Antisemitism and the Politics of History

Ury and Miron's volume makes a stimulating and fair-minded contribution to historiographical, theoretical, and contemporary political discussions and debates about antisemitism as a historical phenomenon and analytical category. Each essay is illuminating in its own right and as part of the whole. A rare achievement!

What’s in a name? This volume analyzes and deconstructs the numerous meanings of the portmanteau ‘antisemitism,’ from adjective to tool, from history to political anthropology, since antiquity through the Holocaust to present-day America. The writers challenge our use of language and concepts as way of understanding the difficulties of connecting the word to concrete historical events.

A timely debate about meaning and intention in the application of a loaded term, and an insightful reflection on the connection between historical events, feelings, and discourse.

Antisemitism and the Politics of History probes key ethical, political, methodological, and intellectual issues surrounding the study of antisemitism with chronological and disciplinary breadth. It seeks to answer thought-provoking questions and features established prominent scholars alongside a new generation of researchers, thus offering a variety of voices grappling with fundamental assumptions concerning antisemitism as a concept and a historical phenomenon.

Antisemitism and the Politics of History makes an essential contribution to rethinking “antisemitism.” Launched by David Engel’s prod to scholars to avoid using the term “antisemitism” since it often obscures more than it reveals, this set of essays interrogates the truisms, assumptions, and conventions widespread in both the academic study and popular understanding of antisemitism. Ranging across empirical analyses from the ancient world to the present, discussed alongside cutting-edge theory, a host of assumptions are interrogated so that readers are treated to new insights and new possibilities in how to think about how we think about “antisemitism.”

"Antisemitism and the Politics of History" is a highly stimulating read and a useful contribution to the field of Jewish history as well as other avenues of scholarship that focus on antisemitism. I predict that historians and others will continue to use the term “antisemitism” in scholarly and public discourse, even after having read this volume. But having read it, they will be better equipped to use the term with an appropriate degree of critical sensitivity.

...a well-timed engagement with the historiography of antisemitism.