Anti-Judaism: The History of a Way of Thinking

Summary

David Nirenberg’s book is challenging to read. Nevertheless, it is a book to be savored. Few books in our time have the potential to broadly organize thinking about a critical area of study to the degree that Anti-Judaism does.

Nirenberg shows how, in generation after generation, societies built on the foundations of Christianity and Islam have both understood their realities and shaped their civilizations through a prism that used constructed ideas of Jews and Judaism. These were mostly not about actual thoughts or actions by real Jews, but about ideas of Jews and Judaism as the opposing principles against whose darkness society can see and shape its light. Nirenberg follows the development of these ideas from Egypt of Greco-Roman times, through the writings of St. Paul, the Church Fathers, early Islam, the medieval world, the Reformation, the development of the modern era’s economic and philosophic structures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, and into contemporary times. In each chapter, he builds a convincing case that the castigation of fictitious constructs labeled as Jews played a vital role in developing the thinking of societies about themselves and their situation in the world.

Context

To establish his argument, Nirenberg applies the tools of the study of the history of ideas, alongside comprehensive scholarly presentation on a host of complex topics. For this reason, his book requires deep immersion and careful analysis.

In a broader sense, Nirenberg is breaking new ground. Much contemporary writing of Jewish history seeks to avoid over-focus on Jewish suffering at the expense of understanding the broader realities of Jewish life in each era. In 1963 the great Jewish historian Salo Baron wrote: “All my life I have been struggling against the hitherto dominant ‘lachrymose conception of Jewish history’ … because I have felt that an overemphasis on Jewish sufferings distorted the total picture of the Jewish historic evolution….”

Baron’s concern shaped much of the work of generations of historians in the field. An unwary reader can mistake Nirenberg’s book for a piece wholly focused on the lachrymose conception of Jewish history. Except that it is not a book about Jewish history, if by that we mean the real lives of Jews and the political/social/creative realities they built in their lifetimes. Instead, it is a history of the ideas of constructed, fictional Jews who served purposes or “did work,” as Nirenberg puts it, in the service of shaping societies where the actual Jewish presence was often negligible in size and influence.

Style

Nirenberg’s style is understated and, for that reason, all the more powerful. His breadth of understanding and powers of exposition can serve as models for academic writing.

Classroom

Because of the depth of the material, the sheer amount of factual evidence gathered and explained by the author, and despite the clarity of the writing, this is a book that will be hard to use at anything under a college-level course. However, it should have wide usage at the college and particularly the graduate level. It has much to teach.

Bibliographic Information

Nirenberg, David. Anti-Judaism: The History of a Way of Thinking. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. ISBN: 9781781851135