Reinvigorating the Field: A Critical Intervention in the Study of Antisemitism

Abstract

Reinvigorating the FieldA Critical Intervention in the Study of Antisemitism Emilie Wiedemann (bio) Rigorous and wholly engaging, key concepts in the study of antisemitism is the volume I was missing during my postgraduate degree in Jewish studies. Coeditor Kalman Weiser in fact introduces the volume as a "pedagogical tool" describing the challenges of his North American, European and Israeli colleagues in teaching about antisemitism.1 From a student's perspective too, the work will certainly be a welcome addition to university reading lists, and a sure sign that the field is diversifying away from the chronological surveys that constitute something of a canon in antisemitism studies. Reflective of the field as a whole in the past few decades, traditionally assigned works tend to address very similar questions: what antisemitism is, why it is important, and how we can understand it through specific historical events in (usually) European history. Students are left with a singular, reified conception of Jew-hatred and how to study it, studded with chronological markers and periodisation. Key Concepts is an antidote which promises to enliven classroom scholarly debate: if I'd had a copy to hand five years ago, I'd have written a very different graduate essay on modern antisemitism. Beyond its pedagogical promise, Key Concepts also makes a compelling intervention in the field. The twenty-one accessible and original chapters encourage curiosity and innovation over rigidity and prescription. Its interdisciplinary scope includes contributions from philosophers, historians, social scientists and legal scholars, and delivers a core message: there is no one way to study antisemitism, but multiple intersecting ones. All in all, the volume strikes a discerning contrast to the aforementioned "simplistic or politically motivated" works which have monopolised the field in recent decades.2 Yet, Key Concepts does not only feel different; it also feels radical. Why? It is not a flashy volume. If anything, Weiser's introduction understates the originality of its intervention, which he explains seeks to "address … intellectual dilemmas" as well [End Page 199] as fulfill an educational brief.3 However, the form, structure and conceptual premise of the work effectively counters nationalist historiographical approaches that have tended to dominate antisemitism studies.4 What's more, it does this in ways that raise novel questions about the field itself, securing its place as a profound and critical intervention. Certain editorial choices signal the volume's original approach. Take the structure of the book itself. The essays are arranged in alphabetical order—the most "neutral way," according to Weiser.5 The editors suggest possible thematic groupings, but the choice of order is left to the reader. Key Concepts then invites an interactive or selective reading experience, which amounts to a sharp break from the current field in two related ways. First, that the essays are not presented in any chronological order abandons a certain teleological subtext which often runs through the study of antisemitism. It tells us: one does not have to study the history of antisemitism in relation to the Holocaust or the establishment of the State of Israel, which are so often the lynchpins of not only courses on antisemitism, but also of the major works these reference.6 Nonetheless, the volume maintains a strong sense of history. Each essay masterfully historicizes the concept at play in different ways. For instance, in "Sinat Yisrael (Hatred of Jews)," Martin Lockshin historicizes rabbinic perceptions of Jew-hatred, interrogating the development of the perception of an "inevitable and/or universal" antisemitism in the modern era.7 This approach de-centers any single event or series of events from a historical narrative and is open to an array of Jewish experiences. This choice to study antisemitism as a series of concepts rather than as a series of events has a second, arguably larger, implication for the type of intervention the volume makes. The editors position themselves in line with an emergent turn in antisemitism studies to maintain conceptual distance between the category of antisemitism and the historical events the term has been used to describe.8 Scholars have taken the concept of antisemitism itself as an object of study and have asked: what has this term meant, to whom, and under what...