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RR 2006/185 Anti-Semitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution Edited by Richard S. Levy ABC-Clio Santa Barbara, CA and Oxford 2005 2 vols ISBN 1 85109 439 3 £125/$185 Also available as an e-book (ISBN 1 85109 444 X)
Keywords Encyclopedias, Ethnic groups, History, Racial discrimination
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120610664105
Many have believed that the Jews should not live as Jews, and should be converted, say, to Christianity. Others have believed that the Jews should not live at all, and that, under a racist logic, should be attacked. These are two broad strands of several associated with anti-Semitism. Historically, forms of this can be found for centuries (for example, accusations that the Jews were responsible for the Black Death and, later, that they were mongrelizing the pure Aryan races with their usury and corruption), even though the term "anti-Semitism" appears to have assumed wide usage as an "ideology" in the late nineteenth-century (as a counter to "Semitism", those characteristics associated with Jews). These issues are part of a wider debate about what is variously called "the Jewish question" or "the Jewish problem" (making something a problem always gives it an artificial substantiality). Politically, there is the issue about Israel in the Middle East (not the same as Zionism), about Judaism (the culture and faith) in a cross-cultural and ecumenical world, and, wider still, the historical legacy of the Holocaust (which for some has provided the most persuasive way of discrediting anti-Semitism).
All these issues and more are acknowledged and examined in this new encyclopedia on anti-Semitism from ABC-Clio, a well-recognized US reference publisher for school, college and university, and general use. The historical and cultural, religious and political resonances, causes and implications of anti-Semitism are all critical to any such work aspiring for usability and authority, and this one covers the bases well. Anti-Semitism usually appears as an entry in other works of reference or is implicit as part of the research in encyclopedias about the Holocaust or Judaism and the like. Here, it takes centre stage in its own right. Richard Levy (the editor, of the University of Illinois at Chicago) suggests that anti-Semitism has been political and ideological for over a century, but that the phenomenon extends far back...