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PARTISAN REVIEW
Another consequence of modernity which I think profoundly influ–
enced anti-Semitism, and still does, is the constant breaking down of so–
cial barriers that had existed in the past - the physical barriers that had
separated Jews from non-Jews by erecting ghetto walls led to a clear sep–
aration between Jews and Christians, a marking off of social, economic,
and spiritual identities. In the modern world, you have an increasing
blurring of notions of fixed identity. It seems to me that anti-Semitism
during the past century has tried in a caricatured, distorted, and often
hysterical manner to deal with real crises of personal or group identity.
Certainly for the anti-Semite, whether the origin of his hatred be reli–
gious, cultural, political, or nationalist, it is the Jew as the Other who
explains and reinforces the source of his own fragmented identity. That is
often a psychological key to anti-Semitism.
Now, the racist discourse of anti-Semitism that assumed such im–
mense proportions since the late nineteenth century derived in part from
the need to establish a new demarcation line between Jews and non–
Jews, to reinforce or replace the boundary that was in the process of
erosion as a result of emancipation and assimilation. Precisely as Jews be–
gan to resemble the majority Gentile society more and more, as they
adopted the dress, the customs, the language and culture of their hosts, as
the visible signs of separation were dissolving, biological racism emerged
as a new and ultimately much more dangerous way of reestablishing and
refixing a disappearing set of boundaries. But now it was not faith but
anatomy and a whole pseudoscience based on biology and racial myths
that determined the new lines of division.
Then there is the
political
aspect. If we are concerned with anti–
Semitism in the first instance, it is because we are well aware of its danger
as a murderous and even genocidal political phenomenon. On the other
hand, Jews have often lived in societies with certain levels of anti–
Semitism that they have been able to tolerate: this is the kind of anti–
Semitism which is essentially no different from xenophobic forms of prej–
udice that exist in all societies, an almost "normal" type of ethnocen–
trism. Realistically, such prejudice, whether now or in the future, is un–
likely to disappear in its simple, straightforward form, nor do I think
that is what essentially preoccupies Jews. They are not overly worried by
the more benign forms of everyday social discrimination. But we know
that even here, there is a danger. Along the spectrum that leads from
that banal level of prejudice with which Jews can live relatively easily, to
the ultimate horrors of the Shoah, there are many intermediate stages,
each with their own characteristics. The politicization of anti-Semitism,
it should be remembered, was a fairly recent development: it has existed
for about a hundred and twenty years. I think that it derived partly from
