Antisemitism (Prejudice)

This book shows how scholarly studies of prejudice, identity formation, and genocide studies can shed light on global examples of religious hatred. The book is divided into four parts, focusing respectively on: theories of prejudice and violence; historical developments of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and race; contemporary Western antisemitism and Islamophobia; and, prejudices beyond the West in the Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Each part ends with a special focus section.

Key features include:
- A compelling synthesis of theories of prejudice, identity, and hatred to explain Islamophobia and antisemitism.
- An innovative theory of human violence and genocide which explains the link to prejudice.
- Case studies of both Western antisemitism and Islamophobia in history and today, alongside global studies of Islamic antisemitism and Hindu and Buddhist Islamophobia
- Integrates discussion of race and racialisation as aspects of Islamophobic and antisemitic prejudice in relation to their framing in religious discourses.
- Accessible for general readers and students, it can be employed as a textbook for students or read with benefit by scholars for its novel synthesis and theories.

The book focuses on antisemitism and Islamophobia, both in the West and beyond, including examples of prejudices and hatred in the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions. Drawing on examples from Europe, North America, MENA, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, Paul Hedges points to common patterns, while identifying the specifics of local context.
Religious Hatred is an essential guide for understanding the historical origins of religious hatred, the manifestations of this hatred across diverse religious and cultural contexts, and the strategies employed by activists and peacemakers to overcome this hatred.

The Jewish peoples have endured thousands of years of discrimination and subjugation, yet during this new millennium, Jews and antisemitism are conspicuously absent from university ethnic studies classroom discourse in the United States. Those scholars, determined to penetrate the walls of the multicultural education stronghold, are met with an ebb and flow of silence and vociferous resistance. A primary rationale for multiculturalists ignoring antisemitism appears to be the Zionist question and how they, themselves, perceive Israel's relationship with Palestine. This qualitative case study analyzed interviews of six prominent scholars in the areas of multiculturalism, history, and Judaism through a critical pedagogical lens. Throughout this paper, the author explores his personal experiences in regard to educational multiculturalists and the dismissal of Jews as a persecuted group. From discourse analysis of themes and recurrent meanings in the data, it is evident that the majority of study participants believe that Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians is unacceptable, yet that does not justify the large-scale generalizations of the Jewish people in the United States. As a result, this paper argues for the inclusion of the Jewish experience into university multicultural discourse.

This is a draft section of a chapter in my forthcoming Ph.D., in which I explore the anti-Semitic theories and theological views of 19th-century German preacher and politician Adolf Stoecker. I examine Stoecker's influence on Nazism, and suggest that whilst Stoecker certainly influenced Nazi ideology, it is a mistake to view his own anti-Semitism through the lens of the Holocaust.

The vast majority of Holocaust victims and survivors were Ashkenazim. Their main language was Yiddish. Yiddish is very close to German, the main difference being that the former is written in Hebrew letters, while the latter in Latin ones. Postwar Europe' s moral foundation is Holocaust remembrance. But this remembrance to be effective, it must be active in the absence of Holocaust survivors. A way to ensure that could be the novel school and university subject of Yiddish for reading purposes. As a result, researchers and interested Europeans would start reading documents and books in Yiddish again. Germany' s premiere cultural organization, Goethe-Institut, is uniquely well-placed and morally obligated to facilitate the relaunch, popularization and cultivation of the skill to read Yiddish-language sources and publications for both the sake of research and for pleasure.

In 1900, the German Empire was extremely shaken by a violent crime. To the east of the country , in the province of West Prussia in the town of Chojnice (Ger. Konitz), a junior high school student, Ernst Winter, was murdered. The circumstances of the case and the manner of the crime led the local population to believe that the boy had been killed by the Jews in order to win his blood for ritual purposes. The accusation of the local Jewish population resulted in a rapid increase in the hostility of Christians (Germans and Poles) towards their Semitic neighbours. The lie about the guilt of the Jews quickly went through the entire province, and then reached the furthest corners of Germany. In Chojnice, riots and numerous attacks on Jews and their property took place. Anti-Jewish excesses have spread rapidly in West Prussia. The course of the investigation and its relationship with the anti-Jewish riots was described by the main representative of the Polish press in West Prussia – Gazeta Toruńska. Słowa kluczowe: antysemityzm, mord rytualny, przesądy, Żydzi, katolicy, Chojnice, ekscesy anty-żydowskie, Prusy Zachodnie, oskarżenie, Rzesza Niemiecka, " Gazeta Toruńska " W XIX wieku prasa stała się głównym środkiem rozpowszechniania informacji. Było tak do czasu zmonopolizowania rynku medialnego przez telewizję w XX wie-ku. Za pośrednictwem gazet propagowano różne idee społeczne i polityczne, w tym antysemityzm, który wzmógł się w Niemczech po 1871 roku. Rynek prasowy w zjed-noczonej Rzeszy był jednym z najlepiej zorganizowanych w Europie – obok Anglii i Francji. Z każdą dekadą poprawiała się jakość i szybkość dziennikarstwa na szczeb-lach lokalnych, gdzie prowadzono dyskusje o palących kwestiach, opisywano afery kryminalne lub nawoływano do głosowania do sejmiku itp.

ABSTRACT
This article explores the meanings of imagined, secret and hidden
wealth that followers of conspiracy theory account for on different
sides of the moral compass, as bad and good. Conspiracy theory, a
strand of intellectual practice exacerbated by the recent crisis in
Greece, calls for exploring hidden wealth assets, while conspiracy’s
mirror-image, transparency, becomes central in the understanding
of wealth in this conundrum. Through three stories, that of Artemis
Sorras – a self-proclaimed trillionaire, of an anti-Semitic book and
of conspiracist publishers in Greece, I examine the centrality of
(un)accountable wealth in imaginations of peoples’ presents and
pasts. I explore narratives of wealth in conspiracist discourse
trajectories, showing how wealth can play a role in imagined
allegiances and political practices. A focus on conspiracy theory
allows an exegesis of how obscure narratives of wealth are
shaping the ways in which people conceptualize economic crisis.
Notions of accountability and secrecy are central to their (and our)
understandings of wealth – and are laden with contradictions,
according to diverse paths of moralizing the past. An anthropology
of conspiracy theory allows scaling narratives of wealth from the
microhistories of money flows to the political economy of crisis.

A chronology of all measures introduced by the National Socialist municipal administration and other perpetrator agencies against the Berlin Jews. The day by day chronicle, based on many hitherto unknown sources, provides the reader with a detailed and graphic picture of how the exclusion of the Jews from all spheres of public life unfolded over time and who was responsible for it. The introduction discusses the overlooked importance of local institutions for the radicalization of the persecution in the capital of the Third Reich, yet also touches upon the reactions and resistance of the Jews.

Cette thèse parle d’Hommes, d’art et de société. Elle traite de l’histoire d’un banquier Juif ashkénaze né à Bonn en 1804 et de ses descendants. À travers l’étude de douze demeures et de leurs collections, elle raconte l’histoire d’une dynastie d’entrepreneurs qui, de l’ancien Ghetto de Bonn – 821 rue des Juifs – rejoignit le sommet de la haute société européenne. Portraiturés par Léon Bonnat, Carolus-Duran et Renoir, Meyer Joseph Cahen d’Anvers et ses enfants Édouard, Emma, Louis, Raphaël et Albert vécurent les conséquences de l’Affaire Dreyfus, s’efforçant d’exprimer la plénitude de leurs droits civils à travers la sociabilité et le mécénat. Dans leurs salons, en ville et à la campagne, les lecteurs croiseront les pas de Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget, Marcel Proust et César Franck, ou encore de Gabriele D’Annunzio et Matilde Serao. Au château de Champs-sur-Marne, à Torre Alfina et dans les autres demeures de la famille les architectes Destailleur et Giuseppe Partini, ou encore les paysagistes Henri et Achille Duchêne, surent plier la « grammaire » du Moyen Âge, de la Renaissance et du XVIIIe siècle au goût et aux ambitions de leurs commanditaires.

https://www.lgdj.fr/les-cahen-d-anvers-en-france-et-en-italie-9782370323743.html

Focusing on many previously untranslated articles in popular national magazines and newspapers, as well as works by prominent racial theorists, this chapter traces how outrage was systematically fomented against Jews in Nazi-era Germany, creating perceived imperatives for drastic discriminatory measures. Rather than locate the core of Nazi antisemitism in historical or psychological factors, this study approaches antisemitism using the theoretical framework of risk communication. The heuristics of risk perception reveal an array of rhetorical tactics that fomented visceral aversion impervious to logical refutation. Portrayals of Jews as embodying maximal and uncontrollable risk, political, academic, and mass media discourse converged on the theme of Jews as posing unacceptable dangers that required progressively more drastic measures to control. The principles of risk communication, especially the means of inflaming outrage, could furnish useful interpretive frames for analyzing current antisemitism and other types of repressive discourse.

Кресін О.В. «Історія Малоросії» Миколи Маркевича: історична праця та політичний трактат // Studia politologica Ucraino-Polona. Т. 7. 2017. С. 271 – 286.
М. Маркевич був людиною свого часу. Як історик він з методологічної точки зору навіть відстав від свого часу, що не пройшло непоміченим для сучасників та нащадків.
На противагу «Історії Малої Росії» Д. Бантиша-Каменського, написаній в об’єктивістському стилі, він створив публіцистичний твір, де історія виступає лише тлом для політичних ідей автора.
До того ж, твір цей насправді, як уже відзначали дослідники, є переважно компілятивним, у якому, до того ж, ступінь обробки запозичень був дуже низьким. Завдяки М. Маркевичу до історичного обігу під виглядом справжніх документів було
введено низку фальшивок та неавтентичних текстів. Дотепер частина істориків продовжує послуговуватися його працею без застережень, як достовірним джерелом. Парадокс полягає в тому, що М. Маркевич відомий як визначний архівіст та археограф
свого часу. В третьому-п’ятому томах «Історії Малоросії» він опублікував низку важливих джерел, проте при підготовці монографічної частини своєї праці Маркевич практично не використовував достовірних документів.
Отже, «Історія Малоросії» М. Маркевича як історична праця не становить особливого інтересу. Ми розглядаємо «Історію Малоросії» як пам’ятку літератури, а також політичної та правової думки, в якій доволі яскраво відобразився комплекс ідей та
естетичних смаків як самого М. Маркевича, так і цілого періоду в історії української культури. Окрім того, ми вважаємо цю працю однією з ключових для розуміння ідейних витоків творчості Т. Шевченка та інших діячів українського національного відродження
ХІХ ст.
Історики української політичної думки мало звертаються до умовного періоду між кінцем XVIII та серединою ХІХ ст. Саме цей час аж донедавна залишався у відповідних дослідженнях практично не концептуалізованим. Певні позитивні зміни сталися з
появою схеми національного відродження східноєвропейських народів у ХІХ ст. М. Гроха, розвиненої і адаптованої до українських реалій Р. Шпорлюком. Згідно з їх висновками, період, у який творив М. Маркевич, в усіх недержавних на той час народів Східної Європи пройшов під знаком впевненості в етнічному колапсі, розчиненні у
великих поліетнічних націях. У Наддніпрянській Україні це виявилося в уявленні про етнічну монолітність єдиного східнослов’янського російського народу, в Галичині – у
австрофільських ідеях.
Перед обличчям такої невідворотності етнографи та історики виявляли бажання зібрати та зберегти для нащадків духовну та матеріальну пам’ять про народ, що зникає. Через це період, який у Східній Європі умовно займав першу половину ХІХ ст.,
називають академічним. М. Маркевич якраз і був виразним представником цього періоду, який зробив важливий внесок у витворення цілісного історичного та етнографічного образу українського народу. Стверджуючи існування зв’язку між
природою, етнологією, історією та політикою, він, можливо навіть несвідомо, поставив під сумнів ідею про можливість повного злиття українського та російського народів.
Цим він проклав місток до наступної фази розвитку української національної ідеї, що розпочалася у 1840-х рр. і відповідала центрально- та східноєвропейським тенденціям, найповніше втіленим у революціях 1848 р., а саме в запереченні концепції
про злиття народів у суперетнічних спільностях, розквіту слов’янофільства та ідеї про слов’янську федерацію тощо.
У такому контексті виразно виступає велич М. Маркевича як дослідника, який доводив, що український народ як окремий та самобутній існував. А молодше покоління – Т. Шевченко, П. Куліш, М. Костомаров на цій основі дали ствердну відповідь на питання про подальші перспективи розвитку українського народу.

Book review. Monographs "Anthropology and ethnology during World War II. The activities of Sektion Rassen- und Volkstumsforschung Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit in the light of new source materials" edited by Małgorzata Maj. (Full text of review in Polish).

Nel giugno 1938, alcuni mesi prima della Notte dei cristalli e un anno prima dell'inizio della Shoah, Oscar Levy - medico e intellettuale ebreo tedesco in esilio a Parigi - scrive una lunga lettera aperta al Cancelliere del Reich, nota come La scomunica di Adolf Hitler. Con un tono a un tempo veemente e pacato, Levy impartisce a Hitler una notevole lezione sul pensiero di Nietzsche e lo invita ad andarsene dal giardino di una filosofia che lui e i nazisti hanno travisato e non avrebbero comunque mai potuto capire. Ma ciò che fa di questa lettera una testimonianza di straordinario interesse storico, è anche l'interpretazione che Levy fornisce in tempo reale dell'hitlerismo e della sua propaganda, tanto più efficace quanto più limitata e a tratti anche intenzionalmente assurda. La lettera di Levy è qui corredata dal primo documento scritto in cui Hitler si esprime - con farneticante consequenzialità - sugli ebrei, anch'esso tradotto per la prima volta in italiano. Introduzione e cura di Vincenzo Pinto.

Nachdem die traditionelle Linke lange Zeit versucht hat, das Problem des Antisemitismus in den eigenen Reihen zu leugnen, kommt seit einigen Jahren eine neue Variante der Abwehr dazu: die Scheinauseinandersetzung. Ein Beispiel dafür ist Peter Ullrichs Broschüre "Begrenzter Universalismus". In ihr will Ullrich zwar erklären, warum die "Sympathie" der Linken für die Palästinenserinnen und Palästinenser "oft so weit ging, alles 'Palästinensische' kritiklos gutzuheißen und warum sie streckenweise mit der absoluten Dämonisierung Israels und teilweise offenem Antisemitismus einherging". Aber dazu hätte Ullrich einen Begriff vom Antisemitismus entwickeln müssen.

Past research on the link between anti-Semitism and criticism of the Israeli government has revealed a partial correlation between the two. However, among the political arguments that have inspired such research, one has gone unaddressed: that criticism of the Israeli government along with silence about more egregious human rights abuses committed elsewhere can only arise from anti-Semitism. This article investigates the link between knowledge of conflicts around the world, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and criticism of the Israeli and Saudi governments. Using a deeper index of anti-Israel opinions than prior research, the results indicate that some criticisms of the Israeli government are more reliable indicators of anti-Semitic sentiment than others. The findings are discussed with regard to how legitimate political criticism can be distinguished from prejudice in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Masters of the World. On the Origins of Jewish Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories about the Jews endlessly flourish around us. Usually, they have been studied in connection with the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged document of the beginning of 20th century. Interpreted as a myth or a paranoid style of thought, denunciation of world Jews conspiracy has been considered as an inve- terate, quite a-historical inclination to misinterpret reality. As a result, little attention has been paid to the origins of the hoax and to his context of appearance. This essay wants to scrutinise the conditions of emergency of the world Jewish conspiracy as a technique to perturb public opinion. It does so in retracing the context of the invention of world conspiracy theory about the Jews in 19th century from a varied complex of hybridization, both cultural and technical. From myth to denunciation, this paper aims to enlighten the transmedia process that produces conspiracy theory, an un- tangled history of mass journalism, plagiarism from fiction to non-fiction products, transmigration of iconographic items as well as textual evidences. Following this approach, the creators of Jews conspiracy theory as well as their modus operandi are debunked and the identity of the author of the «Rabbi’s Speech» at the cemetery of Prague – a forged document and main source of the Protocols – is detected.

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Blurb:
In the summer of 1350, as a deadly pandemic tore across Europe, nine people were burnt at the stake in the Hanseatic city of Visby on the island of Gotland. Ostensibly, this was a sadly familiar story: the Black Death was rampant, and a supposed Jewish plot was offered as an explanation. The alleged perpetrators were forced to confess, and were duly executed. But the people who were consigned to the flames in Visby were not Jewish. In fact, there were no Jews on the island to be victimised. Of the nine accused, two were Christian preachers, and the only named individual, Tidericus, was an organista - probably the organ player at the church of St. Olaf in Visby. The outlandish theory was that the plague was a poisoning scheme run by an international conspiracy of Jews, oligarchs and secular administrators.

This book traces the story of the unfortunate Tidericus, and examines the implications of the antisemitic fantasy which led to his death. The positions of the different ethnic groups in Visby is considered against the backdrop of panic and paranoia which pandemics inspire. The interests of the native Old Gutnish-speaking population are compared to the motives of the Low German-speaking mercantile elite who were administering Visby at the time. A context of social unrest, with class divisions bisecting proto-national identities, proved to be a dangerous fuel for a surreal conspiracy theory. A popular willingness to believe in this lurid nightmare proved to be the undoing of Tidericus and his co-accused. The sources which record the affair, namely two pieces of Hanseatic correspondence, are edited and translated into English for the first time in the appendices.

Published by The Viking Society for Northern Research, London, 2020. 119 pp. ISBN 978-0-903521-99-4. £10 (£5 for Viking Society members). Order from sales@gazellebooks.co.uk. State Viking Society membership to qualify for members’ price.

Rosa Luxemburg weist darauf hin, dass in der aufgehetzten Stimmung ein "Teil der linken Presse" eine vermeintlich "sachliche und ernsthafte" Diskussion "zur jüdischen Frage" führen möchte. Als gänzlich neu beschreibt Luxemburg, dass sich an der Hetze gegen die Sozialdemokratie des Königreich Polens und Litauens eine Gruppierung beteiligte, die "sich sozialistisch schimpft, und zwar die 'Revolutionäre' Fraktion der PPS". [...] An die Adresse derjenigen PPS-Mitglieder, die selbst über die Judenfeindschaft in den eigenen Reihen erschrocken waren, schreibt sie, es sei eine Illusion zu glauben, "man könne ein Sozialnationalist sein, ohne Antisemit zu sein".

A call for papers is now open for the forthcoming issue of JCA. Please submit your manuscript to jca@academicstudiespress.com. The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2019. All submissions are subjected to a blind peer review process. Your submission should comply with the authors’ guidelines, which may be found at https://www.academicstudiespress.com/s/InstructionsforJCAAuthors.pdf

Thomas Haury führt den "Antizionismus" in den "sozialistischen" Staaten vornehmlich auf Stalin zurück, allerdings habe er sich "kongenial" in die SED-Lesart des Marxismus-Leninismus eingefügt. Doch so erschreckend die Übernahme national-antisemitischer Denkweisen durch die Führung des sozialistischen deutschen Staates auch war – es bestand immerhin "auch eine prinzipielle Schranke: Da 'Völker' für den Marxismus-Leninismus einen prinzipiell positiven Referenzpunkt darstellten, musste dies logisch notwendig auch für das 'jüdische Volk' gelten. Der 'Einbau' des Antisemitismus in den Marxismus-Leninismus konnte daher nur erfolgen, wenn die offen ethnisch-rassische Definition des 'jüdischen Volkes' vermieden und durch eine scheinbar 'politisch-ökonomische' ersetzt wurde, die aber ansonsten dieselbe Funktion erfüllte."

Ist Antisemitismus eine Form des Rassismus oder handelt es sich um zwei völlig verschiedene Phänomene? Und gibt es Analogien zur Islamfeindlichkeit oder ist dieser Vergleich abwegig? Der Aufsatz zeichnet die international geführte Fachdiskussion um das Verhältnis verschiedener Ausgrenzungsmuster und Diskriminierungsformen nach.

Roman Shukhevych conducted his first political assassination in 1926 at age 19. In 1934, he was jailed for his role in killing Poland’s Interior Minister. By 1940, he was attending a Nazi military intelligence (Abwehr) academy in German-occupied Poland.

In 2015, the Government of  Canada gave $279,138 to the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in Edmonton. Just outside this centre is a large bronze statue to Shukhevych.  It has often been used over the decades as the symbolic backdrop for uniformed Ukrainian ethnonationalist youth and veterans of fascist military formations to pose in reverence to their WWII-era heroes.

Shukhevych was an organizer of Bandera’s faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B). In 1941, he helped create their founding policy. It called for the ethnic cleansing of "non-Ukrainians" and the liquidation of "Polish, Muscovite and Jewish activists" in a future Ukrainian state.1

Shukhevych was the top-ranking Ukrainian in the Nachtigall Battalion (aka the Konovalets’ Legion). Trained, armed, funded and led by the Nazis, and attached to a Germany special-forces regiment, its Ukrainian soldiers wore German uniforms and joined their Operation-Barbarossa invasion of the USSR (June 22, 1941). Eight days later, on his 34th birthday, Shukhevych’s Nachtigall marched into Lviv with the Nazis. The OUN(B) then declared Ukraine a state under President Yaroslav Stetsko, with Shukhevych as Deputy Defense Minister.

By 1945, Friedrich Nietzsche had fallen into disrepute in the Western democracies, for he had been a popular and influential author among European Nazis and fascists. 1 Soon after 1945, however, began the Great Rehabilitation, an effort led above all by Walter Kaufmann, who successfully erased from Nietzsche's image any taint of Nazism, fascism, or anti-Semitism. 2 Kaufmann's book on Nietzsche first appeared in 1950 and was re-published in three subsequent editions. As a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and an erudite and articulate scholar, Kaufmann was to prove a very effective advocate for Nietzsche. Robert C. Holub, a distinguished professor of German literature, argues in his 2016 book, Nietzsche's Jewish Problem, 3 that Kaufmann's defense of Nietzsche against the charge of

Seitdem Alexander Nitzberg vor sieben Jahren eine neue Übersetzung von Michail Bulgakows Klassiker Der Meister und Margarita vorgelegt und dem deutschen Publikum den russischen Meister in einem völlig neuen Ton präsentiert hat, veröffentlicht er fast jedes Jahr eine weitere Bulgakow-Übersetzung. Im Fall von Bulgakows Romandebüt Die Weiße Garde könnte man statt von einer weiteren neuen auch von der ersten richtigen Übersetzung sprechen – obwohl seit Ende der 1960er Jahre deutsche Fassungen vorliegen. Dass es so schwer ist, Die Weiße Garde zu übersetzen, liegt nicht zuletzt am Original.

Seca, fome e peste. Esta era a situação pela qual passava Lisboa naquela Páscoa de 1506. O rei, como era costume em tais casos, havia saído da cidade, e atrás dele grande parte dos nobres e dos membros da alta burguesia. Enquanto isso, várias procissões pediam a Deus que acabasse com as desgraças que assolavam a população. Neste espírito de exaltação, no domingo 19 de abril, uma semana depois da celebração da morte e ressurreição de Jesus pelos cristãos, um milagre aconteceu na igreja do convento dos dominicanos.

Michael Leoni, a leading singer in late eighteenth-century London, became famous for his role in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's anti-Jewish opera The Duenna. He was discovered, however, at the Jewish synagogue, where his singing enthralled non-Jews in the early 1770s. Tracing Leoni's public reception, this article argues that the performative effect of his singing had a multifaceted relation to his audience's psychology of prejudice, serving to both reiterate and reconfigure a variety of preconceptions regarding the Jews. Leoni’s intervention through operatic singing was particularly significant – a powerful, bodily manifestation that was capable of transforming listeners while exhibiting the deep acculturation of the singer himself. The ambivalence triggered by his performances would go on to define the public reception of other Jewish singers, particularly that of Leoni's protégé, John Braham, Britain’s leading tenor in the early nineteenth century. Ultimately, the experience of these Jews' performances could not be easily deconstructed, as the Jewish performers' voices were emanating from within written, sometimes canonical, musical works. This representational impasse gave rise to a public discourse intent on deciphering their Jewishness, raising questions of interpretation, intention, and confession.

Pese a las numerosas opiniones divergentes que en los últimos años han intentado romper con la asociación lineal, quebrando la tosca cadena Herder/Hegel/Wagner/Bismarck/Nietzsche/Hitler, en los contextos donde se historiza el surgimiento del nacionalismo moderno (beligerante por naturaleza) Herder sigue siendo invocado como un referente ineludible, lo que deja abierta la posibilidad de presentarlo como un prohombre del militarismo germánico, o al menos como el responsable directo de la hipótesis del Sonderweg o “camino especial” alemán. Y en efecto, existe una cierta cantidad de declaraciones herderianas que pueden tildarse redondamente de antisemitas, sin mayores discusiones. Pero al mismo tiempo, Herder fue el primer intelectual alemán que estudió y divulgó sistemáticamente lo que dio en llamar la “poesía hebrea”, y como hombre de letras y hombre de fe, como poeta y como Pastor (por vocación y no a la fuerza, como en el caso de tantos otros jóvenes alemanes de la época) publicó diversos tratados y ensayos en los que exaltaba y comentaba los textos conservados por el pueblo judío. Y si bien es cierto que al hacerlo su interés era rescatar la letra y el espíritu de las Sagradas Escrituras en su humana naturalidad, y no destacar el papel histórico de los hebreos ni defender la exégesis bíblica judía (a la que llega a motejar de “ensueños rabínicos”), no es menos cierto que esa vasta porción de su obra muestra una faceta mucho más amigable y comprensiva para con ese “ajeno pueblo oriental” que supo legar a la humanidad su opus magnum, el libro de los libros. En pocas palabras: si el Herder filósofo de la historia es un Judenfeind, que defenestra o ignora al pueblo de Israel, el Herder lingüista, filólogo y teólogo aparece casi como un Judenfreund.

En 1240, le duc de Bretagne expulse tous les juifs du duché. Cet épisode peu connu signe la fin de la présence d’une communauté juive en Bretagne au Moyen Âge. Elle s’explique par la conjugaison du fanatisme religieux et la volonté d’effacer les dettes d’aristocrates bretons envers des prêteurs juifs. Cette expulsion faisait suite à des massacres qui auraient coûté la vie à 3 000 juifs, suscitant la réprobation du pape.