Antisemitism: Its History and Causes

By Bernard Lazare

Book Overview

Bernard Lazare's controversial magnum opus, originally published in France in 1894, asks why the Jews have aroused such hatred for three thousand years. The journalist, though severed from his Jewish upbringing, was fiercely committed to social justice and could not ignore a shocking antisemitism in the fin-de-si cle circles he knew. In search mg for its historic causes, he was also searching for his own roots and place in the world. As biographer Nelly Wilsonhas noted, young Lazare was "constantly engaged in a dialogue with himself" when he wrote Antisemitism, Its History and Causes. Lazare begins his "impartial study" by considering whatever in the Jewish character might be to blame for antisemitism. Then he looks outward to those nations among which the Israelites dispersed, examining the different faces of antisemitism from Greco-Roman antiquity to the end of the nineteenth century. Lazare brings his research and study to bear on whatever form antisemitism has taken: ethnic, nationalist, economic, social, literary, philosophical. Recognizing that antisemitism is fundamentally based on fear of the stranger and the need for a scapegoat, Lazare concludes with a surprising scenario for the future. This remarkable book conveys Lazare's own spiritual growth. France's Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s would galvanize him to a passionate battle against antisemitism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080327954X
• ISBN13: 9780803279544
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Real answers to the issue of hate against the jews.

Written in 1895,by a very respected jewish-french socialist writer this books vividly details the history of antisemitism from ancient times to the 19th century. It's narrative and descripton are essential for any serious interpretation of the eternal question of why the world has hated the jews so much. A question that sometimes has taken different form of unspoken prejudice and direct manifestation like the mass killing in the holocust.The strenght of the book lies in it's conclusions -that the jews are hated because they are always viewed as strangers- wich have outlasted the life of the auhtor to serve as a permanent remainder of how human beings can be guided by the wrong principles in their relationships with other human beings that may seem to be different because of their values and religion.