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Where Does It Come from & Why Does It Persist?

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Where Does It Come from & Why Does It Persist? ANTI- SEMITISM WHAT ARE ITS NEW FORMS? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM & WHY DOES IT PERSIST? WILL IT EVER GO AWAY? A SYMPOSIUM WITH AYAAN HIRSI ALI, DAVID BERGER, PHYLLIS CHESLER, JEREMY COHEN, IRWIN COTLER, MOHAMMED S. DAJANI DAOUDI, HASIA DINER, STUART EIZENSTAT, AVNER FALK, IRA FORMAN, MICHEL GURFINKIEL, DAVID KERTZER, BRIAN KLUG, DAVID MAMET, DAVID NIRENBERG, EMANUELE OTTOLENGHI, CYNTHIA OZICK, DINA PORAT, ALVIN ROSENFELD, ARI ROTH, SHLOMO SAND, MAXIM SHRAYER, CHARLES ASHER SMALL, ELI VALLEY, HANS-JOACHIM VOTH, XU XIN AND OTHERS ONLINE: MICHAEL BARKUN, BENT BLÜDNIKOW, ROBERT CHAZAN, LEONARD DINNERSTEIN, EVA FOGELMAN ZVI GITELMAN, MICHAEL GOLDFARB, JONATHAN JUDAKEN, SHMUEL TRIGANO, SERGIO WIDDER ART CREDIT 34 JULY/AUGUST 2013 INTERVIEWS BY: SARAH BREGER, DINA GOLD,GEORGE JOHNSON, CAITLIN YOSHIKO KANDIL, SALA LEVIN & JOSH TAPPER THE OLDEST HATRED IS BY SOME ACCOUNTS ALIVE AND WELL, BY OTHERS AN OVERUSED EPITHET. WE TALK WITH THINKERS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE FOR A CRITICAL AND SURPRISINGLY NUANCED EXAMINATION OF ANTI-SEMITISM'S ORIGINS AND STAYING POWER. DAVID BERGER Europe meant that Jews became the Christianity could not eliminate the evil OUTSIDERS & ENEMIES quintessential Other, and they conse- character of Jewish blood. quently became the primary focus of David Berger is editor of History and In the ancient Greco-Roman world, peo- hostility even in ways that transcended Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semi- ple evinced a wide variety of attitudes to- the theological. tism and Ruth and I. Lewis Gordon Pro- ward Jews. Some admired Jewish distinc- Once this focus on Jews as the Other fessor of Jewish History and dean of the tiveness, some were neutral, but others became entrenched, it continued into Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish were put off by the fact that unlike any modern Europe. Thus, although the Studies at Yeshiva University. other people in antiquity, the Jews had a decline of Christianity as the central god who limited their social interaction phenomenon of European society and with non-Jews and prevented them from the rise of the Enlightenment should participating in public rites that Jews arguably have led to the elimination of considered idolatrous. To some observ- anti-Semitism, that is not what happened JEREMY COHEN ers, this meant that Jews hated the rest (even though anti-Semitism did decline). AN ANTIQUATED RELIGION of humanity. With the rise of Christian- People turned back to some of the sec- ity, some of the reasons for hating Jews ondary reasons given in the Middle Ages, In the earliest Christian writings, such as should have receded—since Christians such as the accusation that Jews were the letters of the Apostle Paul, there is a also promote the notion of one God— economic exploiters or the invocation of pattern by which Christians define who but instead, Jews’ rejection of Jesus and their allegedly demonic character, which they are in terms of who they are not, in the description of their responsibility for purportedly led them to engage in ritual terms of an opposition to the Other—and the crucifixion engendered renewed hos- murder and well-poisoning. Nazi anti- that Other is the Jew. If the New Testa- tility and reinforced some of the negative Semitism was nourished by such con- ment is a heavenly covenant, then the To- tropes inherited from the Greco-Roman ceptions, and even the notion of ineradi- rah of Jews is an earthly law. If Christians world. The fact that Judaism was seen as cable Jewish racial characteristics has are identified with a heavenly Jerusalem, an enemy faith but was simultaneously precedent in late medieval circles where then Jews are identified with an earthly granted unique toleration in Christian some people asserted that conversion to Jerusalem. In order for Christianity to be MARCH/APRIL 2014 / MOMENT 35 right, Judaism must be wrong. charges, and other such late-medieval ac- In both traditions, the Jews stand for At the same time, Jews and Judaism cusations. Here lay important groundwork loving the world too much, a temptation have a place in the Christian world, for modern anti-Semitism: The Protocols of that affects everyone who lives in the because they and their Bible testify to the Elders of Zion and its myth of the inter- world. Hence “Jew” becomes a way of Christianity’s biblical origins, and the national Jewish conspiracy, for example, criticizing anyone. When Christians see contrast between the defeated, en- owe much to medieval and even classical a Christian loving the world too much, slaved Jew and the victorious Christian Christian patterns of thought. they call him a Jew or a Judaizer. The validates Christianity. When Saint Au- Jeremy Cohen is the author of several books, same is true in Islam. Sunnis call Shiites gustine (354-430 CE) taught that Jews including The Friars and the Jews: The “the Jews of our community,” and Shiites needed to be preserved—and dispersed Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism and characterize Sunnis as Jews. This is what and subjugated—so that Christians Christ-Killers: The Jews and the Pas- makes anti-Judaism so useful: it has the could define themselves in opposition sion, from the Bible to the Big Screen, power to criticize any “incorrect” attach- to them, we might say that he perceived and professor of European Jewish history at ment to God and the world, even when them as standing on a platform in a rail- Tel Aviv University. the people involved aren’t Jewish. road station waiting for the “Salvation In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Express” to come and pick them up. for example, Shylock could represent all But they would be standing there for- sorts of “incorrect” attachment to mon- ever, because they had missed the only ey, contract, law and love, even though such train—the one that would have DAVID NIRENBERG there hadn’t been Jews in England for led them to Jesus Christ. In Augustine’s A CORRUPTING INFLUENCE 300 years. Martin Luther attacked the terms, the Jews were “stationary,” stuck, Pope as a Jew and was repaid by Catho- as it were, in “useless antiquity.” The Many religions have a dream of transcen- lics in the same coin. And in the Syrian Jew reading his Bible resembled a blind dence, of an ideal world in which there is civil war today, the opposition forces man looking into a mirror, and Chris- no corruption, no suffering and no evil, call Bashar al-Assad a Jew, and he in tians could best appreciate their own and where the soul is eternal. And yet we turn calls the al-Qaeda troops fighting vision in contrast to him. live in a world of suffering, where bad against him Judaizers and Zionists. It is Notwithstanding this perception of things happen to good people, no matter this flexible power to criticize so many the Jews, there was, in fact, a vibrant and how pious. How to explain the tension aspects of this world, even when they creative post-biblical rabbinic tradition between ideal and reality? One way to do have nothing to do with real Jews or Ju- evolving at the same time that Christi- so is to imagine a source of corruption, daism, that has made anti-Judaism such anity was evolving. When the late medi- an agent of confusion seeking to orient us a useful tool for so many people in so eval Church eventually awakened to the toward the deadly material world, rather many different times and places. realities of Talmudic Judaism, it had the than toward our transcendent ideal. Ju- David Nirenberg is a historian at the Uni- Talmud confiscated, tried and burned, daism has been used to imagine the part versity of Chicago and author of Anti-Juda- because it deviated from the Christian of the world that is materialistic, fleshy, ism: The Western Tradition. construction of who the Jews needed to the enemy of our immortal soul. be: fossils of an Old Testament that had Christianity and Islam both teach us to long ago lost its validity and vitality. love God more than money, family, the Talmudic Jews, then, as opposed to the world and even your own life. The op- blind unbelievers that Augustine beheld posite is also true—if you love the world, AVNER FALK in the Jews, were now seen as rejecting then you’re turning away from God. The EXTERNALIZING EVIL the truth deliberately, and there was little Jews are often used to represent this er- need and less tolerance for them in a prop- ror, an error that is, of course, common Many anti-Semitic tropes are the prod- erly ordered Christian society. Christian to much of humanity. When Jesus says, uct of two unconscious processes. One is teachers soon concluded that the Jews had “Store not your treasures on earth,” he’s “splitting,” the unconscious division of killed their Messiah and their God inten- teaching all humanity but using the Phar- external emotional objects into “good” tionally. The popular imagination ran wild isees as his negative example. The Qur’an and “bad.” This tendency is illustrated with this myth of the deliberate unbeliever, uses a similar strategy when it says that in fairy tales such as Snow White, in nourishing the demonization of Jews and the Jews are the greediest for life, that which the child has two mothers: the promoting blood libels, well-poisoning they will abandon God for worldly gain. “good” mother who has died and the 36 MARCH/APRIL 2014 “evil” stepmother who torments. This havior patterns that further antagonized hate everyone who doesn’t look like us, splitting leads a person to view the the Christians and created a vicious circle then there’s a cost, and the children will world in black and white—the good us in relations with the majority.
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