Jewish Studies Research Guide

Is antisemitism on the rise in America? Did the "hymietown" comment by Jesse Jackson and the Crown Heights riot signal a resurgence of antisemitism among blacks? The surprising answer to both questions, according to Leonard Dinnerstein, is no--Jews have never been more at home in America. But what we are seeing today, he writes, are the well-publicized results of a long tradition of prejudice, suspicion, and hatred against Jews--the direct product of the Christian teachings underlying so much of America's national heritage. In Antisemitism in America, Dinnerstein provides a landmark work--the first comprehensive history of prejudice against Jews in the United States, ranging from its foundations in European culture to the present day. Dinnerstein's deeply documented book reveals how non-Christians were excluded from voting, for example, in Rhode Island until 1842, North Carolina until 1868, and in New Hampshire until 1877. The Civil War, Dinnerstein writes, brought a new wave of antisemitism as both sides assumed that Jews supported with the enemy. The decades that followed marked the emergence of a full-fledged antisemitic society, as Christian Americans excluded Jews from their social circles. Antisemitic fervor climbed higher after the turn of the century, accelerated by eugenicists, fear of Bolshevism, the publications of Henry Ford, and the Depression. Just before our entry into World War II, the author tells us, it reached a climax, as Father Coughlin attacked Jews over the airwaves (with the support of much of the Catholic clergy) and Charles Lindbergh delivered an openly antisemitic speech to an isolationist meeting. Dinnerstein devotes individual chapters to antisemitism in the South and among African Americans, showing that prejudice among both whites and blacks flowed from the same stream of Southern evangelical Christianity. After the war, with fresh economic opportunities and increased activities by civil rights advocates, antisemitism went into a sharp decline--though it frequently appeared in shockingly high places, including statements by Nixon and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It must also be emphasized," Dinnerstein writes, "that in no Christian country has antisemitism been weaker than it has been in the United States," with its traditions of tolerance, diversity, and a secular national government. This book, however, reveals in disturbing detail the resilience, and vehemence, of this ugly prejudice. Penetrating, authoritative, and frequently alarming, this is the definitive account of a plague that refuses to go away.

"This book examines the history of antisemitism in the United States and Germany in a novel way by placing the two countries side by side for a sustained comparison of the anti-Jewish environments in both countries from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War. Author Richard Frankel shatters the widely-held notion of exceptionalism in Germany and America: the belief that antisemitism in Germany was uniquely murderous and led inevitably to the Holocaust and that antisemitism in the United States was uniquely benign, making an American Holocaust all but unthinkable. In a series of new and previously published essays that have been revised, updated, and expanded, the book relates antisemitism to issues including Jewish and Chinese immigration, discrimination and exclusion, the First World War and its aftermath, Hitler and Henry Ford, Nazis, the American Right, and the Roosevelt Administration, and a German Ku Klux Klan. Taken together, these essays reveal that antisemitism in Germany was less aberrant than commonly believed and that American antisemitism was indeed dangerous and more similar to what existed in Germany during the same period. Antisemitism Before the Holocaust is an essential volume for students and scholars alike interested in European and American history, the history of the holocaust and the First World War"

"Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary Left antisemitism. The rise of a new and largely left-wing form of antisemitism in the era of the Jewish state, and the distinction between it and legitimate criticism of Israel is now roiling progressive politics in the West and causing alarming spikes in antisemitic incitement and incidents. Fathom Journal has examined these questions relentlessly in the first decade of its existence, earning a reputation for careful textual analysis and cogent advocacy. In this book, the Fathom essays are contextualised by three new contributions: Lesley Klaff provides a map of contemporary antisemitic forms of antizionism, Dave Rich writes on the oft-neglected lived experience of the Jewish victims of contemporary antisemitism, and David Hirsh assesses the intellectual history of the left from which both Fathom and his own London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, as well as this book series, have emerged. Topics covered by the contributors include: antisemitic anti-Zionism and its under-appreciated Soviet roots; the impact of analogies with the Nazis; the rise of antisemitism on the European continent, exploring the hybrid forms emerging from a cross-fertilisation between new left, Christian, and Islamist antisemitism; the impact of anti-Zionist activism on higher education; and the bitter debates over the adoption of the oft-misrepresented International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. This work will be of considerable appeal to scholars and activists with an interest in antisemitism, Jewish studies, and the politics of Israel"