DEFINITION OF ANTI-SEMITISM I

• 1. Unshakable belief that all Jews were participants in a long-range and subtle conspiracy to take control of the world and destroy Christian civilization

DEFINITION OF ANTI-SEMITISM II

• 2. Willingness and commitment to act against Jews over the long duration in order to render them harmless

DEFINITION OF ANTI-SEMITISM III

• 3. To carry out this strategy, anti-semites organized themselves into permanent political parties and/or voluntary associations which usually engaged in publishing ventures designed to expose the Jewish conspiracy

DEFINITION OF ANTI-SEMITISM: SUMMARY

• Anti-semitism was the organized and institutionalized long-range effort by individuals, convinced that Jews were conspiring to destroy Western Civilization, to thwart this threat by whatever means necessary before it was too late

• Ideology was central to the Holocaust– A set of ideas upon which value judgments

could be made and actions taken was in place long before World War II

• Claims of anti-semites that Jew hatred was an universal phenomenon were inaccurate– Anti-semitism was the exclusive creation of

the Christian West

• From the beginning, the existence of the Jews has been of pivotal importance to Christianity– The origins of Judaism, its rejection of the new

religion introduced by Jesus, the role of Jews in the crucifixion, and the competition for souls between church and synagogue made relationship between Jews and Christians intense with emotion• It was not just an argument between religions

but a contest between two groups who claimed exclusive rights to the same God

• Jews were tolerated in the Christian world because they performed a necessary theological function– Their suffering bore witness to the

superior truth of the Christian faith– They presented a living reminder to

backsliders of the price of straying from the true path

ACCULTURATION• Liberals felt that Jews had to

demonstrate a sincere desire to acculturate in exchange for emancipation– And some did—Benjamin

Disraeli– But majority of Jews rebelled

at the implicit demand that they become Christian and chose instead to ignore all religion

DIFFERENCES

Eastern European JewsWestern European Jews

THEODOR HERZL: FATHER OF ZIONISM

FAMOUS ANTI-SEMITES

SUMMARY

• Antisemitism was an irrational, emotional form of racism which had no basis in reality– Yet many people believed it

anyway

• Problem with racism: adherents to racist theories suspend whatever critical and rational faculties they might possess and embrace ideas which make no intellectual or scientific sense but which have a great deal of emotional power.