Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism最新文献

{"title":"Leadership Talk by the European Commission Coordinator on Combating Antisemitism","authors":"Katharina von Schnurbein","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-009","url":null,"abstract":"Even today, the Jewish community of Vienna sets an excellent example of a positive interaction between the community and wider society, thanks to organizations such as the Makkabi Sports Club, the Maimonides Center, the Job Training Centre JBBZ, the psychosocial center ESRA, to name a few. The fact that Jewish life was revived at all in such a way after the Shoah was certainly not a given and testifies to the inherent strength of the community here in Vienna. At the European Commission, we are very much aware that Europe has a specific obligation to protect and support Jewish life. Europe would not be Europe without its two thousand years of European Jewish history, cherishing the continuation of this special symbiosis. The European Commission is about supporting vibrant Jewish life across Europe, and all our antisemitism policies are geared towards it. With this contribution, I will add a European perspective to our reflections on how to tackle this cancer and prevent it from spreading its malignant manifestations further across European societies and indeed to end antisemitism. While none of us are naïve enough to think that this will be any time soon, I like the exclamation mark in the title of “An End to Antisemitism!” If we do not aim for the maximum, we will not achieve the minimum. Antisemitism is not a national problem only! It is a European one. It touches the very heart of the European project. And it needs to be tackled with the greatest rigor on all levels, European, national and local. Yet, in Europe at the start of 2018, antisemitic prejudices are found in all forms, in all countries, irrespective of the size of the Jewish community, and in all strata of society. Sometimes violent, sometimes “only” as oral pinpricks, by questioning the right to a Jewish identity in public. Where antisemitic incidents are recorded properly, figures are record-high: Four antisemitic incidents per day were recorded in Germany and the UK (in 2017)1 and France (in 2016),2 while in all European countries the Jewish community represents significantly less than one percent of the population.","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123067583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leadership Talk by the Executive Vice-President and CEO of the European Jewish Congress","authors":"Raya Kalenova","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-008","url":null,"abstract":"The European Jewish Congress (EJC), the umbrella organization of European Jewry, represents Jewish communities in 42 countries across Europe. Our communities face very diverse challenges, from security issues and attacks on fundamental freedom, to antisemitism,which comes from the far right, the far left, and from radical Islam. As such, they need a strong voice, a voice that is heard and respected, and most importantly, an effective voice. From our headquarters in Brussels, we advocate for policies and mechanisms that will hopefully have tangible effects for our communities, and we are vigilant against attacks on human dignity and democratic values. At the core of these challenges lies the scourge of antisemitism. In all dimensions of our work,we focus on practical efforts towards combatting this evil. This is why I would like to share some of our strategies with you: Our main tool in order to achieve tangible results on the ground is advocacy. A central element of our strategy is to advocate for the development and implementation of legislation.We also identified the need for a dedicated forum to raise awareness and develop tools to fight antisemitism at the European Parliament.We succeeded in establishing the European Parliament Working Group on Antisemitism, which brings together around one hundred principled and motivated MEPs across all major political groups.1 The EJC advises the Working Group and acts currently as its Secretariat. The Working Group’s groundbreaking success of 2017 was the adoption by the European Parliament of the first Resolution solely dedicated to the fight against antisemitism at EU level. The Chair of the Working Group at the time, the former Justice Minister of Spain was the legislative initiator of the Resolution. In the plenary, we found broad political support across all political the spectrum, with 76 percent of MEPs voting in favor. Through this Resolution,","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125397664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Antisemitism: Sociological Perspectives","authors":"E. Ben-Rafael","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-023","url":null,"abstract":"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","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"31 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128656873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jews and Non-Jews in Ancient Cities: Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, Rome","authors":"B. Isaac","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-032","url":null,"abstract":"The investigation of hostility towards Jews in antiquity remains limited in scope by the nature and quantity of the sources. Research has focused most of all on the opinions expressed by ancient Greek and Latin authors in various periods. There is much material here that has been interpreted along different lines by numerous scholars. The disadvantage is that such information is restricted to opinions expressed by upper-class authors. We cannot know what people in pubs in Rome or Antioch were saying about minorities in general and Jews in particular. It is true that a different type of information is conveyed by policy and measures of the authorities with regard to Jews. However, this has the same disadvantage, for it shows what upper-class rulers and administrators did, rather than what they thought. The present paper will focus on a specific phenomenon that is instructive in a somewhat different manner. Several major urban centers had a substantial Jewish population in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. There was a good deal of tension between Jews and other groups in cities, tension that at times led to minor or major outbursts of violence as reported by various authors. These also describe measures taken by the local and imperial authorities on those occasions. This paper will offer a brief survey of such events in an attempt to show that we may gain an extra perspective on the position of the Jews in the ancient world. The topic, in other words, is the interaction between authorities and urban population in times of stress between Jews and non-Jews in cities.","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116157148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Scrolls, Testament and Talmud: Issues of Antisemitism in the Study of Ancient Judaism","authors":"L. Schiffman","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-020","url":null,"abstract":"The study of ancient Judaism raises numerous issues regarding antisemitism such as: Greco-Roman antisemitism and early antisemitic (or anti-Judaic) literature,1 early Jewish-Christian relations,2 and antagonism to the Jews in Babylonia.3 These phenomena continue to be studied by numerous scholars. What has been lacking in research is a meta-analysis that seeks to show how antisemitism has affected the study not only of ancient anti-Judaism but of ancient Judaism and Jewish history in Late Antiquity as a whole. Aspects of this problem include the effects of antisemitism on descriptive terms for Judaism in Antiquity and Late Antiquity; approaches to periodization within the larger ancient historical framework; construal of Jews and Judaism in light of New Testament images and later anti-Jewish material in the Church Fathers; effects of the Reformation and Protestantism on views of the Jews and Judaism; and numerous such topics. More recently, there has been fundamental questioning of the basic geographical and historical facts of ancient Jewish history as a result of modern Middle Eastern issues, to name just a few of the most prominent problems. Some might wonder why one would consider the field of Judaic Studies at a conference devoted to antisemitism. At first glance, it would appear that Judaic Studies is itself a strong antidote to anti-Jewish/Judaic prejudice. Indeed such a notion lay behind the rise of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the scientific study of Judaism, as it developed in Germany and elsewhere in the nineteenth century.4 Its earliest advocates thought it could be utilized as a strategy for combating","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126095960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-fm","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-fm","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132997606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leadership Talk by the Bishop of the Protestant Church of Austria (2008–2019)","authors":"Michael Bünker","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-014","url":null,"abstract":"Antisemitism is not in accordance with the Christian faith or the values of the Protestant Church. Today, we see this as a generally accepted fact. However, a couple of decades ago, this sentiment would have not been so certain. The Protestant Church of Austria was inflicted by German nationalism and Antisemitism during the first half of the twentieth century. Anti-Jewish pamphlets by Martin Luther and other reformers had a particularly adverse impact, too. The Protestant Church only began reconsidering the issue after the war in 1945.While the Roman Catholic Church as a whole committed to a strong opposition against antisemitism in their Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate in 1965, within the Protestant Church, each regional church had to go its own way.1 Some regional churches progressed faster than others. The Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, for example, issued the important Synod decision “On the Renewal of the Relationship between Christians and Jews” in 1980.2 Other regional churches followed, some with considerable delay. With their declaration “A Time for Change,” the Protestant Church of Austria accepted its joint guilt and responsibility only in 1998 and made way for a new relationship with Judaism.3 All Protestant declarations clearly and roundly condemn and oppose antisemitism. What was new about the declarations from the 1980’s and 1990’s was the Church’s understanding of the consequences these declarations should and must have both for the Church and within the Church. These consequences first and foremost concern the joint guilt and responsibility of the Churches concerning antisemitism, a phenomenon also stemming from a Christian Jew-hatred that is hundreds of years old. Second came the need to examine our own doctrines and practices to rid them of antisemitic elements. These ele-","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128624183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leadership Talk by the Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria (2016–2017); Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (2016–2018)","authors":"Christian M. Kern","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-007","url":null,"abstract":"Dealing with antisemitism is a very specific and sensitive issue in our country, and that is because of two main reasons. The first one is because I strongly believe that human dignity is absolutely untouchable. And the second is that we have to take care in a very sensitive way because of our heritage. This heritage imposes three main duties for a representative of Austrian society. The first one, perhaps, is that we are obliged to run a zero ‐ tolerance policy as far as antisemitism is concerned. The second is that this heritage constitutes a very specific, special, and solidary relation to the State of Israel. And the third duty is to remember, not only with regards to the victims and their relatives, but it is also an important aspect as I strongly believe that the way how we deal with our past constitutes in what type of future we are going to live. And there is another specific issue — and I was totally impressed by one of the quotes and sayings of Noah Klieger. He is a survivor of the concentration camp in Auschwitz, and he was a member of the boxing squad, he was a sportsman, an active sportsman, and his resume after all the years was to say that “ some fights, ” he learned, “ you can win, but they are never over. ” ¹ And that is exactly my position as far as antisemitism is concerned. It is a permanent task we have to undertake. And I would like to tell you a short personal story which is very important in order to understand my way of thinking. It is a story which happened in my family. My mother was born in the year 1928, and my grandmother was serving a housekeeper for an old Jewish couple in the late 30s, early 40s. After the Nazis took over, the old Jewish couple had to at the garret. My mother ’ s task was to provide the old couple with food and drinking water. One day, re-ceived at the doorstep of the house of the old couple by Gestapo officers. They chased away and from that day the old","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134313550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Recommendations regarding Religious Groups and Institutions","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-021","url":null,"abstract":"Especially important in this context are interfaith prayer events between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Their shared emotional experiences are best suited to overcome religious hatred or immunize against it. A good practice example is the Kehilat Tzion congregation of Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum who regularly prays together with Christian and Muslim congregations in Jerusalem, thus creating mutual religious respect and acceptance among the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim members of these congregations. ⁴ As far as their religious convictions allow for this, Jewish communities should participate in interfaith prayers.","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114240448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Fight against Antisemitism and the Iranian Regime: Challenges and Contradictions in the Light of Adorno’s Categorical Imperative","authors":"Stephan Grigat","doi":"10.1515/9783110618594-034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618594-034","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of a critique of antisemitism is to disable it and to decipher it through a critique of ideology. Any reconstruction of the mentality of the antisemite, however trenchant, and any account of the history of antisemitism, however comprehensive, ends up in stunned amazement at the projective madness of the Jew-hatred that one is committed to countering at the practical level. As Maximilian Gottschlich put it: “when all is said and done, there is only one serious motive for concerning oneself with antisemitism: to resist it.”1 However, if we wish to resist it without illusions, a critical reconstruction of the antisemitic mentality is essential. In some established academic schools of thought, the impression is given that antisemitism is a result of a lack of knowledge about Jews, Judaism, or the Jewish state. I think that this idea is not only wrong but also underestimates the problem.Were it correct, the situation would not be nearly so bad and could be easily addressed, for example, through meetings between Jewish and nonJewish young people, synagogue open days, and study trips to Israel. Of course, all these things should be done; however, they will not banish antisemitism, because it is a comprehensive worldview of a delusional-projective kind. Instead of downplaying antisemitism as mere prejudice, we have to decipher it through a critique of the “antisemitic society,” as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer put it in their Dialectic of Enlightenment.2 Anti-Jewish hatred must be viewed in the light of the basic constitution of this society. Antisemitism is not an anthropological constant but an ever-changing, delusional reaction to the historically existing society. A developed critique of antisemitism must, unlike a traditional theoretical approach, feel itself ob-","PeriodicalId":418945,"journal":{"name":"Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism","volume":"887 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116171990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}