In October 2018, a white supremacist murdered eleven Jewish worshipers and wounded six others at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the deadliest attack on Jews ever perpetrated in the United States. The gunman’s motivation to kill Jews stemmed from his belief that Jews were committing "genocide" against white Americans. Although his animosity was motivated by a racial conception of Jews, the attack took place in a house of worship, illustrating the complex and interlocking web of anti-Jewish hatred based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, economic issues, and conspiracy theory that is commonly referred to as "antisemitism."
What is Antisemitism? provides a detailed overview of this complex topic. It offers a history of anti-Jewish animosity from antiquity to the present; a discussion of the difficulties of defining antisemitism – arguably one of the most contentious issues in the contemporary discourse on the subject – and three case studies illustrating the diverse and wide-ranging nature of the phenomenon in the present-day, including examples from the political far right, the political hard left, and radical Islamism.
With suggestions for further reading, and a chronological structure, this volume is an accessible and essential student textbook.
Preface
Some notes on terminology
Introduction
Part I: Foundations
Chapter One: The Difficulty of Definitions
Chapter Two: The Onion Model
Part II: The Christian-Influenced World
Chapter Three: Judeophobia
Chapter Four: The Early Christian Church
Chapter Five: Early Medieval Christendom
Chapter Six: Medieval Christendom After the First Crusade
Chapter Seven: Spain, the Inquisition, and Purity of Blood
Chapter Eight: East and West Part I: Reformation and Enlightenment
Chapter Nine: East and West Part II: Emancipation and Revolution
Chapter Ten: East and West Part III: Modern Antisemitism
Chapter Eleven: Genocide
Part III: The Islamic-Influenced World
Chapter Twelve: Islam and the Jews
Chapter Thirteen: Antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim World
Part IV: All Together Now
Chapter Fourteen: The Postwar Era and the Final Layer
Chapter Fifteen: Antisemitism in the Twenty-First Century
Biography
Linda Maizels is an independent scholar who earned her PhD from the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
