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A review by soupcocoon
Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg
5.0
This book may have taught me more than any other. Anyone who wants to begin to understand, notice, and unlearn antisemitism should consider it required reading. I really appreciate being given an actual explanation of antisemitism and how it snowballed throughout history rather than being told antisemitic is unexplainable and the choice of Jews as a scapegoat is random.
The book is well-organized, accessible, and easy to follow. The details of certain examples were too abstract for me to completely understand but that did not make it impossible to move on or understand the main point.
It was a heavy read as it really made me feel the weight of all the hatred of Jews and the anxieties projected onto us building and getting heavier throughout history. But it did feel nice to emerge with an understanding of how deeply anti-Judaism is ingrained in the world's ways of thought. The main point is that throughout history, the central questions, paradoxes, and anxieties of Western societies have been projected onto Jews and explained in terms of Judaism, in many cases leading to violence against actual Jews but in other cases only adding to the canon of anti-Judaism.
The book ends by explaining that the Holocaust cannot have happened without this historical tradition unconsciously ingrained in the world's consciousness and setting a precedent for scapegoating of the Jews. The epilogue adds that today, this pattern of explaining anxieties in terms of Judaism can be seen in the idea of many groups that "the challenges of the world they live in are best explained in terms of 'Israel," a pattern that many people are terrifyingly unaware of in themselves.
5 stars
The book is well-organized, accessible, and easy to follow. The details of certain examples were too abstract for me to completely understand but that did not make it impossible to move on or understand the main point.
It was a heavy read as it really made me feel the weight of all the hatred of Jews and the anxieties projected onto us building and getting heavier throughout history. But it did feel nice to emerge with an understanding of how deeply anti-Judaism is ingrained in the world's ways of thought. The main point is that throughout history, the central questions, paradoxes, and anxieties of Western societies have been projected onto Jews and explained in terms of Judaism, in many cases leading to violence against actual Jews but in other cases only adding to the canon of anti-Judaism.
The book ends by explaining that the Holocaust cannot have happened without this historical tradition unconsciously ingrained in the world's consciousness and setting a precedent for scapegoating of the Jews. The epilogue adds that today, this pattern of explaining anxieties in terms of Judaism can be seen in the idea of many groups that "the challenges of the world they live in are best explained in terms of 'Israel," a pattern that many people are terrifyingly unaware of in themselves.
5 stars