Antisemitism – What It Isn’t

Antisemitism cannot be simply dismissed as just a particularly egregious expression of the human propensity, however understood, for prejudicial generalizations and depredations of those considered “other” or “different”. As Goldhagen explains:

• …The human nature explanation fails because this general propensity cannot explain the many distinctive, indeed singular, features of antisemitism. These include antisemitism’s extent, its longevity, its varieties, its intense passions, its tenacity, it licentiousness, its divorce from reality, its very powerful existence in regions and countries without Jews, and its propensity to violence, including unparalleled mass murder. Perhaps most of all, a general propensity to make cognitive errors cannot explain antisemitism’s particular content, which has across much time and in many places treated Jews as real devils, as being in league with or serving the devil, or explicitly or de facto as secular devils in human form. This is an exceedingly unusual and complex prejudice, not a reflex of group life, with accreted centuries of imagined conspiracy and malfeasance, and thus there is no way to understand this as mere consequence of the failings of humans as social analysts….^[1][1] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. The Devil That Never Dies (p. 52). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

Similarly, as noted by prominent experts like Robert Wistrich, David Patterson, Joshua Trachtenberg and others, scholarly attempts to explain antisemitism focusing on historical, sociological, and economics as the causal factors in the creation of antisemitism, fall short as explanations for the phenomenon of Jew-hatred. These factors may indeed activate the expression of antisemitism, but they do so as “ontological contingencies [which] …  provide the various occasions for an already dormant Jew hatred to surface”^[2][2] Patterson, David. Anti-Semitism and its Metaphysical Origins (p. 4). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition  – but they do not adequately account for the demonstrable and extraordinary consistencies of in the depth, breadth, varieties and murderousness of antisemitism throughout time. In the words of Wistrich: “Despite the many contributions from … researchers in other disciplines, an element of mystery remains. There are factors in anti-Semitism that both derive from and yet clearly transcend the hatred of the different and the alien that are so characteristic of religious bigotry and racism in general. There are a number of parallels between Jew hatred and the persecution and … other minorities, yet the sacral, quasi-metaphysical quality of anti-Semitism is singularly absent in the other cases….”^[3][3] Robert S.Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to Global Jihad, New York, Random House,(Kindle Edition) Location 1586  

Patterson succinctly summarized that “the origins of anti-Semitism have little to do with racism, xenophobia, economic envy, Jewish elitism, scapegoating, psychological disorders, social structures, Manichean divisions of the world into We and They, and the like; such ontological contingencies simply provide the various occasions for an already dormant Jew hatred to surface. Nor does anti-Semitism arise from certain theological, philosophical, or ideological positions; rather, certain theological, philosophical, or ideological positions arise from anti-Semitism.”^[4][4] David Patterson, Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 3 Joshua Trachtenberg in his groundbreaking work The Devil and the Jews concurs stating that the multiple historical, sociological and economic factors often posited as causal factors in the creation of antisemitism are inadequate as explanations for the phenomenon of Jew-hatred that is so demonstrably distinctive amongst human prejudicial evils. At best these are “potent immediate stimuli of active Jew-hatred”, but they are not its first cause: “Underneath the stimuli and contributing to their explosive potentiality, lies the powder keg of emotional predisposition, of a conception of the Jew, which has nothing to do with facts or logic.” ^[5][5] Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews, The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1983, p. 20

As such antisemitism can neither be understood nor effectively fought by denying its distinctiveness and conflating it with other related but significantly different modalities of prejudice. 

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