HOW TO ACCOUNT FOR ANTISEMITISM? It has a very long history, but this history has been written only during the past century. There is no Thucydides or Plutarch of antisemitism; not one of the great historians and sociologists of the past has written about it in any detail. The endeavors to explain and interpret it are of even more recent date. Only after the Second World War and the disaster that befell European Jewry were the many attempts to analyze and understand it generated. Many questions remain open, and some will probably remain unresolved as far as one can look ahead.
They include the questions of whether there was antisemitism before the advent of Christianity or whether antagonism toward Jews at that time was no more than “normal xenophobia”; whether, as others argue, antisemitism can be traced back not to early Christianity but only to the late Middle Ages. This, in turn, raises the questions of whether and to what extent there has been continuity between the traditional, religious antisemitism that prevailed up to the second part of the nineteenth century and the racialist antisemitism that succeeded it and that led to the mass murder of the Second World War. A related debate concerns whether and to what extent contemporary antisemitism is rooted in the antisemitism of the past or whether it is mainly connected with the existence and the policies of the state of Israel as well as with anti-Americanism, antiglobalism, and other contemporary roots and movements.
While up to 1945 antisemites did not on the whole mind being called antisemites, there has been since that time indignation on the part of many, however hostile to the Jews, at being painted with the antisemitic brush. The question arises whether their angry feelings are justified. This also raises the question of whether what was historically predominantly a preoccupation of sections of Christian churches and right-wing movements has become in our time far more frequent among Muslim and left-wing groups; is this base calumny or undeniable fact?
The debate continues with regard to the questions of whether and to what extent economic and psychological motives are involved in antisemitism or whether historically antisemitism was simply the consequence of Jews rejecting Christianity and Islam. It involves the question of whether antisemitism is the more or less inevitable result of the anomalous social, economic, and political position of the Jews among other peoples which had a negative effect on Jews as a collective and as individuals.
This short review does not pretend to present yet another theory of antisemitism or to answer the many unresolved questions. Nor is it an apologetic or polemical statement; it merely attempts to summarize research and debates that have been going on for decades. It also deals with the present character of antisemitism and its future prospects.
One of the most renowned intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky, has stated that “antisemitism is no longer a problem, fortunately,” and this could be quite correct as far as certain parts of the state of Massachusetts as well as some other regions of North America are concerned. But it is less certain that this statement still holds if one moves a little farther afield. Even a mile or two from the campus of MIT, the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, has pointed to a widespread current of opinion that encourages a functional antisemitism marked by disproportionate preoccupation with Jews and the Jewish state: “serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are antisemitic in their effect if not their intent.” (And what of people who are less serious and thoughtful?)
The fact that Harvard’s president was bitterly attacked for saying this shows that passions are still running high. Sixty years have passed since the end of the Second World War; the closed season on Jews is ending. Jews, it is argued, have been talking for too long and too intensely about the Holocaust as if mankind did not experience other tragedies too during the last century. On the other hand, Jews have been doing too well socially and economically and have been too influential politically and culturally to pass unnoticed. And then there is Israel, the greatest danger to world peace in the view of many in Europe. As the leading left-wing historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote, many of the gates which so widely opened to Jews after 1945 may half close. It seems premature to draw the final line under this chapter of human history.
A brief personal statement is called for. I belong to the last surviving members of a generation that lived through European antisemitism in its most extreme form, in contrast to later students of antisemitism for whom the subject was by necessity an abstract or at least remote phenomenon. It is unlikely that a member of this generation who lost his parents and family in this period will be inclined to treat antisemitism as a laughing matter as a professor in Canada recently suggested. On the other hand, having faced extreme antisemitism, he is unlikely to overreact, crying “wolf” at the appearance of every mouse or mosquito.
With a few specific exceptions (such as the origins of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), antisemitism was not for a long time among the central issues preoccupying me on the scholarly level. But I was for thirty years director of what was then the leading institute for the study and collection of material on antisemitism, the Wiener Library in London. While I cannot claim that I studied every single publication on antisemitism that appeared in the world during these decades, I read (sometimes not without an effort) and pondered very many of them. The present long essay is the summary of my thoughts on the subject.
I would like to express my gratitude to Reinhard Kratz and Mark Cohen for a critical reading of one of the chapters and to Matthew Spieler for having acted as my research assistant in the work on this book.
Washington, D.C.
January 2006