Exploring the tangled roots of antisemitism
“In time, that which we fear, we come to hate”. Shakespeare puts this profound thought into the mouth of one of his minor characters, Charmian, attendant to Cleopatra in the play ‘Antony and Cleopatra’.
Prejudice has its roots in fear, the fear of coming to harm at the hands of another group. By the same token, antisemitic prejudice stems from a fear of Jews, a people who live in cohesive communities, observe mysterious rituals and hold tenacious beliefs which, for more than two millennia, appear to have ensured their survival.
These observations must be elaborated on if we are to advance our understanding of antisemitism. The playground bullies who taunt a Jewish child with accusations of ‘Christ killer’, the intellectuals who promote arguments to support the belief that Jewish aspirations to nationhood constitute a danger to a socialist world order and the Jihadi fanatics who have nothing else in mind but the slaughter of Israeli Jews, are each, in their own way, resonating to long-held myths, ingrained in their cultural traditions, of the Jew as an evil being.
At the same time, myths represent a step forward in the evolution of human consciousness. They hover between the fantastic and the earth-bound, and by furnishing the stuff of children’s stories and adult legends they cultivate our powers of imagination. But they can also be deployed for destructive purposes. In short, they can be weaponised in the service of an ideology.
Myths about the Jew reach back to the dawn of civilisation, to a time when rival religions and nations first clashed in battles for supremacy. Jews, who appeared to have discovered alternative means of survival, were a people to be envied and watched with suspicion. They were portrayed in lurid colours, involving the invocation of demonic images, and they were credited with supernatural powers: they could deplete the energy of their adversaries in nefarious ways, they were responsible for all kinds of misfortune visited upon non-Jewish communities and they used their miraculous powers in order to gain pre-eminence over others.
Over many centuries, images of the Jew as a satanic being have worked their way into the human DNA. They have come to be indelibly inscribed in the collective mind and they have continued to assert themselves in modern antisemitic tropes, despite the apologies of leading clerics and politicians attempting to make amends for past transgressions.
For the diehard antisemite, the Jew continues to exist as a monstrous being, capable of changing shape according to the setting in which he finds himself – a secretive and parasitic creature of malign intent, an enemy who must either be driven into the wilderness or eliminated, in other words, the proverbial scapegoat.
Our task in overcoming this prejudice is a mammoth one. Firstly, we must find ways of weakening the roots of antisemitism, a plant which thrives in the fertile soil of fear and unreason. This means dispelling the myth that the problem of antisemitism is quintessentially a Jewish one. To regard the Jew simply as a victim is to invite only pity and commiseration. The wider problem is prejudice against all who are seen as different, whether individually or communally, and this involves challenging irrational notions of superiority and inferiority, whether of character, intellect, ability or belief.
Secondly, we must work to alleviate the causes of fear. This entails supporting political, religious and cultural leaders who demonstrate a preparedness to improve the world we live in by addressing inequality and by confronting hatred wherever and whenever it appears.
Thirdly, we must, as individuals, encourage our children, families, friends and associates to accept and understand all peoples. As Jews, we must speak up spiritedly in our own defence, but we cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that fear and hate both sprout from the same plant, of which antisemitic hatred is only one strain.
