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The history of antisemitism, defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group, goes back many centuries, with antisemitism being called "the longest hatred". [1] Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism: [2]
- Anti-Semitism in Medieval Europe
- Russian Pogroms
- Nazi Anti-Semitism
- Kristallnacht
- Holocaust
- Anti-Semitism in The Middle East
- Anti-Semitism in Europe and The United States
- Sources
Many of the anti-Semitic practices seen in Nazi Germany actually have their roots in medieval Europe. In many European cities, Jews were confined to certain neighborhoods called ghettos. Some countries also required Jews to distinguish themselves from Christians with a yellow badge worn on their garment, or a special hat called a Judenhut. Some Jew...
Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, Jews throughout the Russian Empire and other European countries faced violent, anti-Jewish riots called pogroms. Pogromswere typically perpetrated by a local non-Jewish population against their Jewish neighbors, though pogroms were often encouraged and aided by the government and police forces. In the wake of t...
Adolf Hitlerand the Nazis rose to power in Germany in the 1930s on a platform of German nationalism, racial purity and global expansion. Hitler, like many anti-Semites in Germany, blamed the Jews for the country’s defeat in World War I, and for the social and economic upheaval that followed. Early on, the Nazis undertook an “Aryanization” of German...
Jews became routine targets of stigmatization and persecution as a result. This culminated in a state-sponsored campaign of street violence known as Kristallnacht(the “night of broken glass”), which took place between November 9-10, 1938. In two days, more than 250 synagogues across the Reich were burned and 7,000 Jewish businesses looted. The morn...
Prior to Kristallnacht, Nazi policies toward Jews had been antagonistic but primarily non-violent. After the incident, conditions for Jews in Nazi Germany became progressively worse as Hitler and the Nazis began to implement their plan to exterminate the Jewish people, which they referred to as the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem.” Between ...
Anti-Semitism in the Middle East has existed for millennia, but increased greatly since World War II. Following the establishment of a Jewish State in Israel in 1948, the Israelis fought for control of Palestineagainst a coalition of Arab states. At the end of the War, Israel kept much of Palestine, resulting in the forced exodus of roughly 700,000...
Anti-Semitic hate crimes have spiked in Europe in recent years, especially in France, which has the world’s third largest Jewish population. In 2012, three children and a teacher were shot by a radical Islamist gunman in Toulouse, France. In the wake of the mass shooting at the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdoin Paris in 2015, four Jewish h...
Anti-Semitism; Anti-Defamation League. Antisemitism in history: Nazi antisemitism; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Inescapable Anti-Semitism of Western Nationalists; The Washington Post.
How has antisemitism changed throughout history? What are some differences among religious, political, and racial antisemitism? Why would political or religious leaders espouse antisemitic ideas?
A racialized, politicized, and programmatic anti-Semitism emerged as a force in western and central Europe based on the Aryan myth, which depicted Semites as a subversive group bent on ascendency.
- Jonathan Judaken
anti-Semitism, Hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious group or “race.” Although the term anti-Semitism has wide currency, it is regarded by some as a misnomer, implying discrimination against all Semites, including Arabs and other peoples who are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood.
As nations determined which groups to include or exclude within their boundaries and collective cultures, antisemitism became increasingly salient in public matters. A particularly polarizing case occurred at the end of the 19th century in France.
Antisemitism[a] or Jew-hatred[2] is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against, Jews. [3][4][5] This sentiment is a form of racism, [b][6][7] and a person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Primarily, antisemitic tendencies may be motivated by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or by negative sentiment towards ...
