The rise of anti-Semitism during the second half of the nineteenth century
challenged the gains that Jews had made during that century. Initially a
central and western European phenomenon, anti-Semitism differed funda-
mentally from the earlier expression of anti-Judaism. The latter was primarily
religious – the Jew as guilty of deicide and in league with Satan – with an
economic component: the Jew as usurer. By contrast, anti-Semitism con-
demned Jews in racial and political terms. Like anti-Jewish sentiments,
though, anti-Semitism appealed to a varied and broad audience. It could be
tailored to win believers among the uneducated masses, but also appealed to
an educated audience.
Historians distinguish three overlapping periods in the history of European
anti-Semitism. From 1870 to 1918, anti-Semitism was largely polemical in
nature, expressed in word and text. From the end of the First World War until
1938, systemic forms of anti-Semitism – anti-Jewish legislation – were
adjoined to polemical anti-Semitism. After 1938, as anti-Semitism was sub-
sumed by Nazi anti-Semitism, it turned predominantly violent until 1945. In
this regard, it is important to distinguish anti-Semitism from Nazism. Not all
anti-Semites were Nazis, nor is it possible to draw a straight line from the rise
of anti-Semitism to the rise of Nazi anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism began as a critique of the changes of the nineteenth cen-
tury: capitalism, industrialization, secularization, urbanization, and civic
equality. For some, these changes were essential elements of the path to a per-
fect world. They saw the years leading up to 1914 as an age of progress in
which crime, disease, poverty, war, and intolerance were disappearing. They
explained away evidence to the contrary as vestiges of the Middle Ages, and
assumed that the evils of society existed only in backward parts of the world,
and among the reactionary and ignorant elements of the population such as
the clergy and nobility. The spread of enlightenment, coupled with scientific
and technological advances, they assumed, would eventually rid the world of
anti-Semitism and other evils. They viewed emancipation and the acceptance
of Jews into the mainstream as a measure of the perfectibility of humanity.
Chapter 8