ANTI-SEMITISM

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011, Anti-Semitism

The term "anti-Semitism," first came into use around 1870. Skillful propagandists such as Theodore Fritzche and Houston Stewart Chamberlain were extraordinarily successful in spreading notions of Jewish racial inferiority and its threat to the pure Aryan stock.

Anti-Semitism is a negative and hostile attitude to Jews and the Jewish religion. As a migrant people, the Jews have experienced anti-Semitism within many societies and throughout much of recorded history.

The extreme expression of anti-Semitism was the Holocaust, when six million Jews were murdered in German concentration camps during World War II.

This mass killing, carried out in an advanced and intellectually sophisticated society, traumatized Western societies and called into question the then dominant idea that historical development was marked by an increasingly rational commitment to the creation of an enlightened, progressive and humane society.

In a survey conducted in 1990, there was a surprisingly low level of expressed anti-Semitism among Soviet respondents and virtually no support for state policies that discriminate against Jews. Though, many of the conventional hypotheses predicting anti-Semitism are supported in the Soviet case.

Anti-Semitism is concentrated among those with lower levels of education, those whose personal financial condition is deteriorating, and those who oppose further democratization of the Soviet Union.

These findings are evidence that anti-Semitism is a trivial problem in the Soviet Union and suggest that efforts to combat anti-Jewish movements would likely receive considerable support from ordinary Soviet people.

Books On Anti-Semitism:

The History of Anti-Semitism: From Voltaire to Wagner (History of Anti-Semitism) (October, 2003)
by Leon Poliakov, Miriam Kochan
Reviewer: S. Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel)
I remember reading this book many years ago at the State University of Binghamton Harpur College Library, and being filled with sadness by it. So many of the cultural heroes of the Western world from Voltaire to Wagner were anti- Semitic, or had some anti- Semitic writings. Many such as Tolstoy Goethe Dickens balanced anti- semitism with very pro- Jewish remarks. True Nietzche stood against Wagner. But on the whole even into this century with Pound, Eliot, Celine, Heidegger there were ' great creators' who bore in their mind and soul resentment and hatred of the Jews.
Even with Shakespeare who according to Harold Bloom's wonderful exaggeration ' invented the human' there is the question of his true intent with Shylock. Does a Jew really have hands and eyes for Shakespeare?
I believe that this book should be far more widely read and known than it is. And it should be part of the legacy of all those Jews who have given their lives to Western culture.

The Temptation to Forget: Racism, Anti-Semitism, Neo-Nazism (Contributions in Sociology)
by Franco Ferrarotti
"We are nothing in an absolute sense. We are only what we have been - more exactly, what we remember we were." So begins the latest book by one of Europe's most influential modern sociologists, Franco Ferrarotti. In The Temptation to Forget, Ferrarotti examines how many in the waning years of the 20th century "forget" or reinvent history to serve the purposes of ethnic, racial, or religious separation.
FRANCO FERRAROTTI is Professor of Sociology at the University of Rome.

Anti-Semitism Before the Holocaust (April 10, 2000)
by Albert S. Lindemann
An important new study on a complex and highly controversial topic. Albert Lindemann provides a clear and balanced guide to anti-Semitism from ancient times right through to the twentieth-century inter-war period and the Nazi Holocaust. He looks at all countries where anti-Semitism manifested itself at different times and in different ways xxx; in Russia, the US, Poland, England, Germany, South Africa, and Holland. Throughout he asks difficult and unfamiliar questions to challenge long held and misguided beliefs. An important new study which fills a gap in current literature.

From Prejudice to Destruction : Anti-Semitism, 1700-1933 (September 9, 2005)
by Jacob Katz
Jacob Katz here presents a major reinterpretation of modern anti-Semitism, which blends history of ideas about the Jews gradually became transformed and then, around 1879, picked up so much social force as to result in the premeditated and systematic destruction of the Jewish people of Europe.
Mr. Katz revises the prevalent thesis that medieval and modern animosities against Jews were fundamentally different. He also rejects the scapegoat theory, according to which the Jews were merely a lightning rod for underlying economic and social tensions. On the contrary, he argues, there were very real tensions between Jews and non-Jews, because the Jews were a highly visible and cohesive group and so came into conflict with non-Jews in competing for social and economic rewards.
In the late 19th century, Mr. Katz argues, hatred of the Jews shifted from their religion to more essential aspects of their character and behavior. The term "anti-Semitism," he explains, which first came into use around 1870, was meant to describe this change. Thus, ironically, just as Jews were being integrated into the political state, skillfull propagandists such as Theodore Fritzche and Houston Stewart Chamberlain were extraordinarily successful in spreading notions of Jewish racial inferority and its threat to the pure Aryan stock. And so when Hitler came on the scene, the seeds of Jewish race hatred were widely sown.
Jacob Katz is Professor of Jewish Educational and Social History, Emeritus, at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

From Mohammed to the Marranos (The History of Anti-Semitism) (November, 2003)
by Leon Poliakov, Natalie Gerardi
First Sentence:
Of all the Jewish colonies of the ancient Dispersion, none was older, more stable, nor probably larger than that of Babylonia.

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