorfer als Chefredakteur in den „Deut-
schen Worten“ nicht abdrucken wollte. Schönerers Rede, mit der er gegen einen
Abänderungsantrag zur Schulgesetzesnovelle stimmte, ist ein gutes Beispiel für
den Aufbau des Rassenantisemitismus auf seiner konfessionellen Variante als
Zugpferd:

Das Gefühl des christlichen Volkes (sträubt) sich mit Recht dagegen, dass sich an christli-
chen Schulen jüdische Lehrer oder gar Schulleiter befinden. Die Volksschule ist für das
praktische Christentum bestimmt, es sollte überall gleich unterrichtet werden. Ich bin eben
bestrebt, allen fremden Elementen entgegenzuarbeiten, vor allem jenen vaterlandslosen
Spekulanten, welche sich die Korruption der germanischen Rasse schon in der Volksschule
zum Ziel gesetzt haben.¹³

In einem offenen Brief an Schönerer vom 16. Juni 1883 stellte Pernerstorfer be-
züglich seiner Rede, die er nicht veröffentlichen wollte, fest:

Ich fühle mich verpflichtet, wie schon öfter zu erklären, dass die Form des Antisemitismus,
welche heute bei uns Parteidogma zu werden beginnt, mir gänzlich unannehmbar erscheint.
Der Kampf richtet sich viel mehr gegen die Juden als gegen das Judentum, was zu einer
Verrohung des öffentlichen Lebens führte. Ich stehe nicht auf (dem) brutalem Standpunkt
des ,Juden hinaus‘, ja (ich) stehe sogar zu der ketzerischen Meinung, dass es auch anständige
Juden gibt.¹⁴

Neben dem sich abzeichnenden Konflikt zwischen dem Rassenantisemitismus

und dem traditionellen Nationalismus, der den Antisemitismus nur als taktisches
Mittel benutzte, den Schönerer nun verließ, ist der Artikel vor allem durch die
Formulierung des so typisch österreichischen „schlafenden“ Antisemitismus von
Bedeutung. Auch Karl Lueger wird sich später dankbar des Widerspruchs be-
dienen, dass die „Juden zwar insgesamt schlecht“ wären, man aber auch ein-
zelne, „anständige“ kenne. Nach einigen vergeblichen Versuchen einzulenken,
verließ Pernerstorfer, der interessanterweise schon seit Dezember 1869 Mitglied
des sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterbildungsvereins Gumpendorf war, im Juni den

 Stenographische Protokolle der Sitzungen des Abgeordnetenhauses des österreichischen

Reichsrates, IX. Session, 269. Sitzung vom 16. April 1883, 10185 f. Cf. Wladika, Hitlers Vätergene-
ration, 164.
 Der Brief wurde in den Deutschen Worten, Nr. 12 vom 16. Juni 1883 abgedruckt.
 Georg Ritter von Schönerers Radikalisierung zum Rassenantisemiten 225

„Deutschnationalen Verein.“¹⁵ Ab 1. Juli 1883 stellte Schönerer in der von ihm neu
gegründeten Zeitung „Unverfälschte Deutsche Worte“ eine „unverfälschte,“ ra-
dikalere Version entgegen, die seine Wandlung zum Rassenantisemiten noch
mehr verdeutlichte, wenn er in der ersten Ausgabe schrieb: „Auf dem brutalen
Rassenstandpunkt stehend, müssen wir erklären, dass wir weit eher eine Vermi-
schung mit den Slawen und Romanen für möglich halten, als eine innige Ver-
bindung mit den Juden. Sind doch die ersteren als Arier mit uns stammesver-
wandt, während die letzteren aus der Abstammung uns völlig ferne stehen.“¹⁶
(3) Der „Nordbahn-Skandal,“ der sich über die Jahre 1884 und 1885 erstreckte
und ein gehöriges Aufsehen mit einer zeitweiligen innenpolitischen totalen
Lähmung hervorrief, sollte ein weiterer „entscheidender Moment“ in Schönerers
politischem Leben werden. Im Jahre 1884 musste die Regierung mit der Frage über
die Verlängerung der Konzession der Nordbahn, der sogenannten „Kaiser
Ferdinand Eisenbahngesellschaft,“ deren Aktienbesitz sich vornehmlich in den
Händen der jüdischen Familie Rothschild und Mitgliedern des Kaiserhauses be-
fand, aus verfassungstechnischen Gründen den Reichsrat befassen. Schönerer
und der Deutschnationale Verein sammelten in kürzester Zeit 30.000 Unter-
schriften, die sie in Form einer Petition, die Nordbahn gänzlich zu verstaatlichen,
im Abgeordnetenhaus einbrachten.¹⁷ In den drei berühmt gewordenen „Nord-
bahnreden“ vom 2. Mai 1884, 12. Jänner 1885 und vom 27. März 1885 peitschte
Schönerer die Bevölkerung, aber auch den längst in alle Parteienschattierungen
gespaltenen Reichsrat dermaßen auf, dass sich die Regierung gezwungen sah, die
bereits erfolgte Konzessionsverlängerung zu modifizieren. Schönerer bewies da-
bei mit geschickter, rücksichtsloser Agitation, wie eine kleine Minorität eine
Mehrheit dominieren konnte, die unter anderen Umständen deren Ideen und
Verhaltensweisen verabscheut hätte. Georg von Schönerer sah sich selbst als der
„einzige Volksvertreter, hinter dem neun Zehntel der gesamten Bevölkerung
steht.“ Die Auseinandersetzung um die Verstaatlichung der Nordbahn gab ihm
Gelegenheit, alle seien politischen Ansichten zu vereinen: Seinen Antisemitismus
und seine Habsburgerfeindlichkeit richtete er gezielt und personifiziert gegen die
Familie Rothschild, die reichste jüdische Familie der Donaumonarchie und gegen
die Aktionäre des Kaiserhauses. Da in Preußen schon viel früher der größte Teil

 K. R. Stadler, „Engelbert Pernerstorfer: Zur ‚deutschnationalen‘ Tradition in der österreichi-

schen Sozialdemokratie,“ in Beiträge zur Zeitgeschichte. Festschrift für Ludwig Jedlicka zum
60. Geburtstag, ed. R. Neck und A. Wandruszka (St. Pölten: Niederösterreichisches Pressehaus,
1976), 47.
 Unverfälschte Deutsche Worte 1 (1. Juli 1883): 1.
 Cf. R. Elmayer von Vestenbrugg, Georg Ritter von Schönerer: Der Vater des politischen An-
tisemitismus (München: Eher, 1936), 43.
226 Michael Wladika

der Eisenbahnen verstaatlicht wurde, konnte er Otto von Bismarck ins Spiel
bringen und diesen als den „größten Sozialreformer des Jahrhunderts“ anpreisen.
Mit der Petition an den Reichsrat, die Nordbahn zu verstaatlichen, hatte er
plötzlich unglaubliche 30.000 Stimmen „aus dem Volk“ und konnte so in einer
einmaligen Demonstration direkter Demokratie die Bevölkerung gegen den Ka-
pitalismus aufhetzen, wobei er letztlich die Grenzen einer durch Plebiszite aus-
gehöhlten Demokratie aufzeigte. Die Wiener liberale Presse, die seine Vorgangs-
weise kritisierte, erklärte er für „verjudet“ und von der Regierung bestochen.
Provokateure auf den Zuschauerreihen unterbrachen die Sitzungen immer wieder
mit den Rufen „Nieder das Parlament! Nieder mit den Nordbahnjuden! Heil
Schönerer!“¹⁸
Gleich die am 2. Mai 1884 gehaltene „Erste Nordbahnrede“ zog einen spek-
takulären Ehrenbeleidigungsprozess nach sich, den Schönerer gegen den mäch-
tigsten liberalen Journalisten jüdischer Abstammung der damaligen Monarchie
anstrengte, nämlich gegen Moritz Szeps, den Gründer und Chefredakteur des
„Neuen Wiener Tagblattes,“ ein aus Galizien eingewanderter, in kürzester Zeit
steinreich gewordener Förderer der Wiener Moderne und ein enger Freund
Kronprinz Rudolfs. Szeps, der diesen Prozess am 17. November 1884 sensationeller
Weise gegen Georg von Schönerer verlor und zu vier Wochen Haft verurteilt
wurde,¹⁹ sagte in der Verhandlung: „Herr von Schönerer (hat) in unserer Stadt, in
den deutschen Ländern Österreichs eine Stellung gewonnen, wie sie jetzt kein
anderer Mann einnimmt und dieser Stellung kann nichts etwas anhaben –
nichts!“²⁰ Sogar das „Vaterland“ titelte damals: „Die Terroristen der jüdischen
Presse sind gerichtet, mit ihrer Schreckensherrschaft ist es zu Ende!“ Bei
Schönerer waren nun alle Dämme gebrochen. Hatte ihn am Prozess die einmalige
Verbindung von Liberalismus, Judentum und Herrscherhaus besonders gereizt, so
forderte er in seiner Rede vom 13. Februar 1885 ziemlich offen zur Vernichtung der
jüdischen Presse und damit auch ihrer Akteure auf, indem er einen „letzten Ap-
pell“ an die Regierung richtete:

Hinweg mit der von korrupten und jüdischen Einflüssen beherrschten Presse! Hinweg mit
dieser semitische Pestbeule! Hinweg mit diesen Fremdlingen in unserem Heim! Zertretet

 E. Mayer-Löwenschwerdt, Schönerer, der Vorkämpfer: Eine politische Biographie (Wien:

Braumüller, 1938), 90.
 Zum Prozessverlauf siehe ÖStA, AVA, Nachlass Eduard Pichl, Kt. 37 (Robert Pattai), Mappe
„Pattai an Schönerer. Briefwechsel.“
 Zitiert in: B. Hamann, Rudolf: Kronprinz und Rebell (Wien: Amalthea, 1987), 405.
 Georg Ritter von Schönerers Radikalisierung zum Rassenantisemiten 227

diese volksfeindliche Nattern und macht ein Ende dieser journalistischen Giftmischerei,
damit das so hart bedrängte Volk nicht zur Selbsthilfe gezwungen werde.²¹

Zwei Dinge sollten zu den „Nordbahnreden“ noch angemerkt werden: Schönerer

rühmte sich später immer wieder, dass für ihn Verständigung und Kompromiss
verschleierte Formen der Kapitulation wären. Nur dreißig Jahre später galt es als
höchste Tugend der Nationalsozialisten „kompromisslos“ zu sein. Auf der ande-
ren Seite unterstützte ihn Karl Lueger während des Nordbahnskandals lautstark;
der Mann, der später sehr schnell die Kleingewerbetreibenden auf seine Seite
ziehen konnte und eine ganz andere Auffassung von Antisemitismus vertrat,
welcher im Gegensatz zu Schönerer konfessionell und wirtschaftlich ausgerichtet
war.²²
(4) Die Reichsratswahlen des Jahres 1885 verdienen eine besondere Erwäh-
nung, weil viele Ereignisse dieses Jahres auf einen brutal geführten Wahlkampf
zurückzuführen sind. Nach der Reform der Regierung Taaffe waren erstmals die
sogenannten „Fünf-Guldenmänner“ wahlberechtigt. Das waren Männer, die zu-
mindest fünf Gulden jährliche Steuerleistung vorweisen konnten. Es schlug daher
auch für die „Schönerianer“ die Stunde, die das erste Mal auf einer eigenen Liste
kandidierten, eine nach unten hin breitere Gruppierung anzusprechen.²³
Im Vorfeld der Wahl organisierten einige Anhänger Schönerers den „Politi-
schen Bezirksverein Mariahilf-Neubau,“ die erste Wiener antisemitische Vor-
stadtvereinigung für die „Testwahl,“ die Wiener Gemeinderatswahlen im Frühjahr
1885. Bald folgte auch der Wiener Rechtsanwalt Robert Pattai dem Ruf dieses
Vereines. Gegen die von Karl Lueger angeführten Demokraten führte Pattai das
scheinbar einzige Schönerianische Unterscheidungsmerkmal ins Treffen:

Wir nennen den Feind, wie es Männern geziemt, laut, damit es Alle hören können: Es ist der
Jude. Unser Kampf gilt keiner Konfession! Unser Kampf ist der Rassenkampf! Der Rassenjude
ist der Feind, der unser nationales Bewusstsein verunglimpft, der Jude ist es, der durch seine
nimmersatte Geldgier das ehrliche Volk aussaugt.²⁴

Dieses Bekenntnis war eine allzu deutliche Stellungnahme zugunsten Schönerers.

Karl Lueger, der sich mit Georg von Schönerer für die Reichsratswahlen 1885
verbünden wollte, wurde von diesem mit den Worten „Demgegenüber muss ich

 Zitate in: H. Schnee, Georg Ritter von Schönerer: Ein Kämpfer für Alldeutschland (Reichenberg:
Kraus, 1940), 206.
 Ibid., 28.
 Cf. Wladika, Hitlers Vätergeneration, 174.
 Aufruf vom 12. März 1884, ÖStA, AVA, Nachlass Eduard Pichl, Kt. 37 (Robert Pattai).
228 Michael Wladika

erklären, dass ich niemals faule Kompromisse mit Parteien eingehe, die die
Schleppenträger der Regierung sind, wie z. B. mit einem Dr. Lueger,“ brüsk ab-
gelehnt.²⁵
Am 1. April 1885 veranstaltete Schönerer gemeinsam mit den Burschen-
schaften einen Bismarck-Kommers anlässlich des 70. Geburtstages des deutschen
Reichskanzlers. In der Festrede hob er hervor, „nach Deutschland zu blicken,“
dem er sich „ewig und eins verbunden fühle.“ Auf Österreich bezogen sprach er
von einem „Existenzkampf des Deutschtums,“ den er mit „Gottes Hilfe“ führe.²⁶
Dieser Bezug auf Bismarck fand auch in seinem Wahlaufruf vom 1. Mai 1885
Eingang, in dem Schönerer unter anderem eine „wirtschaftliche Reformpolitik im
Sinne des Fürsten Bismarck“ forderte.²⁷ Die Wahl selbst wurde für den
„Deutschnationalen Verein“ alles andere als ein glänzender Sieg. Außer dem
unbestrittenen Parteiführer schafften nur zwei Schönerianer den Sprung in den
Reichsrat, die anderen fünf Kandidaten fielen durch. Wichtiger aber noch er-
scheint die Tatsache, dass mit Robert Pattai im Jahre 1885 erstmals ein alldeut-
scher, wenn auch „unabhängiger,“ Reichsratsabgeordneter gewählt wurde, der
einen antisemitischen Wahlsieg gegen einen Liberalen in Wien errang. Damit war
endgültig der Beweis erbracht, dass ein Team in nur einem Bezirk den Rassen-
antisemitismus effektiv einsetzen konnte.²⁸ Wieso Pattai gerade in Mariahilf er-
folgreich war, erklärt sich am ehesten aus dem Umstand, dass viele Gewerbe-
treibende durch die neu errichteten und häufig in jüdischem Besitz befindlichen
Kaufhäuser hofften, ihre Probleme durch eine antisemitische Gesetzgebung lösen
zu können.
Georg von Schönerer, der sich keiner der sich im neugebildeten Reichsrat
formierenden Klubs angeschlossen hatte, gründete im Oktober 1885 statt des
Deutschnationalen Vereines des Jahres 1882 mit dem „Verband der Deutschna-
tionalen“ unter seiner Obmannschaft eine Wahlpartei im heutigen Sinn. Der
„Deutschnationale Klub“ mit seinen zwei Mitstreitern wurde hingegen seine ei-
gene Fraktion im Reichsrat.²⁹ Dort warf Schönerer den gleichgesinnten, aber ge-
mäßigteren Deutschnationalen unter der Führung Otto Steinwenders vor, „Kom-

 Zitiert in: E. Mayer-Löwenschwerdt, Schönerer, 92.

 H. Schnee, Georg Ritter von Schönerer, 137.
 Georg von Schöneres Wahlaufruf vom 1. Mai 1885, abgedruckt in: Berchtold, Österreichische
Parteiprogramme, 203.
 Cf. Stenographische Protokolle der Sitzungen des Abgeordnetenhauses des österreichischen
Reichsrates, Eröffnungssitzung der X. Session vom 22. September 1885, 2; P. Molisch, „Die Stellung
Wiens in der deutschösterreichischen Politik von 1848 bis 1918,“ In Jahrbuch des Vereines für
Geschichte der Stadt Wien 3 – 4 (1942): 190.
 Cf. Benda, Der deutsche Turnerbund 1889, 128.
 Georg Ritter von Schönerers Radikalisierung zum Rassenantisemiten 229

promissler“ zu sein und einer Partei der „leeren Phrase“ anzugehören. Daher
könnten sie wegen ihres „Verrates am deutschen Volk“ in der Judenfrage keine
deutschen Patrioten mehr sein. Gerade Steinwender vertrat eben eine Richtung,
die nicht von erzwungener Einigkeit und Kompromisslosigkeit geprägt war, die
ihn auch zu einem Vorläufer jener nationalen Politiker werden ließ, die in der
Ersten Republik mit der Bereitschaft zur Versöhnung und mit dem Willen zur
sachlichen Arbeit Regierungsverantwortung trugen.³⁰
Um sich von diesen Deutschnationalen abzuheben, war Schönerers Politik
jetzt noch mehr auf Zerstörung ausgerichtet. Der Antisemitismus hatte den
Bismarck-Kult vergangener Jahre und die Forderung nach dem allgemeinen
Wahlrecht, sowie die Anschlussbestrebungen an das Deutsche Reich, endgültig in
die zweite Reihe gestellt. Die Zurückdrängung des jüdischen Einflusses war zum
Hauptprogrammpunkt geworden und fortan ein Maßstab für soziale Missstände.
Alles, die Universitäten, die Sozialdemokratie, die Christlichsozialen, der Libe-
ralismus, die gemäßigten Deutschnationalen, die Literatur und die Musik galten
nun für ihn als „verjudet.“³¹ Dabei nahm gerade der Nationalismus in diesen
Jahren in den deutschen Parteien der Monarchie mit Otto Steinwender für die
Deutschnationalen,Viktor Adler für die Sozialdemokraten und Karl Lueger für die
Christlichsozialen einen unerhörten Aufschwung. Der Vergleich zeigt anderer-
seits, wie sehr Schönerer in ein radikales Eck abgedriftet war.
(5) Georg von Schönerers Wandlung zum Rassenantisemiten wurde auch
durch das sich abzeichnende Formieren der Massenparteien der Sozialdemo-
kraten und Christlichsozialen beschleunigt, die eine scheinbar weitere Bedro-
hung der Deutschnationalen darstellten. Es begann die Zeit der modernen
Wahlparteien, die die Honoratioren ablösten.³²
Schließlich fügte Schönerer 1885 als Endpunkt der hier aufgezeigten Ent-
wicklung eigenmächtig einen Absatz an das Linzer Programm von 1882 an, wel-
cher die Forderung nach „Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf allen Gebieten
des öffentlichen Lebens“ enthielt,³³ eine Bestimmung, die Juden auch von jegli-
cher Mitgliedschaft in deutschnationalen Parteien und Vereinen ausschloss, da
ihnen die charakterliche Befähigung zur Teilhabe an der deutschen Nation ab-
gesprochen wurde.

 Cf .E. Mayer-Löwenschwerdt, Schönerer, 93.

 Masaidek, Georg von Schönerer und die deutschnationale Bewegung, 14.
 Cf. M. Wladika, „Ende der liberalen Ära und Anfänge der Massenparteien. Deutschnationale
und Christlichsoziale,“ in Experiment Metropole: 1873: Wien und die Weltausstellung, ed. W. Kos
und R. Gleis (Wien: Czernin, 2014), 272– 81.
 Berchtold, Österreichische Parteiprogramme, 203.
230 Michael Wladika

Michael Wladika studied law and history at the University of Vienna. Since 1999 he
has been working as a provenance researcher for the museums of the City of Vienna.
He worked for the Austrian Commission of Historians and conducts research and
publications on the history of National Socialism in Austria, restitution law, political
parties, historical photography and art theft.

Bibliographie
Primärquellen
Elmayer von Vestenbrugg, Rudolf. Georg Ritter von Schönerer: Der Vater des politischen
Antisemitismus. München: Eher, 1936.
Masaidek, Franz Friedrich. Georg von Schönerer und die deutschnationale Bewegung. Wien:
Schalk, 1898.
Mayer-Löwenschwerdt, Erwin. Schönerer, der Vorkämpfer: Eine politische Biographie. Wien:
Braumüller, 1938.
Schnee, Heinrich. Georg Ritter von Schönerer: Ein Kämpfer für Alldeutschland. Reichenberg:
Kraus, 1940.

Sekundärquellen
Bain, Alex. Die Judenfrage: Biographie eines Weltproblems, Band 1. Stuttgart: Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt, 1980.
Benda, Franz. Der deutsche Turnerbund 1889: Seine Entwicklung und Weltanschauung. Wien:
Verband wissenschaftlicher Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1991.
Berchtold, Klaus, ed. Österreichische Parteiprogramme 1868 – 1966. Wien: Verlag für
Geschichte und Politik, 1968.
Carsten, Francis L. Faschismus in Österreich: Von Schönerer zu Hitler. München: Fink, 1978.
Hamann, Brigitte. Rudolf: Kronprinz und Rebell. Wien: Amalthea, 1987.
Kann, Robert. Das Nationalitätenproblem der Habsburgermonarchie: Geschichte und
Ideengehalt der nationalen Bestrebungen vom Vormärz bis zur Auflösung des Reiches im
Jahre 1918. Band 1. Graz: Böhlau, 1964.
Kruse, Alfred, „Dühring, Eugen.“ In Neue Deutsche Biographie, ed. Bayerische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Bd. 4: 157 – 8. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1959. https://www.deutsche-
biographie.de/pnd118527797.html#ndbcontent.
Molisch, Paul. „Die Stellung Wiens in der deutschösterreichischen Politik von 1848 bis 1918.“
In Jahrbuch des Vereines für Geschichte der Stadt Wien 3 – 4 (1942).
Moser, Johnny. „Von der Emanzipation zur antisemitischen Bewegung. Die Stellung Georg
Ritter von Schöneres und Heinrich Friedjungs in der Entwicklungsgeschichte des
Antisemitismus in Österreich (1848 – 1896).“ PhD diss., Universität Wien, 1962.
Stadler, Karl R. „Engelbert Pernerstorfer: Zur ‚deutschnationalen‘ Tradition in der
österreichischen Sozialdemokratie.“ In Beiträge zur Zeitgeschichte. Festschrift für Ludwig
 Georg Ritter von Schönerers Radikalisierung zum Rassenantisemiten 231

Jedlicka zum 60. Geburtstag, herausgegeben von Rudolf Neck und Adam Wandruszka,
45 – 60. St. Pölten: Niederösterreichisches Pressehaus, 1976.
Wladika, Michael. „Ende der liberalen Ära und Anfänge der Massenparteien. Deutschnationale
und Christlichsoziale.“ In Experiment Metropole: 1873: Wien und die Weltausstellung,
herausgegeben von Wolfgang Kos und Ralph Gleis, 272 – 81. Wien: Czernin, 2014.
Wladika, Michael. Hitlers Vätergeneration: Die Ursprünge des Nationalsozialismus in der k. u.
k. Monarchie. Wien et al.: Böhlau, 2005.
Richard S. Levy
The Defense against Antisemitism: Minor
Victories, Major Defeats, 1890 – 1939
Since I wrote this paper in the summer of 2018, I have found myself wondering if
its title constitutes a just judgment on nearly 130 years of struggle by Jews and
non-Jews to eliminate organized antisemitism. Surely, if I had subtitled it
“Major Victories, Minor Defeats,” we would have to ask ourselves about the pur-
pose of this great conference. Antisemitism, ever-changing, ever-threatening, is
still very much with us. What I was wondering about instead was whether we
can speak of even minor victories, and, more generally, whether the history of
the fight against organized antisemitism during many decades has anything use-
ful to teach us today. I believe that this history and both the victories and defeats
are still instructive.
First some clarifications, beginning with the coining of the term: I have not
been able to find the use of the word antisemitism before 1860, when it was em-
ployed in a cultural rather than a political sense. By late 1879, the German jour-
nalist and political activist Wilhelm Marr seized upon the word antisemite as a
way of distinguishing his political agenda from traditional Christian Judeopho-
bia and from the commonplace prejudices of his day, thus hoping to give his
views the aura of a scientifically derived truth, the product of his personal expe-
rience and historical research.
Important to note about the early history of antisemitism is how rapidly what
was essentially a neologism achieved the broadest currency. There must have ex-
isted a perceived need for a new word to describe the resurgence of conflicts be-
tween Jews and the peoples among whom they lived, fondly thought to be nearly
overcome in this age of progress but which in fact were becoming ever more
openly expressed. The need for a new word affected not just self-identified an-
tisemites but Jews, non-Jewish critics, and neutral bystanders throughout Europe
and wherever Europeans settled in the world. The word appeared in titles of
books and pamphlets and on the mastheads of newspapers in English, French,
Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, and Russian—all by 1894 and in places where no or-
ganized antisemitism existed, as well as where it was developing into full-
fledged political movements. Even to outsiders, something new seemed to be ag-
itating the vexed relations between Jews and others.¹

 For the early history of the term, see R. S. Levy, “Antisemitism, Etymology of,” in Antisemit-
ism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, ed. R. S. Levy (Santa Barbara: ABC-

OpenAccess. © 2021 Richard S. Levy, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-012
234 Richard S. Levy

Certainly, some periods in Jewish history were characterized by oppression

and violence before the 1880s. What was markedly different about this new phe-
nomenon, however, was the swift institutionalization of antisemitism in political
parties, grassroots organizations, lobbying agencies, newspapers, learned jour-
nals, and a variety of voluntary associations. In the past, persecution had
been episodic; outbursts of terrible violence alternated with long periods of
quiet relations between Jews and their neighbors. Now, since the emergence of
organized antisemitism in the 1880s, the action programs aimed at Jews, but-
tressed by modern mass media and new technologies, were being played out
in the political life of nations; the announced intention of the movement was
to continue the struggle for as long as it took to solve the “Jewish Question.”²
When it was no longer just a matter of ancient prejudice—what people said
or thought about Jews—and had become a question of what they intended to do
about them, an organized response among Jews and non-Jews took shape. It is
not surprising that the first systematic, nationally focused, defense efforts
emerged in Germany, where the organized antisemitic movement experienced
its first successes. The following essay concentrates on this specific history be-
cause it was and remained the most important, setting precedents in the re-
sponse to antisemitic assaults in many places. It remains significant because
anti-antisemitism’s successes and failures in Germany were replicated elsewhere
in subsequent years.
It bears mentioning here that, while I do not give great weight to all-too-
common Jew-hatred in my understanding of antisemitism, the importance of cas-
ual prejudice among large parts of the population cannot be discounted. Without
this reservoir of animosity and suspicion, there would be no constituency for
those who wanted to act against Jews. This essay does not address anti-Jewish
feeling because no organized defense against antisemitism has ever been able
to conquer popular anti-Jewish sentiment, and, in fact, very few have even
tried. Therefore, the focus here will be on the exploiters of popular Jew-hatred
and the efforts to disarm them.
It took several years for Jews in Germany to formulate a response to the sus-
tained threat against their rights and well-being. A number of historically based
attitudes and experiences first had to be overcome. For example, the tortuous
granting and withdrawing of legal equality for German Jews during the first

Clio Press, 2005), 1:24– 25. On Marr see M. Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-
Semitism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
 See R. S. Levy, “Setting the Pattern,” in The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Im-
perial Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). Expectations of just how long it would
take to vanquish the Jews varied greatly among antisemitic activists.
The Defense against Antisemitism: Minor Victories, Major Defeats, 1890 – 1939 235

half of the nineteenth century helped keep them in perpetual insecurity. When
Emancipation came in 1869, it was not because of a popular mandate or the re-
sult of an imaginary Jewish power but a gift from the liberal-minded North
German Reichstag. Like their antisemitic enemies, many Jews believed that Jew-
ish emancipation was conditional, a contractual agreement. Civil equality, ac-
cording to this view, was not essentially an inalienable right. Jewish emancipa-
tion had come because many non-Jews had finally recognized their worthiness.
Implicit in emancipation, to German Jews, was the faithful fulfillment of their
side of the contract—continuing to be exemplary citizens and demonstrating
the ability to become good Germans. In their anxiety to show themselves good
Germans, however, Jews hesitated to defend their own cause, concerned about
appearing to non-Jews as a special interest group that needed protecting. To
make a fuss would only give more ammunition to the antisemites. To ask openly
for special intervention by the state would be tantamount to asking for a privi-
leged status, akin to that enjoyed by “court Jews” of earlier centuries. Many were
reluctant even to concede that Jews were the real target of antisemitism, theoriz-
ing that it was really a matter of displaced social protest, or an attack on liber-
alism, or on modernity in general.³ Many of the problems German Jews wrestled
with before entering an active struggle against antisemitism were replicated in
France, Austria, Britain, and America. The compelling reason for not launching
a frontal attack on their enemies was a general lack of confidence in the sympa-
thies of the mass of their fellow citizens. This remains an issue today, and it still
influences Jewish self-defense efforts.
During the 1880s, Jews in Germany made relatively slight responses to an-
tisemitic attacks. Individuals, speaking for themselves, repeatedly countered
the more infamous pamphlets of the antisemites. Part of the problem of mount-
ing a collective defense, however, was the fragmentation of the Jewish communi-
ty. Only antisemites were certain that Jews always and everywhere constituted a
monolith. In fact, there was no acknowledged spokesperson, no agreement
about what constituted Jewish identity, or how to meet the antisemitic threat.
This was not only true of Germany. In defending themselves, Jews have nowhere
in the modern world ever spoken with one voice.
For the most part, Jews were willing to rely on the good offices of “unim-
peachably objective” Christian defenders. There were an impressively large num-
ber of such individuals willing to speak out against the “deeply shameful … ra-

 For a brief but illuminating discussion of the concept of antisemitism as “displaced social pro-
test,” see S. Rohrbacher, “The ‘Hep-Hep’ Riots of 1819: Anti-Jewish Ideology, Agitation, and Vio-
lence,” in Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History, ed. C. Hoffmann et
al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 24– 27.
236 Richard S. Levy

cial hatred and fanaticism of the Middle Ages.”⁴ But the help of liberal-minded
Christians had its problems. For just one example, Theodor Mommsen, the great
historian of Rome, had helped write the Declaration of Notables, quoted above,
and then worked to gather signatures for it. He was also instrumental in rallying
liberal professors at the University of Berlin, isolating Heinrich von Treitschke,
after the latter’s hostile “A Word about Our Jews,” in 1879. But for Mommsen,
as for many non-Jews who had supported Jewish equality, from Christian von
Dohm onward, the ideal solution to the Jewish Question was the disappearance
of Judaism.⁵ Barbaric and shameful as it was for Mommsen and many others, an-
tisemitism was most harmful in its retardation of complete Jewish assimilation,
that is, the abandonment of Jewish identity. The alliance between German and
Jewish liberals who carried on the fight against antisemitism was always bur-
dened by this reality.⁶ Although liberal ambivalence about the legitimacy of Ju-
daism and a tendency to sometimes wish aloud that Jews would behave them-
selves a little better and thus disarm the antisemites, their courageous struggle
against antisemitism and for a rational politics was valued and appreciated by
Jewish activists. Certainly, German Christians had nothing to gain by standing
with Jews against those who would deny them their rights and impugned their
allegiance to Germany.
When the first avowed antisemite was elected to the Reichstag in 1887, and
when he was joined by fifteen others in the elections of 1893, the “silence of the
Jews”—a situation much lamented by the already existing, largely Christian and
liberal, Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus [Association for the Defense against
Antisemitism]—the hesitancy to act in their self-defense, in as united a way as
possible, was finally overcome. The Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdi-
schen Glaubens [Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith] began
to take shape in 1893, ultimately becoming the largest Jewish voluntary associa-
tion in Germany, with approximately 100,000 individual and corporate members.

 Quotation from the “Declaration of 75 Notables against Antisemitism” (Berlin National-

Zeitung, November 12, 1880). Among the signatories were Theodor Mommsen, Rudolph von Gne-
ist, and Rudolf Virchow. Original text and English translation can be found at http://ghdi.ghi-dc.
org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1803, accessed June 5, 2020.
 The Prussian official, Christian von Dohm (1751– 1820), advocated Jewish emancipation in a
two-volume work (1781); it inaugurated a vigorous debate on the status of Jews in civil society.
See R. Liberles, “Dohm’s Treatise on the Jews: A Defence of the Enlightenment,” Leo Baeck Year
Book 33 (1988): 29 – 42.
 See A. T. Levenson, Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism: Defenses of Jews and Judaism in
Germany, 1871 – 1932 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). For a translation of
Treitschke’s essay, see R. S. Levy, ed., Antisemitism in the Modern World: An Anthology of
Texts (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1991), 69 – 73.
The Defense against Antisemitism: Minor Victories, Major Defeats, 1890 – 1939 237

Their credo was clear: “We are not German Jews but German citizens of Jewish
faith.” The organization asked for no other protection than that afforded to all
law-abiding citizens and committed itself to a public defense of Judaism, to a dig-
nified assimilation, and to full participation in German life.⁷
The Centralverein developed a strategy that served as something of a para-
digm for Jewish self-defense in countries wherever Jews had constitutional
rights, recourse to the courts, and access to the public sphere, that is where
they had meaningful options with which to defend themselves against the disen-
franchisement and marginalization that organized antisemitism sought to im-
pose. The fight against the antisemites took a three-pronged approach: the pub-
lication and broad distribution of apologetic and enlightenment literature;
intervention in national, state, and municipal elections on behalf of anti-
antisemitic candidates; and judicial pursuit of antisemitic libels against Judaism
and/or the Jewish community. All three approaches were problematic.
The voluminous literature produced by the Abwehr-Verein and the Central-
verein (henceforth CV) should have been sufficient to convince any fair-minded
person that Jews as a group were excellent citizens, wholly committed to
Germany, and valuable contributors to German science, literature, music, eco-
nomic life, politics, and philanthropy. But, of course, after centuries of denigra-
tion, the accumulated sediment of folk wisdom, and culturally embedded suspi-
cions, it was the rare German (or European) who could be described as “open-
minded” on the Jewish Question. That the systematic, heavily documented refu-
tation of libels and calumnies—the existence of a Jewish secret government,
Judeo-Bolshevism, parasitism, ritual murder, treason—was produced by Jews
and the “dupes” of Jews was grounds enough for many to reject the literature
out of hand. In any case, the effectiveness of this aspect of the anti-anti publish-
ing program was at best dubious. It probably only spoke to those who already
did not have to be persuaded that Jews were largely okay. On the other hand,
the “enlightenment” literature produced by the two organizations—evidence-
based and usually utterly reliable—was relentless in its pursuit of the wrongdo-
ings of the antisemites. The Abwehr-Verein’s weekly and the CV’s monthly news-
papers, a raft of pamphlets, specialized publications, and educational lectures
stigmatized the antisemites’ true motives, their run-ins with the law, their vicious
internal rivalries, their lack of competence as legislators, their hypocrisy, and

 For the complexities of the development of a Jewish response to antisemitism in Germany, see
I. Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870 – 1914 (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1972).
238 Richard S. Levy

their damage to Germany’s reputation abroad—all this may well have had a
greater impact on the general public than trying to change minds about Jews.
In the imperial era, at least, respectability counted for something. The an-
tisemites themselves constantly felt it necessary to reassure the public of their
uprightness and seriousness of purpose. “Rowdy antisemitism” was pushed to
the periphery of the mainstream movement; rowdy individuals, such as the infa-
mous Hermann Ahlwardt, were shunned as an embarrassment. Another indica-
tion of the effectiveness of the efforts to expose the disgracefulness of antisem-
itism is how much time and effort antisemitic individuals, parties, and
organizations spent trying to discredit the Abwehr-Verein as “lackeys of the
Jews” and “Jewish auxiliaries.” While the Abwehr-Verein was dismissed as a
mere pawn of the Jews, the CV was taken much more seriously from its begin-
nings until its dissolution in the Third Reich.⁸
The second approach called for intervention into electoral politics. This was
not unknown in other national arenas, but nowhere was it as systematically and
openly pursued as in Germany by both the CV and the Abwehr-Verein. The Ab-
wehr-Verein created a press service to provide German newspapers and parlia-
mentarians with accurate information about antisemitic candidates and their
agendas. Members sitting for the closely allied left-liberal parties took on the an-
tisemites in the Reichstag and valiantly tried to get the German government to
honor its own constitution when it came to the rights of Jewish citizens to
serve in the civil service or as military officers. In 1912, the two organizations
formed a unified election fund to support candidates willing to oppose antisem-
itism, even Social Democrats—a serious concession for these staunchly bour-
geois-liberal defense groups. Such overt intervention in the electoral process
was rare elsewhere. In the United States, by contrast, both the Anti-Defamation
League of the B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee preferred working
from behind the scenes. Theirs was a Fabian version of anti-antisemitism in that
it avoided direct involvement with the electorate and sought instead to influence
the influential. Ironically, they placed much less faith in the American elector-
ate’s healthy instincts than did the German organizations.⁹

 On the Abwehr-Verein, see B. Suchy, “The Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus (I): From Its
Beginnings to the First World War,” Leo Baeck Yearbook 28 (1983): 205 – 39. On the vilification of
the Centralverein in the imperial era, see Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism.
For Weimar, see D. Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt: Judenfeindschaft in der
Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf, 1999), 96, 99 and n. 15.
 See V. S. Woeste, “American Jewish Committee and Antidefamation Efforts in the United
States,” in Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, ed. R. S. Levy
(Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Press, 2005), 1: 16 – 17.
The Defense against Antisemitism: Minor Victories, Major Defeats, 1890 – 1939 239

The Centralverein and the Abwehr-Verein cooperated and, in many ways, du-
plicated each other’s efforts—with one exception. The CV’s unique weapon was
its legal bureau. The abundant legal talent in the organization combed virtually
the entire antisemitic press and analyzed reports from rank and file members of
its 177 chapters about the antisemites’ misdeeds. This information went into the
CV’s newspaper but also to its legal bureau. The bureau prepared cases against
those who libeled the Jewish community or incited others to racial or religious
hatred but only rarely defended individuals or individual communities. This
tool’s effectiveness was heavily dependent on the good will of the German judi-
ciary and other state agencies, none of which were very scrupulous about imple-
menting equal rights for Jews. Nonetheless, the CV obtained several convictions
against leading and lesser antisemites who alleged the defilement of meat by
Jewish butchers, the torture of animals by kosher slaughterers, and the “religious
necessity” for Jews to commit perjury and ritual murder. Sometimes the bureau
achieved its goal by merely informing the proper state authority of an illegality.
As a result of such information, the Prussian minister of the interior frequently
confiscated antisemitic newspapers, pamphlets, and postcards. Without going
to court, the CV brought the attention of officials to the slanders of state institu-
tions in the antisemitic press. Almost all the major antisemites in the imperial
era were convicted of various illegalities, and most of these cases were the result
of CV intervention. True, the penalties were not terribly severe. For example, The-
odor Fritsch, a stalwart of the movement until his death in 1933, was convicted
on eight separate occasions for various libels during the imperial era, without
ever feeling the need to curb his antisemitic activities.¹⁰ But the damage to “an-
tisemitism’s good name” and the draining of the antisemites’ limited resources
should be counted as at least minor successes.¹¹
At this point, it is perhaps fair to make a very broad generalization: the CV
and Abwehr-Verein strategies won some important victories before World War I,
helping to quarantine the antisemites in the Reichstag—there were only six of
them left in a body of 397 after the elections of 1912. The antisemitic parties
had not come close to passing a single law limiting the rights of Jews. Their in-
ability to win over sizable numbers of Catholics and workers, insulated from or-
ganized antisemitism (if not anti-Jewish prejudices) by the Center Party and SPD,
spoke to the movement’s isolation in larger German society. The defense organ-

 Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt, 90 – 93.

 Count Reventlow, one of the few antisemites of the Imperial era to play a significant role in
Weimar and the Third Reich, regarded the CV as far more effective than the Abwehr-Verein, sin-
gling out especially its legal and press bureaus. See his Judas Kampf und Niederlage in Deutsch-
land: 150 Jahre Judenfrage (Berlin: Berlin Zeitgeschichte-Verlag, 1940), 368 – 69.
240 Richard S. Levy

izations’ constant harassment of powerful groups outside of parliament that

made use of antisemitism for a variety of purposes was also seen to have paid
off. By 1914, several of these seemed to be backing away from the use of antisem-
itism as a tool of mobilization. It should be said to the credit of the defense
groups’ leaders that they refrained from declaring victory—an end to antisemit-
ism, to coin a phrase. They spoke of containment, not an end to the struggle. The
unstoppable march of progress would finish the job. But at the very least, the
disarray of organized antisemitism on the eve of the Great War had the effect
of validating the tools and strategies developed by the Centralverein and the Ab-
wehr-Verein.
These were the same tools and strategies employed during the Weimar Re-
public, where they miscarried abysmally. We can learn something from this fail-
ure.
The Centralverein’s performance in the republican era has been frequently
criticized as unimaginative, as not proactive enough, as blindly committed to
its prewar strategies. None of these criticisms are wholly warranted. And none
are totally without a grain of truth.¹² However, a fair-minded judgement has to
take into consideration two big changes in postwar Germany: the political, so-
cial, and cultural environment in which antidefamation efforts operated; and
an antisemitism much more radicalized by the lost war.
Clearly, the tried-and-true tools of the prewar years were not up to the altered
postwar context. Enlightenment literature, still produced in great volume, now
had to show a more skeptical public that Jews were not only good citizens, hon-
est businessmen, contributors to, not exploiters of, German culture. The task
now was to prove that Jews had not unleashed the World War, or stage-managed
the Bolshevik Revolution, or that they were, as several prominent world leaders
and hundreds of rabble-rousers claimed, engaged in a world conspiracy to en-
slave gentiles at any cost.¹³ That German Jews served at the front, fired their

 For a largely positive view, see A. Paucker, Der jüdische Abwehrkampf gegen Antisemitismus
und Nationalsozialismus in den letzten Jahren der Weimarer Republik (Hamburg: Leibniz, 1969);
an at times hostile evaluation, written as the destruction of the German Jewish community was
being carried out, is A. Doskow and S. B. Jacoby, “Anti-Semitism and the Law in Pre-Nazi
Germany,” Contemporary Jewish Record 3 (1940): 498 – 509. A balanced, not uncritical, view is
D. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1980), chap. 4.
 The best, most responsible, treatment of the reception of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
the primary vehicle of the Jewish world conspiracy, is E. Horn and M. Hagemeister, eds., Die Fik-
tion von der jüdischen Weltverschwörung: Zu Text und Kontext der “Protokolle der Weisen von
Zion” (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012).
The Defense against Antisemitism: Minor Victories, Major Defeats, 1890 – 1939 241

weapons at Jews of other nations, died in the same numbers, and won as many
Iron Crosses (proportionately) as other Germans proved a difficult sell. In a world
where conspiracy thinking seemed, for a great many people, the best way of ex-
plaining the massive disruptions in an age of crisis, dispassionate studies based
on empirical evidence, reasoned argument, and respect for one’s audience were
powerless.¹⁴
The Centralverein struggled on and, far from becoming passive or remaining
mired in the past, it showed a willingness to try new measures and step up its
interventions. It reached out to the Catholic Bavarian People’s Party regionally
and the SPD nationally. While both proved valuable allies, for neither of these
parties was fighting antisemitism a top priority. The CV’s enlightenment litera-
ture dispensed with some of its more gentlemanly self-restraint and began
using the no-holds-barred rhetoric of its enemies. Earlier than most, it recog-
nized the Nazi threat as the most serious. Its once most significant weapon, how-
ever, the pursuit of antisemites through the judicial system, lost its potency in
the chaos of the Republic. A conviction in the Kaiser’s courts had carried with
it a certain stigma; it could damage and sometimes even end the careers of an-
tisemites. A conviction in the courts of the “Jew Republic,” on the other hand,
was effectively exploited as a badge of honor by Nazis and other radical right an-
tisemites. It was proof of the power of the Jews and their ruthlessness that honest
Germans, trying to save their country from extinction, were fined or jailed, mar-
tyrs to the truth.
The CV, mindful of this danger, nonetheless brought forward major suits in
every year of the Republic—sometimes in opposition to its own rank and file
members, who were worried about the reaction of the public to this sort of
“pushiness.” Even though the Republic’s judiciary was somewhat more inclined
than the Kaiser’s to accept CV-initiated suits, it is difficult to see much of a pos-
itive effect. Once again an apt example is Theodor Fritsch, who was convicted
eight times during the imperial era—and had not all that much to say about it
then—was convicted a further nine times after the war—and never stopped talk-
ing about his victimization as evidence of malign Jewish power. Among antisem-
ites, the convictions of their leaders became a credential, evidence of their cour-
age to continue the struggle at any cost. Weimar legal institutions did not have
enough authority in the eyes of the general public to make them effective weap-
ons against organized antisemitism. The lesson here is that without a stable state

 See B. E. Crim, Antisemitism in the German Military Community and the Jewish Response,
1914 – 1938 (Lanham: Lexington, 2014).
242 Richard S. Levy

structure, found to be legitimate in the eyes of most of its citizens, a judicially-

based defense against antisemitism has little prospect of even limited success.¹⁵
The second change that rendered anti-antisemitism relatively helpless was
in the nature of organized antisemitism itself. In a milieu radically altered by
war and revolution, violent antisemitism—in word and deed—came to dominate
the Weimar Republic. The Nazis and their many rivals on the radical right spoke
and wrote openly of murder, assaulted Jews in the streets, vandalized their busi-
nesses, desecrated cemeteries and synagogues, and reviled the laws and institu-
tions of the Republic, as they did so. There had been radical outliers among the
antisemites of the imperial era, but the great majority were conventional in their
outlook, convinced that legal changes, legally arrived at, could solve the Jewish
Question. Not many of them were left by the 1920s; they had been supplanted by
activists who scorned such conventional notions of the way to fight the Jews.
They debated among themselves the virtues of “Pogromantisemitismus” and re-
jected parliamentary solutions as hopelessly naïve.
The Centralverein was not intellectually or physically equipped to engage
with this new sort of antisemitism. The number of people willing to act against
Jews was greater; the number willing to have others act in their name was also
greater. The CV’s erstwhile liberal allies became intimidated and started falling
away during the end-phase of the Republic. The Abwehr-Verein eventually volun-
tarily disbanded. The CV’s publications aimed specifically at well-meaning non-
Jews lost subscribers and, at the end, could not even be delivered in plain brown
wrappers. For the first time since the emergence of organized antisemitism in the
1880s, the Jews were without influential gentiles to defend them.
And this sad fact constitutes the second lesson to be learned from the
German case study. The Centralverein certainly knew that without the engage-
ment of German society, there was no winning the battle against antisemitism.
Whatever Jews said then and say today in their self-defense, no matter how mod-
erately expressed, evidence-based, or intelligently presented, immediately con-
fronts a deeply embedded culture of doubt and denial in a large part of its in-
tended audience. When, by contrast, antisemites like Otto Glagau wrote in the
1870s, claiming 90 percent of the fraudulent bankruptcies that accompanied
the Crash of 1873 were perpetrated by Jews, he did not feel the need to cite a
shred of hard evidence—he was that confident he would be believed by his read-
ers. In such a prejudicial environment, Jews needed then and still need in the
present day allies in the defense of their rights, allies from all walks of society.

 The best guide to the CV’s defense against antisemitism in the Weimar era remains Walter,
Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt.
The Defense against Antisemitism: Minor Victories, Major Defeats, 1890 – 1939 243

True, what these people of good will say is also often impugned, but that they
have so little to gain by standing up for decency in the public sphere, for rational
politics, and for the well-being of their compatriots is plain to see for all but the
most jaundiced. In Europe and America, Jews have always had such allies and
usually in significant numbers. When they have lost them, when they have
been abandoned, their chances of fending off antisemitism shrink to the vanish-
ing point. They cannot do it alone.

Richard S. Levy has taught German history and the history of the Holocaust at the
University of Illinois in Chicago since 1971. He is author of The Downfall of the An-
tisemitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany (Yale, 1975), editor of Antisemitism
in the Modern World: An Anthology of Texts (Heath, 1991), Antisemitism: A His-
torical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution (2 vols., ABC-Clio, 2005), and
with Albert Lindemann, Antisemitism: A History (Oxford, 2010). He has published
twenty scholarly articles or chapters in anthologies. He co-founded and edited H-
Antisemitism, an internet electronic discussion forum, from 1993 to 2004.

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Doron Rabinovici
The Jewish Response to Antisemitism in
Austria Prior to the Anschluss
In Austria, during the period of the monarchy as well as in the First Republic,
from the late nineteenth century till 1933, antisemitism was not only part of
the silent consensus but was loudly expressed by the bourgeois parties. Both
Christian Socialists, the major conservative political faction, and German Nation-
alists, the movement which sought the creation of a Greater Germany, along with
the implementation of antisemitic and anti-clerical policies, competed in their
hatred of Jews. Even the Social Democrats were not immune to the enemy
image of the Jud (Jew) and used anti-Jewish caricatures in their propaganda.¹
In 1897 Karl Lueger, who launched the first antisemitic mass movement in
the capital, won the mayoralty of Vienna on a radically anti-Jewish platform.
His concept of success became Hitler’s populist model. It was in Austria that
Hitler’s worldview had been shaped. He turned elements of two political trends
of the middle class into his theory and practice: racial German nationalism
found in the all-German movement of Georg Ritter von Schönerer and charismat-
ic leadership of the masses and antisemitic populism, inspired by Karl Lueger.²
In order to understand Jewish responses to antisemitism, let us offer some
details about the Jews in Austria at the time: Vienna was the German-speaking
city with the largest portion of Jews in its population. In the bureaucratic and
dynastic center of the reactionary Catholic Habsburg monarchy, the “Jew” was
perceived as the leading representative of social change, a symbol of modern
times as well as of old monotheism. In Vienna, the residential capital of a multi-
national state, Jews, who lived in a hub of various nationalisms and coerced as-
similation, became the target of all prejudice.

Note: This text is based on the authorʼs study: Instanzen der Ohnmacht: Wien 1938 – 1945. Der
Weg zum Judenrat. Frankfurt/Main: Jüdischer Verlag, 2000. Translated also as: Eichmannʼs Jews
– The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna, 1938 – 1945. Transl. N. Sommers. Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2011.

 Cf. L. Spira, Feindbild “Jud’”: 100 Jahre politischer Antisemitismus in Österreich (Vienna:
Löcker, 1981).
 Cf. B. Hamann, Hitlers Wien: Lehrjahre eines Diktators (Munich: Piper, 1997); D. Rabinovici,
Instanzen der Ohnmacht: Wien 1938 – 1945. Der Weg zum Judenrat (Frankfurt/Main: Jüdischer
Verlag, 2000); H. Witek and H. Safrian, Und keiner war dabei: Dokumente des alltäglichen Anti-
semitismus in Wien 1938 (Vienna: Picus, 1988), 13.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Doron Rabinovici, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-013
246 Doron Rabinovici

The greater part of the Jewish population came from the eastern regions of
the monarchy. Of the 175,000 Jews who lived in Vienna in 1910, no more than
one-fifth were born in the capital.³ Most were without a secure income: only a
minority were members of the bourgeois middle class and even fewer belonged
to the upper class.
According to the census of 1934, there were 191,481 Austrian Jews—2.8 per-
cent of the total population. On March 11, 1938, only 185,028 were said to be
still in the country, although the stream of Jewish refugees from the Third
Reich flowed non-stop.⁴ The regional Zionist association, the Zionistischer Land-
esverband, was subdivided into eighteen sections. In total, there were 82 Zionist
groups, with 12,000 members.
The politically liberal, “non-national-Jewish” Union of Austrian Jews had ap-
proximately 3,000 members.⁵ Twenty-four associations were devoted to nurtur-
ing science and culture. For decades, the Union of Austrian Jews had been the
strongest faction in the Viennese Jewish Community, the Israelitische Kultusge-
meinde Wien. The name is no coincidence. The word Jewish was not acceptable
to the monarchy because the Jews were expected to assimilate. Officially, the re-
ligion was therefore Mosaic, not Jewish. The Union of Austrian Jews reigned su-
preme the most in the Kultusgemeinde until 1932.
In the first postwar elections in 1920 it gained 20 of the 36 mandates. How-
ever, the ratios soon changed, leading to coalitions of various parties. In 1924,
the Union formed an election bloc with the middle-class General Zionists and
the Orthodox Adass Jisroel, excluding the newly established Social Democratic
Party, the religious social Zionists of the Misrachi and the Orthodox Beth El. In
1928 the election alliance shifted again. The Union and Adass, jointly, were
able to obtain 18 of the 36 mandates.⁶ Both Jewish factions dissociated them-
selves from any Zionist, that is, national Jewish self-definition.
Declaring that it was a “non-national-Jewish” party, the Union proudly pro-
claimed that it wished to represent “not Austrian Jews but Jewish Austrians.”⁷ It

 Cf. H. P. Freidenreich, Jewish Politics in Vienna 1918−1938 (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1991), 5, 211.
 Cf. H. Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung: Die Juden in Österreich, 1938 – 1945
(Vienna: Herold, 1978), 13.
 Cf. Überblick über das jüdische Organisationswesen im Lande Österreich, Josef Löwenherz an
Adolf Eichmann, Wien, 4. Jänner 1939; Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People,
Jerusalem, A/W 165, 1.
 Cf. Freidenreich, Jewish Politics in Vienna, 219.
 Cf. J. Ornstein, ed., Festschrift zur Feier des 50-jährigen Bestandes der Union Österreichischer
Juden (Vienna: Union Österreichischer Juden, 1937), 61, 65.
 The Jewish Response to Antisemitism in Austria Prior to the Anschluss 247

was not that the Union did not want to take a self-assured Jewish position, nor
was it by any means an advocate of assimilation, but it defended the Austrian
state and hoped for equality under constitutional law and emancipation on
the tide of progress. The Union of Austrian Jews tried to counter antisemitism
in the courts of law, or through interventions and appeals to politicians. Its at-
tempts to come to terms with discrimination and prejudices demonstrate how
they had faith in the institutions of state. Although it sought to counter antisem-
itism with patriotism, to the antisemites, as well as to the majority of society,
Jews could never become “true Austrians.” Many Jews were supposedly assimi-
lated, but paradoxically, the term “Assimilanten” was only used for people who
were regarded as Jews by the majority of Austrians.
The Union’s decline was a consequence of frustration with the notion of an
emancipatory utopia in an antisemitic society. In the end, the Union, which had
once counted on an alliance with liberal parties, had to beg “reactionary” anti-
liberal, Christian Social politicians for protection from ruthless antisemitism.⁸ On
the federal level, many Jews now supported Social Democracy,⁹ while they
turned to Zionist positions within the Kultusgemeinde.
In 1932, the Union lost supremacy in the Kultusgemeinde. Previously, the bloc
consisting of the liberal Union and the anti-Zionist Adass Jisroel had formed an
election alliance with the non-Zionist Social Democrats. In 1928, the Social Dem-
ocratic faction still consisted of both Zionist and non-Zionist members. The Jew-
ish Socialists supported Social Democracy in Austria and Jewish Zionist workers
in Palestine. However, in 1929 the trends separated due to controversy over the
Kultusgemeinde’s budget. The governing coalition chaired by the Union had de-
cided to transfer funds to the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine. The So-
cialist Zionists supported these donations, while their non-Zionist partners pre-
ferred to use the funds for the welfare of the Viennese community.¹⁰
The nature of the political discourse had changed: in the early 1920s, follow-
ing a phase of revolutionary class struggle throughout Central Europe, a civil ad-
ministration of Union, Orthodox, and Zionists had been formed; in 1928 the
Union and Adass Jisroel united to form an Austro-patriotic coalition; in 1932 an
election bloc consisting of the Union and Adass Jisroel joined the non-Zionist
Social Democrats to form a non-Zionist alliance.
In 1932, the Zionist Socialists alone obtained almost as many votes as they
had won together with the Social Democratic List in 1928. The great majority

 Cf. ibid.
 Cf. Freidenreich, Jewish Politics in Vienna, 10.
 Cf. ibid., 103 – 9.
248 Doron Rabinovici

of Socialist Jews had cast their ballot for the Zionists. All Zionist factions gained
votes, and they assumed the presidency of the Kultusgemeinde.
The oppositional Union of Austrian Jews complained that the Zionists’ seiz-
ure of power was “mainly indebted to the […] election right of the foreign Jews.”¹¹
Indeed, part of the Union was made up of a majority of “western Jewish,”
namely, Austrian, Hungarian, and Czech families, while many Zionists were
“eastern Jews,” originating in places such as Galicia.¹²
The Zionists advocated a different way of countering antisemitism and dis-
crimination. In 1920, in his function as Zionist delegate to the National Council,
Robert Stricker, a leading Zionist personality, introduced a bill recognizing Jew-
ish nationality. His proposal unleashed a storm of indignation in the Union. The
Union feared that such ideas would reinforce antisemitism due to the wish for
differentiation. Independently of the Zionist bill, the antisemitic politician
Leopold Kunschak too had demanded a law for discrimination against Jews
and Jewesses as a foreign minority.¹³ Thus, the Zionist movement was reacting
to the antisemitic reality of Austria. It should be noted that after 1945, Leopold
Kunschak became one of the founders of the Christian Democrat Österreichische
Volkspartei; he stated then that in spite of the Nazis and though having been in a
concentration camp himself, he was still proud to be an antisemite.
Zionism in Austria and Germany was not a rejection of German culture but a
search for Jewish self-awareness. Whereas the Union strove to show antisemites
that Jews were loyal Austrians, the Zionists wanted to prove them wrong by turn-
ing Diaspora Jews into a nation. Austrian and German Zionists wanted to estab-
lish a Jewish state in Palestine more as a haven for distressed Jews of Eastern
Europe than for their own personal needs.
The position of a powerful Bund, namely, an independent Jewish national
workers movement that was not Zionist, remained limited in Eastern Europe.
The Bund did not exist in the German-speaking area,¹⁴ and left Zionism attract-
ing most of the Socialist members of the community.

 “Bericht des Präsidiums und des Vorstandes der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien über
die Tätigkeit in den Jahren 1933 – 1936” (Vienna, 1936), 26−27, cited in Rosenkranz, Verfolgung
und Selbstbehauptung, 311.
 See, for instance, Leo Landau, in “Wien von 1909 bis 1939. Mitglied des Vorstandes der
Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde,” report given to Dr. Ball-Kaduri, January 28, 1959 and February
22, 1959; Yad Vashem, 01/244; 6.
 Cf. H. Gold, Geschichte der Juden in Wien (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1966), 49.
 Cf. J. Bunzl, Klassenkampf in der Diaspora: Zur Geschichte der jüdischen Arbeiterbewegung
(Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1975).
 The Jewish Response to Antisemitism in Austria Prior to the Anschluss 249

The Union of Austrian Jews did not reject the Palestine settlement project. In
addition, it maintained the hope of “rebuilding Erez Israel.” But its Jewish self-
understanding was different: it continued to trust in emancipation as the way to
overcome anti-Jewish prejudice. In contrast, while Zionist groups fought antise-
mitic discrimination and sought civic equality and political integration in
Austria, they did not expect protection through emancipation. While the Union
defined itself as “non-national-Jewish,” the Zionist movement refrained from de-
manding recognition as part of the state’s nation and demanded a return to Jew-
ish identity. The Union fought the struggle against antisemitism in Austria in the
courts of law and with enlightening publications. In the same vein, the Zionist
Wiener Morgenzeitung, headed by Robert Stricker, attacked open antisemitism.¹⁵
The Union argued in its publications that antisemitic stereotypes of the Jews were
incorrect; they claimed, for instance, that the Jews had been brave soldiers in
World War I. The young community rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein, later a Jewish
Elder in Theresienstadt, wrote a book protesting an antisemitic pamphlet by Se-
verin Grill, who had denounced the Talmud. The book was published by the
Union of Austrian Jews, and the foreword was written by Viennese Chief Rabbi
David Feuchtwang.¹⁶
Beyond internal political squabbling, Jews—whether Zionist or not—who did
not intend to combat antisemitism with words alone, also got organized. The
Union of Former Jewish Front-Line Soldiers, whose members always stressed
their patriotism, organized militias for defense against Nazi attacks. One year
after its founding in 1932, the Soldiers Union had 8,000 members. On the High
Holidays, 800 of these former soldiers protected synagogues from assault by Na-
tional Socialist gangs of thugs. Some were wounded during the clashes, others
were arrested.¹⁷
Several Jewish organizations in Austria tried to challenge the canard that
Jews were cowardly and not “satisfaktionsfähig” (i. e., not qualified to pick up
the gauntlet). Zionist Jewish youth in the sports club Hakoah strove to prove
the physical prowess of Jews and Jewesses.¹⁸ Arthur Koestler wrote about the
militant Zionist student associations: The goal of these fraternities was to
prove that in fighting duels, boozing, singing, and boasting, Jews knew how to
stand their ground like anyone else.

 Cf. Gold, Geschichte der Juden in Wien, 50.

 Cf. B. Murmelstein, Einige Fragen an Prof. Dr. P. Severin Grill O. Cist. Verfasser der theologi-
schen Studie “Der Talmud und Schulchan Aruch” (Vienna: Union Österreichischer Juden, 1935).
 Cf. Gold, Geschichte der Juden in Wien, 62.
 Cf. J. Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah: Jüdischer Sport in Österreich von den Anfängen bis in die Ge-
genwart (Vienna: Junius, 1987).
250 Doron Rabinovici

Both Zionists and non-Zionists tried to contradict and to fight the stereotypes
but mostly in vain. A conflict that took place in 1934 illustrates the opposing
stands between the Zionist and non-Zionist parties in the Kultusgemeinde. A gov-
ernmental decree separated non-Jewish and Jewish pupils in a part of the
Viennese school system. Collective Jewish classes were about to be instituted.
A protest lodged by the presidency of the Kultusgemeinde on September 19,
1935, had had no impact and denominational segregation in schools remained
in place. The Zionist community leadership therefore changed tactics and decid-
ed, instead of common studies, to push for independent Jewish schools. They
were successful and in the same year a Jewish elementary school was opened.¹⁹
In an interview conducted in 1992, Raul Hilberg recalls his school days back
then:

After all, you should not forget that already before the Anschluss life was quite difficult
here for the Jewish population. There was a rumor, for instance, that separate desks for Jew-
ish pupils would be set up. Therefore, my parents sent me to a Jewish grammar school; as
my mother said, if someone has to sit at a Jewish desk, it is far better to go straight to a
Jewish grammar school. Back then I was 9 years old…²⁰

Hilberg’s mother, like many members of the community and finally also the com-
munity leadership, had changed their minds when confronted with social antise-
mitism and political discrimination.
The Union, nevertheless, continued to insist on public Austrian schools since
it feared the Jewish national character of an independent institution of education
no less than it did state discrimination.²¹ The Orthodox Adass Jisroel welcomed
the governmental decree, which it perceived as an initial step toward purely de-
nominational Jewish schools.²² Adass Jisroel defined itself as being of Jewish de-
nomination and of Austrian nationality. In their opinion, the Jewish religion’s
view of a “people” did not accord with the modern idea of a nation. Adass Jisroel
tried to counter Christian Social antisemitism by stressing religious values and
explaining that Judaism was neither a race nor a nation but merely a faith. In
1936, the Zionist factions were extremely successful in the elections, and the
Union ceased to be the strongest Jewish party.
In 1934, Austrian democracy was abolished and the Christian Socialists, the
only remaining party, formed a dictatorship. The regime was ambivalent toward

 Cf. Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung, 14.

 Interview with Raul Hilberg in Die Presse, December 5, 1992. Translation by the author of this
article.
 Cf. Festschrift, 66.
 Cf. Jüdische Presse, October 5, 1934.
 The Jewish Response to Antisemitism in Austria Prior to the Anschluss 251

the Jews. While the Austrofascists and the Ständestaat, the so-called “Corporate
State,” which was an authoritarian one-party state, granted the Jews protection
from Hitler, antisemitic discrimination grew so vehement that the US government
had to intervene, and on November 13, 1934, Nahum Goldmann paid a visit to
Mussolini on behalf of Austria’s Jews.²³ The policies of the antisemitic minister
of education and chairman of the Christian Socialist Party, Emmerich Czermak,
barred the Jewish intelligentsia from teaching, research, and the arts. On the
other hand, in a typical Austrian compromise the government appointed a Jew-
ish representative, the president of the Kultusgemeinde, Desider Friedmann, to
the State Council.²⁴
The Vienna Kultusgemeinde had to deal with Nazism and its ramifications
even before the Anschluss in 1938. After the Nazis came to power in Germany,
the Jewish community was faced with the consequences of Nazi government pol-
icy. The suppression of the Jews in Germany had a direct impact on the IKG in
Vienna. Refugees from the German Reich streamed to Austria and had to be sup-
ported. Moreover, the anti-Jewish discrimination in Germany exacerbated the an-
tisemitic witch hunts and exclusion from jobs in Austria.
On September 25, 1935, the Israelite Kultusgemeinde Vienna sent the commu-
nity rabbis a letter stamped “confidential.” Although the situation in Austria was
not the same as in Germany, said the letter, the Kultusgemeinde felt the need to
articulate a warning similar to that issued in Germany, which pertained not only
to the holidays “but to the behavior of Jews in the streets and in public places in
general.”²⁵
In July 1936, Austria signed an agreement with the German Reich, which,
among other concessions, allowed the release of imprisoned July Putsch insur-
gents and the inclusion of the Nazi contact men into the government. Antisemitic
discrimination saw a rise in the one-party state. The Zionist movement in
Palestine was alarmed by newspaper reports about anti-Jewish incidents and
discriminatory measures in Austria at the beginning of 1936. On January 22,

 Cf. Freidenreich, Jewish Politics in Vienna, 195 – 203; Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbe-
hauptung, 14– 15; Gold, Geschichte der Juden in Wien, 64.
 Cf. Freidenreich, Jewish Politics in Vienna, 193; A. Staudinger, “Völkische Konkurrenz zum
Nationalsozialismus—am Beispiel des ‘Österreichischen Verbandes für volksdeutsche Ausland-
sarbeit’,” in Fünfzig Jahre danach: Der “Anschluß” von innen und außen gesehen, ed. F. Kreissler
(Vienna/Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1989), 52– 64; A. Staudinger, “Abwehr des Nationalsozialismus
durch Konkurrenz: Zur Kulturpolitik im Austrofaschismus,” in 100 Jahre Volkstheater: Theater,
Zeit, Geschichte, ed. E. Deutsch-Schreiner (Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1989), 34– 87.
 Cf. Rundschreiben der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde, signed by Desider Friedmann and
Emil Engel, Vienna, September 25, 1935, Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People,
Jerusalem, P151/8.
252 Doron Rabinovici

two Zionist officials of Austrian origin went to the Austrian consul general in Jer-
usalem and challenged the diplomat with the latest wave of dismissals of Jewish
employees from public office and the firing of the Jewish president of the Cham-
ber of Lawyers.²⁶
Shortly before the Anschluss, the entry of German troops in March 1938, a
group of Jewish youths took up target practice at the Sievering quarry. After
the National Socialists came to power, Jews were chased through the streets
not only by individual gangs of thugs but also by the antisemitic mob and by mil-
itant National Socialist party groups. When the state authorities took action
against the Jews, the youth Willy Stern, for example, hurried to get rid of his
weapon. Stern dismantled the pistol and threw it into the Danube River. Within
hours the young Jewish defense force had dissolved itself.²⁷
After the National Socialist seizure of power all attempts at countering an-
tisemitism had to be relinquished. Despite antisemitic fantasies, the Jewish com-
munity was not an independent, alien element within the Austrian population
but an integrated and heterogeneous minority.
The Viennese Jewish community leadership supported Chancellor Kurt von
Schuschnigg against Hitler. When the Austrian government fixed a date for a
plebiscite concerning the future of the Austrian state in order to counter pressure
from Berlin, the Kultusgemeinde raised a considerable sum to support it.²⁸ It pin-
ned its only hope on the continued existence of the Austrian state and was anx-
ious to secure its own existence by means of patriotic conduct and civic loyalty.
What happened in 1938 is known;²⁹ the pictures of Hitler arriving in Vienna are

 Cf. Dr. Egon Michael Zweig, Jerusalem, to Dr. Oskar Grünbaum, Vienna, January 22, 1936,
Zionist Archives Jerusalem, S25 – 9817.
 Cf. Willy Stern, interview with the author, Vienna, May 2, 1991.
 Cf. Witek and Safrian, Und keiner war dabei, 41; Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht.
 See, for instance, G. Anderl, “Emigration und Vertreibung,” in Vertreibung und Neubeginn:
Israelische Bürger österreichischer Herkunft, ed. E. Weinzierl and O. D. Kulka (Vienna/Cologne/
Weimar: Böhlau, 1992), 167−338; G. Botz, Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien
1938 – 1945: Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozialpolitik
(Vienna/Salzburg: Geyer, 1975); Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands, ed.,
Jüdische Schicksale: Berichte von Verfolgten, vol. 3 of Erzählte Geschichte: Berichte von Wider-
standskämpfern und Verfolgten (Vienna: ÖBV, 1992); Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wein, ed.,
Trotz allem… Aron Menczer 1917 – 1943 (Vienna/Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau, 1993); A. Jensen, Sei
stark und mutig! Chasak we’emaz! 40 Jahre jüdische Jugend in Österreich am Beispiel der Bewe-
gung “Haschomer Hazair” 1903 – 1943 (Vienna: Picus, 1995); A. Jindra, “Vertreibung und Entrech-
tung der Juden Wiens im Jahre 1938” (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1990); E. Klamper, Auf
Wiedersehen in Palästina: Aron Menczers Kampf um die Rettung jüdischer Kinder im nationalso-
zialistischen Wien (Vienna: Bundeskanzleramt/Bundespressedienst, 1996); A. Leonhartsberg,
“Das Leben der österreichischen Juden zwischen 1938 und 1945” (diploma thesis, University
 The Jewish Response to Antisemitism in Austria Prior to the Anschluss 253

famous. The Jewish community was not prepared for the upcoming persecution.
They did not hide their register. They tried to educate the Austrian public about
Judaism to combat prejudices by exhibitions, books and articles. They tried to
convince the antisemites of their patriotism. They turned to antisemitic Christian
Social politicians to protect them from Nazis. These were not very successful
projects as we know. The Austrian government did not want to fight the Third
Reich and the Austrian National Socialist movement. The so-called “Anschluss
of Austria” took place from the outside and from within. Under pressure from
Berlin, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who had been a member of the Austrian govern-
ment since 1936, took power in March 1938. The National Socialists already con-
trolled several provincial cities and anti-Jewish pogroms in Vienna began even
before the German troops invaded. Schuschnigg resigned as chancellor, stressing
that he did not want to shed any German blood.
Vienna, the city that was once the center of German speaking Jewry, a cradle
of modernity and haven of emancipatory hopes for the Jews of central Europe
turned into a nightmare. As we have seen, in the monarchy as well as in the
First Republic, antisemitism belonged not only to the silent basic consensus
but to the loudly proclaimed creed of most parties. Antisemitism in Vienna as-
sumed a political dimension and for the first time, elections were won on an an-
tisemitic political platform. Antisemitism was not just a tacitly agreed general
mood but the overt credo of the bourgeois parties.

of Vienna, 1986); J. Moser, “Die Entrechtung der Juden im Dritten Reich: Diskriminierung und
Terror durch Gesetze, Verordnungen, Erlasse,” in Der Judenpogrom: Von der “Reichskristallnacht”
zum Völkermord, ed. W. H. Pehle (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1994), 118−31; J. Moser, “Nisko: The
First Experiment in Deportation,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 2 (1985): 1– 30; J. Moser, “Ös-
terreichs Juden unter der NS-Herrschaft,” in NS-Herrschaft in Österreich 1938 – 1945, ed. E. Tálos,
E. Hanisch, and W. Neugebauer (Vienna: ÖBV, 1988), 185−98; L. Moses, Spaziergänge. Studien
und Skizzen zur Geschichte der Juden in Österreich, ed. P. Steines (Vienna: Löcker, 1994);
Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht; M. Ronzoni, “Lebensverhältnisse der jüdischen Bevölker-
ung in Österreich zwischen Herbst 1938 und Frühling 1939: Unbearbeitete Gesuche von jüdi-
schen Österreichern” (diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 1985); Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und
Selbstbehauptung; H. Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (Vienna/Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1993); K.
Stuhlpfarrer, “Antisemitismus, Rassenpolitik und Judenverfolgung in Österreich nach dem ers-
ten Weltkrieg,” in Das österreichische Judentum: Voraussetzungen und Geschichte, ed. A. Drabek
et al. (Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1974), 141−64; K. Stuhlpfarrer, “Nationalsozialistische Verfol-
gungspolitik 1938 bis 1945,” in Wellen der Verfolgung in der österreichischen Geschichte, ed. E.
Zöllner (Vienna: ÖBV, 1986), 144−54; B. Ungar-Klein, “Bei Freunden untergetaucht: U-Boote in
Wien,” in Der Pogrom 1938: Judenverfolgung in Österreich und Deutschland, ed. K. Schmid and
R. Streibel (Vienna: Picus, 1990), 87– 92; H. Witek, “‘Arisierungen’ in Wien: Aspekte nationalso-
zialistische Enteignungspolitik,” in NS-Herrschaft in Österreich 1938 – 1945, ed. E. Tálos et al.
(Vienna: ÖBV, 1988), 795 – 816; Witek and Safrian, Und keiner war dabei.
254 Doron Rabinovici

The Jewish organizations and parties tried to find strategies against the rise
of antisemitism. For decades, the “non-Jewish-national” politically bourgeois lib-
eral-minded Union of Austrian Jews, the strongest fraction in the Viennese Jewish
Community tried to counter antisemitism at the court or through appeals to pol-
iticians. In the attempt to come to terms with discrimination and prejudice, it
trusted in the institutions of the state. It believed in Jewish emancipation and pa-
triotism. The Zionist parties gained the supremacy in the Kultusgemeinde in 1932
and refrained from striving for recognition as part of the state’s nation. They de-
manded a return to Jewish identity.
Several cultural and social Jewish organizations tried to challenge the prej-
udice against Jews. They tried to prove strength and courage. But no Jewish strat-
egy was able to overcome the antisemitic furor, to stop the anti-Jewish discrim-
ination and propaganda of the Austrian dictatorship since 1934, let alone to
prevent the rise of National Socialism.
But the Austrian situation prior to 1938 may help us to understand the situa-
tion in Nazi Vienna. The German troops marching into Austria on March 12, 1938,
were met by cheering crowds. Never again was the invading army to be greeted
with such unflagging enthusiasm as it crossed a border. The Nazis did not have
to fear general opposition to their Jewish policy in Austria. On the contrary, the
authorities could count on a mass of profiteers and sympathizers; at the same
time, they underestimated the zeal with which their policies would be pursued.
The Jews of Vienna were not victims of a policy coming from without. The exces-
sive response and the plundering, which were quite different to what had hap-
pened in Germany, contributed to the distinctive ambiance in Nazi Vienna. More-
over, they had already started before the German troops crossed the border.
The Jewish community had placed all of its hopes against the national so-
cialist threat in the continued existence of the Austrian state and attempted to
safeguard its existence through patriotic compliance and loyalty but in vain. It
could not rely on the solidarity of the non-Jewish population. The Jews of Vienna
were made to realize suddenly that the Vienna that they had regarded as their
home had in fact become a trap.

Doron Rabinovici, writer and historian, born in Tel Aviv, has lived in Vienna since
1964. His work comprises literary prose and academic articles. His publications in-
clude Eichmann’s Jews: The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna, 1938 –
1945 (Polity Press, 2011), Neuer Antisemitismus? Eine globale Debatte (suhrkamp,
2004, edited together with Ulrich Speck and Natan Sznaider), and Neuer Antisem-
itismus? Fortsetzung einer globalen Debatte (suhrkamp, 2019, edited together with
Christian Heilbronn and Natan Sznaider).
 The Jewish Response to Antisemitism in Austria Prior to the Anschluss 255

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Matthias Küntzel
Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East and its
Repercussions in the Postwar Period
Antisemitism based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy is not rooted in Islamic tradi-
tion but, rather, in European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology to the
Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda. Im-
portant to this process was the development of Islamic antisemitism—a particular form of
Jew-hatred, based on the fusion of Islamic anti-Judaism from the old scriptures with modern
European antisemitism. This paper shows how Islamic antisemitism became popularized
within the Arab world by the booklet “Islam and Jewry” from 1937 and via the Arabic-
language program broadcast by a German shortwave transmitter between April 1939 and
April 1945. It also deals with the aftereffects of Nazi propaganda for the Arab world that
paved the way for the Arab’s full-scale war against the Jews of Mandatory Palestine in 1948.

Until 1937, the Nazi government rejected Arab offers of cooperation: It was anx-
ious not to jeopardize British appeasement of Berlin by activities in the Middle
East, especially since the Mediterranean fell within the sphere of responsibility
of Germany’s Italian ally. In June 1937, however, Berlin revised this approach.
The trigger was the proposal from the British Peel Commission for the division
of the Palestine Mandate territory into a smaller Jewish and a larger Muslim-
Arab state. The formation of a Jewish state “is not in Germany’s interest,” was
the instant response of Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath. “Germany
therefore has an interest in strengthening the Arab world as a counterweight
against such a possible increase in power for world Jewry.”¹ Strengthening the
Arabs against the Jews—it is true that Berlin initially pursued this new course
surreptitiously, lest it alienate London. Nevertheless, the scale of the operations
now set in motion was impressive.
The Nazi government began to supply money and weapons to antisemites
such as the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who led the “Arab Revolt”
between 1936 to 1939. During those years, moderate Palestinian Arab forces that
were seeking coexistence with the Zionists had not yet been marginalized. This
changed when the Nazis put all their weight on the Mufti’s scale. “The Mufti him-
self said that it was at that time only because of German money that it had been
possible to carry through the uprising in Palestine. From the outset he made
major financial demands that the Nazis in very large measure met.”²

 Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918 – 1945, Serie D, Band V, Dok. 569.
 K. Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, und die Nationalsozialisten (Frankfurt/
Main: Peter Lang, 1988), 233 – 35.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Matthias Küntzel, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-014
258 Matthias Küntzel

In Egypt, Berlin invested more money in the Muslim Brotherhood than in

any other anti-British organization. This organization, founded in 1928, used
the riots in Palestine for antisemitic campaigns in Egypt, which enabled them
to increase their membership from 800 in 1936 to 200,000 in 1938.³ In addition
to providing funds, Nazi agents organized for the Muslim Brothers so-called
“Palestine meetings” and other anti-Jewish lectures and even helped the Muslim
Brotherhood to produce explosives for their war against the Yishuv in Palestine.⁴
This cooperation, which is evidenced by documents from the British National Ar-
chives, took place in complete secrecy because the Nazis did not want to alert
British authorities in Egypt or London.
However, Nazi propagandists, in the course of their efforts to mobilize the
Arabs against the Jews, had discovered that their racist antisemitism was met
with incomprehension. “The level of education of the broad masses is not ad-
vanced enough for the understanding of the race theory,” wrote a leading
Nazi in Egypt.⁵ The instructor for propaganda at the German embassy in Tehran
came to the same conclusion: “The broad masses lack a feeling for the race
idea,” he explained in a letter to the Foreign Office and therefore recommended
to lay “all the emphasis on the religious motif in our propaganda in the Islamic
world. This is the only way to win over the Orientals.”⁶
As a consequence, Nazi Germany of all places started to use the Islamic
creed as a door opener to gain access to the Muslim masses. “Berlin made explic-
it use of religious rhetoric, terminology, and imagery and sought to engage with
and reinterpret religious doctrine and concepts,” reports David Motadel in his
seminal work about Islam and Nazi Germany’s War. “Sacred texts such as the
Qur’an … were politicized to incite religious violence against alleged common
enemies.”⁷ A thirty-one-page brochure in the Arabic language with the title
Islam and Jewry, published on August 18, 1937, in Cairo, served as a main prop-
aganda tool.

 Cf. A. A. M. El-Awaisi, The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question 1928 – 1947 (London:
Tauris Academic Studies, 1998), 98.
 Cf. National Archive Kew Garden, London: FA 371/23343 Defense Security Office, Egypt, 10.09.
1939—Note on German Suspects—Egypt, 13, 24, 26.
 G. Krämer, Minderheit, Millet, Nation? Die Juden in Ägypten 1914 – 1952 (Wiesbaden: Harrasso-
witz, 1982), 278.
 Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (PAAA), R 60690, Winkler, “Erfahrungen aus der
deutschen Propagandaarbeit in Iran vom November 1939 bis September 1941: Aufzeichnung
vom 10. January 1942,” 2– 3.
 D. Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (London: Belknap of Harvard University Press,
2014), 76.
 Repercussions of Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East 259

“Islam and Jewry”

Islam and Jewry was, as far as we know, the very first text that propagated sheer
Jew-hatred in an Islamic context by mixing selected anti-Jewish episodes of
Mohammed’s life with the so-called wickedness of Jews in the twentieth century.
It was the starting point of what I call “Islamic antisemitism”—the fusion of Is-
lamic anti-Judaism from the old scriptures with European antisemitism.
European antisemitism, as manifested in the phantasm of the Jewish world
conspiracy, was alien to the original image of the Jews in Islam. Only in the
Christian tradition do Jews appear as a deadly and powerful force capable of kill-
ing even God’s only son. They were able to bring death and ruin on humanity—
being held responsible for outbreaks of the plague. The Nazis believed in the
phantasm of the Jews as the rulers of the world, who were thus also responsible
for all its misfortunes. There was, according to their phantasm, only one way to
the redemption of the world: the systematic annihilation of the Jews.
This was not the case in Islam. Here, it was not the Jews who murdered the
Prophet, but the Prophet who murdered Jews: In the years from 623 to 627,
Mohammed had all the Jewish tribes in Medina enslaved, expelled, or killed.
Therefore, some typical features of Christian antisemitism did not appear in
the Muslim world: “There were no fears of Jewish conspiracy and domination,
no charges of diabolic evil. Jews were not accused of poisoning wells or spread-
ing the plague.”⁸ Instead, Muslims used to treat the Jews with contempt or con-
descending toleration. The hatred of Jews fostered in the Qur’an and in the Sun-
nah pursued the goal of keeping them down as dhimmis: hostility was
accompanied by devaluation.
This, however, changed with the emergence of Islamic antisemitism which
combines the worst images of Jews from the Muslim and from the Christian tra-
dition. It seems appropriate to take a closer look at Islam and Jewry, a manifesto
that researchers have largely overlooked so far.
On the one hand, the text builds on the traditions of early Islam: “The battle
between the Jews and Islam began when Muhammad fled from Mecca to
Medina,” we read here:

At that time the Jewish methods were already the same as today. Their weapon as ever was
defamation. … They said Muhammad was a swindler…, they tried to undermine
Muhammad’s honor…, they began to ask Muhammad senseless and unsolvable questions.

 B. Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict And Prejudice (London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1986), 122.
260 Matthias Küntzel

… But with this method too, as before, they had no success. So they … tried to eradicate the
Muslims.

At the same time, the text attacks the Jews in the diction of European antisemit-
ism as “great businessmen,” “exploiters,” “microbes,” and as the perpetrators of
the plague. Since Muhammad’s days, we read here, the Jews have been constant-
ly trying to “destroy Muslims.” The brochure concludes that

The verses from the Qur’an and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest
enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it. Do not believe them, they only know
hypocrisy and cunning. Hold together, fight for the Islamic thought, fight for your religion
and your existence! Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews.⁹

This manifesto was an innovation in several ways. First, while the classical Is-
lamic literature treats Mohammad’s struggle with the Jews as a minor episode
in the life of the Prophet, now “Muhammad’s conflict with the Jews has been
portrayed as a central theme in his career and their enmity to him given a cosmic
significance.”¹⁰ Second, the anti-Jewish components of Islam, which had been
dormant or of less significance during the former hundred years, were suddenly
invested with new life and vigour. Third, the anti-Jewish verses of the Qur’an
were generalized and considered valid for the twentieth century: Converging
with European racism, the Jews were attributed a certain unchanging nature
with negative characteristics. Fourth, the religious patterns have been combined
with elements of a paranoid conspiracy theory: The Muslims were considered to
be eternal victims (“They try to eradicate the Muslims”) in order to legitimize
new forms of aggression (“Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews”),
which were more reminiscent of the policies of the Nazis than the attitudes of
Mohammad.
During the war, Nazi Germany printed and disseminated Islam and Jewry
nearly unchanged in several languages and editions. For example, there is
proof that in 1942, the Spanish authorities confiscated about 1,500 copies of
“a German propaganda pamphlet in the Arabic language called ‘The Islam
and the Jews’” that had been sent to the German consulate in Tangiers. Accord-
ing to the German Foreign Ministry, these brochures were to have been distribut-
ed “unobtrusively” in Spanish Morocco.

 Translated from the German version of “Islam-Judentum. Aufruf des Großmufti an die islami-
sche Welt im Jahre 1937,” in Islam, Judentum, Bolschewismus, ed. M. Sabry (Berlin: Junker &
Dünnhaupt, 1938), 22– 32.
 Lewis, Semites, 128.
 Repercussions of Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East 261

The Spanish authorities, however, who were responsible for Tangiers, pre-
vented this. They were of the opinion that “the distribution of such a propaganda
directed against the Jewish elements in Spanish Morocco could not be permit-
ted” and had all copies confiscated and destroyed.¹¹
In 1943, another 10,000 copies of the same pamphlet were printed in Zagreb,
this time in Serbo-Croatian (Islam i Zidovstvo), and distributed in Bosnia and
Croatia.¹²
Though there is currently no overview of the spread of this pamphlet, Islam
and Jewry might well be regarded as the forerunner of Sayyid Qutb’s notorious
text Our Struggle with the Jews of the 1950s.¹³ David Motadel regards Islam and
Jewry as “one of the most significant examples of this kind of religiously charged
anti-Jewish propaganda dispersed among Muslims,”¹⁴ while historian Jeffrey
Herf deemed this text as “one of the founding texts of the Islamist tradition,
one that defined the religion of Islam as a source of hatred of the Jews.”¹⁵
The publisher of the first Arabic edition of Islam and Jewry was Mohamad Ali
al-Taher, director of the “Palestinian-Arab Bureau of Information” in Egypt. Al-
Taher was a well-known journalist from Palestine who had lived in Cairo for
many years. He was, according to the Norwegian professor of Middle East Stud-
ies, Brynjar Lia, one of Amin el-Husseini’s “Palestinian contacts in Cairo” and is
said to have contributed to the transfer of German Nazi money to the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood.¹⁶ There are other archival sources that indicate a collabo-
ration between al-Taher and German agents.¹⁷
Nonetheless, he was not the author of the pamphlet. “A distinguished Arab
wrote this book about the Jews and their behavior,” wrote al-Taher in his short

 Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin, Höpp-Archiv, “Beschlagnahme einer deutschen Propagan-

daschrift, ‘Der Islam und die Juden’ (in arabischer Sprache),” No. 01.10.015.
 Cf. J. Lebl, The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj-Amin el-Husseini and National-Socialism (Belgrade: Ci-
goja Stampa, 2007), 311– 19; Motadel, Islam, 196.
 Cf. R. L. Nettler, Past Trials and Present Tribulations: A Muslim Fundamentalist’s View of the
Jews (Oxford: Pergamon, 1987).
 Motadel, Islam, 196.
 J. Herf, “Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Nazis and the Holocaust: The Origins, Nature and After-
effects of Collaboration,” Jewish Political Studies Review 26, nos. 3 & 4 (2014): 15.
 Cf. B. Lia, The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: The Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement
1928 – 1942 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1998), 179.
 Cf. M. Küntzel, Nazis und der Nahe Osten: Wie der islamische Antisemitismus entstand
(Leipzig-Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2019), 70 – 71.
262 Matthias Küntzel

preface to Islam and Jewry “and we greatly appreciate it.”¹⁸ But who was that
“distinguished Arab”?
This secret was not revealed in Egypt in August 1937 or later. It was in Ger-
many that Amin el-Husseini was first named as the alleged author of Islam and
Jewry. In 1938, the Berlin-based “Junker und Dünnhaupt Verlag” published the
entire pamphlet under the title: “Islam-Judaism. Call of the Grand Mufti to the
Islamic world in 1937.”¹⁹ In subsequent editions initiated by the Nazis during
the Second World War, the Mufti continued to be named as the author.
Whether el-Husseini was in fact the sole initiator and author of this booklet,
however, is an open question. There is no doubt that the Nazis used this pam-
phlet for their own propaganda purposes. Were they also involved in its creation?
On the one hand, the Arabic text is characterized by a poetic style of writing,
such as can be found in other texts of the Mufti.²⁰ On the other hand, the
Mufti never claimed authorship.
In 1937, the Nazis were el-Husseini’s closest allies. The “only great power in-
terested in Arab victory over the Jews of Palestine and fully trusted by the Arabs
is Germany,” Fritz Grobba, the German Ambassador in Baghdad stated in a re-
port about a visit by the Mufti’s emissaries at the beginning of January 1937.²¹
In the summer of 1937, when the Mufti was hiding on Jerusalem’s Temple
Mount, he was in contact with representatives of Nazi Germany through a mid-
dleman. At that time, Nazi propagandists had already discovered the antisemitic
potential of Islam. Thus, in April 1935, the Nazi magazine Weltkampf published
an article about the “antisemitic movement in Islam.”²²
It is nevertheless still unclear how the writing and publication of Islam and
Jewry came about and what role the Nazis played in this. In addition, we do not
know what contacts al-Taher, the publisher of Islam and Jewry, might have had
with German agents in Egypt in 1937. It is also unclear how the 1938 German
translation of Islam and Jewry was organized and who did it. While historians
have still to answer important questions about Islam and Jewry, the political con-
text which facilitated the emergence of Islamic antisemitism is quite clear.
In his short preface, Al-Taher connected Islam and Jewry to the fight against
the partition of Palestine as proposed in the 1937 Peel Plan: The Palestinian-Arab
Bureau of Information is publishing this work because Muslims and Arabs

 I am grateful to the Israeli Arabist and historian Dr. Edy Cohen, who discovered the original
Arabic booklet and translated its cover page for me.
 Translated from the German version of “Islam-Judentum,” in Sabry, Islam, Judentum, 22– 32.
 Verbal message from Dr. Edy Cohen.
 PAAA, Akten betreffend Judenfragen, Pol. VII, R 104791, Grobba, Bagdad, den 5. Januar 1937.
 Kureshi, “Antisemitische Bewegung im Islam,” Der Weltkampf 12, no. 136 (1935): 113 – 15.
 Repercussions of Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East 263

“should know about Jews just now while the Jews seek to create a state by elim-
inating Muslims and Arabs.”²³
The brochure itself culminates in the following call: “Do not tolerate the par-
tition plan, for Palestine has been an Arab country for centuries and shall remain
Arabic forever.”²⁴ Islam and Jewry was thus intended to theologize the territorial
conflict between Jews and Arabs in order to prevent the realization of a partition
proposal for Palestine—the first important attempt at a compromise—which had
initially been met with a degree of approval from some moderate Arabs.
Islam and Jewry was published eleven years before the State of Israel came
to existence. This fact alone contradicts the widespread assumption that Islamic
antisemitism was a response to Israel’s actions. The Nazi’s engagement in this
respect and at such an early stage also shows that their Islamic turn was not
just a tactic due to the needs of the Second World War. Instead, the Nazis
tried to mobilize and exploit the antisemitic potential, which Islamic texts can
provide if you read them in a selective way. This certain way of reading the Islam-
ic scriptures, however, started to become common in the Middle East in 1937.
“The classical Islamic literature treats [Mohammed’s] struggle with the Jews
as a relatively minor episode in the career of the Prophet,” observes Bernard
Lewis. In modern times, however, Lewis continues,

under external influences which are easily recognizable, Muhammad’s conflict with the
Jews has been portrayed as a central theme in his career, and their enmity to him given
a cosmic significance. This is new, and related directly to new situations and influences.²⁵

New situations—the uproar against the Peel plan and new “external influen-
ces”—by the Nazis for example, changed the picture of the Jews in the Middle
East, indeed. And it was Islam and Jewry that gave the alleged Jewish enmity to-
ward Mohammed a cosmic significance for the first time.

Radio Zeesen
The most effective vehicle of Nazi propaganda, however, was the Arabic-
language broadcasting out of Zeesen, a town with some four thousand inhabi-
tants to the south of Berlin that once housed one of the world’s most powerful
shortwave transmitters. Its influence has long been neglected by historians of the

 According to the translation by Dr. Edy Cohen.

 Translated from the German version of “Islam-Judentum,” in Sabry, Islam, Judentum, 22– 32.
 Lewis, Semites, 128.
264 Matthias Küntzel

Middle East. This author has written about it since 2005,²⁶ but in the meantime,
Jeffrey Herf in his Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World and David Motadel in his
Islam and Nazi Germany’s War analysed extensively this “long-range gun in the
ether” as Joseph Goebbels dubbed it. Based on new sources, both authors show
how the Nazis used this propaganda tool to popularize the Jew-hatred found in
early Islamic sources and radicalized it by combining it with the patterns of Eu-
ropean antisemitism.²⁷
Between April 1939 and April 1945, Radio Zeesen broadcast in standard Ara-
bic every day, soon adding programs in Maghribi Arabic, and broadcasts intend-
ed for Turks, Iranians, and Indians. The Oriental Service of the radio station had
absolute priority over all other foreign broadcast offices and employed around
eighty staff members.²⁸ They presented the Allies in the Second World War as
lackeys of the Jews and drummed the notion of the “United Jewish Nations”
into the audience. At the same time, the Jews were attacked as the worst enemies
of Islam.
At that time, listening to radio took place primarily in public squares or ba-
zaars and coffee houses. Various testimonies from that period indicate that the
German broadcast in the Arabic language was more popular than the BBC’s
broadcasts in Arab languages, for several reasons.
Firstly, its programs were professionally produced, with regular recitations
from the Koran and well performed Arabic music. Secondly, there were quite
popular broadcasters, such as Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem,
the prominent Iranian announcer Bahram Shahrokh, Taqi al-Din al-Hilali from
Morocco, and the prominent Iraqi journalist Yunus al-Bahri. “Berlin could
never have been able to find a better-suited man to be its propaganda instrument
through the Radio,” a British intelligence report remarked about al-Bahri. “With
his sharp voice, aggressive speeches, and marked ability to raise his voice, his
broadcasts quickly became the earmark of Germany’s Arabic service.”²⁹ Thirdly,
the German transmitter—overhauled for the Olympics in 1936 in Germany—was
more powerful than those of its competitors, thus ensuring a better listening ex-
perience. Fourthly, Muslims were addressed as Muslims, not as Arabs: With its

 Cf. M. Küntzel, “National Socialism and Antisemitism in the Arab World,” Jewish Political
Studies Review 17 (2005): 99 – 118.
 Cf. J. Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009);
Motadel, Islam.
 Cf. W. Schwipps, “Wortschlacht im Äther,” in Wortschlacht im Äther: Der deutsche Auslands-
rundfunk im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Geschichte des Kurzwellenrundfunks in Deutschland 1939 – 1945,
ed. Deutsche Welle (Berlin: Haude & Spenersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1971), 58.
 As cited by Motadel, Islam, 93.
 Repercussions of Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East 265

pro-Arab shift, Berlin had discovered the antimodernist potential of Islam. Ger-
man propaganda, however, propagated a politicized version of Islam. According
to Motadel, “German propaganda combined Islam with anti-Jewish agitation to
an extent that had not hitherto been known in the modern Muslim world.”³⁰
Jeffrey Herf highlights the centrality of the teachings of the Koran for Germa-
ny’s Arabic propaganda as well:

It was its reading of this work and this tradition—not citations from Mein Kampf, The Pro-
tocols of the Elders of Zion, or speeches by Hitler or Goebbels—that served as the most im-
portant entry point to Arab and Muslim listeners.³¹

The reception and the effectiveness of Germany’s broadcast propaganda is diffi-

cult to assess. There are indications, though, that it had a certain influence.
Reader Bullard, the British Ambassador in Tehran, in 1940 wrote that

Even if we do broadcast in Persian, we cannot hope to rival the Germans in interest, as their
more violent, abusive style, with exaggerated claims … appeals to the Persian public.³²

These appeals were not only to the Persians. In 1939, a British informant reported
that he had passed a café in Jaffa. It was possible to listen to the German radio
even outside, he wrote. Moreover, in his words, “all around the café stood Arabs
—even on the nearby balconies—listening to the broadcast.”³³ Also instructive is
another British report about the effect of Radio Zeesen on the Arabs in Palestine,
written in October 1939:

In general it may be said that the middle, lower middle and lower classes listen to the Ara-
bic broadcasts from Berlin with a good deal of enjoyment. They like the racy, “juicy” stuff
which is put over; they are amused at the slanderous and libelous attacks on British per-
sonalities. … What the average Palestine Arab does imbibe, however, is the anti-Jew mate-
rial. This he wants to hear and to believe; and he does both. To that extent German prop-
aganda is definitely effective.³⁴

 Motadel, Islam, 97.

 Herf, Nazi Propaganda, 197.
 R. Bullard, Letters from Tehran: A British Ambassador in World War II Persia (London: Tauris,
1991), 28.
 Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Report by Kapeliuk, 18. October 1939 as cited by R.
Wildangel, Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht: Palästina und der Nationalsozialismus (Berlin:
Klaus Schwarz, 2007), 359.
 British National Archive, London, WO 208/1701, Palestine Historical. Monthly appreciations
German Nazi activities in Palestine. Oct ’38–Oct ’39.
266 Matthias Küntzel

In spring 1944, a “Weekly Review of Foreign Broadcasts,” done for the US Mili-
tary Intelligence Division concluded:

the anti-Jewish theme has in the past constituted a good half of the German propaganda
directed towards the Near East. … In recent weeks the Arabic voice in Berlin has surpassed
all its previous records in inciting violence in Palestine.³⁵

The bulk of the radio’s verbal material was indeed devoted to whipping up an-
tisemitic hatred. “The defense of your life is a duty which can only be fulfilled
by annihilating the Jews” was the message on July 7, 1942. “Kill the Jews, burn
their property, destroy their stores … Your sole hope of salvation lies in annihi-
lating the Jews before thy annihilate you.”³⁶ At the same time, the anger of Radio
Zeesen turned on fellow Arabs who entertained the possibility of coexistence
with Jews in Palestine:

Noble Arabs! You should maintain your policy of boycotting the Jews. You should punish
those who ignore the boycott. All Arabs who collaborate with the Jews should be destroyed
before they help the Jews destroy us.³⁷

However, according to Herf,

the fusion of antisemitism with anti-Zionism was the key ideological weapon of the Nazi
regime in its efforts to win support from Arabs and Muslims in North Africa and the Middle
East.³⁸

From April 1939 to April 1945, Radio Zeesen constantly urged their listeners to
prevent the birth of a Jewish state and exterminate the Jews living in Palestine.
It broadcast, for example, that the Jews would not be satisfied until they had
made “every territory between the Tigris and the Nile Jewish.” If they succeeded,

there will remain not a single Arab Moslem or Christian in the Arab world. Arabs! Imagine
Egypt, Iraq and all the Arab countries becoming Jewish with no Christianity or Islam there.³⁹

 Weekly Review of Foreign Broadcasts, F.C.C., No. 118, 3/4/44 “Near and Middle East,” as cited
by Herf, Nazi Propaganda, 219.
 Voice of Free Arabism, July 7, 1942, 8:15 pm, “Kill the Jews before They Kill You,” Kirk to Sec-
retary of State, No. 502 (July 21, 1942), as cited by Herf, Nazi Propaganda, 126.
 Arab Nation, April 30, 1943, 9:00 pm, “Has the Jewish Danger Passed?,” Kirk to Secretary of
State, No. 1047, Cairo (May 15, 1943), as cited by Herf, Nazi Propaganda, 171.
 Herf, Nazi Propaganda, 178.
 Berlin in Arabic, September 8, 1943, “Talk: The Ambitions of the Jews,” Kirk to Secretary of
State, No. 1313, Cairo, September 23, 1943, as cited by Herf, Nazi Propaganda, 57.
 Repercussions of Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East 267

The more impending the defeat of Germany, the shriller the warnings of Radio
Zeesen about the consequences for Palestine should “World Jewry” take advant-
age of its opportunity.
Radio Zeesen stopped broadcasting in April 1945. However, the echoes of
this propaganda, which fell on receptive ears due to anti-Jewish elements of
the Qur’an and other Islamic sources, continued to reverberate. While the view
of the British Foreign Office, which in 1946 “spoke of Arab hatred of the Jews
being greater than that of the Nazis,” may be exaggerated,⁴⁰ it is obvious that
wartime Nazi propaganda contributed to increased hostility after the war.

Antisemitic Mobilization against the

New-Founded Israel
The significance of Nazi propaganda became clear on November 2, 1945, the an-
niversary of the Balfour declaration. On that day, the worst anti-Jewish pogroms
in Egypt’s history were perpetrated in Cairo: Demonstrators “broke into the Jew-
ish quarter, plundered houses and shops, attacked non-Muslims, and devasted
the adjacent Ashkenazi synagogue before finally setting it on fire.”⁴¹
This Arab mob was organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, which, after 1945,
turned out to be the most important political force in Egypt with 1,500 branches
and at least 500,000 members. By 1948, these figures had doubled or even tri-
pled.⁴²
They tirelessly defended the war crimes perpetrated by Amin el-Husseini, the
Mufti of Jerusalem. “Should one hair of the Mufti’s be touched, every Jew in the
world would be killed without mercy”—threatened their newspaper in 1946—
some months after the Holocaust.⁴³
Utilizing the arguments of the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood started to rad-
icalize the Arab street in their struggle against the Jewish state. They adopted the
antisemitic course of Amin el-Husseini in every respect: “This hero fought Zion-

 B. Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2008), 34.
 Krämer, Minderheit, 320.
 El-Awaisi, The Muslim Brothers, 135.
 “One hair of the Mufti’s is worth the Jews of the Whole World,” Al Ikhwan Al Muslimun, June
20, 1946, Tuck to Secretary of State, No. 1648 (June 24, 1945), as cited by Herf, Nazi Propaganda,
242– 43.
268 Matthias Küntzel

ism with the help of Hitler and Germany,” they proclaimed in 1946. “Germany
and Hitler are gone, but Amin Al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”⁴⁴
Historians of the Middle East agree that it was to a large extent the pressure
from the “Arab street” that had previously driven a reluctant Arab League into a
full-scale war against Israel in 1948.⁴⁵ Egypt’s Premier Nuqrashi, for example,
was against the military assault that took place in 1948. However, he said he
was swayed by public opinion that “was all in favor of the war, and considered
anyone who refused to fight as a traitor.”⁴⁶
When the Arab League met in Cairo in December 1947, the Brotherhood
brought, for example, 100,000 demonstrators into the streets. According to a
contemporary account, on the terrace of the Savoy Hotel where the meeting of
the League took place, “the Prime Ministers of the Arab states stood with worthy
and grave expressions acknowledging, fez in hand, the salutes of the passing pa-
rade of believers.”⁴⁷ The Arab League responded to this demonstration by, for the
first time, agreeing to the training of volunteers for jihad in Palestine. Thus, it
was under the impact of the Brotherhood’s mass mobilization that a reluctant
Egypt government began its active participation in the fighting in Palestine.
In addition, while the Yishuv had to defend itself against guerrilla attacks,
using all necessary means to do so, the Muslim Brotherhood spread rumors of
horrific Zionist atrocities against Arabs in Palestine. Thus, they “created an at-
mosphere in which war seemed the only logical and natural process,” writes
Thomas Mayer. “The [Brotherhood] Society succeeded in drawing Egypt into a
full-scale military initiative in Palestine.”⁴⁸ The American embassy in Damascus
confirmed this assessment. Without referring to the Brotherhood by name, they
identified “the combined momentum of their own rhetoric and pressure from
below” as the cause of the Egyptian invasion of Israel. The “Government appears
to have led public opinion to the brink of war and [is] now unable to retreat.”⁴⁹
Only in December 1948, after this war was lost, did the Egypt government
dissolve the branches of the Muslim Brotherhood and ban the organization.

 As cited by Herf, Nazi Propaganda, 244.

 Cf. M. Küntzel, “The Aftershock of the Nazi War against the Jews, 1947– 1948: Could War in
the Middle East Have Been Prevented?” Jewish Political Studies Review 26 (2014): 38 – 53.
 F. A. Gerges, “Egypt and the 1948 War,” in The War for Palestine. Rewriting the History of
1948, ed. E. L. Rogan and A. Shlaim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 154.
 “Mit deutschem Gruß für Palästina,” Spiegel 51 (1947): 11.
 T. Mayer, “The Military Force of Islam: The Society of the Muslim Brethren and the Palestine
Question: 1945 – 48,” in Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel, ed. E. Kedourie and S. G.
Haim (London: Frank Cass, 1982), 110 – 11.
 R. Memminger, Damascus to Secretary of State, May 9, 1948, USNA, 800 Syria/9 – 548, as
cited by Morris, 1948, 181.
 Repercussions of Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East 269

Why were the Arab rulers not able to dissolve the militant and antisemitic dem-
onstrations of the “Arab street” in the years before?
Probably, those rulers were obsessed by an antisemitic kind of anti-Zionism,
as well. Thus, two years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Ibn Saud described the
Jews as an “aggressive people” whose ambitions “extend to all the Arab states
where holy places are to be found.”⁵⁰ Lebanese Foreign Minister, Hamid
Frangieh, regarded “the expansionist efforts of Zionism a serious threat to
peace.”⁵¹ Iraqi Crown Prince Abd al-llah considered Zionism “the greatest trage-
dy of the twentieth century,”⁵² while an Egyptian member of parliament viewed it
as “a cancer in the Arab body.”⁵³ It is no wonder, therefore, that an assembly of
Arab kings and princes convened by Egypt’s King Farouk in May 1946 struck the
same note. Their resolution states as follows:

We have decided that Zionism poses a danger not only to Palestine but also to all other
Arab countries and to all nations of Islam. Therefore it is the duty of all Arab countries
and Islamic countries to resist the danger of Zionism.⁵⁴

The paranoid delusion that a few thousand Zionists in Britain and the US togeth-
er with the Yishuv in Palestine constituted a dangerous global power that threat-
ened the whole Islamic world had nothing to do with reality but much to do with
the cumulative impact of the years of relentless Nazi propaganda since broad-
casts from Berlin had permanently claimed that Zionism was inherently expan-
sionist.

Conclusion
In 1948, there were, of course, also other motives to prevent the creation of the
state of Israel—for example, the Egypt’s rulers desire to counter the territorial

 Archiv der Gegenwart, United Press, “Telegramm von König Ibn Saud und Präsident Tru-
man,” entry of October 18, 1946, 901.
 Archiv der Gegenwart, “UN-Bulletin, Declaration by Hamid Frangieh on behalf of the Arab
League,” entry of July 22, 1947, 1151.
 FO 371/45237/E 2090, Oriental Department to Dickson, 26 March 1945, as cited by M. Litvak
and E. Webman, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (London: Hurst,
2009), 39.
 Al-Ahram, 6 and 7 March 1946, as cited by Meir and Webman, Empathy, 41.
 Third Section of the Resolutions of the Anshas Summit of May 28 and 29, 1946, as cited by Z.
Elpeleg, Through the Eyes of the Mufti: The Essays of Haj Amin, trans. R. Kessel (London: Valen-
tine Mitchell, 2009), 194.
270 Matthias Küntzel

ambitions of Emir Abdullah from Trans-Jordan, or the feeling that Palestine had
become a test of the Arabs independence vis-à-vis the imperial powers. However,
the aftereffect of Nazi propaganda played a crucial role, as well. Nazi Germany’s
efforts to incite Arabs against the Jews changed the perception of the Jews within
Islamic societies. While individual editions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
were already circulating in Palestine during the 1920s, European conspiracy the-
ories became popular only since the late 1930s. In addition, Radio Zeesen
strengthened an exclusively anti-Jewish reading of the Islamic scriptures and agi-
tated in an antisemitic manner against the Zionist project.
Nazi propaganda thus contributed to the fact that the end of World War II
was followed by a twofold division of the world. The one division between polit-
ico-economic systems is known as the Cold War. The second cleavage, merely
covered over by the Cold War, has to do with the persistence of National Socialist
modes of thought particularly in the Arab world. In her report on the trial of
Adolf Eichmann in 1961, Hannah Arendt cast her gaze into this abyss:

the newspapers in Damascus and Beirut, in Cairo and Jordan did not conceal either their
sympathy for Eichmann nor their regret that he “did not finish the job”; a radio broadcast
from Cairo on the opening day of the trial even included a little sideswipe at the Germans,
reproaching them for the fact that “in the last war, no German plane had ever flown over
and bombed a Jewish settlement.”⁵⁵

Obviously, there was not only a temporal proximity between the Arab war
against Israel and the Nazi war against the Jews three years before but also an
ideological proximity. In this respect, the war of 1947/48 might appear as an af-
tershock of the Nazi war before.
In today’s Middle East, a rhetoric that was influenced by Nazi sources still
prevails. To this day, Palestinian leaders continue to refuse to recognize the Jew-
ish state by using those eighty-year-old pretensions. The more that connection is
understood, the easier might it become to free the lives of Palestinians and Arabs
from the idiocy of antisemitism.

 H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen (Munich: Piper,
1986), 81.
 Repercussions of Nazi Propaganda in the Middle East 271

Political scientist and historian Matthias Küntzel, born in 1955, holds a tenured
part-time position as a teacher of political science at a technical college in
Hamburg, Germany. Between 2004 and 2015, Küntzel was an external research as-
sociate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism
(SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of Jihad and
Jew-Hatred. Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (Telos 2009) and, most re-
cently, of Nazis and the Middle East: How Islamic Antisemitism came into
Being (Hentrich & Hentrich 2019; in German).

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Piper, 1986.
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El-Awaisi, Abd al-Fattah M. The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question 1928 – 1947.
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Elpeleg, Zvi. Through the Eyes of the Mufti: The Essays of Haj Amin. Translated by Rachel
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Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986.
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Movement 1928 – 1942. Reading: Ithaca Press, 1998.
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Litvak, Meir, and Esther Webman. From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust.
London: Hurst, 2009.
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Palestine Question: 1945 – 48.” In Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel, edited
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2008.
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Comprehending Shoah and Post-Shoah
Antisemitism
Dina Porat
Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event?
A Debate between Two Pillars of Holocaust
Research and its Impact on the Study of
Antisemitism
The following words of philosopher Eliezer Schweid, of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, regarding the uniqueness of the Holocaust, may serve as a starting
point for our issue:

We will begin by citing a fact obvious to all readers of the wide-ranging literature on the
Shoah: Philosophers have no monopoly on the question of whether the Shoah was a com-
pletely aberrant, unprecedented event that cannot be compared with any other historical or
contemporary occurrence, or whether it can be discussed together with other attempts at
genocide, especially with contemporary outbreaks of mass killing. Almost everyone who
studies the Shoah addresses this question seriously.¹

Indeed, a stormy debate has been underway over the past two decades in the re-
search world, with reverberations in society at large, over the question of wheth-
er the Holocaust was a unique historical event—meaning, an event possessing
unique attributes that are characteristic of it alone—or a genocide that, although
extreme, should nonetheless be located on the continuum of genocides that oc-
curred before and after it.² Put differently: Should the Holocaust be examined
exclusively as an event that was planned and carried out against the Jewish Peo-
ple and regarded as a national catastrophe and a Jewish tragedy alone? Or
should it be studied as an event whose implications transcend the unique con-
text of a specific national group of victims and that holds international signifi-
cance from which we can also derive lessons on a human and universal level?
Could formulations such as “an unprecedented event with unique characteris-
tics” settle the debate?
In this article, I will try to examine the views of Israel Gutman (1923 – 2013)
and Yehuda Bauer (b. 1926), the two most prominent Jerusalem-based Holocaust

 E. Schweid, “Is the Shoah a Unique Event?” in Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Respons-
es during and after the Holocaust, ed. S. T. Katz, S. Biderman, and G. Greenberg (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 221.
 One example of this debate is the controversy that erupted around an international confer-
ence on genocide that was held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on June 29, 2016.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Dina Porat, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-015
276 Dina Porat

researchers, who were active in Israel in the decades following the Holocaust—
on these questions in general, and the question of the uniqueness of the Holo-
caust in particular, even before the onset of the abovementioned debate. I will
also explore the possible implications of their conclusions for the current re-
search of antisemitism. To conclude, I will attempt to propose a third possibility:
that there is no fundamental contradiction between these two approaches—the
view of the Holocaust as wholly unique and the view of the Holocaust as an ex-
treme and unprecedented event on the continuum—and that an effort should at
least be made to bring them closer together. This third possibility is proposed
here with the utmost caution and with due consideration of whether it is reason-
able to propose a synthesis in the case in question. Indeed, we have learned from
Georg W. F. Hegel that the wave that follows thesis and antithesis is synthesis
and that the pendulum stimulating the research swings from one side to the
other and back again, at least until the midpoint. However, based on an exami-
nation of the writings of Gutman and Bauer, who sometimes relate to the possi-
bility of synthesis, can we say that these two approaches are actually two sides of
the same coin and that they complete one another, because uniqueness does not
preclude us from relating to and closely examining other events?
As we are dealing with the years immediately following the Holocaust—both
Gutman and Bauer began writing and publishing in the 1950s—we can perhaps
ask whether there is any significance to the fact that Gutman was a survivor who
experienced a number of the circles of hell during the Holocaust—in the Warsaw
Ghetto, in Auschwitz, in Majdanek and more—whereas Bauer’s family immigrat-
ed with him to Palestine from Prague in 1939, on the eve of the war. Could it be
that Holocaust survivors hold a certain view on the subject under discussion that
differs from that of those who lived in a safe place during the Holocaust? This is
a sensitive question due to the broader question that underlies it, pertaining to
the impact of the life circumstances of the historian or scholar on his or her con-
clusions. “Leaving the event as an unexplained and unresearched event fulfills
Holocaust survivors’ deep mental need to give expression to their feeling that
what happened to them was unique in intensity and scope,” writes one Yad
Vashem employee who has been in consistent contact with survivors for many
years.³ Of course, historians, and survivors in general, devote themselves to re-
searching and explaining the Holocaust and to not leaving it as an event that
is unexplained and unresearched. Still, the question remains: Did the experien-
ces of the two scholars that are the focus of this article lead them with greater

 E. Amir, “The Uniqueness of the Holocaust,” [in Hebrew] Alachson 16 (2017).

 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 277

vigor to the conclusion that the Holocaust was unique, or to the opposite conclu-
sion?
Another question that emerges from the period under discussion here is
whether devotion to the Zionist idea, and to the aspiration within Israel of build-
ing research and teaching that is consistent with this idea, had as well an impact
on the conclusions.
The possible influences on the research also include interpersonal relations:
Gutman and Bauer would often hold lengthy conversations with Abba Kovner,
the poet and Vilna ghetto underground leader and partisan, who became an orig-
inal thinker and cultural leader in Israel. All three were members of kibbutzim of
Hashomer Hatzair, and questions pertaining to Jewish history and the fate of the
Jewish People were pressing for them. Bauer and Gutman were close friends for a
number of decades, and together they established a number of infrastructure en-
terprises in the field of Holocaust research. Kovner was an inspiration for both
men. Their personal relationship, however, did not require fundamental agree-
ment between them, and they disagreed on a number of key issues, including
a particularly extended difference of opinion regarding the uniqueness of the
Holocaust. In other words, their views have neither been consistent with nor de-
termined by interpersonal relations.

Gutman’s Approach: Uniqueness

Gutman categorically opposed defining the Holocaust as an ongoing general
phenomenon or framework and locating it on a continuum of genocides that oc-
curred before and after it. It cannot be included on a continuum of other murders
that were perpetrated for territorial, religious, or ethnic reasons, as Gutman
maintained:

The more I have explored the subject over the decades, the more I have come to recognize
the uniqueness of the Holocaust, which cannot be turned into another episode in history.⁴

Nazi antisemitism also cannot be seen merely as the most extreme link in the
phenomenon of antisemitism, he noted. The Nazis undoubtedly exploited the
negative image that had been instilled by the church for many centuries prior
to the emergence of the Nazi party, and the Jew’s transformation into a Satan
that opposes humanity, which, unlike all other cases in history, continued for
thousands of years and served as a backdrop for murder. However, in addition

 Quoted in D. Porat, “The Jerusalem School,” [in Hebrew] Haaretz Books, February 4, 2009.
278 Dina Porat

to the consistent elements of antisemitism, Nazism also mobilized new and dif-
ferent components; first and foremost was the Jews’ placement “beyond the
realm of humanity” and “their physical, spiritual, and cultural eradication …
as a necessity in clearing a path for the redemption of humanity.” This total
and apocalyptic removal was one of a kind:

The Holocaust’s uniqueness stems from the role of antisemitism in general, and of racial
antisemitism in particular, in the worldview of Hitler and National Socialism, and from
the stages of the implementation of this worldview in the Nazi Third Reich and in the
course of the war. The Holocaust is an event that stands alone in the history of humanity,
which is why it has been so difficult for Jews and non-Jews alike to understand and inter-
nalize it.⁵

Gutman expounded his outlook in two lectures that subsequently became key
articles: “The Holocaust and its Impact on Jewish History”⁶ and “Notes and Re-
flections for a Discussion on the Uniqueness and Universal Nature of the Holo-
caust,”⁷ a title that says simply that the uniqueness and the universal nature of
the Holocaust go hand in hand with and complete one another, as “the dimen-
sions of the crime alone endow it general human significance that transcends
the history of one nation.”⁸ After examining the attributes of the totalitarian re-
gimes in his articles, Gutman quotes Saul Friedländer, the worldwide renown
scholar, who wrote:

The absolute character of the anti-Jewish drive makes it impossible to integrate the exter-
mination of the Jews not only within the general framework of Nazi persecution, but also
within the wider aspects of contemporary ideological-political behavior, such as fascism,
totalitarianisms, economic exploitations, and so forth.⁹

Gutman’s argument also finds support in the words of Nathan Rotenstreich, a

leading figure in the Hebrew University, on the uniqueness of the persecution
of the Jews:

 I. Gutman, “The Impact of the Holocaust on Jewish History,” [in Hebrew] Newsletter: The
World Union of Jewish Studies 23 (1984): 14, 15 – 22.
 Ibid.
 Cf. I. Gutman, “Notes and Reflections for a Discussion on the Uniqueness and Universal Na-
ture of the Holocaust,” [in Hebrew] Yalkut Moreshet 28 (1979): 77– 94.
 Ibid., 77.
 S. Friedländer, Some Aspects of the Historical Significance of the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Insti-
tute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977), 7.
 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 279

Even if the Holocaust can be viewed as the height of persecutions implemented against the
Jews by the nations of the world, [we cannot] ignore the fact that the Holocaust is a special
type of persecution, and that the difference between the persecutions is a genuinely qual-
itative one.¹⁰

In addition, with regard to the fundamentally anti-Jewish foundation of Nazism,

Rotenstreich asks whether the Holocaust is a unique phenomenon constituting a
type in itself, and answers his own question as follows:

It seems to me that despite the proximity between traditional anti-Semitism and National
Socialist anti-Semitism, it is the latter that is a unique phenomenon.¹¹

The same is true of the work of Ben-Zion Dinur, the historian who became min-
ister of education and a leading force in Yad Vashem. Indeed, in accordance with
his well-known study “Diasporas and Their Destruction,” in which he analyzes
the cyclicality of the destruction of Jewish centers and the construction of others,
during the Holocaust Dinur believed that the cyclicality of the destruction was
part of the affliction of exile, and therefore that the Holocaust was not a new ep-
isode in our history:

It is new in its form and its scope, and its calculated organization and its menacing dimen-
sions, but not at all in its essence.¹²

However, after the Holocaust, when the intensity of the loss and the tragedy be-
came clear, he wrote:

And nonetheless, what happened to us was unique and completely different. It is some-
thing that has never before occurred. Never before has the blood of an entire nation
been abandoned with this being proclaimed publicly. Before the eyes of the entire world,
we were removed from the human race. Before the eyes of the entire world, we were exe-
cuted and destroyed using all means and all methods. We should see things as they are and
not conceal them.¹³

 N. Rotenstreich, On Jewish Existence in This Era [in Hebrew] (Merhavia and Tel Aviv: Poalim,
1972), 111– 12.
 N. Rotenstreich, Holocaust and Revival: A Symposium [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Hebrew Uni-
versity of Jerusalem, 1975), 124– 34.
 B.-Z. Dinur, “Diasporas and Their Destruction,” [in Hebrew] in Generations and Records:
Studies and Studies in Israeli Historiography of its Problems and History, vol. 4 of Ben-Zion
Dinur: Historical Writings (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1978), 175.
 B.-Z. Dinur, “Our Fate and Our War in These Times,” [in Hebrew] in Remember: The Holo-
caust and Its Lesson (Jerusalem: Yad VaShem, 1958), 36.
280 Dina Porat

Jacob Talmon, the Hebrew University scholar who inspired generations of stu-
dents, explored European history as the backdrop for the Holocaust and reached
the same conclusion:

the world has never seen such a campaign of annihilation. Not an outburst of forces of wild
religious extremism, not a wave of pogroms initiated from above, not the act of an incited
mob … but rather the act of a “legal” government that handed over an entire people to mur-
derers … That is how this campaign of extermination differed completely from all other
massacres, mass murders, and acts of spilling blood and forsaking life in history … The
Nazis’ extermination of the Jews of Europe is different and deviates from all of these
mass killings [previously referred to by Talmon] in the conscious, detailed, and precise
planning that preceded it and in its systematic implementation; in the absence of a factor
of emotional outburst; in the meticulously implemented decision to destroy everything,
without leaving a trace; and in the prevention of any possibility of someone escaping
when his turn came to be killed.¹⁴

After drawing on the writings of these colleagues, Gutman sums up by stating

that the Holocaust differed from similar crimes and constituted an unprecedent-
ed event in Jewish history and the history of the world in that it was an attempt
at the total murder of a people, grounded in ancient antisemitism and carried
out with meticulous planning, as the world bore witness to the murder:

Obfuscating the uniqueness of the Holocaust, or integrating it into a long list of crimes,
even when done with good intentions, helps distort the historical picture … Understanding
and remembering this uniqueness are the vaccine against the crime.¹⁵

And he continues with greater force:

The Holocaust is an act that is included in the complex of crimes that have been defined as
genocide, but genocide does not say all there is to say about the ideological basis of “The
Final Solution for the Jewish People,” even as defined in the UN Convention on the Preven-
tion of Genocide.¹⁶

When they speak of genocide, he emphasizes, they are talking about something
that has happened and that will happen again—wars and murders have occurred
in human society since its inception; in this way, they negate the murder of the
Jews, which by nature was a singular event.¹⁷ According to Gutman, the Jews had

 J. Talmon, “European History as Background for the Holocaust,” [in Hebrew] in In the Era of
Violence (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1975), 265 – 66.
 Gutman, “Notes and Reflections,” 79.
 Ibid., 92, see points of conclusion.
 In conversation with Gutman while preparing the critique in Porat, “The Jerusalem School.”
 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 281

no way of escaping the repercussions of racial theory, because no change of

name, profession, or place—or even assimilation or conversion to Christianity
—were of any help. On the contrary, religious conversion was viewed as an at-
tempt to infiltrate and corrupt the Aryan race.
The evil spirit that gripped Germany at the time precludes us from speaking
about ordinary people, Gutman maintains, with regard to Ordinary Men, the title
Christopher Browning, the renown American historian of North Carolina Univer-
sity gave to his book,¹⁸ a title that became a turn of phrase and a term that
Gutman totally opposed. He thought that the opposite was true: that the contin-
uously intensifying dynamics of political and military power, the course of which
was dictated by ideology, resulted in the murder of the Jewish People being as-
signed supreme importance in the Nazis’ priorities; in practice, it became one of
the main war aims that an entire nation was trained to implement with cruelty so
chilling that those involved cannot be characterized as ordinary people.¹⁹
Gutman was the editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, in which
he wrote the entry for “Genocide”:

According to all the experts, genocide was one component of the Holocaust. However, the
crime that the Nazis committed against the Jewish people in Europe involved planning; the
administration of a system; the construction of extermination facilitates; the forced transfer
of the entire Jewish population in underhanded ways; and, above all else, assigning them
[the Jews] blame and the stigma of conspirators and pests, whose physical extermination
was required for the rehabilitation of society and the future of humanity. In this way, it
alone constitutes a distinct type of crime that is broader and more all-encompassing
than genocide.²⁰

The approach of Gutman and his supporters can perhaps therefore be summed
up in the following sentence: It was the uniqueness of Nazi ideology’s approach
to the Jews and its horrific implementation in reality that made the Holocaust
unique.

 Cf. C. R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Po-
land (New York: Harper Collins, 1993).
 Cf. Gutman, “Notes and Reflections,” 23.
 I. Gutman and M. Mushkat, “Genocide,” [in Hebrew] in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, ed. I.
Gutman (Jerusalem: Yad VaShem, 1990), 2:391– 92.
282 Dina Porat

Yehuda Bauer’s Approach: The Holocaust as an

Unprecedented Event
Yehuda Bauer’s approach to the subject developed over time. His initial remarks
reflect complexity and uncertainty, which found expression in a number of his
writings. This has been pointed out, for example, by Yair Auron, an Open Univer-
sity scholar of the Armenian genocide, who notes that Bauer regards the
Armenian genocide as the closest parallel to the Holocaust but distinguishes be-
tween “genocide” on the one hand, and “Holocaust,” or total extermination, on
the other hand, meaning that total extermination did not occur: “Not to see the
difference between the concepts, not to realize that the Jewish situation was
unique, is to blur history,” writes Bauer,

On the other hand, to declare that there are no parallels, and that the whole phenomenon is
inexplicable, is equally a mystification [emphasis added—the original Hebrew text reads: “is
also a mistake, one of mystification”] … To view the Holocaust as just another case of man’s
inhumanity to man, to equate it with every and any injustice committed on this earth … to
say that the Holocaust is the total of all the crimes committed by Nazism in Europe, to do
any or all of this is an inexcusable abomination based on the mystification of the event [the
original Hebrew text reads: “abomination that blurs the event”]. On the other hand, to view
it as totally unique is to take it out of history and out of the context of our everyday lives,
and that means opening wide the gates for a possible repetition. We should properly use
the term “Holocaust” to describe the policy of total physical annihilation of a nation or a
people. To date, this has happened once, to the Jews under Nazism.

Therefore, at the time, at the beginning of the 1980s, Bauer preferred to make use
of the term “epoch making,” and also introduced a similar term: “alpine event.”
These original terms were not integrated into the discourse on the definition of
the Holocaust, but they constitute a stage in Bauer’s thinking about the event;
and a few pages later, Bauer also makes perhaps the first use of the term an “un-
precedented event.”²¹
Other scholars have also addressed the development of Bauer’s later think-
ing in the 1990s. Eliezer Schweid, who analyzed the situation using the chisel of
the philosopher, wrote:

The cautious and precise among the scholars who maintain that the Holocaust was an ex-
ceptional and unprecedented event (here we refer especially to the worldview of Yehuda
Bauer, according to its most recent version) acknowledge that although we can also find

 Y. Bauer, “Against Mystification: The Holocaust as a Historical Phenomenon,” [in Hebrew] in

The Holocaust: Historical Aspects (Tel Aviv: Poalim, 1982), 75 – 76, 81.
 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 283

similar foundations … in other attempts at genocide, only in the Nazi attempt to murder the
Jewish people, based on Nazi ideology, do we find these features playing a central, exclu-
sive, and unadulterated role. Therefore, even if the Holocaust can be placed on a continuum
of the execution of such plans, it is located at the end of the continuum, as the complete
embodiment of the meaning of the concept of genocide—in terms of ideology, planning and
execution—and must therefore also be characterized as exceptional and unique within it.²²

We will return to the matter of similar foundations later in this article. In the
meantime, we take note of Schweid’s recognition of the caution and precision
that characterized the development of Bauer’s thinking in his aspiration to
find the exact formulation. We also emphasize that according to Schweid’s for-
mulation, “exceptional” and “unprecedented” are adjectives that are mutually
complementary, as opposed to contradictory.²³
A second scholar who addressed the development of Bauer’s later thinking
is A. Dirk Moses of the University of Sydney, who pays significant attention to the
writings of Yehuda Bauer and Steven T. Katz, a Boston University scholar and
academic adviser to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
(IHRA), during the 1990s. Moses reaches the conclusion that they locate the Hol-
ocaust at the heart of Jewish life and Jewish identity. Therefore, they must nec-
essarily resolutely insist on the uniqueness of the Holocaust, as not doing so
would undermine their individual identities and their concept of collective Jew-
ish existence. The significance that Katz and Bauer ascribe to the Holocaust has
no basis, he writes, if the Holocaust is “just” another instance of mass murder
that highlights human history. In his view, they also ascribe theological signifi-
cance to the Holocaust, endowing its victims, and its victims alone, with the sta-
tus of sanctity.²⁴ This is Moses’s major argument, which he does not always de-
velop out of respect for Katz and Bauer and their perspectives, particularly when
disregarding the possibility that the linkage between Jewish identity and Holo-
caust memory, which all recognize, does not require us to reach the conclusion
that the Holocaust was unique. Katz vehemently objects to this erroneous pre-
sentation of his views, which is not based on excerpts from his writing. Addition-
ally, in decisive remarks that were recently published,²⁵ again Katz stresses his

 E. Schweid, Battle until Dawn [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Poalim, 1991), 146.
 Cf. E. L. Fackenheim, who agrees with Schweid, in “The Shoah as a Novum for History, Phi-
losophy, and Theology,” [in Hebrew] Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah 15 (1985):
121– 27.
 Cf. A. D. Moses, “Conceptual Blockages and Definitional Dilemmas in the ‘Racial Century’:
Genocides of Indigenous Peoples and the Holocaust,” Patterns of Prejudice 36, no. 4 (2002): 13.
 Cf. S. T. Katz, The Holocaust and New World Slavery: A Comparative History (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2019).
284 Dina Porat

unequivocal position that the Holocaust was unique—not for theological reasons
or due to a mystification of the event and its victims, nor due to his support for
Jewish identity after the Holocaust but rather based on his research as a histor-
ian and a phenomenologist. Katz disagrees with Bauer but emphasizes that the
latter is a secular man who led a movement for secular Judaism, and that he also
decisively rejects all mystification and theological meaning like that assigned to
the Holocaust by Elie Wiesel. Katz notes that additional scholars have adopted
Moses’s approach without evaluating it and shows, ironically, that even they
cannot avoid expressions such as “exceptionality” and “extremity” in their dis-
cussion; they too are unable to escape the uniqueness of the Holocaust.²⁶
In remarks made at a conference held by the Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities in 2012, Bauer presented a refined summary of the view to which he
arrived after years of thought, out of the anxiety that has accompanied his stud-
ies and his activity in international organizations and that guides his analysis—
the Holocaust, despite its extreme nature, has not prevented subsequent mur-
ders; the twentieth century was a bloody century during which many tens of mil-
lions of civilians were murdered (it is difficult to estimate exactly how many);
and who knows how many will be murdered in the century that follows.²⁷
First, he spoke about a subject that is close to his heart and that he repeatedly
emphasizes: the issue of suffering. It is clear that all survivors of genocide each
focus on their own suffering and that a competition of victimhood prevails
among them, which he believes constitutes a cover for political interests and at-
tempts to profit from the status of the victim and runs counter to all moral and
historical perception. Second, he addressed the question of comparison: suffer-
ing, torture, and sadism cannot be ranked, he argued, because no genocide is
any better or easier than another. In the event that scholars are trying to identify
parallels between genocides, they must also identify the differences between
them, which can only be done through comparison. Comparison is particularly
essential for Holocaust Studies, as it alone can clarify the extent to which the
Holocaust has unique foundations.

 See Katz’s response to Moses in Holocaust and New World Slavery, 13 – 17. Katz addresses the
arguments of Donald Bloxham and Dan Stone, which appear repeatedly in their writings.
 Bauer, “Holocaust and Genocide,” [in Hebrew] remarks delivered at the opening of the sym-
posium on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem, September 2– 4, 2012), published in Igeret 34
(2012): 34– 39. In his lectures, Bauer repeatedly quotes Rudolph J. Rummel, who examined the
numbers of those who were killed during the twentieth century. Cf. R. J. Rummel, Statistics of
Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 (Charlottesville: Center for National Security
Law, School of Law, University of Virginia, 1997).
 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 285

The question of the unique foundations of the Holocaust led Bauer to exam-
ine the factors resulting in genocide and to ask whether there are certain factors
or elements that led to or were present in the Holocaust and that have not been
found together in other genocides. He enumerates these factors as follows:
1. Totality—the aim of identifying and killing all Jews, down to the last one.
2. Universality—that is on a universal scale, everywhere in the world—first in
Europe and then around the globe. Indeed, many peoples, or segments of
many peoples, were part of the execution of the Holocaust.
3. The absence of rational motivating factors—there were no practical, econom-
ic, military, or political motivations for the murder of the Jews as there were
in other cases of genocide. After all, Jewish property was already in German
hands prior to the murder, and neither in Germany nor in any other country
did the Jews constitute a threat. The main motivating factor was irrational
ideology that was detached from reality and from German interests. Even
when economic, military, and other considerations ran counter to the ideol-
ogy, the latter had the upper hand. Here, we can perhaps add to Bauer’s as-
sertions that this ideology created—particularly among a fanatical group—a
surreal and unfounded picture of the world promoted by a leader for whom
the fear of the Jews became an obsession, and who swept up almost all of
society, as if he were a messiah striving for redemption by eradicating the
Jews.
4. Racial theory—the surreal race theory that brought about the Holocaust re-
quired the physical and intellectual eradication of the Jews because they
constituted a biological antithesis as well as an antithesis in principle: it
was a case of intentional destruction of an entire culture, or of a principle
—the principle of equality—and of those who brought to the world democra-
cy, liberalism, and humans’ equality before God, all of which run counter to
race theory based on inequality. And again we might add: when we speak of
genocide we are limiting the actions of the Germans and their collaborators
to murder, whereas the Holocaust involved the systematic destruction of an
entire culture, as well as intentional harassment, isolation and disposses-
sion, discrimination, and abuse that eased the subsequent murder.
5. Industrialized murder in the heart of Europe—the Holocaust involved plan-
ned murder not perpetrated in an outburst of fury but rather in a level-
headed manner with special attention to detail, in offices and through bu-
reaucracy, and systematically, using a system that had never been tried on
such a scale.
6. A point that Bauer has referred to on other occasions—the nature of the vic-
tim, and the civilization the Jews created throughout the generations, are
what caused the uniquely obsessive approach toward them and their percep-
286 Dina Porat

tion as the polar opposite of everything the Nazis stood for. This, it should be
added, is perhaps the greatest compliment the Jewish People could ask for.

In Bauer’s view, each of the six components he presents together in order to op-
pose the notion of uniqueness also appear separately in the murder of other peo-
ples, such that none are unique to the Holocaust. As a result, the Holocaust is
not unique in terms of its components but rather “unprecedented,” as he has
characterized it in recent decades, in that it involved all the components togeth-
er. The Holocaust, therefore, is the most extreme genocide—“the complete em-
bodiment of the meaning of the concept of genocide,” to use the words of
Schweid. Bauer explains with candor that he examines these components
from the Jewish perspective. “Viewing the Holocaust from the perspective of
the Jewish victim is the main thing, and … doing so does not undermine in-
depth exploration of the perpetrators of the crimes,” he maintains. “indeed, I
am in favor of a Judeo-centric view of the Holocaust,” which is the title of one
of his articles. At the same time, however, he again argues that this view does
not necessitate the Holocaust’s classification as unique but rather as unprece-
dented.²⁸
In a discussion that developed following Bauer’s lecture, the respondents
debated questions regarding the Holocaust’s uniqueness and unprecedented na-
ture. Dan Michman of Bar Ilan University and head of Yad Vashem’s Internation-
al Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, highlighted the path that led from the
term unique to the term unprecedented and the fact that the Holocaust was
much broader than simply murder; it was the destruction of an entire culture
through severe all-encompassing measures, not murder alone, and therefore
cannot be defined merely as genocide. Moreover, due to its scope and its
depth, it cannot serve as a paradigm for other genocides, because it does not en-
able us to understand their variation. Next, Jürgen Zimmerer, a Hamburg Univer-
sity historian, asked how one exceptional case can be a scale for other cases;
after all, long-standing multifaceted antisemitism is the core of the Holocaust,
and no other genocides have been characterized by a comparable component.
It is therefore necessary to take into account the uniqueness and singularity of
antisemitism, and to understand that we can learn from the Holocaust without
detracting from its specificity.²⁹

 See Dalia Ofer’s and my interview with Bauer, “An Interview with Prof. Yehuda Bauer,”
Moreshet: Journal for the Study of the Holocaust and Antisemitism 17 (2020): 15 – 35.
 Michman’s and Zimmerer’s remarks were not published but can be found in the video foot-
age of the academic conference that was uploaded to YouTube, video, 1:52:01, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=b6 g1ngmYFig.
 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 287

The limited framework of this article precludes us from expanding our dis-
cussion into one on the general debate between the two views, as the writing
on the subject, which continues today, is broad and rich, and scholars and phi-
losophers have articulated views in both directions. For example, Raul Hilberg,
Léon Poliakov, Elie Wiesel, Emil Fackenheim, Eberhard Jäckel, and Richard Ru-
benstein, each from his own perspective, all articulated the view that the Holo-
caust is unique,³⁰ and a younger generation has continued their arguments. For
example, in their article entitled “The Uniqueness of the Holocaust,” Avishai
Margalit and Gabriel Motzkin, two Hebrew University philosophers, present
the event’s uniqueness as a human experience of a unique quality, based on
the unique manner in which the Nazis linked humiliation and murder.³¹
On the other hand, there has been no lack of scholars who objected to the
notion of uniqueness and debated its advocates; Irving L. Horowitz, a Jewish-
American sociologist, for example, attacked the eight arguments listed by Emil
Fackenheim, the Jewish-American theologian, for the uniqueness of the Holo-
caust,³² on the grounds that they are the product of theological thinking; and
Wiesel’s words on the world of the concentration camps that is located outside,
if not beyond, history,³³ on the grounds that it reflects the mystical trend against
which Bauer also spoke. Richard Evans, the Cambridge British historian, defend-
ed himself against the charge of Helen Fine, the Jewish-American historian, that
he played down the scope of genocides in general and focused only on the Hol-
ocaust: the Jewish genocide—it was a debate opposite to what one could ex-
pect.³⁴ In the course of the historians’ debate that took place in Germany in
the mid-1980s, German historians also addressed the question of uniqueness,
and a few, most notably Ernst Nolte, offered a long list of comparisons of geno-
cides to the Holocaust, thereby expressing opposition to its uniqueness. As
noted, these are only a few examples of the extensive literature on the subject.

 See, for example, R. Rubenstein, The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Fu-
ture (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
 Cf. A. Margalit and G. Motzkin, “The Uniqueness of the Holocaust,” Philosophy and Public
Affairs 25, no. 1 (1996): 65 – 83.
 Cf. Moses, “Conceptual Blockages and Definitional Dilemmas.”
 Cf. E. Wiesel, “Now we Know,” in Genocide in Paraguay, ed. R. Arens (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1976), 165; I. L. Horowitz, “Genocide and the Reconstruction of Social Theory:
Observations on the Exclusivity of Collective Death,” Armenian Review 37, no. 1 (1984): 2.
 Cf. R. J. Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from
the Nazi Past (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), 38.
288 Dina Porat

Questions and Suggestions

We now return to the questions with which this article began, and we begin with
the possibility that historians and philosophers who were survivors, and who
worked in Israel during the era in which the Zionist enterprise was the motivat-
ing force behind the work overall, knew that the assertion of the Holocaust’s
uniqueness served to reinforce the feeling that a unique Jewish society was
being built in Israel in its aftermath, and that the world needed to recognize
the terrible injustice that had been caused to its brothers and sisters. It is true
that historians, like all people, are molds of the landscape of their homelands;
however, the fact that a long list of historians and philosophers who were work-
ing outside of Israel and were not obligated to the sentiments or the frameworks
that emerged there have reached the conclusion that the Holocaust was unique,
and have debated those who thought otherwise, indicates that this conclusion
has stemmed from the research and the thinking of each scholar, and not neces-
sarily from the needs of their surroundings.
Second, even if relating to the Holocaust as a unique phenomenon was char-
acteristic of many of the philosophers and the historians working in Israel in the
initial decades following the Holocaust and the establishment of the state, the
tendency to view it as a link in the chain of genocides intensified over time, es-
pecially from the 1980s onward, following the genocide that occurred in
Cambodia in the 1970s, and in the 1990s, with the mass murders in Rwanda
and the Balkan. A look at the debate that occurred in the research community
of the 2000s reveals an increase in this tendency, especially in western universi-
ties, which are gradually abandoning the notion of the uniqueness of the Holo-
caust and have come to regard it as an anachronistic idea that confines under-
standing to a narrow horizon.³⁵ Debate among historians does not always stem
from the heart of the academic research, as many scholars of the phenomenon
of genocide are not familiar with the history of the Holocaust and are first intro-
duced to the subject via engagement with varied disciplines and eras, thus the
debate has become an outcome of political interests and fashions as well.
Third, on the question of synthesis—as the conclusions reached by a number
of scholars reflect—the Holocaust’s classification as unique in no way serves to
disrespect or detract from the severity of other murders and atrocities or to ex-
clude them from the discussion. On the contrary, deeper exploration of the his-
tories of other genocides and their outcomes, and their comparison to the Holo-
caust, can result in empathy for the suffering of the other and a move away from

 Cf. Moses, “Conceptual Blockages and Definitional Dilemmas.”

 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 289

the ranking of suffering. Bauer, among others, believes that there is no contra-
diction between Jewish specificity and universality, as these are two sides of
the same coin.³⁶ We can therefore say that there is no necessary contradiction
between the research of the Holocaust as a unique phenomenon and the re-
search of other murders, but rather completion and cross-fertilization, or synthe-
sis, as suggested by the title of Gutman’s article, “The Uniqueness and Universal
Nature of the Holocaust.” Another title in this spirit was formulated by Michael
Berenbaum, former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, for his article “The Uniqueness and Universality of the Holocaust,”
and Dan Stone, the Royal Holloway British historian, has stressed that, even if he
does not agree with them, a new generation of scholars is no longer taking part
in the debate but rather pointing out the possibility of synthesis.³⁷
Depicting the Holocaust as a unique event does not necessarily encompass a
view of the event on a religious, ethical, metaphysical, or mystical level, as
Moses maintains, but rather is the outcome of its examination as a historical
event, which, like all historical events, has its own characteristics. It also does
not necessarily stem from a Jewish and Israeli feeling that the Jewish people
and its history are unique but rather from the feeling, from the emotional
realm, and the recognition, from the realm of logical analysis, that the Holocaust
was such an exceptional event that it can be viewed as unique, regardless of the
general Jewish self-perception. Jews during the Holocaust felt that the events oc-
curring around them had never occurred before—that they were living on bor-
rowed time in a world that had been turned upside down in a manner that
could not be understood. “This period,” wrote Chaim Kaplan, a teacher in the
Warsaw Ghetto, “so full of darkness and catastrophe … is unparalleled since
we became a people,”³⁸ to cite one of many such examples. It was darkness
for humanity as a whole, not just for the Jewish People. The same was true of
Jews following the Holocaust:

Members of this generation [following the Holocaust] do not allow themselves the perspec-
tive of distance, as they tend to regard the continued involvement from within as an abso-
lute moral obligation resting on their shoulders … It was a consensus that was perceived as
virtually self-evident by Jewish scholars of the Holocaust. It reflected the feeling, of mem-

 Conversation with Bauer when preparing the critique in Porat, “The Jerusalem School.”
 Cf. M. Berenbaum, ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis
(New York: New York University Press, 1990); D. Stone, “The Historiography of Genocide: Beyond
‘Uniqueness’ and Ethnic Competition,” Journal of Theory and Practice 8, no. 1 (2004): 127– 42.
See “the new generation” in the executive summary.
 C. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, trans. and ed. A. I. Katsh
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 64, 88.
290 Dina Porat

bers of the generation of Holocaust survivors, that what occurred went beyond all evil that
could be expected from man, even against the backdrop of the Jewish People’s history of
trouble and calamity.³⁹

Indeed, recognition of the uniqueness of the fate and the treatment of the Jewish
People, whether living in the Land of Israel or not, is accompanied by a heavy
feeling and is not self-evident. It also involves a sense of shared fate and the bur-
den of responsibility for this fate. Is the assumption that the Holocaust is not
part of this uniqueness but rather an extreme genocide located on the continu-
um of genocides that occurred before and after it, not an attempt to escape this
heavy feeling and to be part of a broader universal framework that is shared by
many nations?
Bauer clearly defines his position on this subject and agrees that the attempt
to say that the Jews are like all nations encompasses a dimension of escapism:

All these universalizing attempts [regarding the Holocaust] seem to me to be, on the Jewish
side, efforts by their authors to escape their Jewishness. They are expressions of a deep-
seated insecurity; these people feel more secure when they can say “we are just like all
the others.” The Holocaust should have proven to them that the Jews were, unfortunately,
not like the others. Obviously it did not.⁴⁰

Dan Michman, who belongs to the intermediate generation of Holocaust schol-

ars, between that of Gutman and Bauer on the one hand and the third generation
that is active today on the other hand, related to this assumption as follows:

Is the Holocaust one case of genocide and nothing more? I reject this assertion … The Hol-
ocaust is not the “genocide of the Jews.” Defining it as such ignores and fails to understand
the largely anti-Jewish activities that occurred in the era of the Third Reich, including what
they referred to as de-Judaization … But also during the period of the murder itself—the
genocide—there are features that are absent from all other cases of genocide … because
there was uniqueness in the Holocaust … Characterization of the Holocaust as “unique”
has come under attack in recent years by various researchers, but I am not afraid of it.⁴¹

 Schweid, Battle until Dawn, 143, 267.

 Y. Bauer, “A Past that Will not Go Away,” in The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Un-
known, the Disputed and the Reexamined, ed. M. Berenbaum and A. J. Peck (Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Press, 1998), 20.
 D. Michman, “Researching and Teaching Holocaust and Genocide in the Context of Conflict
and Trauma,” lecture delivered at the fifth biennial conference of the International Network of
Genocide Scholars, June 29, 2016.
 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 291

To accentuate his words, he drew attention to a basic aspect that was neglected
in the heat of the debate: the dictionary’s definition of the adjective “unique,” as
it appears for example in the Oxford Dictionary, as “the only one of its kind” and
“very special or unusual.” According to this definition, unique is not an absolute
term. Therefore, Michman continues, it does not necessarily mean that it is de-
tached or not comparable but rather that it “possesses extremely exceptional
characteristics, and not because it belongs to me and not the other.”⁴²
Michman also noted the immense interest in the Holocaust that continues to
grow: Bauer repeatedly emphasizes that if the Holocaust were unique, there is no
reason to research or address it, as uniqueness means singular—that it will not
repeat itself, and it can be left behind our wall. However, uniqueness is the rea-
son for the great interest in the Holocaust, which today is tenfold what it was de-
cades ago when scholars laid the foundations for this research in Israel and else-
where. At the time, we—members of the intermediate generation—were still
students of the first. The Holocaust is fascinating and intriguing to explore pre-
cisely because it is an exceptional event pertaining to the Jewish People but also
one that holds universal human meaning and has implications for all realms of
individual and public life: leadership, the sweeping-up of society, ideology and
power, people at moments of spiritual elevation and decline, loss and destruc-
tion, sophisticated killing mechanisms, and war lasting years and claiming vic-
tims on an incomprehensible scale—all of which still lie at the heart of individ-
ual and public life today, seventy-five years after the tragedy known as World
War II came to an end. As recently formulated by Nigel Pleasants, the Exeter Uni-
versity sociologist, who advocates the uniqueness of the Holocaust: “We are
haunted by the Holocaust precisely because there is reason to say it is unique.”⁴³
Befitting an intermediate generation, Michman seeks the path of synthesis,
showing that Yad Vashem’s selection of Christopher Browning to write its volume
on the evolution and implementation of the Final Solution is indicative of the
need for synthesis, which can occur only when the debate is bona fide and
not conducted out of political rivalry and not out of an agenda that fuels oppo-
sition, against anyone who advocates uniqueness, that at times seems genuinely
personal for the scholars from the field of genocide. According to Michman,
Browning’s book constitutes a bridge between the approach advocating unique-

 Ibid.
 N. Pleasants, “The Question of the Holocaust’s Uniqueness: Was it Something More than or
Different from Genocide?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 33, no. 3 (2016): 297.
292 Dina Porat

ness and the approach tending toward universality, and proves that synthesis is
possible.⁴⁴
And to our fourth and last question, regarding the impact of these argumen-
tations on the study of antisemitism. Friedländer wrote about “the absolute char-
acter of the anti-Jewish drive” that motivated the Nazis, and Gutman crystalized
his affirmation that the uniqueness of the Holocaust stems from the uniqueness
of the “total and apocalyptic” nature of Nazi antisemitism and from its ferocious
implementation, and the other scholars who agreed with them actually upheld
the same idea.⁴⁵ The question that arises is therefore, whether the Nazi antisem-
itism should be researched and dealt with as a separate issue, a phase that
stands outside the former and subsequent phases of antisemitism. Taking a
look at the two millennia long history of antisemitism, the answer a historian
who delved into this history should give, is, I believe, in the negative: Nazi ideol-
ogy, albeit its unique characteristics, drew upon that long history, and was nour-
ished by the racial and religious elements that created the ugly image of the Jew
along centuries, and by the vast literature that had been devoted to the issue.
Moreover, that image of the Jew has not vanished following the Holocaust, the
opposite is true: the verbal and visual depictions of Jews flourishing in the
post-war world until today are as ugly as those that preceded the Holocaust
and draw upon elements that were in popular use when it was perpetrated.
There is no contradiction between the uniqueness of Nazi antisemitic ideol-
ogy and the necessity to research it with same tools we approach any other kind
of antisemitism. The phases in the long history of antisemitism follow one anoth-
er and pile each on top of the former one, and they should all be looked at as
parts of this phenomenon as a whole, and should be researched as a whole—un-
derstanding it may serve as the basis for ways to combat it.

Dina Porat is professor emerita in the department of Jewish History and head of the
Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University.
She also serves as the chief historian of Yad Vashem, and specializes in the History
of the Holocaust, contemporary antisemitism and post-war Christian-Jewish rela-
tions.

 Cf. D. Michman, “Comparative Research on the Holocaust in Western Europe: Its Achieve-
ments, its Limits and a Plea for a More Integrative Approach,” Moreshet: Journal for the Study
of the Holocaust and Antisemitism 17 (2020): 286 – 306.
 Friedländer, Some Aspects, 37.
 Is the Holocaust a Unique Historical Event? 293

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Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin
Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or
Assimilation?
As an Orthodox Jew growing up in New York City, it was hard to imagine that
Jewish life existed anywhere else let alone in a remote region of the world
such as the Caribbean. That statement may seem odd today in a world of global
technology where we are “all connected,” but during the 1970s it wasn’t that far-
fetched. The Holocaust, which wiped out a third of the world’s Jewry, had ended
thirty years earlier, Israel was a developing country—hardly the center of Jewish
life, and people in Midwestern and certain Pacific Coastal regions of the US had
never actually encountered a Jew. Yet in NYC, Yiddish could be heard among
many of the non-English languages spoken throughout the city, kosher delis
were springing up everywhere, and a very Jewish Ed Koch was elected mayor.
Jewish life outside of the newly developed Jewish State seemed reserved for
the million or so Jews living in the corner of the Earth comprising NYC. It’s a
wonder, then, that New York was not actually the first established Jewish com-
munity in the Western hemisphere. That title actually belongs to a coastal
town, known as Paramaribo, in the small South American country Suriname fol-
lowed by the Caribbean Island of Curaçao. What is yet even stranger is that sev-
eral Caribbean Islands had thriving Jewish communities yet reported no inci-
dents of antisemitism. As a prejudice theorist specializing in antisemitism, it
is odd explaining a lack of prejudice, specifically for a people who have been
the targets of prejudice wherever they have lived for over two thousand years.
This paper, therefore, has several goals. First, it outlines the history of the
Jewish migration to various Caribbean Islands, with a focus on the Haiti, the
Netherland Antilles, Cuba, and Suriname. Second, it provides actual accounts
of Jewish life in the Caribbean. Third, it highlights the history of antisemitism
or lack thereof and the Caribbean Jewish disappearance, and presents theories
of tolerance to account for both with future directions of research.

Note: This essay includes research from an earlier publication: F. Cohen Abady, “Where Have All
the Caribbean Jews Gone?” in Antisemitism in North America: New World, Old Hate, ed. S. K.
Baum, N. J. Kressel, F. Cohen Abady, and S. L. Jacobs (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 196 – 209.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin, published by De Gruyter.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-016
296 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

The History of the Jews of the Caribbean

The history of Caribbean Jewry is as old as the New World itself. It should come
as no surprise that conversos from Spain and Portugal set sail for the New World
to escape persecution. However, what may not be apparent at first is the unfold-
ing of Caribbean Jewish history and its relationship to antisemitism. Jews sailed
to the New World as conversos to escape antisemitism and were determined to
hold on to their Jewish identities often at great costs. Paradoxically, when the
peril ended and Jews were given the opportunity to practice the Jewish religion
freely, they chose to relinquish their faith through intermarriage and assimila-
tion, or they emigrated and left the Caribbean altogether. The next segment
traces the history of antisemitism in the Caribbean from the Spanish-Portuguese
Inquisition through the present day.
The Inquisition was one of the darkest times faced by Diaspora Jews; antise-
mitism was at its height, second only to the Holocaust. The Edict of Expulsion
forced the Jews to wander and settle in faraway lands, often still unsure of
their safety to practice Judaism freely. Then their history took an interesting
turn. By the nineteenth century, Jews gained religious freedom and acceptance
in all realms of society. Antisemitism seemed to magically disappear but so
did the Jews. Many chose to emigrate, mostly to the US or various South Amer-
ican countries, while others chose to assimilate, intermarry, and in essence shed
their Jewish identities.

The Inquisition

Contrary to popular belief, the Spanish Inquisition actually began in 1391 when
Ferrant Martinez, a friar in Seville, instigated a pogrom against the Jews. The
pogrom came to be known as the Massacre of 1391. Eighty-six years later in
1477, another Dominican friar from Seville, Alonso de Hojeda, implored Queen
Isabella to deal with Andalusian conversos who were secretly practicing Judaism
(crypto-Jews). Queen Isabella and Ferdinand II of Aragon pressured Pope Sixtus
IV to agree to an Inquisition to rid Spain of crypto-Jews. On November 1, 1478,
Pope Sixtus IV agreed publishing Exigit sinceras devotionis affectus, the papal
bull giving Ferdinand and Isabella the authority to appoint their inquisitors
and root out all heretics.
In 1483, Queen Isabella appointed Tomas de Torquemada (inquisitor-
general) and two Dominican monks, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin,
to head the Inquisition and set up the tribunals in Spain. The conversos in Seville
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 297

were the first targeted. Between 1486 and 1492, twenty-five auto-da-fés were held
in Toledo, in which hundreds of people were either burned at the stake or impris-
oned. By the time the Inquisition reached Barcelona in 1492, over 13,000 conver-
sos were put on trial, and ultimately that same year the Jews of Spain were ex-
pelled. Many fled over the border into Portugal.
In 1531, Pope Leo X extended the Inquisition to Portugal. As with Spain, tri-
bunals were set up in cities throughout the country. The Inquisition continued
until the late eighteenth century and spread to Spanish and Portuguese colonies
in the New World. Those Jews and conversos fleeing from Portugal and Spain to
the New World were not safe in colonies such as Goa, Brazil, and Mexico, until
the late eighteenth century.¹

Expulsion

The intent of the Spanish Inquisition was to prevent conversos/New Christians

from practicing Judaism. In order to prevent conversos from interacting with
Jews (who seduced faithful Christians to stray), the monarchy formally expelled
all Jews from Spain. The Edict of Expulsion, also known as Alhambra Decree was
issued in January 1492 (and not revoked until 1968).² Jews were given approxi-
mately four months to either convert to Christianity or leave the country, after
which the sentence was death without trial. Any non-Jew caught sheltering or
hiding Jews had their belongings and hereditary privileges confiscated.³
While historic accounts of those Jews expelled from Spain differ, it is esti-
mated that between 100,000 and 200,000 Jews either emigrated that year or con-
verted.⁴ The Jews of Castile emigrated mainly to Portugal only to be expelled in
1497, and some went to North Africa; the Jews of Aragon went to Italy. The Se-
phardic Spanish Jews travelled to Europe, North Africa, and the New World
until settling and establishing communities in cities such as Amsterdam and
Antwerp. Those conversos who remained in Spanish and Portuguese territories

 Cf. H. A. F. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1998).
 Cf. R. Eder, “1492 Ban on Jews Is Voided by Spain,” New York Times, December 17, 1968,
https://nyti.ms/1RThnvN.
 Cf. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469 – 1716 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964).
 Cf. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition; M. L. Margolis and A. Marx, A History of the Jewish People
(New York: Scribner, 1964); J. Telushkin, Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About
the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History (New York: William and Morrow, 1991).
298 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

were the continuously suspected of secretly practicing Judaism and continued to

face persecution until the eighteenth century.
Those Jews who sailed to the New World were followed by the friar-
inquisitors and were thus in peril in the New World as well. Many New World
conversos found creative means of survival, acting as brokers, traders, financiers,
pilots, cartographers, and makers and users of astronomical tables and nautical
instruments used for trade and often piracy against Spain.
There are reports of Jews who actually engaged in piracy to free the Ameri-
can and Island colonies of the Spanish. Jewish pirates include Moses Cohen
Henriques, a Dutch privateer who captured a Spanish silver fleet off Havana in
1628; Sinan “the Great Jewish Pirate” allied with the Barbary pirates in the
mid-sixteenth century; and Rabbi Samuel Pallache, who in his youth attacked
Spanish ships and later founded the Jewish community in Amsterdam.⁵ Carib-
bean Jews were determined to free themselves of the antisemitic yoke that still
took hold in the New World through whatever means necessary.
Fear of persecution of the original Jewish communities is apparent in the
Spanish-Portuguese synagogues still standing in Suriname and Curaçao today,
both of which maintain the sandy floors put down during the Inquisition to muf-
fle the sounds of prayers and allow for Jews to gather in secrecy.

Settling in the New World 1500 – 1800

Haiti

Luis de Torres was the first Jew to settle in Haiti in 1492. Like many Jews, he im-
migrated to escape persecution. He left Spain with Christopher Columbus as his
converso interpreter. Most Jews, however, immigrated to Haiti after it was con-
quered by the French in 1633. Their stay was short lived—in 1683, France expelled
the Jews from Haiti, leaving only a few high positioned officials of French trading
companies. Haitian Jews experienced little peace in Haiti during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, culminating with the 1804 slave revolt of Toussaint
L’Ouverture, which resulted once again in the death or expulsion of the Jews.
Nevertheless, Jews continued to settle in Haiti as an escape from persecution
and civil strife in Europe.

 Cf. E. Kritzler, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved
Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom—and Revenge
(New York: Anchor Books, 2008).
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 299

As a French Colony, public schools in Haiti were reserved for Catholics caus-
ing Jews to once again hide their religious identities in order to attend schools.
Most Jews settled in port cities, making their livings as tradespeople. Archaeolog-
ical evidence supports the existence of ancient Jewish communities in Jérémie,
Cap Haitien, and Jacmel.

The Netherlands Antilles (Curaçao, St. Maarten, and Bonaire)

Archaeological evidence indicates that Jews arrived to the island of St. Maarten
during the Spanish Inquisition, and a Jewish community existed during the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. Recently the ruins of an abandoned synago-
gue (c. 1781) were discovered along with the remains of a historic Jewish ceme-
tery.
The Jews of Curaçao differed from those of St. Maarten and other Caribbean
communities. Curaçao, sometimes referred to as the “Mother of Jewish commun-
ities in the New World,” was home to the wealthiest Caribbean Jewish commu-
nity.⁶ Samuel Cohen was the first Jew to arrive in Curaçao when the Dutch con-
quered the island from the Spanish in 1634. In 1651, twelve Jewish families
arrived from Amsterdam and established Congregation Mikvé Israel. The Jewish
community settled on Plantation De Hoop (The Hope). In 1659, a second group of
Jewish settlers arrived with the first Torah scroll (still used today in the Mikvé
Israel-Emanuel Synagogue). By 1660, the Jews concentrated in Willemstad, and
in 1674 they constructed the first of four synagogues in Willemstad. This synago-
gue was replaced in 1703 with a much larger one, the Snoa synagogue, which was
then replaced by the magnificent Temple Emanuel. The now unified Mikvé Israel-
Emanuel Synagogue congregation uses the Snoa. ⁷ Most of the Jews in Curaçao
were of Sephardic descent, and by 1732, Congregation Mikvé Israel became the
center of Jewish religious life.
The Jewish population in Curaçao became very influential. By the end of the
eighteenth century, the Jews constituted more than half of the white population
in Curaçao. They fought alongside Simon Bolivar in Venezuela and Colombia’s
fight for independence against Spain. They were prominent businessmen excel-
ling in international trade, shipping and maritime insurance, and transportation.

 Cf. M. Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean: The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Settlements in
the Caribbean and the Guianas (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2002), 23.
 I. S. Emmanuel and S. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles (Cincinnati:
American Jewish Archives, 1970).
300 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

Many of these Jewish firms and commercial shops continue still exist on the is-
land today.

Cuba

According to some reports the first Jews (marranos) arrived in Cuba with
Christopher Columbus: Luis de Torres (Santa Maria), Juan de Cabrera (La
Pinta), and Rodrigo de Triana (La Nina).⁸ Throughout the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, Jews immigrated to Cuba from Brazil. However, under Spanish
rule they were harassed, and many assimilated into Cuban society.⁹

Suriname: The Oldest Jewish Community in the Western

Hemisphere
Suriname (also referred to as Republic of Suriname) is a country in northern
South America, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north. Although it is not
an island, it is a member of CARICOM (the Caribbean Community) and is consid-
ered a Caribbean country. Suriname has a population of approximately 560,000,
many of which reside in the northern capital of Paramaribo. Many of the first
Jews to settle Suriname were of Spanish and Portuguese descent that fled to Hol-
land and the Dutch colonies to escape persecution. Many immigrated to Brazil
for a small fee and became merchants or sugarcane growers, but when the Por-
tuguese recaptured Brazil from Holland, many of the Jews fled Brazil to settle in
other Dutch colonies.¹⁰
The first Dutch Jews arrived in Suriname as early as 1639, with a second
group of Jewish settlers arriving from England in 1652 with the help of Lord
Willoughby of Parham. The third group of Jewish settlers arrived with Joseph
Nuñez de Fonseca (David Nassi) from Dutch Brazil. After the Portuguese defeat
in 1654, they settled in Suriname in 1666. Most established sugarcane plantations
in Torarica, the capital of Suriname, and later in Cassipora and Jodensavanne
along the Suriname River. The Portuguese Jewish Congregation of Suriname
was founded in 1662. The first synagogue Kahal Kadosh (Holy Congregation): Be-
racha Ve Shalom (Blessing and Peace) was built in 1667 and the Jewish Court of

 Cf. Margolis and Marx, A History of the Jewish People.

 Cf. J. R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook 315 – 1791 (New York: Hebrew
Union College Press, 1999).
 Cf. C. Potok, Wanderings (New York: Knopf, 1978).
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 301

Civil Justice (The Mahamad) was established in 1785 and gave the court assembly
(Senhores do Mahamad) the right to act in all matters of civil justice.¹¹
By 1667 the Jews of Suriname were granted full religious and economic free-
doms by the Dutch government. The Jews of Suriname prospered. By 1730 they
owned 115 of 400 plantations in Suriname. Then in 1767, Jewish business practi-
ces were questioned by the local government and general population causing an
economic downturn. By 1791 Jewish plantation ownership declined to only 46 of
600 plantations. Additionally, internal strife caused a rift between the Sephardic
and Ashkenazi communities leading to a division of congregations. The Neve
Shalom (Oasis of Peace) synagogue built in 1719 in Paramaribo became the Ash-
kenazi synagogue in 1735, and the Portuguese Sephardic community built their
own synagogue in Paramaribo called Sedek Ve Shalom (Justice and Peace).¹²

Acculturation: 1800 – 1950

Haiti

The largest Jewish migration to Haiti occurred between the late 1800s and early
1900s from predominantly Arab lands in the Middle East, when antisemitic inci-
dents were on the rise. Prior to this era, there was little antisemitism in Arabs
lands. Jews, living in the Muslim world, were given dhimmi status or a sec-
ond-class citizenship, which was restrictive in nature but for the most part af-
forded a peaceful life. As “People of the Book,” they received relative security
against persecution. The Damascus affair in 1840 led to a rise in antisemitic in-
cidents throughout the Middle East.¹³ A French law giving French citizenship to
minorities in French-controlled North Africa and the Middle East allowed many
Jews from Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt to move to Haiti. Thirty Jewish families ar-
rived during this period bringing with them their Sephardic customs and tradi-
tions.

 Cf. C. C. Goslinga, A Short History of the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam (New York: Spring-
er, 1979).
 Cf. ibid.
 The Damascus affair began on February 5, 1840, when Franciscan Capuchin friar Father
Thomas and his Greek servant were reported missing. The local authorities believed that Jews
had killed them to use their blood in the making of Passover Matzos. Solomon Negrin, a Jew,
was arrested, tortured, and forced to confess along with several other Jews. The incident was
followed by violent attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East. Cf. B. Lewis,
From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 2004).
302 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

When the United States occupied Haiti between 1915 and 1934, many Jews
took the opportunity to move to the United States. Before the start of World
War II, the Haitian government issued passports and visas to Eastern European
Jews escaping Nazi-occupied Europe.¹⁴

Curaçao

In 1864, the Reform Jewish Movement built Temple Emanuel. Today the merged
congregations comprise Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, referred to as the oldest synago-
gue in the Western hemisphere housing the Jewish Historical Cultural Museum.
The synagogue contains 18 Torah scrolls over 300 years old—dating back to the
Spanish Inquisition in the late 1400s. The synagogue’s remarkable architecture,
solid mahogany interior, eighteenth-century copper chandeliers, and sand-
covered floor have remain a monuments and the number one tourist attraction
in Curaçao.¹⁵ United Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel continues to be the old-
est active Jewish congregation in the Americas. World War II produced a Jewish
war hero. George Maduro fought during the war in the Netherlands and later
joined the resistance. In 1945 he was captured by the Germans and later died
in Dachau.

Cuba

Jewish immigration to Cuba increased in the late 1800s, after Jose Marti liberated
Cuba from Spain in 1898. In 1904 following the Spanish–American War, a group
of American Jewish war veterans immigrated to Cuba and founded a congrega-
tion in Havana. American Ashkenazi Jews immigrated to Cuba to work for US-
owned plantations and businesses, and in 1906 the United Hebrew Congregation
was founded.
The period from 1910 until 1920 saw a large influx of Jews from Turkey and
Eastern Europe looking to settle in the United States but was denied due to the
“quota system” immigration policy. Due to the lack of antisemitism in Cuba,
some of the new Jewish immigrants stayed and fared well, mostly in Cuba’s
growing garment industry. Two synagogues were erected in Camaguey, Shevet

 Cf. R. Batti, “One More Step toward ‘Never Again’,” The Almanac 47, March 14, 2012, https://
haitiholocaustsurvivors.wordpress.com/published-articles/one-more-step-toward-never-again/.
 Cf. Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles.
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 303

Ajim and Tiferet Israel. A Jewish community was founded in Santiago in 1924,
called the Jewish Society of Eastern Cuba. The society was housed in a rented
space until 1939, when it finally moved into a new building, which became the
Synagogue of Santiago de Cuba. By 1924, there were 24,000 Jews (commonly re-
ferred to as “Polacos”¹⁶) living in Cuba, and in the 1930s, the Central Jewish Com-
mittee was formed. Seventy-five percent of Cuba’s Jewish population lived in
Havana. Havana hosted five synagogues, a kosher restaurant, one Jewish high
school, and five Jewish elementary schools. Limited Jewish immigration contin-
ued throughout World War II (with the S.S. Saint Louis being denied access).¹⁷

Suriname

In the 1800s the economy began to decline, and the Jewish population began to
dwindle. Pirate raids, sugar devaluation, depletion of agricultural soil, and the
end of the slave trade all took their toll on the economy. Plantation communities
disappeared along the coastline, and the remainder of the Jewish community re-
located in Paramaribo.

Tales of Antisemitism: From 1950 to the Present

Day
By the 1950s most Jews living in the Caribbean left the islands, most immigrating
to the United States for economic opportunities and higher education. Many re-
counted their stories of life on the islands with fondness and gratitude for the
hospitality provided by their host countries.

Haiti: Eli Abady, Gilbert Bigio, and Bill Mohr of Haiti

By the late 1950s, most of the Haitian Jewry left for economic opportunities and
Jewish marriage partners. Today, only a handful of Jews remain mostly in Port-
au-Prince.

 The Cubans referred to all immigrant Jews and non-Jews without an English accent as “po-
laks.”
 Cf. G. Thomas and M. Morgan-Witts, Voyage of the Damned (New York: Stein & Day, 1974).
304 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

The Abadys arrived in Haiti from Aleppo, Syria via Cairo, Egypt, circa 1900
and established a textile business in Port-au-Prince. Though there was no official
Jewish sector, these Sephardic Jews tended to settle in the neighborhoods sur-
rounding the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Unlike the Jewish communities of
Curaçao and Suriname, the Jews of Haiti had no synagogue, no rabbi, no
schools, and no community center of their own. On Jewish holidays, prayer serv-
ices and meals were celebrated in home gatherings. Since there was no rabbi or
center of Jewish life on the island, even the Jewish ritual of circumcision had to
wait until a mohel (a doctor or rabbi who performs a Jewish circumcision) was
brought in from the United States. Sometimes the ritual, which is traditionally
performed on boys at eight days old, waited for years.
Eli Abady explained that he did not receive a Bris until the age of two “be-
cause there was no mohel living on the island.” Nonetheless, he and his brother
Clement and four sisters Fortune, Rene, Alice, and Esther led a happy childhood.
They attended the neighborhood Catholic schools without experiencing any an-
tisemitism whatsoever. When asked about it Eli replied, “There was no antisem-
itism in Haiti. Everyone was always very accepting and kind to us. They never
made us feel different.” Although the Jewish community was scattered around
the island, he always felt a sense of community. When asked how they were
able to get together without living in the same area, the reply was matter-of-
fact, “Haiti is very small. It didn’t take long to get to anyone’s home.”
By the 1950s, many Jews left Haiti for the United States. Eli like many of the
young people of his generation immigrated to the US in the early 1960s in pur-
suit of economic and matrimonial prospects. In the years that followed, Eli ar-
ranged for visas for his family to immigrate to the United States.
Of the prominent Sephardic families residing in Haiti—the Bigios, Chrems,
Silveras, Ashkenazies, Danas, and Shaloms, only Gilbert Bigio remains. Bigio
has been the unofficial leader of the Sephardic community in Haiti and contin-
ues to hold yearly Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services in his house. Bigio
owns the only Torah in all of Haiti, which is necessary for Sabbath and High Hol-
iday services. Additionally, as one of the few Jews remaining in Haiti and a prom-
inent businessman, he serves as the honorary consul for Israel in Haiti.¹⁸ When
asked if he’s ever experienced antisemitism in Haiti, Bigio laughed. “On the con-
trary, the Haitians have a lot of respect for the Jews, and a lot of admiration for

 Cf. P. Woodward, “Does Haiti Billionaire, Gilbert Bigio, Make Israel Look Good?” Ezili Danto,
January 25, 2010, http://www.ezilidanto.com/zili/2011/03/haitis-billionaire-industrialist-gilbert-
bigio/.
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 305

Israel,” he said, pointing out that Haiti voted for the United Nations partition of
Palestine in 1947, which created Israel.¹⁹
Sephardic Jews however, comprised only a portion of Haitian Jewry. In 1937,
the Haitian government issued passports to European Jews escaping the Holo-
caust. Bill and Harriet Mohr founders of Haiti Holocaust Survivors (Almanac,
March 14, 2012) described Haiti as a comfort and “healing place to be,” where
they were welcomed and cared for.²⁰ It was a safe haven for Jews, some of
whom stayed through the 1950s and some of whom used it as a transit stop
until they could gain entrance into the United States. For those who left and
built homes in the United States, Haiti saved their lives and the Haiti Jewish Ref-
ugee Legacy Project was designed by the Mohrs to inform the world and honor
those Haitians who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

Curaçao

Although Jewish firms and commercial shops continue to be forerunners in the

island’s economy, the number of Jews residing in Curaçao has diminished over
the years. Today fewer than 350 Jews remain on the island, out of a total popu-
lation of 125,000. On many of the islands, Jews usually leave to attend universi-
ties in the United States and marry within the Jewish faith.
Victor Abady, a prominent business owner in Curaçao arrived from Aleppo,
Syria in the early 1900s and established textile and retail businesses. Though it is
rare, he and his family keep a kosher home, built a ritual mikveh, and employed
a rabbi to run a Jewish day school in the heart of this colorful island. The Cura-
çao Community Hebrew School (for children ages five through twelve) is run out
of Congregation Sharei Tsedek. The local supermarket carried a full line of kosher
groceries imported from Israel, the United States, and Europe. When asked about
antisemitism on the island the answer was the same for each member of the
Abady family, “what antisemitism?”
Though Victor’s son Aaron Abady eventually left Curaçao for the United
States, he unequivocally said that antisemitism never factored into his decision.
Like many Jews before him, leaving the Caribbean was based on religion and
matrimonial prospects for his children. Nonetheless, Aaron’s home in Curaçao

 L. Luxner, “Haiti’s Few Jews Hold on to History,” Miami Herald, March 21, 2004, http://fac
ulty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/misctopic/ethnic/jewshistory2.htm.
 “The Haiti Holocaust Project Seeks Information,” Repeating Islands: News and Commentary
on Caribbean Culture, Literature, and the Arts, issued July 18, 2010, accessed July 7, 2020, http://
repeatingislands.com/2010/07/18/the-haiti-holocaust-project-seeks-information/.
306 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

and his father’s business remains. The Jewish community in Curaçao still main-
tains one of the most historic synagogues in the world. United Congregation
Mikvé Israel-Emanuel in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, is the oldest active Jew-
ish congregation in the Americas (founded in 1651), and continues to follow the
Sephardic traditions. The Curaçao Community Hebrew School is now run in con-
junction with Congregation Sharei Tsedek, a conservative Ashkenazi community,
and Jewish cemeteries such as Beth Haim may still be visited on the island with
tombstones dating back to the 1600s.

St. Maarten

The Jews currently living on St. Maarten are recent immigrants from other Dutch
Islands, the United States, and Israel who came for vacation or business and re-
mained. Less than ten years ago, the Jewish community of St. Maarten opened its
first synagogue since the eighteenth century. The synagogue and new Chabad
Center operated by Rabbi Moishe and Sara Chanowitz officially opened its
doors on January 3, 2011. Once a church, the 1,200-square-foot space sits in
the Simpson Bay Yacht Club over Zee Best, a French pastry shop on the Dutch
side of the island. The synagogue serves 300 Jewish permanent island residents
and over 1,000 visitors during the tourist season. Little is known about the Jews
who first came to the island as refugees from the Spanish Inquisition except that
there was a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century community that was abandoned
late in the seventeenth century.
An interview with Rabbi Moishe of the Chabad house of St. Maarten revealed
that antisemitism on St. Maarten was a non-issue. He added that the locals show
the Jewish community on the island tremendous respect and admiration, and ev-
eryone gets along and coexists without fear. Le Grand Marche Supermarkets has
made kosher food (which is imported from the US, Israel, and France) available
on the island and Jewish children are home schooled and receive both a Jewish
and secular education.

Cuba

By 1952, only 12,000 Jews remained in Cuba. After the Revolution, 94 percent of
Cuba’s Jewish population fled. Those who remained were assimilated into Cuban
society. Members of the Caribbean Jewry maintain that antisemitism is not expe-
rienced in any Caribbean island. Cuban Jews are no different. Interviews with
Cuban Jews confirm that common antisemitism was non-existent. However, oth-
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 307

ers such as Professor Irving Horowitz maintain that anti-Israeli attitudes and
anti-Zionism, specifically that of the Castro regime, falls nothing short of antise-
mitism.²¹ Fidel Castro always maintained a respectful attitude toward the Cuban
Jewish community. However although he originally supported Israel, that sup-
port gradually changed to hostility following the Six-Day War in 1967. Nonethe-
less, the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is a complicated
one and will be discussed in subsequent sections; however it is imperative
that the debate be heard on both sides before conclusions are drawn.
New Jersey resident Arline Hanfling moved to Cuba when she was one-year
old and had only happy memories of her childhood in Havana. “There was no
problem at all being Jewish and no antisemitism. I belonged to a very Reform
temple.”²² Similarly, Carol Siegler of Longboat Key in Florida spent most of
her childhood in Havana. Born of Lithuanian descent, her family owned and op-
erated a textile factory and a department store in Havana. In 1906, Jews of Ash-
kenazi descent founded Cuba’s first synagogue, the United Hebrew Congrega-
tion. The following decade saw a large migration of more Ashkenazi Jews as
well as Sephardic Jews from Turkey. The Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe
used Cuba as a stopover en route to the United States, but due to the lack of an-
tisemitism remained in Cuba and prospered. Their reasons for remaining are
noteworthy. Coming from Europe’s hotbed of antisemitism, the lack of prejudice
must have come as a welcome surprise to the newly arrived “Polacos.”
The Synagogue of Santiago de Cuba was founded in 1924, (originally called
the Jewish Society of Eastern Cuba) consisting mainly of Sephardic Jews from
Turkey. This changed in the late 1930s as Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe
migrated to Cuba in escape of the Nazis, at which time a Central Jewish Commit-
tee was founded. Cuba was a safe haven for Jews until 1939 when President Bru
and the Cuban government refused to permit the S.S. Saint Louis to land in
Havana harbor. A case for Cuba’s antisemitic policies often begins with the
Saint Louis. Supposedly, Nazi agents within Cuba convinced the general public
that the refugees aboard were a threat against Cuba and the safety of its citizens.
Authorities reported that the Cuban government charged five hundred dollars
per refugee to obtain a visa for Cuba. Additionally, the sugar-based economic col-
lapse of the 1920s led to high unemployment, and the emergence of a nationalist
movement barring employment of immigrants and prompting Cuba to accept no

 Cf. I. L. Horowitz, “Cuba, Castro and anti-Semitism,” Current Psychology 26, no. 3 (2007):
183 – 90.
 R. Wiener, “Few Expect Big Changes as Fidel Castro Departs: Island Ruler’s Reign Was Tough
on Israel, Less so on the Jews,” New Jersey Jewish News, February 28, 2008, http://www.njje
wishnews.com/njjn.com/022808/njFewExpectBigChanges.html [no longer accessible].
308 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

newcomers of any kind or nation.²³ After weeks at port the ship’s passengers
were denied entrance, forcing the Saint Louis to return to Europe and sentencing
its passengers to death.
Those Jews able to find refuge in Cuba during the war started businesses and
fared well. Jay Levinson, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of The
Jewish Community of Cuba, insists that Castro and his government opposed an-
tisemitism and that the Jewish community has always been protected, despite
their official position supporting the Palestinians against Israeli occupation
and aggression. According to Levinson, Castro differentiates Jews from Israel
and asserts that although Jews did suffer economically after the Revolution, it
was as members of Cuba’s middle class, not as Jews specifically.²⁴ Even in to-
day’s Cuba, Jews are free to maintain Jewish traditions and religious rituals.
There is availability of kosher products, places of worship, and complete respect
for the Jewish community.
Irving Horowitz,²⁵ Rutgers Professor Emeritus and editor of Cuban Commu-
nism, 1959 – 2003,²⁶ counters the claim that Castro’s anti-Zionist record is not
in itself antisemitic sentiment but born out of political and diplomatic relation-
ships. He maintains that anti-Zionism is antisemitism and adds that the 90 per-
cent decline of the Cuban Jewish community soon after 1959 supports his argu-
ment. At the time of the Revolution in 1959, Cuba’s Jewish population peaked at
15,000 people; today it is estimated at 1,200. Additionally, Cuba provided train-
ing camps for Palestinian terrorists and published anti-Israel propaganda.
Horowitz’s points are valid, yet even after Cuba severed diplomatic relations
with Israel in 1973, Jewish life never disappeared. Jews maintain religious serv-
ices in synagogues and attend Jewish Sunday schools. The only recorded antise-
mitism occurring in Cuba was during the Gulf War when Arab students threw
stones at Adas Israel Synagogue in Havana. Cuban authorities responded quick-
ly, and no one was hurt. In 1991, the Castro regime eased its atheistic policies
allowing citizen participation in religious associations. The American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) sent religious and community leaders to
help rebuild the Cuban Jewish communities of Havana, Santiago, and Camaguey.

 Cf. M. Bejarano, The Jewish Community of Cuba: Memory and History, ed. H. Avni (Jerusalem:
Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2014).
 Cf. J. Levinson, Jewish Community of Cuba: The Golden Years, 1906 – 1958 (Boulder: Westview,
2006).
 Dr. Horowitz passed away while this paper was being written.
 Cf. I. L. Horowitz and J. Suchlicki, Cuban Communism, 1959 – 2003, 9th ed. (Piscataway:
Transaction, 1998).
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 309

B’nai B’rith and a Hadassah women’s chapter also provide medicine and other
forms of aid to Cuba’s Jewish community.
Stuart Cooper of New Jersey and past president of the B’nai B’rith Tri-State
Region participates in the Cuban Jewish Relief Project. The United States govern-
ment allows B’nai B’rith members to travel to Cuba, to supply religious articles
and medicine to the Jewish community as well local Cuban hospitals. Despite the
dwindling number of Jews in Cuba, Cooper maintains that the Castro regime has
never singled out the Jews. Today restrictions on organized religion have eased
and Cooper points out that “[the government] allowed people to worship openly
without any repercussions, even those who were members of the Communist
Party. There is no discrimination permitted in Cuba of any sort.” In 1994, the Jew-
ish Agency provided a $150 exit fee to over 400 Cuban Jews allowing them to
immigrate to Israel, in what is now referred to as Operation Cigar.

Suriname

During World War II, a few Jewish refugees from Europe settled in Suriname. By
1975 after its independence from Holland, Suriname’s Jewish population saw a
steep decline, which only deepened after civil war broke out in the late 1980s.
The current Jewish community consists of only 300 people. In the late 1990s,
the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish synagogues in Paramaribo merged and
services are actively held in the Neve Shalom Synagogue in downtown Parama-
ribo (Zedek v’ Shalom is currently rented). Today’s Jewish community of Suri-
name is poor and is currently being upkept by an initiative called Chai Member-
ship. Jacob Steinberg is director of the initiative, which collects donations from
members outside of Suriname who wish to donate money to maintain the syna-
gogues, cemeteries, mikvah, and their surrounding grounds.²⁷
Through email correspondence, he explained that the entire structure from
the Aron Kodesh (holy ark), Bimah (dais), the benches, to the beautiful Torahs,
are all supported through outside membership and donations. Like the synago-
gue in Curaçao, the Neve Shalom Synagogue boasts a sandy floor as a reminder of
the forty years spent in the desert after leaving Egypt, and as a continuation of
the marranos secret synagogues during the Inquisition when practicing Judaism
was a capital crime. The floor had been covered with sand to quiet the sounds of
their prayers.

 Cf. “Welcome to the Suriname Jewish Community!” Suriname Jewish Community, issued
2009, accessed April 12, 2013, http://www.suriname-jewish-community.com/.
310 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

“There is no antisemitism to speak of in Suriname,” he responded when

asked. The Neve Shalom Synagogue is open to tourists and community members.
It is cared for by a shamash (which is the Hebrew word for caretaker) and con-
tains a museum and library. The synagogue grounds also house a community
center, the former house of the rabbi, and the first Sephardic cemetery. Since
the community no longer has a local rabbi, the former rabbi’s apartment has
been renovated and is now rented by guests and tourists. Israel has an honorary
consul in Paramaribo.

What Happened to Caribbean Jewry?

What were once vibrant Jewish communities have disintegrated into a handful of
Jews. What happened to these communities? Where have all of these Jews gone?
Were antisemitic incidents on the various Caribbean Islands grounds for emigra-
tion? The remainder of the paper recounts the history of antisemitism from the
first arrival of Jews to the Caribbean through the present day, and proposes the-
oretical explanations for that history with a specific emphasis on the various the-
ories of tolerance. The paper concludes with directions for future research based
on the Caribbean model of tolerance.

From Immigration to Emigration and Assimilation: The Quiet

Disappearance of Caribbean Jewry
As history has shown, immigration to the Caribbean was ignited by antise-
mitism. While phenomenally its disappearance stemmed from quite the
opposite—a complete lack of antisemitism. Jewish migration to the Caribbean
began as a result of the Jewish expulsion decree from Spanish-held lands. The
expulsion decree was signed on March 31, 1492, and announced on May 1 (in-
cluding the kingdoms of Castile, Catalonia, Aragon, Galicia, Majorca, Minorca,
the Basque provinces, the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, the kingdom of Valen-
cia, and the kingdom of Andalusia). The Jews were given three months to leave
and were required to be out of the country by August 1st. Many of Spain’s Jews
paid their way into Portugal only to be expelled again in 1497.²⁸

 Cf. W. H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, vol. 11 (Boston:
American Stationers, 1837).
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 311

The “Holy Office of the Inquisition” in Portugal forced the conversion of the
Jews who remained to Catholicism where they then lived as “New Christians.”
The New Christians of Portugal were not persecuted in the same manner as
the conversos of Spain, as such the exodus of the Jews from Portugal was unlike
the massive one from Spain. The Jewish exodus from Portugal lasted from the six-
teenth century to the nineteenth, mostly to Western Europe where the conversos
returned to Judaism.²⁹
During the seventeenth century, Protestant European countries (with the ex-
ception of France) began colonizing the Caribbean Islands. These powers al-
lowed Jews to reconvert from Catholicism to Judaism without persecution, mak-
ing these colonies a viable option for their settlement. In turn the colonizing
powers welcomed the Jews’ expertise in trading, shipping, and banking, as
well as their knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese. When Portugal reoccupied
the Dutch-held parts of Brazil, in 1654, the Jews left those settlements and rees-
tablished themselves among the main producers of sugar on islands throughout
the Caribbean.
By the end of the eighteenth century, Jews were permitted to settle in Span-
ish-speaking countries. After living for several generations as conversos and New
Christians, the Spanish-Portuguese Jews in the Caribbean returned to Judaism.
They were welcomed, given equal rights and citizenship, and were well respect-
ed. The Jews worked to preserve their Spanish language, culture, and traditions.
However, the widespread social acceptance of the Sephardic Jews was more det-
rimental to its preservation than it was beneficial—leading to intermarriage and
assimilation. Although the Caribbean Sephardim took pride in their Jewish an-
cestry and were free to worship, work, and live every aspect of life as they
chose, they were losing their Judaism.
In part the decline of Jewish practices during that period had to do with the
lack of religious leaders, institutions, and structured communities. Since Juda-
ism in the Spanish-Portuguese colonies had previously been practiced in secret,
many Caribbean Jews needed to build religious institutions from scratch and im-
port rabbis and religious leaders from Europe. Many of these rabbis insisted
upon strict Orthodox observance, which was already far removed from the Car-
ibbean way of life. The tropical climate and the distances of the Jews from the
synagogue made it all but impossible to observe the Sabbath, kosher and dietary
laws, and abide by the restrictive modest dress code imposed by Orthodox Jewry.
This created resistance toward anything deemed Jewish among the newer gener-

 Cf. O. R. Constable, Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, 2nd
ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
312 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

ations, thus alienating them from communal life altogether. Each subsequent
generation saw more assimilation and intermarriage.³⁰
Unlike the Jews who settled in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies and re-
mained Jews in secret, the Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal who had fled
to Amsterdam and then settled in the Dutch, Danish Virgin Islands, French and
British Caribbean Islands were never forced to hide their identities and establish-
ed active Jewish communities. Synagogues were established soon after their ar-
rival, and by the end of the eighteenth century there were over 1,500 Jews on the
island of Curaçao alone. Yet only a handful of these families are Jewish today,
most are devout Catholics who acknowledge that their ancestors were Dutch
Jews.³¹
Another contributing factor to the decline of Caribbean Jewry was the intro-
duction of the Reform movement, which established its own arrangement of
prayers and brought its own religious leaders to the islands. English texts re-
placed Spanish hymns and Sephardic melodies. The synagogue as a cohesive
community and family center began to lose meaning.³² In Curaçao specifically,
a rift developed in the congregation in 1815 over the new cantor from Amster-
dam. The division of the synagogue caused the Sephardic community to spread
among the islands and eventually to marry non-Jews.³³
The arrival of Ashkenazi and Middle Eastern Jews raised several issues. First,
their arrival pushed the Spanish-Portuguese Jews to further assimilate. The Span-
ish-Portuguese Jews were among the elite of Caribbean society. They worked as
bankers, ship owners, professors, generals, and politicians and did not want to
associate with the newcomers.³⁴ Many chose instead to leave the islands or as-
similate with non-Jews of their own class and social standing.³⁵
Second many of the newcomers, especially with the advent of Nazism and
the Holocaust, immigrated to the Caribbean with the intent to continue on to
the United States.³⁶ Most had no intention of establishing communities or main-
taining ties. The Jewish refugees were provided a safe haven until they were able

 Cf. Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean.

 Cf. J. C. Goldish, Once Jews: Stories of Caribbean Sephardim (Princeton: Markus Wiener,
2009).
 Cf. Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean.
 Cf. Goldish, Once Jews.
 Cf. Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean.
 Cf. Goldish, Once Jews.
 Cf. J. Newman, Nearly the New World: The British West Indies and the Flight from Nazism
1933 – 1945 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019).
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 313

to obtain visas to the US. Those who did remain soon faced the same challenges
as their predecessors, making it difficult to maintain a Jewish way of life.³⁷
Economically, it was no longer feasible to remain on the islands. Firstly, the
Caribbean was replaced by Africa and Southeast Asia as a center for the produc-
tion of sugar, vanilla, cocoa, and other tropical products. Secondly, transatlantic
ships no longer needed coal stations. Jewish trading and shipping companies in
the region declined and eventually relocated to the United States. This economic
situation prompted younger generations to look forward to the higher education
and training that American universities offered.³⁸

Explaining the Lack of Antisemitism in the Modern

Caribbean: The Psychology of Tolerance
It would seem that the claim “The moon is the only place, where one can be free
from antisemitism”³⁹ is wrong—there seems to be no report of classic antisemit-
ism in the Caribbean for over two-hundred years. Here, classic antisemitism is
specified because of the anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist attitudes expressed in
Cuba after the revolution. However, with the exception of Cuba, there have
been no expressions of modern antisemitism or anti-Israeli attitudes either.
One could argue that there are no reports of antisemitism because the Jews
have all but disappeared. This would be a valid argument except for the fact
that historically antisemitism has and continues to exist in societies without
Jews.⁴⁰ An alternate and more probable argument would be that the Caribbean
is a conglomerate of islands and a multi-cultural society that favors tolerance
and acceptance of all regardless of race or religion. In the words of Ralph R.
Premdas:

[The Caribbean may be viewed] as an area populated by a diverse polyglot of peoples. There
are whites, blacks, browns, yellows, reds, and an assortment of shades in between. There
are Europeans, Africans, Asian Indians, Indonesian Javanese, Chinese, Aboriginal Indians,
and many mixes. There are Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Rastafarians, Santería, Winti,

 Cf. Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean.

 Cf. ibid.
 H. Arendt, “Ceterum Censeo,” in Vor Antisemitismus ist man nur noch auf dem Mond sicher
(Munich: Piper, 2000), originally published in Der Aufbau, December 26, 1941). Translation by
the authors of this article.
 Cf. “Anti-Semitism Rising Even in Countries with No Jews at All, Secretary-General Tells
Event on Power of Education to Counter Racism, Discrimination,” United Nations, issued Sep-
tember 26, 2018, accessed July 7, 2020, https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sgsm19252.doc.htm.
314 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

Vudun, etc. They speak in a multitude of tongues—Spanish, English, Dutch, French, Eng-
lish, and a diverse number of Creoles such as papiamentu, sranan tongo, ndjuka, saramac-
can, kromanti, kreyol, as well as Hindustani, Bhojpuri, Urdu, etc. In whatever combinations
of race, religion, language, and culture they cohere and coexist.⁴¹

From social psychological research, several theories exist that may help explain
the extraordinary lack of prejudice experience in the Caribbean: integrated
threat theory and the contact hypothesis, the multiculturalism hypothesis, and
terror management theory.
Research on political tolerance has consistently found a negative association
with perceived threat.⁴² In other words, the greater the cultural threat, the lower
the tolerance. Integrated threat theory posits that both realistic threats and sym-
bolic threats to one’s social group dissuade tolerance.⁴³ Realistic threats are both
economic (epitomized by perceived competition over material and economic
group interests) and physical in nature (safety concerns). Symbolic threats are
often cultural and focus on group differences in values, norms, and beliefs. Stud-
ies have found that in contrast to the US, race, for example, is not a defining fac-
tor in the Caribbean despite the shared history of colonialism and slavery.⁴⁴ Out-
groups with their different worldview threaten the cultural identity of the in-
group and their way of life, thus leading to more negative attitudes and less tol-
erance toward these groups.⁴⁵
A meta-analysis of over 200 empirical studies examining the contact hypoth-
esis demonstrates that inter-group contact has positive effects on prejudice—
frequent contact with out-group members has been shown to increase knowl-

 R. R. Premdas, “Ethnicity and Identity in the Caribbean: Decentering a Myth,” The Helen
Kellogg Institute for International Studies Working Paper #234 (1996): 2.
 Cf. J. L. Sullivan and J. E. Transue, “The Psychological Underpinnings of Democracy: A Se-
lective Review of Research on Political Tolerance, Interpersonal Trust, and Social Capital,” An-
nual Review of Psychology 50 (199): 625 – 50.
 Cf. W. G. Stephan and C. W. Stephan, “Cognition and Affect in Stereotyping: Parallel Interac-
tive Networks,” in Affect, Cognition, and Stereotyping: Interactive Processes in Group Perception,
ed. D. M. Mackie and D. L. Hamilton (Orlando: Academic, 1993), 111– 36; G. Stephan and C. W.
Stephan, Intergroup Relations (Boulder: Westview, 1996).
 Cf. E. K. Bailey, “‘I am studying in the US but’: Observations and Insights from Caribbean
College Students,” Social Identities 23 (2017): 87– 103.
 Cf. e. g. V. M. Esses et al., “Public Attitudes toward Immigrants and Immigration,” in Cana-
dian Immigration Policy for the 21st Century, ed. C. M. Beach et al. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
Press, 2003), 507– 36; P. M. Sniderman and L. Hagendoorn, When Ways of Life Collide: Multicul-
turalism and its Discontents in the Netherlands (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 315

edge, liking, and positive affect thereby increasing cultural tolerance.⁴⁶ Addition-
ally, research has shown a relationship between religion and intergroup contact
whereby contact is associated with positive attitudes toward outgroups among
religious people.⁴⁷
Research also indicates that governments play a role in prejudicial atti-
tudes.⁴⁸ Studies examining political tolerance indicate that promoting democrat-
ic beliefs and values, such as equality and civil rights, increases tolerance for
cultural diversity thus instilling confidence and a sense of trust and security
for both the out-group and in-group. Research explicitly conducted on political
controllability and antisemitism demonstrated in four empirical studies that the
lack of perceived political control contributes to antisemitic conspiracy theo-
ries.⁴⁹
The multiculturalism hypothesis posits that support of cultural diversity
leads to increased tolerance toward ethnic out-groups.⁵⁰ Studies in several coun-
tries found that endorsement of multi-cultural recognition, increased positive
evaluations of out-groups both implicitly and explicitly,⁵¹ and decreased percep-
tions of group threat⁵² leads to more positive attitudes toward immigrants.

 Cf. T. F. Pettigrew and L. R. Tropp, “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory,” Jour-
nal of Personality and Social Psychology 90 (2006): 751– 83.
 Cf. G. Piumatti and S. Russo, “Moderators of Linear and Nonlinear Associations between Re-
ligiosity, Xenophobia, and Tolerance toward Immigrants in Italy,” Psychology of Religion and Spi-
rituality 11, no. 4 (2019): 399 – 407.
 Cf. S. Marquart-Pyatt and P. Paxton, “In Principle and in Practice: Learning Political Toler-
ance in Eastern and Western Europe,” Political Behavior 29 (2007): 89 – 113; H. McClosky and
A. Brill, Dimensions of Tolerance: What Americans Believe about Civil Liberties (New York:
Basic Books, 1983); Sullivan and Transue, “Psychological Underpinnings of Democracy.”
 Cf. M. Kofta et al., “What Breeds Conspiracy Antisemitism? The Role of Political Uncontroll-
ability and Uncertainty in the Belief in Jewish Conspiracy,” Journal of Personality and Social Psy-
chology 118, no. 5 (2020): 900 – 18.
 Cf. M. Verkuyten, “Ethnic Group Identification and Group Evaluation among Minority and
Majority Groups: Testing the Multiculturalism Hypothesis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psy-
chology 88 (2005): 121– 38.
 Cf. J. A. Richeson and R. J. Nussbaum, “The Impact of Multiculturalism versus Color-Blind-
ness on Racial Bias,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40 (2004): 417– 23, Verkuyten,
“Ethnic Group Identification”; C. Wolsko et al., “Framing Interethnic Ideology: Effects of Multi-
cultural and Color-blind Perspectives on Judgments of Groups and Individuals,” Journal of Per-
sonality and Social Psychology 78 (2000): 635 – 54.
 Cf. K. Velasco González et al., “Prejudice towards Muslims in the Netherlands: Testing the
Integrated Threat Theory,” British Journal of Social Psychology 47 (2008): 667– 85; C. Ward and
A.-M. Masgoret, “An Integrative Model of Attitudes toward Immigrants,” International Journal
of Intercultural Relations 30 (2006): 671– 82.
316 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

Recent research in terror management theory suggests that thoughts of cul-

tural assimilation serve to reduce cultural threat. According to terror manage-
ment theory,⁵³ human beings, like all other animals, are driven to survive. Yet un-
like other animals, humans are uniquely aware of the inevitability of death and
the ever-present potential for lethal experiences, which creates the potential for
paralyzing terror. Terror management theory posits that to “manage” this poten-
tially debilitating terror, humans created cultural worldviews (symbolic concep-
tions of reality shared by individuals in a group) to minimize death anxiety by
imbuing the world with order, meaning, and permanence, and by providing a
set of standards of valued behavior that, if satisfied, confers self-esteem and ul-
timately, death transcendence through symbolic and/or literal immortality. Thus,
from the perspective of terror management theory, individuals manage their ter-
ror by maintaining faith in the cultural worldview and living up to the standards
of value that are part of that worldview.
Cultural worldviews require continual validation from others in order to be
sustained, especially when confronted with reminders of mortality. This valida-
tion occurs mainly through the process of social consensus.⁵⁴ Thus, the mere ex-
istence of people with similar worldviews bolsters the individual’s faith in the
validity of his or her own worldview, thereby increasing its effectiveness as an
anxiety-buffer. Likewise, the mere existence of people with dissimilar world-
views threatens the individual’s faith in his or her own worldview, thereby un-
dermining its effectiveness as an anxiety-buffer. As such, people generally prefer
ideas and people that conform to their worldviews and derogate ideas and peo-
ple that deviate from them.
To date, hundreds of experiments around the world have established the
link between death fear and attachment to cultural worldviews. Mortality re-
minders have increased prejudices toward Blacks, Jews, Muslims, and immi-
grants among others. These studies strongly suggest that investment in a cultural
worldview, and obtaining a strong sense of self-esteem by meeting standards of
value within that worldview, shelters people from death concerns; and, con-
versely, that mortality salience (MS) motivates people to bolster self-esteem
and defend their worldviews.
Research exploring the role of mortality salience and political orientation in
explaining attitudes in prosocial values demonstrated that following a threat,

 Cf. J. Greenberg et al., “The Causes and Consequences of a Need for Self-Esteem: A Terror
Management Theory,” in Public Self and Private Self, ed. R. F. Baumeister (New York: Springer,
1986), 189 – 212.
 Cf. L. Festinger, “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes,” Human Relations 7 (1954):
117– 40.
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 317

the importance of benevolent values, which focus on the welfare of people living
in close proximity, increases. More importantly, benevolence increased in impor-
tance regardless of political orientation.⁵⁵
Additionally, research⁵⁶ suggests that when a differing other is receptive to
alternative ideologies (as the Jewish inhabitants of the Caribbean have always
been) then MS actually increases assimilation efforts rather than derogation.
Studies showed that MS heightened Christians’ efforts to assimilate receptive
atheists to Christianity, rather than disparage them. These results may shed
some light on the lack of antisemitism in the Caribbean. If actively engaging
in the assimilation or even learning about a successful assimilation serves terror
management then not only should antisemitism disappear, but Jews should be
loved and respected among the Caribbean population.
Similar research⁵⁷ conducted on the Hawaiian Islands suggests that the gen-
eral lack of prejudice there reflects their cultural worldview, or the Hawaiian
value referred to as “Aloha Spirit.” This value expressed as friendliness, accept-
ance, and tolerance is credited with affecting acceptance of the various cultures
currently represented on the islands. The high rate of intermarriage in Hawaii
has also been deemed to positively impact their cultural tolerance. Much can
be inferred from the Hawaiian Islands to the Caribbean Islands who (1) share
a similar “sunny” disposition, and (2) who have an increasingly large rate of in-
termarriage between Jews and local non-Jewish Islanders.

Conclusions and Directions for Research

This paper aimed to provide insight on the arrival and disappearance of Jews in
the Caribbean. From start to finish the paper: (1) highlighted the history of the
Jewish migration to various Caribbean Islands; (2) investigated Jewish life in
the Caribbean and its disappearance via live interviews and archival data;
(3) highlighted the lack of antisemitism experienced by Caribbean Jewry in an

 Cf. Y. Naveh-Kedem and N. Sverdlik, “Changing Prosocial Values Following an Existential

Threat as a Function of Political Orientation: Understanding the Effects of Armed Conflicts
from a Terror Management Perspective,” Personality and Individual Differences 150 (2019):
109494.
 Cf. S. Kosloff et al., “Mortality Salience Motivates Attempts to Assimilate Differing Others to
One’s Own Worldview,” unpublished manuscript, Michigan State University, 2012.
 Cf. M. Salzman, “Ethnocultural Conflict and Cooperation in Hawaiʻi,” in Handbook of Ethnic
Conflict: International Perspectives, ed. D. Landis and R. D. Albert (New York: Springer Science +
Business Media, 2012), 21– 44.
318 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

attempt to explain it; (4) and posited psychological theories of tolerance to ac-
count for the lack of Caribbean antisemitism.
Caribbean Jewry is exceptionable on several accounts. For starters, the Car-
ibbean Jewish community transcended space. While the Caribbean is comprised
of several independent countries and colonies, the Spanish-Portuguese Jews of
the Caribbean considered themselves one community and often referred to them-
selves as the Caribbean Jewish Nation;⁵⁸ they maintain the oldest Jewish commu-
nity in the Western hemisphere; its community is marked by a complete lack of
classic antisemitism; its established families are large, economically well off,
well-educated, and except in name and heritage are no longer Jewish (most
have intermarried, assimilated, and converted⁵⁹). The assimilation of the Carib-
bean Jews took place in less than two-hundred years. On islands such as St.
Maarten, they disappeared altogether.
What began as a cohesive unit has gradually disappeared, and today Jewish
life in the region is difficult to find. A tour of the Caribbean Islands revealed that
there are very few active Spanish-Portuguese communities in the Caribbean
(Curaçao and Suriname still maintain the old synagogues), and even fewer
new ones (St. Maarten maintains the new Chabad House). These communities
while still active have very few congregants, and their members continue to de-
cline. This “comfortable disappearance” devoid of acts of antisemitism and ac-
tive discrimination is worrisome.
Research must be conducted to examine the underlying causes of such a dis-
appearance. Why would a community given the option to maintain their cultural
and religious identity freely chose to abandon it? Could it simply be due to a lack
of Jewish education and spiritual leaders as was the case in the late eighteenth
century? Or possibly the desire for economic wealth and social standing played a
role. But even so, why, when finally given the opportunity to openly practice Ju-
daism, did so few remain Jewish and so many convert to Christianity?
To even begin to scratch the surface of these questions, research must be
conducted to differentiate between tolerance/acceptance of difference and toler-
ance/acceptance of assimilation. During the Inquisition, Jews converted but did
not assimilate or truly accept the Christian way of life and continued to practice
Judaism in secret and as a result were persecuted. After the Inquisition ended,
Jews were not only accepted as Jews but invited into society’s elites as equals.
As equals these Jews became open to the ideas of their non-Jewish counterparts
and more willing to adopt their cultural norms and worldviews; in reality they

 Cf. Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean.

 Cf. Goldish, Once Jews.
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 319

were actively recruited into society and invited to assimilate. Research on assim-
ilation reveals that assimilation is a method of maintaining a dominant identity
over out-groups. Instead of distinguishing the in-group from the out-group,
members of the out-group are recruited into the in-group.⁶⁰ Assimilation, there-
fore, maintains prejudice by simply changing members of the in-group through
adoption of the cultural norms and worldviews of the in-group. Those who do
not assimilate are negatively judged and discriminated against.
A lesson regarding the disappearance of the Caribbean Jews may be inferred
from American history. In 1906, the US government passed the Nationality Act
mandating that that all immigrants seeking naturalization speak English. By
1923, thirty-four states had laws mandating English-only instruction in schools.
The laws were enacted primarily to assimilate immigrants and American Indians.
These laws were later rescinded, and in the 1960s the Bilingual Education Act
became a federal statute recognizing the discriminatory nature of the previous
laws and the importance of maintaining one’s cultural identity.⁶¹ Samuel P.
Huntington summed up the seriousness of assimilation and identity loss quite
well. In a paper critiquing the relationship between immigration and American
national identity, Huntington wrote:

When I began to investigate this, my first thought was that we probably have a real problem
with immigration. But then I came to the conclusion that no, while there may be an immi-
gration problem, it isn’t really a serious problem. The really serious problem is assimila-
tion.⁶²

The question posed earlier in this paper—where have all the Caribbean Jews
gone?—may now be considered. The Caribbean Jews who settled on the islands
over four-hundred years ago have been assimilated; the newcomers have moved
on. Either way they are gone, and without its utility so is antisemitism.
An investigation into Caribbean Jewry can enlighten us about our own com-
munities and future Jewish generations. Jewish intermarriage in the United
States is occurring at an alarming rate⁶³ and is decreasing the size of the Amer-

 Cf. J. F. Dovidio et al., “Why Can’t We just Get Along? Interpersonal Biases and Interracial
Distrust,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 8 (2002): 88 – 102.
 Cf. N. Cerda and C. M. Hernandez, “Legislation Timeline,” Bilingual Education, http://www.
freewebs.com/cerdahdz/legislationtimeline.htm, accessed June 8, 2013. [No longer accessible.]
 S. P. Huntington, “Reconsidering Immigration: Is Mexico a Special Case?” Center for Immi-
gration Studies, issued November 1, 2000, accessed July 3, 2020, http://www.cis.org/American
Identity-USMexicoImmigrationPolicy.
 According to The Jewish Federations of North America (2013) the rates of intermarriage have
increased from 13 % in 1970 to 47 % in 2001.
320 Florette Cohen Abady and Daniel Kaplin

ican Jewish population. In 1997, Alan Dershowitz tackled this problem in his
book, The Vanishing American Jew. Noting that assimilation is on the rise, he ob-
served that because Jews have spent thousands of years surrounded by enemies
looking to convert or exterminate them, they’ve become collectively defensive
against antisemites but not against internal actions and inactions destructive
to Jewish survival. He suggests that in order to survive, the Jewish people
must adapt to new internal necessities and acknowledge the demographic chal-
lenges of intermarriage, assimilation, low birthrates, and the breakdown of
neighborhoods and communities.⁶⁴
Additionally, American Jews have become divided. There are political, reli-
gious, and cultural differences among American Jews.⁶⁵ The Ultra-Orthodox
Jews believe that their way of religion is the only strand of Judaism that can sur-
vive while the political Zionists believe religion is outdated, and culture remains
important to the survival of Judaism. Others believe that American Jews are like
any other American group and Jewish tradition and ethics will keep Judaism
alive. Some believe that Jewish organizations are enough, and others say that
Jewish education is key.⁶⁶ Unfortunately, this divide has become an obvious
part of the problem. Jewish identity must evolve beyond antisemitism, religion,
and politics to form a united comprehensive identity inclusive of all Jews. Other-
wise, if this trend continues, how long will it take for American Jewry to disap-
pear the way Caribbean Jewry has? This is a question for all Jewish communities
to consider and can serve as an example for other communities in similar situa-
tions.

Florette Cohen Abady is Associate Professor for Social Psychology at CUNY College
of Staten Island. She received her PhD from the Social Psychology program at
Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 2008. Her most recent line of research dem-
onstrates that people who are reminded of their own death (mortality salience) re-
spond by reaffirming their core values and beliefs, making their expressions of
these more intense or more extreme. The mortality salience paradigm may be ap-
plied to cases of individual voting preferences, stereotypic thinking, and prejudice,
which seems to be aroused by major social disruptions.

 Cf. A. M. Dershowitz, The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next
Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997).
 Cf. L. A. Kotler-Berkowitz, “The Structure of Political Divisions among American Jews,” Con-
temporary Jewry 37, no. 1 (2017): 5 – 27.
 Cf. e. g. the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore, https://jcc.org/, accessed July 9,
2020.
 Caribbean Jewry: A Model of Tolerance or Assimilation? 321

Daniel Kaplin is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department and Coordi-

nator of the Forum on Migration at St. Francis College. His research focuses on
cross-cultural psychology, immigration, religion/spirituality, and prescriptive au-
thority for psychologists. Daniel Kaplin has served numerous boards and commit-
tees and has received numerous awards and commendations for his work.

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Gennady Estraikh
Sholem Aleichem and Qumran:
Jewish-Related Scholarship in the Soviet
Union, 1953 – 1967
The Jewish academic centers established in the early Soviet state functioned al-
most exclusively in Yiddish and had eclipsed or subdued the remnants of Jewish
studies pursued at academic and independent organizations of the pre-1917 pe-
riod. In Kiev, the most vigorous of the new centers developed ultimately into the
Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture (IJPC), a structural unit of the Ukrainian
Academy of Sciences. By 1934, the IJPC had on its payroll over seventy people
in academic and administrative roles. Two years later, however, the Stalinist
purges of the time had consumed the IJPC and sent many of its employees to
prison to be later sentenced to death or gulag.¹ In Minsk, the authorities similarly
destroyed the academic Institute of National Minorities, which mainly dealt with
Jewish-related research.² By this time, all Jewish (in fact, Yiddish-language) ed-
ucational institutions, including university departments, ceased to exist. Some
scholars moved to other fields of research or left academia entirely. Soviet school
instruction and cultural activity in Yiddish emerged in the territories of Poland,
Romania, and the Baltic states, forcibly acquired in 1939 and 1940, but after June
22, 1941, all these disappeared in the smoke of World War II.
However, the IJPC had an afterlife: in the fall of 1936, the authorities permit-
ted the formation of a small academic unit named the Bureau (kabinet) for Re-
search on Jewish Literature, Language, and Folklore. The Bureau endured until
1949, when it fell victim to a campaign that targeted the remaining Jewish insti-
tutions. In the same year, the authorities closed the Lithuanian Jewish Museum,

Note: The research for this article was conducted as part of the Shvidler Project for the History of
the Jews in the Soviet Union at New York University. I owe thanks to Lawrence H. Schiffman, Igor
Krupnik, and Kirsten Howe, who helped me in conceiving and writing this article.

 See, for example, D. Shneer, “A Study in Red: Jewish Scholarship in the 1920s Soviet Union,”
Science in Context 20, no. 2 (2007): 197– 213; E. Melamed, “The Fate of the Archives of the Kiev
Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture: Puzzles and Discoveries,” East European Jewish Affairs
42, no. 2 (2012): 99 – 110.
 D. Shevelëv, “Iz istorii evreĭskikh akademicheskikh podrazdelenyĭ v Belorusskoĭ Sovetskoĭ
͡
Sotsialisticheskoĭ Respublike v 1920-kh–nachale 1940-kh gg,” in Sovetskaia͡ iudaika: istoriia,͡
͡ (Jerusalem and Moscow: Gesharim/Mosty kul’tury,
problematika, personalii, ed. M. Kupovetskiĭ
2017), 78 – 79.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Gennady Estraikh, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-017
326 Gennady Estraikh

which was established in Vilnius soon after the city’s liberation from the Ger-
mans.³ The year 1950 saw the closing of the department of Assyrian and Hebrew
studies at the Oriental Faculty of the Leningrad State University.⁴ In Tbilisi, the
Historical and Ethnographic Museum of Georgian Jews survived longer, but its
turn to be phased out came in 1952.⁵ In that year, thirteen leading figures in
the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC, 1942– 1948) faced execution on August
12.⁶ In post-Stalinist Soviet Union, no institutions or programs for studying Jews
and Judaism were in existence, apart from small-scale Hebrew courses and Ori-
ental Studies at universities and research centers in Moscow, Leningrad, and
Tbilisi.
The following analysis of Jewish-related scholarly life focuses on the rela-
tively liberal stretch of years between March 1953, when Stalin’s death stopped
overtly anti-Jewish campaigns, and the June 1967 war in the Middle East,
which created a harsher climate for Jewish life in the Soviet Union.

Continuation of Interrupted Projects

The bulk of the output produced by Yiddish-language academic institutions in
the 1920s–1940s has become irrelevant to the radically changed societal, linguis-
tic, and ideological environment of Jewish life today. However, this does not
apply to the legacy of the momentous works in the field of Jewish ethnomusicol-
ogy left by Moisei (Moyshe) Beregovsky (1892– 1961). In 1927, Beregovsky initiat-
ed the establishment of the Commission for Jewish Folk Music Research at the
Department of Jewish Culture of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and,
from 1929, he headed research of musical folklore at the IJPC and then—after
its dismantling—at the Bureau. The purges of the 1930s spared him, but he did
not avoid incarceration in the 1950s. Released from the gulag in 1955, Beregovsky
returned to Kiev and, until his death, prepared his collections for publication.
Although Soviet musicology generally shunned Jewish themes, the attitude to

 D. F. Fishman, The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures
from the Nazis (Lebanon: University Press of New England, 2017), 234– 35.
 I. Axelrod-Rubin, “The Jewish Contribution to the Development of Oriental Studies in the
USSR,” in Jews in Soviet Culture, ed. J. Miller (London: Transaction Books, 1984), 287– 88.
 M. Altshuler, “Georgian Jewish Culture under the Soviet Regime,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 5, no. 2
(1975): 32– 37.
 See, for example, J. Rubenstein and V. P. Naumov, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar
Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 327

folk music was different.⁷ As a result, Beregovsky’s two books posthumously saw
publication: in 1962, the Moscow publishing house Sovetsky kompozitor [Soviet
Composer] produced his Jewish Folk Songs, edited by composer and music critic
Sergey Aksiuk (1901– 1994), formerly editor-in-chief of the Sovetsky kompozitor,
and in 1987, the same publisher put out Jewish Folk Instrumental Music, edited by
ethnomusicologist Max Goldin (1917– 2009), who taught at the Conservatory of
Riga.
Meanwhile, the Moscow Yiddish literary journal Sovetish Heymland [Soviet
Homeland], which was started in 1961 under the editorship of the poet Aron
Vergelis (1918 – 1999), began to play the supplementary role of an outlet, often
the only one available, for publications of popular and, increasingly over the
years, serious academic essays, most notably on various aspects of Yiddish phi-
lology. The journal formed a small “pale of Jewish cultural settlement,” whose
internal life remained barely visible even to Soviet Jews, the prevalent majority
of whom could not, or would not, read the about 10,000 copies sold around the
country. Yet, in addition to its role of a forum for Yiddish literature, the journal
acted also as an umbrella for various projects, including the preparation of a
Russian-Yiddish dictionary.
In 1948, the Kiev Bureau’s dictionary manuscript, a product of many years of
work, was already in the hands of the Moscow Jewish publishing house Der
Emes [Truth]. However, in November of that same year, the publishing house
stopped operating, as it was closed down concurrently with the liquidation of
the JAFC. In January 1949, the secret police arrested Elye Spivak (1890 – 1950),
the Bureau’s director and editor-in-chief of the dictionary, and transported him
to a prison in Moscow, where he would die. Two months later, Chaim Loytsker
(1898 – 1970), a senior scholar, was also arrested and received a sentence of fif-
teen years of hard labor. The year 1951 saw the arrest of two other dictionary com-
pilers, Moyshe Maidansky (1900 – 1973) and Ruven Lerner (1912 – 1972), both sen-
tenced to ten years of incarceration. The logic of the selection of targets for
persecution often escaped contemporaries and remains a puzzle for historians.
In any case, Moyshe Shapiro (1899 – 1973), the leading linguist of the Bureau,
was never arrested. He left Kiev to teach Russian philology at the pedagogical
institute in the city of Tiraspol in Moldavia (the breakaway Transnistria territory
in contemporary Moldova).
In the early 1960s, Vergelis enthusiastically supported the idea to revive the
dictionary project and allocated an office space for Shapiro, who had moved to

 J. Braun, “Jews in Soviet Music,” in Jews in Soviet Culture, ed. J. Miller (London: Transaction
Books, 1984), 85.
328 Gennady Estraikh

Moscow after retiring from teaching in Tiraspol. Shapiro and other surviving lin-
guists began revising and refocusing the dictionary, which, in its original design,
was intended for users with a good knowledge of Yiddish. By the mid-1960s, it
had to address a different audience, including people who wanted to learn the
language or lacked the means to express the realities of modern life. In addition,
it was necessary to take into account new Yiddish dictionaries published outside
the Soviet Union by that time. In 1965, a reworked version was submitted to the
publishing house Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia [Soviet Encyclopedia].
Shapiro and other linguists associated with the Sovetish Heymland rejected
the militant purism practiced by some of their American colleagues, who were
always on the warpath against etymologically “unacceptable” words. According
to Shapiro, however, the German, Hebrew, or Slavic origin of the word was of less
importance than its authenticity, stylistic adequacy, and clarity. Although the
Sovetish Heymland toed the official Soviet line of rejecting the notion of a world-
wide Jewish nation, the journal, a publication with a cultural-diplomatic mis-
sion, sought to attract foreign readers. Therefore it did not try to erect an artificial
wall between the Soviet and non-Soviet varieties of Yiddish. Shapiro even doubt-
ed the value of the notion of Soviet Yiddish:

This definition never had nor could have any terminological meaning, since it never meant
a new quality of a literary language different from the literary Yiddish outside the borders
of the Soviet Union. In fact, there were only a few peculiarities which could justify speaking
(even conditionally) of a specific Soviet Yiddish style.⁸

Significantly, although the journal and other Moscow Yiddish publications did
not reintroduce the traditional spelling of Hebrew words, the final consonant let-
ters, characteristic for Hebrew and non-Soviet Yiddish, reappeared in the journal
after three decades of abandoning them as a result of the radical orthographic
reform.⁹
The compilers hoped the dictionary would come out in 1967. However, the
publisher’s guidelines demanded serious, time-consuming improvements. At
some stage, the text incorporated a clandestine epitaph to the leading figures
in the JAFC executed on August 12, 1952: the combination of words “on the
twelfth of August” illustrated the usage of “twelfth,” although examples of
usage did not accompany any other ordinal numbers. The dictionary, which final-

 G. Estraikh, Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 108 – 9.
 G. Estraikh, “Soviet Yiddish Orthography: An Iron Logic or Coincidence?” Shvut 1– 2 (1995):
218 – 41.
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 329

ly appeared in 1984, was, in a sense, a memorial to the Soviet Yiddish linguists of

the IJPC and the Bureau. None of them lived to see this publication completed by
Moyshe (Moyni) Shulman (1911– 1994), a retired senior editor of the Sovetish
Heymland. ¹⁰

Moyshe Belenky
Moyshe (Moisei) Belenky (1910 – 1996) never contributed to the Sovetish
Heymland, because he sought to be appointed its editor, and this competition be-
tween himself and Vergelis made them sworn enemies. While still a student him-
self at the Moscow Teachers Training Institute, which had a Yiddish department
until 1938 and was the alma mater of many Yiddish literati, he began to teach
Marxist-Leninist philosophy to students of the theater school at the Moscow
State Yiddish Theater and then, in 1932– 1949, he worked as the school’s director.
Later he combined this position with that of editor-in-chief of the publishing
house Der Emes. Arrested in 1949, he was held incarcerated until 1954. Upon
his release and legal rehabilitation, Belenky pursued two parallel careers, one
in Jewish literary scholarship and one in philosophy (he taught at the prestigious
Shchukin Theater School in Moscow), with emphasis on topics of scientific athe-
ism. This field, propagandistic in nature though with an academic slant, received
a push in 1954, when two decrees formulated a new approach to dealing with the
“survivals” of religious mentality. Religion had no place in communist society of
the near future as envisioned by Nikita Khrushchev, and atheism, specifically
Marxist scientific atheism, should build a solid dam against it.¹¹
Belenky was perfectly prepared to work in scientific atheism. As early as
1941, he published a Yiddish book entitled Acosta, Spinoza, and Maimonides. Ac-
cording to Belenky, Uriel Acosta, “one of the first critics of the Bible, gravitated to
materialism,” whereas Baruch Spinoza “furthered materialist examination of the
world.” Maimonides, or Rambam, on the other hand, fought for “the freedom of

 W. Moskovich, “An Important Event in Soviet Yiddish Cultural Life: The New Russian-
Yiddish Dictionary,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 14, no. 3 (1984): 31– 49; W. Moskovich, “The Russian-
Yiddish Dictionary of 1984 and the Problems of the Maintenance of Soviet Yiddish after the Sec-
ond World War,” in Under the Red Banner: Yiddish Culture in the Communist Countries in the Post-
war Era, ed. E. Grözinger and M. Ruta (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008), 231– 38; L. Fliat,͡ “I slo-
͡
var’, i pamiatnik,” My zdes’ 581, March 8 – 18, 2018, http://www.newswe.com/ index.php?
go=Pages&in=view&id=1945.
 J. Anderson, Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 16.
330 Gennady Estraikh

reason, but in some philosophical issues he slipped to the positions of idealism.”

Belenky emphasized that he based his research on the Marxist methodology, be-
cause there was no other way to understand fully and correctly the philosophers’
worldviews and their places in the history of human thought.¹²
The Marxist approach also implied a heavy ideological bias. In 1959, Belenky
wrote that “Judaism, like any other religion, represents a conservative and reac-
tionary worldview.” Moreover, according to him, “Israeli clericals solidarize[d]
with fascist cannibals-cum-racists.”¹³ He continued to study the three philoso-
phers, but Spinoza and Acosta were more welcome in the Soviet ideological cli-
mate. His 1964 book, Spinoza, came out in the respected and widely read series
Life of Remarkable People. In 1956, the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of
Political and Scientific Knowledge published Belenky’s supporting material for
lectures on The Origin and Class Essence of Judaism. His pamphlet, What is
the Talmud, came out in 1960, and the same title appeared again in 1963 and
1970, on the covers of his much weightier volumes.
Belenky was not, by any means, the only author writing on Judaism. Critique
of Judaism played a significant role in the work of other scientific atheists, in-
cluding Giler Livshits (1909 – 1983), a distinguished Minsk-based historian of an-
tiquity and religion. An important figure in the field was Mikhail Shakhnovich
(1911– 1992), whose first book, The Social Essence of the Talmud, appeared as
early as 1929. One of the founders of the Museum of History of Religion in Lenin-
grad (St. Petersburg), Shakhnovich worked as its leading scholar. In his 1960
book, entitled The Reactionary Essence of Judaism, Shakhnovich argued that Ju-
daism created conditions for spreading ideologies of Zionism and American im-
perialism, as well as for gender inequality.¹⁴ His monograph The Decline of Juda-
ism followed in 1965. Judaism remained, however, a sideline in Shakhnovich’s
voluminous output. In general, in an imagined competition among scientific
atheists dealing with various aspects of Jewish religion, the laurels for the
most prolific author would certainly go to Belenky.
In 1960, Belenky’s pamphlet The Talmud in the Light of Science appeared in
Moscow. And 1962 saw the publication of his edited volume, The Critique of Ju-
daism, which came out under the imprimatur of the History Institute at the Acad-
emy of Sciences. In his 1966 monograph Judaism, he praised the Karaites for be-
coming a voice of “the latent protest of Jewish masses against the inhuman

 M. S. Belen’kiĭ, Akoste, Shpinoze, Maymon (Moscow: Der Emes, 1941), 3 – 4.

 M. S. Belen’kiĭ, “O sovremennom iudaizme v SShA i Izraile,” Voprosy istorii religii i ateizma 7
(1959): 106, 115.
 M. Shakhnovich, “Pravda o sovremennom iudaizme,” Agitator 23 (1963): 52– 54.
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 331

exploitation, justified and defended by the Talmud.”¹⁵ He fired his criticism at

Rabbi Yehudah Leib Levin (1894– 1971) of the Moscow Choral Synagogue for
preaching that Jews were provided with nitzotz elokim, the divine spark in the
soul, which kept them attached to the Jewish faith.¹⁶ Conflating anti-clericalism
with anti-Zionism, Belenky went on to (mis)inform his readers about the legal-
ities of life in Israel. Thus, according to him, an uncircumcised boy could not be-
come a citizen of the country, and a woman had limited legal rights in many
spheres of Israeli life.¹⁷ (Even still, in 1990 he would settle in Rehovot, Israel.)
In 1967, the Moscow State University’s Department of History and Theory of
Atheism accepted his dissertation on Critical Analysis of the Dogma, Cult and
Ideology of Judaism and thus effectively certified him as a top specialist. It is
highly questionable, though, if his books fulfilled the claimed mission of “firmly
shattering the myth of supernatural origin of Jewish religion, holidays, and rites”
and “showing the reactionary nature of Judaism.”¹⁸ According to Alexander
Grushevoi, a historian of antiquity and the Middle East, Belenky’s writings on
the Talmud have little to do with scholarship. Still, he commends Belenky’s
work as, at that time, the only widely accessible source of information on this
topic.¹⁹

Literary Scholarship
Despite the devastating losses endured by Yiddish literary circles during World
War II and the Stalinist repression, the Sovetish Heymland could always rely
on scores of contributors, including literary scholars. In one of his first inter-
views, Vergelis stated: “We are allotting much space in our magazine to problems
of literary theory and criticism.”²⁰ Initially, Nokhem Oyslender (1893 – 1962), a
central figure in Soviet Yiddish literary life from its early days, acted as the
doyen of the critical guild heading the journal’s department of literary criticism.
However, a year after the journal was started, this position became vacant.
Hersh (Grigory) Remenik (1905 – 1981), Oyslender’s replacement, belonged to
the generation schooled during the Soviet period. He graduated from the Yiddish

 M. Belen’kiĭ, Iudaizm (Moscow: Political Literature Press, 1966), 130.

 Ibid., 9.
 Ibid., 94, 222.
 Ibid., 237– 38.
 A. G. Grushevoĭ, “K istorii izucheniia ͡ v Rossii Talmuda i perioda ego sozdaniia,”
͡ Pis’mennye
͡
pamiatniki Vostoka 1 (2007): 95.
 S. Chertok, “A New Magazine in Yiddish,” Soviet Literature 1 (1962): 178.
332 Gennady Estraikh

department at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute and worked as a teacher in an

old Jewish agricultural colony in Ukraine. In 1934, the Yiddish department at
the Moscow Pedagogical Institute admitted him as a graduate student, and in
1937, after defending his dissertation on Sholem Aleichem’s novellas, he received
the academic title of candidate of philological sciences. (The advanced academic
degrees of “candidate” and “doctor” were introduced in the Soviet Union in
1934.) Two years later, however, Remenik was arrested. Following his liberation
and legal rehabilitation, around 1955, he taught Russian literature at the peda-
gogical institute in Yaroslavl, an old Russian city. After moving to Moscow to re-
place Oyslender at the department of literary criticism, Remenik played an im-
portant role in shaping the literary-critical politics of the journal and engaging
other literary specialists. In its first issue of 1966, the Sovetish Heymland reported
(p. 109) that in December 1965, he had organized a “scientific session” devoted to
Y. L. Peretz, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the classic writer’s death.
Hillel Aleksandrov (1890 – 1972), who came to the “session” from Leningrad,
began his academic career in Minsk as a specialist in social-demographic as-
pects of Jewish life, but in 1933, he settled in Leningrad and worked there as a
professor at the Institute of History, Philosophy, and Linguistics. Arrested in
1937, he was not released until 1959 and then taught at the Oriental Faculty of
the Leningrad University. He wrote in the Sovetish Heymland about his archival
findings, most notably about the legacy of Israel Tsinberg (1873 – 1939), the pre-
eminent historian of Jewish literature, whose death he witnessed in the gulag.²¹
Khatskl Nadel (1905 – 1968) and Oyzer Holdes (born Holdesheym, 1900 –
1966), came to the Peretz conference from Kharkiv. They were holdovers from
the time, until 1934, when the city was the capital of Soviet Ukraine and, as
such, housed Jewish cultural, educational, and publishing organizations. Both
were arrested in 1951 and could return to Kharkiv only after several years in
the gulag. Holdes was reinstated as a member of the Writers Union, whereas
Nadel renewed his work as a bibliographer, being hailed as the founder of the
local academic tradition in the field of bibliography.²² Irme Druker (1906 –
1982), an Odessa-based writer and student of literature, was also incarcerated
from 1950 to 1956. His book on Mendele Moykher-Sforim, The Grandfather
Mendele, came out in Yiddish in Warsaw in 1964.

͡
 G. Eliasberg, “…Odin iz prezhnego Peterburga”: S. L. TSinberg—istorik evreiskoĭ literatury,
͡ (Moscow: Russian State University for the Humanities, 2005), 146.
kritik i publitsist
͡ a,͡ “Osnovatel’ khar’kovskoĭ universitetskoĭ shkoly bibliografov: Х. S. Nadel’
 S. B. Glibitskai
(1905 – 1968): k 110-letiiu͡ so dnia ͡ rozhdeniia,”
͡ Bіblіotechniĭ forum: іstoriia,͡ teoriia͡ і praktika 1
(2015): 58 – 60.
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 333

In the Sovetish Heymland’s “pale of literary settlement,” critics and histori-

ans could analyze works by authors who were of no interest to the rest of Soviet
academia. Outside the “pale,” the list of Yiddish writers usually ended up where
it started: Sholem Aleichem. The mini-industry that emerged in the 1920s and
matured in the 1930s and the 1940s around Sholem Aleichem-related cultural ac-
tivities continued to function during the last Soviet decades.²³ In 1963, Remenik’s
biography of Sholem Aleichem, published in Russian with a print-run of 10,000
copies, gained the praise of The New York Times (17 November 1963, p. 40), which
characterized the book as a “warm, sympathetic biography and literary criticism
of Sholem Aleichem.” In 1972, Remenik defended a doctoral dissertation on
Sholem Aleichem’s oeuvre, at the Institute of World Literature. It was the only
dissertation on Yiddish literature defended in the Soviet Union in the 1950s–
1980s. The defense became possible thanks to Uran Guralnik (1921– 1989), a
leading scholar of the institute and a contributor to the Sovetish Heymland.
Another reputed leading scholar on Sholem Aleichem was Riva Rubina
(1906 – 1987), who in the 1930s lectured on the history of Yiddish literature at
the Minsk Pedagogical Institute and, from 1934, at the Moscow Pedagogical In-
stitute. Later she established herself as a compiler and commentator of Russian
translations of Sholem Aleichem’s writings. In the 1950s, she continued her ac-
tivity, which began in 1940, when the State Publishing House produced her edit-
ed collection of stories by the classic writer. The year 1956, the fortieth anniver-
sary of Sholem Aleichem’s death, saw the publication of his stories for children
edited by Rubina for the Publishing House of Children’s Literature. Then in 1957,
the State Publishing House put out a seven-hundred-page volume of Sholem
Aleichem’s prose with an introduction written by Rubina. And in 1959, the
year of Sholem Aleichem’s centenary, another smaller collection of his writings
carried Rubina’s introduction. A biographical article written by her also opened
the first volume of the jubilee collection of Sholem Aleichem’s works, which had
a quarter of a million print-run for each of its six volumes.
The Soviet ideological apparatus saw the Sholem Aleichem centenary as a
public relation, or cultural diplomatic, opportunity for showing the world that
Jewish culture enjoyed full state support. In this climate, Israel Serebriani
(1900 – 1978), a Yiddish literary scholar, had a chance to publish his book Sholem
Aleichem and Folk Creativity in Russian. Originally written in Yiddish, it was
translated by Rashel Miller-Budnitskaia (1906 – 1967), who taught foreign litera-
ture at the Moscow Region Pedagogical Institute.

 G. Estraikh, “Soviet Sholem Aleichem,” in Translating Sholem Aleichem: History, Politics and
Art, ed. G. Estraikh, J. D. Finkin, and M. Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, 2012), 62– 82.
334 Gennady Estraikh

Belenky, ubiquitous in virtually all domains of Soviet Jewish cultural life,

played a central role in the production of books by and on Sholem Aleichem.
The first job that he found after his release from the gulag was at the State Pub-
lishing House of Belles-Lettres, the parent organization of the liquidated Der
Emes. There, he dealt with the project of a hundred volume series of Jewish lit-
erature translated into Russian.²⁴ This project was aborted soon after conception,
but in the meantime, Belenky had secured for himself an influential place in
Jewish-related publishing and was the main person responsible for compiling
and editing the six-volume centenary edition of Sholem Aleichem’s oeuvre.

Ancient History and Philology

It is certainly no coincidence that “history” was conspicuously absent in the
name of the remnant of the IJPC—the Bureau for Research on Jewish Literature,
Language, and Folklore. Publications on ethnic history were of particular con-
cern to Soviet ideologists. Peeter Tulviste, an Estonian scholar, wrote about eth-
nic identity that to a significant degree it

can be conceived as consisting of various texts which interact with each other […] From this
point of view, history texts of various kinds interact with each other and many other texts in
the formation as well as the functioning of individual identity.²⁵

A Soviet Jew usually had few, if any, texts on Jewish history for her or his iden-
tity-generating interactions. Significantly, vigilant functionaries in the Commu-
nist Party’s Central Committee routinely blocked publication of scholarly
works devoted to the Holocaust, and the term itself did not appear in the vocabu-
lary of Soviet books and periodicals.
Readers interested in Jewish history would look for indirect ways of getting
access to information, finding it usually in occasional journalistic coverage of
historical topics or in belles-letters, such as the writings of the German Jewish
novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, the most broadly published German-language writ-
er in the Soviet Union. According to the Soviet statistics for 1917– 1957, his books
came out in sixty editions, translated into eight languages spoken in the Soviet

 G. Kenig, “Der ‘goldener fond’ fun der yidisher literatur in sovetn-farband,” Morgn-Frayhayt,
October 19, 1956, 4.
 P. Tulviste, “History Taught at School Versus History Discovered at Home: The Case of Esto-
nia,” European Journal of Psychology of Education 9, no. 2 (1994): 122 – 23.
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 335

Union, with the total print run of over 2.6 million copies.²⁶ Shimon Markish wrote
the following about the Feuchtwanger phenomenon:

in the second half of the 1950s and in the 1960s his works were published in the USSR
many times. All of his novels with the exception of Jephthas Tochter (Jephtha’s Daughter)
were published or republished within this fifteen-year period, and his collected works in
twelve volumes were published in an edition of 300,000 copies. In all, this comprised a
kind of compendium of Jewish history from the beginning of the Christian era to the
Nazi persecutions. Most Jews of my generation and of the generation after mine experi-
enced the fascination of Feuchtwanger, if not always as a writer at least as a Jew.²⁷

At the same time, Soviet scholars’ studies of the ancient past sometimes touched
on aspects of Jewish history. Such esoteric topics were obviously considered
harmless and incapable of boosting Jewish historical memory. For instance,
readers had access to the 1962 book History of the Khazars by Mikhail Artamonov
(1898 – 1972), director of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. A decade be-
fore its publication, Artamonov had a difficult stretch in his life. In December
1951, he, an archeologist, was attacked in the Pravda, the central party daily
newspaper, for claiming that Khazaria served as a model for Ancient Russia.²⁸
Rumors ascribed the article, bylined “P. Ivanov,” to various people, including
Stalin. It was indeed a serious matter in the climate of the time, when the agit-
prop expected to see validation of Russia’s role as a pioneer rather than an imi-
tator. The experience of the early 1950s left an imprint on Artamonov’s 1962
book, which claimed inter alia that adoption of the Jewish religion by the ruling
class of Khazaria was “a fatal step,” because it severed the government from the
people, replaced pastoral nomadism and agriculture with mercantile middle-
men, and led to the “parasitic enrichment of the ruling elite.”²⁹
This idea that the Khazar state became parasitic after accepting Judaism
found further development in the work of the leading Soviet archeologist
Svetlana Pletneva (1926 – 2008).³⁰ Mikhail Ikhilov (1917– 1998), who defended

 C. Wachsmann, Der sowjetische Heine: Die Heinrich Heine-Rezeption in den russischsprachi-

gen Rezeptionstexten der Sowjetunion (1917 – 1953) (Berlin: Weißensee, 2001), 2.
 S. Markish, “The Role of Officially Published Russian Literature in the Reawakening of Jew-
ish National Consciousness (1953 – 1970),” in Jewish Culture and Identity in the Soviet Inion, ed. Y.
Ro’i and A. Beker (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 227– 28.
 P. Ivanov, “Ob odnoĭ oshibochnoĭ kontsept ͡ sii,”
͡ Pravda, December 25, 1951, 3.
 Artamonov’s 1962 book was also criticized by some historians—see, for example, Ia.͡ A. Fë-
dorov’s review in Voprosy istorii 3 (1963): 146 – 50.
 P. B. Golden, “Khazar Studies: Achievements and Perspectives,” in The World of the Khazars:
New Perspectives. Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium, ed.
336 Gennady Estraikh

his dissertation on history and culture of Mountain (or Caucasus) Jews at the
Moscow Institute of Ethnography in 1949, wrote about Khazars’ involvement in
the ethnogenesis of Mountain Jews. In his treatment of the subject, some of
the Khazars were assimilated by the core group of Jews who had come to the
Caucasus from Persia.³¹
1951 saw the revival of the Palestinian Society, whose roots stemmed from
the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society, established in 1882. Although the re-
vitalized society functioned under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences, its
mission was predominantly in the domain of politics. In January 1962, Armand
Volkov, the Jerusalem-based representative of the Palestinian Society and him-
self an orientalist scholar, visited the Central Rabbinical Library of Israel. He
promised to organize exchange of publications and said that there was room
for visits to the Soviet Union by Israeli academics.³² In June 1962, Zvi Harkavy
(1908 – 1979), director of the Central Rabbinical Library, returned from a visit,
lasting several weeks, to libraries of Moscow and Leningrad. It was a visit to
the country where Harkavy was born and spent the first two decades of his
life. He brought an agreement with the Leningrad State Public Library (from
1992, the National Library of Russia), permitting Israeli researchers to receive
copies of Hebrew manuscripts.³³
The Palestinian Society’s journal, Palestinskii sbornik [Palestine Miscellany],
became an important outlet for academic publications. No mention of the State
(or pre-state period) of Israel would appear in its pages, but the taboo did not
apply to medieval history of Jews and to ancient Israel. Professor Isaac Vinnikov
(1897– 1973), one of the semitologists who contributed to the journal, headed the
department of Assyrian and Hebrew studies at the Leningrad University’s Orien-
tal Faculty in 1945 – 1949 and returned to the university after the forced hiatus in
the late Stalinist years. At the 25th International Congress of Orientalists held in
Moscow in August 1960, Vinnikov chaired the session addressed by Yigal Yadin,
a general turned well-known archaeologist, one of the twelve members of the Is-
raeli delegation. Vinnikov emphasized the importance of applying Marxist meth-

P. B. Golden, H. Ben-Shammai, and A. Róna-Tas (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 34; L. S. Klejn, Soviet Ar-
chaeology: Trends, Schools, and History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 304.
 M. Ikhilov, Narodnosti lezginskoĭ gruppy (Makhachkala: The Dagestan Branch of the Academy
of Sciences, 1967), 149 – 52.
 “Head of Russian Palestine Society Visits Hechal Shlomo,” Jerusalem Post, January 5, 1962, 3.
 “Israeli Scientists Will Attend Red Parley,” The Sentinel, June 28, 1962, 8.
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 337

ods to biblical studies, which meant to look into social and economic context of
biblical texts through the prism of classics of socialist theories.³⁴
The Palestinskii sbornik published articles by the well-established scholar in
Arabic, Aramaic, and Talmudic studies, Iulii (Iudel) Solodukho (1877– 1963),
whose research focused on the Babylonian Talmud but was categorized as stud-
ies of ancient Iraq and Iran. The purges miraculously bypassed Solodukho, de-
spite the fact that in his youth, before turning into a Soviet orientalist, he was
involved in rather “questionable” activities: he studied at the famed Volozhin
yeshiva, was a delegate at the Fifth Zionist Congress, and participated in the He-
brew language movement. According to the American scholar of Judaism Jacob
Neusner, Solodukho “made the effort both to preserve the traditions of Talmud
learning acquired in his youth and to master and make use of the Marxist her-
meneutic which came to dominance in his mature years.”³⁵
Less fortunate was Iosif Amusin (1910 – 1984), a specialist in the history of
the ancient Near East, who, as a member of a Zionist youth organization, lived
through the experience of exile, 1926 – 1930, and incarceration, 1938 – 1939.
Still, he graduated from the Leningrad University and served in the army during
World War II. After 1945, he taught ancient history at the Leningrad Pedagogical
Institute and the Leningrad University until he was fired during the campaign
against “cosmopolitanism.” After a period of unemployment, he found a job
at the Pedagogical Institute in the Volga city of Ulianovsk. Upon returning to
Leningrad in 1954, Amusin worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Ar-
chaeology and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences
and showed great interest in the Dead Sea, or Qumran, scrolls.³⁶
The first Soviet semitologist’s article on the Dead Sea scrolls, written by
Amusin’s colleague Klavdia Starkova (1915 – 2000), appeared in 1958 in the jour-
nal Vestnik drevnei istorii [Bulletin of Ancient History]. Boris Smolar, editor-in-
chief emeritus of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (in the 1920s, he represented
the JTA in Moscow and continued to keep a close eye on the situation in the So-
viet Union), wrote about Starkova in 1969 after visiting Leningrad: “a Russian

 “Voprosy drevneĭ istorii i filologii na 25-om mezhdunarodnom kongresse vostokovedov v

Moskve,” Vestnik drevnei istorii 2 (1961): 143 – 64.
 I. Solodukho, Soviet Views of Talmudic Judaism: Five Papers by Yu. A. Solodukho in English
Translation, ed. J. Neusner (Leiden: Brill, 1973), ix.
 L. N. Gluskina, “The Life and Work of Joseph Amussin,” Revue de Qumrân 14, no. 1 (1989):
109 – 20; Ia.͡ V. Vasil’kov, A. M. Grishina, and F. F. Perchenok, “Repressirovannoe vostokovedenie:
vostokovedy, podvergshiesia ͡ repressiiam ͡ v 20—50-e gody,” Narody Azii i Afriki 4 (1990): 116.
338 Gennady Estraikh

woman who has a record in the scholarly world as being dedicated to the study
of the history of the Jewish people.”³⁷
However, semitologists were not the only scholars interested in the Dead Sea
scrolls. Giler Livshits’ The Qumran Scrolls and Their Historical Significance, the
first pamphlet-sized description of the findings made in the Qumran gorge of
the Dead Sea, was published in 1959 under the imprint of the Belorussian
State University, where the author worked from 1958. In 1967, he put out a
much more substantial volume, The Origin of Christianity in the Light of the
Dead Sea Scrolls. Livshits’ 1957 book, The Class Struggle in Judea and Uprisings
against Rome, which essentially historicized biblical events and characters,
had been a cause of concern to his dogmatic colleagues, who went as far as to
insist on destroying the entire print run. Ultimately, the book reached readers
thanks to enthusiastic reviews by influential Moscow historians. Still, a chapter
on the Jewish diaspora of that time saw publication only a quarter of century
after Livshits’ death.³⁸
While scholars turned to studying the Dead Sea scrolls exclusively, or at
least primarily, for purely academic interest, the Soviet ideological watchdogs
welcomed such studies for a completely different reason, highlighted, for in-
stance, in a review of the 1960 book Scrolls of the Dead Sea by history popular-
izer Anatoly Varshavsky (1920 – 1990). Scientific atheists could use the dating
(long before Jesus), provenance, and content of the scrolls for arguing that the
official history of Christianity and, by extension, of other religions represented
“an enormous falsification.”³⁹ As a result, Varshavsky’s book came out in
50,000 copies under the imprint of the Molodaia gvardiia [Young (Communist)
Guard], one of the biggest Moscow publishing houses. Also in 1960, the Moscow
Publishing House of Political Literature put on the market the book Finds in the
Judean Desert co-authored by Sergei Kovalev (1886 – 1960), director of the Muse-
um of Religion and Atheism, and Mikhail Kublanov (1914– 1998), a historian of
religion. This book had a print run of 55,000. Its revised edition, followed in
1964, had even a bigger print run—68,000.
Kovalev and Kublanov, as well as some other Soviet historians, impugned
one of the previously unquestionable postulates of Soviet historiography of
early Christianity, namely that the birthplace of the new religion located outside
Palestine. The postulate originated from Friedrich Engels’s statement:

 B. Smolar, “Russia Today,” Jewish Advocate, January 2, 1969, 7.

 G. Livshits,͡ Giler Markovich Livshits:͡ K 100-letiiu͡ so dnia͡ rozhdeniia,͡ ed. V.A. Fedosik et al.
(Minsk: Belorussian State University, 2009).
 M. Andreev, “Rukopisi Mërtvogo moria,” ͡ V mire knig 3 (1961): 6.
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 339

The legend that Christianity arose ready and complete out of Judaism and, starting from
Palestine, conquered the world with its dogma already defined in the main and its morals,
… can continue to vegetate only in the theological faculties and with people who wish “to
keep religion alive for the people” even at the expense of science.⁴⁰

Alexander Kazhdan (1922 – 1997), a Soviet Byzantinologist who had been pub-
lishing studies on the Dead Sea scrolls since the 1950s, argued that the whole
massive tradition of Marxist scholars’ assertion that Christianity was born in
Asia Minor, not in Palestine, stemmed from misinterpretations of Engels’s origi-
nal writings. Kazhdan, who consequently emigrated from the Soviet Union and
worked as an academic in the United States, also came to the cautiously phrased
conclusion that Jesus was a historical person.⁴¹
Although Starkova, who pioneered study of Qumran in the Soviet Union,
continued to publish on this theme, Amusin’s works would dominate the Soviet
book market. His book The Dead Sea Scrolls came out in Moscow in two editions,
in 1960 and 1961. In 1962, it appeared in a Slovak translation; translations into
Polish and Romanian followed in 1963.⁴² In 1965, Amusin was awarded a doctor-
ate for this research. At the award ceremony, he concluded his speech with a
quote, in Hebrew, from the Pirkei Avot, a tractate that contains sayings and eth-
ical teachings of the rabbinic sages: “You are not expected to finish the job, but
you cannot shirk the obligation to undertake it.”⁴³ In the same year, the Moscow
publishing house Nauka (Science) put out 60,000 copies of Amusin’s new book,
Finds at the Dead Sea, edited by Vasily Struve (1889 – 1965), the founder of the
Soviet school of historical research of Ancient Orient. In his introduction, one
of his last written works, Struve referred to Engels’s recommendation to study
the historical conditions which led to the rise of Christianity. In other words,
he emphasized that Amusin’s work was useful from the point of view of Marxist
scholarship.
Amusin’s books continued to appear in the coming years, even after 1967,
when a vigilant eye might deem the topic of Qumran ideologically harmful,
being, at least geographically, “too close” to Zionism. His paper, prepared for

 K. Marx and F. Engels, K. Marx and F. Engels on Religion (Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub-
lishing House, 1957), 321.
 D. V. Pospielovsky, Soviet Antireligious Campaigns and Persecutions (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1988), 6 – 7; O. V. Metel, “Sovetskaia ͡ istoriografiia ͡ pervonachalʹnogo khristianstva v kontse͡
50 – 60-kh gg ХХ v.,” Vestnik Omskogo universiteta 4 (2007): 107– 11.
 Z. J. Kapera, “A Bibliography of J. D. Amussin: Concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Revue de
Qumrân 14, no. 1 (1989): 121– 26.
 N. Shraga, “Soviet Jew Gets Ph.D. for Thesis on Jewish Subjects,” The Jerusalem Post, June 22,
1965, 3.
340 Gennady Estraikh

the 27th International Congress of Orientalists held in Ann Arbor in August 1967,
was circulated and reviewed, though he did not attend the event. The Soviets, as
well as Czechoslovaks, Bulgarians, and East Germans had decided to withdraw
at the last moment, due to the current international situation—the war in
Vietnam and the tensions in the Middle East—which made the time inopportune
for cultural and scholarly exchange.⁴⁴

Israel Studies
By either their own choice or the decision of some policy-makers, Leningrad
semitologists were little involved in Israel-related studies or cultural projects.
True, Lev (Arye Chaim Leyb) Vilsker (1919 – 1988), Amusin’s brother-in-law,
who graduated from the Leningrad University in 1950 as a specialist in semitol-
ogy and worked at the Public Library, did numerous literary translations from
Hebrew, signing them “Vilsker-Shumsky.” Shumsk—now a town in the Ternopol
region of Ukraine—was his birthplace. His translations of contemporary literary
works appeared in the 1960s, when Moscow publishers had released four books
of Russian translation of Israeli authors. One of them, the 1966 collection of nov-
ellas written originally in Hebrew, Arabic, and Yiddish carried the title Searchers
of Pearls. It came out under Vilsker’s editorship.(In the 1980s, Vilsker would pub-
lish his research articles in the Sovetish Heymland, most notably on unknown
poems of Yehuda Halevi.)
Nonetheless, the establishment of the State of Israel had necessitated train-
ing of people specifically for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other Soviet
agencies. Joseph Braginsky (1905 – 1989), a well-known Soviet Orientalist, en-
couraged Feliks (Fayvl) Shapiro (1879 – 1961) to work as a teacher of Hebrew.
He knew Shapiro, because many years ago their fathers taught at the same Jew-
ish school in Baku. Shapiro also had experience teaching Hebrew but later
changed his profession. Now, retired, he was happy to return to Hebrew, the
more so as it filled his life with interest and brought additional income.
In 1954, Shapiro threw himself, body and soul, into the work over a Hebrew-
Russian dictionary. Israeli radio programs helped him to reflect the contempo-
rary language usage. For the same purpose, he asked Shmuel Minunis, the
head of the Communist Party of Israel, who visited Shapiro at home, to send

 “Orientalists Begin Meeting in Michigan,” The New York Times, August 14, 1967, 6; Z. J. Ka-
pera, “The Qumran Commentaries and their Significance for the History of the Qumran Commu-
nity by Joseph Amusin,” Revue de Qumrân 6, no. 4 (1969): 590 – 92.
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 341

him a Hebrew newspaper, the Communist Party’s Kol Haam (Voice of the Peo-
ple). Shapiro’s death in 1961 delayed the publication of the dictionary, however.
Two people played decisive roles in preparing the publication afterwards:
Abraham Rubinshtein (d. 1981), a former Jewish actor and later a lecturer of He-
brew at Moscow universities, and Bentsion Grande (1891– 1974), a leading Soviet
semitologist. Grande wrote an overview of Hebrew grammar for this edition.⁴⁵ In
large part thanks to this dictionary, the word ivrit (Hebrew) increasingly ap-
peared in Soviet publications. Cleary, the term drevneevreiskii iazyk [Old Jewish
language], used in Russian-language literature, could no longer be used to de-
note the Hebrew spoken in contemporary Israel.⁴⁶
In 1964, Tbilisi hosted the first Conference on Semitic languages, with papers
on ancient and modern Hebrew. The choice of the place was not random: the
Tbilisi University had a department of Semitic studies at the Faculty of Oriental
Studies. In 1960, the founder and head of the department, the distinguished ori-
entalist Giorgi V. Tsereteli (1904– 1973), was allowed to establish the Institute of
Oriental Studies at the university. Shapiro and Rubinshtein took part in the
Tbilisi conference with papers on the contemporary lexis of Hebrew. Michael
Zand (b. 1927), a Moscow orientalist whose main expertise was in the Persian
and Tajik languages and cultures, spoke on Yiddish as a substrate of contempo-
rary Hebrew.⁴⁷ (A decade later, Zand’s struggle for emigration to Israel won the
support of academicians in the Unites States and other countries.)
In Moscow, the academic Institute of Oriental Studies had scholars special-
izing in Israel studies. In 1953, one of them, Galina Nikitina (1924– 1982), defend-
ed a candidate dissertation, on the basis of which she wrote her 1956 book The
Suez Canal—the National Asset of the Egyptian People. The idea that Israel had
revealed itself as an aggressive outpost of the USA was central in her 1958 article
“Israel and American Imperialism.”⁴⁸ Economic and political expansion of Israel
in Africa, a popular topic in the Soviet press, was also discussed in academic
publications, notably in Nikitina’s 1963 article in the scholarly journal Peoples

 “1962, Moskve, ivrit-rusish verterbukh,” Sovetish Heymland 5 (1962): 104; L. Prestina and F. L.
͡
Shapiro, Slovar’ zapreshchennogo iazyka: 125-letiiu͡ F. L. Shapiro (Minsk: MET, 2005), 18, 20 – 22,
175; Iu.͡ I. Kostenko, “Prepodavanie ivrita v MGIMO,” Iazyk ͡ ivrit: issledovanie i prepodavanie 43
(Moscow: Sefer, 2012), 102– 4.
 A. Iu.͡ Aĭkhenval’d, Sovremennyĭ ivrit (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 8 – 9.
 M. Agranovskaia,͡ Evrei v Rossii: istoriograficheskie ocherki 2-ia ͡ polovina XIX veka–XX vek
(Moscow: Jewish University, 1994), 173.
 G. S. Nikitina, “Izrail’ i amerikanskii imperializm,” Sovetskoe vostokovedenie 5 (1958): 71– 79.
342 Gennady Estraikh

of Asia and Africa. ⁴⁹ Judging by her publications, she could not read Hebrew
sources and relied on translations and publications in English. Her 1968 book
The State of Israel: A Historical Economic and Political Study (which also came
out in Polish and English and shaped her 1977 doctoral dissertation—the first So-
viet doctoral dissertation on Israel) would set a tone for academic endeavors in
this field.⁵⁰ Some contemporary authors find parallels between Nikitina’s analy-
sis and the later theories of the Israeli “new historians” and “critical sociolo-
gists,” particularly in rejecting the claims that Jewish-Israeli history represented
a continuous national history, starting with the biblical era and going on unbro-
ken until the establishment of the State of Israel.⁵¹

Conclusion
As part of the strategy aimed at assimilation of Jews to the dominant culture, the
ideological apparatus of the Soviet Union could consider its strategy of restrict-
ing and deforming Jewish-related academic and popular scholarship publica-
tions a success. This strategy had contributed to depriving the vast majority of
Soviet Jews of cultural memory. To them, Jewish history was a virtual blank.
Few people had access to books, including ones brought overtly or covertly
from abroad, which could satisfy their curiosity and contribute to fostering
their national pride and identity. Suppression of cultural memory by applying
a straightjacket or an outright ban to works on ethnic history was seen as a
way to dispel the rising tide of emigration, which would become especially
strong in the 1970s, but began to spread, in particular, following the late
1950s repatriation of over 18,000 Jews to Poland and their (in the vast majority
of cases) subsequent emigration to Israel.⁵²
In reality, however, this cultural “awakening” was not the only or the main
driving force of the Jewish emigration in the last decades of the Soviet Union. A
more potent factor was the glass ceiling facing Jews in society, limiting their ed-
ucational, social, and professional mobility, especially after 1967. As Mikhail (or
Michael, as he later became known) Zand wrote soon after arriving in Israel,

 G. S. Nikitina, “Ėkspansiia ͡ Izrailia ͡ v Afriku i neokolonializm,” Narody Azii i Afriki 3 (1963):

36 – 44.
 V. V. Bol’shakov, “Kritika sionizma v sovetskoĭ istoriografii,” Voprosy istorii 9 (1973): 78 – 88.
̆ and S. A. Kozheurov, Rossiia͡ i Izrail’: trudnyi ̆ put’ navstrechu (Jerusalem and
 A. D. Ė pshtein
Moscow: Gesharim/Mosty kul’tury, 2011), 29 – 33.
 G. Estraikh, “Escape through Poland: Soviet Jewish Emigration in the 1950s,” Jewish History
31, no. 3 – 4 (2018): 291– 317.
 Sholem Aleichem and Qumran: Jewish-Related Scholarship 343

“every [Soviet] Jew, except the genius, knows there are certain positions he can
never occupy and that he cannot hope to rise to the top.”⁵³ At play were also
other non-cultural and often “non-Jewish” factors motivating Jews to leave,
most notably the general disillusionment with the Soviet system. In other
words, social and economic circumstances had almost nullified the “achieve-
ments” of cultural assimilation policies.
In a cruel sense, however, the oppressive policies against studies of Jews and
Judaism was not completely ineffective. It certainly had a devastating effect on
the state of Jewish studies in the country. In 1987, Igor Krupnik, a leader of
the independent Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Commission in Moscow,
listed Jewish history and philology among the most neglected areas of study.⁵⁴
Apart from semitology, which had a more or less natural intergenerational trans-
fer of knowledge,⁵⁵ virtually all branches in the field of studies of Jews and Juda-
ism had to be established anew in the 1990s. The independent, grassroots re-
search groups, which appeared in Moscow and Leningrad in the early 1980s,
left little trace in Russian academia, because the majority of their participants,
many of them refuseniks, left the country in the late 1980s or in the 1990s
and continued their studies in Israel or the United States.⁵⁶ As a result, more
often than not, Jewish studies in Russia and other post-Soviet states still struggle
to this day to put down roots through the layers of wasteland left from the Soviet
period.

Gennady Estraikh is a Professor at Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Stud-

ies, New York University. His research and publications are mainly in the fields of
Yiddish studies, and intellectual history of Jewish socialism and communism. His
most recent monograph is Transatlantic Russian Jewishness: Ideological Voyages
of the Yiddish Daily Forverts in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (2020).

 M. Zand, “A Reply to Mr. Davies,” The New York Times, December 6, 1971, 39.
 I. Krupnik, “The Contribution of the Younger Generation of Soviet Scholars to Jewish Studies
in the USSR,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 17, no. 2 (1987): 45.
 I. R. Tantlevskiĭ, “Il’ia ͡ Sholeĭmovich Shifman (1930 – 1990),” in Il’ia ͡ S. Shifman, Karfagen
͡
(St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Press, 2006), 3 – 6; S. Iakerson, “‘Ia͡ ostalsia ͡ v Lenin-
͡ ͡
grade, chtoby stat’ gebraistom’,” in Sovetskaia iudaika: istoriia, problematika, personalii, ed.
M. Kupovetskiĭ͡ (Jerusalem and Moscow: Gesharim/Mosty kul’tury, 2017), 273 – 85.
 I. Krupnik, “Kak my zanimalis’ istorieĭ… i ėtnografieĭ: K 35-letiiu͡ Evreĭskoĭ istoriko-ėtnogra-
ficheskoĭ komissii, 1981—1990 gg,” in Sovetskaia͡ iudaika: istoriia,͡ problematika, personalii, ed. M.
͡ (Jerusalem and Moscow: Gesharim/Mosty kul’tury, 2017), 286 – 360; M. Beizer, “Jew-
Kupovetskiĭ
ish Studies Underground in Leningrad in the 1980s,” East European Jewish Studies 48, no. 1
(2018): 56 – 77.
344 Gennady Estraikh

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v Moskve.” Vestnik drevnei istorii 2 (1961): 143 – 64. [Russian]
Nikitina, G. S. “Ėkspansiia ͡ Izrailia ͡ v Afriku i neokolonializm.” Narody Azii i Afriki 3 (1963):
36 – 44. [Russian]
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Alan Silberstein
Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against
Antisemitism

Who Was Sister Rose?

Who was this woman often called a “feisty nun?”¹ Sister Rose Thering (1920 –
2006) was a member of the order of Dominican Sisters, who devoted the majority
of her long life to the fight against injustice and discrimination, and in particu-
lar, antisemitism in the Roman Catholic Church. Her graduate school research on
the treatment of minorities, especially the Jews, in Catholic textbooks directly
impacted Nostra Aetate. This document was the Declaration of the Second Vati-
can Council on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, promulgat-
ed by Pope Paul VI in 1965, which removed the pariah label from the Jewish re-
ligion in Roman Catholic teaching.
For the next forty years, she worked hard, and effectively, to ensure that
church teaching matched the new framework. Working from her base at Seton
Hall University, a Roman Catholic school in New Jersey, she brought Jews and
Christians to study together. She became a chief proponent of Holocaust educa-
tion, a battler for Jewish causes, and a proponent for Israel. Perhaps her most
lasting contribution was to promote a state education mandate requiring that
the lessons of the Holocaust be taught at every grade level in her home state;
a requirement which has since been emulated in several of the most populous
American states.
Sister Rose was raised in the early twentieth century, in a large, religiously
observant German-American Roman Catholic family in Plain, Wisconsin, a small
rural town in the Midwest. At a young age, she decided to become a nun, like
three of her aunts; and also, a teacher. She selected the Dominicans rather
than her aunts’ Franciscan order, because this would assure her the opportunity
to become a teacher.²
Rose Thering entered religious life at age eighteen, in 1938, and took her
vows two years later. For the next seventeen years, she worked as a teacher
and administrator in Catholic schools in the Midwest. She also earned her mas-

 More correctly, she was a “religious sister,” as her order was non-cloistered.
 Cf. Sr. R. Thering, “Oral History Interview,” interview by Sr. I. Schmidt O.P., August 5, 1993 (Ar-
chives of the Sienna Center, Racine).

OpenAccess. © 2021 Alan Silberstein, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-018
348 Alan Silberstein

ter’s degree in education, at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota,
though her thesis topic gave no hint of her passion for fighting discrimination.
Her thesis related to preparing adolescent girls for entering the religious life.
As far as Sister Rose knew, in her youth, she had never met a Jew. She said
later that, as a child, she was troubled by what she learned in school about Jews
and by the antisemitism she perceived in her own family. And, as a teacher, she
was disturbed by the way the approved textbooks described the Jews, both in
Jesus’ time and in her day.
Non-Jews who resisted the antisemitism of their peers tend to fall into to two
camps: The first are people whose childhood friendships with Jews made it un-
thinkable for them to accept antisemitic values. A good example of this is Pope
John Paul II, whose childhood and lifelong friendship with Jerzy Kluger contrib-
uted to the pope’s fierce opposition to antisemitism and his becoming the first
pope to visit a synagogue. Another example is Winston Churchill, criticized for
being “too fond of the Jews,” an attitude attributed by his biographer³ to child-
hood friendships with Jews.
The second are Jewish converts to Christianity, who cannot reconcile antise-
mitic attitudes with their own continued racial identification as Jews. Examples
include Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher and Fr. Paul Demann, both of whom became
major figures in the life and work of Sister Rose Thering. They were devout Cath-
olics who, for a long time, were devoted to converting other Jews. But, they also
deplored the contempt with which Jews were held, arguing that love, not hate,
would more likely win them over as converts.
However, Sister Rose does not fit either pattern. In my search to explain Sis-
ter Rose’s commitment to fighting antisemitism, I can find no motivation stron-
ger than her innate hatred of injustice. She felt that antisemitism was immoral
and also illogical. She developed a series of arguments that took complete
form in her PhD thesis.
Her order urged her to complete her PhD in education so she could take a
leadership role at the Dominican College. In 1957, at age 37, she began her
PhD studies at Saint Louis University, one of the oldest Catholic universities in
the US, located in St. Louis, Missouri, under Jesuit Father Trafford P. Maher of
the Education Department. This university was already involved in projects to
promote interreligious understanding. Father Maher was the leader of their
Workshops in Human Relations. For Sister Rose’s dissertation topic, he recruited
her to study how Catholic religious teaching materials present other faith, racial,
and national groups. This put her in the right place at the right time to make a

 Author’s private discussion with Martin Gilbert, London, August 2006.

 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 349

major intellectual contribution to a most historic revision, eight years later, in the
Catholic Church’s views on Jews. Her thesis research was used by the represen-
tatives of the American Jewish Committee to convince the Ecumenical Council
that the stand of the Catholic Church on the Jews needed to change. Judith
Hershcopf Banki of the American Jewish Committee called this timing “providen-
tial.”⁴ She may have been thinking of the Yiddish word, “bashert.”

The American Jewish Committee Textbook

Studies
How did the idea of such a textbook study come about? It was proposed by the
American Jewish Committee. The AJC was first organized in 1906 to advocate for
the defense of Jews in response to pogroms in Kishinev, in the Russian Empire.
Their objective was “the protection, the preservation and the extension of the
civil and religious rights and privileges of Jews.”⁵ The AJC and other Jewish
groups thought that what was being taught in religious schools was contributing
to tension among American citizens. In fact, the first such studies were self-crit-
ical reviews of textbooks used in Jewish Schools. In 1935, the Synagogue Council
of America reviewed more than 300 Jewish textbooks and recommended that a
quarter of them be discontinued. It also called for the inclusion of positive Jewish
teaching on Jewish-Gentile relationships in Jewish textbooks.
In 1958, Rabbi Morris N. Kertzer, AJC’s Director of Interreligious Affairs, de-
cided to initiate a series of textbook “self-studies” by Jews, Protestants, and
Catholics to determine how each group taught their students in America to un-
derstand members of other religions. These were to be conducted by scholars,
each from their own faith’s perspective. While these projects were funded by
the AJC, they were meant to be “independent studies, carried out and supervised
by faithful adherents of the religion studied.”⁶ The study of Jewish textbooks was
conducted by Dr. Bernard D. Weinryb of Dropsie College, now part of the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania. It concluded that while the Jewish material tended to make
very little mention of non-Jewish groups, almost no negative views were ex-
pressed.⁷ The Protestant study was supervised by Dr. Bernhard Olson of Yale

 Author’s oral interview with Judith Banki, December 21, 2017, Sydney.
 “Jews to Help Race. Form Big Organization,” New York Daily Tribune, November 12, 1906.
 J. Banki, “Pivotal Figure: The Woman Behind ‘Nostra Aetate,’” Commonweal Magazine, June
16, 2006, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/pivotal-figure.
 E. Fisher, “Perspectives: Christian Teaching and Judaism,” SIDIC Periodical 9, no. 3 (1976): 19.
350 Alan Silberstein

University and completed in 1960. It found significant anti-Jewish sentiment ex-

pressed in the textbooks used by the major denominations of Protestantism to
teach their youth.
For the Catholic study, the AJC approached Fr. Maher of Saint Louis Univer-
sity. Father Maher recruited three doctoral candidates to each conduct part of the
study. Sister Mary Linus Gleason was assigned an analysis of English literature
textbooks used in Catholic parochial schools. Sister Mary Rita Mudd was as-
signed an analysis of social studies textbooks. And, in 1959, Sister Rose Thering
began her study of religion textbooks. Later in life, she told a friend that she
knew from her days as a teacher that that was where all the controversial mate-
rial was to be found.⁸

The Catholic Religion Textbook Study

Sister Rose entitled her dissertation, “The Potential in Religion Textbooks for De-
veloping a Realistic Self Concept: A Content Analysis.” She argued that

it is in their curriculum materials that religious schools nurture students in the particular
faith which such schools are designed to foster. This almost inevitably involves reference to
and comparison with other faith and ethnic groups.

The question she wanted to answer is:

Does it necessarily follow that the portrait of such groups—religious, racial, ethnic—will be
unfavorable and prejudicial in comparison with the self-portrait?⁹

For inspiration as to the methodology of her study, as well as for the implica-
tions, she drew heavily on prior work of a similar nature, completed in 1952 in
France by Fr. Demann, whose own book was called The Teaching of Contempt,
and on the Protestant study being completed at Yale by Bernhard Olson. To en-
sure that her conclusions would be representative, she identified the most fre-
quently used books in Catholic schools and selected sixty-five volumes (texts
and teaching guides) from eight publishers. Some of these books dated back
to the 1930s, but many were revised or published in the late 1950s.

 Cf. Author’s oral interview with Sister Michelle Ollie, Racine, January 4, 2018.
 Sr. R. M. A. Thering, O.P., “The Potential in Religion Textbooks for Developing a Realistic Self
Concept: A Content Analysis” (PhD diss., Saint Louis University, 1961).
 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 351

She then proceeded to identify every single reference in these books to a re-
ligious or racial group, evaluated the references to determine whether they re-
flected prejudice, and of what kind. Jews were but one of nine categories:
1. Catholic Non-Roman
2. Protestant
3. Jewish
4. Other Non-Christian
5. Non-Catholic in General
6. Negro
7. Other Ethnic
8. International
9. General

She evaluated each reference according to whether it reflected prejudice and the
type of portrait painted. And she evaluated whether the portrait, as compared
with Roman Catholics, was negative, positive, neutral, or undifferentiated. She
encoded these findings into arithmetic scores and compiled the data by publish-
er. Most importantly, she also provided quotations from the texts and teaching
guides to exemplify her classifications. The example quotations of the disparag-
ing comments may have been more compelling than the fairly anodyne statisti-
cal scores.
She gave examples of disparaging comments regarding Protestants and oth-
ers, and of respectful comments regarding Jews. However, she found a preoccu-
pation with Jews and disparaging views dominant.
Based on her analyses and her belief that the disparagement was unwarrant-
ed, she made these recommendations to the publishers in her dissertation:
1. Show the continuity of Old and New Testaments.
2. Show Jesus as a Jew with a Jewish mother and, his Apostles and disciples as
his Jewish friends.
3. Give a true picture of Judaism in the days of Jesus and stop denigrating pre-
sent-day Jews.
4. State clearly that the conflict was between Jesus and only some of the Jewish
leaders.
5. Avoid identifying “all the Jewish people,” then or now, with some of the
leaders of the Jews who plotted against Jesus.
6. Refrain from making negative value judgements of the Jewish people.
7. Explain that in the crucifixion, Jesus suffered and died for the salvation of
all.
8. Emphasize that nothing in the New Testament authorizes anyone to think
that the Jewish people alone are under reprobation or a curse.
352 Alan Silberstein

She pointed out that all these recommendations fit well within then existing
church dogma. She was imploring textbook publishers to be kinder, or as she
would put it, more accurate, in their presentation of the Jews.

How the Jews Got a Place at Vatican II

Were it not for Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, these textbook studies might
have been destined for the library and not for the pivotal role they played in his-
tory. However, the year that the AJC commissioned these textbook studies, 1958,
was the very same year that Pope John XXIII was elected. Because of his age, 76,
he was expected by many observers to be a “caretaker.” But he surprised them by
announcing his plan to call an ecumenical council to discuss and settle matters
of church doctrine and practice.
By “ecumenical,” the pope meant embracing all branches of Christianity,
not the panoply of world religions later included. When the new pope “was field-
ing ideas for the Council, almost none of the bishops and theologians canvassed
suggested that the church speak out on the Jews.”¹⁰ However, this new pope did
have a history of empathy for Jews. As Bishop Roncalli, while serving as a
Vatican diplomat in Turkey and Greece during World War II, he was credited
with saving tens of thousands of Jews by issuing baptismal certificates and by
interfering with deportations.¹¹ Pope John also made an important gesture
early in his reign by altering the Good Friday prayers to remove a reference to
“perfidious (deceitful and untrustworthy) Jews.”¹²
From the beginning of his papacy, Pope John entered into a series of discus-
sions with a French Jewish historian, and former Superintendent of Public In-
struction in France, Jules Isaac, who had lost his wife and daughter in the Holo-
caust. Isaac spoke with the pope at length about both the Holocaust and the
harmful consequences of some church teachings. And, reportedly, Isaac was en-
couraged to make this point by his friend Fr. Demann, who had completed his
own textbook study. It is to these discussions that scholars attribute the
pope’s decision to expand the scope of the ecumenical council to include the
Jews.

 J. Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933 –
1965 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 240.
 Cf. T. L. McDonald, “John XXIII and the Jews,” The Catholic World Report, April 3, 2014,
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2014/04/03/john-xxiii-and-the-jews/.
 Connelly, From Enemy to Brother, 240.
 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 353

During the two years before the formal opening of Vatican II, preparation in-
volved the appointment of ten commissions, one of which, the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity, would take up the Jewish question. In June, 1960,
the pope appointed Cardinal Augustin Bea to head this commission. Cardinal
Bea was a German priest and a biblical scholar with some experience in Chris-
tian-Jewish dialogue. He reached out to Catholic scholars, to Jewish representa-
tives and also, to American Bishops, whom he knew to be advocates for improv-
ing relations with the Jews.

American Jewish Committee at Vatican II

The AJC, as well as other Jewish organizations, took the announcements in Rome
as an opportunity to launch a broad diplomatic approach, with a team of repre-
sentatives from the US and Europe opening communications with various offi-
cials. Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, recently appointed to succeed Kertzer as Director
of Interreligious Affairs at the AJC, was among the most active representatives of
the Jewish community working to support Cardinal Bea’s work. In assembling
his team, 36-year-old Rabbi Tanenbaum recognized that his former teacher at
the Jewish Theological Seminary, the 54-year-old theologian and philosopher,
Rabbi Abraham Heschel, might be an effective liaison with the 80-year-old Car-
dinal Bea, as both were biblical scholars educated in Germany.¹³ Heschel and
Bea hit it off and met several times in Rome, Boston, and New York.¹⁴ While Car-
dinal Bea was sympathetic to what he was being told about the injuries caused
by Catholic teaching, he asked for academic papers to support the Jewish posi-
tion.
For the first paper, Rabbi Tanenbaum turned to Judith Hershcopf Banki who
had met with all the textbook scholars. When the request came to prepare a
paper for Cardinal Bea, she prepared her own summary of Sister Rose’s findings,
which the AJC submitted in 1961.¹⁵

 Cf. G. Spruch, Wide Horizons: Abraham Joshua Heschel, AJC, and the Spirit of Nostra Aetate
(New York: American Jewish Committee, 2008), 4.
 Cf. D. H. Strober and G. S. Strober, Confronting Hate: The Untold Story of the Rabbi who Stood
up for Human Rights, Racial Justice, and Religious Reconciliation (New York: Skyhorse, 2019).
 It is noteworthy, as pointed out to the author by Fr. John T. Pawlikowski, OSM in an interview
on December 27, 2017, that neither woman’s name—Rose or Judith—was identified anywhere in
this or subsequent submissions to the Vatican. Father Pawlikowski is the author of Catechetics
and Prejudice: How Catholic Teaching Materials View Jews, Protestants and Racial Minorities
(New York: Paulist Press, 1973), which was based on Sister Rose’s thesis research.
354 Alan Silberstein

Banki’s paper, “The Image of Jews in Catholic Teaching,” made the case that
such teaching, “particularly in the United States—is fostering prejudice and hos-
tility.”¹⁶ The AJC paper called on the pope to improve

Catholic teaching about Jews and Judaism, by cleansing all Catholic educational and litur-
gical publications of inaccurate, distorted, slanderous or prejudiced statements about Jews
as a group.¹⁷

Herein, Banki drew heavily on Sister Rose’s not-yet-completed dissertation for

pedagogical arguments and conclusions about what was being said in religious
textbooks. Like Sister Rose’s dissertation, Banki’s paper appealed to a higher
purpose than just sympathy or even justice for the Jews. Where Sister Rose
spoke of the importance of mutual respect among the citizens of the American
democracy, Banki said that

prejudice against any religious group today inevitably weakens the entire fabric of society,
degrades both the haters and the victims, and saps the spiritual strength of all mankind…
[and] … serves only to advance the cause of anti-religious forces.¹⁸

She acknowledged that antisemitism was not the policy of the church but point-
ed out that “Catholic religious teaching today contains defamatory misstate-
ments and omissions which may encourage hostility and contempt for Jews.”¹⁹
She pointed out many ways in which typical descriptions of Jews in teaching,
and preaching, violated church dogma.
She pointed out typical textbook practices:
‒ Blaming the Jews—all those alive in Jesus’ day, as well as in present times,
for the crime of deicide: “When they (the Jews) would not heed the Prophets,
He sent His only-begotten Son to call them to repentance. Him also they put
to death. Because of this fact, they were finally rejected by God and their
rights to His Kingdom were given to others.”²⁰
‒ Using the term “Jews” pejoratively to present them as “hate ridden, cruel and
materialistic”; while in positive statements about the Jews of the Old Testa-
ment, the term “Hebrews” or “Israelites” was preferred: “Jesus … was reject-

 J. H. Banki, “The Image of the Jews in Catholic Teaching: A Memorandum to the Secretariat
for Christian Unity,” submitted by the American Jewish Committee, issued June 22, 1961, http://
www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/6 A3.PDF, 2.
 Ibid., 28.
 Ibid., 2.
 Ibid., 4.
 Ibid., 12.
 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 355

ed by the leaders of the Jewish people … because of their material and carnal
minds.”²¹
‒ Unjust or inaccurate comparisons of the Jewish religion with Christianity:
“The Jews believed that one should hate an enemy; but Christ taught the op-
posite.”²²
‒ Omissions such as failing to acknowledge the Jewish roots of Christianity or
the continuity between the Old and New Testaments: “There can be no
doubt that the world must thank the Catholic Church for the Bible.”²³

The use of extensive quotations from textbooks provided irrefutable proof. These
examples were quite powerful. When Cardinal Bea was presented with these ex-
amples, he is said to have replied, “through our negative teaching we have pro-
mulgated the hatred against Jews, culminating in the Holocaust; and these must
go.”²⁴
Additional AJC memoranda were submitted in November of that same year:
“Anti-Jewish Elements in Catholic Liturgy,”²⁵ and “On Improving Catholic-Jewish
Relations”²⁶ prepared by Rabbi Heschel.

Vatican Council II’s Four Sessions 1962 – 1965

What happened next is a tale of leadership, diplomacy, and intrigue that cannot
be covered here adequately. The Vatican Council met over a four-year period. For-
mal meetings occurred several weeks each fall. However, important delibera-
tions and negotiations occurred in the interim periods. Pope John XXIII con-
vened the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in October 1962 but died only
six months later. His successor, Pope Paul VI, maintained the momentum, open-
ing three more sessions. At the final session in 1965, the council voted to approve
four “constitutions” and three “declarations,” one of which was Nostra Aetate
(In Our Time): The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Re-
ligions.

 Ibid., 15.
 Ibid., 18.
 Ibid., 20.
 Thering, “Oral History Interview.”
 Cf. A. J. Heschel, “Anti-Jewish Elements in Catholic Liturgy,” submitted by the American Jew-
ish Committee, issued November 17, 1961, http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/6 A2.PDF.
 A. J. Heschel, “On Improving Catholic-Jewish Relations,” issued May 22, 1962, http://www.
ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/6 A4.PDF.
356 Alan Silberstein

It is important to realize that the issuance of a statement on the Jews was not
preordained. In fact, “this statement was the most contested matter the bishops
faced over four years of deliberations.”²⁷
The proposal to issue a resolution on relations with the Jews was introduced
in the first session, then subsequently withdrawn. Strong drafts were circulated,
then watered down. During the intervening periods, additional papers were sub-
mitted. During the three years before the final adjournment in 1965, there was
extensive lobbying by Jewish groups, including the AJC, in Rome and with influ-
ential bishops in the United States. On the other side, there was pressure from
conservative Christian leaders who objected to changing the church’s teaching
about the Jews, by Arab leaders who objected politically, and by Christian lead-
ers from Arab countries who feared the repercussions to their own people. Over-
hanging these deliberations was the moral weight of the Holocaust cast by such
events as the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann and, in 1963, the controversial play,
The Deputy, which portrayed Pope Pius XII as having failed to speak out against
the Holocaust. Finally, as the closing session approached, the declaration was
reintroduced and expanded to include favorable references to Muslims, Hindus,
Buddhists, and other religions.
Writing with the perspective of the passage of fifty years, Rabbi Noam
Marans, one of Rabbi Tanenbaum’s successors at the AJC, assessed the impact
thus:

Nostra Aetate was a sea change, a Copernican revolution, a Catholic self-reflection in the
wake of the Shoah, that launched a new era of Catholic-Jewish relations. It rejected the
charge that Jews are collectively guilty of killing Jesus, a charge that facilitated violence di-
rected at Jews for centuries. Nostra Aetate prohibited Catholic teachings portraying Jews as
accursed. It condemned antisemitism, affirmed Christianity’s Jewish roots and opened a
conversation that ultimately led to a Catholic embrace of the eternity of God’s covenant
with the Jewish people.²⁸

Sister Rose said simply, “In fifteen Latin lines that document … changed our neg-
ative relationship with Jews to a positive one.”²⁹

 Connelly, From Enemy to Brother, 240; emphasis added.

 N. Marans, “The Vatican Document of December 10, 2015 ‘God’s Gift and Calling’ Builds on
Nostra Aetate,” John Oesterreicher Memorial Lecture, Seton Hall University, November 3, 2016.
 Thering, “Oral History Interview.”
 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 357

Turning Policy into Action

With the promulgation of Nostra Aetate, and a call for “fraternal encounter,” the
Catholic Church and the Jewish community established formal liaison commit-
tees and other bodies, which continue to this day to serve as forums for interre-
ligious dialogue. In the United States, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the
very same group that issues the imprimatur for the Catholic textbooks, sum-
moned educators and book publishers to a meeting in Washington. They told
the publishers that their textbooks had to change and directed them to hire Jew-
ish scholars to review their texts in light of Nostra Aetate. ³⁰
In 1967, the conference issued guidelines,³¹ calling for changes to traditional
teaching, in a litany, which mirrors quite well the recommendations of Sister
Rose and Banki. These guidelines, and subsequent guidelines issued in 1975
and 1985 called for dialogue, avoidance of proselytizing, educational programs
at Catholic schools and universities, and joint scholarly enterprises. And, that

School texts, prayer books, and other media should, under competent auspices, be exam-
ined in order to remove not only those materials which do not accord with the content and
spirit of the Statement (Nostra Aetate), but also those which fail to show Judaism’s role in
salvation history in any positive light.³²

The conference also established a Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations, to

which Sister Rose was invited to serve as an advisor. She continued to serve
for twenty years.
Over the decades since Sister Rose conducted her textbook study, there have
been several more textbook studies, and these have demonstrated continued
progress. One researcher, Philip A. Cunningham said that in 1994, he was

 Cf. Author’s oral interview with Fr. John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, December 27, 2017, Chicago,
Illinois.
 Cf. “Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations,” Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Inter-
religious Affairs, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued March 1967, http://www.usccb.
org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/jewish/upload/Guidelines-for-Catho
lic-Jewish-Dialogue-1967.pdf.
 “Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations—1985 Revision,” Bishops’ Committee for Ecumen-
ical and Interreligious Affairs, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued 1985, http://
www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year/lent/guidelines-for-catholic-jewish-relations.
cfm.
358 Alan Silberstein

able to chart the dramatic reversals in Catholic teaching about Jews that resulted from Nos-
tra Aetate and to which Rose Thering had made such an important contribution. The trans-
formation from the materials … were truly startling.³³

Sister Rose after Nostra Aetate

In 1961, what did a newly minted PhD, interested in Christian-Jewish relations
find to do in a world that had not yet heard of Nostra Aetate? To understand
the turns in Sister Rose’s life, it is necessary to go back to 1959, to take note of
a watershed event that occurred while she was still at Saint Louis University.
The university scheduled an “Education Day” to which were invited Catholic
school superintendents and book publishers from around the US. The textbook
scholars from the three universities, including Sister Rose, presented their meth-
ods and their findings.
As Sister Rose began presenting her conclusions, an animated discussion
began, and she was severely criticized by some of the leaders. One bishop said

Rose Thering said Pope John XXIII inspired her because he took the word “perfidious” out
of the prayer we used to pray on Good Friday. But I want Rose Thering to know that he
hasn’t changed the Gospel, and he never will.³⁴

Another called the local bishop to say that a nun was bad-mouthing the church.
She was summoned and asked about her research. While he permitted her to
continue, he urged her not to publicize her findings: “Don’t hang out our dirty
laundry in public.” “Well,” she said later, “I hung it out.”³⁵ The experience
was a searing one. Rather than becoming submissive, she became radicalized.
She authorized her professor to publish her work under his name because “it
had to get out.”³⁶ She completed her thesis and received her degree. She deter-
mined that Jewish-Christian relations would become her calling, and she expect-
ed that it would make her a better Christian.

 “In Memory of Sister Rose,” Boston College Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, issued
2006, accessed May 19, 2020, https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/texts/
cjrelations/news/thering_tribute.htm.
 C. G. Rogers, Habits of Change: An Oral History of American Nuns (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011), 159.
 O. Jacoby, dir., Sister Rose’s Passion, Documentary Film, 2004.
 Thering, “Oral History Interview.”
 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 359

She returned to Racine to head the Dominican College’s Department of Ed-

ucation, as requested by her community. Two years later, in 1963, while serving
in this capacity, Sister Rose traveled to Chicago to attend the National Conference
on Religion and Race with representatives of Catholic, Jewish and Protestant or-
ganizations. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who spoke, called it “the most sig-
nificant and historic [convention] ever held for attacking racial injustice.”³⁷
There, Sister Rose, Rev. King, and Rabbi Heschel all met each other for the
first time. This experience inspired her to find more impactful work. In 1965,
she relocated to Chicago to become an activist on the staff of the Catholic
Adult Education Center, which was already deeply involved in interracial justice.
She added Jewish studies to their agenda, inviting as speakers, scholars who
were engaged in cutting edge interreligious work.

Seton Hall
In 1968, Sister Rose was recruited to New Jersey to join the staff of Seton Hall
University’s Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies, the first such academic institu-
tion in the world. It was founded by Msgr. Oesterreicher, one of the pioneers of
inter-religious dialogue. Monsignor Oesterreicher had been a theology advisor to
Cardinal Bea during Vatican II and wrote part of Nostra Aetate.
Born a Jew in Moravia, then part of Austria, in 1904, he converted to Roman
Catholicism and became a priest in 1927. He considered himself simultaneously a
Catholic and still a member of the Jewish people. Throughout his life, he was an
advocate of Jewish-Catholic reconciliation and fought “antisemitism from a Cath-
olic point of view.”³⁸ He argued that since the roots of Christianity were in Juda-
ism, Christian antisemitism was illogical. Also, he argued that his fellow Jews
could more easily be won over to Christianity with kindness than with contempt.
He fought and fled the Nazis, first in Austria, then in France; and he finally fled
to the United States in 1940. His parents were killed in Theresienstadt and
Auschwitz. He was ministering to a congregation in New York City, when in
1953, with the encouragement of a wealthy congregant, he created the institute
dedicated to Catholic-Jewish relations in partnership with Seton Hall. At the in-
augural lecture, he explained the need:

 S. Pieza, “Rev. King Urges Boycott by Churches to Fight Bias,” Chicago’s American, January
16, 1963.
 Connelly, From Enemy to Brother, 11.
360 Alan Silberstein

Today in the United States, and particularly here in the East, such millions as never before
of Christians and Jews are living side by side. Should they not know more of one another
than what the newspapers provide?³⁹

Because of his academic reputation, Cardinal Bea engaged him in the work of the
ecumenical council.
At Seton Hall, Sister Rose organized what she and Msgr. Oesterreicher called
the “Menorah Studies” program, which brought Catholic School teachers to
workshops with Jewish scholars. She befriended Holocaust survivors and
made Holocaust education a central theme of the institute. She also began to or-
ganize study tours of Israel.

Israel
To understand Sister Rose’s special relationship with Israel, it is necessary to re-
visit what was being taught to Catholic school children about Jews and their
homeland, as late as 1960, that their just punishment for killing Jesus was to be-
come and remain stateless. “The Jews as a nation refused to accept Christ, and
since His time they have been wanderers on the earth without a temple.” ⁴⁰ Israel
was portrayed as illegitimate. When the Declaration on the Jews was being con-
sidered at Vatican II, a statement was issued asserting that it was a religious
statement and not political. The Vatican did not establish formal diplomatic re-
lations with the State of Israel until 1994.
In 1970, Sister Rose made her first visit to Israel, an event that changed her
life. Visiting Yad Vashem, she said, told her, “the story of the results of antisem-
itism … brought about by our ‘contempt teaching’ about Jews.”⁴¹ She subse-
quently led fifty-three more missions of Jews and Christians to Israel. Each
was an opportunity to educate Americans of different religions about each
other, as well as to build empathy and support for the young country.
When Jewish groups demonstrated on behalf of Israel, she took to the streets
with them, as she wished her people had done in the 1930s. Sister Rose was one
of the first non-Jewish officers of the influential American Israel Friendship Lea-
gue. And, together with leaders of other Christian sects, she helped to organize

 J. M. Oesterreicher, “Why Judaeo-Christian Studies,” inaugural lecture, The Institute of Ju-

daeo-Christian Studies, Seton Hall University, 1954, https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/view
content.cgi?article=1004&context=oesterreicher.
 Thering, “The Potential in Religion Textbooks,” 177
 Thering, “Oral History Interview.”
 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 361

the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel. Subsequently, she

served as its executive director for several years. Sister Rose spoke countless
times to Jewish and Christian groups, on the topic, “A Christian Speaks on
Israel.” Reading through her speeches reveals that she was as passionate a Zion-
ist as any Jew. She said in 1993:

in the process of loving for, and caring for, and rebuilding the ancient wasteland, the Jew-
ish People itself was reborn and eventually, the Nation of Israel emerged! It is now a right-
ful member of the Family of Nations. It is this State of Israel, legally and morally founded,
that is the Homeland of the Jewish People. No U.N. resolution of the General Assembly will
ever change this!⁴²

Whenever Israel was threatened, Sister Rose used her voice and ever-increasing
influence to be heard—in Washington, in the Vatican, and at the UN. Interesting-
ly, one of her targets was Kurt Waldheim when he was Secretary General of the
UN. She wrote letters questioning his criticism of Israel in the face of Palestinian
terrorism.
Later, in 1986, she took on Waldheim more dramatically. She came to Vienna
to protest his inauguration as president of Austria. She and Father David
Bossman, then provost of Seton Hall, joined her friend, activist Rabbi Avi
Weiss, on a trip to Vienna to protest the inauguration of Waldheim’s inaugura-
tion as president of Austria. Waldheim was accused of suppressing the record
of his German army service as a Wehrmacht officer. Also, he was implicated
in the roundup and deportation of Greek Jews to Auschwitz.
Sister Rose said she went “to lend a Christian voice to this protest, because I
feel that Christians did not speak out enough during World War II.”⁴³ They joined
other peaceful protesters at various locations. While their demonstrations attract-
ed both critics and supporters of Waldheim, she was particularly disheartened
by the virulent antisemitic reactions of the local population.
Most shocking to her, however, was her experience at the Vienna airport
prior to returning home. She was subjected to a humiliating strip-search by
local police, an experience she compared, “in a tiny way,” with the humiliation
of Jews during the Holocaust: “before I knew it, I was totally nude. For the first
time, I know what my Jewish sisters had gone through before they were thrown

 Sr. R. Thering, “Reflections: A Christian Educator’s Thoughts for Post Holocaust Education,”
issued 1992, 19.
 Sr. R. Thering and R. A. Weiss, “Dark Memories of Vienna,” special interview by S. Birnbaum,
JTA Daily News Bulletin, July 21, 1986, https://www.jta.org/1986/07/21/archive/special-interview-
dark-memories-of-vienna.
362 Alan Silberstein

into the gas chambers.”⁴⁴ When she was invited to the Austrian consulate in New
York to receive an apology, one of the younger consular officers commented that
the Holocaust was never taught in school.

Commission on Holocaust Education

Sister Rose believed in teaching the lessons of the Holocaust. The State of New
Jersey has one of the largest populations of Jews and Holocaust survivors and
their descendants in the United States. In 1982, Thomas Kean, then governor
of the state, having learned that individual school districts had been developing
curricula about the Holocaust, called together a group of survivors, legislators,
and educators. His intent was to develop generations of young people sensitized
to the baseness and the consequences of bigotry carried out to its logical ex-
tremes.
Governor Kean appointed Sister Rose to a new advisory council on Holocaust
education to develop curricular material and promote its use statewide. She
thought it should be mandatory. For the next twelve years, she worked tirelessly
with successive governors and Members of the State Legislature to pass a law, in
1994, mandating that lessons of the Holocaust and genocide be taught in every
public school at every grade level. A permanent commission was named to sup-
port compliance with the requirement.
The passage of the legislation was helped by Steven Spielberg’s comments in
October 1994, when he accepted the Academy Award for his film Schindler’s List.
These were distributed to every legislator in New Jersey:

There are 350 thousand survivors of the Holocaust alive today. I implore all the educators
who are watching this program to, please, do not allow the Holocaust to remain a footnote
in history. Please teach this in your schools. There are 350 thousand experts who just want
to be useful with the remainder of their lives. Please listen to the words and the echoes and
the ghosts. And, please teach this in your schools.⁴⁵

Today, the commission coordinates with thirty-two university centers to ensure

that school teachers are well equipped to teach about the Holocaust, in an
age-appropriate fashion, as well as about the evils of prejudice and discrimina-
tion. Studies have confirmed their deterrent effect on antisemitism, prejudice,

 Interview in the National Catholic Reporter, December 1986.

 “‘Schindler’s List’ Winning Best Picture,” YouTube video, 4:24, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=1HKTYYX50hQ.
 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 363

and hate crimes.⁴⁶ Inspired by New Jersey, eighteen more states have passed
legal mandates, and others are considering them.

Sister Rose Thering Fund for Education in

Jewish-Christian Studies
In 1975 Seton Hall University created a degree granting program in Jewish-
Christian studies. With the passage of the Holocaust Education law, teachers
working in public schools and in religious schools of all faiths were encouraged
to enroll. Sister Rose asked supporters to raise scholarship funds for these teach-
ers. To date, hundreds of teachers have studied there, taking courses such as
“Christian-Jewish Encounter” and “Lessons of the Holocaust.” The fund stands
as a living memorial to Sister Rose.

Legacy and Lessons

Sister Rose never stopped teaching or speaking out. Despite her interest in Jews,
she never became a less devout Catholic. In 2001, Sister Rose Thering

finally received long overdue acknowledgement for the role her research had played at the
Second Vatican Council, an award from the International Liaison Committee of the Holy
See’s Commission on Relations with the Jews and the International Jewish Committee for
Interreligious Consultations.⁴⁷

Six months before her death from illness in May 2006, she returned to the com-
munity where she had entered religious life seventy years earlier.
What are the lessons one can draw from this unique individual who devoted
her life to leaving us a better world than the one she found? What can be done to
continue the battle against antisemitism?
‒ First, to encourage dialogue—formal platforms and programs enable profes-
sionals and laypeople to work together on common problems. Not every
problem can be solved—especially theological ones. But, working together
breeds mutual understanding and respect, allows friendship and trust to de-

 Including B. L. Hadzima, “Prejudice Elimination: An Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of The

New Jersey State Mandate To Teach The Holocaust And Genocide” (PhD diss., Seton Hall Uni-
versity, 1999).
 Banki, “Pivotal Figure.”
364 Alan Silberstein

velop, and reduces the gaps between positions. Friends give each other the
benefit of the doubt. Formal mechanisms for dialogue created the friend-
ships and trust that enabled Cardinal Bea’s project to progress well beyond
anyone’s wildest expectation. Formal mechanisms that bring religious lead-
ers together today, continue the progress.
‒ Second, academic rigor. The textbook studies, arduous as they were, provid-
ed incontrovertible proof that generations were being taught to hate. They
pointed out exactly which concepts, and which descriptions of the other,
were at the root of antisemitism. Presented with the facts of what was
being taught, and the implications of that teaching on society, church lead-
ers changed dogma as well as how it was communicated.
‒ Third, use the classroom. People learn to hate in many ways, not all in
school. But school is a good place to reverse the process. On occasion, Sister
Rose liked to quote the lyrics from Richard Roger and Oscar Hammerstein’s
South Pacific:

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear

You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late

Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught.⁴⁸

‒ Fourth, commit strategically. Nostra Aetate would never have come to fru-
ition if organized Judaism had not begun, many years earlier, to work for
the rights of Jews by building bridges to religious and government institu-
tions. The pursuit of textbook studies was a brilliant strategy. When those
studies began, no one could guess where they would lead. Holocaust educa-
tion would not be embedded in educational curricula in the United States
and elsewhere, if leaders like Sister Rose had not labored for decades to
build the institutions to support that objective.
‒ Finally, to have courage—Sister Rose never lost hers!

 R. Rogers and O. Hammerstein, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” track 17 on South Pacific
(Original Broadway Cast Recording), 1958.
 Sister Rose Thering’s Battle against Antisemitism 365

Alan Silberstein is a businessman who retired as CEO of Western Union. For many
years he has been active in Jewish affairs and inter-religious dialogue in the US,
Poland, and Israel. He is chair of Forward, the largest Jewish-American publica-
tion, a member of the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University, and treasurer
of the Sister Rose Thering Fund for Education in Jewish-Christian Studies at
Seton Hall University.

Bibliography
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Secretariat for Christian Unity.” Submitted by the American Jewish Committee. Issued
June 22, 1961. Accessed May 19, 2020. http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/6 A3.
PDF.
Banki, Judith Hershcopf. “Pivotal Figure: The Woman Behind ‘Nostra Aetate.’” Commonweal
Magazine, June 16, 2006. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/pivotal-figure.
Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, National Conference of Catholic
Bishops. “Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations.” Issued March 1967. Accessed May
19, 2020. http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/jew
ish/upload/Guidelines-for-Catholic-Jewish-Dialogue-1967.pdf.
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Bishops. “Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations—1985 Revision.” Issued 1985.
Accessed May 19, 2020. http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year/lent/
guidelines-for-catholic-jewish-relations.cfm.
Boston College Center for Christian-Jewish Learning. “In Memory of Sister Rose.” Issued
2006. Accessed May 19, 2020. https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/
cjl/texts/cjrelations/news/thering_tribute.htm.
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1933 – 1965. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.
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(1976).
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New Jersey State Mandate To Teach The Holocaust And Genocide.” PhD diss., Seton Hall
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Marans, Noam. “The Vatican Document of December 10, 2015 ‘God’s Gift and Calling’ Builds
on Nostra Aetate.” John Oesterreicher Memorial Lecture, Seton Hall University, November
3, 2016.
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1906.
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Judaeo-Christian Studies, Seton Hall University, 1954. https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=oesterreicher.
366 Alan Silberstein

Pawlikowski, John. Catechetics and Prejudice: How Catholic Teaching Materials View Jews,
Protestants and Racial Minorities. New York: Paulist Press, 1973.
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January 16, 1963.
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University Press, 2011.
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Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Antisemitism in Today’s America
Leonard Dinnerstein’s Antisemitism in America, published in 1994, remains the
most comprehensive and authoritative study of its subject to date. In his
book’s final sentence, however, Dinnerstein steps out of his role as a reliable
guide to the past and ventures a prediction about the future that has proven
to be seriously wrong. Antisemitism, he concludes, “has declined in potency
and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.”¹ In the years since he for-
mulated this optimistic view, antisemitism in America, far from declining, has
been on the rise, as I will aim to demonstrate.
I begin with a personal anecdote. During a lecture visit to Boca Raton,
Florida, in January 2017, I attended religious services at one of the city’s large
synagogues and was surprised to see heavy security outside and inside the
building. “What’s going on?” I asked a fellow worshipper. “Nothing special,”
he replied, “having these guys here is just normal these days.”
It didn’t strike me as normal, especially in America. From visits to synago-
gues in Europe, I am used to seeing security guards in place—mostly policemen
but, in France, sometimes also soldiers. As targets of ongoing threats, Europe’s
Jews need such protection and have come to rely on it. Why such need exists is
clear: Europe has a long history of antisemitism, and, in recent years, it has be-
come resurgent—in many cases, violently so.
European Jews are doing, then, what they can and must do to defend them-
selves against the threats they face. Some, fearing still worse to come, have left
their home countries for residence elsewhere; others are thinking about doing
the same. Most remain, but apprehensively, and some have adopted ways to
mute their Jewish identities to avert attention from themselves. For instance,
they may feel it no longer prudent to wear Jewish skullcaps or other Jewish mark-
ers, like jewelry with the Magen David, in public. Some have removed the
mezuzot (the markers of a Jewish home that contain biblical verses) from their
outside doorposts. It’s a nervous, edgy way to live, but for many, that’s Jewish
life in today’s Europe.
America, we have longed believed, is different—even exceptional—for being
largely free of ongoing, serious anti-Jewish hostility. The great majority of
American Jews go about their daily lives without encountering overt antagonism.
Unlike Jews over the centuries who often suffered from intolerance and persecu-

 L. Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 250.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Alvin H. Rosenfeld, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed

under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-019
368 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

tion as residents of Christian and Muslim lands, American Jews know that they
live in a country that is free and democratic and upholds the values of religious
and ethnic pluralism. They enjoy full civil and political rights, have not been
subjected to federally imposed restrictive legislation that singles out Jews, and
have never faced pogroms or other forms of mass violence, as their European an-
cestors did.
At the same time, however, social antisemitism is part of the country’s his-
tory, and in earlier decades, American Jews experienced varying degrees of dis-
crimination and exclusion in employment, residential neighborhoods, universi-
ties, resorts, social clubs, and even hospitals. A hard-edged antisemitism, at its
most extreme reflecting Nazi views, was at times a prominent part of the public
discourse of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and during these years Jews were fre-
quently accused of disloyalty, economic profiteering, and war-mongering.
Acts of aggression against individual Jews and Jewish institutions have also
occurred over the years. Some of these acts have been lethal, but they have been
largely episodic and not chronic or continuous. So, while the United States has
hardly been free of antisemitism, American Jews, for the most part, have long felt
generally accepted, and the great majority are fully integrated in virtually all
strata of American life. The Jewish presence in the arts, entertainment, educa-
tion, business, medicine, science, politics, and other spheres of American life
has been prominent and productive for decades. When it comes to having to con-
tend with antisemitism, then, America, in comparison with Europe and parts of
the Muslim world, looks far better; and, over the past half-century or more, most
Jews have felt secure and at home in this country and have prospered in it.
Recent events, though, have begun to rattle these feelings of safety and be-
longing. Beginning in early January 2017, and continuing on an almost daily
basis for over two months, bomb threats were made against over 150 American
Jewish community centers, schools, civil rights agencies, homes for the elderly,
and other organizations across thirty-eight states.² In this same time frame, sev-
eral Jewish cemeteries were desecrated; synagogues were attacked; and swasti-
kas were scrawled on Jewish property in numerous places. Believing their com-
munities to be under assault by newly emboldened right-wing activists, many
American Jews were unnerved by the rapid surfacing of such hostility. They
sensed that America was entering a new and more threatening era, one marked
by the emergence of a reenergized antisemitism together with overt forms of in-

 “Bomb Threats to Jewish Institutions in 2017,” Anti-Defamation League, issued March 15, 2017,
accessed May 18, 2020, https://www.adl.org/news/article/bomb-threats-to-jewish-institutions-
in-2017.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 369

tolerance, bigotry, and hostility directed against others. While much of their
anxiety diminished when the perpetrator of most of the bomb threats turned
out to be a troubled Israeli teenager, many nevertheless began to feel that
they could no longer take their safety for granted.³ Aware that anti-Jewish hostil-
ity has been on the upsurge globally since the turn of the millennium, Jews ev-
erywhere have begun to feel more vulnerable.⁴ Would these feelings of unease
begin to reshape the lives of American Jews into a more wary and defensive pos-
ture? Or would the country’s traditions of freedom, tolerance, and respect for
pluralism and diverse cultural and religious traditions be resilient enough to
allow American Jews to go about their lives more or less normally?
It is still too early to answer these questions clearly, but it is possible to ob-
serve certain developments in recent years that have introduced new sources of
concern for American Jews. I will devote the remainder of this paper to briefly
discussing three prominent areas of American social and political life that
seem especially hospitable to today’s antisemitism. Each of these needs to be
taken seriously in its own right, and the synergy among them is potentially high-
ly destructive. I will also briefly propose some of what needs to be done to coun-
ter these troubling developments.

Terror Attacks and Jews as Targets

Unforeseen at the time when Dinnerstein was writing his book, terrorism and the
need to guard against it have become defining features of American life. In the
aftermath of the attacks of 9/11/2001, Americans in general are more apprehen-
sive about their security than they had been before. Jews may feel this disquiet
more than most, and for several reasons: (1) Jewish populations in the United
States are densest on the east coast, where the attacks took place. In the Jihadi
imagination, New York City, the country’s financial center, is a “Jewish” city; it
may have been targeted for that reason, and it is feared that it will be again.
(2) At the time of the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, rumors started
up that the Israeli Mossad was behind these assaults and that Jews who worked
in the Twin Towers had been tipped off ahead of time not to come to work on the

 T. Pileggi, “Jewish Israeli-US Teen Arrested for Phoning in JCC Bomb Threats,” Times of Israel,
March 23, 2017, https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-israeli-teen-19-arrested-over-jcc-bomb-
threats/.
 For more on the recent upsurge of antisemitic hostility, see A. H. Rosenfeld, ed., Resurgent
Antisemitism: Global Perspectives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), and A. H.
Rosenfeld, Deciphering the New Antisemitism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015).
370 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

day when the planes hit; reasonable people know this story is absurd, but it per-
sists to this day in parts of the Arab world and elsewhere and signals to Jews
that, in a time when conspiracy theories about covert Jewish power are in
wide circulation, their innocence cannot be taken for granted. (3) A third reason
Jews are worried today is that in a number of cities, including Paris, Toulouse,
Brussels, and Mumbai, there has been a close link between Jihadi terror attacks
in general and the choice of Jews as targets in particular; in the United States
itself, attacks against Jews have sometimes been precursors to larger attacks
against American institutions, as in the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane
by El Sayyid Nosair, two of whose accomplices then participated in the 1993
World Trade Center bombing.⁵ There have been other incidents of this kind as
well, some of them successful, others foiled before they could take place. (4)
A final cause of Jewish unrest comes with the recognition that ideological antise-
mitism, in both its neo-Nazi and Jihadi forms, is one of the motivators for terror
attacks against American targets, including American Jews and Jewish institu-
tions.⁶
To illustrate ideological antisemitism as it manifests in Jihadi attacks, I
quote from Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to the American Public,” issued one
year after his deadly attacks on 9/11/2001. In his message, bin Laden denounced
America as “the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind” and sin-
gled out the Jews as the source of the country’s wickedness: “Your law is the law
of the rich and wealthy people … Behind them stand the Jews, who control your
policies, media, and economy.” He excoriated America for its support of Israel,
whose creation, he declared, “is a crime which must be erased.” If America con-
tinues to back Israel, he warned, “this will result in more disasters for you … Do
not await anything from us but Jihad.”⁷
This notion that America and other countries have “surrendered to the
Jews,” who are said to control their economies, media, and “all aspects” of
their lives, making non-Jews the servants of the Jews, is a prominent feature
of today’s antisemitism, especially among Jihadis. So, too, is the charge that
the Jews are an age-old and still-abiding threat to Islam and that the existence
of Israel is an intolerable offense against Muslims. Such ideas are recognizable

 For a detailed, clarifying study of these and other such incidents, see Y. Barsky, Terror Inci-
dents and Attacks against Jews and Israelis in the United States, 1969 – 2016 (New York: Commu-
nity Security Services, 2016), https://jewishpgh.org/app/uploads/2018/09/Terrorist-Attacks-
Against-Jews-in-US-1969 – 2016.pdf.
 Ibid., 16 – 25.
 “Full text: bin Laden’s ‘letter to America’,” Guardian, November 24, 2002, https://www.the
guardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 371

features of a widespread strain of contemporary thinking about Jews that sees

them as a sinister, manipulative, and predatory people conspiratorially organ-
ized to seize power on a transnational scale. Louis Farrakhan, the leader of
the Nation of Islam, has long given voice to these views and made repeated
warnings to Jews that the end of their time is near. On May 26, 2018, in a sermon
given in Chicago, Farrakhan spoke of “Satanic Jews who have infected the whole
world with poison and deceit,” warning his listeners that “the false Jew will lead
you to filth and indecency.”⁸ And Farrakhan is not alone in spewing such hatred
against Jews. More and more, violent threats are being voiced in America by rad-
ical Islamic preachers.
In July 2017, for example, at two different mosques in California, prominent
imams called from their pulpits for the slaughter of the Jews. One of these
preachers, Sheikh Ammar Shahin, of the Islamic Center of Davis, California, in-
cluded in his prayers an appeal to Allah to put an end to the Jews: “Count them
one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any one
of them.”⁹ Similar exhortations were voiced by Sheikh Mahmoud Harmoush:

Allah wants us to have jihad in our lives, no matter what and where we are and what is
happening … Oh Allah, destroy them. They are no match for you. Oh Allah, disperse
them and rend them asunder. Turn them into booty in the hands of the Muslims.¹⁰

In December 2017, at the Islamic Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, Sheikh Aymen
Elkasaby referred to the Jews as “apes and pigs” and likewise called for them to
be destroyed.¹¹ At about the same time, at an Islamic institute in Houston, Texas,
Sheikh Raed Saleh Al-Rousan, invoked a familiar hadith to call for the death of

 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Louis Farrakhan Warns against ‘Satanic Jews’ in Chicago
Speech,” Times of Israel, June 5, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/louis-farrakhan-warns-
against-satanic-jews-in-chicago-speech/.
 “More on Imam Ammar Shahin And Islamic Center of Davis, California: Teaching Wahhabi
Islam, Hosting Sheikh Who Supports Death Penalty For Homosexuality,” MEMRI, issued August
2, 2017, accessed May 18, 2020, https://www.memri.org/reports/more-imam-ammar-shahin-and-
islamic-center-davis-california-teaching-wahhabi-islam-hosting.
 “California Imam Mahmoud Harmoush Prays for Allah to Destroy the Jews: They Are After
Mecca and Medina,” MEMRI, accessed December 21, 2017, https://www.memri.org/tv/cal
ifornia-sermon-jews-plotting-mecca-medina-allah-wants-jihad/transcript [no longer accessible].
 “Friday Sermon at Jersey City, NJ: Imam Aymen Elkasaby Prays to Be Martyred on the
Threshold of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Which Is ‘Under the Feet of the Apes and Pigs’,” MEMRI, ac-
cessed December 21, 2017, https://www.memri.org/tv/antisemitic-sermon-jersey-city-imam-
aymen-elkasaby/transcript [no longer accessible].
372 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

Jews.¹² The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) monitors sermons of
this kind and has identified others like them. How representative these hate-
spewing imams are among those who preach in America’s mosques is unknown,
but the fact that they are heard at all is enough to make American Jews uneasy
about what may lie ahead for them.
It is little wonder, then, that Jews, like others in America, have begun to take
elaborate measures to secure their buildings and personnel against future acts of
aggression. Shootings, arson attacks, and bombings against Jews and Jewish in-
stitutions have already been perpetrated or attempted in recent years by neo-
Nazis and Jihadi Muslims.¹³ In the current climate, overwrought as it is with
the passions that drive these people, other acts of anti-Jewish violence can be
expected in the period ahead. In response, a defense organization, Community
Security Services, has trained some 4,000 Jewish volunteers to protect synago-
gues and other Jewish institutions in America.¹⁴
According to the 2017 report by the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic in-
cidents in America increased by 57 percent this past year, with almost 2,000 an-
tisemitic events and activities recorded. Antisemitic incidents in schools and on
college campuses doubled in 2017, as did such incidents in non-Jewish elemen-
tary and high schools.¹⁵

 “Houston Imam Raed Saleh Al-Rousan: ‘Good Tidings’—Muslims Will Kill Jews On Judgment
Day; ‘Do Not Tell Me That Palestine Is The Country Of The Jewish [People]’,” MEMRI, accessed
December 21, 2017, https://www.memri.org/tv/houston-imam-raed-rousan-muslims-kill-jews-
palestine/transcript [no longer accessible].
 Cf. Barsky, Terrorist Incidents and Attacks.
 Cf. J. Dolsten, “This Organization has Trained 4,000 Jewish Volunteers to Keep Synagogues
Safe,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), November 6, 2017, https://www.jta.org/2017/11/06/news-
opinion/united-states/this-organization-has-trained-4000-jewish-volunteers-to-keep-syna
gogues-safe.
 Cf. “Anti-Semitic Incidents Soared in 2017, ADL Says,” Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), Febru-
ary 26, 2018, https://www.jta.org/2018/02/26/united-states/anti-semitic-incidents-in-2017-more-
than-double-the-us-total-from-2015-adl-says?mpweb=1161-3106 -17640&utm_source=JTA%20Mar
opost&utm_campaign=JTA&utm_medium=email.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 373

Campus Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism

Most Americans, it is safe to say, are not antisemites. A recent Pew poll, in fact,
reports that Jews are the most admired religious group in the United States.¹⁶
These positive attitudes toward Jews also carry over to American attitudes to-
ward Israel, which are largely favorable (although variables appear when politi-
cal party affiliations, race, and generational differences are factored in).¹⁷ On the
whole, then, both Jews and Israel look good in the eyes of most Americans. Ex-
ceptions exist, however, and within segments of the country’s African-American
communities, gay community, certain liberal churches, and a few labor unions,
negative attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish state are evident. In its
2016 platform, for instance, Black Lives Matter, a popular coalition of African-
American and other politically active groups on the “progressive” left, de-
nounced Israel as an “apartheid” state and accused it of carrying out a program
of “genocide” against Palestinians. A much-publicized “Dyke March” in Chicago
on June 24, 2017, initially banned the participation of Jewish women who were
identified as “Zionists” and thereby were accused of serving as apologists for
Israeli “pinkwashing.”¹⁸ In January 2014, the Presbyterian Church USA published
an unusually hostile booklet, “Zionism Unsettled,” which vilified Israel and de-
nigrated both Zionism and Judaism.¹⁹ (The booklet has since been removed from

 Cf. “How Americans Feel About Religious Groups,” Pew Research Center, issued July 16,
2014, accessed May 18, 2020, http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-
religious-groups/.
 Cf. L. Saad, “Americans’ Views Toward Israel Remain Firmly Positive,” Gallup News, Febru-
ary 29, 2016, http://news.gallup.com/poll/189626/americans-views-toward-israel-remain-firmly-
positive.aspx.
 Cf. “Chicago ‘Dyke March’ Bans Jewish Pride Flags: ‘They Made People Feel Unsafe’,”
Haaretz, June 26, 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/chicago-dyke-march-bans-jewish-
pride-flags-they-made-people-feel-unsafe-1.5488238.
 Cf. “ADL Voices Anger Over Presbyterian ‘Zionism Unsettled’ Study Guide,” Anti-Defamation
League, issued February 11, 2014, accessed May 18, 2020, https://www.adl.org/news/press-re
leases/adl-voices-anger-over-presbyterian-zionism-unsettled-study-guide. The Evangelical Lu-
theran Church in America is another Christian denomination that, as an institution, promotes
the boycott of Israel. During a conference promoting “free inquiry and meaningful debate of im-
portant political and social debates” at the St. Olaf Institute for Freedom and Community, Mitri
Raheb, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor, gave a speech entitled “Religious Diversity, Political Con-
flict, and the Spirituality of Liberation.” In it, he proposed ideas of Christian supersessionism—
to great audience acclaim—and cited an American scholar who also promotes the notion that
Jews have no legitimate claim to the land of Israel. For more on this speech, see R. Benne, “Po-
litical Supersessionism,” First Things, March 2018, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/03/
political-supersessionism.
374 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

the Presbyterian Church USA website.) These hostile trends have become espe-
cially acute on some American college and university campuses, where anti-
Israel sentiments run deep and can provoke words and deeds that are indistin-
guishable from antisemitism.
America has over 4,000 colleges and universities. The great majority of these
are generally free of ongoing anti-Israel and antisemitic activities. At some uni-
versities on both the west and east coasts, however, and often at more elite uni-
versities, such antagonisms are ongoing and have become a regular part of the
campus scene. AMCHA Initiative, an organization that investigates and combats
campus antisemitism, carried out a study to determine the prevalence of antise-
mitic activity and the factors that affect it on more than 100 US campuses with
the largest Jewish student populations. They found that on close to half the cam-
puses, students were threatened because of their Jewish identity: they were har-
assed and intimidated, their places of residence defaced with swastikas and
other antisemitic graffiti, the events they organized disrupted and shut down,
their participation in campus activities shunned, and more.²⁰ The political pas-
sions that animate these activities are not campus-wide but usually find a voice
among some students and student groups such as Students for Justice in Pales-
tine, as well as individual faculty members in certain humanities and social sci-
ence departments and in some national scholarly organizations.²¹ Politically mo-
tivated actions of this kind take several forms— most notoriously the Boycott,
Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which rallies people on and off campus-
es to engage in widespread educational, cultural, and economic boycotts of
Israel; encourages divesture from companies that deal with Israel and from cer-

 Cf. “Report on Antisemitic Activity in 2015 at U.S. Colleges and Universities with the Largest
Jewish Undergraduate Populations,” AMCHA Initiative, issued March 2016, accessed May 18,
2020, https://www.amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Antisemitic-Activity-at-U.
S.-Colleges-and-Universities-with-Jewish-Populations-2015-Full-Report.pdf.
 See the American Studies Association’s stated position on boycotts of Israeli academic insti-
tutions, “Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions,” issued December 4, 2013, accessed May 18,
2020. https://www.theasa.net/about/advocacy/resolutions-actions/resolutions/boycott-israeli-
academic-institutions; the American Anthropological Association’s actions regarding the Israel/
Palestine conflict, “Letter from President Alisse Waterston: AAA Implements Action on Israel-
Palestine,” issued June 24, 2016, accessed May 18, 2020, https://www.americananthro.org/Par
ticipateAndAdvocate/AdvocacyDetail.aspx?ItemNumber=20835&navItemNumber=592; the Criti-
cal Ethnic Studies Association’s endorsement of BDS, “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions
(BDS),” issued 2013, accessed May 18, 2020, https://criticalethnicstudies.org/content/bds; and
the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association’s declared support for the boycott of
Israeli academic institutions, H. Keinon, “Native American Studies Association Joins Academic
Boycott of Israel,” Jerusalem Post, December 18, 2013, https://www.jpost.com/diplomacy-and-
politics/native-american-studies-association-joins-academic-boycott-of-israel-335388.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 375

tain Israeli firms; and seeks to impose political penalties and otherwise bring
about sanctions against Israel. Some campuses are also venues for the annual
spring hate-fest called Israel Apartheid Week. Other events include anti-Israel
“die-ins,” in which students feign victimization by other students pretending
to be Israeli soldiers; the construction of fake Israeli check-points and other hos-
tile acts of open-air political theater; courses, lectures, and conferences on Israel
and the Middle East that may reflect anti-Israel biases and pursue anti-Israel
agendas; efforts to constrain, silence, or disrupt speakers invited to campus
who are judged by Israel’s adversaries to be Zionist advocates; and frequently
heard “intersectional” arguments that draw ties between Jews, Israelis, and oth-
ers denounced as “racists,” “white supremacists,” and “oppressors.”
Those who engage in many of these activities tend to justify them on the
grounds that they advance the progressive goals of peace, justice, civil rights,
and the rights of indigenous and minority peoples while opposing forces that
supposedly work against those goals—namely, racism, fascism, imperialism, set-
tler-colonialism, and, of special interest to us, Zionism; and it is Zionism that, in
the antisemitic political imagination, incarnates all of the oppressive ideologies
just named. Most of this activity is fueled by ill will and is poorly informed about
the historical and political complexities of the Israeli-Arab conflict and of Israel
itself; yet, on numerous campuses these trends are now well established and are
unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
Among the initiatives described above, BDS is the best organized and most
dynamic. As a movement that seeks to marginalize and isolate Israel, it is not a
new phenomenon, for boycott movements against Israel date back at least to the
1940s. BDS is a continuation and intensification of this trend. It originated in res-
olutions formulated at the 2001 UN World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrim-
ination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa; these res-
olutions were then taken up in 2004 by the “Palestinian Campaign for the
Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)” and the 2005 “Palestinian
Civil Society Call for BDS.” While BDS has diverse supporters, its chief advocates
on American campuses include Students for Justice in Palestine, various Muslim
student associations, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other groups active on the anti-
Israel political left. They claim to stand for non-violent resistance, but their ulti-
mate goals are destructive—foremost, the end of Israel as a sovereign, Jewish-
majority state. In the words of Omar Barghouti, co-founder of BDS:

A Jewish state in Palestine in any shape or form cannot but contravene the basic rights of
the indigenous Palestinian population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination
that ought to be opposed categorically … Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish
376 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish
state in Palestine.²²

Barghouti’s words are echoed in countless other statements by BDS advo-

cates, most of whom oppose a two-state solution and do not recognize the legiti-
macy of the existing State of Israel. Here, for instance, is As’ad AbuKhalil, anoth-
er spokesman for BDS:

The real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel … That should be stated as an un-
ambiguous goal. There should not be any equivocation on the subject. Justice and freedom
for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel.²³

Those who embrace these views do not see the Jews as a people entitled to the
rights of national self-determination, and they discount the validity of any Jew-
ish historical, political, and moral claims to the land. Alone among the world’s
countries, Israel, as they see it, is undeserving of a future. Through boycotts and
other strategies of opposition, advocates of BDS aim to delegitimize and, ulti-
mately, bring about the end of the State of Israel.
In a practical sense, BDS partisans have won almost no victories, for not a
single American university to date has followed their calls to divest from compa-
nies that deal with Israel. In a propagandistic sense, however, the constant vil-
ification of Israel as a “colonialist,” “apartheid,” “Nazi” state has no doubt erod-
ed the country’s image in the eyes of some people on America’s college
campuses. Moreover, a politics of delegitimization, carried on and intensified
over time, takes on dimensions of dehumanization that can be detrimental to
Jewish students and faculty members.
Here are just a few examples of hundreds that might be cited. In March 2016,
at Claremont College in California, “Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine”
placed mock eviction notices on the doors of dormitory rooms where Jewish stu-
dents resided. Similar notices appeared in the residence halls of Harvard Univer-
sity, New York University, Scripps College, Pitzer College, and elsewhere.²⁴ In

 R. Hollander, “Analyzing Palestinian Propaganda on CNN: Rashid Khalidi on ‘Fareed Zakaria

GPS’,” Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), issued February
20, 2017, accessed May 18, 2020, https://www.camera.org/article/analyzing-palestinian-prop
aganda-on-cnn-rashid-khalidi-on-fareed-zakaria-gps/.
 S. Azani, “Facing the Truth about BDS,” Times of Israel, June 5, 2015, https://blogs.time
sofisrael.com/facing-the-truth-about-bds/.
 Cf. A. D. Sharon, “Campus Eviction Notices are fake, but their anti-Semitism is Real, Experts
Say,” Jewish News Service, June 22, 2014, https://www.jns.org/campus-eviction-notices-are-fake-
but-their-anti-semitism-is-real-experts-say/#.Wj1e3bQ-dsM=.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 377

February 2017, a student at McGill University recommended in a Twitter post that

his fellow students “punch a Zionist today.” When others warned that his call for
violence could be directed against Jews indiscriminately, he held his ground, ar-
guing that Jews are not a “legitimate ethnic group.” His campus’s newspaper, the
McGill Daily, endorsed a policy to ban articles from its pages that “promote a
Zionist worldview.”²⁵ In September 2017, the organizers of a student demonstra-
tion at the University of Illinois called “Smashing Fascism: Radical Resistance to
White Supremacy” released a statement, in the name of “movements for mass
liberation,” in which they expressed disgust at “the unholy union of American
fascists, white supremacists, and Zionists.”²⁶ Add to this aggressive student be-
havior the presence of faculty members at various universities, including Oberlin
College, Rutgers University, the University of California at Berkeley, San
Francisco State University, and elsewhere who have unashamedly transmitted
hardcore antisemitic messages about Jews and Israel over social media, and
the campus scene becomes even more toxic.
Not surprisingly, all of AMCHA Initiative’s studies have found a clear and ro-
bust relationship between anti-Zionist expression and acts of anti-Jewish aggres-
sion: schools with BDS activity, the presence of anti-Zionist student groups like
Students for Justice in Palestine, and faculty who support BDS are three to eight
times more likely to show evidence of incidents that target Jewish students for
harm, and the stronger the presence of these factors, the more incidents of
anti-Jewish hostility are likely to be found.²⁷
In short, at numerous universities, the American campus scene has become
a venue for chronic anti-Zionist and antisemitic agitation. It’s unlikely to ease up
anytime soon.

 For more on the McGill Daily’s anti-Zionist views, see “McGill Student Newspaper Under Fire
for Refusing to Publish Pro-Israel Op-eds,” The Tower, November 17, 2016, http://www.thetower.
org/4174-mcgill-student-newspaper-under-fire-for-refusing-to-publish-pro-israel-op-eds/. For
more on the student’s plea to “Punch a Zionist today,” see “McGill Student Leader Doubles
down on ‘Punch a Zionist Today’ Message,” Times of Israel, February 13, 2017, https://www.
timesofisrael.com/mcgill-student-leader-doubles-down-on-punch-a-zionist-today-message/.
 M. Vadum, “A Smash Zionists Rally at the U of Illinois,” Frontpage Magazine, September 8,
2017, https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267820/smash-zionists-rally-u-illinois-matthew-
vadum.
 Cf. AMCHA Initiative, “Report on Antisemitic Activity” and their second report “Antisemit-
ism: At the Epicenter of Campus Intolerance: Antisemitic Activity in 2016 at U.S. Colleges and
Universities With the Largest Jewish Undergraduate Populations,” AMCHA Initiative, issued
April 2017, accessed May 18, 2020, https://www.amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/
04/Antisemitism_At-the-Epicenter-of-Campus-Intolerance_Report-2016.pdf.
378 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

Rise of the Alt-Right, White Nationalism, and

Armed Militias in the Trump Era
Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a group of
his supporters assembled at the Reagan Building in Washington, DC to celebrate
what they saw as a victory for their cause. They were addressed by Richard
Spencer, a prominent white nationalist, who called out “Hail Trump! Hail our
people! Hail victory!” His words, echoing familiar Nazi chants, were greeted by
some in the crowd with stiff-armed salutes right out of the Hitler era.²⁸ Many
Americans were shocked, for they are not used to seeing neo-Nazis gathering
for a convention just a few blocks from the White House. Even more startling
were subsequent displays of white supremacist and antisemitic fervor, culminat-
ing in the infamous rally of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and others belonging to the
hardcore right in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017. Posters that circu-
lated in advance of that rally urged people to come to Charlottesville to help
“Unite the right” and “End Jewish influence in America.” Many responded en-
thusiastically and joined in a much-publicized street demonstration at which
the words “Jews will not replace us” were repeatedly shouted out.²⁹
One looked on with a deepening sense of dismay, especially considering that
these events might not be aberrant, one-off happenings but could herald the re-
vival of re-energized passions on the extreme right. Such feelings and the politics
they give rise to have long existed on the margins of American society. Decades
ago, for instance, they found expression in Henry Ford’s The International Jew
and other antisemitic publications. Father Coughlin’s antisemitic radio broad-
casts and populist rallies organized by the America Bund and Silver Shirts
also gave sanction to antisemitic sentiments. In more recent times, however,
such views were regarded as beyond the pale and had no presence in the coun-
try’s respectable mainstream.
What, then, explains the surprising appearance this past year of swastika
flags, Nazi slogans, and antisemitic chants in the halls and streets of American

 D. Lombroso and Y. Appelbaum, “‘Hail Trump!’: White Nationalists Salute the President-
Elect,” Atlantic, November 21, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/ri
chard-spencer-speech-npi/508379/.
 For more about the origins of numerous neo-Nazi slogans, see D. Neiwert, “Explaining ‘You
Will Not Replace Us,’ ‘Blood and Soil,’ ‘Russia is Our Friend,’ and other Catchphrases from
Torch-bearing Marchers in Charlottesville,” Southern Poverty Law Center, issued October 10,
2017, accessed January 29, 2021, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/10/when-white-
nationalists-chant-their-weird-slogans-what-do-they-mean.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 379

cities, including the nation’s capital and a university town closely associated
with an icon of America’s most hallowed democratic ideals, Thomas Jefferson?
Numerous factors are no doubt involved, but one is the influence of an amor-
phous, previously obscure movement, the alt-right, most of whose active life
until recently took place on the internet and not in the public square. A collec-
tion of diverse, counter-cultural types on the reactionary right, the alt-right re-
sists easy definition, but its main ideological thrust is populist and nativist,
and its most radical elements include vehement white supremacy and antisem-
itism. Many of the alt-right’s members call for the end of a United States they re-
gard as a “Zionist Occupied Government,” which they refer to as “ZOG.” They
aim to either replace this version of America, which they no longer regard as
their country, or carve out of it a racially pure, white ethno-state. They were
prominently represented on the streets of Charlottesville, some of them in battle
fatigues and armed with heavy weapons. Eric Ward, who has studied the white
nationalist movement, finds antisemitism at the core of the group’s beliefs and
mission. As Ward writes, in the alt-right mind, Jews are seen as “the absolute
other, the driving force of white dispossession … [They] are a different, unassi-
milable, enemy race and must be exposed, defeated, and ultimately eliminat-
ed.”³⁰ Alt-right publications, websites, and popular music give ample evidence
that Ward is correct in seeing antisemitism as “the lynchpin of the white nation-
alist belief system.”
How many Americans find this “belief system” appealing is unknown, but
the Charlottesville march numbered an estimated five to six-hundred people, in-
cluding a sizable group of militant types on the extreme left that considers itself
“anti-fascist” and came to Charlottesville to oppose the “Unite the Right” rally
and to do battle with its organizers.³¹ The organizers were an assortment of peo-
ple on the hard right, some of whom populate Nazi websites like the Daily Storm-
er or belong to a small group that calls itself the “1488ers.” The name needs de-
coding: the number fourteen points to a fourteen-word white supremacist
slogan: “We must assure the existence of our people and a future for white chil-
dren.” The numbers 88 are a coded reference to “H,” the eighth letter in the al-

 E. K. Ward, “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism,” Political
Research Associates, June 29, 2017, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/06/29/skin-in-the-
game-how-antisemitism-animates-white-nationalism/.
 Cf. “Have Hate, Will Travel: the Demographics of Unite the Right,” Anti-Defamation League,
issued October 8, 2017, accessed May 18, 2020, https://www.adl.org/blog/have-hate-will-travel-
the-demographics-of-unite-the-right.
380 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

phabet, which, when doubled, as in 88, signifies “HH,” or “Heil Hitler.”³² Once
they are understood, the Nazi references leave no doubt about the extreme think-
ing that inspires those who identify as 1488ers.
The number of people who identify with hard right groups is probably small
and, until recently, their influence has been negligible. Some find affiliation with
such groups to be a desirable bonding experience. They gain a new sense of be-
longing in a virtual—and increasingly real—social climate, with its own lan-
guage, dress code, and rituals. They feel emboldened by the election of Donald
Trump, believe they have a friend in the White House, and can now step out of
the shadows and proudly make their case to the American public. They favor the
president’s America First rhetoric and see some of his daily tweets and other
statements as conveying only thinly coded antisemitic sentiments. They also
identify with negative views he has expressed about Muslims, Hispanics,
African-Americans, and other minorities. They took well to the president’s am-
bivalent response to the events in Charlottesville: there are “very fine people
on both sides,” he said, puzzling and upsetting those who find nothing “very
fine” about neo-Nazis and Klansmen. One of the alt-right’s most extreme voices,
the former KKK leader and far-right politician David Duke, in fact, publicly
thanked the president for his “honesty and courage in tell[ing] the truth about
Charlottesville and condemn[ing] the leftist terrorists” who fought against the
neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and others on the streets of the Virginia city.³³
Some in this diverse collection of right-wing activists look favorably upon the
ascendancy of Donald Trump to the White House and see him as something like
the second coming of Adolf Hitler, hence their fondness for Nazi signs and sym-
bols. Many of the opponents of these groups on the left also look upon Trump in
Hitlerian terms, but they denounce him as a racist and antisemite. Debates about
President Trump’s personality, politics, and opinions, as well as the degree to
which he may be responsible for an increase in racial, religious, and ethnic ten-
sions in America, are intense and ongoing. Whatever else these sharply polarized
views of the American president may reveal, they point to a new and troubling
moment in America’s social and political life—one in which antisemitism as well
as other forms of racial and ethnic bias are far more prominent in the country’s
public life than they have been for a number of years.

 B. Palmer, “White Supremacists by the Numbers,” Slate, October 29, 2008, http://www.slate.
com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/10/white_supremacists_by_the_numbers.html.
 Cf. Z. B. Wolf, “Trump’s Defense of the ‘very Fine People’ at Charlottesville White Nationalist
March Has David Duke Gushing,” CNN.com, August 15, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/
politics/donald-trump-david-duke-charlottesville/index.html.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 381

The last few months have seen some small white supremacist rallies by
groups like Identity Evropa, but they have not attracted the numbers of loyalists
or displayed the kind of aggressive rhetoric or violent action seen in
Charlottesville. In addition, one of the alt-right’s principal architects, Stephen
Bannon, used his position at Breitbart News to elevate and spread the alt-right’s
ideological platform. Bannon is neither an antisemite nor a white supremacist,
but his strong advocacy of populist and nativist views appealed to people of
such leanings. He lost his post at Breitbart in January, however, and before
then he also lost his powerbase at the White House where, for a time, he played
a key role as chief strategist to Donald Trump. The president fired him in August
2017 and has since derided him as having lost not only his job but also his
mind.³⁴ With Bannon’s fall and no doubt also for other reasons, the alt-right’s
advance into the American mainstream seems, at the moment, to have slowed
down, but events can change quickly, and the potential danger that the alt-
right represents should not be discounted.³⁵
In short, America is in a phase of social, political, and ideological tumult, in
which extreme views of many kinds have come prominently to the fore. Antisem-
itism flourishes in such an unsettled climate, as do other kinds of racial, ethnic,
and religious hostility. President Trump’s comment on January 10, 2018, against
people who are seeking to come to the United States from “shithole countries” in
Africa demonstrated how unrestrained racist rhetoric has become in the coun-
try’s political discourse.³⁶ In such a time, it may be revolting but it is not surpris-
ing to learn that the person running uncontested as the Republican candidate for
a Congressional seat in Illinois’ third district, Arthur Jones, is an avowed white
supremacist, openly declared antisemite, and former leader of the American
Nazi party. A notorious denier of Nazi crimes against the Jews, he has called
the Holocaust nothing but “an extortion racket” and the “biggest, blackest lie

 Cf. P. Baker and M. Haberman, “Trump Breaks with Bannon, Saying He Has ‘Lost His Mind’,”
New York Times, January 3, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/us/politics/trump-ban
non.html.
 And even now, incidents occur of the most extreme kind. In January 2017, Samuel Wood-
ward, an avowed antisemite and member of an armed neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen Divi-
sion, was charged with murdering a Jewish college student, Blaze Bernstein. Atomwaffen is a
small but extreme white nationalist group that openly declares its affinities with Nazism. For
more, see The Forward and S. Kestenbaum, “What is Atomwaffen Division, The Nazi Group
Tied To The Murder Of Blaze Bernstein?” Haaretz, February 4, 2018, https://www.haaretz.
com/us-news/what-is-atomwaffen-division-1.5788573.
 Cf. J. Hirschfeld Davis, S. Gay Stolberg, and T. Kaplan, “Trump Alarms Lawmakers With Dis-
paraging Words for Haiti and Africa,” New York Times, January 11, 2018, https://www.nytimes.
com/2018/01/11/us/politics/trump-shithole-countries.html.
382 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

in history.” Jones has run for public office before and attracted few followers and
almost no notice. His chances of winning this time in the overwhelmingly Dem-
ocratic district in which he lives are virtually non-existent, but the fact that he is
in the race as the sole Republican candidate for Congress gives his toxic views
far greater visibility than they otherwise would have.³⁷
Jones is an extreme case but not an isolated one. Freddy Burgos, a member
of Virginia’s Republican Party State Committee, has been sidelined by his party
for encouraging voters to support Christian candidates over non-Christians.
Burgos claims that “nobody loves the Jewish people and Israel more” than he
does. He just doesn’t want his fellow Virginians to vote for Jewish representa-
tives.³⁸ Paul Nehlen, who identifies with the alt-right and, at the time of writing,
is the only Republican candidate running in Wisconsin’s Republican primary
race, has just been disowned by his political party for disseminating racist
and antisemitic messages.³⁹ Patrick Little, a republican who is challenging
Diane Feinstein for a United States Senate seat in California, is a white suprema-
cist and Holocaust denier whose campaign rhetoric includes the statement that
he “woke up to the Jewish question and [has] dedicated my political life to ex-
posing these Jews that control our country.” He has denounced Feinstein as a
“Zionist bitch,” called the Nazi slaughter of the Jews a “propaganda hoax,”
and will work for an America “free from Jews.” He’s also on record as wanting
to introduce a death penalty for any American politician who proposes foreign
aid to Israel. Despite his extreme views, he has been garnering about 18 percent
of likely California voters, according to one poll.⁴⁰

 Cf. L. Sweet and F. Main, “Holocaust Denier Poised to Claim GOP Nomination in Illinois Race
for Congress,” Chicago Sun-Times, February 6, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/
20180206143824/https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/holocaust-denier-arthur-jones-repub
lican-3rd-congressional-district-lipinski-newman/.
 Cf. A. Olivo, “Va. Republicans Move to Dump Controversial Leader over Anti-Semitic Online
Post,” Washington Post, February 12, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-pol
itics/va-republicans-move-to-dump-controversial-leader-over-anti-semitic-online-post/2018/02/
12/acdcb4c0 -1011-11e8 - 8ea1-c1d91fcec3fe_story.html?utm_term=.afcc57ac3af5.
 Cf. “GOP Dumps Candidate Over anti-Semitic Statements,” Haaretz, February 14, 2018,
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/gop-dumps-candidate-over-anti-semitic-statements-1.
5822216. In January 2018, during a guest appearance on former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke’s
podcast, Nehlen stated that “Jews control the media,” cf. E. Sullivan, “Twitter Bans GOP Con-
tender For Racist Tweet Targeting Meghan Markle,” NPR, February 13, 2018, https://www.npr.
org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/13/585339969/twitter-bans-gop-contender-for-racist-tweet-tar
geting-meghan-markle.
 Cf. A. Kaplan Sommer, “The GOP’s ‘Nazi Problem’ Comes to California With anti-Semitic Hol-
ocaust Denier Candidate,” Haaretz, May 1, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-
republican-front-runner-for-california-senate-seat-is-holocaust-denier-1.6040713.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 383

What is new here is not the persistence of antisemitic passions but their pub-
lic airing. At their most extreme, a small but increasingly vocal minority of
Americans now feel free to declare themselves “Proud to be an Antisemite.” I
take these words not from one of Jones’ speeches, although they accurately rep-
resent his sentiments, but from a bumper sticker on a car seen driving in the
streets of New York. With the appearance of this strain of antisemitic triumphal-
ism, the United States has reached a new low in the nation’s history.
What’s needed in such an environment is for people in positions of leader-
ship in America’s cultural, educational, political, and religious life to speak out
against these ugly developments forcefully and unambiguously. But more than
words are needed. Countries around the world, including the United States,
need to recognize antisemitism as a persistent social pathology and develop
much more systematic methods of monitoring it in all of its manifestations. As
is, such efforts take place, if at all, inconsistently and, in most places, without
reliable results. Scholars need to study anti-Jewish hostilities as seriously and
comprehensively as they do anti-Black racism, anti-feminism, homophobia,
and other chronic societal ills. As is, only a single university in the United States
sponsors a research institute devoted to the study of contemporary antisemitism,
and that is my own institute at Indiana University. In addition, careful scrutiny
needs to be given to the use of the internet to spread antisemitism and other
kinds of hate speech. In whatever ways possible that are consistent with the
need to protect free speech, hateful, threatening words against Jews and others,
including on social media, need to be discouraged and curtailed. Also, critiques
need to be regularly offered of otherwise reputable institutions, such as the Unit-
ed Nations, certain NGOs, and certain churches, labor unions, and universities
that help to foster antisemitism, often through wildly disproportionate attacks
on Zionism and Israel.
In addition to all of the above, legislation should be instituted to put checks
on these problems before they get still worse. This fact was recognized on March
7, 2017, when all 100 members of the United States Senate put forward a strong
appeal to the leading law enforcement officials in the Trump administration.
They drew explicit attention to the upsurge of antisemitism and called for
“swift action” against the rapid and intensifying spread of threats against Jewish
community organizations across the country. “This is completely unacceptable
and un-American,” the senators wrote.⁴¹ They are right, and if their words are

 L. King, “All 100 Senators Press Trump Administration to Help Communities Fight anti-Sem-
itism,” USA Today, March 7, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/07/
senators-press-trump-administration-help-communities-against-antisemitic-threats/98851406/.
384 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

heeded and practical and effective initiatives are taken to check this hatred, we
will all be better off for it. If today’s antisemitism grows worse, however, America
will no longer be the America we have known.
This dismal prospect calls to mind an especially memorable response to the
escalating growth of antisemitism abroad. In January 2015, during some of the
worst violence directed against Jews and others in Paris, the French Prime Min-
ister, Manuel Valls, spoke words that bear remembering. Fearing that French
Jews, then under attack, might decide to leave the country in large numbers—
and over the past ten years, almost 40,000 of them have left for Israel (numbers
for those who have migrated to other countries are unavailable)—Valls urged his
compatriots not to remain indifferent to the emergence of lethal Jew-hatred in
their country. He wanted to awaken their consciences to this peril not only for
the sake of the Jews but also for that of the entire country. For, as he put it,
“France without Jews is not France.”⁴²
Nor can America be America without its Jews. President Trump should know
that and, with others, do all that he can to prevent such harm from growing. He
need not fear that large numbers of Jews are about to exit American shores. They
will not. But if their safety is constantly threatened and they begin to feel that
their lives are destined to be harassed and disrupted, they will, for the first
time for most, sense that they are living under a state of siege. They will then
install more protective fortifications in and around their communal institutions,
hire more guards to secure their synagogues, schools, community centers, cem-
eteries, homes, and businesses, and begin to follow the European model of mut-
ing their identities to avoid calling unwanted attention to themselves.
Nothing would be more out of step with the self-confident and generally suc-
cessful lives that most American Jews have enjoyed until now. But if, in hereto-
fore unexpected and unprecedented ways, antisemitism takes hold more deeply
in the United States, Jews will adapt, as European Jews have, by devoting more
of their time, energy, and money to shoring up their defenses. They will see such
moves into a warier and more protective lifestyle as necessary and, in time, it
will become part of American Jewry’s own “new normal.”
That is the situation I encountered at the heavily guarded synagogue in
Florida and that Jewish friends elsewhere tell me has become more and more
part of their own experiences. In fact, though, this new, defensive posture is
nothing other than a normalization of the abnormal, a condition that no free
and self-respecting people should have to endure.

 “French PM: France without Jews Would Be a Failure,” Times of Israel, January 11, 2015,
https://www.timesofisrael.com/french-pm-france-without-jews-would-be-a-failure/.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 385

Epilogue
Since the completion of this chapter, developments have taken a turn for the
worse for Jews in America, sometimes dramatically so. The country is in an over-
wrought phase of political tension and social unrest, and, within such a climate,
antisemitism tends to escalate. Such a trend was confirmed in May, 2020, when
the Anti-Defamation League reported that there were more than 2,100 antisemitic
incidents in the United States in 2019, the largest number of such incidents in
any year since the ADL began its audits some four decades ago.⁴³ In some
cases, the hostility has become lethal. For instance, on October 27, 2018, a gun-
man entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh shouting “All Jews must
die” and shot seventeen people, killing eleven of them. It was the “deadliest at-
tack on Jews in American history.”⁴⁴ Six months later, on April 27, 2019, the
Chabad synagogue in Poway, California was similarly attacked. Four people
were shot, including the rabbi, one fatally.⁴⁵ Then on December 10, 2019, two
gunmen stormed into a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey, and mur-
dered four people. A large bomb, discovered in the assailants’ car after this as-
sault, was intended to blow up a synagogue in a nearby town.⁴⁶ Also in Decem-
ber, 2019, a killer entered the home of a rabbi in Monsey, New York during a
Chanukah celebration and stabbed and slashed five people with a large knife.

 Cf. “ADL’s Audit of Antisemitic Incidents: 2019 Year in Review,” accessed September 30,
2020, https://www.adl.org/2019-audit-h.
 “The Decade’s Top 10 Incidents of Hate,ˮ accessed September 30, 2020, https://www.adl.org/
resources/reports/the-decades-top-10-incidents-of-hate. Cf. also C. Robertson, C. Mele, and S.
Tavernise, “11 Killed in Synagogue Massacre; Suspect Charged With 29 Counts,ˮ New York
Times, October 27, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsburgh-syn
agogue-shooting.html, and J. Maltz, “‘Deadliest Attack on Jewish Community in U.S. History’:
Jewish Leaders Lament Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting,ˮ Haaretz, October 27, 2018, https://
www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-jewish-leaders-lament-pittsburgh-shooting-as-deadliest-at
tack-on-community-1.6595792.
 Cf. J. Wilkens, K. Davis, and T. Figueroa, “One Dead, Three Injured in Poway Synagogue
Shooting,” San Diego Union-Tribune, April 27, 2019, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/
news/public-safety/story/2019 - 04-27/reports-of-several-people-shot-at-poway-synagogue.
 Cf. M. Gold, N. Corasaniti, and W. K. Rashbaum, “Jersey City Shooting Updates: 6 Killed, In-
cluding an Officer,ˮ New York Times, December 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/
nyregion/jersey-city-shooter.html, and T. Joffre, “Suspects in Jersey City Shooting Attack Had
Powerful Bomb in Van,” Jerusalem Post, January 14, 2020, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/
suspects-in-jersey-city-shooting-attack-had-powerful-bomb-in-van-614091.
386 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

One of them, an elderly man, was hospitalized in critical condition and later
died.⁴⁷
These attacks were the most brutal against American Jews in the last two
years, but numerous physical assaults on Jews in Brooklyn and elsewhere
have also taken place in recent months. Many go unreported or are underreport-
ed, but they continue, especially targeting religiously observant Jews. In addi-
tion, synagogues, Jewish schools, cemeteries, and other Jewish establishments
have been defaced with swastikas and other hateful markings. Anti-Israel pas-
sions, often accompanied by aggressive words directed against Jewish students,
have been on the increase on some American college and university campuses.⁴⁸
Calls for anti-Israel boycotts (BDS) likewise are now a common feature of cam-
pus rhetoric, as they are among certain newly emerged political figures. Add to
all of the above the dissemination on social media of widespread conspiracy the-
ories implicating Jews in the Corona-virus pandemic⁴⁹ and the intensification of
racial strife in America, and the picture becomes still more troubled.
In short, American Jewry finds itself in a newly agitated and more threaten-
ing situation, one that most have never before experienced and probably did not
expect to see in their lifetimes. Like their kindred in European cities, they are es-
tablishing greater security measures around Jewish institutions of all kinds and
appealing to officials in local and national governmental bodies to take antisem-
itism seriously and enact effective measures against its escalation. What lies
ahead is unpredictable, but if present trends continue, they will undoubtedly
have significant impact on the future of Jews, not only in America but around
the world.

 Cf. R. Liebson et al., “5 Wounded in Stabbing at Rabbi’s Home in N.Y. Suburb,” New York
Times, December 28, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/nyregion/monsey-synagogue-
stabbing-anti-semitic.html, and A. Paybarah, “Monsey Stabbing: Rabbi Dies Three Months After
Hanukkah Attack,” New York Times, March 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/
nyregion/rabbi-monsey-attack.html.
 Cf. T. Rossman-Benjamin, “A Survey of Antisemitic Activity and Trends on U.S. Campuses in
2019 and Efforts to Address It (March 2020),” AMCHA Initiative, accessed August 26, 2020,
https://amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Kantor-Center-Campus-Antisemitism-
US-March2020.pdf.
 Cf. A. Weiner, “Global Trends in Conspiracy Theories Linking Jews with Coronavirus,ˮ AJC
Global Voice, issued May 1, 2020, accessed September 30, 2020, https://www.ajc.org/news/
global-trends-in-conspiracy-theories-linking-jews-with-coronavirus.
 Antisemitism in Today’s America 387

Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Professor of English and Jewish Studies, holds the Irving M.
Glazer Chair at Indiana University, where he also serves as the founding director
of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. He is the author
and editor of numerous books and scholarly articles on the Holocaust, antisemit-
ism, and Jewish literature. He has lectured widely on these subjects in America, Eu-
rope, Israel, and India.

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 Antisemitism in Today’s America 389

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390 Alvin H. Rosenfeld

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Haim Fireberg
Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish Sense
of Belonging
The beginning of 2017 was characterized by a surge of bomb threats to Jewish
community centers and synagogues throughout the United States. The count
was in the hundreds. “‘These are regular occurrences now, with a frequency
that’s been increased and on a scale that’s been increased,’ Elise Jarvis, associ-
ate director for law enforcement outreach and communal security at the Anti-
Defamation League [ADL], told the Guardian.”¹ The Jewish public attitude was
that “incidents of hate targeting Jewish Americans have been on the rise since
the November election, as have incidents targeting Muslims, Mexicans, black
Americans and immigrants. [Even though the ADL still] hesitated to link the re-
cent threats … to election results.”² But many American Jews were panicked and
pointed to the extreme right as responsible, although without any proof, because
of their support of the newly elected president, Donald Trump.³
It was not a secret that the majority of American Jews were supporters of the
Democratic Party and were in favor of Hillary Clinton for presidency over
Trump.⁴ So the burst of threats could only confirm their presumptions that lib-
eral life in the US was fading away under the new administration.⁵ An ADL re-
port claimed of a sharp increase in antisemitic violent manifestations—especially
of bomb threats and desecration of cemeteries—since Trump was elected in No-
vember 2016, apparently proved their fears. But this report was criticized as lean-
ing on unreliable data that only incurred and caused panic about daily antisem-

 J. Lartey, “Jewish Community Centers in US Receive nearly 50 Bomb Threats in 2017 so far,”
The Guardian, February 4, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/04/us-jewish-
community-centers-bomb-threats.
 Ibid.
 Cf. E. Strauss, “The JCC Bomb Threats Confirm That Jewish Parents Are Right to Be Afraid,”
Slate, January 19, 2017, https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/01/the-jcc-bomb-threats-confirm-
that-jewish-parents-are-right-to-be-afraid.html.
 Cf. R. Shimoni Stoil, “American Jews Voted 70 %–25 % in favor of Clinton over Trump, Poll
Shows,” The Times of Israel, November 10, 2016, https://www.timesofisrael.com/american-
jews-voted-70 -25-in-favor-of-clinton-over-trump-poll-shows/.
 Cf. M. Smith, “Anonymous Bomb Threats Rattle Jewish Centers Across Eastern U.S.,” New York
Times, January 9, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/us/bomb-threats-jewish-centers.
html.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Haim Fireberg, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-020
394 Haim Fireberg

itic threats among Jews.⁶ The American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) extensive sur-
vey from April 2019 reveals that the vast majority of American Jews feel that an-
tisemitism in the US is in its peak over the last decade, even though most of the
participants testified that personally they had not experienced any antisemitic
manifestations, neither physically nor online.⁷ The Kantor Center, at Tel Aviv
University (TAU), which has analyzed antisemitism worldwide over the last twen-
ty-five years, has not identified any major differences in violent antisemitism in
the US over the last few years.⁸ This kind of paradox should be studied in depth,
and I have chosen to do so by analyzing the well-documented European Jewry’s
experience.
Reviewing antisemitic violent incidents worldwide reveals that the aftermath
of Jewish hatred is constantly thriving. Whilst studying and comparing contem-
porary antisemitism in EU Member States, several peculiarities, almost paradox-
es, can be identified. One of them hints that the level of violent antisemitism, as
shown by the number of violent incidents, does not necessarily indicate the level
of antisemitic sentiment. It could be considered as a necessary condition in de-
fining antisemitism but undoubtedly not a sufficient one. This article analyzes
the contradictory factors that influence the understanding of antisemitism by in-
dividuals, organizations, and states using the latest empirical evidence available.
In late 2012, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) con-
ducted a survey on antisemitism in eight EU Member States (the United King-
dom, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, and Latvia).⁹ An ex-
tended follow-up survey and research is taking place in 2018, in which
thirteen Member States are taking part, including Austria, who did not partici-

 As an expert on violent antisemitism and the researcher in charge in the Kantor Center, TAU,
for analyzing antisemitic violence, I have shown that in the five months following the elections,
there was no increase in threats or desecration incidents in comparison to the eight previous
years of President Obama’s administration. Our yearly reports have shown that there were no
dramatic changes in violence over the years. Cf. “Annual Reports on Worldwide Antisemitism,”
Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, last updated 2020, accessed Oc-
tober 28, 2020, https://en-humanities.tau.ac.il/kantor/rerearch/annual_reports. In March 2017,
it was already clear that the majority of the bomb threats were a hoax.
 Cf. “AJC Survey of American Jews on Antisemitism in America,” American Jewish Committee,
issued October 2019, accessed October 28, 2020, https://www.ajc.org/sites/default/files/pdf/
2019 -11/2019AntisemitismSurvey-Book_11.19.pdf.
 For data, see the Kantor Center’s “Annual Reports on Worldwide Antisemitism.”
 Cf. EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Discrimination and Hate Crime against Jews in
EU Member States: Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism, issued November 8, 2013, ac-
cessed October 28, 2020, https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2013-discrimination-hate-
crime-against-jews-eu-member-states-0_en.pdf.
 Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish Sense of Belonging 395

pate in the original survey.¹⁰ The survey reached out to 5,847 Jews, and the re-
sults were published in November 2013. Sixty-six percent of the participants de-
clared that antisemitism in their countries is “a big problem” or “a fairly big
problem.” The most concerned group to see antisemitism as a huge problem
were the Hungarian Jews (90 %), and almost neck-and-neck were the French
Jews (85 %). On the other hand, in the UK (52 %) and Latvia (54 %), most of
the respondents agreed that antisemitism is “not a very big problem” or “not
a problem at all.”¹¹ The survey has shown that the diversity of antisemitic per-
ceptions are not divided along geographic lines.
Although country differences exist, the bigger picture reveals that more than
three-quarters (76 %) of the overall participants think that antisemitism “has
worsened over the past five years in the country where they live.”¹² France
and Hungary lead this perception—Hungary with 91 % and France with 88 %.
But also in the UK, where only a minority believed that antisemitism is a real
problem, 66 % of participants still agreed that the situation has worsened. In Lat-
via, only 39 % claimed so.¹³
In France and Hungary, where according to the FRA survey antisemitism is a
considerable problem, the levels of antisemitic violence based on Tel Aviv Uni-
versity [TAU] publications¹⁴ sharply differ. In France, between the years 2009
and 2015, we recorded a yearly average of 142 violent incidents. In Hungary,
on the other hand, the seven-year average was around nine incidents only. It
seems that violence alone cannot explains the fact that in both countries the
sense of insecurity is a major factor in contemporary Jewish life.
In the UK and Latvia, where the Jewish population estimated almost no
problems with antisemitism, TAU data reveal an even more astonishing situa-
tion: in sharp contrast to Latvia where the recorded average of violent incidents
from 2009 until 2015 was only one, the average yearly amount in the UK was 144.
The UK infamously holds the European record.

 Cf. EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), “Major EU Antisemitism Survey Planned for
2018,” issued December 13, 2017, accessed October 28, 2020, https://fra.europa.eu/en/news/
2017/major-eu-antisemitism-survey-planned-2018. The countries covered are: Austria, Belgium,
Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden,
and the UK.
 FRA, Discrimination and Hate Crime, 16.
 Ibid.
 Cf. ibid., 17.
 Data on violent antisemitic events is based mostly on the TAU annual analyses that have
been published yearly for the last 26 years by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary
European Jewry.
396 Haim Fireberg

Violent antisemitism is not a problem in Latvia and matches the FRA survey
results. In Hungary, with a large Jewish population (the third largest in Europe
after France and Britain), almost all the targets were Jewish facilities and memo-
rial sites and not human beings. Would it be right to assume that neither the total
sum of violent cases in Hungary nor their nature should be considered as an ex-
planation to the outcome of the survey; that is, antisemitism in Hungary is flour-
ishing and is “a big problem”?¹⁵
The year 2015 presented a new notorious record in murderous antisemitic vi-
olence in Europe. Just to mention three: the attack that occurred in Paris on Jan-
uary 9, where an Islamist killed four Jewish shoppers at a kosher supermarket;
the attack on the central synagogue in Copenhagen in February where a security
guard was murdered and two others were injured by an Islamist gunman; and in
Manchester in September, four Jewish boys were brutally beaten and severely in-
jured in an antisemitic attack. Although the state of violent antisemitism in
France and the UK has a lot in common, the survey shows that the people in
both countries understand the problem differently.
If it is therefore not the extent of violence that generates the same anxiety
toward antisemitism, what could France and Hungary—for instance—have in
common that makes the Jews there very concerned with “the problem of antisem-
itism”?
In January 2015, in the wake of the Paris massacres, the French PM, Manuel
Valls, recalled the visions of the French Revolution: “The choice was made by
the French Revolution in 1789 to recognize Jews as full citizens. To understand
what the idea of the republic is about, you have to understand the central role
played by the emancipation of the Jews. It is a founding principle.” Valls did
not try to defend the current situation in France; on the contrary, he spoke sharp-

 Antisemitism Worldwide 2014: General Analysis Draft, ed. D. Porat (Tel Aviv: Kantor Center of
the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, 2014), https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/
images/kantorfull.pdf; Antisemitism Worldwide 2013: General Analysis Draft, ed. Stephen Roth
Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism (Tel Aviv: Kantor Center of
the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, 2013). In Hungary, 14 violent incidents against
Jews were recorded in 2013, and 15 in 2014. In 2013, 116 of violent manifestations were recorded
in France; in 47 cases persons had been attacked (41 % of the cases). One hundred sixty-four
incidents were recorded in 2014, 88 (54 %) of them targeted persons. In the UK, 95 violent inci-
dents were recorded in 2013, 63 of which (67 %) targeted persons. In 2014, the overall violent in-
cidents were 141, 82 (58 %) against persons.
 Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish Sense of Belonging 397

ly and bitterly: “If … 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The
French Republic will be judged a failure.”¹⁶
Although Valls was known for his warm attitudes toward French Jews, his
decisive words should also be understood in connection with the continuous
emotional erosion that many French Jews have about the being French citizens
and practicing open Judaism at the same time. For many, it was only the tip of
the iceberg; a process lasting almost a decade in which Jews felt that they are not
only under attack by vast groups of radical Muslims, but that the main political
groups, primarily from the French Left abandoned them. A popular Jewish opin-
ion is that there is an unholy—although undeclared publicly—alliance between
French radical Left and Muslim extremists against a common enemy—the Jewish
community in France for an alleged unequivocal support of Israel.¹⁷ When such
a connection is being made, even casual criticism of Israeli policy toward a two-
state solution becomes antisemitic in nature and involves calls to Boycott, Di-
vestment, and Sanctions [BDS] on Israel, while it is illegal according to French
law.¹⁸
Ron Azogui, a member of the Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive
[SPCJ] concluded:

Antisemitism in France cannot be considered anymore as a temporary situation associated

with the situation in the Middle East; it is a structural problem that has not been fought as
such and has not been halted yet. … Forty percent of racist violence perpetrated in France
in 2013 targeted Jews. However, Jews represent less than 1 percent of the French population.
… [We believe] that antisemitic violence has settled and is anchored in society. But the ag-
gravating factor is that French Jews feel isolated in their fight against antisemitism. Aren’t
the values that are attacked by this scourge are those of a whole nation?¹⁹

Unfortunately, his rhetorical question as well as Valls’s remarks are still part of
the French Jewish community’s common experience.

 J. Goldberg, “French Prime Minister: If Jews flee, the Republic Will Be a Failure,” The Atlan-
tic, January 10, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/french-prime-
minister-warns-if-jews-flee-the-republic-will-be-judged-a-failure/384410/.
 In 2015, one of the prominent Jewish intellectuals in France, Shmuel Trigano, expressed this
view in his publication: A Journey Through French Anti-Semitism (Spring, 2015). For online sum-
maries on Trigano’s attitudes, see: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1534/a-journey-
through-french-anti-semitism/, accessed October 28, 2020.
 Cf. J. Y. Camus, “France,” in Antisemitism Worldwide 2014: General Analysis Draft, ed. D. Porat
(Tel Aviv: Kantor Center of the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, 2014), https://www.je
wishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/kantorfull.pdf, 63 – 66.
 Stephen Roth Institute, Antisemitism Worldwide 2013, 52.
398 Haim Fireberg

In Hungary, we find that the quest for Hungarian national identity in the
twenty-first century, the uncertainty about its common values and the place of
minorities, including Jews, in this nation-state are central issues in Hungary’s
discourse today. Dr. Rafi Vago, the renowned scholar, has thus described the sit-
uation there:

deep divisions in Hungarian political life [could be found], between the center-right party
Fidesz [the ruling party], the extremist right wing party, Jobbik, and the liberal-left, over
Hungary’s past. It … became a test case for the delicate balance and relationship between
various parts of Hungarian society, the media and the political spectrum.²⁰

Vago stressed that standing in the center of the conflict was

the need to face the fate of its almost 600,000 Jews who perished in the Holocaust and eval-
uate the inter-war and war time Horthy regime … The [recent years] … became [also] the
focal point of strong differences of opinion [about] the rise of antisemitism, and the govern-
ment’s handling of those issues.²¹

Although the number of violent antisemitic incidents in Hungary is relatively

small and rare, there are strong feelings among the Jews. “Jews can now feel an-
tisemitism in the streets,”²² stressed Rabbi Schlomo Koves [Slomo Köves], the ex-
ecutive Rabbi of the Unified Hungarian Congregation. Many consider that the
bad atmosphere is the result of the nationalistic discourse, especially the revi-
sionism of Hungary’s World War II past:

The main danger in Hungary is the attempt to “whitewash” the anti-semitic past, rehabil-
itate aspects of the Horthy era, emphasize Hungary’s alleged loss of sovereignty in March
1944, with the German occupation, thus as attempt to relativize Hungary’s role in the de-
struction of its Jewry.²³

It is not a debate that takes place behind closed doors and in academic circles
only, but in the media and in public demonstrations as well. A few examples
in short:

 R. Vago, “Hungary,” in Antisemitism Worldwide 2014: General Analysis Draft, ed. D. Porat (Tel
Aviv: Kantor Center of the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, 2014), https://www.je
wishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/kantorfull.pdf, 54.
 Ibid.
 Stephen Roth Institute, Antisemitism Worldwide 2013, 44.
 Ibid.
 Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish Sense of Belonging 399

‒ In 2014, the government, ruled by Fidesz, erected a statue at Freedom

Square, showing Germany’s imperial eagle striking down on archangel Ga-
briel, Hungary’s guardian angel, symbolizing Hungary’s innocence versus
Nazi aggression, in commemoration of March 19, 1944, the date of the
Nazi occupation of Hungary. Continuing opposition to the statue reflects
the attitudes of wide segments of the Hungarian public, not only among
Jews, that the statue deflects Hungary’s responsibility for the Holocaust.
The leading historian of the Holocaust in Hungary, and Holocaust survivor,
Prof. Randolph L. Braham, returned a prestigious state award to the Hungar-
ian government in protest of rewriting Hungary’s history.²⁴
‒ Another source of dispute is the project of the “House of Fates,” a planned
educational center and a Holocaust museum in the eighth district, now
home to many Jews. It became the focus of ongoing debates claiming that
the project’s aims are not clear, that the voice of the Jewish community
has not been taken into consideration.²⁵ Although the dispute has nothing
to do with antisemitism per se, and many prominent members of the Jewish
community, although not the official ones, are involved in the project, the
contemporary opinion among the Jewish leadership in the Federation of
Hungarian Jewish Communities [Mazsihisz]—and it is spreading down to
the ranks—is of cessation from the government.²⁶

The FRA survey has shown many parallels between French Jewry and Hungarian
Jewry that support the analysis above. Although France and Hungary differ in
their political systems and civic ethos, the willingness of Jewish citizens to em-
igrate “because of not feeling safe living there as a Jew” in both countries is the
highest according to the FRA survey: 48 % of Hungarian Jews and 46 % of French

 Cf. Vago, “Hungary,” 54; R. L. Braham, “Hungary: The Assault on the Historical Memory of
the Holocaust,” in The Holocaust in Hungary: Seventy Years Later, ed. R. L. Braham and A. Ko-
vacs (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2016), 261– 310.
 Cf. “Budapest Politicians Tour New Holocaust Museum Described as Shocking,” Hungarian
Free Press, May 7, 2015, http://hungarianfreepress.com/2015/05/07/budapest-politicians-tour-
new-holocaust-museum-described-as-shocking/; Vago, “Hungary,” 55.
 For an update on this controversy, see: “High-ranking Fidesz Leader’s Anti-Semitic Com-
ments Shake the Hungarian Jewish Community,” Hungarian Spectrum, issued December 1,
2019, accessed October 28, 2020, https://hungarianspectrum.org/tag/mazsihisz/. Another con-
troversy was about the anti-George Soros campaign in Hungary that deepened the gap between
the Government and the veteran Jewish establishment headed today by Andras Heisler. Cf. R.
Ahren, “Decrying ‘Betrayal,’ Hungary Jews Say Netanyahu Ignoring Them,” The Times of Israel,
July 20, 2017, https://www.timesofisrael.com/decrying-netanyahu-betrayal-hungary-jews-say-
pm-ignoring-them/.
400 Haim Fireberg

Jews.²⁷ The feelings of insecurity led to an increasing disbelief in the future of the
community and has weakened the sense belonging to the nation as it would be
shown later on. While the two countries differ in the overall number of violent
antisemitic incidents, the fear of becoming a victim of threats, insults and verbal
harassment—important factors in creating an antisemitic environment—is very
similar. Sixty‐five percent of Hungarian Jews and seventy-six percent of French
Jews were worried of being exposed to these kinds of attacks.
The only actual difference was found when they were asked about their wor-
ries of being personally attacked. Seventy-one percent of French Jews answered
that they are worried, in comparison to forty‐three precent of Hungarian Jews.
Indeed, this difference could be explained by their specific experiences.²⁸ On
the other hand, Hungary has one unique factor—as 66 % of respondents empha-
sized—which is the vast exposure of individuals to antisemitism in the public
sphere, first and foremost, by the eagerness of mainstream politicians to
adopt publicly antisemitic attitudes and antisemitic rhetoric, something that al-
most does not exist in French politics.²⁹
On the other side, we have the UK and Latvia. The FRA survey revealed, as
was mentioned above, that 52 % of UK Jews believe that antisemitism is not, or
almost not a problem in Britain. And it is the highest rate among the EU mem-
bers. The Jewish Policy Research (JPR) concluded in wake of the survey: “[The
British Jewish population has] a strong sense of belonging to the UK.”³⁰ There
are several empirical indications that support this assumption, for example,
77 % of the respondents declared that they “have not considered emigrating” be-
cause of their fear of antisemitism.³¹ Knowing that the UK, according to TAU
data, has the highest rate of antisemitic violence in Europe, causes one to won-
der how is it that only a relatively small proportion of UK respondents to the FRA
survey claimed to be worried about being a victim of violence. Thirty-five percent
were worried of verbal harassment and twenty-five percent were worried of phys-
ical attacks; the smallest rate of all participants in the survey.³² Even though the

 FRA, Discrimination and Hate Crime, 37.

 Cf. ibid, 33.
 Cf. ibid., 26.
 M. Whine, “United Kingdom,” in Antisemitism Worldwide 2014: General Analysis Draft, ed. D.
Porat (Tel Aviv: Kantor Center of the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, 2014), https://www.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/kantorfull.pdf, 71.
 Cf. FRA, Discrimination and Hate Crime, 37.
 Cf. ibid, 33. It is interesting that when asked about their personal experience, the rate of
those who have suffered from violence is climbing to 19 %. This is above the percentage of Lat-
via’s respondents (16 %) and Italy, with the lowest rate of people who actually suffered from vi-
olence (12 %).
 Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish Sense of Belonging 401

number of violent antisemitic incidents in Britain is the highest among EU mem-

bers, the sense of security of the British Jews, and their belief as shown in the
survey, of being integrated into the British society, are remarkable.³³
In comparison to France, a considerably lower rate of respondents claimed
to be suffering from antisemitic attitudes in the public sphere or at social events.
The survey revealed that UK Jews sense that many in the political establishment
—at least when it comes to the Conservative Party and the more moderate repre-
sentatives of the Labour Party—are standing with them in fighting antisemitism
and discrimination.³⁴
Concerns and questions have been raised in Britain recently about the future
of Jewish existence in the country. The sense of security was diluted in the wake
of the murderous antisemitic incidents in 2014 (Brussels), and in 2015 (Paris, Co-
penhagen, and Manchester), and the hate against the Jews shown in the streets
of European capitals during the summer of 2014 and “Operation Protective
Edge.” A prominent Londoner lawyer, Hillary Freeman, summarized the popular
feelings:

As a Jew, I find this particularly offensive. It’s taking the Holocaust—the greatest tragedy in
the history of the Jewish people—and using it as a stick to beat us with. … I am horrified
that my grandma, now 96, might live to see the country that gave her sanctuary over 70
years ago become a place that is no longer safe for Jews. But the terrifying truth is that
once the genie of antisemitism has been released from the bottle, it is almost impossible
to put it back.³⁵

The Paris massacres have sent shock waves throughout the UK’s Jewish society,
and its members have been looking for reassurance to their civilian status in the

 My analysis totally objects to Jonathan Boyd’s conclusion that “most European Jewish pop-
ulations appear to feel a strong sense of belonging to the countries in which they live, and most
seem to be able to comfortably manage the relationship between their Jewish and wider national
identities. Even in the countries where levels of antisemitism are revealed by these and other
data to be highest, Jews feel remarkably attached to the nations in which they live: over 70 per-
cent of respondents in Hungary feel a strong sense of belonging to Hungary, and over 80 per
cent of respondents in France feel a strong sense of belonging to France.” J. Boyd, “Jewish
Life in Europe: Impending Catastrophe, or Imminent Renaissance?,” Institute for Jewish Policy
Research, issued November 2013, accessed October 28, 2020, https://archive.jpr.org.uk/down
load?id=1491, 12.
 Cf. ibid, 26.
 H. Freeman, “Why, as a British Jew, I’m Terrified by the Anti-Semitism suddenly Sweeping
my Country,” The Daily Mail, August 9, 2018, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-
2720381/Why-British-Jew-I-m-terrified-anti-Semitism-suddenly-sweeping-country.html.
402 Haim Fireberg

UK. In 2015, during a meeting with Jewish Leaders, David Cameron, PM, praised
the sense of mutual solidarity and belonging that unifies all Britons:

I know that everyone will be very concerned about what happened in Paris and the appal-
ling attacks … I want to reassure you that we will try and do everything we can to make sure
that your organizations are properly engaged with our police and security services right
across the board to see if there is anything more we can do to ensure security … But I
think we should use the momentum of those great demonstrations to emphasize what
we are in this country: a very successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy.³⁶

In November 2017, while celebrating a centenary to the Balfour declaration,

Theresa May, stressed that there

can be no excuses for any kind of hatred towards the Jewish people. Criticizing the actions
of Israel is never—and can never be—an excuse for questioning Israel’s right to exist, any
more than criticizing the actions of Britain could be an excuse for questioning our right to
exist.³⁷

The Jewish leadership has continuously played down a survey from January
2015, called the “Antisemitism Barometer”—criticizing it for severe methodolog-
ical faults—which claimed that almost half of UK Jews are now considering em-
igrating.³⁸ By doing so, they also preferred to neglect the consequences from the
changes of the Labour Party’s leadership, headed by Jeremy Corbyn, its harsh
new policies toward Israel, and the antisemitism in the party’s ranks.³⁹

 “Jewish Community Leaders Meet with Prime Minister David Cameron,” Jewish Leadership
Council, issued January 13, 2015, accessed October 28, 2020, https://www.thejlc.org/jewish_
community_leaders_meet_with_prime_minister_david_cameron2.
 R. Sanchez, “Theresa May Says there Can Be ‘No Excuse’ for Anti-Semitism as she Marks Bal-
four Centenary with Netanyahu,” The Telegraph, November 2, 2017, https://www.telegraph.co.
uk/news/2017/11/02/theresa-may-says-can-no-excuse-anti-semitism-marks-balfour-centenary/.
 Cf. J. Lewis, “Nearly Half of British Jews Say they Have no Future in Europe, Study Finds,”
The Jerusalem Post, January 14, 2015, https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Nearly-half-of-British-
Jews-says-they-have-no-future-in-Europe-study-finds-387693; “The Antisemitism Barometer,”
Campaign Against Antisemitism, last updated 2019, accessed October 28, 2020, https://anti
semitism.org/barometer/.
 Cf. A. Borschel-Dan, “British Jews Fight to Regain the Labour Party they once Called ‘Fam-
ily’,” The Times of Israel, November 9, 2017, https://www.timesofisrael.com/british-jews-fight-to-
regain-the-labour-party-they-once-called-family/. For an extensive analysis of the contemporary
relations between the British Left and the British Jews, see: D. Hirsh, Contemporary Left Antisem-
itism (Milton: Routledge, 2018); and also D. Rich, “Antisemitism in the Radical Left and the Brit-
ish Labour Party,” Kantor Center Position Papers, issued January 2018, accessed October 28,
 Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish Sense of Belonging 403

Jonathan Arkush, the president of the Board of Deputies, has pushed for-
ward the idea of reaching out to the growing Muslim society, offering to tighten
the bond of citizenship and integration of British society, in order to fortify again
the sense of security among the UK Jewish population. In his words:

I want to meet Muslims and show them that Jews are actually human beings and you can
combine being a good Muslim with being a good British citizen and hopefully take them
away from being at risk of flirting with jihadi ideas.⁴⁰

Latvia, like Hungary and almost all post-Soviet States, deals mainly with its past
in its quest for the future: the quest for a national identity. Violent antisemitism
is almost a non-issue in Latvia. Unfortunately for the small community, the ador-
ation of the Latvian Nazi-era SS units and other Nazi collaborators became part
of the national discourse of the new Latvia.⁴¹ Even so, a high proportion of the
respondents (68 %) in the FRA survey showed a high sense of belonging and an-
swered that they have “not considered emigrating.” On the one hand with sim-
ilarities to Hungary, we see rising nationalism and the eulogizing of their own
Nazi past, but on the other hand with similarities to the UK, we see a declaration
of trust in their homeland.⁴²
The respondents were asked to point to several statements that are “possible
contexts for negative statements about Jews.” In almost every possible “context,”
the Latvian proportions were the lowest. Every statement that involved public at-
titudes or politicians’ attitudes against Jews had gotten a low rating; in contra-
diction to France, Hungary, and even better than the UK’s results.⁴³ The empiri-
cal findings show that what is being considered from the outside as a neo-Nazi
and nationalistic debate has not yet converted into antisemitism and has not yet
given rise to a new generation of extreme antisemites. One more factor is that the
Israeli-Arab conflict, which according to the Latvian respondents has the small-

2020, https://en-humanities.tau.ac.il/sites/humanities_en.tau.ac.il/files/media_server/0001/
Dave%20Rich%20180128.pdf.
 S. Linde, “New UK Jewish Leader: I Want to Meet Muslims,” The Jerusalem Post, June 25,
2015, https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/New-UK-Jewish-leader-I-want-to-meet-Muslims-407127.
 Cf. Stephen Roth Institute, Antisemitism Worldwide 2013; I. Cantorovich, “Post-Soviet Region
in 2014,” in Antisemitism Worldwide 2014: General Analysis Draft, ed. D. Porat (Tel Aviv: Kantor
Center of the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, 2014), https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.
org/jsource/images/kantorfull.pdf, 19 – 20.
 Cf. FRA, Discrimination and Hate Crime, 37.
 Cf. ibid, 26.
404 Haim Fireberg

est influence on antisemitic discourse or violence in comparison to France, Hun-

gary, and the UK (14 %, 56 %, 49 %, and 35 % respectively).⁴⁴

Conclusion
A few patterns have been found whilst studying and comparing contemporary
antisemitism in four EU Member States, two from Western Europe—France and
UK—and two from Central and Eastern Europe—Hungary and Latvia.
‒ The level of violent antisemitism, as is shown by the number of violent in-
cidents, does not necessarily indicate the state of antisemitic perceptions.
Generally, it could be a necessary condition in defining an antisemitic at-
mosphere but undoubtedly not the only one. France and Britain have the
highest level of recorded incidents, but their Jewish population’s self-percep-
tion of antisemitism is almost the opposite. The same could have been indi-
cated in Hungary and Latvia. Both countries have a low level of violent an-
tisemitism, but their perceptions of antisemitism in their countries differ
from each other.
‒ In both countries where respondents have indicated that antisemitism is a
severe problem (i. e., France and Hungary), they show either a high ratio
of estrangement from the ethos that have been chosen for national identity
(Hungary), or demonstrate ongoing dissatisfaction from the state of civic
consolidation and express worries about society’s disintegration (France).
In both Latvia and Britain there is a higher level of confidence in the civic
order, especially in Britain, and a strong belief that the British society is
on the right path in dealing with the challenges of new antisemitism. But
confidence in government and society, or lack of it, is only one part of the
sufficient conditions.
‒ Frustration from the political establishment, from ruling parties, and from
the solutions they supply in order to control violent antisemitism, but
much more importantly, to supply a common basis for all fractions of society
to unite around, are the major factors in adopting harsh perceptions about
antisemitism. Without belief in the future of the country, and without confi-
dence that Jews are an important component of its society, Jews feel aban-
doned. And this lack of confidence is the main sufficient condition in adopt-
ing the hard antisemitic atmosphere. In the UK we have shown a high level
of cooperation between the authorities and the Jewish community; in Latvia

 Cf. ibid, 24.

 Antisemitic Perceptions and Jewish Sense of Belonging 405

it was not a declared issue but empirically given that no friction was found
between the Jews and the government. But in France, though de facto, the
authorities are trying their best to confront antisemitism and to find new
paths to civic integration, the level of trust toward the political establish-
ment is still very low.⁴⁵ Much of the same could still be said about Hungary.
There are many similarities here also to the US Jewry experience and the di-
vision over the Trump administration.

Haim Fireberg is a research associate at the Kantor Center for the Study of Contem-
porary European Jewry, Tel Aviv University and head of research programs at the
Center. His main foci of research are the urban history of the Jewish Yishuv in
Palestine and during the first two decades of the State of Israel, and the study
of virtual Jewish communities (maintaining Jewish and Israeli life in cyberspace).
Fireberg is also active in monitoring and researching contemporary antisemitism,
concentrating on Europe.

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20180128.pdf.
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four-centenary/.
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can-jews-voted-70 - 25-in-favor-of-clinton-over-trump-poll-shows/.
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pdf.
Comprehending Anti-Zionism as a Virulent Form
of “New Antisemitism”
Matthias J. Becker
The German Left and Israel

Abstract
Within society and public discourse, antisemitism is still perceived as emanating
predominantly from the political Right. However, reactions to the Six-Day War in
1967 demonstrated the fallacy of this assumption. Anti-Zionist attitudes spread
in German public discourse, notably among the New Left.
Although the Left attempts to distance itself from antisemitism, it neverthe-
less justifies the reproduction of traditional antisemitic stereotypes (e. g., the
greedy Jewish capitalist) and the use of antisemitic metaphors (e. g., plague of
locusts) through the following two demonizing maneuvers:
One, Israel has been associated since the late 1960s with ideologies that the
Left clearly rejects: colonialism and imperialism, oppression, militarism, and
chauvinism. The Left has always positioned itself on the side of the weak against
the mighty. In the context of the Mideast conflict, this means showing solidarity
with the Palestinians. Based on such a perspective, Israel has been continuously
blamed as the cruel and mighty oppressor. Leftists have seen Israel as the bridge-
head for the United States into the Arab world and partly interpret American
support as the expression of the alleged Jewish global power.
Two, parts of the German left have declared Israelis to be the “new Nazis”
and compare the Mideast conflict to the Holocaust. Through such demonizing
analogies, German atrocities are trivialized and identification with the German
in-group takes place. Additionally, when claiming that the Mideast conflict re-
sembles Nazi atrocities, Germans are able to emphasize their sensitivity regard-
ing their own history and, as a result, feel morally superior. This leads to the
birth of “honorable antisemitism,”¹ wrapped in anti-Zionist reproaches.
The way in which such distorted perspectives on Israel and the Mideast con-
flict are uttered depends to a large extent on the motives and the background of
the speaker. Whilst the Far Left depicts Israel and Jews as colonialists and impe-
rialists, center-left milieus see themselves as advocates for human rights, elo-
quently advocating for the secularization of Israel and the abandonment of Zion-
ism. Both groups, however, charge Israel with backward and immoral behavior
and give it the status of a pariah.

 J. Améry, “Der ehrbare Antisemitismus,” Werke: Aufsätze zur Politik und Zeitgeschichte, ed. S.
Steiner (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2005 [1969]), 7:131.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Matthias J. Becker, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed

under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-021
412 Matthias J. Becker

Its “rhetorical flexibility”² makes this form of hatred toward Israel so attrac-
tive to the mainstream society. Speakers distance themselves from conventional
forms of antisemitism, emphasizing—based on their ideological position—that it
is impossible for them to hold prejudices against Jews. Antisemitism in this form
is presented as legitimate criticism of Israel while at the same time, the taboo of
criticizing the Jewish state (another antisemitic stereotype) is emphasized. Left
Israel-related antisemitism can then be embraced by the mainstream; its social
acceptability makes it much more dangerous than the limited appeal of tradi-
tional forms of Jew-hatred.

1 Introduction
Scholarship and the broad public tend to perceive antisemitism as a constitutive
component of a right-wing worldview. Since the 1990s and especially since the
Second Intifada (2000), however, antisemitism in the left political sphere has be-
come a de-facto part of the discourse as well. Related discussions in the public,
throughout different left groups, but also in academia can be characterized as
being highly emotional. The reason for this might be that antisemitism within
the leftist worldview still sounds oxymoronic, that is, antisemitism on the left
is opposed to the self-conception of left groups.
Since antisemitism on the left must be perceived within the context of anti-
Zionism, I will first clarify the latter term. This, in turn, requires the understand-
ing of what left milieus mean when they use the term Zionism. The meanings of
terms shift throughout history. Only through consideration of the ideological
background as well as the historical genesis of these phenomena,³ current pat-
terns of language use (including their communicative functions) can be under-
stood and classified as being expressions of antisemitism in the left political
sphere.⁴

 M.W. Kloke, “Kein Frieden mit Israel: Antizionismus in der ‘gebildeten’ Linken,” in Gebildeter
Antisemitismus: Eine Herausforderung für Politik und Zivilgesellschaft, ed. M. Schwarz-Friesel
(Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2015), 160.
 A historical overview will be given in part 3 of this article.
 The linguistic characteristics will be explored in part 4 of this article.
 The German Left and Israel 413

2 Terminology
Wide parts of the Left saw (and still see) Zionism as a reactionary ideology that
propagates an “incompatibility between Jews and non-Jews.”⁵ Through such an
interpretation of Zionism as a backward nationalism, it is perceived as an obsta-
cle for the leftist aspiration of overcoming nation statehood and establishing a
classless society.⁶ In light of the historical reasons for the emergence of Zionism,
such a conception decontextualizes the Zionist movement and relativizes antise-
mitism.⁷
Anti-Zionism is an ideology that is opposed to the alleged character of Zion-
ism and aims at overcoming the Zionist movement.⁸ The hostility toward Israel is
placed within the core of the ideology. The elements that constitute anti-Zionism
and its historical genesis will be elucidated in part 3 of this article.
Often people (not only) on the left emphasize that there is a difference be-
tween anti-Zionism and antisemitism.⁹ From a historical perspective, the two

 T. Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” in Neuer Antisemitismus?

Eine globale Debatte, ed. D. Rabinovici, U. Speck, and N. Sznaider (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
2004), 147.
 Further on, I will indicate that a left worldview does by no means exclude nationalism and the
construction of per se good peoples (e. g., standing up against the finance capital). In addition,
left-liberal elites repeatedly raise the claim that nationalism in its extreme form has been van-
quished in Western Europe and especially in Germany—while Zionism, however, remains to be a
relic of nationalist tendencies in Europe’s past (regarding post-national self-images among Euro-
pean elites cf. A. S. Markovits, “Europäischer Antiamerikanismus und Antisemitismus: Immer
gegenwärtig, obwohl immer verleugnet,” in Exklusive Solidarität: Linker Antisemitismus in
Deutschland: Vom Idealismus zur Antiglobalisierungsbewegung, ed. M. Brosch et al. [Berlin: Met-
ropol, 2007], 241).
 Zionism has its political roots in the end of the nineteenth century and got a huge reputation
with Theodor Herzl’s writing “Der Judenstaat” from 1896. As a reaction to increasing antisemit-
ism, the declared aim of the Zionist movement was the founding or reconstitution of a Jewish
national state in Palestine (cf. T. Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik: Antizionismus
in der deutschen Linken [Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2011], 28). Relativizing
antisemitism among left groups however started even before they dealt out criticism against
Zionism (see part 3 of this article).
 Cf. H. J. Schmidt, Antizionismus, Israelkritik und “Judenknax”: Antisemitismus in der deutschen
Linken nach 1945 (Bonn: Bouvier, 2010), 11.
 With regards to the definition of antisemitism: “Antisemitism as a mental system of belief and
of interpretation of the world has been passed down through the centuries, always adapted to
current conditions and correspondingly modified, yet without changes in the underlying concep-
tual constants, according to which Jews categorically function as the other. […] In antisemites’
mentally fixed binary construction of the world, Judaism figures as the ultimate opposite of their
own form of existence. Accordingly, Jews, with the imagined characteristics imputed to them,
414 Matthias J. Becker

phenomena are of course not identical, since they originate from different ideo-
logical standpoints. A differentiation can therefore be legitimate when looking at
an early historical stage. However, considering the genesis as well as current pat-
terns and actualizations of both phenomena, a differentiation does not meet the
characteristic of antisemitism, which is to continuously—and in accordance with
own values and principles—adapt to present conditions. During long parts of its
historical existence as well as in its current shape, anti-Zionism can rather be
characterized as a “synonym”¹⁰ of antisemitism:

Anti-Zionism solely superficially appears to be an attitude on its own. In reality, it simply is

a new form of latent antisemitism in disguise that in contrast to passed on hostility toward
Jews has less a religious but rather a political and economic basis.¹¹

Particularly in its goal of destroying the State of Israel, which nowadays is the
“most important symbol of Jewish life and survival,”¹² the synonymous, however
socially acceptable status of anti-Zionism becomes apparent:

Contemporary anti-Zionism, which rejects or delegitimizes the existence of the Jewish state,
functions to a great extent “as a ticket for the traditional hostility toward Jews, and its ul-
tima ratio is the annihilation of Israel.”¹³

According to the characterization of anti-Zionism as a “ticket” for traditional an-

tisemitism, Haury¹⁴ stresses that the anti-imperialism of the Left—that with re-

embody that which is categorically non-normal and bad. Antisemitism thus signifies exclusion
of Jews and Judaism by labeling them as the absolute and total negation of the world order de-
fined as normal.” M. Schwarz-Friesel and J. Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind: The Language
of Jew-Hatred in Contemporary Germany (Boston: University Press of New England, 2017), 18.
With regards to the definition of verbal antisemitism: “All linguistic utterances that devalue,
stigmatize, discriminate against, and defame Jews qua Jews can be considered forms of verbal
antisemitism. These are utterances, in other words, that can be coded as stereotypes hostile to-
ward Jews and that are used to transmit resentments.” Ibid., 19).
 W. Laqueur, Gesichter des Antisemitismus: Von den Anfängen bis heute (Berlin: Propyläen,
2008), 18.
 L. Mertens, “Antizionismus: Feindschaft gegen Israel als eine neue Form des Antisemitis-
mus,” in Antisemitismus in Deutschland: Zur Aktualität eines Vorurteils, ed. W. Benz (München:
DTV, 1995), 89.
 Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 145.
 L. Rensmann and J. H. Schoeps, eds., Feindbild Judentum: Antisemitismus in Europa (Berlin:
Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2008), 17.
 T. Haury, “Die ideologischen Grundlagen des Antizionismus in der Linken” (D-A-S-H, 2005),
http://www.d-a-s-h.org/dossier/07/08_grundlagenantizionismus.html.
 The German Left and Israel 415

spect to the Mideast (conflict) comes along as anti-Zionism—shows antisemitic

patterns:

The anti-imperialist world-view of the New Left was shaped by Manichaeism, personifica-
tion, conspiracy theory and the opposition to good “peoples” versus the bad finance capital
and therefore it was structurally antisemitic […]¹⁵

Applying the linguistic approach to the present-day antisemitism, Schwarz-

Friesel and Reinharz also emphasize that both phenomena must be seen as
closely related on the linguistic level. They therefore categorize anti-Zionism as
subtype of Israel-related antisemitism respectively of anti-Israelism:¹⁶

[…] because anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism are often inextricably linked and because usu-
ally no linguistic distinction is made, we subsume this variant under anti-Israelism.¹⁷

Anti-Zionism in large parts of its historical, and almost completely in its present-
day shape, is tainted with antisemitic elements. Its purpose is the one of an iden-
tity-forming feature, a “cultural code.”¹⁸ This facilitates the affiliation to a partic-
ular cultural milieu in which the reproduction of antisemitic stereotypes is the
expression of illegitimate attitudes. Through the loop of anti-Zionism, antisemit-
ic stereotypes and other forms of Israel-related antisemitism¹⁹ can be justified
and finally can reach the status of what is permissible to say. Related interpre-
tations of global states and processes get reinforced through diverse anti-
isms²⁰ that constitute a simplified, “one-dimensional worldview,”²¹ to be espe-
cially characterized by a distorting dichotomy between the good and the evil.

 Ibid.
 Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 145. With concerns to the defini-
tion of Israel-related antisemitism cf. also EUMC, “Working Definition of Antisemitism” (2004),
229.
 Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 371.
 S. Volkov, Antisemitismus als kultureller Code: Zehn Essays (München: C.H. Beck, 2000), 83.
 Cf. EUMC, “Working Definition of Antisemitism.”
 Next to anti-Zionism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-modernism, anti-militarism as
well as anti-imperialism constitute a self-contained model of interpreting the world.
 Haury, “Die ideologischen Grundlagen.”
416 Matthias J. Becker

3 Genesis of Left-wing Antisemitism

Hostility toward Jews among the Left existed even before Israel was founded.²²
Hence, it cannot be limited to the time frame after 1948. Hostility toward Jews
is the oldest hatred in human history and has for centuries constituted an inte-
gral characteristic of European culture, which could (and still can) be observed
among all social groups. Even philosophers of the Enlightenment in the eight-
eenth century such as Voltaire, Kant, and Fichte,²³ as well as leading represen-
tatives of the labor movement and theoreticians of socialism such as Karl Marx,
expressed antisemitic attitudes.²⁴ In addition, examples including the early so-
cialists such as Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Russian anarchists
such as Mikhail Bakunin and others, the Stalinist show trials, and the Commu-
nist Party of Germany (KPD) of the Weimar Republic may be mentioned.²⁵ Calls,

 Cf. L. Poliakov, Geschichte des Antisemitismus. Band V: Die Aufklärung und ihre judenfeindli-
che Tendenz (Worms: Heintz, 1983); E. Silberner, Kommunisten zur Judenfrage: Zur Geschichte von
Theorie und Praxis des Kommunismus (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1983).
 Cf. E. Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sozialismus vom
Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1914 (Berlin: Colloquium, 1962), 286; Schwarz-Friesel and
Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 36.
 Whether Marx was really an antisemite is being thoroughly debated among scholars. It is a
fact that he (as well as many other leftists) also criticized antisemitism. T. Stein indicates that
“such statements […][were] less the reflection of a genuinely left antisemitism from a specifically
left-minded model for interpreting the world, but rather, due to macro social structures of prej-
udice that could also affect left-wing patterns of judgement. A socialist or a person believing in
the ideals of Enlightenment was therefore not automatically immune to the adoption of anti-Jew-
ish prejudices,” Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik, 81; cf. also H. Brunkhorst, “Die
falsch gestellte Frage: War Marx Antisemit?” Blätter 8 (2014): 110 – 18, https://www.blaetter.de/
archiv/jahrgaenge/2014/august/die-falsch-gestellte-frage. For antisemitism on the Left at that
time cf. inter alia Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage, 137; M.W. Kloke, Israel und die deutsche
Linke: Zur Geschichte eines schwierigen Verhältnisses (Frankfurt: Haag und Herchen, 1994), 30; T.
Haury, Antisemitismus von links: Kommunistische Ideologie, Nationalismus und Antizionismus in
der frühen DDR (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002), 160.
 Cf. Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage, and Kommunisten zur Judenfrage; Poliakov, Ge-
schichte des Antisemitismus; M. Kessler, Antisemitismus, Zionismus und Sozialismus: Arbeiterbe-
wegung und jüdische Frage im 20. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Decaton, 1994); O. Kistenmacher, “Vom
‘Judas’ zum ‘Judenkapital’: Antisemitische Denkformen in der Kommunistischen Partei Deutsch-
lands der Weimarer Republik, 1918 – 1933,” in Exklusive Solidarität: Linker Antisemitismus in
Deutschland. Vom Idealismus zur Antiglobalisierungsbewegung, ed. M. Brosch et al. (Berlin: Met-
ropol, 2007), and ibid., Arbeit und “jüdisches Kapital”: Antisemitische Aussagen in der KPD-Ta-
geszeitung “Die Rote Fahne” während der Weimarer Republik (Bremen: edition lumière, 2016);
K. Holz, Nationaler Antisemitismus: Wissenssoziologie einer Weltanschauung (Hamburg: Hambur-
 The German Left and Israel 417

particularly the one from central committee (ZK) member, Ruth Fischer, in 1923,
to resist the “capitalist Jews” by “hanging” them on lanterns and “trampling”²⁶
them, demonstrate the explicit nature with which antisemitism was expressed in
left milieus at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The term anti-Zionism is originally disconnected from such forms of left-wing
antisemitism. It can be found, amongst others, in Jewish minorities and illus-
trates the—by no means uniform, very heterogeneous, and widespread—attitude
of many European Jews regarding the pursuit of a Jewish homeland. The Jews
who represented principles of emancipation and assimilation in their respective
European civil societies were opposed to this pursuit in particular.²⁷ In Germany,
it was the liberal Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Cen-
tral Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) that sought to enforce civic
as well as equal rights for Jews, emphasize the loyalty of German Jews toward
Germany, and strengthen the Jewish self-confidence. The Centralverein rejected
the Zionist belief in a Jewish nation with its own history, culture, and future.
Also, orthodox Jews opposed Zionism as it demanded the return to the holy
land of Israel before the arrival of the Messiah. The Allgemeiner Jüdischer Arbei-
terbund (General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, generally
called The Bund) in East Europe was the most prominent anti-Zionist movement
of the Jewish left—here, Zionism was rejected as bourgeois and therefore reac-
tionary Jewish nationalism.²⁸
The rejection of Zionism represented a dominant attitude also in non-Jewish
leftist groups. Here, Zionism was characterized as backward and competing with
the socialist movement. However, the rejection of Jewish nationalism had its
basis in a constant underestimation of antisemitism and hatred of Jews was
meant to be eliminated in the course of the planned revolution in any event.²⁹
Anti-Zionism before Auschwitz must be distinguished from the Marxist-Len-
inist anti-Zionism of the late Stalinism.³⁰ The latter is based on an anti-imperia-

ger Edition, 2010); J. Gerber, Ein Prozess in Prag: Das Volk gegen Rudolf Slánský und Genossen
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016).
 Quoted in N. Müller and O. Marusczyk, Marxistische Faschismusanalysen als Zeitdiagnose:
Zur unterschiedlichen Rezeption des Nationalsozialismus (München: AVM Akademische Verlags-
gemeinschaft, 2014), 27.
 Volkov, Antisemitismus als kultureller Code, 77.
 Cf. Kessler, Antisemitismus, Zionismus und Sozialismus, 92; Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus
und Israelkritik, 28.
 Cf. P. Ullrich, Die Linke, Israel und Palästina: Nahostdiskurse in Großbritannien und Deutsch-
land (Berlin: Dietz, 2008), 84.
 Cf. Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik, 29.
418 Matthias J. Becker

list worldview and arose mainly in the realm of power of Stalin’s Soviet Union.³¹
It represents a continuation of an anti-Zionist bias that characterized the relation
of certain parts of the Left with concerns for Judaism, even before the Middle
East conflict erupted. This emerging anti-Zionism exhibited a structural, contex-
tual, and functional proximity with antisemitic views (not least through the re-
production of stereotypes), even though mostly lacking an otherwise “tradition-
al,” racist component³²—conceptually, this “anti-Zionism after Auschwitz”³³
considered itself to be antifascist and, thus, had to avoid any antisemitic conno-
tation. From then on, this early form of anti-Zionism has had an impact on other
left-wing groups outside of the Soviet Union.
In the German Democratic Republic (DDR) that defined itself as antifascist
and anti-imperialist, anti-Zionism was part of the state-approved propaganda.³⁴
Israel was characterized as a “spearhead of the imperialist camp,”³⁵ Zionism as
an “‘anomaly’ of capitalist imperialism,”³⁶ as a devastating demon as well as the
case example of colonialism. This led to a socially acceptable anti-Zionist out-
look, which was in accordance with then hegemonic perceptions in society.
The anti-Zionist propaganda was steadily fed with antisemitic content, especially
after the Six-Day War in 1967. It received a special place in an ideology that equa-
ted Zionism not only with nationalism but also with economic expansionism.
By construing the State of Israel as regional henchman of US imperialism,
the alleged symbiosis of these two states could be presented as the root of all
evil. Allegations such as “global conspiracy of […] Wall street capitalists” as

 This Marxist-Leninist anti-imperialism is an ideological element of Marxism stemming from

Lenin that also reached the Left in Germany in a rather dogmatic manifestation. It has to be dis-
tinguished from anti-imperialism in a broader sense that rejects all forms of occupation and col-
onialism (cf. Ullrich, Die Linke, Israel und Palästina, 42; Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Is-
raelkritik, 29; S. Salzborn, Kampf der Ideen: Die Geschichte politischer Theorien im Kontext
[Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2017]).
 Cf. Haury, Antisemitismus von links, 429.
 Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik, 29.
 Cf. A. Timm, Hammer, Zirkel, Davidstern: Das gestörte Verhältnis der DDR zu Zionismus und
Staat Israel (Bonn: Bouvier, 1997); Haury, Antisemitismus von links; M.W. Kloke, “Antisemitismus
in der Linkspartei: ‘DIE LINKE hat ein Problem mit Antisemitinnen und Antisemiten’,” in Antise-
mitismus in deutschen Parteien, ed. D. Ionescu and S. Salzborn (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2014),
153 – 90; J. Herf, Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left,
1967 – 1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); S. Meining, “Zwischen Nichtbezie-
hung, Feindschaft und später Annäherung: die Deutsche Demokratische Republik und Israel,”
in Deutschland, die Juden und der Staat Israel: Eine politische Bestandsaufnahme, ed. O. Glöckner
and J. H. Schoeps (Hildesheim: Olms, 2016).
 Kloke, “Antisemitismus in der Linkspartei,” 154.
 Mertens, “Antizionismus: Feindschaft gegen Israel,” 89.
 The German Left and Israel 419

well as a dichotomization between “working nations” and “financial hyenas and

parasites”³⁷ not only confirmed antisemitic stereotypes but also raised the per-
suasive potential of such demonization. In this worldview, Jews and/or Zionists
served as scapegoats—albeit the GDR actually strove to overcome discrimination
toward humans based on their affiliation with a certain group.³⁸ With the aid of
such rhetorical constructions, a collective identity was to be created and the new
ruling system was thereby justified—the latter being necessary in the face of the
countless problems that occurred during the formation of socialism. In addition,
the obsessive comparison between Zionism and National Socialism can be clas-
sified as exonerative antisemitism, fulfilling the need for relief and exculpation
from Nazi crimes.³⁹
The vast majority of the West German left,⁴⁰ however, can be characterized
as pro-Israel, partly even philosemitic, during the 1950s to the mid-1960s. Such
attitudes can be partially explained by the knowledge and the shame regarding
the Shoah.⁴¹ Strong enthusiasm for the progressive pioneer state with its socialist
kibbutzim existed both within the social democratic as well as the Christian
left.⁴² This promptly changed with the Six-Day War in 1967, triggering an exhaus-

 Haury, Antisemitismus von links, 429.

 Cf. Kloke, “Antisemitismus in der Linkspartei,” 154.
 Cf. ibid.; cf. also Mertens, “Antizionismus: Feindschaft gegen Israel,” 93.
 Regarding the genesis of antisemitism among the West German left, see specifically the com-
prehensive studies by Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke, and L. Rensmann, Demokratie und
Judenbild: Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Wiesbaden:
VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004).
 Cf. D. Cesarani, The Left and the Jews: The Jews and the Left (London: Labour Friends of Is-
rael, 2004), 63; Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 144; C. Globisch,
Radikaler Antisemitismus: Inklusions- und Exklusionssemantiken von links und rechts in Deutsch-
land (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013), 43.
 Cf. Cesarani, The Left and the Jews; M.W. Kloke, “Zum Antisemitismus in der deutschen Link-
en,” Jüdisches Forum für Demokratie und gegen Antisemitismus, 2017, https://jfda.de/blog/2017/
09/18/zum-antisemitismus-in-der-deutschen-linken. The federal German Communist Party of
Germany (KPD) showed a temporary rapprochement toward Israel. Yet, this already changed
during the Suez crisis in 1956 that was followed by an anti-Zionist smear campaign (cf. J. Ed-
munds, “The Left’s Views on Israel: From the Establishment of the Jewish State to the Intifada”
[PhD diss., London School of Economics and Political Science, 1997], 2; J.-Y. Camus, “The French
Left and Political Islam: Secularism versus the Temptation of an Alliance,” Engage, 3 [2006],
https://engageonline.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/the-french-left-and-political-islam-secularism-
versus-the-temptation-of-an-alliance-jean-yves-camus-engage-journal-issue-3-september-2006).
However, it did not share the same quality of hatred toward Israel as East European and espe-
cially Soviet anti-Zionism (cf. R. S. Wistrich, “Left-Wing Anti-Zionism in Western Societies,” in
Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in the Contemporary World [London: Palgrave Macmillan,
1990], 49).
420 Matthias J. Becker

tive erosion of solidarity among the leftist groups, who now considered them-
selves as anti-imperialist. ⁴³ The fact that Israel could preventively defend itself
against an imminent attack from the Arab states represented a “sin”⁴⁴ within
“the leftist logic of categorical solidarity with the victims.”⁴⁵ Moreover, conserva-
tive milieus increasingly expressed sympathy with Israel, and this led to a
change of thinking among the leftist groups.⁴⁶
The (more and more antisemitic) ideology of anti-Zionism (in connection
with anti-Americanism) represented a completely natural component for the aris-
ing New Left⁴⁷ during the 1970s up until the end of the 1980s in West Germany.
Israel, the concept of the enemy, became the nexus that brought a “political-
ideological closing of ranks”⁴⁸ for the disunited left.
Ever since, it is of particular concern for the Left to demonstrate solidarity
with the Palestinians and to support the fight of the Palestine Liberation Organ-
ization (PLO) against Israel.⁴⁹ Introduced by the Socialist German Student Feder-
ation (SDS),⁵⁰ the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO), the civil rights move-
ment and the 1968 movement, leftist groups established many Palestine
Committees from the 1970s onwards. Unlike traditionally left movements, these
leftists put their hopes of overthrowing capitalist systems in the so-called nation-
al liberation movements in the “Third World,” that is, in Africa, Asia, South
America, and primarily in the Middle East. The focus on these non-European
movements served as identification objects and allowed an unambiguous and
therefore persuasive dichotomization between the rulers and the ruled—a re-
duced perception of political and economic processes that stressed their world-
view. After the unsuccessful attempt by the APO to trigger revolutionary impuls-
es in West Germany, this was a crucial step toward self-legitimization.⁵¹
In accordance with a fraternization with, as well as pure romanticization of,
fighting peoples as well as by “applying the anti-imperialist scheme to the [Mid-

 Cf. Haury, Antisemitismus von links.

 Kloke, “Kein Frieden mit Israel,” 161.
 Globisch, Radikaler Antisemitismus, 44.
 Cf. Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke, 183.
 The New Left was constituted by the Socialist German Student Federation (SDS), the Extra-
Parliamentary Opposition (APO), the subsequently following or seceding groups (comprising
also the Maoist K-Groups), the Urban Guerilleros as well as the emerging ecological movement
and the political party The Greens.
 Rensmann, Demokratie und Judenbild, 299.
 Cf. Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke, 106.
 The SDS was the 1961-founded hotbed of the New Left, which was the first to dissociate itself
from the Socialist-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) drifting to the Right.
 Cf. Haury, “Die ideologischen Grundlagen.”
 The German Left and Israel 421

dle East] conflict,”⁵² Israel was demonized and delegitimized in numerous left-
wing publications,⁵³ claiming that it is a “Zionist aggressor state,” a “bridgehead
of US imperialism,” an “oppressor of Arabic peoples’ liberation efforts” or an
“artificial entity built on stolen land and with scrounged money,” showing a
“parasitic character.”⁵⁴ Applying this explanatory (and strongly evaluative)
scheme, almost all political conflicts were related to Israel (and Jews), with
Jews described as the absolute evil. In the end, this led to a point where anti-
Zionism became—also in West Germany—a model for interpreting the world.
The above-mentioned utterances coming from the then left milieus raise,
once again, the questionability of separating anti-Zionism from antisemitism.⁵⁵
Antisemitism could be observed on the basis of not only the language use,
but also of concrete actions by leftist protagonists: the attack on the Jewish com-
munity house in West Berlin on November 9, 1969 by the Tupamaros of West Ber-
lin (which was justified with the foregoing narrative) proves how much the rejec-
tion of Israel was tainted with antisemitism.⁵⁶ Besides this act of terrorism,
further incidents of the 1960s and 1970s included the arson attack on a nursing
home in the Jewish community in Munich,⁵⁷ the sympathetic responses of the
Red Army Faction (RAF) and other groups with regards to the assassination of
Israeli athletes during the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 by the Palestinian
Black September Organization,⁵⁸ the hijacking of an Air France airplane by Pales-

 T. Haury, “Zur Logik des bundesdeutschen Antizionismus,” in Vom Antizionismus zum An-
tisemitismus, ed. L. Poliakov (Freiburg: ça ira, 1993), 141.
 These included back then and in the following decades amongst others the daily newspaper
junge Welt, leaflets of various Middle Eastern groups, the publications Rote Fahne, Linksruck,
and Rote Presse Korrespondenz.
 Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 144; cf. also M.W. Kloke, “An-
tizionismus und Antisemitismus als Weltanschauung? Tendenzen im deutschen Linksradikalis-
mus und -extremismus,” in Extremismus in Deutschland: Erscheinungsformen und aktuelle Bes-
tandsaufnahme, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern (Berlin: BMI, 2004), 173.
 Cf. Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 371.
 Cf. W. Kraushaar, Die Bombe im Jüdischen Gemeindehaus (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, In-
stitut für Sozialforschung, 2005). For further examples cf. Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke,
and Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken.”
 Cf. W. Kraushaar, “Wann endlich beginnt bei Euch der Kampf gegen die heilige Kuh Israel?”
Mü nchen 1970: Über die antisemitischen Wurzeln des deutschen Terrorismus (Reinbek: Rowohlt
Verlag, 2013).
 Cf. S. Grigat, “Antisemitismus und Antizionismus in der Linken,” Hagalil, April 18, 2002,
http://www.hagalil.com/antisemitismus/europa/linker-antisemitismus.htm.
422 Matthias J. Becker

tinian (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP]) and German (repre-
sentatives of the Revolutionary Cells) terrorists in July 1976.⁵⁹
During the Lebanon War in 1982, Israel was continuously accused of com-
mitting a genocide. Meanwhile, particularly among the German left, compari-
sons between Israel and Nazi Germany became more and more noticeable
(e. g., through allusions such as “final solution to the Palestinian question”⁶⁰).
A first turning point, that is, the problematization of the antisemitic content
of such statements among the Left could be witnessed in the 1980s. This “time of
tensile testing and learning processes”⁶¹ were even further intensified in the
1990s, specifically during the Gulf War in 1991. The prominent outlook in large
parts of the Left at that time (trivializing the dictator Saddam Hussein, character-
izing the US as belligerent as well as ignoring the concrete danger of war for Is-
rael) led to the separation of the so-called Antideutschen (anti-Germans)⁶² from
the anti-imperialist core (which continued to represent the classic anti-Zionist
position).⁶³ Hence, a fundamental shift in perspective happened within single
groups within the left milieu in Germany, both regarding the Middle East conflict
as well as antisemitism.⁶⁴ Since then, left-wing antisemitism was recognized

 After touchdown in the Ugandan city of Entebbe, the passengers were separated into Jewish
and non-Jewish groups and the non-Jewish hostages were released. The only hostage that was
killed tragically was a concentration camp survivor (cf. V. Weiß, “Die antizionistische Rezeption
des Nahostkonflikts in der militanten Linken der BRD,” in Antisemitismus, Antizionismus, Israel-
kritik, ed. M. Zuckermann [Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005], 231; Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und
Israelkritik, 52).
 Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 145; for its function and lin-
guistic patterns, see part 4 of this article.
 Cf. Kloke, “Antizionismus und Antisemitismus als Weltanschauung?,” 177.
 Mouthpieces of the political camp of the Antideutschen amongst others were the weekly
newspaper Jungle World (dissociated from the junge Welt) as well as the magazines Bahamas
and konkret.
 Cf. Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 143. For a detailed anal-
ysis concerning the separation of the left spectrum in the Federal Republic of Germany, cf.
also J. Gerber, Nie wieder Deutschland? Die Linke im Zusammenbruch des “realen Sozialismus”
(Freiburg: ça ira, 2010); P. Nowak, Kurze Geschichte der Antisemitismusdebatte in der deutschen
Linken (Münster: edition assemblage, 2013).
 These developments of reorientation within certain left-wing groups were already anticipat-
ed through the debates about the Lebanon War in 1982 but also through the impulses originating
from the “historians quarrel” and the Jenninger speech (cf. Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismus-
streit der deutschen Linken,” 145). However, in the 1990s—not so far from the inception of
the Gulf War—the commencing Oslo peace process must be mentioned, which, in its turn, led
to a shift and easing of the dispute over Israel among the Left. Yet, this period of calm rapidly
ended with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 (cf. Kloke, “Antizionismus
und Antisemitismus als Weltanschauung?,” 180).
 The German Left and Israel 423

within its own ranks and publicly discussed. The Antideutschen considered an-
tisemitism in Germany to be widespread and of eliminatory character

since the “Jew” as bogeyman shows a constitutive meaning for the ideological construction
of the “German people.” The extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, thus, has to be con-
sidered as the negative climax of both the civil society as well as the “German nation.”⁶⁵

Auschwitz is no longer regarded as merely the crimes of National Socialism but

particularly as the German crime. Additionally, the Antideutschen clearly rejected
the reunification of Germany due to a threatening hegemonic positioning of the
German state. Members of this group comprehend Zionism as response to the Eu-
ropean antisemitism and defend, amongst others, the existence of Israel as a cru-
cial shelter for all Jews.⁶⁶ This conflict, among the Left, was about

the relation toward Israel and the Mideast conflict, the meaning of the Shoah for the pre-
sent, attitudes toward antisemitism, nationalism and the German past, the question of anti-
capitalism and anti-imperialism, the relation toward war and peace and the relevance of
international solidarity. It is, to sum it up, about the identity of the radical left in Germany
after 1989.⁶⁷

The critical reflection on left-wing antisemitism that started in the 1990s admit-
tedly did not lead to the termination of anti-Zionist distortions of Israel. During
the Second Intifada (2000) and the Lebanon War in 2006 (and 2009), antisemitic
stereotypes were reproduced again through the loop of anti-Zionism. Newspa-
pers such as junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Unsere Zeit reconfirmed a con-
tinuous virulence of anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist patterns of the (radical to the
extreme) left.⁶⁸

 Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 152.

 Ibid.
 Ibid., 144.
 Cf. M.W. Kloke, “Israel: Alptraum der deutschen Linken?” in Exklusive Solidarität: Linker An-
tisemitismus in Deutschland. Vom Idealismus zur Antiglobalisierungsbewegung, ed. M. Brosch et
al. (Berlin: Metropol, 2007), 316. Imhoff could prove antisemitism among the readers of left-ori-
ented media. Cf. M. E. Imhoff, Antisemitismus in der Linken: Ergebnisse einer quantitativen Befra-
gung (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011). Giesel examined antisemitism in the course of a qualitative
corpus analysis of reader comments from the newspapers New Germany (Neues Deutschland)
and taz; cf. L. Giesel, “‘Kriegstreibende Zionisten’ und ‘Pro-Israel-Lobby’: Verbaler Antisemitis-
mus in Kommentarbeiträgen des Neuen Deutschlands und der Taz,” in Gebildeter Antisemitis-
mus: Eine Herausforderung für Politik und Zivilgesellschaft, ed. M. Schwarz-Friesel (Baden-
Baden: Nomos, 2015). Such analyses prove a continuous presence of left-wing antisemitism.
424 Matthias J. Becker

Looking at rather left-oriented media within the German mainstream illus-

trates that Israel-related antisemitism in this milieu also does not represent an
individual case (and cannot at all—as often suggested—be considered a
taboo). Right after its foundation in 1948, the renowned publisher of the news-
paper Die Zeit, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, already classified Israel as comparable
with Nazi Germany.⁶⁹ Also Rudolf Augstein drew this analogy in his Spiegel arti-
cles of the 1970s and 1990s.⁷⁰ Jakob Augstein, stepson of the popular publisher
and editor-in-chief of the left-liberal Freitag, in recent history continued this tra-
dition in his Spiegel columns by repeatedly comparing Israel with Nazi Germany
(“Gaza is a prison. A camp.”⁷¹). Furthermore, J. Augstein equated the Jewish state
with the South African apartheid regime,⁷² alleged intentional killing of Palesti-
nian children by the Israeli army and claimed that ultra-orthodox Jews would
“follow the law of revenge.”⁷³ The journalist also reproduced world conspiracy
ideologies (“[…] the Netanyahu government keeps the whole world on a leash
with rising war hymns,” “[…] the whole world as a hostage […]”⁷⁴; “when Jeru-
salem calls, Berlin obeys its will.”⁷⁵ The fact that a major part of German journal-
ists defended Jakob Augstein against the allegations antisemitism of the Wiesen-
thal Center—despite his obviously demonizing statements—confirms the social

 “One can only hope what the shock regarding the death of Count Bernadotte means for the
responsible men of the government of Israel, that they pause at least for a moment and recog-
nize appalled how far they have already come on their way that has led another nation into the
abyss.” M. Gräfin Dönhoff, “Völkischer Ordensstaat Israel,” Die Zeit, September 23, 1948, http://
www.zeit.de/1948/39/voelkischer-ordensstaat-israel.
 “It must not be the same people, that seek to engrain the remembrance of the platform in
Auschwitz forever into the memory of us and the ones that come after us […], to act as the ‘mas-
ter race’ toward the Palestinians.” R. Augstein, “Ist Israel noch zu retten?” Der Spiegel, October
15, 1990, http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13502118.html.
 J. Augstein, “Gesetz der Rache,” Spiegel Online, November 19, 2012, https://www.spiegel.de/
politik/ausland/jakob-augstein-ueber-israels-gaza-offensive-gesetz-der-rache-a-868015.html.
 Cf. S. Beyer and E. Follath, “Spiegel-Streitgespräch. Was ist Antisemitismus?” Spiegel Online,
January 14, 2013, https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-90535659.html.
 Augstein, “Gesetz der Rache”; cf. also P. Kuhn, “Dämonisierung mit dem Ziel der Dele-
gitimierung,” Die Welt, January 16, 2013, https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article
112787522/Daemonisierung-mit-dem-Ziel-der-Delegitimierung.html; M. Küntzel, “Die Jakob Aug-
stein-Debatte: Eine verpasste Chance,” in Gebildeter Antisemitismus: Eine Herausforderung für
Politik und Zivilgesellschaft, ed. M. Schwarz-Friesel (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2015), 53 – 74.
 J. Augstein, “Es musste gesagt werden,” Spiegel Online, April 6, 2012, https://www.spiegel.
de/politik/deutschland/jakob-augstein-ueber-guenter-grass-israel-gedicht-a-826163.html.
 J. Augstein, “Die deutsche Atom-Lüge,” Spiegel Online, June 4, 2012, https://www.spiegel.de/
politik/ausland/u-boote-fuer-israel-wie-deutschland-die-sicherheit-in-nahost-gefaehrdet-a-
836816.html.
 The German Left and Israel 425

acceptability of antisemitic slurs within the German mainstream discourse. The

central argument in the debates was that Augstein would represent critical,
left-wing journalism and, therefore, his articles cannot represent expressions
of antisemitic thinking. This debate exemplifies “a removal of taboos, a ration-
alization and a legitimization of antisemitic stereotypes.”⁷⁶ The Augstein case
demonstrates that the conditions for such statements change if they are ex-
pressed by left-liberal elites—positively connoted and chosen opinion leaders
of the German political mainstream.⁷⁷
The highest circulating German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung also
reproduced antisemitic stereotypes in the form of illustrations. Two scandals
took place in 2013 and 2014: in one of them, the newspaper published a cartoon
that depicts Israel as a monster, who is served by a maid representing Germany.⁷⁸
In the second case, they released a cartoon showing Facebook founder, Mark
Zuckerberg, as an octopus with a hooked nose, incorporating the application
WhatsApp.⁷⁹ Even if such cartoons were rejected as beyond the antisemitic para-
digm, its presence nonetheless demonstrates once more that antisemitic imagery
can be observed in left-liberal mainstream media as soon as journalists refer to
Israel and/or Jewish persons. Because of their potential impact on opinions with-
in wider mainstream society, the presence of such images is even more danger-
ous in this media spectrum than in decidedly left-wing press.⁸⁰

 L. Rensmann, “Antisemitismus und Israelfeindschaft,” in Deutschland, die Juden und der

Staat Israel: Eine politische Bestandsaufnahme, ed. O. Glöckner and J. H. Schoeps (Hildesheim:
Olms, 2016), 277.
 For a detailed analysis of the statements of J. Augstein and the thereby triggered debate, see
M. Küntzel, “Die Jakob Augstein-Debatte,” and especially L. Betzler and M. Glittenberg, Antisem-
itismus im deutschen Mediendiskurs: Eine Analyse des Falls Jakob Augstein (Baden-Baden:
Nomos, 2015).
 Cf. F. Augstein, “Ist ein gehörntes Monster antisemitisch?” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 2, 2013,
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/bebilderung-der-seite-das-politische-buch-ist-ein-ge
hoerntes-gieriges-monster-antisemitisch-1.1710600; “Antisemitismus-Vorwurf wegen Karikatur:
‘SZ’ bezeichnet Veröffentlichung als ‘Fehler’,” Spiegel Online, July 3, 2013, http://www.spiegel.
de/kultur/gesellschaft/antisemitismus-vorwurf-sueddeutsche-nennt-veroeffentlichung-fehler-a-
909299.html.
 Cf. P. Gensing, “SZ macht Facebook zu Jewbook,” Publikative.org, 2014, accessed November
12, 2017, https://publikative.org/2014/02/25/sz-macht-facebook-zu-jewbook; “Mark-Zuckerberg-
Karikatur: Antisemitismus-Vorwurf gegen ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’,” Spiegel Online, February 25,
2014, http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/mark-zuckerberg-wiesenthal-center-kritisiert-su
eddeutsche-fuer-antisemitische-karikatur-a-955613.html.
 For a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the image of Israel within the German main-
stream media, see R. Beyer, Mit deutschem Blick: Israelkritische Berichterstattung über den Na-
hostkonflikt in der bundesrepublikanischen Qualitätspresse. Eine Inhaltsanalyse mit linguistischem
426 Matthias J. Becker

On the political level, the behavior of politicians from the party DIE LINKE
(The Left) have provoked various scandals in the past twenty-five years, leading
to debates on antisemitism in the party.⁸¹ Related incidents prove that certain
parts of the party are still dominated by anti-Zionist attitudes. For instance,
the politician Hermann Dierkes from the city of Duisburg repeatedly called for
a boycott of Israel; the left-wing city counsellor Erika Zemaitis rejected the sub-
sidization of the reconstruction of the synagogue in Herford that was destroyed
by the Nazi regime; furthermore, in 2008, eleven delegates of the party were ab-
sent during the vote concerning a proposal to fight antisemitism (shortly before
the seventieth anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht), because they conceptually
equated solidarity with Israel with a form of taboo to criticize Israeli politics.⁸²
The politicians Annette Groth, Inge Höger, and Norman Paech participated in
the so-called Gaza flotilla raid in May 2010. The legitimization of the latter
was questioned by large parts of the media. Relativization of terror and fraterni-
zation with Hamas and Hezbollah could be observed at demonstrations initiated
by the party, in which left-wing and Islamist groups showed their hostility to-
ward Israel together with extreme right-wing actors.⁸³ Former head of the DIE
LINKE parliamentary group, Oskar Lafontaine (as well as Norman Paech), repeat-
edly expressed understanding for the Iranian nuclear program.⁸⁴

Schwerpunkt von Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung und Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Die
Welt und Welt am Sonntag, Nürnberger Nachrichten, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Focus und Der
Spiegel (Bremen: edition lumière, 2016). For a qualitative analysis of articles and readers’ com-
ments in the left liberal newspaper Die Zeit, see M. J. Becker, Analogien der “Vergangenheitsbe-
wältigung”: Antiisraelische Projektionen in Leserkommentaren der Zeit und des Guardian (Baden-
Baden: Nomos, 2018); trans. ibid., Antisemitism in Reader Comments: Analogies for Reckoning
with the Past (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
 For a detailed overview of antisemitism in the party DIE LINKE, which constitutes the suc-
cessor party of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands
[SED]), cf. Kloke, “Antisemitismus in der Linkspartei”; S. Salzborn, “Die Linkspartei hat ein An-
tisemitismusproblem,” Die Welt, June 8, 2010, http://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article
7957984/Die-Linkspartei-hat-ein-Antisemitismusproblem.html; S. Salzborn and S. Voigt, “Antise-
miten als Koalitionspartner? Die Linkspartei zwischen antizionistischem Antisemitismus und
dem Streben nach Regierungsfähigkeit,” Zeitschrift für Politik 3, no. 58 (2011): 290 – 309.
 Cf. Kloke, “Antisemitismus in der Linkspartei,” 162.
 Cf. Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 151. For statements rela-
tivizing terror of DIE LINKE politician Christine Buchholz cf. Kloke, “Antisemitismus in der Link-
spartei,” 160.
 Cf. ibid., 161, including corresponding statements of the Rosa Luxemburg foundation). Obvi-
ously, one shall, at this point, not forget the commitment of politicians from the party DIE LINKE
such as Petra Pau and Gregor Gysi. Kloke summarized these accomplishments (cf. ibid., 169).
 The German Left and Israel 427

Yet, not only within DIE LINKE, but also among other left-wing, autonomous
movements and non-governmental organizations, one can find the tendency to
treat antisemitism as merely a historically relevant phenomenon and conse-
quently—intentionally or not—justify demonization as well as the delegitimiza-
tion of Israel, since criticism of the latter cannot possibly constitute antisemit-
ism.⁸⁵
During the events of the now irrelevant anti-globalization movement attac
and the Trotskyist group Linksruck, Israel was repeatedly characterized as “fas-
cist.” Here again, the “heroic fighters of the intifada”⁸⁶ were praised and support-
ers called for the boycott of Israeli goods.⁸⁷ Through the often-used comparison
between international financial capital and national community/-ies, economic
processes are simplified; furthermore, such schemes activate patterns that are
mainly known from the right-wing nationalism or voelkisch anti-capitalism.⁸⁸
This way

anti-Zionist attitudes within the anti-globalization movement as well as in the peace move-
ment provide ideological points of reference for anti-Israeli argumentation from the ex-
treme right or Islamist side.⁸⁹

In summary, it can be stated that anti-Zionism, justified by a simplified anti-im-

perialist worldview, has been constantly expressed in the GDR and in left-wing
milieus of the FRG, in particular since 1967. Leftist groups have been character-
izing Israel as the ultimate evil, as the henchman or even as the secret string-
pulling puppet master of US imperialism. They reproduce antisemitic stereo-

 Yet, statistical surveys such as the renowned FES-Mitte-Study from 2016 show that the pres-
ence of antisemitism in the left-wing milieu has to be classified according to the so-called polit-
ical center and the right-wing spectrum: “Classic antisemitism exhibits an almost linear increase
(extreme left-wing 0 %, rather left-wing 1 %, center 7 %, rather right-wing 14 %, extreme right-
wing 16 %). The same holds true for Israel-related antisemitism (extreme left-wing 14 %, rather
left-wing 16 %, center 23 %, rather right-wing 43 %, extreme right-wing 46 %” (A. Zick, B. Küpper
and D. Krause, Gespaltene Mitte—Feindselige Zustände: Rechtextreme Einstellungen in Deutsch-
land 2016, ed. for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation by R. Melzer (Bonn: Dietz, 2016), 64.
 The fraternization with Palestinians can even go so far that some anti-imperialists see
Hamas as a partner and suicide bombers as martyrs that are fighting a justified battle (see state-
ments in Linksruck, quoted in Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 143
and 148).
 Ibid., 155.
 Ibid., 156.
 Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik, 91; cf. also T.-C. Heger, “Die Linke und der
Jihad: Ideologische Schnittstellen zwischen der extremen Linken und dem sunnitischen Islam-
ismus” (MA thesis, Universität Potsdam, 2007).
428 Matthias J. Becker

types, projective-exonerative analogies, and thereby demonize and delegitimize

the Jewish state. The linguistic patterns of repertoire used to devalue Israel and,
consequently, Jews, will be illustrated in the following part of the article.

4 Patterns of Language Use and their

Communicative Functions
As explained in part 3 of this article, anti-Zionism functions as a pivotal ideolog-
ical justification as well as the carrier of antisemitism on the Left. This function
of anti-Zionism gets commonly characterized through the metaphor of a “Trojan
horse.”⁹⁰ Thus, antisemitism (not only) on the Left can be communicated in an
“honorable”⁹¹ way, that is, as a verbal offense against injustice, oppression, and
exploitation.
As it was mentioned before, anti-Zionism is based on an anti-imperialist
worldview that is determined by categories such as Manichaeism, personifica-
tion, conspiracy theories, and an extreme reference to “the people.”⁹² Furthermore,
I have added the following categories into Haury’s synopsis: stereotypes,⁹³ Nazi
comparisons as well as further (partly historical) comparisons. ⁹⁴ All these catego-
ries constitute the anti-Zionist repertoire of demonization. Due to shortage of
space, only a few examples of the complex patterns of language use will be
taken into consideration. These, in their respective turns, constitute implicit
forms of anti-Israel demonization.⁹⁵
Speakers construct the Middle Eastern conflict as a conflict in which—
through a recourse to an anti-imperialist scheme (representing a Manichaean

 Kloke, “Zum Antisemitismus in der deutschen Linken.”

 Améry, “Der ehrbare Antisemitismus,” 131; cf. also M. Gallner, “Like a Cloud Contains a
Storm: Jean Améry’s Critique of Anti-Zionism,” Fathom, Autumn 2016, http://fathomjournal.
org/like-a-cloud-contains-a-storm-jean-amerys-critique-of-anti-zionism.
 Cf. Haury, “Die ideologischen Grundlagen.”
 The allegation of a Jewish world conspiracy constitutes only one of many antisemitic stereo-
types.
 The categories of Manichaeism and personification constitute parameters that can be com-
pleted with stereotypical meaning.
 For a (linguistic) approach regarding implicit forms of Israel-related antisemitism inter alia
within political mainstream cf. Becker, Antisemitism in Reader Comments; L. Giesel, “NS-Verglei-
che und NS-Metaphern im öffentlichen Kommunikationsraum sowie in E-Mails an die Israeli-
sche Botschaft und den Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland: Korpuslinguistische Perspektiven
auf konzeptuelle, strukturelle und funktionale Charakteristika” (PhD diss., Technische Universi-
tät Berlin, 2017); Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind.
 The German Left and Israel 429

worldview)—Palestinians play the role of the weak, the non-white oppressed, in

need of help, who are fighting for their legitimate goals; Israel, though, plays
the role of an oppressive, omnipotent, and illegitimate power: ⁹⁶

(1) The Palestinian resistance movement call to battle against the occupier (Süddeutsche
Zeitung, reader’s comment, December 7, 2017)

At the same time, commenters regard the presence of Palestinian life in the Mid-
dle East as something natural, while Israeli existence, however, is regarded as
something artificial: ⁹⁷

(2) My opinion is that the Jewish claim to Palestine doesn’t have a rational basis. The Arabs
have lived in that region all along and so they are of course entitled to live there today.
Their leaders have my full support to fight off the planned Zionist takeover! (taz, read-
er’s comment, December 7, 2017)

It is striking that commenters often refer solely to the (usually demonized) Israeli
Prime Minister or to the Zionist state but not to the Israeli populace. ⁹⁸ The usage
of the category extreme reference to the people or humans vis-à-vis Israelis would
demand the concession that Jewish citizens also have the right to exist in the
Middle East. Writers acknowledge group-related rights only in reference to the
Palestinian side. The avoidance of such a reference to the Israeli populace
also leads to the case where Jews are conceptually sidelined. Hence, left speak-

 Cf. M. Schwarz-Friesel, “Explizite und implizite Formen des Verbal-Antisemitismus in ak-

tuellen Texten der regionalen und überregionalen Presse (2002– 2010) und ihr Einfluss auf
den alltäglichen Sprachgebrauch,” in Judenfeindschaft und Antisemitismus in der deutschen
Presse über fünf Jahrhunderte: Erscheinungsformen, Rezeption, Debatte und Gegenwehr, ed. M.
Nagel and M. Zimmermann (Bremen: Edition Lumière, 2013), 1005. The examples presented in
this section originate from texts by Kloke (“Antisemitismus in der Linkspartei,”) and Becker (An-
tisemitism in Reader Comments) as well as from a current corpus of web comments set up by the
author of the article. The latter consists of reader’s comments of left-wing oriented media that
relate to the decision of US president Donald Trump on December 6, 2017 to recognize Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel (these are roughly 300 readers’ comments on Süddeutsche Zeitung [Face-
book presence of the newspaper], taz, and Die Zeit).
 This outlook corresponds to the typical right-wing construction of an autochthonous German
people on the one side and the international Jewry which is incapable of nation building on the
other side (cf. Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 150).
 Ibid., 148.
430 Matthias J. Becker

ers can—through the loop of the “legitimizing excuse ‘Israel’”⁹⁹—demonize the

reference group (partly in striking an aggressive tone), without being potentially
confronted with the reproach of reproducing misanthropic, in this particular
case, antisemitic hate speech, which of course would not be compatible within
a leftist self-conception.¹⁰⁰
In parallel with this abstractly avoiding reference to Israeli citizens in the
anti-Zionist discourse, speakers personify the concept of “the enemy, Israel.”
As indicated above, the personification of Israel often introduces the reproduc-
tion of antisemitic stereotypes. According to this observation, the commenter
in the next example, a journalist of the junge Welt, reproduces the stereotype
of vengefulness as a characteristic of the personified Israel:

(3) With old Testament right, Israel cracks down on the Palestinian rebellion in the occu-
pied territories. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And that is clearly an understate-
ment. An eye for hundred eyes, and a tooth for hundred teeth, that’s the invoice.¹⁰¹

Next to the stereotype of vengefulness, writers in the left milieu frequently refer
to greed for money. They can utter such an allegation explicitly, when they speak
of “greedy Jews”; or implicitly coded, when they speak of “the finance capital”
or “the Wall Street.”¹⁰² In the present-day discourse, this stereotype in its actual-
ized form gets transferred onto Israel—a country that allegedly is greedy for land:

 Y. Pallade, “Aktueller Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Neues vom

Antisemitismus: Zustände in Deutschland, ed. H. Helas, D. Rubisch and R. Zilkenat (Dietz: Berlin,
2008), 105.
 Cf. Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik, 31.
As soon as speakers reproach the Israeli ability to put up with a fight, they direct that re-
proach not only toward Israelis, but also toward Jews in the commentator’s own country (and
worldwide). Through the oscillating usage of the lexemes Zionists, Israelis, and Jews (which
are understood as synonyms), they (unsubstantially) equate these groups. The first ones are
often explicitly named, the latter one, however, only implied. In the frame of such a perspective,
German Jews get forced in a position of justification pressure as soon as the Middle Eastern con-
flict escalates again.
 Pirker 2000 in junge Welt, quoted in Kloke, “Antisemitismus in der Linkspartei,” 159.
 Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik, 90. In the context of the Occupy Wall Street
movement related reminiscences are articulated as well. Here, references to Rothschild (as a
symbol of Jewish influence) are rarely made, instead such an explicit reference were replaced
by naming Goldman Sachs and a sinister East Coast lobby operating behind the scenes (for
an analysis of such paraphrases cf. Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic
Mind, 10). Hence, an imaginary is chosen that is accessible to an antisemitic interpretation of
the world. While criticizing banks and economic sectors, speakers also use locust metaphors
(which represents a pattern with a long history) and activate a scenario of menace, in which “lo-
 The German Left and Israel 431

(4) Historically, Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians. In 1947, there was a clear arrange-
ment of who gets what. But for Israel that wasn’t enough. It wants more and more.
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, reader’s comment, December 6, 2017)

In the context of this stereotype, writers often express world conspiracy theories.
In the twentieth century, related theories entered the left discourse through the
allegations such as “Zionist multimillionaires who […] repeatedly meet at private
conferences in order to support Israel’s aggression.”¹⁰³ Today, such constructions
also appear in moderate left-liberal media (cf. e. g., Jakob Augstein’s columns
presented in part 3 of this article). In the following extract, a reader of Süddeut-
sche Zeitung accuses Israel (again personified) of destabilizing the region of the
Mideast and of being responsible for the refugee crisis (and therefore for the cur-
rent destabilization of the European Union and Germany):

(5) Israel displaces people, those flee by the millions to other countries. Consequently,
these countries got destabilized and through Zionist/imperialist cover-ups pushed
into a civil war—even more people have to flee, this time towards Europe, and lo
and behold, the number of Muslims in Europe raises disproportionately. Basically,
only a Zionist conspiracy in order to weaken Europe, especially the evil Germany. (Süd-
deutsche Zeitung, reader’s comment, December 6, 2017)

Furthermore, writers in the present-day discourse on the Mideast conflict repro-

duce stereotypes of deceit and hypocrisy and—in conjunction with these—the in-
strumentalization of antisemitism:

(6) Israel claims, Hamas would have “killed” an Israeli soldier and start to shoot at Pal-
estinian territory. (Die Zeit, reader’s comment, August 3, 2014)
(7) While other countries deal with their (admittedly often bigger) conflicts by force, Israel
categorically whines, screams, and wails, emphasizing that they’d have the right, be-
cause of antisemitism (Die Zeit, reader’s comment, August 4, 2014)
(8) Israel’s behavior [is] comparable with the one of a beaten child […]. The Jews have suf-
fered for centuries, and now they themselves spread misery in their self-created ghetto.
(Die Zeit, reader’s comment, November 29, 2012)

The latter comment shows the paternalistic allegation that Israel would behave
like a child and therefore is—in the political arena—backward. Additionally, the
commenter strikingly uses the lexeme “ghetto.” This is an allusion to the Nazi

custs” pounce on defenseless consumers, destroy economic states, and in fact, going as far
plunging the whole states into chaos.
 T. Haury, “Von der linken Kritik des Zionismus zum antisemitischen Antizionismus von
links,” in Antisemitismus: Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. S. Salzborn (Giessen: NBKK, 2004), 150.
432 Matthias J. Becker

crimes and therefore an implicit comparison between Israel and Nazi Germa-
ny.¹⁰⁴ As I have already pointed out in part 3 of this article, ever since the German
left (i. e., in both German states, GDR and FRG) has express(ed) Nazi compari-
sons on a regular basis. Such comparisons can be realized explicitly by word
play like Nazisrael or Zionazis. ¹⁰⁵ In the previous section, I also demonstrated in-
direct forms of exonerative antisemitism, not least with the aid of articles written
by well-established journalists such as Gräfin Dönhoff and Rudolf and Jakob
Augstein.
Instead of listing examples of my linguistic data, in which writers utter Nazi
comparisons, I would rather refer to the three communicative functions¹⁰⁶ that
accompany Nazi comparisons, which constitute the essence of exonerative anti-
semitism: Through the use of Nazi comparisons, Israel gets demonized (in the
course of a so-called perpetrator-victim-reversal); beyond that, Nazi crimes are
deprived of their singular status and consequently relativized. If the writer is a
member of the German in-group (i. e., that of the former perpetrators), the rela-
tivization of Nazi crimes is accompanied by an unburdening of guilt from the
writer’s own national community. Hence, Israel serves as a projection surface
for characteristics that are opposed to a positive collective self-image (the Holo-
caust is, for many Germans, the largest impediment to this sort of affinity with
national identity). The unburdening of guilt allows a discursive overcoming of
the historically bad conscience that prevents individuals from having a sincere
identification with their national identity.¹⁰⁷ Within the course of Nazi compari-
sons (as a form of Israel-related demonization) the above-mentioned category of
an extreme reference to the people gets activated. This is similar to the Manichean
scheme referred to at the beginning of this section, where interpreting the world
images of what is good and what is bad, gets reinforced. Yet, in this case the pos-

 Cf. Becker, Antisemitism in Reader Comments; Giesel, NS-Vergleiche und NS-Metaphern. It is
an implicit Nazi comparison, because the commenter activates the Nazi scenario only through
using the lexeme “ghetto.” An explicit Nazi comparison would mean: Israel is/acts like Nazi Ger-
many (X is like Y).
 Cf. Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke, 171; Rensmann, Demokratie und Judenbild, 315.
 When I use the term (communicative) function(s), I refer to deductions that can be inferred
out of the given information regarding the proportion of the two correlated issues. Readers can,
but they don’t have to be able to infer these potential deductions. This means that the actual
understanding of the analogies can diverge subjectively. Questions, such as whether the writer
utters a comparison intentionally, or if readers can entirely understand the comparison, do not,
however, affect the functions of analogies in that context. For a detailed analysis of functions,
inter alia, of Nazi comparisons cf. Becker, Antisemitism in Reader Comments.
 Cf. Rensmann, Demokratie und Judenbild, 73; Globisch, Radikaler Antisemitismus, 43.
 The German Left and Israel 433

itive image does not affect other (per se positively evaluated) peoples but specif-
ically the own people of the Germans.
The reconstruction of a need for unburdening of guilt of the German in-
group that accompanies Nazi comparisons is rather striking in the context of left-
ist groups. After all, the left internationalism takes nationhood as an anachron-
istic identity promoting concept. As a result, leftist groups think of themselves as
being free of national sentiment and, thus, of needs for exoneration and national
self-identification.¹⁰⁸ The frequent, almost obsessive presence of Nazi compari-
sons demonstrates, however, overlaps between different political camps in Ger-
many in relation to their needs as soon as the Nazi past and antisemitism be-
come the issue.
From the above-mentioned Manichean worldview predefined, the relation to
the people also gets activated or expanded via a positive relation of leftist groups
to national liberation movements (with regard to anti-Zionist utterances, positive
images are projected onto Palestinians).¹⁰⁹ Leftist anti-Zionists express such a
perspective whilst, at the same time, vehemently rejecting the existence of the
Israeli state. This double standard finally results in a delegitimization of Israel:¹¹⁰

(9) […] in the course of the years we started to resolutely question the right to exist of the
apartheid state of Israel.¹¹¹

Such a double standard can, however, also occur when writers apply especially
high moral standards to Israel. This is characteristic for anti-Israeli manifesta-
tions coming from the left-liberal camp: writers take the view that Israelis
and/or Jews would not have learned anything from the past persecution of
Jews. On the other side, there are the German (non-Jewish) writers who—not
least because of their presumed historical sensitivity (that they tend to express,
for example, via Nazi comparisons)—would have learned from the (Nazi) past
and therefore hold an exemplary role. Accordingly, they perceive themselves
as morally superior to Israelis and/or Jews. Double standards come into effect

 A. Ludwig shows that the category nation plays a much bigger role in the thinking of the
New Left than it might at first sight appear. Cf. A. Ludwig, Neue oder Deutsche Linke? Nation
und Nationalismus im Denken von Linken und Grü nen (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1995);
cf. Haury, Antisemitismus von links, 154; Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik, 76.
 Cf. part 3 and Kloke, “Zum Antisemitismus in der deutschen Linken.”
 A delegitimization of the Israeli state obviously appears in the course of each category pre-
sented in this article that as a whole constitutes the anti-Zionist repertoire of demonization.
 Pirker 2013 in junge Welt, quoted in Kloke, “Antisemitismus in der Linkspartei,” 160.
434 Matthias J. Becker

when writers reproach Israel for defending itself against terrorism and gratui-
tously suggest pacifism, indulgence, and de-escalation instead.
In the example introduced above from the junge Welt, the reference to Israel
as an “apartheid state” is of interest. This is one among those historical compar-
isons through which anti-Zionism is characterized in left-wing milieus. The refer-
ence to apartheid shows Israel as a state with a fully established, institutional-
ized segregation between Israelis and Palestinians.¹¹² The above-mentioned
functions of demonization (of Israel) and relativization (of racist crimes of the
South African apartheid regime) can be further witnessed here.¹¹³
The apartheid regime represents a product of European colonialism that in
its late form is shaped by (justifying) racist positions. A demonization of Israel
through comparisons to apartheid, colonialism, expansionism, militarism, and
chauvinism represent standardized distortions of Israel and of Zionism in leftist
contexts.¹¹⁴ In the course of historical comparisons (next to the one of apartheid
especially with the European colonial empires in mind), in which European
crimes are projected onto Israel, writers reinforce the Manichean worldview of
the anti-imperialist anti-Zionism and consequently justify their own rejection
of the Israeli state.¹¹⁵
A central concomitant phenomenon of anti-imperialist anti-Zionism is the
one of anti-Americanism. The rejection of the US, which works as the prototype
of capitalism and imperialism per se, gets interlinked with anti-Zionist concep-
tualizations that are unambiguously pre-defined by conspiracy-theory explana-
tions and a clear idea of good and bad.¹¹⁶ In the present-day discourse, such a

 Cf. Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 164; cf. also B. Pogrund,
Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,
2014) and B. Pogrund, “Israel has many Injustices: But it is not an Apartheid State,” Guardian,
May 22, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/israel-injustices-not-
apartheid-state.
 Cf. Becker, Antisemitism in Reader Comments.
 Cf. ibid.; Kloke, “Zum Antisemitismus in der deutschen Linken.”
 The advantage of such demonizing (and relativizing of historical crimes) comparisons is
that speakers devalue and ostracize Israel without using antisemitic stereotypes. They therefore
represent a form of anti-Zionist expressions that leftist speakers can utter without being labelled
as antisemitic (cf. Becker, Antisemitism in Reader Comments).
 Cf. Rensmann, Demokratie und Judenbild, 304. According to Markovits, fear of and criticism
regarding capitalist modernity are the unifying elements that interconnect antisemitism and
anti-Americanism. Since the mid-nineteenth century, American Jews and the USA have been de-
picted as a symbol of modernity, “motivated by money, greedy, metropolitan, universalistic, in-
dividualistic […].” A. S. Markovits, Amerika, dich haßt sich’s besser: Antiamerikanismus und An-
tisemitismus in Europa (Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 2004), 216; cf. also A. S. Markovits,
Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
 The German Left and Israel 435

conceptualization gets conveyed in the idea of the “Wall Street as the worldwide
center of power of the Jewish finance capital.”¹¹⁷ In relation to Israel, an anti-
American resentment is expressed when (as stated in part 3) writers depict the
Israeli state as a “bridgehead” or “spearhead”¹¹⁸ or as the “agency of American
imperialism”¹¹⁹ in the Middle East. Writers also allege a Jewish-Zionist control
over the US (or the US president) as soon as the US government makes a decision
in favor of Israeli interests:

(10) It is Payday for Trump, he has to act and this is what he did. The Jewish-Zionist donors
take their toll. And it doesn’t matter to him if the region [of the Mideast] burns. (Süd-
deutsche Zeitung, reader’s comment, December 7, 2017)

Frequent allegations of an Israeli-US-American plot demonstrate the compatibil-

ity of antisemitism and anti-Americanism within the frame of an anti-imperialist
worldview.
Patterns of language use are shaped by the motifs and ideological back-
ground of writers. They can convey their conceptualizations introduced above
in an explicit manner, which is often the case, when it comes to utterances of
the radical left. Hence, writers use superlative (“the worst dictatorship in the
world,” “one of the most violent and militarized societies in the world”)¹²⁰
and request the destruction of Israel.
Moderate representatives of a left-minded thinking, however, can convey Is-
rael-related demonization implicitly (inter alia via rhetorical questions, advices,
admonitions) and/or embedded into socially acceptable patterns of argumenta-
tion.¹²¹ Hence, instead of radical claims to destroy Israel, writers propose a sec-
ularization of Israel and/or the birth of a multi-ethnic state. Yet, with the aid of
knowledge regarding the high degree of destructive antisemitism within certain
contemporary Muslim communities (not only) in the Middle East, readers can
discern that both speech acts—aggressive request as well as constructive ad-
vice—would lead to the same consequences for Jewish life in the Middle East.
The advantage of the second variant, of course, is that due to its subtle nature,
it is accessible in debates of the political mainstream. The examples shown in
parts 3 and 4 of this article, however, prove that (not least because of the ano-
nymity guaranteed by the internet) an implicit and/or elaborate nature even in

 Rensmann, Demokratie und Judenbild, 309.

 Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 147.
 Haury, Antisemitismus von links, 442.
 Quoted in Haury, “Der neue Antisemitismusstreit der deutschen Linken,” 147.
 Cf. Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 276.
436 Matthias J. Becker

left-liberal milieus, and therefore in the mainstream, are no longer unconditional

requirements for the expression of antisemitic attitudes—such processes might
redeem explicit verbal antisemitism from its presence as a phenomenon of mar-
ginal groups.

5 Conclusion and Outlook

In both East and West Germany anti-Zionism—justified by an anti-imperialist
worldview—was established at an early stage, especially after 1967. This ideology
represents a simplistic interpretation of the world, in which Israel always plays
the role of the ultimate evil; via projective-exonerating analogies, writers addi-
tionally depict the Jewish state as a return of German and/or European crimes
as well as a partner of the repelled US-imperialism. In the course of this role as-
signment, which is embedded in an unequivocal black-and-white scenario, writ-
ers can (among other forms of demonization) transfer antisemitic stereotypes
onto Israel.
The patterns described lead us to numerous contradictions and moral con-
victions within a leftist world view, which representatives of the related milieus
otherwise obviously avoid or do not anticipate. These include: (1) degradation
and ostracism of a certain group that are (2) accompanied by the reproduction
of antisemitic stereotypes; (3) the relativization of crimes in the German and Eu-
ropean past through Nazi and other historical comparisons; (4) as a consequence
of such a relativization (in case of Nazi comparisons), an unburdening of the
German national in-group and thus a strengthening of national self-images of
Germans; (5) no matter if the comparisons are related to the German, the Pales-
tinian or other peoples (that are depicted as oppressed)—comparisons of that
kind presume an almost uncritical-affirmative relation to the concept of the peo-
ple.
On the surface and in spite of such contradictions, one can speak of an at-
tractiveness of anti-Zionism that arises out of its “rhetorical flexibility.”¹²² First,
writers can renounce familiar patterns of explicit hostility toward Jews. They can
claim that their “criticism” only applies to the Jewish state and that is based on
humanistic principles¹²³ and therefore cannot have any antisemitic basis. Fur-
thermore, their criticism is tabooed out of a misunderstood historical responsi-

 Kloke, “Kein Frieden mit Israel,” 160.

 Cf. Améry, “Der ehrbare Antisemitismus,” 131.
 The German Left and Israel 437

bility. Following this line of reasoning, it is not antisemitism, but the reproach of
antisemitism against the leftist writers that becomes the scandal.
By means of the anti-Zionist camouflage, antisemitic tropes can infiltrate the
mainstream of the German society. Even if explicit anti-Zionist utterances, as
they come from the radical left do get problematized, patterns of language use
among left-liberal milieus can lead to the point, where antisemitic stereotypes
(and other forms of demonization) can reach the status of what is permissible
to say. That makes them significantly more dangerous than explicit, traditional
forms of verbal Jew-hatred, which only have a limited appeal within mainstream
society. Despite linguistic differences, the conceptual basis—the rejection of ev-
erything that is Jewish—remains and can become acceptable to the majority.
In this respect, the analysis of socially acceptable forms of antisemitic hate
speech must be brought to the fore of present-day antisemitism research.

Matthias J. Becker is a postdoc researcher at the Center for Research on Antisem-

itism (ZfA) at the Technical University in Berlin. He is also affiliated with CENTRIC,
Sheffield Hallam University, and the Vidal Sassoon Center at Hebrew University,
Jerusalem. His research lies within the disciplines of (pragma)linguistics, research
on prejudice, and internet studies and focuses on the construction of implicit hate
speech. In his postdoc project, he examines various forms of antisemitic and racist
hate speech in British mainstream media in the context of Brexit.

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Linda Giesel
Comparisons between Israel and Nazi
Germany in Contemporary German
Discourse

Abstract
Nazi comparisons are communicative strategies to express defamation against
individuals or groups of people and to generate outrage in the space of public
communication. Producers direct analogies toward the historical awareness of
the recipients and furthermore anticipate their emotional reactions.
Since the beginning of the 1980s, we can determine that rhetorical derefer-
encing on the National Socialist (hereafter NS) past is made in connection
with altercations concerning Israeli politics. In comparisons between National
Socialists and Israelis, a correlation is established that defames the State of Is-
rael as a continuity of the NS dictatorship. Apart from the relativization of Na-
tional Socialism, the portrayal of the victims of the past as perpetrators of the
present is furthermore a relativization of guilt. This form of imagination and in-
terpretation discloses the desire for the relief from and resistance to culpability.
It also services refusal of remembrance concerning the NS past, which is a func-
tional element of antisemitism in the German post-Holocaust society.
In a linguistic corpus study that includes more than ten thousand emails,
which were addressed to the Embassy of Israel in Berlin and the Central Council
of Jews in Germany between 2002 and 2014, I analyzed verbal antisemitic Nazi
comparisons,¹ for example, “What Israel is doing with the annexation of Gaza
is for me, personally, a form of a concentration camp!” (an email to the Embassy
of Israel with reference to the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014). Most of the emails
with comparisons to Nazi Germany were sent during periods of military conflicts
in the Middle East. However, writers constantly produce those derealizations,
even during times of (military) de-escalation in the conflict.

 This research was conducted within the project “Antisemitism in the World Wide Web” at the
Technical University of Berlin (see https://www.linguistik.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/fg72/Anti
semitism_2.0_short_version_final.pdf) and financially supported by the German Research Foun-
dation (DFG). Furthermore, parts of the corpus data are based on the research project “Concep-
tualization and Verbalization of Contemporary Antisemitism in Germany” by Monika Schwarz-
Friesel.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Linda Giesel, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-022
444 Linda Giesel

The systematic corpus-based study consists of quantitative evaluations as

well as of qualitative analyses concerning the verbal realization of comparisons
and antisemitic stereotypes. These results reveal that analogies between Israel
and the German Nazi regime were realized predominantly as utterances without
typical comparative connectives. These expressions address Israeli politicians in
reference to different National Socialist officials, for example, Hitler and Goeb-
bels, or the Israeli military in reference to Wehrmacht and SS. Those expressions
focus primarily on the agents and frame them as perpetrators of the present. On
the other hand, producers of Nazi comparisons also describe Palestinians as vic-
tims by referring to Gaza as the Warsaw Ghetto or Auschwitz. In my article, I pre-
sent the results of this study and illustrate them by using examples of the corpus
data.

1 Introduction: Development and Function of

Nazi Comparisons
Since the post-war period, it can be determined that Nazi comparisons² were
used in and beyond Germany to equate politicians, practices, institutions, and
crimes with entities and circumstances of the Nazi era to defame and stigmatize
political opponents. Especially during the Cold War, analogies were drawn from
both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic to
accuse each other of acting like the National Socialists or using their methods.³
In reference to constructing the Berlin Wall, the West German newspaper, Rhei-
nische Post, described the GDR in 1961 as

(1) Ulbricht’s large Concentration Camp.⁴

 I use the term comparison in order to denote the common expression of Nazi comparison, even
though they are heterogeneous comparisons. Those are basically characterized by drawing an
analogy between two entities from different conceptual domains, for example, Anne is like a
nightingale. Levinson denotes those utterances as “similes” in reference of figurative and heter-
ogeneous comparisons. See S. C. Levinson, Pragmatics, 17th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2006), 155.
 Cf. G. Stötzel, “Zur Geschichte der NS-Vergleiche von 1946 bis heute,” Politische Semantik. Be-
deutungsanalytische und sprachkritische Beiträge zur politischen Sprachverwendung, ed. J. Klein
(Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989), 266 – 67.
 Rheinische Post, 17.08.1961; as quoted in T. Eitz and G. Stötzel, Wörterbuch der “Vergangen-
heitsbewältigung.” Die NS-Vergangenheit im öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch (Hildesheim: Olms,
2007), 1:404.
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 445

Several politicians, for example, Willy Brandt, expressed similar statements con-
cerning the lockdown of East Germany and the GDR citizens’ escape attempts.⁵
Besides foreign affairs, Nazi comparisons were used in debates on domestic af-
fairs to discredit politicians from the opposition party or in entirely other con-
texts, such as abortion or animal rights.⁶ They all have in common that they
function as communicative strategies to express defamation against individuals
or groups of people and to generate outrage in the space of public communica-
tion.⁷ Those analogies are directed toward the historical awareness of the recip-
ients and, furthermore, anticipate their emotional reactions,⁸ because they refer
to an era that represents inhumanity and terror like no other period of time.⁹
In the early years of using such phrases in political debates, right after World
War II, there was no critical historic and linguistic reflection on them. It was not
until the late 1960s that the first assessments on Nazi comparisons occurred,
which marked them as “dangerous equation”¹⁰ and relativizations of the Nation-
al Socialist past, as well as the violation of human rights.¹¹ Despite the increased
problematization of the use of those verbal strategies, there is also an increase of
the usage of Nazi comparisons in international debates. Marie-Hélène Pérennec
even describes this as “inflationary usage,”¹² which is continually repeated in
inner-German and international debates, for instance, the verbal attacks of the
Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in the spring of 2017 toward the Ger-

 Cf. Stötzel, “Zur Geschichte der NS-Vergleiche von 1946 bis heute,” 267.
 For example, the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) planed a
campaign against factory farming by using the slogan “The holocaust on your plate” (cf. Eitz
and Stötzel, Wörterbuch der “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” 1:350). On the other hand, Pro-Life ac-
tivists have used the term “Babycaust” in reference to abortions since 1979. For further explana-
tions, see L. Giesel, NS-Vergleiche und NS-Metaphern: Korpuslinguistische Perspektiven auf kon-
zeptuelle, strukturelle und funktionale Charakteristika (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 69 – 71.
 Comparisons between entities of National Socialism and other entities, for example, the com-
parison between party programs of the NSDAP and the NPD, do not belong to the Nazi compar-
isons I discuss below. These are historically critical comparisons that serve as a form of sensitiz-
ing for (extreme) right-wing tendencies in political parties and not as defamations or
demonizations of people or institutions.
 Cf. M. Schwarz-Friesel, Sprache und Emotion, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Francke, 2013), 197.
 Cf. M. Schwarz-Friesel and J. Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind: The Language of Jew-Ha-
tred in Contemporary Germany (Boston: University Press of New England, 2017), 134.
 Die Zeit, 04.04.1969; as quoted in T. Eitz and G. Stötzel, Wörterbuch der “Vergangenheits-
bewältigung.” Die NS-Vergangenheit im öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch (Hildesheim: Olms, 2009),
2:17.
 Cf. Eitz and Stötzel, Wörterbuch der “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” 2:17– 18.
 M.-H. Pérennec, “Nazi-Vergleiche im heutigen politischen Diskurs: Von den Gefahren falsch-
er Analogien,” LYLIA Lyon linguistique allemande 16 (2008): 11.
446 Linda Giesel

man Government. He accused Germany of implementing “Nazi practices”¹³

against Turkish politicians and their planned campaigns in German cities. Erdo-
ğan’s statement hit the headlines for some weeks, and he primarily received re-
jection for his allegation. But the intended effect to cause a stir and to create out-
rage was successful.
Even though we can observe a large amount of Nazi comparisons in the past,
they did not lose their effect over time: media attention.¹⁴ Thorsten Eitz and
Georg Stötzel identify this attention as the main target of the producers. Many
of them apologize for their utterances afterwards referring to an accidental
faux pas. The procedure (from drawing the comparison to generating public out-
rage up to the apology) has become a “stereotype ritual.”¹⁵ Despite the assertion
that one has to deal with an accidental verbal error, Monika Schwarz-Friesel em-
phasizes that speakers use Nazi comparisons as an intentional strategy that
forces a reaction of indignation.¹⁶
This article examines a specific type of Nazi comparison—the equation be-
tween Israeli entities and entities of the German Nazi era. Those expressions
have special functions and impact on the context of the German post-Holocaust
society. Before I define them as expressions of verbal antisemitism (part 3) and
present some results of the corpus study (part 4), I will provide a short insight in
verbal realization of Nazi comparisons from a linguistic point of view (part 2).
This contribution is based on my research as part of the dissertation I submitted
to the Faculty I (Humanities) at the Technical University Berlin in 2018.

2 Verbal Realization of Nazi Comparisons

Speakers use various verbal expressions to draw analogies between entities of
the National Socialism and other entities.¹⁷ Besides formulating an explicit com-
parison and using like as connector, there are many ways to express equality or

 “Bundesregierung verbittet sich Erdoğans Nazi-Vergleich,” Die Zeit, March 6, 2017, http://
www.zeit.de/politik/2017- 03/tuerkei-recep-tayyip-erdogan-nazi-vergleich-reaktionen.
 Cf. Eitz and Stötzel, Wörterbuch der “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” 1:3.
 Ibid., 3 – 4.
 Cf. Schwarz-Friesel, Sprache und Emotion, 198. If speakers use Nazi-specific vocabulary or
phrases not knowing that they are drawing an analogy, for example, “to each their own” in dif-
ferent contexts, it can be assumed that this is an unintentional language use that exposes igno-
rance and unawareness of historical circumstances.
 Comparisons and metaphors are based on analogies between two or more entities. For fur-
ther explanation, see F. Eggs, Die Grammatik von als und wie (Tübingen: Narr, 2006), 66 – 67.
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 447

similarity between two or more entities, for example, X reminds me of Y. ¹⁸ Some-

times those analogies were drawn without using expressions that indicate the
comparison; they are verbalized as nominal metaphors of the type X is a Y. ¹⁹
In Nazi comparisons or metaphors, the entities are equated in terms of one or
more qualities, characteristics that they allegedly have in common. This asserted
common quality is referred to as tertium comparationis, which does not necessa-
rily need to be expressed explicitly.²⁰ The so-called third element of a compari-
son can also be inferred in the process of comprehension,²¹ for example in:

(2) Employees of Boehringer, who work in animal testing laboratories, are like Nazis from
the history of Germany […]²²

The recipient has to activate the general knowledge about characteristics of the
behavior of National Socialists and apply them to employees of the pharmaceut-
ical company Boehringer. In this way, the recipient establishes the conceptuali-
zation²³ Chemical Laboratory Assistants Acting like Nazis in the context of
the utterance in 2). This creates an association between Animal Testing and NS
Crime, which suggests an equalization of the suffering of Nazi victims and the
suffering of laboratory animals.
In addition to the variety of verbal indicators of comparison, there is also a
diversity of entities that can be included in the comparison, such as persons, for
example, Hitler or Nazi officials like Goebbels, institutions and organizations like
the SS or the Wehrmacht, and crimes like the Shoah. Aside from explicit verbal-
izations, the comparisons can be expressed implicitly by the use of allusions or
indirect utterances, such as:

 Cf. L. Ortner, “Wortbildungs- und Satzbildungsmittel zum Ausdruck von Metaphern und Ver-
gleichen in Science-Fiction-Texten oder: Von ‘wurstförmigen Raumkrümmern’ und ‘Wesen wie
Ameisenigel,’” in Studien zur deutschen Grammatik. Johannes Erben zum 60. Geburtstag, ed.
E. Koller and H. Moser (Innsbruck: Institut für Germanistik an der Universität Innsbruck,
1985), 268.
 Cf. H. Skirl and M. Schwarz-Friesel, Metapher, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg: Winter, 2013), 25 – 26.
 Cf. Eggs, Die Grammatik von als und wie, 38 – 39.
 Cf. ibid.
 Quoted in TAZ, October 4, 2008, 30.
 Conceptualizations can be described as mental images and mental representations. In cog-
nitive linguistics, concepts are defined as mental units of organization that are memorized and
processed with general knowledge in combination with subjective experiences (cf. M. Schwarz-
Friesel, Einführung in die kognitive Linguistik, 3rd ed. [Tübingen: Francke, 2008], 108 – 9). Follow-
ing the standards of cognitive science, I use small capital letters to refer to conceptualizations.
448 Linda Giesel

(3) Unfortunately the methods used are very similar to the bad times in our history
(IBD_31.05. 2010_Sch_019)²⁴

For understanding of 3) it is necessary to infer the meaning of methods which

were used in the bad times in our history. The comparison indicator similar estab-
lishes the analogy while the underspecified component bad times in our history
implies the reference to Nazi Germany.
Although such expressions appear as comparisons on the linguistic surface
with a characteristic structure, for example, comparison components and con-
nectives, they basically fulfill different (cognitive and communicative) functions
in contrast to “ordinary” comparisons, such as identifying differences and sim-
ilarities of entities and thereby contribute to a gain of knowledge.²⁵ Pérennec de-
termines that Nazi comparisons serve as a discursive practice that violates all
conversational maxims²⁶ and deliberately abuses the cognitive role of compari-
son.²⁷ The functions that they fulfill in general is described in part 1. There is
one specific type of Nazi comparison that is an expression of contemporary an-
tisemitism and additionally fulfills certain functions. This form will be discussed
below.

3 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany

as an Expression of Antisemitism
Since the beginning of the 1980s, an increase of rhetorical dereferencing on the
NS past in connection with altercations concerning Israeli politics can be deter-
mined. During this period, comparisons came especially from West German left-

 This quote originates from an email to the Embassy of Israel in Berlin and belongs to the
corpus data of the research project “Conceptualization and Verbalization of Contemporary An-
tisemitism in Germany” by Monika Schwarz-Friesel (for detailed information on this project and
the specific corpus material, see Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind).
Based on that material, I analyzed emails with Nazi comparisons as part of my dissertation
(see Giesel, NS-Vergleiche und NS-Metaphern).
 The cognitve and comunicative functions of comparisons are described in Eggs, Die Gram-
matik von als und wie, 38, and in F. Eggs, “Vergleichen und Vergleiche—Implikationen der
Sprachwissenschaft für die Sprachdidaktik,” in Gesteuerter und ungesteuerter Grammatikerwerb,
ed. T. Becker and C. Peschel (Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, 2006), 45 – 48.
 The conversational maxims are compiled in H. P. Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” in Syntax
and Semantics, ed. P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (Cambridge: Academic Press, 1975), 3:47– 48.
 Cf. Pérennec, “Nazi-Vergleiche im heutigen politischen Diskurs,” 1.
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 449

wingers in connection with the claiming of the Golan Heights in 1981 and with
the Lebanon War in 1982.²⁸ Rooted in the perception of anti-imperialistic anti-
Zionism, which equates Zionism with Nazism,²⁹ persons and groups from the
left-wing spectrum were already drawing comparisons between Israel and Nazi
Germany years before—in particular since the Six-Day War in 1967.³⁰ Since
then, Israel was seen as a vicious oppressor country and imperial outpost of the
United States in contrast to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which
staged itself as part of a global social revolutionary liberation movement. It
was supported by the anti-imperialistic internationally oriented left, which iden-
tified itself with the repressed Palestinians and positioned itself against the US
and Israel.³¹
In 1969, immediately after an antisemitic attack of the Berlin Jewish Commu-
nity Center at the remembrance event of the Pogrom Night from 1938, a claim of
responsibility appeared, which was composed by the German Marxist organiza-
tion “Schwarze Ratten/Tupamaros West-Berlin.”³² This attack had a special rele-
vance in the context of antisemitic assaults because on the one hand, the assas-
sins targeted German Jews and blamed them for military actions in the Middle
East, while on the other hand, this crime was committed on a date that has
such a painful historical implication like November 9; thereby it was directly
connected to the victims of the Pogrom and their descendants. The authors
who claimed responsibility provided reasons for the anti-Jewish terrorist attack
and accused Israel of committing fascistic atrocities that would be equal to
the “Kristallnacht von 1938”:

 Cf. Eitz and Stötzel, Wörterbuch der “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” 2:24.

 An insight to anti-Zionism in connection with antisemitic concepts, also regarding the his-
torical foundations, are given in L. Poliakov, Vom Antizionismus zum Antisemitismus, 2nd ed.
(Freiburg: ça ira, 2006) and T. Haury, Antisemitismus von links: Kommunistische Ideologie, Natio-
nalismus und Antizionismus in der frühen DDR (Köln: Hamburger Edition, 2002).
 Cf. T. Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Israelkritik. Antizionismus in der deutschen Linken
(Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2011), 45 – 47.
 Cf. M.W. Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke. Zur Geschichte eines schwierigen Verhältnisses,
2nd ed. (Frankfurt/Main: Haag und Herchen, 1994), 288.
 During the commemoration, an explosion was supposed to injure and kill many people, es-
pecially Jews. However, because of an inoperable detonator, the prepared bomb did not explode.
For details see, W. Kraushaar, Die Bombe im Jüdischen Gemeindehaus (Hamburg: Hamburger Ed-
ition, Institut für Sozialforschung, 2005).
450 Linda Giesel

(4) […] Every ceremony in West Berlin and in Germany suppresses that Zionists repeat the
Kristallnacht from 1938 every day in the occupied territories, in refugee camps and in
Israeli prisons. The Jews expelled from fascism have themselves become fascists […].³³

In 4) the analogy is expressed through the iterative utterance repeating the Kris-
tallnacht from 1938 as well as through the accusation of becoming themselves fas-
cists. Thereby, the producers first refer to Zionists as Nazi perpetrators and in
the second sentence explicitly to Jews. Concealing the antisemitic intention with
anti-Zionist expressions is a typical manifestation of anti-imperialistic antisem-
itism, which is revealed immediately in the text and certainly in the context of
the crime.
In comparisons between National Socialists and Israelis, a correlation is es-
tablished that stigmatizes the State of Israel as a continuation of the NS-dictator-
ship (becoming fascists). Apart from the extremely negative evaluation and def-
amation of Zionists and Jews, a relativization of National Socialism is expressed.
It furthermore results in a portrayal of the Jewish victims of the past as perpetra-
tors of the present. This reversal of perpetrators and victims serves the purpose
of exoneration, which is one of the main functional elements of post-Holocaust
antisemitism.³⁴ Additionally, it is accompanied by a relativization of Germany’s
culpability in conjunction with the projection of guilt onto Israel and/or Jews.³⁵
This form of hatred against Jews is often described as “antisemitism because of
Auschwitz and not in spite of it.”³⁶ Concerning these dimensions of antisemit-
ism, Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz ascertain:

In fact, however, both dimensions are important if one wants to understand postwar antise-
mitism. Despite the Auschwitz experience, many Germans did not fundamentally alter their
attitude toward Jews (and accordingly the traditional clichés remained in use in everyday
discourse), and because of Auschwitz additional stereotypes developed based on denial of
responsibility and repression of shame.³⁷

 Agit 883, 13.11.1969, 1. Jg., Nr. 40, 9, “Schalom + Napalm”; quoted in Kraushaar, Die Bombe im
Jüdischen Gemeindehaus, 47.
 Cf. W. Bergmann. “‘Störenfriede der Erinnerung’: Zum Schuldabwehr-Antisemitismus in
Deutschland,” in Literarischer Antisemitismus nach Auschwitz, ed. K.-M. Bogdal, K. Holz, and
M. N. Lorenz (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007), 28 – 29, and A. Heyder, J. Iser, P. Schmidt, “Israelkritik
oder Antisemitismus? Meinungsbildung zwischen Öffentlichkeit, Medien und Tabus,” in Deut-
sche Zustände, ed. W. Heitmeyer (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 3:149 – 50.
 Cf. Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 58.
 Cf. D. Diner, “Negative Symbiose: Deutsche und Juden nach Auschwitz,” in Ist der National-
sozialismus Geschichte? Zu Historisierung und Historikerstreit, ed. W. Benz and D. Diner (Frank-
furt/Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1987), 186.
 Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 58.
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 451

Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany disclose the desire for the relief
from and resistance to culpability in the German post-Holocaust society.³⁸ They
are to be considered as antisemitic utterances even if there is no explicit refer-
ence to Jews. Sometimes these comparisons are hidden as “criticism of Israel.”
However, this serves as a camouflage for covering underlying (antisemitic)
thought patterns. In Israel-related antisemitism, the reference to the State of Is-
rael (and not to Jews) functions as a projection surface of antisemitic conceptu-
alizations.³⁹
With respect to Nazi comparisons that do not refer to Israeli or Jewish enti-
ties (see parts 1 and 2), the utterances in this study are characterized by further
features. Regarding the potency of Nazi comparisons concerning Israel, we can
determine that in addition to their already persuasive potential, due to the im-
pact on the historical consciousness (especially in a German context), ⁴⁰ they
also manifest major elements of contemporary antisemitism:⁴¹ Comparisons be-
tween Israel and Nazi Germany serve to ward off guilt, they relativize NS crimes,
and they function as “verbal antisemitisms”⁴² that demonize the State of Israel.

4 Corpus Study: Nazi Comparisons in Emails to

the Embassy of Israel in Berlin and the Central
Council of Jews in Germany
To obtain a linguistically representative and systematic investigation of compar-
isons between Israel and Nazi Germany, I carried out a corpus study that includ-
ed emails that were addressed to the Embassy of Israel in Berlin and the Central

 Cf. Bergmann, “‘Störenfriede der Erinnerung,’” 28 – 29, and L. Rensmann, Demokratie und
Judenbild. Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Wiesbaden:
Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004), 314.
 Cf. W. Frindte and D. Wammetsberger, “Antisemitismus, Israelkritik, Nationalismus—Empiri-
sche Befunde,” Berliner Debatte Initial 19, 1/2 (2008): 40; Stein, Zwischen Antisemitismus und Is-
raelkritik, 34– 36; Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 153. They also out-
line the difference between legitimate criticism and anti-Israeli antisemitism as a verbal
expression of violence (see 145 – 57).
 Cf. Schwarz-Friesel, Sprache und Emotion, 197– 99.
 Cf. inter alia the “Working Definition of Antisemitism” constituted by the IHRA, May 2016,
https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/press_release_document_anti
semitism.pdf, accessed February 1, 2021. Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic
Mind, 23.
 Ibid.
452 Linda Giesel

Council of Jews in Germany between 2002 and 2014. I would like to thank Prof.
Monika Schwarz-Friesel and Prof. Evyatar Friesel who kindly provided the data
material for this study. During the investigation period, 10,235 emails in total had
been received by both institutions.⁴³
The corpus study allows a combination of a qualitative cognition-based lin-
guistic textual analysis and a quantitative statistical analysis. The investigation
of self-motivated written texts offers some advantages compared to other studies
about antisemitic attitudes, for example, getting insights in individual conceptu-
alizations and emotional patterns of the authors of the texts, without influencing
them by the design and the conditions of the study concerning the formulation
of the questions.⁴⁴
In order to analyze any verbal manifestation of such analogies in the form of
explicit and implicit comparisons, metaphors, and allusions, I selected each
email that included at least one of those analogies and examined it according
to certain linguistic criteria, such as the structure and components of the com-
parison or the metaphor (entities and tertia comparationis), lexical indicators,
and connectives.⁴⁵ In connection with the pattern of the Nazi comparison, I
also annotated antisemitic stereotypes and descriptive or expressive lexemes
of emotion mentioned in the email text.⁴⁶ To analyze the empirical material, I

 The precise period of emails to the Central Council includes March 31, 2002 to December 31,
2008 and to the Israeli Embassy includes October 17, 2003 to December 31, 2014. During this time
8,708 emails arrived at the Israeli Embassy, and 1,527 arrived at the Central Council.
 See in detail Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 327– 30. For further
information about research methods in the field of corpus linguistics, see N. Bubenhofer,
Sprachgebrauchsmuster: Korpuslinguistik als Methode der Diskurs- und Kulturanalyse (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2009), 111– 29, and C. Scherer, Korpuslinguistik, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg: Winter, 2014),
3 – 10.
 These linguistic categories are based on, inter alia, Ortner, “Wortbildungs- und Satzbildungs-
mittel zum Ausdruck von Metaphern und Vergleichen”; Eggs, Die Grammatik von als und wie and
Eggs, “Vergleichen und Vergleiche,” as well as on M. Thurmair, Vergleiche und Vergleichen. Eine
Studie zu Form und Funktion der Vergleichsstrukturen im Deutschen (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001);
M. Thurmair, “Vergleiche(n) im Text. Von der Wissensvermittlung zur Manipulation,” LYLIA Lyon
linguistique allemande 15 (2008): 1– 18, and on F. Dornseiff, Der deutsche Wortschatz nach Sach-
gruppen. Mit einer lexikographisch-historischen Einführung und einer ausführlichen Bibliographie
zur Lexikographie und Onomasiologie, 8th ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004).
 These categories are based on, inter alia, Schwarz-Friesel, Sprache und Emotion; Schwarz-
Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind; G. B. Ginzel, ed., Antisemitismus: Erschei-
nungsformen der Judenfeindschaft gestern und heute (Bielefeld: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik,
1991); J. H. Schoeps and J. Schlör, eds., Antisemitismus: Vorurteile und Mythen (München: Piper,
1995), particularly N. Hortzitz, “Die Sprache der Judenfeindschaft,” 19 – 40, and on Bergmann,
“‘Störenfriede der Erinnerung’.”
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 453

used a combination of inductive and deductive approaches, where the categories

of the deductive analysis are based on linguistic and interdisciplinary antisem-
itism research. This framework was successively extended with inductive catego-
ries during the process of text coding,⁴⁷ which was technically realized by using
the qualitative analysis tool MAXQDA.⁴⁸
Due to this approach, it is possible to gain results about the frequency of
emails with Nazi comparisons corresponding with the addressed institutions,
while regarding the time period on the one hand and gaining a qualitative
view into the thought patterns, underlying the comparisons on the other hand.
In connection with the qualitative analysis, linguistic conclusions about drawing
analogies and different forms of verbal realization also could be achieved. In the
following sections, I present selected results of my examination and illustrate
them by using examples of the corpus data.⁴⁹

4.1 Quantitative Results

The evaluation of all 10,235 emails sent to the Embassy of Israel in Berlin and the
Central Council of Jews revealed 945 (9.2 %) texts that include comparisons be-
tween Israel and Nazi Germany in any form of verbal realization (see part 4.2).
A total of 8.8 % of those texts were addressed to the Embassy and 11.5 % of
them were addressed to the Central Council. A correlation between the institu-
tion and the frequency of emails with those analogies can be determined, but
this correlation is very weak.⁵⁰ The fact that Israel-related Nazi comparisons
were sent to the Central Council, an institution that represents the Jewish com-
munity in Germany, illustrates that German Jews were held accountable for cir-
cumstances in the Middle East or for Israeli practices. In the mind of the writers

 Cf. F. Breuer, Reflexive Grounded Theory: Eine Einführung für die Forschungspraxis, 2nd ed.
(Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010).
 This is a software for qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods data analysis, cf. U. Kuck-
artz, Einführung in die computergestützte Analyse qualitativer Daten, 3rd ed. (Wiesbaden: Verlag
für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010), 12– 20.
 The corpus design and the research methods as well as the results of the study are described
in detail in Giesel, NS-Vergleiche und NS-Metaphern, 160 – 301.
 The chi-square test reveals a correlation between the frequency of emails with Nazi compar-
isons and the institution (Embassy vs. Central Council as the independent variable), χ2 =11.26.
The Cramér’s V, which is based on χ2, shows only a weak effect, V = 0.033. Cf. C. Duller, Einfüh-
rung in die Statistik mit EXCEL und SPSS. Ein anwendungsorientiertes Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch, 2nd
ed. (Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, 2007), 128 – 29.
454 Linda Giesel

of these emails, the central council of Jews in Germany functions as a represen-

tative of the Israeli state as the following examples show:

(5) You behave worse than the NAZIs […] you build walls, kill children and enslave and
spoil the rest of humanity (ZDJ_27.07. 2006_Zaj_001)
(6) Your settlement policy in the Middle East is nothing other than what Adolf Hitler un-
fortunately did from 1933 to 1945. (ZDJ_29.07. 2006_Boe_001)

The Council is directly addressed (you) and connected with Israel’s policy toward
the Palestinians. Besides the stereotypes of Child Murderer, Oppressive and
Illegitimate State, and The Evil in the World, Nazi comparisons in this con-
text reveal a conceptual pattern which is associated with the antisemitic stereo-
type of Jews are Israelis and do not Belong to the German Society. This is
the current variant of the traditional Judeophobic stereotype of Jews as the
Other and Foreigners:

This fundamental categorization, which originated in antiquity, provides the foundation for
all further stereotypes. Without this differentiation or discrimination, the negative attribu-
tions derived from it would not exist in such massive proportions. Only comprehensive ex-
clusion of a certain social group makes it possible to focus on features deemed to set it
apart. One generally ascribes positive characteristics to one’s own group in order to rein-
force one’s identity and self-concept.⁵¹

The analysis of the time period, in which these emails were received, reveals that
between 2006 and 2014 most of the texts with comparisons to Nazi Germany
were sent during periods of military confrontations in the Middle East.⁵² The
years in which a military conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territories
or Lebanon took place, like the war against the Hezbollah (2006), the military
operations Cast Lead (2009),⁵³ Pillar of Defense (2012), and Protective Edge
(2014), show 22.4 % more emails than years without major military operations
(2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2013).⁵⁴ In contrast, the amount of emails with
Nazi comparisons displays only a very small difference: 9.9 % of the emails dur-

 Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 75.

 Because of the total quantity and the balance of the data material during the whole evalua-
tion period, only the frequencies of the emails to the Israeli Embassy were included in the cal-
culation.
 Operation Cast Lead started already on December 27, 2008. However, the emails that refer to
it were only received from the beginning of 2009.
 The absolute frequencies are 5,318 emails during the years with military conflicts and 3,370
emails during the years without military escalation periods.
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 455

ing periods of conflict include Nazi comparisons, and 7.2 % of emails during mili-
tary de-escalation times contain such utterances.⁵⁵
This result demonstrates that Nazi comparisons concerning Israel were pro-
duced consistently, no matter if there was a military conflict or not. This finding
indicates the stability of those derealizations⁵⁶ and their associated antisemitic
conceptualizations, which were activated with, as well as without, the reference
to specific military confrontations. The example in 7) is taken from a text that
was sent to the Embassy during the Operation Pillar of Defense, and 8) is an
email with reference to specific Israeli politicians but without any information
about a specific discourse:

(7) The Israeli state is a killer state. What is the difference between this state and the Ger-
man terror system from 33 – 45? You do not need to be surprised that Jews are hated.
(IBD_17.11. 2012_ano_002)
(8) HEIL HEIL NETANJAHU! HEIL LIEBERMAN. JEW NAZIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(IBD_29.04. 2011_Did_001)

Both analogies serve the functions of Nazi comparisons even though they are
constructed completely different, and they contain different entities. The next
paragraph outlines several aspects of the verbal realizations of such expressions.

4.2 Dominant Manifestations of Verbal Realization

The qualitative analysis shows that analogies between Israeli entities and Nazi
entities are predominantly realized as comparisons. From 1,021 analogies,⁵⁷

 In some cases other discourse events may have occurred that also took place within these
periods of time. In order to get comparable intervals and to detect an overall tendency of the
distributions of emails including Nazi comparisons, this possible interference factor was accept-
ed.
 Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz define derealizations as “linguistic utterances [which; L. G.] do
not portray reality as it is (and can be intersubjectively experienced), but rather constitute, on
the basis of their semantic contents, the language generators’ own subjective realities. In this
case, the representational function of language, which depends largely on the criterion of
truth (and the possibility of testing a thing’s truth value), is instrumentalized by the language
generators to verbalize aspects of the world as they view them,” Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz,
Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 158.
 For the reason that some emails include more than one analogy, 1,021 of those expressions
were determined in 945 emails to the Israeli Embassy and the Central Council of Jews in Germa-
ny.
456 Linda Giesel

77.8 % are expressed in a comparison and 22.2 % in a metaphorical structure. In

addition to typical comparative connectives, for example, like in 9), the analyzed
Nazi comparisons are mainly verbalized by different terms that indicate the com-
parison between two or more entities, in 10)–15).⁵⁸

(9) Your home country is a torturer like the Nazis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(ZDJ_17.01. 2008_ano_001)

In utterances without explicit connectors, producers often express Nazi compar-

isons by negating a difference between Israel and Nazi Germany or by accusing
Israel of not being any better than the National Socialists.

(10) what you are doing is not different from what the Nazis did !!!
(IBD_00.00. 2014_Süs_001)
(11) Especially you Jews who had many victims in World War II, must be ashamed of such
deeds. You are not better than Adolf Hitler and his followers (IBD_31.05.
2010_Bra_002)

In allegations like 11), the imagination emerges that Jews should have learned
from the NS-history and therefore should act in an outstanding moral way. Fur-
thermore, this conceptualization is one of the dominant (post-Holocaust) stereo-
types that are connected to Nazi comparisons. In addition to the negation of a
difference between Israel and Nazi regime, many comparisons are verbalized
by comparative lexemes like similar, comparable, parallel or the same.

(12) I have to say that Israel acts totally inhumanly. Why are they doing similar things that
happened during the Holocaust to other peoples now? (ZDJ_27.07. 2006_Hun_001)

Besides the comparative lexeme in 12), we can also determine the adverb now
which serves as a temporal deictic expression. Lexemes and phrases like back
in time, then, former, or in the past in opposition to now, today, or currently
can also function as comparison indicators:

(13) What former used to be the Warsaw Ghetto is the Gaza Strip today. The Nazis were
against the Jews and the Israelis (Jews) today are against the Palestinians.
(IBD_09.01. 2011_Fri_001)

 The following list of verbal realizations is based on dominant forms I carried out in the
course of the corpus study. Due to the scope and the focus of this article, I will present selected
verbal manifestations.
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 457

Another expression for Nazi comparisons is the focus particle also, which em-
phasizes the tertium comparationis as the focused element of the comparison.⁵⁹
The focus particle establishes an analogy relation between the entities by indi-
cating an allegedly common feature, like being people of perpetrators:

(14) The Holocaust was cruel and bad, but always presenting oneself as a victim is very
blatant. You are also a perpetrator. (IBD_10.09. 2012_Fri_001)

In 14) it is not only the focus particle that serves as indicator of the (implicit) Nazi
comparison. The reversal of victims and perpetrators is also expressed. Even
though all antisemitic Nazi comparisons imply a reversal of perpetrators and vic-
tims, there are some manifestations that explicitly frame the victims of the past,
their descendants, and/or Israelis (as citizens of a state of the Shoah survivors)
as perpetrators of the present. In the following excerpt of an email, addressing
the military operation Cast Lead, the reference to guilt and shame fits into the
conceptual representation of the perpetrator-victim reversal:

(15) The state of Israel, which is a cruel one, must now be ashamed because it is guilty.
Victims become perpetrators. (IBD_22.01. 2009_Gar_001)

The projection of guilt onto Israel and/or Jews is accompanied by a relativization

of Germany’s culpability. As explained in part 3, expressions like that constitute
a current manifestation of post-Holocaust antisemitism.
A different way to draw analogies between Israel and Nazi Germany is to use
typical Nazi vocabulary, for example, Heil in greetings to the ambassador or the
prime minister of Israel:

(16) The Jews call Heil Hadas Handelsman (IBD_01.07. 2013_ano_001)

(17) I have heard that the Israelis greet each other with Heil Netanjahu (IBD_20.10.
2012_ano_001)

When a specific lexeme or a citation is used to refer to a situation other than the
original one, it is a form of allusion from a semantic-functional point of view.⁶⁰
Writers also use popular phrases, for instance, known from the Sportpalast

 Concerning the German auch, see G. Helbig, Lexikon deutscher Partikeln, 2nd ed. (Leipzig:
Verlag Enzyklopädie, 1990), 91– 92.
 Cf. P. Lennon, “Die Rolle von Anspielungen in britischen Zeitungstexten,” Zeitschrift für An-
gewandte Linguistik 34 (2001): 14.
458 Linda Giesel

speech of Joseph Goebbels (1943) in reference to military conflicts in the Middle

East:

(18) Does Israel want the total war? (IBD_27.11. 2012_Amm_001)

Israel is being accused of intending to start an ethnic (total) war or to plan a gen-
ocide of the Arab population, which is labeled as the final solution/Endlösung.
The following example is also verbalized as a rhetorical question and refers to
the Lebanon war in 2006:

(19) Is the disproportionate use of tanks, air force and bombs already the final solution?
(IBD_28.06. 2006_Jae_001)

As indirect speech acts, rhetorical questions do not intend answers; they primar-
ily function as assertives that express an assertion and an evaluation in an im-
plicit way.⁶¹ Nevertheless, to use specific expressions of the Nazi vocabulary has
a special function: because of their historical relevance and the associated mem-
ories, the emotional dimension of these expressions is very important.⁶² The ut-
terances in 18) and 19) express an equation between the concepts Israeli Military
Operation and World War II or the Shoah. For the reason of this direct equation
of the entities, the analogies show intersections with nominal metaphors like the
examples below. Here Gaza is conceptualized as a concentration camp,
Benjamin Netanyahu as Adolf Hitler and Israel’s policy as Holocaust to the Pal-
estinians.

(20) The idea to bombard the Gaza concentration camp with phosphorus bombs may have
been taken directly from Nazi textbooks
(IBD_00.06. 2010_Not_001)
(21) Netanyahu the HITLER of the Jewish land. Liebermnan the henchman (IBD_00.05.
2010_ano_044)
(22) Stop the holocaust of Palestinian people!!! STOP THIS genocide!!! (ZDJ_15.01.
2009_Kay_001)

Using words like Holocaust or concentration camp in different contexts causes a

referential shift of their original meanings.⁶³ Concerning the term Holocaust,

 Cf. J. Meibauer, Pragmatik: Eine Einführung, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2008),
109.
 The emotional potential of antisemitic texts is described in Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz,
Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 208 – 34.
 Cf. ibid., 138.
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 459

Soric determines a successive abstraction of the word meaning that leads to a

detachment of the reference to the mass murder of the European Jews.⁶⁴
Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz criticize this as a (ahistorical) decontextualization,
which functions in a way that those words

no longer allude to the unique historical events and stages of the Nazi genocide but are
employed as defamatory tools directed against Jews or Israelis. Thus the communicative
strategy of perpetrator–victim reversal is mirrored on the verbal microstructural level
with a derealizing effect.⁶⁵

In addition to the question of realizing the analogy, the components of the com-
parison were also analyzed as part of the study. The results reveal that compar-
isons and metaphors with components referring to Israeli entities prevail (72.7 %)
over components referring explicitly to Jewish entities (20.8 %). Concerning the
basis of the comparison, which contains the concept related to National Social-
ism, two groups of entities can be identified. On the one hand, these compari-
sons refer to agents such as Adolf Hitler, Nazis in general and individual Nazi of-
ficials, like Goebbels, Himmler, and Eichmann, or specific NS institutions and
organizations, such as NSDAP, Wehrmacht, and the SS. Those expressions
focus primarily on the actors and frame them as perpetrators of the present.⁶⁶

(23) I can no longer identify any significant difference between the Israeli army and the
German Wehrmacht in the attack on Poland in 1939
(ZDJ_31.07. 2006_Sch_001)

On the other hand, producers of Nazi comparisons refer to Gaza as the Warsaw
Ghetto or Auschwitz and declare the Israeli Palestine policy as Holocaust or final
solution. ⁶⁷ These utterances either focus on Palestinians explicitly or imply the
conceptualization of them as victims of the Israeli state which applies Nazi meth-
ods.

(24) Gaza, the largest concentration camp worldwide

(IBD_00.06. 2010_Wik_001)

 Cf. A. Soric, “‘Bomben-Holocaust’: Eine sprachkritische Analyse eines kontroversen Aus-

drucks mit rechtsextremistischem Hintergrund,” Aptum: Zeitschrift für Sprachkritik und Sprach-
kultur 2 (2005): 178 – 87.
 Cf. Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 138.
 See also examples 5)–11) and 21).
 See also examples 12), 13), 19), 20), and 22).
460 Linda Giesel

Another way to draw analogies between Israel and Nazi Germany is, as shown in
part 2, to express it implicitly by the use of utterances like the past, the terrible
history, or:

(25) Evil thoughts would compare this situation with 70 years ago …
(IBD_03.12. 2012_Bus_001)

Recipients infer the meaning of such phrases by activating their background

knowledge within the communicational contexts. The analogy is established
by the lexeme compare and the underspecified component 70 years ago implies
the reference to Nazi Germany. Due to the fact that Nazi comparisons are contro-
versial and often rejected in the space of public communication, we can assume
that the writer attempts to indicate a distance from the expression by referring to
evil thoughts and by using the subjunctive would compare.

5 Conclusion
Comparisons, which are ordinarily cognitive instruments of achieving knowledge
by contrasting or identifying similarities of characteristics of entities, change
their function when they are realized as Nazi comparisons. This article revealed
those expressions as verbal strategies of defamation, demonization, and relativ-
ization of National Socialism as well as phenomena of contemporary antisemit-
ism when it comes to the equation of Israel and Nazi Germany. The reversal of
perpetrators and victims (and their descendants), and the projection of guilt
onto Israel, which underlies such utterances, serves the purpose of exoneration,
one of the main functional elements of post-Holocaust antisemitism.
The corpus study indicated that emails including Nazi comparisons were
sent to the Embassy of Israel as well as to the Central Council of Jews in Germany
in a similar frequency, whereas the relative amount of Nazi comparisons ad-
dressed to the Central Council is slightly higher (11.5 % vs. 9.2 %). The results re-
veal that producers, who send these texts referring to Israel to the Central Coun-
cil, which acts as representation of German Jews, conceptualize Jews as Israelis
and not Belonging to the German Society. This represents the current var-
iant of the traditional Judeophobic stereotype of Jews as Group of the
Other and as Foreigners.
Emails including those analogies were sent during periods of military con-
flicts as well as during times of no military altercations. This leads to the conclu-
sion that Nazi comparisons were produced constantly and regardless of whether
there was a military conflict occurring in the Middle East. The periods of military
 Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany 461

confrontation can, for example, act as a form of valves for antisemitic expres-
sions, but they are no trigger for antisemitism. Among other verbal manifesta-
tions, this illustrates the stable “mental system of belief and […] interpretation
of the world”⁶⁸ as a typical constant of antisemitism.
The analysis of linguistic forms of the analogies between Israel and the Ger-
man-Nazi regime reveals a variety of verbalizations.⁶⁹ They are realized predom-
inantly as utterances without typical comparative connectives, also as meta-
phors, as allusions through specific NS vocabulary or through implicit
phrases. Producers of Nazi comparisons mainly focus on agents like Israelis
and/or Jews, Israeli institutions and politicians or Jewish organizations and
equate them with National Socialist entities. Furthermore, they refer to Gaza
as Warsaw Ghetto or concentration camp and the Palestine policy as Holocaust.
By the use of those verbalizations, writers explicitly or implicitly characterize
Palestinians as Current Victims of the Israeli Nazi Regime. In addition to the an-
tisemitic impact, these demonizations express a banalization of the genocide of
the European Jews and the Nazi era in general; they mock the victims of the Na-
tional Socialists as well as their descendants. The exposure of a language usage
that trivializes Nazi crimes is of course of utmost relevance—not only from a lin-
guistic perspective but also from a historical and socio-political point of view.
Concerning an uncritical handling of those verbal attacks, Schwarz-Friesel and
Reinharz warn:

When drastic expressions […] and comparisons to the Nazis are used repeatedly for so-
called criticism of Israel without being challenged, after a while their inappropriateness
goes unnoticed and habituation sets in.⁷⁰

Research studies identified the high frequency of the usage of Nazi comparisons
in multiple contexts within the public and in the private space of communica-
tion.⁷¹ Regarding specific comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, the
tendency of habituation is also determined in this corpus analysis. Detecting
such language usage and its implications should have the aim of raising aware-

 Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 18.

 A detailed classification of the verbal realization is given in Giesel, NS-Vergleiche und NS-
Metaphern, 196 – 245.
 Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind, 13.
 Cf. Among others Stötzel, “Zur Geschichte der NS-Vergleiche von 1946 bis heute,” 261– 76;
Eitz and Stötzel, Wörterbuch der “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” vol. 1 and vol. 2; Pérennec,
“Nazi-Vergleiche im heutigen politischen Diskurs,” 1– 12; Soric, “‘Bomben-Holocaust,’”
178 – 89. Schwarz-Friesel, Sprache und Emotion, 197– 200; Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, Inside
the Antisemitic Mind, 344– 45.
462 Linda Giesel

ness of the dangers that are in involved in it, especially considering the current
political tendencies and the increase of Israel-related antisemitism.⁷²

Linda Giesel is a linguist whose research focuses on hate speech, contemporary an-
tisemitism, and Nazi comparisons. During her doctoral studies, she was part of the
DFG-project “Antisemitism in the World Wide Web” at the Technical University of
Berlin. In 2019 she published her dissertation on the topic of Nazi comparisons and
metaphors with a focus on structural, conceptual, and functional characteristics of
antisemitic utterances from a corpus linguistic perspective. Her current work focus-
es on investigating antisemitism in the context of the penal system in Germany.

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Florian Markl
“Israel Threatens to Defend Itself”:
The Depiction of Israel in the Media
In 2003, an opinion poll conducted on behalf of the EU Commission yielded one
very remarkable result: 59 percent of Europeans saw Israel as the greatest threat
to world peace. Not North Korea, not Iran, not Russia, but Israel. The number in
Germany was even higher: Here 65 percent, almost two thirds of those ques-
tioned, singled out Israel as the greatest threat to the world.¹
In 2008, 40 percent of Germans approved of the statement: “What Israel
today does to the Palestinians is not substantially different from what the
Nazis during the Third Reich did to the Jews.” In an opinion poll two years
later, 57 percent of Germans approved of the claim “Israel is conducting a war
of extermination against the Palestinians.”² And according to another opinion
poll, conducted in 2016, 40 percent of Germans agreed with the statement:
“Given how Israel treats the Palestinians, I can easily understand why one is
against the Jews.”³
All these statements have one thing in common: They are grotesque distor-
tions of what Israel is and what Israel does.
If we want to understand how distorted opinions like these are formed, we
have to take a close look at the way the media reports on Israel and the Pales-
tinian-Israeli conflict. Since most Europeans get all their information about the
Jewish State from the media, the way Israel is depicted in the media’s reporting
exerts a tremendous influence on Europeans’ attitude toward Israel.
The analysis of Austrian media that Mena Watch has conducted since 2011
clearly shows that in their coverage of Israel, journalists time and again do
not adhere to basic journalistic standards. They often draw a picture of Israel
that is based on imbalanced and misleading reporting; the selective omission
of facts; the application of double standards when judging Israeli behavior com-

 Flash Eurobarometer, “Iraq and Peace in the World,” issued November 2003, http://ec.europa.
eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/flash/fl151_iraq_full_report.pdf, 81.
 Unabhängiger Expertenkreis Antisemitismus, “Bericht des unabhängigen Expertenkreises An-
tisemitismus. Antisemitismus in Deutschland—Erscheinungsformen, Bedingungen, Prävention-
sansätze,” issued November 10, 2011, http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/077/1707700.pdf, 53.
 Unabhängiger Expertenkreis Antisemitismus, “Bericht des Unabhängigen Expertenkreises An-
tisemitismus,” issued April 7, 2017, https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/18/119/1811970.pdf, 65.

OpenAccess. © 2021 Florian Markl, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-023
466 Florian Markl

pared to that of other countries; and the presentation of their own biased atti-
tudes toward Israel as if they were plain facts.

Classic Traditional Antisemitism

Sometimes the reporting crosses every line and is plainly antisemitic. Take for
example a caricature that was published as an illustration for a review of two
books about Zionism in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2013. Here, Israel was por-
trayed as an ugly monster with horns, with the caption saying the Jewish State
was a “greedy juggernaut.”⁴ Note that the caricaturist did not have Israel in
mind at all when he drew the monster—that connection was made by the editors
of the newspaper.⁵
Another German newspaper, the Stuttgarter Zeitung, in yet another carica-
ture used the antisemitic motif of the well-poisoning Jew, in this case showing
Israel’s prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu poisoning a piece of bread with a
deadly substance called “settlement policy” in order to feed it to a pigeon
named “Peace Process.”⁶ Of course, you will never find a similar caricature
about Mahmoud Abbas’ incitement to violence and terror: Only Israelis and Is-
rael’s political leaders are fair game.
It was also classic antisemitism when the chief foreign affairs editor of Aus-
tria’s biggest daily newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung, referred to Israelis living in
communities beyond the so-called Green Line as “venomous snake brood” (“gif-
tiges Natterngezücht”).⁷ Needless to say that that the journalist who wrote the
article, Kurt Seinitz, never uses similarly derogatory language when referring
to other groups of people.

 “Deutschland serviert,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 2, 2013.

 M. Wuliger, “Gefräßiges Monster Israel: Wie die Süddeutsche Zeitung antisemitischen Spin
produziert,” Jüdische Allgemeine, July 3, 2013, http://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/article/
view/id/16410.
 “Geh’n mer Tauben vergiften im Park…,” Stuttgarter Zeitung, August 5, 2013.
 K. Seinitz, “Jüdischer Extremismus ist auch nicht neu,” Kronen Zeitung, June 9, 2014.
 “Israel Threatens to Defend Itself”: The Depiction of Israel in the Media 467

Comparison with National Socialism

According to most definitions, including the one brought forward by the Interna-
tional Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in May 2016,⁸ and since then
adopted by numerous governments and other entities, it is also antisemitic to
equate Israel with Nazi Germany or portray Israeli actions as similar to what
the Nazis did. In a caricature published by profil, the Austrian equivalent to
the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, during the Lebanon war in 1982, we
saw Heinrich Himmler and other Nazis sitting side by side with Hitler in hell,
who expresses his admiration for Israel’s prime minister Menachem Begin. A
more recent example comes from 2004, when the Kleine Zeitung published a car-
icature entitled “Then and Now” showing two scenes. On the left-hand side, a
grim-faced soldier wearing a swastika armband and standing in front of a ruined
house looks at a young boy wearing a Yellow Star. On the opposing right-hand
side, we see the exactly same scene with only two minor changes: The swastika
on the soldier’s armband has been replaced by a Star of David, and the boy
wears a kaffiyeh, the checkered Palestinian headdress.⁹ The message is simple
and clear: The Israelis nowadays are doing exactly the same to the Palestinians
that the Nazis once did to the Jews.

De-Realization
These are clear-cut examples for the anti-Israeli variance of antisemitism. But
more often the media contributes to the widespread, one-sided, false, and unfair
picture of Israel in more subtle ways. A de-realizing reporting about the Jewish
state and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict forms the foundation on which the de-
monization of Israel, its de-legitimization, and the application of double stand-
ards can flourish—the “three Ds” that the former Jewish-Russian dissident Natan
Sharansky famously identified as key markers for Israel-related antisemitism.¹⁰
What is meant with the term de-realization? In the words of scholars Monika
Schwarz-Friesel and Jehuda Reinharz, de-realization is

 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, “Working Definition of Antisemitism,” issued

May 26, 2016, https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/press_release_docu
ment_antisemitism.pdf.
 P. Pismestrovic, “Einst und jetzt,” Kleine Zeitung, May 19, 2004.
 N. Sharansky, “3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimiza-
tion,” Jewish Political Studies Review 16 (2003): 3 – 4.
468 Florian Markl

a phenomenon that results when a mental interpretive schema applied to a specific extra-
linguistic situation, in the case of anti-Israelism to a country, results in a distorted, nar-
rowed, or completely false perception and assessment of the situation. The criterion of fal-
sity or distortion emerges from the incongruence between the subjective perspective of the
observer and the objective or intersubjective situation.¹¹

In this sense de-realization is a distorted view of reality. The three Ds thus

reveal themselves as a direct consequence of the derealized position, and to a great extent
build on each other or mutually support each other in pseudo-rational “argumentation.”¹²

By constant repetition, in our case by the media’s biased, inadequate, and faulty
reporting about Israel, de-realizing claims gain the appearance of objectivity. A
picture of Israel is thus set that obscures substantial parts of reality, does not ac-
knowledge them, or presents them only in a highly distorted form. The result is a
picture in which the Jewish State is presented almost exclusively as the aggres-
sor, whereas the Palestinian side of the conflict is barely ever mentioned—unless,
of course, it can be portrayed as the victim of Israeli aggression.

“Israel Threatens Hamas”: The Depiction of

Israel as the Aggressor
Let’s look at some examples to illustrate how this works. The first one features
the Austrian daily newspaper Kurier. On June 18, 2012, Palestinian terrorists com-
ing from the Sinai Peninsula infiltrated Israel and attacked a group of construc-
tion workers, one of whom, an Israeli Arab, was killed.¹³ In the following days,
hundreds of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
For almost a week, Kurier did not write a single word about the escalation in
Israel’s south. Only when the Israeli Air Force reacted to the ongoing Palestinian
attacks by bombarding Hamas facilities in the Gaza Strip did Kurier wake up.
“Near East. New Attacks on Gaza,” was the headline of the first short report
to be found in the newspaper.¹⁴ The rockets raining down on Israel were still

 M. Schwarz-Friesel and J. Reinharz, Inside the Antisemitic Mind: The Language of Jew-Hatred
in Contemporary Germany (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2017), 158.
 Ibid., 157.
 “South border clash leaves civilian, terrorists dead,” Ynet News, June 18, 2012, http://www.
ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4243734,00.html.
 “Nahost. Neue Angriffe auf Gaza,” Kurier, June 24, 2012.
 “Israel Threatens to Defend Itself”: The Depiction of Israel in the Media 469

not mentioned at all. When Kurier finally reported on the hundreds of rocket at-
tacks, it did so under the headline: “After the cease-fire announcement, Israel
threatens Hamas.”¹⁵
By ignoring both the initial Palestinian terrorist attack as well as the subse-
quent barrages of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, Israel was presented as the
aggressor who threatens Palestinians with death and destruction. This kind of
misrepresentation has become a regular feature especially when it comes to rock-
et attacks from Gaza. As long as Israel doesn’t respond, Palestinian rocket fire is
of no interest whatsoever. When Israel reacts, the headlines will more often than
not be something like: “Israel attacks Gaza.”
The very same mechanism was at play at the beginning of the 2014 Gaza
War: Three Israelis—often referred to as “settlers,” although two of them did
not live in the disputed Jewish communities in the West Bank—were kidnapped
and murdered by Hamas terrorists. A huge search operation by the Israeli De-
fense Forces (IDF) was met with rockets fired from the Gaza Strip: three on
June 24, four on June 25, six on June 27, six again on June 28, four on June 29,
twelve on June 30, and so on and so forth.¹⁶ On July 8, Israel started “Operation
Protective Edge” in order to stop the incoming rocket barrage from Gaza.
For weeks, the Palestinian rocket fire was completely ignored by the Austri-
an media, and when Israel finally acted to suppress the rocket launches, it quick-
ly morphed into the aggressor. The ORF evening news reported: “After Israeli at-
tacks [sic!] on Hamas facilities in the Gaza Strip, Hamas today again responded
with counter-attacks [sic!] on Israeli localities.”¹⁷ The headline and the subse-
quent report, representative of numerous other during the course of the war,
completely reversed the factual timeline of events. And of course, phrases
were extensively used that tried to explain what was happening by alluding to
ancient Jewish principles from the Old Testament and alleged Jewish character
traits, which ostensibly were still motivating Israel’s behavior. “An eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth,” said one ORF report;¹⁸ the daily newspaper Die Presse
wrote about an “archaic cycle of revenge and vengeance” being reenacted in the

 “Israel droht Hamas nach Verkündigung der Waffenruhe,” Kurier, June 25, 2012.
 “News of Terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (June 25 – July 1, 2014),” The Meir
Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, issued July 1, 2014, accessed November
23, 2018, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/article/20663.
 “Raketenangriffe auf Israel,” ZiB 2, July 7, 2014.
 E. Gollackner, “Eskalation der Gewalt in Nahost,” ZiB 24, July 9, 2014.
470 Florian Markl

war;¹⁹ and according to the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s best-selling daily newspa-
per, Israel’s attempts to stop the rocket fire from Gaza were “revenge attacks.”²⁰
The depiction of Jews as revengeful has for centuries been a frequent component
of antisemitic propaganda.
On June 15, about a week into the war, Israel accepted an Egyptian cease-fire
proposal and stopped its military operations. Hamas rejected the proposal and
kept firing rockets at Israel. After a couple of hours, Israel resumed its fight
against Hamas. If you followed the development on that day on Austrian
media websites, you would have received a totally different impression of what
had happened. “Israel again bombards targets in the Gaza Strip,” wrote the
Kronen Zeitung, which at least mentioned the fact that Hamas never ceased firing
at all—other media simply left out this not unimportant piece of information.
“Again Israeli air attack on the Gaza Strip,” said the Kurier’s website; “New Isra-
elis Attack on Gaza Strip,” headlined the Salzburger Nachrichten, with a smaller
headline above saying: “Israel attacks again”; “The cease-fire is over,” Kleine
Zeitung’s website reported about a cease-fire, that one side of the conflict
never had adhered to in the first place;²¹ and “For now no cease-fire: Israel
again flies air attacks,” wrote the ORF. ²² The ORF evening news reported
about a possible escalation of the war due to Israeli threats—and did not say
a single world about Hamas’ refusal to stop firing rockets at Israel. The bottom
line of all these misleading headlines and reports is this: Even when Israel tem-
porarily suspended its military operations, it was still the Jewish State which was
depicted as being the attacker and aggressor.

When Pictures Omit One Part of the Story

The ways in which Palestinian violence was blurred out can be shown by looking
at the photos that the Kurier chose to publish during the Gaza War. Between July
9 and September 3, the daily newspaper published a total of 134 articles about
the war which included 54 photographs. Almost completely missing in these pic-

 T. Vieregge, “Der Friede liegt fern, die Visionäre haben ausgeträumt,” Die Presse, July 10,
2014, https://www.diepresse.com/3835589/der-friede-liegt-fern-die-visionare-haben-ausge
traumt.
 “Racheangriffe auf Gaza,” Kronen Zeitung, June 30, 2014.
 F. Markl, “Der ewige Aggressor Israel,” Mena Watch, July 15, 2014, https://www.mena-watch.
com/der-ewige-aggressor-israel/.
 F. Markl, “Der ewige Aggressor Israel—Fortsetzung,” Mena Watch, July 15, 2014, https://www.
mena-watch.com/der-ewige-aggressor-israel-fortsetzung/.
 “Israel Threatens to Defend Itself”: The Depiction of Israel in the Media 471

tures of more than seven weeks—of at times intense fighting—were Palestinian

attacks on Israel or Palestinian fighters. Only one photo showed two masked
men on a motorcycle who were described as Hamas fighters, but they were
not shown as doing actual violence.²³ And while more than 4,000 rockets
were launched from Gaza during the course of the war, there was not a single
picture showing a Palestinian rocket attack. Only one very small picture showed
a cloud of smoke in the sky: That was all that remained of a Palestinian rocket
after it was intercepted and destroyed by the Israeli Iron Dome defense system.²⁴
Not showing a single Palestinian rocket attack, to be sure, also meant that Kurier
did not show the location from where all these rockets were fired: often times
from densely populated residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas basically
took the civilian population hostage and used it as a kind of human shield in
its war against Israel. Indiscriminately firing rockets at Israeli villages and cities
was a war crime, according to the international law; doing so from civilian res-
idential areas was a war crime as well. Although photos showing such Palestini-
an attacks were available, Kurier decided to completely omit them in its coverage
of the war, thus literally showing only one side of the conflict.
There were, to be sure, photos of Palestinians—but mostly of Palestinian ci-
vilians, often children or injured people, many times contrasted with pictures
showing Israel’s mighty military power. On July 19, Kurier published a collage
of five photos. One big picture, providing the background for the other ones,
showed a huge cloud of dust rising, apparently the result of an Israeli missile
hitting a target somewhere in the Gaza Strip. In the four corners of this photo
there were four smaller ones. The picture in the upper left corner showed two
small Palestinian children, their faces dirty and one of them apparently injured.
In the upper right corner, two Palestinian males carried away a third, an obvious-
ly injured one. On the bottom left side, the viewer caught a glimpse of a Pales-
tinian street through a hole in a wall, presumably damage caused by an Israeli
attack. And the photo on the bottom right-hand side showed a tank with an Is-
raeli flag, swirling up dust as it rapidly moved forward in the direction of the
photographer. All in all, four of the five pictures showed results of Israeli military
action or injured Palestinians, most notably the close-up of a very small boy,
while the Israeli side was only represented by an impersonal, dangerous-looking

 N. Jessen, “Geldflüsse der Hamas drohen zu versiegen,” Kurier, July 29, 2014, https://kurier.
at/politik/ausland/israel-geldfluesse-der-hamas-drohen-zu-versiegen/77.237.516.
 N. Jessen, “Ein Krieg mit geänderten Allianzen,” Kurier, August 9, 2014, https://kurier.at/
politik/ausland/israel-gaza-nahost-krieg-mit-geaenderten-allianzen/79.270.569.
472 Florian Markl

and relatively high-tech military weapon system.²⁵ A very similar kind of con-
trasting juxtaposition was published by the Kronen Zeitung: Two Palestinian doc-
tors handling an injured Palestinian toddler on one side of the picture, and again
an Israeli tank swirling up dust as it speeds toward the camera.²⁶ Palestinians
were presented as victims with human faces, just like during an earlier round
of fighting between Israel and Hamas, when a close-up photo showed a veiled
and crying Palestinian woman (headline of the article: “Suffering and Dying
in Gaza”²⁷), thus evoking compassion with Palestinians. On the other hand, rare-
ly were photographs to be seen of Israeli victims and the hundreds of thousands
of Israelis who had to run for cover in bomb shelters within seconds of the alarm
bells sounding.
An analysis of the headlines used in the coverage of the Gaza War 2014
shows results similar to the analysis of the pictures: Israel was presented as
an aggressive power, Palestinians were barely mentioned and were not presented
as active players but only as reacting to Israeli attacks. The analysis undertaken
by Mena Watch was confirmed by Anatol Stefanowitsch, a linguist from Berlin,
who came to the conclusion that the headlines in German media showed a “sys-
tematic asymmetry in their depiction of the players,” with Israel disproportion-
ately often being depicted as a war-mongering protagonist.²⁸
Even in the rare cases of reporting about Palestinian violence, the danger
emanating from Palestinian attacks was regularly downplayed. The thousands
of rockets fired at Israel were often called “home made” in order to deny their
deadly potential, and the terrorists were being belittled. For example, in a com-
mentary published during the short Gaza War in 2012 the editor of an Austrian
newspaper wrote about the “snotty-brat terrorists from Hamas” who “provoke”
Israel, and said: “These Mini-Bin-Ladens shoot scrappy rockets at Tel Aviv and
other localities.”²⁹

 “Gaza. Die Offensive rollt,” Kurier, July 19, 2014, https://kurier.at/politik/ausland/nahost-

konflikt-gaza-die-offensive-rollt/75.571.134.
 “Israel zerstört in Gaza Tunnelsysteme,” Kronen Zeitung, July 19, 2014.
 M. Giorgio, “Leiden und Sterben in Gaza,” Kleine Zeitung, November 17, 2012.
 Quoted in G. M. Hafner and E. Schapira, Israel ist an allem schuld: Warum der Judenstaat so
gehasst wird (Köln: Eichborn, 2015), 108.
 W. Fellner, “Israel muss den Palästinenser-Staat zulassen,” Österreich, November 21, 2012.
 “Israel Threatens to Defend Itself”: The Depiction of Israel in the Media 473

De-realization at its Best

A prime example for the de-realizing reporting about the Palestinian-Israeli con-
flict was an article published in Die Presse which claimed to discuss the reasons
for the breakdown of the so-called Oslo peace process. Therein, a Palestinian
propagandist was quoted at length, and Israel was blamed for the absence of
peace. What was completely missing was the mention of Palestinian terror—it
was as if all the suicide bombings and the terror war that was launched by
Yasser Arafat in 2000 and that cost the lives of more than 1,000 Israelis had
never happened.³⁰
The de-realizing view on the conflict, in which Palestinian incitement and
violence is being ignored while Israel is being portrayed as a ruthless aggressor,
can lead to pieces of reporting and commentary that are just absurd. During the
Gaza War in 2014, the daily newspaper Die Presse published an op-ed by the
well-known public intellectual Ian Buruma, in which the author claimed that Is-
rael had reduced half of the Gaza Strip into rubble, and went on asking what rea-
sons, “apart from pure bloodlust” or “a lust for violence and a thirst for revenge”
there might be for “Israel’s bombs raining down on civilians.” While Israel’s
military in fact undertook numerous measures in order to avoid civilian casual-
ties in the Gaza Strip, for Buruma Israel’s actions stood in line with the German
bombardment of Coventry in World War II and the American nuclear attack on
Hiroshima.³¹
Sometimes the coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is so distorted,
that it gets barely anything right at all. The most infamous example was a
photo published by The New York Times on September 29, 2000. The caption
read: “An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount.”³² A closer
look at the photo led to initial doubts: In the background, one could clearly see a
gas station. Even someone who doesn’t know much about Jerusalem might know
that there certainly is no gas station on the Temple Mount. Wherever the photo
was shot, it could not have been taken where the caption claimed it was.
But that was not the only problem. As it turned out, the injured man was not
a Palestinian, but Tuvia Grossman, a twenty-year-old Jew from Chicago. He had

 S. Knaul, “Der gescheiterte Friede von Oslo,” Die Presse, September 13, 2013, https://www.
diepresse.com/1452118/nahost-der-gescheiterte-friede-von-oslo.
 I. Buruma, “Warum der Bombenregen auf Zivilisten?” Die Presse, August 8, 2014, https://
www.diepresse.com/3851563/warum-der-bombenregen-auf-zivilisten.
 “An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount,” New York Times, September
29, 2000.
474 Florian Markl

been on his way to the Wailing Wall, when his taxi had been attacked by an Arab
mob. He had been dragged out of the car, brutally beaten and attacked with
clubs; stones were smashed on his head. He somehow managed to get up and
flee to a close-by gas station—the one that can be seen in the background of
the photo. A group of police officers stationed there were able to disperse the vi-
olent Arab mob, thus in all likelihood saving Grossman’s live.³³ Instead of show-
ing Israeli aggression against a Palestinian, what the photo really showed was
the Jewish victim of a brutal attack committed by Arabs. That is de-realizing re-
porting almost at its best.
Only almost, because sometimes the reporting gets even worse and simply
loses any contact with reality whatsoever. As for example in the case of an article
published on the website of the German weekly magazine Focus that had the
headline: “Syria doesn’t react to Israel’s poison gas attack.”³⁴ Of course, there
never was an Israeli poison gas attack on Syria; the headline was pure fiction.
It is important to notice that all these are not simple mistakes or examples of
sloppy journalism. If that were the case, then these mistakes would have to occur
referring to all sides of the conflict. But in all the years of our media analysis at
Mena Watch, we have not found a single case in which the distortions related to
Palestinians. The “mistakes” all fed only one narrative: here the Israeli aggres-
sors, there the Palestinian or Arab victims.
When a waiter makes a lot of mistakes calculating the customers’ bills be-
cause he is just bad at calculating, the mistakes have to go either way; if they
only occur to the detriment of the customers, this suggests something beyond
mere and innocuous mistakes. The same is true when dealing with “mistakes”
in the media’s coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Conclusion
As mentioned before, the de-realizing media coverage of Israel is the foundation
for the demonization and de-legitimization of Israel. Why? Because it presents
reality in such a biased and highly distorted form, that Israeli actions cannot

 S. Simmons, David & Goliath: The Explosive Inside Story of Media Bias in the Israeli-Palesti-
nian Conflict (New York/Jerusalem: Emesphere Productions, 2012), 11– 14.
 “Syrien reagiert nicht auf Israels Giftgasangriff,” Focus Online, May 5, 2013. The headline was
changed after a protest storm broke out on the internet. A screenshot can be seen at U. W. Sahm,
“Journalismus vom Feinsten,” Israelnetz, July 5, 2013, https://www.israelnetz.com/index.php?
id=45270.
 “Israel Threatens to Defend Itself”: The Depiction of Israel in the Media 475

anymore be explained by rational reasons or motivations—and other, irrational

motives for Israel’s behavior have to be found.
When the firing of thousands of rockets from Gaza is simply ignored, what-
ever measures of self-defense Israel takes must appear as illegitimate and ruth-
less aggression. When Palestinian terror attacks are ignored, the purely defensive
security fence alongside the so-called Green Line separating the Westbank from
Israel morphs into an “apartheid wall,” allegedly erected to racially oppress the
Palestinians. Since every threat to Israel’s security is either ignored or not taken
seriously, there must be something in the Israeli or Jewish “nature” that makes
Israelis and Jews so aggressive, violent, and a danger for the whole world.
Sometimes the distorted reporting about Israel becomes unintendedly funny,
as for example with the headline I chose as the title for my contribution: The
line, “Israel threatens to defend itself” or “Israel threatens with self-defense”
needs no further comment.³⁵
But the de-realizing thinking I described results in articles and magazine
covers that are not funny at all. Like the cover page the German weekly magazine
stern published in 2006: A collage of photos shows an Israeli flag, the Dome of
the Rock on the Temple Mount, a black-and-white capture of uniformed female
Israeli pioneers, and an artillery firing a shot, all overlapped by a picture of a
soldier wearing a prayer shawl performing a prayer. The headline reads: “Israel.
What makes the country so aggressive.”³⁶

Florian Markl is a political scientist and scientific director of the independent Mid-
dle East think tank Mena Watch in Vienna. Before that he was an archivist and
historian at the General Settlement Fund for Victims of National Socialism and lec-
turer at the University of Vienna. Together with Alexander Feuerherdt he is the au-
thor of Vereinte Nationen gegen Israel [United Nations against Israel], and Die
Israel-Boykottbewegung. Alter Hass in neuem Gewand [The Movement to Boy-
cott Israel. Old Hatred in New Guise], both published by Hentrich & Hentrich in
2018 and in 2020.

 “Israel droht mit Selbstverteidigung,” Focus online, January 22, 2006, https://www.focus.de/
politik/ausland/atomstreit_aid_103917.html.
 “Israel. Was das Land so aggressiv macht. Die Geschichte des Judenstaates,” stern, August 3,
2006.
476 Florian Markl

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Editorial Board
Eliezer Ben-Rafael Tel Aviv University
Florette Cohen Abady CUNY College of Staten Island
Klaus S. Davidowicz University of Vienna
Karin Finsterbusch University of Koblenz-Landau
Evyatar Friesel Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Aleksandra Glizczyńska-Grabias Polish Academy of Sciences
Simha Goldin Tel Aviv University
Stephan Grigat Hebrew University of Jerusalem / University of Vienna
Maxine Grossman University of Maryland
Benjamin Isaac Tel Aviv University
Martin Rothgangel University of Vienna
Julius H. Schoeps Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies in
Potsdam
Monika Schwarz-Friesel Technical University of Berlin
Karin Stögner Hebrew University of Jerusalem / University of Vienna
Esther Webman Tel Aviv University
Wolfgang Wieshaider University of Vienna

OpenAccess. © 2021, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-024
List of Contributors
Matthias J. Becker Technical University of Berlin
Robert Chazan New York University
Florette Cohen Abady CUNY College of Staten Island
Gennadiy Estraikh New York University
Haim Fireberg Tel Aviv University
Paula Fredriksen Boston University / Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Linda Giesel Berlin
Erich S. Gruen University of California, Berkeley
Daniel Kaplin St. Francis College New York
Matthias Küntzel Hamburg
Armin Lange University of Vienna
Richard S. Levy University of Illinois in Chicago
Florian Markl Mena Watch Vienna
Kerstin Mayerhofer University of Vienna
Sara Offenberg Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Dina Porat Tel Aviv University
Doron Rabinovici Vienna
Alvin H. Rosenfeld Indiana University
Leonard Rutgers Utrecht University
Alan M. Silberstein New York
Birgit Wiedl Institute for Jewish History in Austria St. Pölten
Michael Wladika University of Vienna

OpenAccess. © 2021, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-025
Acknowledgements
The conference and publication were made possible by the help and support of
the following persons and institutions:

Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, Alan & Carol
Silberstein, United States, Israeli Embassy in Vienna, Austria, Federal
Chancellary of Austria, Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign
Affair, De Gruyter Publishers, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna,
Protestant Church of Austria, Faculty of Protestant Theology, University of
Vienna, Faculty of Social Studies, University of Vienna, Faculty of Historical
and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna, Institute for Jewish Studies,
University of Vienna, Vienna Israelite Community, Kantor Center for the Study
of Contemporary European Jewry, Tel Aviv University, The Knapp Family
Foundation, Federal State of Burgenland, Federal State of Carinthia, Federal
State of Lower Austria, Federal State of Upper Austria, Federal State of
Salzburg, Federal State of Tyrol, Federal State of Vorarlberg, National Fund of
the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, New York University,
University of Vienna, Rectorate, University of Vienna, Salo W. and Jeannette M.
Baron Foundation, City of Vienna, MA 7, Tel Aviv University, Austrian Academy
of Sciences, Future Fund of the Republic of Austria.

The following institutions and universities contributed to the conference and the
book:

Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA), Amadeu Antonio

Foundation, Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, Bar Ilan University, Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev, City Law School, University of London, Community
Security Trust, De Montfort University Leicester, UK, Eötvös Loránd University
Budapest, Fondation Jean Jaurès, Global Network for Advanced Research in
Jewish Studies, New York University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Indiana
University Bloomington, The Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies,
Bar Ilan University, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Institute of Law
Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Jewish Affairs Council, Mideast Freedom
Forum, Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, Queen Mary
University of London, Scandinavian School of Theology, Uppsala, Simon
Wiesenthal Centre, Trinity College, Technical University of Berlin, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Université Libre de Bruxelles, University
College of Southeast Norway, University of Groningen, University of Illinois,

OpenAccess. © 2021, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-026
484 Acknowledgements

Chicago, University of Innsbruck, University of Koblenz-Landau, University of

Maryland, University of San Diego, University of Southern California,
University of the West of Scotland, University of Tübingen, University of
Vienna, University of West Bohemia, University of Zurich, Yad VaShem, Yale
University, Yeshiva University.