In this provocative book, Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer analyze the lies, misperceptions, and myths about Jews and Judaism that anti-semites have propagated throughout the centuries. Beginning with antiquity, and continuing into the present day, the authors explore the irrational fabrications that have led to numerous acts of violence and hatred against Jews. The book examines ancient and medieval myths central to the history of anti-semitism: Jews as 'Christ-killers', instruments of Satan, and ritual murderers of Christian children. It also explores the scapegoating of Jews in the modern world as conspirators bent on world domination; extortionists who manufactured the Holocaust as a hoax designed to gain reparation payments from Germany; and the leaders of the slave trade that put Africa in chains. No other book has focused its attention exclusively on a thematic discussion of historic and contemporary anti-semitic myths, covering such an expansive scope of time, and allowing for such a painstaking level of exemplification. Anti-semitism is an essential book that will serve as a corrective to bigotry, stereotype, and historical distortion.
MARVIN PERRY taught history at Baruch College, City University of New York, USA, for many years. He is the co-editor of Jewish-Christian Encounters Over the Centuries: Symbiosis, Prejudice, Holocaust, Dialogue and author of Western Civilization: A Brief History.
FREDERICK M. SCHWEITZER is Professor of History at Manhattan College, USA. He is the co-editor, with Marvin Perry, of Jewish-Christian Encounters Over the Centuries: Symbiosis, Prejudice, Holocaust, Dialogue and is author of A History of the Jews Since the First Century A.D.
Table of Contents
Introduction The Trial and Death of Jesus: 'The Myth of Christ-Killers' and the 'Criminal People' Ritual Murderers: Christian Blood and Jewish Matzohs The Diabolization of Jews: Evil Demons, Conspirators, and Race Defilers Homo Judaicus Economicus: The Jew as Shylock, Parasite, and Plurat Denying the Holocaust A Neo-Nazi Mythology Anti-Semitic Myths Blackwashed: The Nation of Islam Inherits a Devil Conclusion
What People are Saying About This
Henry L. Feingold
...a lucidly written work that reminds us that Man's myth making propensity lives side by side with his rationality. (Henry L. Feingold, member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Jewish History and author of Lest Memory Cease: Finding Meaning in the American Jewish Past.)
