Internalized Judeophobia: Examining the History of Systemic Judeophobia
Internalized Judeophobia, Explaining the Self-Hating Jew: Part 2
“Antisemitism is not a unitary phenomenon... Antisemitism is not a belief but a virus. The human body has an immensely sophisticated immune system which develops defences against viruses. It is penetrated, however, because viruses mutate. Antisemitism mutates.”
- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
In the introduction of this series, I introduced the concept of internalized Judeophobia, which is the internalization of systemic Judeophobia — the fear, hatred, or aversion to Jews, Israelis, Judaism, and/or Israel.
In order to understand the consequences of this internalization and how it becomes internalized, we must first understand the systemic origins of the problem. What exactly is systemic Judeophobia? How is it different from antisemitism?
First, “antisemitism” is a manifestation of Judeophobia. It is an outdated term coined in the 19th century by antisemites. Judeophobia, which I wrote at length about here, is the far older, constant thread of the Jewish experience.
Judeophobia predates antisemitism by millennia. It has gone by different names, but the aversion to Judaism and Jews, Israel and Israelis, whether by the name Hebrew, Jew, Israelite, Zionist, or otherwise, is firmly embedded into Jewish history. The accusations change era to era, but there is always that core aversion and discrimination. Like Sacks says, the virus mutates and shifts to fit the times in which it exists. Among others, that historical journey has manifested Judeophobia in terms of tribalism, religious oppression, racial discrimination, and political othering.
There are two historical threads that need to be tracked to reach a comprehensive understanding, first the manifestations of Judaism, and then the thread concerning a Jewish state.
In ancient times, Judeophobia was a question of peoplehood, a disdain and aversion to the Hebrews as a tribe and a people. This is first documented in biblical times, though it is cemented throughout history. Just about every Jewish holiday consists of some form of addressing Judeophobia. Thus, the well known pre-meal adage “They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat”.
As history progressed, the hate morphed into monotheistic sectarian strife. Jews have been tolerated throughout history, their presence is self evident of that, but this ancient hatred inevitably flares up, and turns into violence and persecution. There are the well known epochs of the Crusades, Christian pogroms, and the Spanish Inquisition. In the Arab world there are the less well known but just as brutal Islamic conquests, the Almohad caliphate, and recently the 20th century grand exodus of Jews from the Muslim world.
In the post Napoleonic era, as Judaism morphed from being primarily an ethnic peoplehood into a religion in a post enlightenment sense, the hatred began to express itself via political mechanisms. With society geared towards reason and the scientific method, Jews thrived in enlightenment Europe. But eventually, the convenience and utility of Judeophobic tendencies become irresistible. In the short term, blaming Jews has proven to be a winning formula.
Most famously and successfully of course, the Nazis found a convenient target in Jews, and were able to convince Germans that Jewish betrayal was responsible for losing the first World War. Corrupting enlightenment ideas of science and reason, and borrowing from 19th century social Darwinism, the Nazis framed their hate as racial antisemitism. This of course was the foundation for the Holocaust, and there is no event more emblematic of systemic Judeophobia than the murder of six million Jews.
Politically right wing regimes do not have a monopoly on Judeophobia. On the left, the Marxists and Soviets were able to target Jews (eventually Zionists) as the scapegoat for their problems. In the Soviet case, this was in part inherited from Tsarist Russia; Jews had been subject to violence and political othering while confined to ethnic and religious enclaves. After the Russian revolution in 1917, and until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the aversion carried on. The USSR had the 20th century distinction of manifesting Judeophobia in all of its plentiful forms, a kaleidoscope of hate: tribal, ethnic, religious, and political. The very existence of Jews was completely antithetical to communist goals.
None of this is new information to anyone with a basic level of understanding of Jewish history. But it bears repeating in the framework of Judeophobia. Systemic aversion to Jews and Judaism is much better understood as a cultural and historical throughline. The second half of the Judeophobic blanket, the aversion to Israel and Israelis, is also a feature of history. “Anti-Zionism” is not a new phenomenon. It was simply dormant because it lacked a target for two thousand years.
Ancient Israel, the kingdom of Judah (Judaea) was a constant target of invasion, conquest, and oftentimes forced assimilation. The Babylonians, the Seleucid Greeks, and the Romans all attempted to destroy the Judean way of life in their own way.
The Romans were particularly successful with their ultimate conquest and absorption of Judea as a Roman province. This was followed by the expulsion of most Jews from the region. Were the Romans antisemitic? They would not have considered themselves so. But the Romans would have looked at the Jewish way of life as inferior. They were certainly Judeophobic. They had an aversion to the Kingdom of Judah, its citizens, and what it stood for. They wanted to end the customs and rituals of Judaism, and they knew the best way to do that was to remove the native population from their land. They were so committed to this line of thinking that they renamed the province entirely.
These two key manifestations of what it means to be Jewish at all are tightly knit. The intangibles of the relationship with the divine, the customs and tradition of the religion, as well as the tangibles of the ritual, which oftentimes specifically revolve around architecture and geography. Israel or any historical analogue of Israel is the grounding conduit for Judaism. Temporarily removing a Jewish state in the land of Israel did not eliminate Judeophobia, it simply turned that aspect of the hatred dormant until a Jewish state was reformed. As it happened, this episode of dormancy lasted for two thousand years.
So, we can see clearly that these two primary streams within Judeophobia are well established. Hate, fear, and a general aversion to Jews and Judaism, as well as Israel and Israelis (or their ancient analogues). History shows us that Sacks’ virus analogy holds. That infection can manifest via any of the tribal, religious, racial, or political access points. With Israel, the next mutation occurs. It is a different spin on a classic case: the geopolitical.
It bears mentioning that this is where this idea differentiates itself from the emergent popular term “Jew Hate”. “Jew Hate” is another manifestation of Judeophobia, in this case the obvious and overt hatred of Jews. “Jew Hate” however, does not address Israel in any meaningful way. It therefore suffers from the same semantic shortcomings of “antisemitism”. Jew hate is a visceral term, therein lies its power. It hits at the core manifestation that Jews are dealing with on the surface. It is a symptom however. The root cause is the more useful “Judeophobia”.
Understanding the systemic conditions for Judeophobia is the key groundwork for understanding the “self-hating” Jew. This segment focused on the past, and it orients us in the correct framing. This primes us to understand how systemic Judeophobia manifests in western society today.
In the next edition of the series, we will explore the core manifestations of systemic Judeophobia on a more practical level, specifically in the Canadian context.