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THE BEGINNING OF RESEARCH ON ANTISEMITISM
By Michael C. Wallo, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Central Michigan University.

H-German
October 2007

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=52051211498666

[Review of Richard S. Levy, ed., Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, 2 volumes (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005).  xxiv + xxvii + 828 pp.  Illustrations, table of contents, list of contributors entries, index.  $185.00 (cloth).  ISBN 978-1-85109-439-4.]

Recent memory is filled with episodes of antisemitism such as Mel Gibson's drunken invective or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's harangues of Holocaust denial. These outbursts make Richard Levy's Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution even more indispensable as a counter against such antisemitic attacks. Its avowed mission is to educate readers to the "destructive nature of antisemitism and the injury it can still do to the human community" (p. xxxiii), and to accomplish this aim, Levy attempts to offer and succeeds in giving "the educated reader the most accurate, thorough, and up-to-date information on antisemitism in an unbiased manner" (p. xxix). His encyclopedia demonstrates substantial breadth of information and the considerable progress of research into the discrimination against Jews until this point in time. Yet, at the same time, this work illustrates the vast study yet to be done on antisemitism around the globe.

Levy has gathered a contingent of international, well-versed scholars who have contributed to the compendium. The work has an overwhelmingly Western perspective and deals to a large degree with antisemitism in those nations. Other cultures are not completely disregarded: authors examine nations, individuals, and incidents from the Middle East, North Africa, South America, and even Japan, but these entries are limited in number. On the other hand, articles whose topics derive from some part of a German-speaking culture make up approximately 40 percent of the entries while articles associated with the United States are the next highest percentile, consisting of around 9 percent of the total. For those of us in German Studies, the number of entries devoted to German-speaking cultures makes the encyclopedia particularly attractive. Many of these entries examine nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century antisemites or groups such as Heinrich Class (p. 130), Adolf Stöcker (pp. 684-685), and the Pan-German League (pp. 528-529); others inform about National Socialists and Holocaust-related incidents. These topics certainly deserve scrutiny in an encyclopedia on antisemitism; however, the lack of entries pertaining to other nations and their relationships with Jews strongly indicates that research remains to be done on exposing the discrimination against Jews within other cultures.

An examination of the types of entries shows that the largest number are biographical, such as those on Erasmus (pp. 210-211), Henry Ford (pp. 233-236), and Theodor Fontane (pp. 232-233), and that historical incidents like the Jewish census in the German army in 1916 (pp. 371-372) and the Waldheim Affair (pp. 752-753) are the second most frequent type of article. Other categories of entries include concepts, groups, works, documents, and countries associated with antisemitism. One should also mention that the contributors' articles go beyond mere perpetrators of antisemitism, so that defenses of Jews such as Mark Twain's 1898 essay "Concerning the Jews," which rejected contemporary antisemites' wild conspiracy theories about Jews, or Christian Wilhelm von Dohm's late-eighteenth-century treatise, "Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden," which pleaded for Jewish emancipation, are also broached in the two volumes as responses to antisemitism and as part of "the history of anti-Semitism" (p. xxix). However, in an encyclopedia on antisemitism, these positive stories are unfortunately few.

Of all the entries, those on the "Judensau," "masculinity," and "Thomas Mann" are particularly striking. The Judensau is not only shocking for its disgusting depiction of Jews feeding on the teats of a pig, sucking on the pigs' tail, and licking its posterior, but also for its open representations in German cathedrals and on the Sachsenhauer Bridge in Frankfurt am Main (p. 388). The stereotype of the effeminate Jewish male derives from such absurd claims as the feminine speech patterns of Yiddish, emasculation through circumcision, and ritual murder accusations in which the male Jew tries to stem his menstruation with the blood of a newborn (pp. 447-448). While the overwhelming majority of scholars would not associate Thomas Mann with antisemitism, recent research has begun to call into question this assertion. As the article's author demonstrates, his diary contains some dreadful statements and his novella Walsungenblut (1906) revolves around Jewish twins who view Wagner's Die Walküre (1870) and emulate the incestuous acts of Wagner's characters to become, like them, more German. The most disturbing part of the novella is Mann's depiction of the young man's joy at having cheated his sister's Gentile fiancée of his "sexual prerogative" (p. 444).

As the Mann entry demonstrates and as Levy notes, the designation of antisemites and antisemitic acts can be complicated based upon the lack of firm definition of the word "antisemitism" (p. xxxi). That said, one entry is out of place in the encyclopedia and a few others could have been included. The "Gottfried Benn" article is undeserving of inclusion in the work, considering that Benn made no antisemitic statements and was the friend of many Jews (pp. 65-66). His injudicious membership in the National Socialist Party for a short time was certainly not based on antisemitism. On the other hand, articles on Ethiopian Jews, Israel's history as a nation suffering from antisemitism, gender-specific discrimination against Jewish women, and one of the foremost antisemitic publishing houses in pre-World War II Germany, J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, would have been excellent additions to the volumes.

Levy's compendium is user-friendly with alphabetized entries, recommended further readings for each entry, and "see also" sections. Articles range from approximately 400 to 2,000 words; about 120 of the total 612 entries are nearer the latter length and deal with general topics such as modern anti-Jewish caricatures (pp. 102-107), emancipation (pp. 201-204), Roman literature (pp. 612-617), and Holocaust denial, negationism, and revisionism (pp. 319-322). Prominent among the quality visuals of the encyclopedia are disturbing illustrations of the Judensau (p. 388), ritual murders (pp. 603, 606, 656), and Jews being burned in Cologne (p. 461). Some entries that may be difficult to find on a first attempt -- for instance, if a searcher were looking for an entry on Francisco Franco, he would not look under "F," but rather under "S" for the entry "Spain under Franco" (pp. 674-675) -- are located easily enough in a comprehensive thirty-five-page general index.

To my knowledge, this work is the first of its kind on this topic and provides a wealth of information and new and surprising facts that would benefit any scholar interested in the topic.[Note 1: Jerome Chanes published Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004), but its title and genre indicate its lack of comprehensiveness.] However, the compendium is particularly ideal for Jewish studies scholars and -- because of the entries on Germanic antisemitism -- Germanists and German historians. Although the cost is certainly one of its shortcomings, individual entries would be useful in applicable undergraduate courses.