Antisemitism in History and Politics

Abstract

Antisemitism in History and Politics Omer Bartov (bio) The highly politicized current debate over defining antisemitism suffers from a profound lack of historical perspective. Indeed, like many previous debates about antisemitism, it reflects the politics of the moment much more than the historical record. Not for the first time, the feuding camps are divided by their irreconcilable positions: those who see the world through an antisemitic prism, for whom everything that has gone wrong with the world, or with their personal lives, is the fault of the Jews; and those who see the world through an anti-antisemitic prism, for whom every critical observation of Jews as individuals or as a community, or, most crucially, of the state of Israel, is inherently antisemitic. But what do we mean when we speak of antisemitism? Because of its long and complex history, antisemitism can only be understood by tracing its deep roots as well as its modern transformation since the late nineteenth century. And because antisemitic arguments have always been answered by counterarguments, anti-antisemitism has a similarly extended and multifaceted history. For that reason, over time both have meant different things to different people, and both have been mobilized for political ends time and time again. Indeed, in an obvious if at times peculiar way, these two discourses have become dependent on one another. Historically, long before the [End Page 100] term antisemitism was coined, anti-Jewish animus played a role not only in how Jews were perceived by others, but also in how Jews interacted with the world and, especially in the modern era, in how they perceived themselves. Conversely, anti-antisemitic rhetoric gains public importance and visibility whenever it succeeds in persuading the public that antisemitism is a real and present danger. What has been called "the longest hatred" has a long and complex history.1 For centuries, the vast majority of world Jewry lived in the midst of Christian communities. By the eighteenth century, some 80 percent of all Jews in the world resided in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where they had their own governing institutions, legal apparatus, special rights from the king, and, in the vast stretches of the kingdom's eastern borderlands were offered far-reaching privileges by Polish magnates.2 To be sure, the fact that Polish monarchs and lords enticed Jews to their lands and estates by providing them with numerous privileges aroused much resentment among peasants and townsmen. If the former disliked being controlled by Jews as leasers of noble estates, the latter saw Jews as competitors in the same socioeconomic niche. Yet, the Jews were needed as estate managers, artisans, manufacturers, merchants, and go-betweens linking remote villages to local marketplaces. This meant in turn that there was constant interaction between Jews and their Christian neighbors. The notion of the shtetl as existing in splendid (or wretched) isolation was always more of a myth and a figment of the literary imagination than a social reality.3 But it is also true that Jews and Christians lived both together and apart.4 What set them apart was religious loathing and socioeconomic resentment on the part of Christians, on the one hand, and the clear and rigid boundaries that Jewish communities drew between themselves and their neighbors, on the other. Without such boundaries, the Jews might have ended up like the Armenians who fulfilled a similar socioeconomic role but, being Christian, ended up assimilating into the Polish population. The Jews were thus both kept apart and chose to keep themselves apart. Suspicion and loathing were as mutual as interaction was common. [End Page 101] To be sure, this was not a symmetrical relationship as the Jews were a minority living in a Christian universe and Christianity was in large part based on a theological disdain for Judaism and Jews. The Church kept them in its midst as witnesses "to the truth of Christianity," numerous expulsions notwithstanding. Anti-Jewish imagery, which became increasingly prevalent beginning in the twelfth century, associated Jews with the devil and with everything unclean, threatening, and unnatural, including the charge of using Christian blood for religious purposes. This combination of socioeconomic resentment and religious disparagement combined with demonic imagery was the...