- Homo antisemiticus: Lessons and Legacies
Eight books on antisemitism are before us: two overviews of the topic (Cohn-Sherbok and Laqueur); Robert Michael’s dense and hard-hitting outline of the rise of Christian antisemitism; Hyam Maccoby’s examination of antisemitism and modernity, which focuses primarily on the contributions of intellectuals; Theodore Weeks’s masterful summation of the evolution of antisemitism in Poland during the nineteenth century; and three works that deal with the contemporary resurgence of antisemitism.
The key questions of Hyam Maccoby’s book are also ours: “How is it that this [Christian] medieval prejudice proved so lasting and potent? By what means did it [End Page 461] bridge the gap between medievalism and Enlightenment? How was it that many of the most respected Enlightenment figures (such as Voltaire), dedicated as they were to tolerance and pluralism, retained a virulent antisemitism? Are the roots of antisemitism religious? If so, how do these roots differ in Christianity and Islam? Why is it that while Christian medieval antisemitism was so much more vicious than the Islamic variety, the modern world has seen a reversal of roles, and even the actual modes of propaganda employed (blood-libel, Protocols of [the] Elders of Zion, etc.) have been transferred from Christendom to the Islamic world without change?” (p. xi). By presenting the arguments and insights of these books, I will draw out some of the lessons gleaned from the study of the history of antisemitism. These eight works ultimately reveal eight paradoxes that scholars should bear in mind as they engage this history.
Dan Cohn-Sherbok’s The Paradox of Anti-Semitism is a narrative of the relationship between antisemitism and Jewish revival through the ages. “The paradox of Jewish life,” he writes, “is that hatred and Jewish survival have been interrelated for thousands of years, and that without antisemitism, we [Jews] may be doomed to extinction” (p. xiv). Repeatedly, we are enjoined to consider this relationship and the conundrum that “Jews need enemies in order to survive” (p. 209). Cohn-Sherbok uses this contention to offer the reader a primer not only on antisemitism, but also on the various strands of Judaism—Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Humanistic, assimilationist, and overtly rejectionist—each of which he presents as a Jewish response to vilification.
In this work, as in most of his other books, Cohn-Sherbok offers a cut-and-paste overview unencumbered by the complexities of history or textual sensitivity. While the book has footnotes, almost none of these refer to other scholars’ research. Most are citations from other works by Cohn-Sherbok himself, so that the volume becomes too self-contained. Also, occasional errors slip in: for example, Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies was published in 1543, not the year before (p. 31), and as Ronald Schechter has shown, Sephardim in France hardly “lived in comfort and security” (p. 43).1
The organization and packaging of the book allow the wholly uninitiated to savor a sense of the vitality of rabbinic Judaism...