Difference between revisions of "American Historical Review Roundtable: Rethinking Anti-Semitism"

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:Anti-Semitism Requires Rethinking. Unlike anti-black racism, nationalism, postcolonialism, or feminism, anti-Semitism remains under-theorized. Fundamental questions remain unresolved: How does one define anti-Semitism? Should the word be hyphenated? Can a term that was coined in order to distinguish racialized and politicized Judeophobia from religious anti-Judaism stand for the whole history of Jew hatred? Is hatred the emotion propelling anti-Semitism? Or is Judeophobia—the term I will defend using as an overarching category for the field—better understood in terms of ambivalence: a volatile combination of both fear and fascination? Is anti-Judaism a leitmotif for understanding the Western tradition? If so, were ancient Judeophobia and medieval anti-Judaism animated by the same impulses as Nazi anti-Semitism, and how do these map onto anti-Zionism? How should one periodize Judeophobia?<ref>Judaken</ref>
 
:Anti-Semitism Requires Rethinking. Unlike anti-black racism, nationalism, postcolonialism, or feminism, anti-Semitism remains under-theorized. Fundamental questions remain unresolved: How does one define anti-Semitism? Should the word be hyphenated? Can a term that was coined in order to distinguish racialized and politicized Judeophobia from religious anti-Judaism stand for the whole history of Jew hatred? Is hatred the emotion propelling anti-Semitism? Or is Judeophobia—the term I will defend using as an overarching category for the field—better understood in terms of ambivalence: a volatile combination of both fear and fascination? Is anti-Judaism a leitmotif for understanding the Western tradition? If so, were ancient Judeophobia and medieval anti-Judaism animated by the same impulses as Nazi anti-Semitism, and how do these map onto anti-Zionism? How should one periodize Judeophobia?<ref>Judaken</ref>
 
==The history of the term "anti-Semitism"==
 
==The history of the term "anti-Semitism"==
−
It is notable that Judaken writes of 'Anti-Semitism' that it was a: 'term that was coined in order to distinguish racialized and politicized Judeophobia from religious anti-Judaism'.  In other words, he is saying that the term never included any other 'Semites' than the Jews.
+
It is notable that Judaken writes of 'Anti-Semitism' that it was a: 'term that was coined in order to distinguish racialized and politicized Judeophobia from religious anti-Judaism'.  In other words, he appears to be saying that the term never included any other 'Semites' than the Jews.
  
 
He goes on to argues that this is not correct:
 
He goes on to argues that this is not correct:
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He goes on to speak for the whole Roundtable saying 'In short, we argue against exceptionalism, eternalism, teleology, apologetics, and theoretical naïveté in how scholars approach anti-Semitism.'<ref>p. 1124.</ref>
 
He goes on to speak for the whole Roundtable saying 'In short, we argue against exceptionalism, eternalism, teleology, apologetics, and theoretical naïveté in how scholars approach anti-Semitism.'<ref>p. 1124.</ref>
 +
 
==Contents==
 
==Contents==
 
*[[Jonathan Judaken]] Introduction The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 4, October 2018, Pages 1122–1138, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhy024
 
*[[Jonathan Judaken]] Introduction The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 4, October 2018, Pages 1122–1138, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhy024

Revision as of 12:53, 9 December 2025

The 'striking' cover of issue of AHR featuring the American Historical Review Roundtable: Rethinking Anti-Semitism, 2018.

AHR Roundtable: Rethinking Anti-Semitism was a special section of the American Historical Review Volume 123, Issue 4, October 2018.

The Journal summarises the Roundtable thus:

As the striking caricature on the front cover indicates, the October issue features an AHR Roundtable on the vexed history of anti-Semitism. Initiated by Jonathan Judaken (Rhodes College) in partnership with the International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism (ICRAR) at Birkbeck, University of London, the eight-part roundtable reflects ICRAR’s ongoing effort to overcome the isolation and politicization of the study of anti-Semitism. This is necessarily a controversial topic, and some of the essays are sure to generate heated debate; given recent developments in the U.S., Eastern Europe, and of course the Middle East, the task of historicizing anti-Semitism seems even more relevant now than it did when first initiated several years ago. The roundtable offered the occasion to confine our four featured reviews to recent monographs in Jewish history.[1]

Here is the abstract for the Introduction by Jonathan Judaken which introduces the argument that the term 'anti-Semitism' should be replaced by 'Judeophobia':

In his introduction, Jonathan Judaken surveys theories and debates about anti-Semitism. He makes three salient observations about what hampers the field. First, it lacks agreed-upon definitions of its central concepts and terms. Second, how anti-Semitism compares to Islamophobia, anti-black racism, and other forms of oppression is unresolved. Third, periodization of anti-Semitism remains vague. In particular, he underscores and counters eternalist and teleological narratives, claims about uniqueness, and apologetics. He argues that these impediments are in part a product of the shadow of the Holocaust and the continuing conflict over Israel/Palestine. To move out of these theoretical impasses, Judaken makes two recommendations. First, he suggests replacing the term “anti-Semitism.” He argues that as a term for the fear and fascination about Jews and Judaism, “Judeophobia” better lends itself to conceptual clarity, periodization, and comparability. Second, he calls for more meta-level considerations, drawing from work in critical social and literary theory, postcolonialism, and studies of racism and gender. Congruent with this conceptual groundwork, Judaken suggests that Judeophobic discourses and practices encompass five modes — stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, racialization, and murder — and five periods — ancient, early Christian, high medieval, modern, and post-Holocaust.[2]
Anti-Semitism Requires Rethinking. Unlike anti-black racism, nationalism, postcolonialism, or feminism, anti-Semitism remains under-theorized. Fundamental questions remain unresolved: How does one define anti-Semitism? Should the word be hyphenated? Can a term that was coined in order to distinguish racialized and politicized Judeophobia from religious anti-Judaism stand for the whole history of Jew hatred? Is hatred the emotion propelling anti-Semitism? Or is Judeophobia—the term I will defend using as an overarching category for the field—better understood in terms of ambivalence: a volatile combination of both fear and fascination? Is anti-Judaism a leitmotif for understanding the Western tradition? If so, were ancient Judeophobia and medieval anti-Judaism animated by the same impulses as Nazi anti-Semitism, and how do these map onto anti-Zionism? How should one periodize Judeophobia?[3]

The history of the term "anti-Semitism"

It is notable that Judaken writes of 'Anti-Semitism' that it was a: 'term that was coined in order to distinguish racialized and politicized Judeophobia from religious anti-Judaism'. In other words, he appears to be saying that the term never included any other 'Semites' than the Jews.

He goes on to argues that this is not correct:

The dilemma of whether to hyphenate the term provides an example of the need for an entangled history of anti-Semitism. If you type “antisemitism” into your word processor, it will likely autocorrect. This is because in most English dictionaries it is spelled with a hyphen. But the preponderant position among scholars of anti-Semitism is that this is wrong.[4] They give two main reasons. As Shmuel Almog puts it, “If you use the hyphenated form, you consider the words ‘Semitism,’ ‘Semite,’ ‘Semitic’ as meaningful. They supposedly convey an image of a real substance, of a real group of people — the Semites, who are said to be a race. This is a misnomer: firstly, because ‘Semitic’ or ‘Aryan’ were originally language groups, not people; but mainly because in antisemitic parlance, ‘Semites’ really stands for Jews, just that.”[5] Historically, however, “Semites” was not just a placeholder for “Jews.”
The original German term Antisemitismus was not hyphenated when political activist and pamphleteer Wilhelm Marr popularized the neologism around 1879.[6] Targeting Jewish emancipation, Marr sought to distinguish his position from the tradition of religious anti-Judaism by deploying a modern, secular, scientific construct based on racial theory.[7] But Marr’s term derived from the field of comparative philology, which grouped together Semitic languages. In the early nineteenth century, linguists, anthropologists, philosophers, and Orientalists not only opposed “Semitic” to “Aryan” languages, they also maintained that languages encapsulated the indelible racial spirit of the people who used them.[8] Both Jews and Arabs were implicated by the construct “Semites,” which led Edward Said to provocatively note in Orientalism, “I have found myself writing the history of a strange, secret sharer of Western anti-Semitism.”[9]The work of Gil Anidjar has helped unlock this shared secret not only by suggesting its long history, but also by indicating how and when it became a secret. As Anidjar put it, “Once equally Semites, Jews and Arabs were both race and religion in a secular political world . . . Today, and since Nazism at least, one can divide them again.”[10]

He states: 'There are powerful watchdog organizations that monitor these turf wars, and off-campus agitators who aid and abet the combatants on both sides.'[11] This literal both-sidesism will not do.

He goes on to speak for the whole Roundtable saying 'In short, we argue against exceptionalism, eternalism, teleology, apologetics, and theoretical naïveté in how scholars approach anti-Semitism.'[12]

Contents

Notes

  1. ↑ https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/123/4/xi/5114804?redirectedFrom=fulltext
  2. ↑ https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/123/4/1122/5114687?redirectedFrom=fulltext
  3. ↑ Judaken
  4. ↑ 10. See Yehuda Bauer, “In Search of a Definition of Antisemitism,” in Michael Brown, ed., Approaches to Antisemitism: Context and Curriculum (New York, 1994), 10–23, here 10; Robert S. Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (New York, 1991), xvi; James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews—A History (New York, 2001), 628–629 n. 17; A. Roy Eckardt, “The Nemesis of Christian Antisemitism,” Journal of Church and State 13, no. 2 (1971): 227–244, here 227; Richard S. Levy, “Forget Webster,” German Studies Review 29, no. 1 (2006): 145–146.
  5. ↑ 11. Shmuel Almog, “What’s in a Hyphen,” SICSA Report: The Newsletter of the Vidal Sassoon International Study of Antisemitism, Summer 1989, 1–2, https://phdn.org/antisem/shmuel_almog-what_s_in_a_hyphen-1989.html.
  6. ↑ 12. For a careful delineation of the origins of the concept stem word antisemit- and its cognates Antisemiten, antisemitisch, and Antisemitismus, and of the semantic inflation of the term, see David Engel, “Away from a Definition of Antisemitism: An Essay in the Semantics of Historical Description,” in Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman, eds., Rethinking European Jewish History (Oxford, 2009), 30–53.
  7. ↑ 13. See Moshe Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Antisemitism (Oxford, 1986), 88, 92, 95, 113.
  8. ↑ 14. On the development of the Aryan myth, see Léon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, trans. Edmund Howard (New York, 1974); George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (Madison, Wis., 1985), 39–47.
  9. ↑ 15. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978), 27–28.
  10. ↑ 16. Gil Anidjar, Semites: Race, Religion, Literature (Stanford, Calif., 2008), 20.
  11. ↑ p. 1124.
  12. ↑ p. 1124.
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