In medieval Europe, Jews were not passive victims of the Christian community, as is often assumed, but rather were startlingly assertive, forming a Jewish civilization within Latin Christian society. Both Jews and Christians considered themselves to be God’s chosen people. These dueling claims fueled the rise of both cultures as they became rivals for supremacy. In How the West Became Antisemitic, Ivan Marcus shows how Christian and Jewish competition in medieval Europe laid the foundation for modern antisemitism.
Marcus explains that Jews accepted Christians as misguided practitioners of their ancestral customs, but regarded Christianity as idolatry. Christians, on the other hand, looked at Jews themselves—not Judaism—as despised. They directed their hatred at a real and imagined Jew: theoretically subordinate, but sometimes assertive, an implacable “enemy within.” In their view, Jews were permanently and physically Jewish—impossible to convert to Christianity. Thus Christians came to hate Jews first for religious reasons, and eventually for racial ones. Even when Jews no longer lived among them, medieval Christians could not forget their former neighbors. Modern antisemitism, based on the imagined Jew as powerful and world dominating, is a transformation of this medieval hatred.
A sweeping and well-documented history of the rivalry between Jewish and Christian civilizations during the making of Europe, How the West Became Antisemitic is an ambitious new interpretation of the medieval world and its impact on modernity.
Ivan G. Marcus is the Frederick P. Rose Professor of Jewish History at Yale University. He is the author of Piety and Society: The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany; Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe; The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times; and Sefer Hasidim and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe.
"Riveting."—Christopher Akers, The Spectator
"A major contribution to what is an ongoing scholarly conversation about mediaeval and ‘modern’ anti-Semitism. . . .A thought-provoking book."—Francis Ghilès, Arab Weekly
"Provocative and timely."—Glenn C. Altschuler, The Jerusalem Post
"Highly clarifying."—Samuel Rubinstein, Engelsberg Ideas
"[Marcus’s] impeccable scholarship and lucid prose offer an excellent introduction to a topic that is, alas, still timely."—John Tolan, Times Literary Supplement
"Impeccably detailed. . . . Marcus argues that modern antisemitism is the historical successor of medieval antisemitism. . . . Thus, Marcus suggests, understanding the forces that gave rise to the structure of antisemitism helps us understand, and combat, antisemitism today."—Brian Hillman, Jewish Book Council
"Erudite. . . . Readers of this illuminating book are informed, if not comforted, about Jewish historical fate."—Benjamin Ivry, Forward
“Ivan Marcus's new book is an excellent sober historical genealogy of modern antisemitism. Marcus spends most of the book establishing the structure of premedieval and medieval hatred of Jews, especially in Christian Europe, and then demonstrates compellingly that the continuity between those structures (not the stereotypes) can be shown to persist in the modern ‘secularized’ versions of antisemitism. There is so much learning in and so much to learn from this clearly and engagingly written work; it is a major new challenge to historiographical doctrines claiming that there is an absolute break between premodern anti-Judaism and modern antisemitism.”—Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley
“Ivan Marcus’s book is a major intervention in the ongoing scholarly conversation about medieval and modern ‘antisemitism,’ including the debate as to whether this is the correct word to describe the cluster of hostile attitudes toward Jews in the earlier period. He strongly defends the usage in this characteristically evenhanded but spirited and engaging study of a painful subject. It ought to command wide readership and stimulate an enormous amount of productive critical response.”—William C. Jordan, Princeton University
“My college classmate Ivan Marcus has written a fresh, thought-provoking book about the origins in medieval Europe of modern antisemitism. It will give Christian and Jewish readers today a lot to think about regarding the behavior of their ancestors in medieval times.”—Joseph I. Lieberman, former United States Senator
