Antisemitism: Sociological Perspectives

The story of European Jewry is more than two thousand years old. It has known periods of prosperity but also times of persecutions.1 Above all, it is impossible to describe this history without assessing the vicissitudes of their condition as a minority repetitively harassed in most various circumstances. Hatred of Jews has even received a special label—antisemitism. Early examples of massacre of Jews took place in Alexandria, before and after the beginning of the Common Era, when the city was home to the largest Jewish diaspora community.2 Manetho, an Egyptian historian, wrote scathingly of the Jews and so did Agatharchides of Cnidus who ridiculed Jews’ laws as “absurd.” Many scholars have studied this persistent attitude and come up with a variety of accounts. Shaul Bassi cites the historical testimony of Ludwig Börne, a German Jew who converted to Christianity, written in 1832: “Certain people object to my being a Jew; others forgive me; still others praise me for this; but everybody remembers it.”3 It is this special look on Jews or past-Jews that qualifies for the term antisemitism. The term itself was formulated by Wilhelm Marr who in 1879 founded the “League for Antisemitism” and elaborated on his intentions in Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum [The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism], published the same year.4 This term became common usage in many languages. According to Marr, Jews constituted physically and morally a distinct inferior race predisposed to be a “slave race.” He followed notorious figures who shared his hatred of Jews among whom Richard Wagner stood out with his Das Judenthum in der Musik [Jewishness in Music], published in 1850.Wagner