Search results for ""Author Léon Poliakov""

Covering the story of prejudice against Jews from the time of Christ through the rise of Nazi Germany, The History of Anti-Semitism presents in elegant and thoughtful language a balanced, careful assessment of this egregious human failing that is nearly ubiquitous in the history of Europe. Suicidal Europe, 1870-1933 traces the development of a belief among Europe's educated classes in an eventual Jewish domination of the West. Revealing the embedded myths about Jewish bankers and Jewish Bolsheviks in European rhetoric and histories, Poliakov demonstrates that the steady rise in anti-Semitism and suspicion of Jews in the late nineteenth century—highlighted by the Dreyfus affair—and its eventual eruption in the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the 1920s are part of the same thread of fear and hatred that reaches back to the beginning of the first millennium.

Read more less

Covering the story of prejudice against Jews from the time of Christ through the rise of Nazi Germany, The History of Anti-Semitism presents in elegant and thoughtful language a balanced, careful assessment of this egregious human failing that is nearly ubiquitous in the history of Europe. From Mohammed to the Marranos focuses on the Sephardim, the Jews of North Africa and Iberia. Poliakov relates the great achievements of Spanish Jewry under the Muslim Caliphs followed by their gradual and painful decline during and after the Christian reconquest. The author explains the emergence of the Marrano culture, Jews who converted to Christianity, and the dispersion of those Jews who refused to convert in the face of expulsion and death.

Read more less

Covering the story of prejudice against Jews from the time of Christ through the rise of Nazi Germany, The History of Anti-Semitism presents in elegant and thoughtful language a balanced, careful assessment of this egregious human failing that is nearly ubiquitous in the history of Europe. From Voltaire to Wagner reviews the period of the European Enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when anti-Semitism gradually stopped being an official state policy in most countries. Highlighting the emancipation of Jews as it spread across Europe, Poliakov shows how philosophers, statesmen, and some theologians became concerned with civil rights, yet the anti-Semitic beliefs of many highly regarded and influential persons remained a major roadblock to true equality and justice. The volume ends with the development of racial anti-Semitic theories bound up in the emerging modern sciences.

Read more less

Covering the story of prejudice against Jews from the time of Christ through the rise of Nazi Germany, The History of Anti-Semitism presents in elegant and thoughtful language a balanced, careful assessment of this egregious human failing that is nearly ubiquitous in the history of Europe. From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews systematically traces the twists and turns of hatred against Jews as it developed from Roman times to the end of the eighteenth century. Chiefly the history of prejudice against the Ashkenazim, this volume demonstrates that organized anti-Semitism was unknown until the First Crusade, an event that marked the beginning of systematic genocide and mass expulsions in Europe. Jews were accused of countless crimes, from causing the Black Death to practicing ritual murder, and the author attempts throughout to reveal the sociological and psychological forces behind these irrational charges.

Read more less