1. The Holocaust and AntiSemitism
Lecture 13: February 23, 2009
The Holocaust and AntiSemitism

2. Quiz
Describe one difference between pre-modern “religious anti-Judaism” and modern “anti-Semitism.”
What is one theological problem raised by the Holocaust?

3. Opportunities
Free Money
Great Courses

4. What Happens When You Google “Jew”?

5. Christian Anti-Judaism
Synagoga and Ecclessia
Jews paradoxical position vis a vis Christianity

6. The Crusades and Medieval Persecution
Rescue Christian Holy Sites (1099)
Widespread massacres and forced conversion
Blood Libels (1144)
Fourth Lateran Council (1215)
Limited Usury, Jewish badge
Talmud on-trial-Why?
Black Death and Poisen Wells (1348)

7. Jewish Expulsion 1290 Expulsion from England
Jews expelled from France
1492 Expulsion from Spain

9. The New Antisemitism Traditional Christian anti-Judaism
Theology
Conversion is a possibility
1879-New Term: “Antisemitism”
Wilhelm Marr and Karl Duehring
Racial terminology
Biological and unchangeable
1894 Alfred Dreyfus Affair

10. Why Antisemitism?
Ask them for ideas?

11. Rise of Antisemitism? Economic Political Psychopolitical Terms
Lower class resentment
Dislocation of capitalism, industrialization
Blame Jews for competition of capitalism
Political
Resent democracy, equality, anticlericalism
Antisemitism as tool for illiberal forces
Yearn for a pre-modern utopia
Psychopolitical Terms
Glorification of German people
Need common enemy

12. The Holocaust
Systematic, state-sponsored persecution and annihilation of approximately 6 million Jews by Nazis and collaborators between 1933 and 1945
Jews are less than 1% of German population (500,000)
Final Solution to Jewish Question

17. Questions Raised by Holocaust
Why did the Nazis want to exterminate the Jews?
Hitler’s plan from the beginning?
Response to failure of other efforts to solve Jewish problem
How did Hitler and the Nazis succeed in imposing view on millions of Germans?
Germans wanted change after WWI
Nazis implemented totalitarian dictatorship
Bureaucratic proccess

18. More Questions… How did Nazis manage to kill Jews outside of Germany?
Had support of local governments
Exterminate nearly all Jews living in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Western Russia
Most Jews in Hungary, Holland and Greece
How did America remain silent?

19. Impact of the Holocaust on Judaism
Demographic
Wipes out center of Jewish life
Émigrés have huge impact on American Jewish community
Theological
Is covenant broken?
Unprecedented destruction
Where is God?
614th commandment

20. Impact, continued Centrality of Holocaust narrative Political Question
Silence in 1950s and 1960s
Gains centrality in recent decades
Connection with Israel
Today: Is there too much victimization?
Political Question
Will Jews always be persecuted?
Recent rise in antisemitsim

21. Anti-semitism today

22. Antisemitic Themes Dual Loyalties
Jews conspiring to destroy Western Civilization
Control politics, culture, press, and economics
Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Russia, 1903)
Jews and 9/11
Holocaust Denial
Racial distinction between good and evil groups
Aryan vs. Semite
Jews are strangers, parasites
Dual Loyalties

23. The Protocols Today

24. Is America an Exception?
No fight for emancipation in US
Separation of Church and State
Jews get vote in all states by 1840
Anti-Jewish antagonism muted
Founded as place for religious dissidents
Strong strain of civil nationalism
Also racial and religious notions of American identity
American society profoundly religious
Strong belief in denominations
Ideal citizen is connected to religious community