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124 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, by Gavin 1. Langmuir. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 417 pp. $35.00. Professor Langmuir, a respected medieval social historian at Stanford University, explores the historical origins of antisemitism in an insightful collection of recycled essays. He sets out to provide a coherent definition of this elusive term, and like this reviewer he rejects the hyphenated form as based on pseudoscientific premises of racial and ethnic differences. He also distinguishes between anti-Judaism and other forms ofhostility toward Jews and antisemitism. The latter word he reserves for that unusual form of anti-Jewish hostility which arose in northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and which was the same in kind as Hitler's hostility. It was "chimerical" in the sense that it was based upon irrational, unreal characteristics attributed to Jews and was used to defend the subjects of this hatred from doubts about themselves. Langmuir lays out this thesis with remarkable clarity in the opening chapter, insisting that the difference between anti-Judaism and antisemitism goes far beyond simply matters of faith. In. the ancient world antiJewish actions were expressions of ethnocentric animosity. Christians, however, developed a hostility that had a certain empirical basis. For them the enduring existence of a vigorous Jewish community was a challenge to their own religion, and so they developed rationalizations to explain their antipathy. After all, Jews did reject the cornerstones of the Christian faiththe deity ofJesus, his undeserved death, and his bodily resurrection-and these "literal-minded" people refused to understand their own Scriptures in the spiritual way that Christians did. Christians conceptualized the differences with their Jewish neighbors in nonrational or faith terms, regardingJewish disbelief as due to a lack of understanding and their own hardened hearts. Nevertheless, Jews were not to be destroyed but allowed to remain as objects of divine concern and as proof of the superiority of Christianity. The hope was ever present that they would see the error of their ways and turn to Christ. Over the centuries, however, as ritual developed as the primary expression of Christian religiosity and encompassed their obviously nonrational beliefs, the continuing presence of Jews took on an ominously different meaning. Christians were aware of conflicts between the affirmations of their religiosity and rational empirical knowledge, such as the Eucharist and transubstantiation; and the existence of Christian heretics and the Inquisition reflected their responses to doubts or disbeliefs that challenged doctrines central to their sense of identity. By the eleventh century Jews were regarded as the very incarnation of disbelief, and their Book Reviews 125 mere existence threatened the shaky faith of contemporary Christians. Christians responded by projecting irrational fancies on this minority. Antisemitism now emerged, and new notions about Jews appeared that lacked any kernel of truth but yet buttressed Christian beliefs against the menace of doubt. Langmuir shows how, beginning with the massacres in the Rhineland at the time ofthe First Crusade (1096), Christians turned on their neighbors, and eminent figures like Peter the Venerable preached hatred against the Jews for their unbelief. Christians irrationally accused Jews of such practices as the crucifixion of children (William of Norwich, 1144), ritual murder (Hugh of lincoln, 1255), and ritual cannibalism (Fulda, 1235). Up till then Jews had been legally protected in both France and England, and they actually were encouraged to engage in moneylending because of the great need for capital in the expanding commercial economy and also because ,they were vulnerable to periodic "shakedowns " by the monarchs. Now they were portrayed as usurers, bribers, ritual murderers, blood-drinking cannibals, and even torturers of Christ through secret attacks on the sacred host on church altars. Although these fantasies were totally unprovable, Christians slaughtered Jews not for what they were-unbelievers-but for things they did not do and could not have done. They attributed these horrendous deeds to Jews as a symbolic expression of their own repressed fears about crucifIXion and cannibalism-the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistand unbearable doubts about God's goodness as the bubonic plague swept Europe. This was no mere xenophobia. These were chimerical assertions or projections of mental processes...

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