Unfinished Draft:

Please do not cite

Antisemitism in the Context of Intergroup Relations:

A Comparative-historical View

by

Frederick D. Weil

Department of Sociology

University of Chicago

This draft: August, 1983

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Note: This is an unfinished draft from 1983. I delivered a summary of this project at the 1983 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, in Detroit, entitled, "Contact, Conflict and Prejudice." The ASA paper is appended at the end of this draft: it is printed in blue.

              ABSTRACT

              The goal of this paper is to suggest a framework for analyzing antisemitism in history, and then to apply this framework schematically. The first part of the paper contains a sketch of the framework of analysis. Antisemitism is examined in the context of intergroup relations, and three types of relation are suggested - contact, conflict, and prejudice - as well as a number of arenas of relations - especially the political, the economic, the social, and the religious and cultural realms. In the second, longer, part of the paper, several historical types of antisemitism are developed, each characterized by different configurations of intergroup relations together with the influence of past forms of antisemitism.

A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS

              Types of Intergroup Relations

              I would like to argue that antisemitism is best understood in the context of - and as a part of intergroup relations. Jacob Katz put the matter this way,

The relationship between Jews and Gentiles is at all times a reciprocal one. The behavior of the Jews towards their neighbors is conditioned by the behavior of the latter towards them, and vice versa. A real insight into this relationship can therefore be gained only by concentrating our attention simultaneously on both sides of the barrier. Every attitude of the Jew towards the non-Jew has its counterpart in a similar attitude of the Gentile towards the Jew. Similarity does not mean, however, that exactly the same pattern of behavior is to be observed both on the Jewish and on the Christian side, for the position of each is different. (Katz, 1961: 3)

              In this view, it would be incorrect to view Jews simply as passive objects of antisemitism. Nor does this entail blaming the victim: the positive beliefs and cohesiveness of Jews - things which Jews cannot be expected to give up and remain Jews - may well arouse animosity among Gentiles under certain circumstances, just as the beliefs and cohesiveness of Gentiles may arouse the animosity of Jews. From this perspective, it is possible to consider further which types of intergroup relationship arouse animosity and which ones lead to harmony. (The fact that Gentiles have usually been more powerful than Jews does not reduce the utility of this approach, although it is clearly one of the most important factors in explaining outcomes.)

              Three types of intergroup relation will be considered here: contact, conflict, and prejudice.

              In the first place, it makes a great deal of difference whether or not two groups which are aware of each other actually have contact with each other, and of course, it is also important how much contact they have and what the nature of the contact is - for example, whether or not it is among equals. And assuming that the groups do not have absolutely harmonious relations - which would be rare - it is possible to distinguish different types of intergroup tension. The first type is conflict of interests, which may be further subdivided into conflicts over material interests and conflicts over "ideal" interests such as religious or ideological doctrine. Prejudice is not the same thing as conflict, and it is probably a more complex phenomenon. It may exist in a variety of forms - for example, scapegoating, double standards, and stereotypes - but more problematically, it may also be conscious and intentional or it may be an unconscious phenomenon. Conscious prejudice might be found in scapegoating, for instance, in an opportunistic incitement of popular sentiment against some group for the purpose of distracting attention from a material problem; unconscious prejudice, on the other hand, may be sought in individual psychology or in cultural or linguistic tradition. These distinctions in intergroup tension are important, because each type has different characteristics; and tension will not be correctly understood if they are mixed up. Moreover, intergroup contact has a different effect on conflict than it does on prejudice. The relationships among these three categories can be expressed as a set of propositions:

              1.    There could be no conflict between groups without contact. Of course, not all forms of contact lead to conflict, but at least some form must be a necessary condition.

              2.    In contrast, contact - or at least certain forms of contact - should reduce prejudice, since prejudice is generally based on untruth.

              3.    Conflict may, under certain circumstances, lead to prejudice, but it may not do so at all. Intergroup tension may simply remain conflictual, and it is important not to confuse conflict with prejudice.

              At this point, we can already draw one very important practical conclusion regarding the ability of education, enlightenment, or therapy to reduce intergroup tension. If the tension is strictly conflictual, then there is no reason to think that education or the others will have any effect at all: the groups already understand their own and the other's position, and what is needed is conflict regulation or bargaining mediation. To the extent that the tension consists of prejudice, however, education and the rest may well help reduce tension - if that is its intent. We must recognize the possibility that if education reflects an "official" culture which is itself prejudiced, then education is unlikely to reduce prejudice (see Weil, forthcoming).

              Arenas of Intergroup Relations

              It is also possible to identify different arenas in which intergroup relations can occur - political, economic, social, religious/cultural.

[This section has not yet been written: however, two examples from the United States in the mid-1960s illustrate the argument that will be made. Rural fundamentalist Christians were found to be especially likely to say that Jews have too much political power on opinion surveys (Glock and Stark, 1966; cf. Middleton, 1973). But this group has little contact with Jews and has less education than average: many who have analyzed these surveys have concluded that this is an expression of pure prejudice, not conflict, which more contact and education might remedy. On the other hand, inner-city blacks were found to say on similar surveys that Jews behave unfairly in economic situations, but they did not say that Jews have too much political power (Marx, 1967). In fact, the more contact these blacks had and the more educated they were, the more likely they were to express these opinions: this would seem to be a case of economic conflict, not prejudice. However, opinion surveys in the 1980s indicate that the situation for both groups had changed (Martire and Clark, 1982).]

AN HISTORICAL TYPOLOGY

Note: The theoretical framework has not yet been developed beyond this point, but perhaps its broad outlines are already visible. The second section of the paper suggests an historical typology based on this framework. The reader should note that this typology is not intended as a full historical account, but rather as a schema which could be used in giving such an account; thus, certain aspects of the history will be stressed more, and others less, than a narrative account would perhaps warrant. On the other hand, it should also be noted that since this draft is still in progress, the ratio of raw historical material to structural analysis is higher than is intended in the final draft.

              The general model proposed in this paper posits certain interactions between direct intergroup relations on one side, and the effects of institutions on the other side. However, the attitudes and behavior of the institutions themselves grow out of the direct intergroup relations existing at the foundation of the institutions. To be sure, the orientations of institutions do not remain rigidly stable over time - and to a certain extent one can account for changes stemming from their relations with other groups - but the sociological concept of an institution implies that they tend to resist change to which less organized groups in the population are prone. Thus, the historical picture drawn here entails an accretion of elements of antisemitism over time: certain intergroup relations become crystallized in institutions, which in turn affect the ground on which new intergroup relations evolve. This process is repeated a number of times until a relatively complex situation emerges. But in contrast to dialectical models, it will not be argued here that the process necessarily has a teleological character; and in contrast to certain cyclical theories, it will not be argued that there is repetition of much detail in the cycles - indeed, it is not clear to what extent one can identify definite repeating patterns in the interactions between institutions and popular intergroup relations. The virtue of the present model, it could be argued, is merely that it provides a fairly clear framework with which to account for the generation of antisemitism, and to analyze the sedimentary character of later, more complex manifestations.

              The major stages in the development of antisemitism can be summarized schematically as follows. These stages are described in greater detail in the later sections of the paper.

              1.    Ancient Antisemitism. In the ancient world, hostility to the Jews was primarily political, whether against a Jewish state, a subjected Jewish province, or a competing ethnic-national community in an imperial city. The indirect cause of the hostility was the communal cohesiveness and separateness of the Jews, together with a perceived arrogance, both stemming from Jewish adherence to their particular religion: religious intolerance on the non-Jewish side was not a cause, although belief in the superiority of Hellenistic culture contributed to the friction.

              2.    Christian Antisemitism in Development. Antisemitism as prejudice - which is to say, based on untruth - has its source in systematic defamation by the Church, embedded in orthodox Christian doctrine from the beginning. Since Christianity originated as a Jewish sect, and ever afterward felt itself existentially challenged by Judaism - at first for adherents and converts, and throughout its history with regard to doctrinal authority - its anti-Jewish polemics were sharper than those based merely on social, economic, or political conflict. This assertion is demonstrated by the example of Islam which, as a "cousin" rather than "brother" religion, never had to compete with Judaism as Christianity did, and thus never defamed it as Christianity did. That is, this defamation originated, and partly continued, as a form of boundary maintenance on the part of a group which - at least initially - had difficulty maintaining its separate identity.

              3.    Christian Antisemitism in Power. Legal degradation of the Jews and their exploitation by rulers began when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and later of Europe. In the pagan world, the Jews were at most repressed for the purpose of political pacification or subjected to a special tax as punishment for rebelliousness - the few attempts determinedly to suppress or degrade the religion were sporadic and unsystematic. Christian states, on the other hand, systematically reduced Jewish citizenship rights and, when the financial need arose, singled out the Jews as special sources of revenue. Thus civically degraded, the Jews stood outside the main structure of feudal society and, as "serfs of the chamber," became the legal property of the rulers.

              4.    Feudal or "Traditional" Antisemitism. The Church attempted in various ways during its first millennium to degrade the Jews socially and economically as well as civically without decisive success: Jews enjoyed fairly good relations with the sometimes imperfectly Christianized peoples of Europe, and secular rulers usually had little desire to reduce the utility of "their" Jews, who helped quicken a generally stagnant medieval economy. In the Crusades, the Church entered upon a renewed offensive against those who stood outside it or adhered weakly to it. The attacks on the Jews in the Rhineland and elsewhere, generally instigated by fanatical Christian preachers and joined by somewhat marginal populations, signalled a further turning point in the status of Jews: Jewish personal and communal security was permanently reduced; their contact with their Christian neighbors was cut back; and they were forced into increasingly marginal economic positions, most characteristically money-lending. This increased marginality now opened the way for the decisive accumulation folk prejudices against the "stranger in our midst;" it exacerbated competition and hostility of the emerging burgher class; and it thereby reduced the socioeconomic utility of the Jews to the centralizing monarchs. These last developments were matched by a further withdrawal of the Jewish community into itself, and led to the formation of the Jewish ghetto, an extreme form of segregation.

              5.    Modern Antisemitism. The development of modern society undercut the institutional bases of "traditional" antisemitism. Continuing state centralization came at the expense of the influence of religion, and Christianity itself was split in the Reformation, but it promoted the political participation of the Third Estate, beginning with the burghers but eventually including all commoners. One side of this development was general Enlightenment secularization and democratization, and the other side was the growth of Romantic nationalism. And on the one side the Jews were invited to give up their separate medieval corporate status (and religion) and assimilate with the rest of the citizenry, while on the other side they were increasingly viewed as standing outside the national community on "cultural" (religious), then ethnic, and finally racial grounds. Antisemitism thus became secular, political, and "racial" - and in most cases, until the Nazis, more popular than institutionalized. The Jews, for their part, split into traditional, assimilationist, and eventually nationalist (Zionist) factions, depending on whether they adhered to the ghetto community and orthodox religion, Enlightenment deism or secularism, or nineteenth century theories of ethnic nationalism.

              6.    A Post-Modern Antisemitism? Antisemitism in America to some extent returns to the ancient situation of pre-Christian intergroup conflict without prejudice. America "is different" since it had no established Church - and no violent reaction against it, no feudal establishment - and no Enlightenment revolution and Romantic counterrevolution, and no ethnic national population after the mid-nineteenth century - and therefore a truncated folkish reaction. America was defined by one side of the European development: Enlightenment secularism or deism and democracy; and American Jewry was recruited primarily from assimilationist Jews and Jews torn out of their traditional ghetto communities by pogroms. Thus, the American population, including blacks, consists to a much greater extent than the European populations of non-dominant groups in greater or lesser contact and conflict with each other, and prejudice is thus less institutionalized but rather more based on spontaneous group interaction. Likewise, the state of Israel stands in something of a post-modern relation to its surroundings. The creation of nationalistic Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, it is regarded by European traditionalists with something of the respect (with or without the hostility) of ancient Christians for militant national Judaism, and by liberal Europeans and most Americans as a democratic state allied to the West (with or without added feelings of guilt for the genocide). And it is increasingly treated by its Arab neighbors as a sovereign state, respected by its allies and hated and feared by its enemies for its power. True, a mixture of old Islamic with modern nationalistic prejudice continues to color the attitudes of Israel's neighbors, just as a certain traditional antisemitism continually re-emerges among American fundamentalist Christians, but in neither case do these seem as decisive in shaping attitudes or relations as did the institutionalized heritage of Christian and feudal antisemitism in modern Europe.

              Ancient Period: Conflict without Prejudice?

              There was clearly tension between Jews and non-Jews in the ancient world; the question is whether it was prejudicial or merely conflictual. Several explanations for this intergroup tension, which are used to explain antisemitism in medieval and modern times, can be dismissed as explanations for hostility to the Jews in ancient times.

              The economic position of the Jews and their economic relations with others, were not of a nature to cause hostility. Jews held a normal range of occupations: most of them were farmers, but there were also artisans, merchants, and so on. In general, internal class divisions rose when the Jews encountered less external hostility and fell when they encountered greater external hostility. "The information available clearly demonstrates, in any case, that the economic status of the Jews was very diversified and that there was no special reason for hating them for their wealth, or their economic power" (Sevenster, 1975: 88; Baron, 1975). Race also seems not to have been a factor in ancient antisemitism. "Not a single indication is to be found in ancient literature that antisemitism in the ancient world used the theory of race as a weapon of attack" (Sevenster, 1975: 56; for the same conclusion with regard to blacks, see Snowden, 1983: 63). Various defamatory stereotypes and untruths can, indeed, be traced to ancient times, but several of them which became much more important in later times were not at all common or important in ancient times, but seem to have been rather isolated charges. For instance, Apion's charge of ritual murder seems to have been isolated, although he seems not to have invented it; in any case, it was apparently not repeated by his followers. His story of Jewish worship of an ass may have been a variation of more traditional charges that Jews, who could not be observed worshiping ordinary idols, worshiped strange ones. Note that Jews were often charged with atheism due to their lack of idol worship. Another charge, of sexual excesses, occurs only in, and not before Tacitus. Still another charge, that Jews did not escape from bondage in Egypt, led out by their God, but were rather leprous Egyptians expelled for that reason, may have begun with the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho in the third century BCE. On the other hand, this may also have been a traditional story in Egypt even at that time, begun as a response to the uncomplimentary biblical story. In any case, it had greater currency in the ancient world. (NB Freud's acceptance of part of the story in his Moses and Monotheism.)

              The Jews were considered and considered themselves a people, an ethnos, or a nation, like others. Whether or not the Jewish people possessed a state depended on the balance of power between the neighboring empires (Malamat, 1976: 8; Tadmor, 1976: 97; Stern, 1976: 185, 207, 217). And at those times when the Jews did possess a state, its relations with other states covered the normal range, from peace to war, and Israel was known to have a capable military. Moreover, unlike in Christian Europe, the Jews constituted a very large and expanding portion of the population, and also unlike later times, they were by no means averse to conducting offensive war: thus, they presented sometimes serious threats to their neighbors and problems to the empires under which they lived.

              The greatest peculiarity of the Jews in the ancient world was their monotheistic religion. However, monotheism as such was not the direct cause of hostility towards them - not even when it was falsely understood. Although there were variations, the polytheism of most of the neighboring nations tended to make them tolerant of other religions, including that of the Jews. Rather, monotheism caused hostility indirectly, for it reinforced Jewish communal cohesion, exclusiveness, and militancy: it made the Jews themselves more hostile to other groups and intolerant of other religions and external control. In Egypt under the Pharaohs, in Canaan and Palestine, and in the Babylonian exile, this factor increasingly set them apart from other ancient peoples, and helped them maintain their identity through several dispersions and losses of their state. It promoted a fanatical adherence to independence and resistance to interference in their communal life, and more than once supported rebellions - in which Jews were prepared to be martyred - which either won or lost them their state. In the diaspora, they appeared as strangers, especially in their way of life and customs. These caused the Jews to segregate themselves - that is, to reduce the level of contact with other groups.

              However, it was not simply strangeness and separateness which distinguished the Jews and caused intergroup tension - other ancient groups were also to some extent strange and separate. Rather, it was recognized that these features were due to Jewish adherence to their Law. "The Jews were never quite like the others; they were always inclined to isolate themselves; they had no part in the morals and customs of the people about them, nor in that syncretism that was meant to be so tolerant. There was always something exceptional about the religion of the Jews, and this made them difficult in social intercourse, ill-adapted to the pattern of ancient society" (Sevenster, 1975: 89).

              Especially in the Hellenistic empires and the Hellenized portions of the Roman empire, cities were organized as polises, and participation in civic rites and religion was expected of citizens. Jews often wanted citizenship rights without having to participate in these rites: this brought them into conflict with other citizens.

              It must not be thought, however, that ancient antisemitism was of a directly religious nature: the direct cause of hostility to the Jews was political, and actions taken against the Jews by the ancients were generally not motivated on religious grounds, but rather political. The religious problem entered mainly on the Jewish side, for their special resistance to interference in their religious and communal practices caused conflicts to become more severe and also sometimes called forth additional interference as pagan rulers sought to get to the perceived root of the resistance. As Heinemann wrote, this was not a "religious war, but rather a power struggle....The fact that the Jews have an entirely different sort of worship was everywhere recognized, and it had a powerful attractive and repulsive effect; it only led to political consequences when the Jewish settlement expanded or followed a policy which was feared" (1931: 18).

              In the first place, as we have seen, Jewish religious and communal characteristics sometimes made them difficult to subject and integrate into uniform imperial administration. Over the centuries, as monotheism became more firmly rooted among the Jewish masses, attempts to introduce pagan or emperor worship into Palestine met with increasingly intense resistance, in which national aspirations were mixed with eschatological and messianic hopes. Thus, the attempts of the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus Epiphanes, to introduce Greek culture into Palestine, and finally to forbid the practice of the Jewish religion in 167 BCE led directly to the Hasmonean revolt and the establishment of the second Jewish Commonwealth; and in the same way, the increasing religious interference of the Romans, beginning with Caligula's attempt to introduce emperor-worship, led to the Great Revolt and the consequent destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE (Stern, 1976: 204-207, 296-297).

              The policies of the different empires under which the Jews lived varied considerably. The Hellenistic empire and later the Hellenized cities in the Roman empire were contemptuous of the Jews from their own highly developed cultural and political standpoint - and the Jews reciprocated from their side: indeed, in hindsight, this cultural antagonism appears as perhaps the greatest such polarity in the ancient world and provided the basis for the nearest approximation to later forms of antisemitism. Indeed, hostility against the Jews in Alexandria and other Egyptian cities generally came from the local Hellenistic populations, while Jewish relations with Egyptians were comparatively good. On the other hand, and notwithstanding the forced resettlement and the story in the Book of Esther, most historians tend to feel that the relative silence of the sources regarding Jewish-gentile tensions in Babylonia and later Persia attests to comparatively favorable conditions there (Tadmor, 1976: 159-82; Sevenster, 1975: 180). The Romans, for their part, followed a pragmatic and tolerant policy toward the Jews, as toward other cultural groups in their empire. In the case of the Jews, this policy was facilitated for a long while by reciprocal demonstrations of loyalty by the Jews as well as by the memory of the military aid the latter had rendered in the Roman conquest of Hellenistic Egypt. But on the other hand, it was also partly due to the violent and fanatical resistance which interference with Jewish religious and communal practices always aroused.

              Under the Hellenistic and Roman empires, Jews in the Diaspora also needed special privileges in order to practice their religion, in particular that they not be required to take part in all activities (including, of course, worship, but also exemptions from cultic taxes and civic duties on the sabbath). Inasmuch as they were thus tolerated without being tolerant in return, this situation often caused resentment among the native populations. And when their privileges were guaranteed by central imperial authorities in Roman times, local officials were also often antagonized. Especially in Hellenistic cities, which valued their own culture above others, this was the case: authorities were irritated at having to extend protection to a group for which they had no sympathy, and authorities and population alike sometimes transferred their antagonism against the Romans onto the Jews (Sevenster, 1975: 145-6). These factors all played a major role in the pogroms in the Hellenistic city of Alexandria in 66 CE. This was probably the worst and best known outbreak of antisemitism in the ancient world.

              Finally, we would hold a mistaken view of Jewish-gentile relations in the ancient world if we concentrated only on hostility, or at best neutrality. Rather, Judaism exercised not only repulsion but also great attraction on the ancient pagans, and the Jews were active proselytizers and remained so, though decreasingly, through the first millennium of the Christian age. Indeed, Heinemann argues that it was the very features of Judaism which caused antisemitism in the ancient world which also attracted many pagans to it. "An investigation of the motives of both proselytes and antisemites enables us to recognize a much closer connection between the two. It was the exclusiveness of Jewish monotheism which attracted the first group, and repelled the second" (1940: 397). However, Jewish proselytism also caused particular problems for Jews. The Romans opposed it as a matter of imperial policy, just as they later opposed the spread of Christianity (which, of course, began as a Jewish sect). And furthermore, Jewish proselytizers clearly must have emphasized the differences and the communal separation between Jews and non-Jews and made invidious comparisons: this reinforced the impression of many pagans, especially the Hellenistic, that the Jews were simply arrogant and intolerant of other beliefs, and thereby increased their hostility.

              Christianity and Feudalism: the Origins of "Traditionalism?"

                     The Relations of Judaism with Christianity

              In contrast to the mainly political conflict of the pagan world, we may say that anti-Jewish prejudice has its origins in the doctrinal and missionary struggles of Judaism with Christianity and the latter's defamation of Judaism which resulted from the conflict. For our purposes, it is not necessary to decide whether Jewish monotheism passed its intolerance on to its daughter religion, Christianity: it is only necessary to note that the two religions were conflicting exponents of the same tradition, each claiming to possess the truth, that each shared many of the same practical goals, and that this struggle over the same ground produced a sharpness not found in Jewish-pagan conflicts.

              The conflict over doctrine and proselytes. Christianity was the product of a particular development within Judaism, and the characteristics of its origins and its early relations with its mother religion conditioned the attitudes and behavior which became institutionalized in the relations between the Church and the Synagogue.

              During the time of the Second Jewish Commonwealth (142 BCE - 70 CE), the Roman Empire was undergoing a process of cultural homogenization, and especially outside of Palestine, Judaism was affected by these religious syncretistic currents. As this syncretism drew Jews and Hellenized pagans closer together, Judaism experienced a period of great growth, due in large part to its successful proselytizing efforts among the gentiles. Jewish proselytism also sometimes took on universalistic aspirations transcending the ethnic state, and the messianic idea swung from the more narrowly secular goals of political liberation to eschatological hopes for the unification of all men under God in the end of days.

              However, Judaism's growth left its population much more diverse, and especially within Palestine, this diversification resulted in a process of sectarianization. As it expanded, Judaism never succeeded in reconciling the sectarianism of its increasingly diverse adherents with these universalistic goals; and after the wars of 66 - 135 CE, which put an end to the Jewish state and also destroyed much of the Jewish population, it turned its back on these old ambitions and toward a cultivation of its own heritage. Nor did it ever recover its prior expansionistic momentum.

              Christianity was a product of this process: it began as a Jewish sect, and it went farther than any branch of Judaism which survived in synthesizing Hellenistic elements with the fundamentals of Jewish religion. Proselytization based on syncretism was also inherited by rising Christianity, but since Christianity put fewer obstacles in the way of conversion, it was more successful among the gentiles. With this development, Judaism's expansion was checked at the expense of Christianity.

              Each religious group responded differently to the developing conditions in which it found itself. Judaism responded to fragmentation and loss of state by turning increasingly inward and consolidating its spiritual and communal identity at the expense of its national and expansive orientations. Institutionally, this change found its expression in the growth of the synagogue and Pharisaic rabbinate in the place of the Temple and priesthood; scripturally, it was represented by the codification of the Pharisaic oral law tradition in the Talmud; and socially, it meant the strengthening of communal cohesion and the reduction of class conflict as the Jewish people perforce drew closer together in an increasingly hostile and dangerous environment (Baron, 1975: 23). And while none of these changes implied the rejection of a militant defence of the religion or of proselytization, in practice, Judaism now took a less directly confrontational stance vis a vis its competitors and a less welcoming posture toward potential converts - although it was the later legislation of Christianity and Islam in power which most radically cut back Jewish proselytization. Also, as Judaism increasingly withdrew into itself and reduced its missionary activities, it sought to increase its segregation from other groups, especially Christian but also pagan.

              Christianity, for its part, responded to Jewish rejection on the one hand with defamation, and on the other hand by turning to proselytism among the gentiles and then to direct competition with the religion of the empire. Paul's missionary success among the Hellenistic gentiles and Hellenistic Jews came with the fall of the Temple, which signaled the "twilight situation among all the Hellenistic Jewish masses, from Syria to Rome" (Baron, 1952-80: II, 83): it is significant that he did not have this success among the non-Hellenistic Jews of Babylonia or among Pharisaic Jews elsewhere. This was part of his turn away from Pharisaic Judaism and toward Greek and Roman culture, and part of the break of Christianity with Judaism. Moreover, Christianity's success was also due to its particular synthesis of Judaism with Greco-Roman culture at a time when this was especially attractive to many, and when the Empire had an especially great need for cultural homogenization which it was not entirely able to provide within the confines of Hellenistic culture alone. Given orthodox Judaism's rejection of this sort of syncretism, it was bound to lose out in the competition for converts to the Christian mission.

              For a time, various Hellenistic Jewish-Christian groups formed bridges between the two religions, but as each of the latter formed a clearer, more separate identity, these intermediate groups lost their ability to survive, and the break became complete.

              Christian defamation of Judaism. The direct or indirect basis of the anti-Jewish prejudice which eventually emerged from this religious conflict can be traced to Christian defamation of Judaism. However, we must not suppose that Christian hostility and fear was an invention out of thin air: it reflected that of the Jews. As long as the Christians were a Jewish sect, Jewish leadership persecuted them as heretics and denounced them to the Roman authorities. In fact, as Ruether (1974) shows, Christian defamation of Judaism has its roots in the condemnation of orthodox, Pharisaic Judaism by several of the Hellenistic Jewish sects from which Christianity originated. After the Church became gentile, although the rabbis expressed less concern for Christianity, the Jews remained militant in defence of their own religion and social organization as against Christianity, and for some time they continued to compete successfully with Christians for proselytes. And of course, even though the rabbis tended officially to ignore early Christianity, they considered Christians apostates and idolaters, and questionable monotheists at best. These charges, which amounted to a complete repudiation of the truth of Christianity, were sufficient to cause the Church considerable doctrinal insecurity, especially with respect to potential converts, those of uncertain faith, or other competing religions - and this insecurity was recurrently problematical in the pagan Roman Empire, in imperfectly Christianized and later heretical medieval Europe, and in the Christian Roman Empire's conflicts with Persia and Christian Europe's later conflicts with Islam.

              In this context, Church defamation also served as a means to segregate Christians from Jewish influence, since initially, Christianity as the daughter religion was in greater danger of being reabsorbed than vice versa. That is, defamation served not only as a weapon in doctrinal conflict but also as a means for Christian leadership to demarcate and reinforce otherwise fragile boundaries between the groups. To this extent, then, one may say that the closer the social relations between Christian and Jewish populations, the sharper were the denunciations by the Christian hierarchy: Bishop Chrysostom's virulent eight sermons against the Jews in Antioch in 387, where relations were apparently close, are a prime example of this. Indeed, Parkes writes, "Chrysostom's Jew was a theological necessity rather than a living person" (1969: 166; see also Ruether, 1974: 170-181).

              Moreover, inasmuch as Judaism was still a proselytizing religion at the time of Christianity's emergence, the two were in competition for gentile converts. From the beginning - which is to say by the end of the first century CE - Christianity systematically falsified its account of Jewish history. Parkes accounts for this defamation in the change of Christianity from a Jewish sect to a religion of the Gentiles: this Church sought to legitimate itself by demonstrating its roots in antiquity and by claiming that it had become the true Israel, covenanted to God (1969: ch. 3). Ruether argues further that early Christianity was not content simply to lay claim to the Jewish heritage, but again especially at the time it was turning to its mission among the gentiles, it found it doctrinally useful to argue that the Jews had always been apostate, and it reinterpreted the scriptures to turn Jewish self-criticism into a claim that Jews had always been rejected by God. Moreover, it claimed, Jews had always persecuted and killed their own prophets; and now they had killed their own messiah, Jesus: thus, the charge of deicide was made by official Christian doctrine from the beginning (1974: ch. 2).

              The patristic writers of the second to sixth centuries expanded on these charges. The Jews were also said to be idolaters, sensualists (from their alleged anti-spiritualism), and remarkably, infanticides - as the pagans had charged the early Christians (cf. Cohn, 1975). At least by the fourth century, in Chrysostom's sermons, the Jews became viewed as inhuman and demonic; and in the midst of clerically inspired anti-Jewish riots in the early fifth century, also in Antioch, the first recorded Christian charge of "ritual murder" appeared (Ruether, 1974: ch. 3).

              With this, the official doctrinal defamation of the Jews by the Church is largely complete. As we will see in another connection, additional elements were added to the stereotype begun by the early Church in the period of the Crusades and the Inquisition - but most of these additions were repudiated by the Church hierarchy, although they were often most actively promoted by the lower clergy. Indeed, the Church early developed doctrinal limitations to their anti-Jewish hostility, to which the hierarchy consistently held in the face of later excesses. From the beginning, Paul taught that the Jews were to be preserved to bear witness in their suffering to the truth of Christianity, and also that they would resist recognizing this truth until the end of days when they and the gentiles would be converted and saved. Likewise, the official Church policy, formulated as early as Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century, was that Jews should not be forced to convert - for both Pauline and practical reasons.

              The contrast of Islam highlights many of Christianity's characteristic attitudes toward Judaism. To begin with, Jewish tensions with Islam were not as sharp as with Christianity, for the two were not conflicting exponents of precisely the same tradition. "Unlike the Christian religion, this new creed did not arise within Jewry. ...It was, therefore, from the beginning, a struggle between strangers, rather than an internecine strife among brethren" (Baron, 1952-80: III, 94). Islam was also a more fully political movement than was Christianity, and since Judaism had no state, Islam was content to subject the Jews rather than convert them - and the Jews had long been accustomed to foreign subjection. And Judaism, for its part, was only one of several minorities under Islam and was therefore not singled out, nor were Jews treated as "aliens" as under European Christendom. Rather, Jews were to be excluded from the ruling military and administrative sectors (although this was not always observed in practice, especially at the beginning of Moslem rule when Jews were indispensable in these positions), and relegated to the lower status position of economic activity. They were taxed, but not otherwise forced into marginal economic positions, in contrast to their position under Christian rule, and sometimes became quite well-to-do. To be sure, Islam's intent was to prohibit infidels from holding socially superior positions, and there were discriminatory excesses, but Jews enjoyed greater security of person and property and greater protection from expulsion than under Christianity. And while Jews were not permitted to proselytize in Moslem lands (apostasy from Islam was a capital offence), their numbers increased dramatically in the first centuries of Moslem rule, partly through natural increase and partly through conversion of slaves: in this period, the large majority of world Jewry lived under Moslem domination from old Persia through North Africa to Islamic Spain (Baron, 1952-80: III, 75-172).

              Legal status under Christianity. The decisive drop in the Jews' position came to the extent that Christianity became the legal religion of any area and the authorities enforced a subordinate status on the Jews: first in the Roman Empire and later in Europe. For as Ruether (1974: 181) remarks, "What had previously been theology and biblical hermeneutics now was to become law and social policy." And in the same regard, Parkes writes, "In so far as legislation was concerned, a right once lost was never permanently regained. The restrictions were continually reinforced. The path towards their medieval position and the medieval ghetto was followed relentlessly and without deviation" (1969: 199).

              To be sure, certain Jewish disabilities have their origins in the pre-Christian Roman Empire. However, these were not the results of defamation or of "prejudice" in the sense used here, but rather of a program of pacification growing out of political conflict. Still, when Christianity inherited the Roman Empire's legal and institutional apparatus, most of these Jewish disabilities were continued. Thus, upon suppressing the great revolt and destroying the Second Temple, Vespasian imposed the special fiscus judaicus, partly as a punitive measure and partly to make up for the lost Temple tax, which had been voluntary. In this, the Jews had to pay no more taxes than previously, but they were singled out among all peoples of the Empire for a special tax: this was the first instance of the idea of the Jew as a specific taxpayer, a practice Christianity in power was definitely to continue.

              With Constantine's adoption of Christianity in 313, the Roman Empire began to restrict ever more citizenship rights of the Jews. Constantine's own legislation was aimed primarily at hindering conversion to Judaism, preventing Jewish persecution of apostates to Christianity, diminishing Jewish authority over non-Jewish slaves (it had been common to convert them to Judaism), and increasing the tax burden of the Jews. Anti-Jewish legislation was further developed and codified through the fifth and sixth centuries, and received its definitive expression in the Theodosian and Justinian Codes, the former in particular providing the kernel of medieval European laws on Jews. They went far in enforcing Church policies of social segregation - interfaith marriages, for instance, were declared adulterous - and they were aimed at diminishing the social status of Jews. At first Jews were required to share the burdens of municipal government, since their former exemption based on opposition to idolatry were no longer valid under Christianity. But eventually, they were forbidden to hold posts in the imperial administration, although they had never held many; and in general, emperors increasingly adhered to the principle that Jews should not exercise authority over Christians. On the other hand, the legality of Jewish religion was reconfirmed and Jewish communal and religious autonomy was largely - though not always absolutely - guaranteed. In principle, Jewish security was also to be assured, but in practice, the Emperors did not always effectively intervene against attacks of local populations, sometimes led by Christian clergy, or provide restitution for any damages. In a celebrated case in 388, Bishop Ambrose of Milan forced Emperor Theodosius to retract an order restituting the Jews of Callinicum for a synagogue which had been burned by a Christian crowd.

              The legal foundations of medieval European society were dual, ecclesiastical and secular, and at first, the two were bound up in the synthesis of the laws of the Christian Roman Empire. As long as this synthesis held, the legal status of the Jews was still based on the Theodosian Code, which contained many restrictions but also guaranteed a good deal of security and autonomy. But as the heritage of the Roman Empire slowly disintegrated in the constant struggles of the kings, princelings, and great landholders of the early period, the legal synthesis also broke up and the secular Roman component was gradually replaced by feudal laws - and eventually also national laws. This development provided the basis for a modification in the legal status of the Jews in medieval Europe, the more so, as we will see, since the social status of the Jews had also changed in the interim, as had their relations with their Christian neighbors and masters. And while Church law included certain doctrinal limitations to anti-Jewish hostility, secular law varied widely from quite favorable to completely intolerant (although, to be sure, a genocidal attitude never quite emerged in the middle ages: the polar extreme seems to have been forced conversion or expulsion). Here we see quite clearly the pattern sketched at the outset. Church law was the expression of a relatively stable institutionalized attitude toward the Jews, while the secular component stemmed from the more spontaneous and volatile relations of Jews with various groups in medieval society. But this character of secular law provided an immediate result of great practical importance to the Jews. For just as the existence of Judaism was guaranteed by Church law, so Jews were indirectly protected by the fragmentation of secular law: Jews persecuted in one polity were able to and did move to another.

              A contrast is provided by the eastern heir to the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire. Unlike the west, Byzantium was neither fragmented and anarchic nor backward and poor. Thus, the Jews retained their Roman citizenship rights, such as they were under the Justinian Code, and were mainly degraded with regard to religion. Since Byzantium was unified, imperial policy toward the Jews was more consistent than in the West - personal security was better, expulsions were rare, and popular outbursts were illegal and were generally prevented. Instead, extreme antisemitism took the form of several attempts at forced conversion, a pattern unusual in the West. And since Byzantium was rich and retained a money economy, the Jews were not forced into restricted economic roles or economically exploited to the extent they were in the West, as we will see. Christian anti-Jewish legislation here was not translated into radical insecurity for the Jews, nor into economic antisemitism (see Baron 1952-80: III, 193-4; Ruether 1974: 195-9).

              It must be noted, however, that Christian discriminatory legislation was not limited to the Jews, but also extended to non-orthodox Christian sects and Christian heretics: in fact, these groups were generally treated more harshly than the Jews (Parkes, 1969; Trachtenburg, 1943; Cohn, 1975). Still, this does not so much indicate that the Jews were not singled out - they were, relative to pagan, heathen, and Moslem [?] populations - as prove that the discrimination was directed against competing "brother" religions.

              There were also practical limits to Christian persecution of Jews. To begin with, of course, the whole of world Judaism was not under Church control: a substantial number, and for many centuries a substantial majority, lived to the east and south of Christianity, in Babylonian Persia and the Moslem lands. Jews were sometimes able to play off one dominating power against another in regards their treatment - for several centuries after the fall of the Second Temple by rebellion or threat of unrest, and thereafter by bribery. And as we have seen, Christian rulers also feared betrayal by Jews living at the border areas of their realms.

              Prior to the Crusades and the major expulsions of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, Christian rulers attempted and failed a number of times to suppress Judaism by forced conversions. Thus, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius panicked when the Empire was attacked in 632 and Jews appeared threateningly cohesive and militarily capable, and he attempted to force all Jews in the Empire to accept baptism: Byzantine Jewry underwent four major attempts altogether at forced conversion from the 7th to the 10th centuries (Baron, 1952-80: III, 24, 183-4). Likewise, the Visigoth king Sisebut issued a decree forcing Spanish Jews to accept baptism in 613 (Baron, 1952-80: III, 38): this inaugurated a century of martyrdom, but it also seems not to have been successful. These attempts failed for several reasons, besides the simple administrative difficulty of such measures without the resources later developed by the Inquisition or totalitarian regimes: the extraordinary resistance of the Jews, including their often successful efforts to bribe officials and their often powerful social positions; the fact that Jews were sometimes very well integrated into the dominant society and had friendly relations with the gentile population; and finally, on the other side, the recurrent difficulty for the Christian society in successfully integrating insincere and unwilling converts.

              Finally, secular feudal rulers too sometimes had independent reasons for protecting the Jews from ecclesiastical persecution. As we will see, Jews were often needed for their tax base, for their liquid capital for purposes of credit, for their trading connections, for their diplomatic and linguistic ties to foreign areas, and for their administrative, medical, and scholarly skills.

                     The Position of the Jews under Feudalism

              Christianity in power also attempted to translate its legal degradation of the Jews into social isolation, economic marginalization, and political (as well as merely legal) subordination. However, because of the resistance to this policy by both the rulers and common people in Europe during the first Christian millennium, the Church did not succeed in these goals by its own efforts until after the Crusades. On the other hand, a number of extra-ecclesiastical factors operated in the same direction as Church policy, and religious doctrine also exercised an indirect influence on non-religious developments. Moreover, the resulting changes in the status of the Jews in turn provided new, extra-religious grounds for antisemitism.

              Socioeconomic marginalization. The Church attempted to break social contact between the Jews and the Christian masses; and from the time of Constantine (313), as we have seen, the Christian Empire attempted to enforce this segregation by legislation. The rabbis, for their part, welcomed this as a method of preserving the Jews' communal and religious identity and of supporting Jewish self-government. However, these efforts were often made in the face of quite good relations between Christian and Jewish populations, and the Church found social segregation especially important in newly converted areas, since Christianity often made its first advances through established Jewish communities. Indeed, despite their developing economic marginality, Jewish contact with gentile populations was often better the less Christianized the latter were, as was the case in early medieval Europe. As we will see, close and good relations at the popular level were often opposed by the leaders of the Church hierarchy as a doctrinal - but rather theoretical - matter, while sharp discriminatory practices were introduced by the local clergy or mendicant preaching orders - and these were in turn, moderated by the hierarchy. However, this too does not seem to have seriously damaged Jewish-gentile relations at the popular level in Europe until the Crusades.

              The most important element of Jewish economic marginality was their gradual estrangement from the land and concentration in industry and commerce in a primarily agrarian world - although a majority remained farmers for many centuries after the emergence of Christianity. Now in principle one may say that land ownership provides greater security and often greater social status for members of dominant population groups, but that it can expose members of subordinate population groups to greater insecurity, especially in times of social or political instability and when intergroup hostility rises: if these vulnerable groups have to flee, they are unable to take their property with them, as they could if it were movable.

              However, while this sort of insecurity played a major role in forcing Jews off the land, the Church was by no means solely responsible: Jewish movement out of agriculture began even before Christianity became ascendant. In ancient Palestine and Babylonia, Jewish agriculture had come under considerable tax pressure, and sometimes extortions, by hostile Roman and Persian bureaucracies. But the destruction of the Jewish state left Jewish farmers throughout the Middle East even more vulnerable to the actions of hostile populations in their midst, as well as to the empires under which they lived. Especially in the diaspora, the antagonism of the Hellenistic and later Christian populations forced Jews to group together and pursue less exposed occupations. In Palestine itself, where imperial policy sometimes made Jews a minority, Jewish agriculture became less secure as the country became a border area between two empires; but this insecurity played a smaller role where Jewish farmers remained in the majority, as in Galilee and sections of Babylonia. To be sure, after it became ascendant, the Church had several reasons for desiring that Jews leave the land. In principle it opposed the dominance of Jewish landholders over Christian slaves or serfs, and it threw obstacles in the way of this practice wherever it could. But as a more practical matter, the Church had little other reason to oppose Jewish landholding than that it took potentially tithe-paying land out of circulation - although even here, indirect means were often found for levying ecclesiastical taxes on Jewish farmers. However, it was not until after the Crusades that insecurity caused by the Church or religion played a major role in driving Jews from the land.

              Indeed, secular rulers in backward European lands in the early middle ages often made new settlement of the land attractive for farmers from more advanced regions such as Jews from Islamic lands. On the other hand, as secular law became increasingly feudalized, religious factors played an indirect role in reducing Jewish land-ownership. Land now represented not only a means of livelihood but also a basis of power, and this was to be denied religiously subordinate peoples like the Jews. And legally, all feudal relations were based on Christian oaths of fealty: thus wherever Jews entered such relationships, awkward means had to be found for administering alternative oaths.

              Nor did the Church always, or primarily, contribute to the movement of Jews into industrial and commercial positions, and to the consequent growth of economically-based hostility. Again, certain general structural principles seem to have played a role in this development even before Christianity became ascendant. Thus, the dispersion of the Jews between two rival empires, the Roman and the Persian, also encouraged commercial occupations: Jews were able to develop commercial contacts and speak a common language among co-religionists in the enemy lands. And while religious differences sharpened the hostility between their successors, Christian and Moslem lands, this structural principle continued to promote a commercial role for the Jews. Indeed, Jews were often invited into relatively backward European lands by early medieval princes with the implicit or explicit understanding that they would further foreign trade with the more advanced East, and that they would contribute their more highly developed industrial or artisanal skills to the less developed economies. However, Jews did not always or uniquely fill this role: from the fifth to the eighth centuries, the Syrians were the more important traders; and after the Crusaders forced open new trade routes to the East by conquest, the demilitarized Jews, who could neither protect their merchants en route nor conduct trade by force, were displaced by the Hanseatic and Italian city-states. Thus, until the Crusades, Jewish dispersion between relatively advanced and relatively backward countries and the actions of the European monarchs did more than the policies of the Church to push the Jews into commerce: indeed, Jewish social structure in Christian Byzantium was not much less diversified than in Moslem lands.

              The most important specifically religious factor which eventually contributed to Jewish marginality was the prohibition of loans on interest to co-religionists, a prohibition which Christians, Moslems, and Jews alike shared (see Nelson, 19--). As the Church became increasingly successful in prohibiting legitimate extensions of credit with interest until the rise of the Renaissance Italians, the Jews became the major sources of credit to the aristocracy and commoners (burghers and peasants) in England, France, Germany, and Italy. To be sure, Jews faced commercial competition on one side from the Lombards, who provided credit at truly usurious rates, and on the other side from the Italian charitable monti di pieta, which charged nominal rates, but the one was always formally condemned by the Church, and the doctrinal legitimacy of the other was never on completely solid ground. A number of the expulsions of Jews were indeed economically rather than religiously motivated, especially in thirteenth and fourteenth century France. Rulers exploiting prejudices and popular resentment against perceived Jewish usury treated the Jews as "sponges," soaking up money from the population in interest on loans and then expropriated and expelled them; the cycle of protection and expulsion was often repeated several times. However, most expulsions were politically motivated for reasons we will explore; in fact, rulers were generally disappointed with the yields of their expropriations.

NOTE: The text which follows, particularly the next two subsections, is not yet as developed as the foregoing text.

              Political alliances and conflicts. These structural economic factors also caused hostility to the Jews, independent of any religious hostility. This is proved by the similar hostility against gentile trading groups of the time. The Syrians, for instance, also formed separate, solidaristic communities in the midst of the European population: they were also excluded from political positions, and hostility also arose against them stemming from economic resentment and intercommunal distrust (see Parkes, 1969: 313-6). Likewise, Flemish, Lombard, and Cahorsin money-lenders, who charged much higher rates of interest than the Jews, were also subject to street attacks and sudden expulsions, especially in the thirteenth century (Baron, 1952-80: IV, 207).

              -     Feudal relations and Serfs of the Chamber.

              -     Church's fear of loss of old regulations and ad hoc utility (see Baron, 1952-80: IV, 50f; Parkes, 1969: 317f).

              -     Rising nationalism.

              The growth of folk antisemitism. This combination of factors - the break in social contact, the conflict of interest especially over money lending and the double moral standard which grew out of it, the pressure of theological hostility and sometimes lies - all these factors encouraged the growth of "folk" popular prejudice on one side and of political opportunism and scapegoating among the secular rulers on the other side.

              It is important to consider the intergroup relations of Jews with several groups on the gentile side.

              -     The Church.

              -     The Emperors and outside the Empire, the Kings.

              -     The Aristocracy.

              -     The Burghers.

              -     The Peasantry.

              Also note the internal divisions within Jewry: Bankers, other money-lenders, traders and merchants, producers and craftsmen, peddlers and inn-keepers, workers and farmers, Jewish communal leaders (religious and secular), liaisons with gentiles.

              Much of the basis for popular prejudice has its roots in the teaching of the early Christian patristic writers. "The Jew as he is encountered in the pages of fourth-century writers is not a human being at all. He is a 'monster,' a theological abstraction, of superhuman cunning and malice, and more than superhuman blindness. He is rarely charged with human crime, and little evidence against him is drawn from contemporary behavior, or his action in contemporary events....In view of the close relations which obviously existed between local Jewish and Christian communities, it is amazing how this myth of Jewish character could so long have passed muster" (Parkes, 1969: 158).

              Jews were religiously persecuted as long as they did not accept Jesus as the messiah, but as we have noted, they were also preserved for an eventual conversion and to bear witness to the truth of Christianity.

              The socioeconomic degradation of the Jews gave factual basis to stereotypes and their segregation promoted popular prejudices.

              Popular stereotypes and prejudice sometimes led to pogroms in times of hardship, especially when whipped up by secular or clerical elites. At the time of the eleventh century when Pope Urban II preached the first Crusade, some especially zealous mendicant monks and priests were exceeding doctrinally approved bounds and engaging in rabble-rousing against Jewish populations, also spreading lies which now appeared for the first time - well-poisoning, desecration of the host, ritual murder - and later Popes occasionally had to issue edicts denouncing extremes.

              The most extreme result in terms of intergroup relations was the formation of the ghetto, desired in part by both sides: the withdrawal into the ghetto deepened the break in social contact, and perhaps to that extent reduced religious and economic conflict, but also probably exacerbated prejudice.

              Certain additional elements of antisemitism developed in a similar manner from the originally religious anti-Jewish stance of the Church and Christian political bodies. For instance, Jews in the border areas between Christian and non-Christian lands were suspected of disloyalty. Thus, the Christian Roman Empire suspected their loyalty vis-a-vis the Persian Empire; and in Europe, the Holy Roman Empire and Visigoth and Reconquista Spain suspected their loyalty vis-a-vis the Islamic areas at the borders. In several cases, Jews enjoyed better conditions in the non-Christian areas across the borders, and thus had good reasons to side with them against the Christians.

              Summary of Christian and Feudal Relations

              1.    Initial religious defamation, stemming from a conflict of ideal interests.

              2.    Legal disabilities and dependency, wherever Christianity gained the upper hand.

              3.    Economic marginality forced on Jews by Christian clerical and secular rule.

              4.    Social segregation, caused by doctrine, law, and economic marginality.

              5.    Growth of folk and superstitious prejudice because of break in contact.

              6.    Feudal intergroup relations were a semi-independent source of antisemitism, although they were based on the foundations and results of Christian-Jewish relations. However, they tended to be more volatile since they were not institutionalized in doctrine but rather based on current interests.

              The Modern Period: Prejudice without Christianity?

              Two factors, one political, one cultural, in the rise of the modern period helped break up the feudal/traditional dynamic of antisemitism and set in motion a modern dynamic. The centralizing state aspired to (and eventually did) break up all feudal corporate bodies, including the Jewish ghetto and its solidaristic social organization: rather, all loyalty was demanded for itself (e.g. Napoleon's convening of the Sanhedrin). At the same time, Enlightenment rationalism attacked the Church (already divided by the Reformation) and religion generally as mystification: this weakened theologically-based antisemitism by weakening its source. The direct result of these factors was the establishment of a new "first-order" modern dynamic of pressure to assimilate, opposed by the obstacle of residual traditional antisemitism: this was basically the initial Continental liberal pattern.

              Jews generally split over the offer of assimilation depending on (a) their own willingness to live in a larger social context than their ghetto solidarity, and (b) what exactly the dominant society offered to and demanded of them. To the extent that the modernization process was slow, flawed, or incomplete (as esp. in Germany: Ruerup, 1975), traditional elements of the dominant society retained considerable power to delay or deny Jewish admittance to the state bureaucracy, the army, the university, and some free professions: this in itself exacerbated the split in the Jewish community and also increased popular prejudice against Jews. To the extent that the modernization process was fast or nearly complete, assimilation acted as a solvent to traditional Jewish self-conceptions: Judaism itself, as a religion, was attacked by Enlightenment rationalism; assimilation and/or religious reform threatened Jewish solidarity and identity; and even when the Jewish religion per se was permitted, conceptions of Judaism as a nation or people was generally not permitted by the centralizing states: Jewish law and community self-regulation - in short, all legal-ethical double standards - were prohibited in the same way.

              The socialist-communist variant carried this pattern to an extreme by prohibiting all religion, and a different sort of persecution of Jews resulted. Some traditional and some modern forms of antisemitism were opportunistically exploited by rulers, who upon occasion used Jews as scapegoats for political purposes. [Something about early socialist movement on "The Jewish Question."]

              On the right, the romantic reaction against the Enlightenment created more serious problems, along with them, a kind of "second-order" modern antisemitism. The most traditional form of antisemitism in this context was simply reactionary: a desire to roll back the assimilation of Jews into the mainstream society. Perhaps the most straightforward variant of this type was the concept of the "Christian state:" the essence of the state was to be Christian, and only those Jews who actually converted would be permitted to take part in national life. The sincerity of converts was sometimes distrusted (as had been the case of the Maranos in Inquisition Spain), but conversion was not held to be impossible as in more radical formulations. Another variant, and perhaps the most typical, was non-religious folkish (and romantic) nationalism: the state was to be an ethnic national state, whose people had a definite cultural character, and Jews were considered as a foreign people (Volk) and were to be excluded. Again, although assimilation was not as open as with Christian baptism, it was not held to be impossible in principle as long as the Jew took on all cultural characteristics of the host people, including usually its religion (and the newly assimilated were mocked for their not fully successful efforts to fit in). The most radical variant was racist antisemitism, which combined romantic ethnic national goals with the scientific tradition of anthropology and Darwinian evolution (Mosse, 1978): Jews were now held to be another race and inassimilable in principle. Moreover, they were a definite danger to the national race precisely to the extent that they did assimilate, for they then corrupted the blood of the dominant race. The racist variant also had the goal of genocide, a goal not shared by other forms of antisemitism: in fact, it was a specifically anti-Christian goal, since the latter wanted to preserve the Jews for the Second Coming. However, all these variants adapted traditional forms of anti-Jewish prejudice to the new situation (Katz, 1980), and this prejudice was sharpened by (a) the continued lack of contact with traditional Jews, many of whom were immigrants from Eastern to Western Europe, and who were also held to be the most authentic, and (b) on the other side, the economic success of the most assimilated Jews, which put them in conflict especially with certain of the old middle classes (small farmers and peasants, craftsmen, small tradesmen and merchants, small producers, some free professionals) whose economic existence was threatened by capitalist growth and economic crises - both of which were stereotypically identified with the Jews (Rosenberg, 1967).

              Another Jewish reaction, this one to "second-order" forms of antisemitism, was adherence to Jewish ethnic nationalism, Zionism: Jews were also held to be a nation (without a state), and the host nations were held incapable of relinquishing their antisemitism. Zionism was opposed within the Jewish community (a) by traditional ghetto leaders, (b) by liberal (reform) assimilated Jews, and (c) by Jewish socialists.

              Antisemitic outbreaks at the turn of the century were in general not of the most radical, racist variety, but rather Christian- or ethnic-state in nature, as in Western and Central Europe, or fully traditional, with opportunistic help from national leaders, as in Russia.

              The Holocaust, on the other hand, was of the radical racist variety, and it did indeed practice genocide. The Holocaust was not a logically or historically "necessary" outcome, but rather the result of incomplete modernization, a flawed party system (which did not offer effective alternatives loyal to the republic) and economic, military and foreign policy crises: a radical party came to power, committed to radical antisemitism, but it was not elected for that reason. The mass murder itself was carried out bureaucratically, "without passion," by the party/state apparatus, without the participation (and to some extent, without the knowledge) of the bulk of the population: research has shown that there was in fact no mass support for genocide, at most for disenfranchisement (Steinert, 1967). Such bureaucratic mass murder without widespread popular support is only possible in a particular sort of society. Germany was a modern nation-state, with wide franchise, in which virtually all autonomous centers of potential resistance had been broken down, and with an unfree and unstable political culture: that is, there was a combination of radical aspirations plus the means to carry them out at the central state level, together with an inability to resist and fear of doing so at the mass level. But more than this, a particular (modern) form of moral indifference played a role (Baum, 1982): in a large society in which traditional bonds have disintegrated and in which modern institutional ties have broken down, and in a perceived crisis, contact in a mass society becomes degraded (in this sense, meaningful contact becomes "inflated" and thereby devalued), and it becomes possible for some sectors of the population to consider others as morally subhuman. This moral indifference is a more radical phenomenon than the medieval moral double standard.

              The Question of American Exceptionalism

              The destruction of European Jewry left the United States the home of the largest diaspora Jewish community - and indeed, despite the re-creation of a Jewish state, the largest Jewish community altogether. It is thus especially important to inquire whether there existed here too an American exceptionalism, whether as Ben Halpern asked most fully "America is different" (1956). The basic answer can be expressed analogously to the answer to the original question of American exceptionalism ("no feudalism, no socialism"): "no traditionalism, no antisemitism."

              The lack of "traditionalism" in America does not only mean that there was no medieval antisemitism; its absence also affected both the "first-" and "second-order" forms of modern antisemitism. Individual assimilation was demanded of American Jews, just as it was of European Jews, but the dominant American society differed in two important respects. In the first place, liberal ideals of equal opportunity were firmly established in American culture, not disputed by any major groups on the right or the left: American conservatives outside the South have generally been eighteenth century federalists or nineteenth century liberals, almost never romantic reactionaries. And in the second place, American society was relatively "unformed:" there was no established church (most were, in fact, dissenting: see Lipset, 1963), elites were not formally defined by legal, traditional, religious/cultural criteria, and Jews themselves were only one of a number of immigrant ethnic groups, all of which aspired to be assimilated and eventually laid claim to a part in further determining the character of American society. Thus, Jewish assimilation in America never faced the barriers that it did in post-traditional Europe. In the same sense, reactionary "second-order" modern antisemitism never achieved the success in America that it did in Europe. In Europe, Jewish Emancipation was connected to the revolutionary process, and political reaction therefore became opposed to Jewish assimilation; in America, there never was an Emancipation, nor was liberal ideology ever opposed by reactionary desires for the old regime. Thus, just as there was never an officially legitimated religious/traditional antisemitism in America, none of the peculiarly modern forms which developed in Europe - Christian-state, ethnic-nationalist, and (to a lesser extent) racist - really took hold in America. In the absence of officially legitimated variants, American antisemitism derived from individual psychological sources, from the residual traditionalism of certain subcultures or from groups peripheral to the dominant culture, and de novo from changing intergroup relations.

              American Jewish orientations also differed from their European counterparts. In Europe, as we have seen, three views opposed liberal, reform ideology, which was felt to have failed: traditional-ghetto, socialist-secular, and ethnic-nationalist (Zionism). The first of these alternatives was generally left behind by American Jews by the decision to emigrate, while the last two were partly identified with the European experience or with the transitional immigrant ghetto experience; and liberal assimilationism which did not require giving up religious beliefs, was by no means found to have failed in America. Indeed, American Jewry since the Second World War has faced a new situation: the Holocaust effectively ended the European referent and all that went with it; the creation of the state of Israel realized the (historically, European) goal of an ethnic-national solution, leaving it as the major alternative to American liberal-assimilationism - and incidentally providing certain new grounds for antisemitism, mainly in charges of double national loyalty; and within America, changing puralistic intergroup relations have created a new set of challenges which are still being addressed.

              America is in a certain sense the classical locus since ancient times for observing the relations of Jews with other groups in a society, because Jews have not had such comparable equality with other groups since then and because America is comparatively free of the burden of medieval and modern European history. Jews had greater socioeconomic success than many other immigrant groups prior to World War II primarily because they arrived with more urban skills at the outset and later obtained more and better education, and because of their smaller family size and older population profile (Kahan, 1981). This success initially preserved a certain degree of folkish prejudice, partly because it supported traditional stereotypes and partly because it fueled economic conflict of interests; after the war other white groups caught up economically, and as mutual assimilation proceeded antisemitic prejudice declined (see Stember, 1966; Erskine, 1965-66; Selznick and Steinberg, 1969; Lipset and Schneider, 1978; Martire and Clark, 1982; Rosenfeld, 1982). Jews were probably not in greater intergroup conflict over foreign policy questions through World War II than were other immigrant nationality groups (for instance, Germans, Italians, and Irish opposed American alliance with Britain in that war); after World War II, and especially after the oil crisis of 1974, new strains (conflict, perhaps eventually prejudice) may emerge, centering around America's support for Israel. Ironically, the greatest tension in the postwar period has arisen between Jews and blacks (see Marx, 1967; Quinley and Glock, 1983). Jews found themselves in the upper socioeconomic levels, but with an orientation of a group discriminated against, at the time the black movement emerged. Initially there was economic conflict, especially in stores run by Jews in the black communities (many of these neighborhoods were formerly Jewish, and many Jews kept their businesses there after they changed their residences), but ideological conflict has grown over principles of anti-discrimination and also some foreign policy issues, and prejudice has emerged from these conflicts and from the political opportunism of some leaders who have sought to exploit the conflicts (Weisman, 1980-81).

* * * * * *

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CONTACT, CONFLICT AND PREJUDICE:

ANTISEMITISM IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERGROUP RELATIONS

Abridged Version:

Delivered at the 1983 Annual Meetings

of the American Sociological Association

by

Frederick D. Weil

Department of Sociology

University of Chicago

This draft: August, 1983

CONTACT, CONFLICT AND PREJUDICE:

ANTISEMITISM IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERGROUP RELATIONS

              My goal in this paper is to suggest a framework for analyzing antisemitism, and although in some places it may sound as if I am attempting to provide that analysis, that will be more than I can do here. In other words, what I am presenting here is a program or prologue for analysis rather than the analysis itself. The paper at present consists of two parts, and a third, which is still to be written, is planned. In the first part of the paper, I sketch the framework of analysis briefly: I will argue that it makes a good deal of sense to examine antisemitism in the context of intergroup relations, and I will suggest that we consider three types of relation -- contact, conflict, and prejudice -- as well as a number of arenas of relations -- especially the political, the economic, the social, and the religious and cultural realms. In the second part of the paper, which is the longer section, I try to develop several historical types of antisemitism (or lack of it) characterized by different configurations of intergroup relations. I will not be attempting to give an historical account in this section, although it may often sound like it; rather, I will be engaging in the dubious social science enterprise of developing ideal types -- dubious because they too often degenerate into stereotypes and simply obscure what they hope to clarify. The third section of the paper, which as I say is still to be written, will consist of an application of the framework and typology to several historical cases of antisemitism, mainly in late nineteenth century Europe. I hope that the approach I develop will allow me to account simply for certain national differences at that time.

A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS

              Types of Intergroup Relations

              I would like to argue that antisemitism is best understood in the context of -- and as a part of intergroup relations. Jacob Katz put the matter this way,

The relationship between Jews and Gentiles is at all times a reciprocal one. The behavior of the Jews towards their neighbors is conditioned by the behavior of the latter towards them, and vice versa. A real insight into this relationship can therefore be gained only by concentrating our attention simultaneously on both sides of the barrier. Every attitude of the Jew towards the non-Jew has its counterpart in a similar attitude of the Gentile towards the Jew. Similarity does not mean, however, that exactly the same pattern of behavior is to be observed both on the Jewish and on the Christian side, for the position of each is different. (Katz, 1961: 3)

              In this view, then, it would be incorrect to view Jews simply as passive objects of antisemitism. Nor is this a case of blaming the victim: the positive beliefs and cohesiveness of Jews -- things which Jews cannot be expected to give up and remain Jews -- may well arouse animosity among Gentiles under certain circumstances, just as the beliefs and cohesiveness of Gentiles may arouse the animosity of Jews. Since this is inevitably so, it seems imperative to consider further which types of intergroup relationship arouse animosity and which ones lead to harmony. (I might add that the fact that Gentiles have usually been more powerful than Jews does not reduce the utility of this approach, although it is clearly one of the most important factors in explaining outcomes.)

              Let us consider three types of intergroup relation: contact, conflict, and prejudice.

              In the first place, we will find that it makes a great deal of difference whether or not two groups which are aware of each other actually have contact with each other, and of course, it is also important how much contact they have and what the nature of the contact is -- for example, whether or not it is among equals. Moreover, assuming that the groups do not have absolutely harmonious relations -- which would be rare -- it is possible to distinguish different types of intergroup tension. Perhaps the simpler type is conflict of interests, which may be further subdivided into conflicts over material interests and conflicts over so-called "ideal" interests such as religious or ideological doctrine. Prejudice is not the same thing as conflict, and it is probably a more complex phenomenon. It may exist in a variety of forms -- for example, scapegoating, double standards, and stereotypes -- but more problematically, it may also be conscious and intentional or it may be an unconscious phenomenon. We might find conscious prejudice in scapegoating, for instance, in an opportunistic incitement of popular sentiment against some group for the purpose of distracting attention from a real problem; unconscious prejudice, on the other hand, may be sought in individual psychology or in cultural or linguistic tradition.

              These distinctions in intergroup tension are important, because each type has different characteristics; and we will not understand tension correctly if we mix them up. Moreover, intergroup contact has a different effect on conflict than it does on prejudice. We can express the relationships among these three categories as a set of propositions:

              7.    There could be no conflict between groups without contact. Of course, not all forms of contact lead to conflict, but at least some form must be a necessary condition.

              8.    In contrast, contact -- or at least certain forms of contact -- should reduce prejudice, since prejudice is generally based on untruth.

              9.    Conflict may, under certain circumstances, lead to prejudice, but it may not do so at all. Intergroup tension may simply remain conflictual, and it is important not to confuse conflict with prejudice.

              At this point, we can already draw one very important practical conclusion regarding the ability of education, enlightenment, or therapy to reduce intergroup tension. If the tension is strictly conflictual, then there is no reason to think that education or the others will have any effect at all: the groups already understand their own and the other's position, and what is needed is conflict regulation or bargaining mediation. To the extent that the tension consists of prejudice, however, education and the rest may well help reduce tension -- if that is its intent. We must at least recognize the possibility that if education reflects an "official" culture which is itself prejudiced, then education is unlikely to reduce prejudice.

              Arenas of Intergroup Relations

              In the interest of brevity, I do not want to say anything systematically about the different arenas in which intergroup relations can occur -- political, economic, social, religious/cultural. Rather, I would like to mention two examples from America in the mid-1960s, which may be familiar. Rural fundamentalist Christians were found to be especially likely to say that Jews have too much political power on opinion surveys. But this group has little contact with Jews and has less education than average: many who have analyzed these surveys have concluded that this is an expression of pure prejudice, not conflict, which more contact and education might remedy. On the other hand, ghetto blacks were found to say on similar surveys that Jews behave unfairly in economic situations, but they did not say that Jews have too much political power. In fact, the more contact these blacks had and the more educated they were, the more likely they were to express these opinions: this would seem to be a case of economic conflict, not prejudice. I might add that opinion surveys do not find the same situation for either group in the 1980s.

AN HISTORICAL TYPOLOGY

              I will not develop the theoretical framework further at this point: its broad outlines are at any rate already visible. Rather, I want to move to the second section of the paper and suggest an historical typology based on this framework. I also want to remind the reader that I do not intend the following as an historical account, but rather as a typology which could be used in giving such an account; thus, I will be stressing certain aspects of the history more than a narrative account would perhaps warrant.

              The Ancient Period: Conflict without Prejudice?

              In the ancient world, Jewish-Gentile relations were largely non-prejudicial. The Jews were considered and considered themselves a people, an ethnos, or a nation, like others. Whether or not the Jewish people possessed a state depended on the balance of power between the neighboring empires. And at those times when the Jews did possess a state, its relations with other states covered the normal range, from peace to war, and Israel was known to have a capable military. The Jews also held a normal range of occupations: most of them were farmers, but there were also artisans, merchants, and so on. In general, internal class divisions rose when the Jews encountered less external hostility and fell when they encountered greater external hostility.

              The greatest peculiarity of the Jews in the ancient world was their monotheistic religion. However, monotheism as such was not the direct cause of hostility towards the Jews -- not even when it was falsely understood. Although there were variations, the polytheism of most of the neighboring nations tended to make them tolerant of other religions, including that of the Jews. Rather, monotheism caused hostility indirectly, for it reinforced Jewish communal cohesion, exclusiveness, and militancy: it made the Jews themselves more hostile to other groups and intolerant of other religions and external control. The direct cause of external hostility was political. As Isaak Heinemann wrote, this was not a "religious war, but rather a power struggle." "The fact that the Jews have an entirely different sort of worship was everywhere recognized, and it had a powerful attractive and repulsive effect; it only led to political consequences when the Jewish settlement expanded or followed a policy which was feared." (1931: 18)

              Christianity and Feudalism: The origins of "Traditionalism"

              Leaving aside any consideration of Islam, we may say that anti-Jewish prejudice has its origins in the doctrinal struggles of Judaism with Christianity. It is not necessary to decide whether Jewish monotheism passed its intolerance on to its daughter religion, Christianity: it is only necessary to note that the two religions were conflicting exponents of the same tradition, each claiming to possess the truth, and that for a very considerable part of this first millennium, Christianity regarded the existence of Judaism as posing a mortal threat to itself. It responded in part with defamation, and the charge of deicide was made almost from the outset.

              However, we must not suppose that Christian hostility and fear was an invention out of thin air: it reflected that of the Jews. And even though the Jews were weakened by the loss of their state, they remained militant in defence of their religion and social organization, and for a long time they successfully competed with Christians for proselytes. Nor were the Jews socially and economically degraded in the first millennium to the extent they were later: they continued to hold a wide range of occupations, including farming; they were among the elites in many places in the diaspora, both economically and politically, and they retained the right to bear arms in some European localities even until the thirteenth century; under the protection of princes in Western Europe, Jews retained very considerable communal freedom and autonomy until the eleventh century and were even protected from forced conversions; and perhaps most importantly, Jews retained good relations with the imperfectly Christianized common people of Europe and their religion even exercised a certain attraction.

              The decisive drop in the Jews' position came to the extent that Christianity became the legal religion of any area and the authorities enforced a subordinate status on the Jews: first the Roman Empire and later in Europe. (In this regard, Parkes writes, "In so far as legislation was concerned, a right once lost was never permanently regained. The restrictions were continually reinforced. The path towards their medieval position and the medieval ghetto was followed relentlessly and without deviation." [1969: 199]) Jews were religiously persecuted as long as they did not accept Jesus as the messiah, but they were also preserved for an eventual conversion and to bear witness to the truth of Christianity. Christians in power also applied long-term socioeconomic pressure on the Jews, forcing them into ever fewer occupations, especially into money-lending -- interest on loans to coreligionists being doctrinally prohibited to both religions. And by the time of the eleventh century when Pope Urban II preached the first Crusade, some especially zealous mendicant monks and priests were exceeding doctrinally approved bounds and engaging in rabble-rousing against Jewish populations, also spreading lies which now appeared for the first time -- well-poisoning, desecration of the host, ritual murder -- and later Popes occasionally had to issue edicts denouncing extremes. In part, this was an attempt by the Church not only to degrade the Jews, but also to break social contact between them and the Christian masses; and the Jews also responded by cutting social contact with Christians. This combination of factors -- the break in social contact, the conflict of interest especially over money lending and the double moral standard which grew out of it, the pressure of theological hostility and sometimes lies -- all these factors encouraged the growth of "folk" popular prejudice on one side and of political opportunism and scapegoating among the secular rulers on the other side. Popular stereotypes and prejudice sometimes led to pogroms in times of hardship, especially when whipped up by secular or clerical elites. Rulers also exploited these prejudices and popular resentment against perceived Jewish usury: Jews were treated as "sponges," soaking up money from the population in interest on loans and then expropriated and expelled; the cycle of protection and expulsion was often repeated several times. The most extreme result in terms of intergroup relations was the formation of the ghetto, desired in part by both sides: the withdrawal into the ghetto deepened the break in social contact, and perhaps to that extent reduced religious and economic conflict, but also probably exacerbated prejudice.

              The Modern Period: Prejudice without Christianity?

              Two factors, one political, one cultural, in the rise of the modern period helped break up the feudal/traditional dynamic of antisemitism and set in motion a modern dynamic. The centralizing state aspired to (and eventually did) break up all feudal corporate bodies, including the Jewish ghetto and its solidaristic social organization: rather, all loyalty was demanded for itself (e.g. Napoleon's convening of the Sanhedrin). At the same time, Enlightenment rationalism attacked the Church (already divided by the Reformation) and religion generally as mystification: this weakened theologically-based antisemitism by weakening its source. The direct result of these factors was the establishment of a new "first-order" modern dynamic of pressure to assimilate, opposed by the obstacle of residual traditional antisemitism: this was basically the initial Continental liberal pattern.

              Jews generally split over the offer of assimilation depending on (a) their own willingness to live in a larger social context than their ghetto solidarity, and (b) what exactly the dominant society offered to and demanded of them. To the extent that the modernization process was slow, flawed, or incomplete (as esp. in Germany: Ruerup, 1975), traditional elements of the dominant society retained considerable power to delay or deny Jewish admittance to the state bureaucracy, the army, the university, and some free professions: this in itself exacerbated the split in the Jewish community and also increased popular prejudice against Jews. To the extent that the modernization process was fast or nearly complete, assimilation acted as a solvent to traditional Jewish self-conceptions: Judaism itself, as a religion, was attacked by Enlightenment rationalism; assimilation and/or religious reform threatened Jewish solidarity and identity; and even when the Jewish religion per se was permitted, conceptions of Judaism as a nation or people was generally not permitted by the centralizing states: Jewish law and community self-regulation -- in short, all legal-ethical double standards -- were prohibited in the same way.

              The socialist-communist variant carried this pattern to an extreme by prohibiting all religion, and a different sort of persecution of Jews resulted. Some traditional and some modern forms of antisemitism were opportunistically exploited by rulers, who upon occasion used Jews as scapegoats for political purposes. [Something about early socialist movement on "The Jewish Question."]

              On the right, the romantic reaction against the Enlightenment created more serious problems, along with them, a kind of "second-order" modern antisemitism. The most traditional form of antisemitism in this context was simply reactionary: a desire to roll back the assimilation of Jews into the mainstream society. Perhaps the most straightforward variant of this type was the concept of the "Christian state:" the essence of the state was to be Christian, and only those Jews who actually converted would be permitted to take part in national life. The sincerity of converts was sometimes distrusted (as had been the case of the Maranos in Inquisition Spain), but conversion was not held to be impossible as in more radical formulations. Another variant, and perhaps the most typical, was non-religious folkish (and romantic) nationalism: the state was to be an ethnic national state, whose people had a definite cultural character, and Jews were considered as a foreign people (Volk) and were to be excluded. Again, although assimilation was not as open as with Christian baptism, it was not held to be impossible in principle as long as the Jew took on all cultural characteristics of the host people, including usually its religion (and the newly assimilated were mocked for their not fully successful efforts to fit in). The most radical variant was racist antisemitism, which combined romantic ethnic national goals with the scientific tradition of anthropology and Darwinian evolution (Mosse, 1978): Jews were now held to be another race and inassimilable in principle. Moreover, they were a definite danger to the national race precisely to the extent that they did assimilate, for they then corrupted the blood of the dominant race. The racist variant also had the goal of genocide, a goal not shared by other forms of antisemitism: in fact, it was a specifically anti-Christian goal, since the latter wanted to preserve the Jews for the Second Coming. However, all these variants adapted traditional forms of anti-Jewish prejudice to the new situation (Katz, 1980), and this prejudice was sharpened by (a) the continued lack of contact with traditional Jews, many of whom were immigrants from Eastern to Western Europe, and who were also held to be the most authentic, and (b) on the other side, the great economic success of the most assimilated Jews, which put them in conflict especially with certain of the old middle classes (small farmers and peasants, craftsmen, small tradesmen and merchants, small producers, some free professionals) whose economic existence was threatened by capitalist growth and economic crises -- both of which were stereotypically identified with the Jews (Rosenberg, 1967).

              Another Jewish reaction, this one to "second-order" forms of antisemitism, was adherence to Jewish ethnic nationalism, Zionism: Jews were also held to be a nation (without a state), and the host nations were held incapable of relinquishing their antisemitism. Zionism was opposed within the Jewish community (a) by traditional ghetto leaders, (b) by liberal (reform) assimilated Jews, and (c) by Jewish socialists.

              Anti-Semitic outbreaks at the turn of the century were in general not of the most radical, racist variety, but rather Christian- or ethnic-state in nature, as in Western and Central Europe, or fully traditional, with opportunistic help from national leaders, as in Russia.

              The Holocaust, on the other hand, was of the radical racist variety, and it did indeed practice genocide. The Holocaust was not a logically or historically "necessary" outcome, but rather the result of incomplete modernization, a flawed party system (which did not offer effective alternatives loyal to the republic) and economic, military and foreign policy crises: a radical party came to power, committed to radical antisemitism, but it was not elected for that reason. The mass murder itself was carried out bureaucratically, "without passion," by the party/state apparatus, without the participation (and to some extent, without the knowledge) of the bulk of the population: research has shown that there was in fact no mass support for genocide, at most for disenfranchisement (Steinert, 1967). Such bureaucratic mass murder without widespread popular support is only possible in a particular sort of society. Germany was a modern nation-state, with wide franchise, in which virtually all autonomous centers of potential resistance had been broken down, and with an unfree and unstable political culture: that is, there was a combination of radical aspirations plus the means to carry them out at the central state level, together with an inability to resist and fear of doing so at the mass level. But more than this, a particular (modern) form of moral indifference played a role (Baum, 1982): in a large society in which traditional bonds have disintegrated and in which modern institutional ties have broken down, and in a perceived crisis, contact in a mass society becomes degraded (in this sense, meaningful contact becomes "inflated" and thereby devalued), and it becomes possible for some sectors of the population to consider others as morally subhuman. This moral indifference is a more radical phenomenon than the medieval moral double standard.

              The Question of American Exceptionalism

              The destruction of European Jewry left the United States the home of the largest diaspora Jewish community -- and indeed, despite the recreation of a Jewish state, the largest Jewish community altogether. It is thus especially important to inquire whether there existed here too an American exceptionalism, whether as Ben Halpern asked most fully "America is different" (1956). The basic answer can be expressed analogously to the answer to the original question of American exceptionalism ("no feudalism, no socialism"): "no traditionalism, no antisemitism."

              The lack of "traditionalism" in America does not only mean that there was no medieval antisemitism; its absence also affected both the "first-" and "second-order" forms of modern antisemitism. Individual assimilation was demanded of American Jews, just as it was of European Jews, but the dominant American society differed in two important respects. In the first place, liberal ideals of equal opportunity were firmly established in American culture, not disputed by any major groups on the right or the left: American conservatives outside the South have generally been eighteenth century federalists or nineteenth century liberals, almost never romantic reactionaries. And in the second place, American society was relatively "unformed:" there was no established church (most were, in fact, dissenting), elites were not formally defined by legal, traditional, religious/cultural criteria, and Jews themselves were only one of a number of immigrant ethnic groups, all of which aspired to be assimilated and eventually laid claim to a part in further determining the character of American society. Thus, Jewish assimilation in America never faced the barriers that it did in post-traditional Europe. In the same sense, reactionary "second-order" modern antisemitism never achieved the success in America that it did in Europe. In Europe, Jewish Emancipation was connected to the revolutionary process, and political reaction therefore became opposed to Jewish assimilation; in America, there never was an Emancipation, nor was liberal ideology ever opposed by reactionary desires for the old regime. Thus, just as there was never an officially legitimated religious/traditional antisemitism in America, none of the peculiarly modern forms which developed in Europe -- Christian-state, ethnic-nationalist, and (to a lesser extent) racist -- really took hold in America. In the absence of officially legitimated variants, American antisemitism derived from individual psychological sources, from the residual traditionalism of certain subcultures or from groups peripheral to the dominant culture, and de novo from changing intergroup relations.

              American Jewish orientations also differed from their European counterparts. In Europe, as we have seen, three views opposed liberal, reform ideology, which was felt to have failed: traditional-ghetto, socialist-secular, and ethnic-nationalist (Zionism). The firs of these alternatives was generally left behind by American Jews by the decision to emigrate, while the last two were partly identified with the European experience or with the transitional immigrant ghetto experience; and liberal assimilationism which did not require giving up religious beliefs, was by no means found to have failed in America. Indeed, American Jewry since the Second World War has faced a new situation: the Holocaust effectively ended the European referent and all that went with it; the creation of the state of Israel realized the (historically, European) goal of an ethnic-national solution, leaving it as the major alternative to American liberal-assimilationism -- and incidentally providing certain new grounds for antisemitism, mainly in charges of double national loyalty; and within America, changing puralistic intergroup relations have created a new set of challenges which are still being addressed.

              America is in a certain sense the classical locus since ancient times for observing the relations of Jews with ;other groups in a society, because Jews have not had such comparable equality with other groups since then and because America is comparatively free of the burden of medieval and modern European history. Jews had greater socioeconomic success than many other immigrant groups prior to World War II primarily because they arrived with more urban skills at the outset and later obtained more and better education, and because of their smaller family size and older population profile (Kahan, 1981). This success initially preserved a certain degree of folkish prejudice, partly because it supported traditional stereotypes and partly because it fueled economic conflict of interests; after the war other white groups caught up economically, and as mutual assimilation proceeded anti-Semitic prejudice declined. Jews were probably not in greater intergroup conflict over foreign policy questions through World War II than were other immigrant nationality groups (for instance, Germans, Italians, and Irish opposed American alliance with Britain in that war); after World War II, and especially after the oil crisis of 1974, new strains (conflict, perhaps eventually prejudice) may emerge, centering around America's support for Israel. Ironically, the greatest tension in the postwar period has arisen between Jews and blacks. Jews found themselves in the upper socioeconomic levels, but with an orientation of a group discriminated against, at the time the black movement emerged. Initially there was economic conflict, especially in stores run by Jews in the black ghettos (many of these neighborhoods were formerly Jewish, and many Jews kept their businesses there after they changed their residences), but ideological conflict has grown over principles of anti-discrimination and also some foreign policy issues, and prejudice has emerged from these conflicts and from the political opportunism of some leaders who have sought to exploit the conflicts for their own ambitions.

REFERENCES

Baum, Rainer C.. 1982. The Holocaust and the German Elite. Totowa, NJ. Rowman & Littlefield.

Halpern, Ben. 1956. The American Jew: A Zionist Analysis. New York. Theodore Herzl Foundation.

Heinemann, Isaak. 1931. "Antisemitismus." Pp. 3-43 in Wilhelm Kroll (ed.), Paulys-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Supp. 5. Stuttgart.

Kahan, Arcadius. 1981. "Jewish life in the United States: perspectives from economics." Pp. 237-270 in Joseph B. Gittler (ed.), Jewish Life in The United States: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. New York. New York University Press.

Katz, Jacob. 1961. Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Katz, Jacob. 1980. From Prejudice to Destruction: Antisemitism, 1700-1933. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.

Mosse, George. 1978. Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. New York. Howard Fertig.

Parkes, James. 1969. The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism. New York. Atheneum. [1934]

Rosenberg, Hans. 1967. Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit. Berlin. Walter de Gruyter.

Ruerup, Reinhard. 1975. Emanzipation und Antisemitismus. Goettingen. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Steinert, Marlis G. 1967. Hitler's War and the Germans. Athens, Ohio. Ohio University Press.

[End of Appendix, “Contact, Conflict and Prejudice.” See first part of this document for the main paper.]