Anti-semitism and its metaphysical origins /

Adopting what he calls in his preface a "conscientiously Jewish approach" to the phenomenon of Jew hatred, Patterson (Holocaust studies, Univ. of Texas, Dallas) rejects standard explanations: racism, xenophobia, scapegoating, envy, projection, and so on. He argues that no single historical, psychological, sociological, or Christological explanation accounts for the anti-Semitism of, for example, Democritus of Thrace, John Chrysostom, Martin Luther, Henry Ford, and Sayyid Qutb. Instead, Patterson finds anti-Semitism rooted in the human soul's desire to be God and so to kill God. Chapters examine Christian theological anti-Semitism (Jew as demonic, cursed, Christ killer), Islamic Jihadism, modernist philosophical anti-Semitism (Fichte, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Nietzsche), national socialist anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, anti-Zionist anti-Semitism (for Patterson, a redundancy), and Jewish "Jew hatred" (from Marx, Weinniger, and Freud to overstated claims regarding critics of Israeli policy such as Michael Lerner and Daniel Boyarin). There is also an analysis of Arthur Miller's novel Focus. Numerous Hebrew word plays and extensive citations from the Talmud, Kabbalistic and Hasidic masters, and Emmanuel Lévinas make Judaism the font of profound, and compelling, teaching. Yet claims for metaphysical origins work only if one accepts Patterson's God of the Tanakh and select mystical traditions, the existence of the soul, and an idealized Judaism, and ignore teachings that contradict his ideal. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Amy-Jill Levine, Vanderbilt University