Stereotypes of Jews in literature
Encyclopedia
Stereotypes of Jews in literature have evolved over the centuries. According to Louis Harap, nearly all European writers prior to the twentieth century projected the Jewish stereotype in their works. Harap cites Gotthold Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...

's Nathan the Wise (1779) as the first time that Jews were portrayed in the arts as "human beings, with human possibilities and characteristics." Harap writes that, the persistence of the Jewish stereotype over the centuries suggests to some that "the treatment of the Jew in literature was completely static and was essentially unaffected by the changes in the Jewish situation in society as that society itself changed." He contrasts the opposing views presented in the two most comprehensive studies of the Jew in English literature, one by Montagu Frank Modder and the other by Edgar Rosenberg
Edgar Rosenberg
Edgar Rosenberg was an American television producer. Born in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany, to German Jewish parents, Otto & Lilli, the Rosenberg family migrated to America in 1940, due to the Outbreak of World War II. Rosenberg married comedian and commentator Joan Rivers and was the father of Melissa...

. Modder asserts that writers invariably "reflect the attitude of contemporary society in their presentation of the Jewish character, and that the portrayal changes with the economic and social changes of each decade." In opposition to Modder's "historical rationale", Rosenberg warns that such a perspective "is apt to slight the massive durability of a stereotype". Harap suggests that the recurrence of the Jewish stereotype in literature is itself one indicator of the continued presence of anti-Semitism amongst the readers of that literature.

English literature

Edgar Rosenberg has characterized 'the image of the Jew in English literature' as having been "a depressingly uniform and static phenomenon". For example, although Jews were expelled
Edict of Expulsion
In 1290, King Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from England. Lasting for the rest of the Middle Ages, it would be over 350 years until it was formally overturned in 1656...

 from England in 1290, stereotypes were so ingrained and so durable that they persisted in English society as evidenced by presentations in English literature, drama, and the visual arts during the almost four-hundred-year period when there were virtually no Jews present in the British Isles. Dik Van Arkel notes that "Chaucer, Marlowe and Shakespeare had no direct knowledge of Jews."

The Canterbury Tales

In the Canterbury Tales, the Prioress tells a story of a devout Christian child who was murdered by Jews affronted at his singing a hymn as he passed through the Jewry, or Jewish quarter, of a city in Asia. Much later criticism focuses on the tale's anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

. Allen Koretsky asserts that, because the anti-semitism in this tale runs counter to the generally positive image of Chaucer, it has been "ignored, excused, explained or palliated in a number of ways."
Thus, a considerable body of critical and scholarly opinion holds that this speech, in the mouth of the Prioress, represents an ironic inversion of Chaucer's own sentiments: that is, the Prioress is seen as a hypocrite whose cruelty and bigotry belies her conventionally pious pose — a situation typical of the indeterminacy of Chaucer's intentions.

Elizabethan era

The character of Barabas in Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

's play Jew of Malta is possibly the first ever stage-portrayal of a psychopath
Psychopathy
Psychopathy is a mental disorder characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior and abusive treatment of others, and are very disproportionately responsible for violent crime...

 (at least within English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

). Barabas takes people into confidence by playing on their desires and then killing them. Like Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...

—the idea of whom may have been inspired by Barabas—he is open to interpretation as a symbol of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

. However, also like Shylock, he occasionally shows evidence of humanity (albeit very rarely).

It has been suggested that the Jew of Malta influenced Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...

. Despite the fact that Shakespeare probably never met a Jew, The Merchant of Venice includes a character named Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...

 who has become the archetype of the Jewish moneylender stereotype. Derek Cohen asserts that the Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...

 character is "the best known Jew in English."

Shylock is a money-lender and was often portrayed with a hooked nose and bright red wigs. Shylock's character has been criticized for its anti-semitic nature, although some interpretations of the play consider him a sympathetic figure.

Victorian era

When Jews are found in Victorian fiction, they are almost always portrayed as a stereotype rather than as human beings.

The "villain Jew" stereotype is found in a number of Victoria era novels. The character of Fagin from Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

's Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...

is perhaps one of the best known Jewish stereotypes in the world. Dickens portrays him as immoral, miserly, and "disgusting" to look at. Another famous example is the character of Svengali
Svengali
Svengali is a fictional character of George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby. Svengali "would either fawn or bully and could be grossly impertinent. He had a kind of cynical humour that was more offensive than amusing and always laughed at the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place...

 in George Du Maurier
George du Maurier
George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier...

's novel Trilby
Trilby (novel)
Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the Fin de siècle after Bram Stoker's Dracula. Published serially in Harper's Monthly in 1894, it was published in book form in 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the United...

.
Some authors of this period seem to have attempted to counterbalance the negative portrayals of Jews in their earlier works with more positive images in later works. For example, in the novel Our Mutual Friend
Our Mutual Friend
Our Mutual Friend is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining psychological insight with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life" but is also about human...

, Dickens presents the Jewish character Riah as a paragon of virtue. Dickens even claimed that Fagin's Jewishness was incidental to the conception of the character and this claim has been treated seriously by many literary critics. In opposition to this view, Cohen and Heller assert that Fagin's Jewishness is stressed frequently in Oliver Twist and that Dickens often refers to him as "the Jew" and that Fagin's character and physical features draw on the "long history of anti-Semitic associations and stereotypes to provide added resonance to Fagin's particular villainies".

George Du Maurier depicts Svengali as a Jewish rogue, masterful musician, and hypnotist
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...

. The character has been portrayed in many film and television versions of the story. The word "svengali" has entered the language meaning a person who with evil intent manipulates another into doing what is desired. It is frequently used for any kind of coach who seems to exercise an extreme degree of domination over a performer (especially if the person is a young woman and the coach is an older man).

One notable exception is the character of Anton Trendelssohn, whom Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...

 portrays as a more deep character rather than as a Jewish stereotype.

George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

's novel Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day...

(1876) is admired by many for having made an honest attempt to capture the essence of 19th century Judaism by presenting a sympathetic rendering of Jewish proto-Zionist and Kaballistic ideas,

20th century

Negative stereotypes of Jews were still employed by prominent twentieth-century non-Jewish writers such as Dorothy Richardson
Dorothy Richardson
Dorothy Miller Richardson was a British author and journalist.-Biography:Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883...

, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

, T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

, Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

 and James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

.

Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

 mentions Jewish attitudes towards money in his poem The Cantos
The Cantos
The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered...

, which focuses on the themes of economics and governance. In the poem, Jews are implicated in sinister manipulations of the money supply. Abraham Foxman asserts that The Cantos include a "vicious diatribe against interest-paying finance" and that those sections include antisemitic passages. In Canto 52, Pound wrote "Stinkschuld's [Rothschilds] sin drawing vengeance, poor yitts paying for / Stinkschuld [Rothschilds] / paying for a few big jews' vendetta on goyim", but the name Rothschilds was replaced by "Stinkschulds" at the insistence of Pound's publisher.

American literature

Until the 20th century, the characterization of Jews in American literature was largely based upon the stereotypes employed in English literature.
Although Jewish stereotypes first appeared in works by non-Jewish writers, after World War II it was often Jewish American writers themselves who evoked such fixed images. The prevalence of anti-Semitic stereotypes in the works of such authors has sometimes been interpreted an expression of self-hatred; however, Jewish American authors have also used these negative stereotypes in order to refute them.

19th century

Anti-Semitic images are often found in nineteenth century American literature. Some of the most notorious examples can be found in the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In Hawthorne's novel The Marble Faun, Jews are described as "the ugliest, most evil-minded people" who resemble "maggots when they overpopulate a decaying cheese."

The earliest significant American poets were the Fireside Poets
Fireside Poets
The Fireside Poets were a group of 19th-century American poets from New England.-Overview:...

. These wrote from a Christian point of view and, with the exception of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...

, uniformly employed negative stereotypes of Jews.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Jews were often characterized as overly ambitious compared to African-Americans and Native Americans. Anti-Jewish stereotypes portrayed Jews as "aggressively smart and threateningly successful"; they were seen as a threat to American culture because of their "rapid social and economic mobility". However, despite their economic success, Jews were depicted as being unable to assimilate into American culture. One focus of media attention was the Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....

 of Manhattan, an area where many European Jewish immigrants had settled. Newspaper accounts and photographs of the time depicted this urban slum as cluttered, disorderly, dirty and smelly; in brief, the living conditions of the Jews were considered to violate middle-class white standards of cleanliness and orderliness. Alicia Kent notes that, although the photographs of Jacob Riis
Jacob Riis
Jacob August Riis was a Danish American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific...

 were motivated by a desire to reform immigrant housing and employment conditions, they ironically helped to fix the public perception of Jews as "disorderly and uncontrollable."

Perhaps the only major work of 19th century American literature that does not depict Jews according to the stereotypes of the day is Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

's epic poem Clarel
Clarel
Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land is an American epic poem by Herman Melville, published in two volumes in 1876. Clarel is the longest poem in American literature, stretching to almost 18,000 lines...

 which depicts the hardships faced by Jews living in Palestine as well as their customs. Departing from the usual treatment employed by other American writers of that era, Melville presents a range of Jewish characters that provide the reader a sense of Jews as human individuals rather than as cardboard cutouts.

20th century

The presentation of economic and social stereotypes of Jews in American literature persisted into the first half of the 20th century. Jews were depicted as money-obsessed, vulgar, and pushy social climbers. Jewish men and women were represented in literature as dressing ostentatiously. Their physical characteristics followed the model that had been handed down over the centuries: red hair and hooked noses were some of the prominent features employed. For example, in The American Scene
The American Scene
The American Scene is a book of travel writing by Henry James about his trip through the United States in 1904-1905. Ten of the fourteen chapters of the book were published in the North American Review, Harper's and the Fortnightly Review in 1905 and 1906...

, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 employs a number of antisemitic stereotypes to describe the skin color and nose shape of the Jewish residents. Characterization of Jews as an inferior race could be found in works such as Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

's novel, Martin Eden
Martin Eden
Martin Eden is a novel by American author Jack London, about a proletarian young autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909, and subsequently published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.This book...

.

Jewish-American authors

According to Sanford V. Sternlicht, the first generation of Jewish-American authors
Jewish American literature
Jewish American Literature holds an essential place in the literary history of the United States. It encompasses traditions of writing in English, primarily, as well as in other languages, the most important of which has been Yiddish...

 presented "realistic portrayals - warts and all" of Jewish immigrants. He describes the literature of this generation as "almost devoid of Jewish self-hatred." Sternlicht contrasts this generation with some second or third-generation Jewish-American authors who deliberately "reinforced negative stereotypes with satire and a selective realism".

The Jewish-American Princess (JAP) stereotype was a construct of, and popularized by, post-war Jewish male writers, notably in Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...

's 1955 novel, Marjorie Morningstar
Marjorie Morningstar (novel)
Marjorie Morningstar is a 1955 novel by Herman Wouk, about a woman who wants to become an actress. In 1958, the book was made into a Hollywood feature movie starring Natalie Wood, also titled Marjorie Morningstar.-Plot:...

and Phillip Roth's 1959 novel Goodbye, Columbus
Goodbye, Columbus
Goodbye, Columbus is a 1959 book by American novelist Philip Roth. It was the writer's first book: a collection of five short stories and one novella, also titled "Goodbye, Columbus"....

featuring princess protagonists.

Medieval era

In medieval French literature, Jews are generally presented unfavorably. However, those Jews who convert are treated favorably. For example, a Jew who is among the infidels who convert is viewed positively in the 12th-century Pèlerinage de Charlemagne a Jérusalem (Pilgramage of Charlemagne to Jerusalem). A rare exception to the unfavorable stereotyping of Jews is a work by Peter Abelard
Peter Abelard
Peter Abelard was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. The story of his affair with and love for Héloïse has become legendary...

 framed as a dialogue between a Jewish and a Christian philosopher and presents Judaism in a favorable light.

18th century

Although Voltaire was celebrated for his commitment to tolerance, his writings often included vicious stereotypes of traditional targets of prejudice such as Jews and Catholics. Discussing Voltaire's literary treatment of Jews in works such as Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...

, Eric Palmer describes him as having been "uncharacteristically blind to some forms of inhumanity within his sphere." Robert Michael writes that, "Voltaire's work helped ensure that antisemitic stereotypes would persist among the educated members of French society."
In his 1759 novel Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...

, Voltaire utilizes stereotypical characterization of Jews as greedy and dishonest. For example, Cunegonde is sold to a Jewish merchant:

19th century

Nineteenth-century French literature is filled with both pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish images. Some of the anti-Jewish images include stereotypes such as the greedy banker and art collector in Honore de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

's series La comedie humaine
La Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy .-Overview:...

(The Human Comedy). Henry H. Weinberg has described the stereotype of the Jewish banker in late nineteenth-century French literature as "shifty, cosmopolitan, cleverly manipulating ... single-minded [in his] quest for money." In George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

's drama Les Mississipiens (1866), there is a Jewish capitalist, Samuel Bourset, who has been described as a "Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...

 in modern dress".

High German literature

In the first published version of the Faust legend – the anonymous Faustbuch of 1587 – Faust borrows money from a Jew, who demands one of Faust's legs as security for the debt. Faust saws off his leg and gives it to the Jew as collateral; however, when Faust subsequently returns to repay the debt, the Jew is, of course, unable to return the leg and compelled to pay Faust compensation as a result.

19th century

The hostility towards Jews that developed in the political and cultural arenas of 19th century German society was reflected in the literature of the era. One stereotype of Jews employed in German literature was to represent them as speaking in a manner that was considered defective German. This manner of speech was referred to as mauscheln, a German word based on the proper name Moishe. An example of this stereotype is the character of Jäkel the Fool who speaks in a "mock Frankfurt accent dialect" that is meant to be understood as proto-Yiddish.
Richard Levy characterizes Veitel Itzig, the villain in Gustav Freytag
Gustav Freytag
Gustav Freytag was a German novelist and playwright.-Life:Freytag was born in Kreuzburg in Silesia...

's Debit and Credit as "perhaps the most poisonous stereotype of the greedy, utterly immoral Jewish businessman in nineteenth-century literature." According to Jacob Katz, the message of Debit and Credit is that "Judaism alone is not capable of giving its adherents morality or culture."

Post-World War II

Since the end of World War II, negative stereotypes of the Jew have almost totally disappeared from German literature. The awareness of German crimes against Jews and the contribution of antisemitism in German literature to the ethos in which those crimes were committed have led postwar authors to work towards providing a more accurate and unbiased portrayal of the Jewish experience.

Russian literature

Zvi Y. Gitelman writes that "Whatever their personal views of the Jewish people, pre-1881 Russian writers fell short of their liberal, humanistic ideals when they wrote of Jews."

Further reading

  • Craig, Terrence: Racial Attitudes in English-Canadian Fiction, 1905-1980. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1987. xii, 163 pp.
  • Wassermann, Henry: Stereotypes and Antisemitism, from the Middle Ages to the Present. Jerusalem: Israel Information Centre, 1985. 23 pp. ("Da et amcha"). (Hebrew)

See also

  • Antisemitism
  • Jewish-American Princess
    Jewish-American princess
    Jewish-American Princess or JAP is a pejorative stereotype of a subtype of Jewish-American female. The term implies materialistic and selfish tendencies, attributed to a pampered or wealthy background.-Origins:...

  • Model minority
    Model minority
    Model minority refers to a minority ethnic, racial, or religious group whose members achieve a higher degree of success than the population average. It is most commonly used to label one ethnic minority higher achieving than another ethnic minority...

  • Nice Jewish boy
    Nice Jewish boy
    The Nice Jewish boy is a stereotype of Jewish masculinity which circulates within the American Jewish community, as well as in mainstream American culture...

  • Self-hating Jew
    Self-hating Jew
    Self-hating Jew is a term used to allege that a Jewish person holds antisemitic beliefs or engages in antisemitic actions. The concept gained widespread currency after Theodor Lessing's 1930 book Der Jüdische Selbsthass ; the term became "something of a key term of opprobrium in and beyond Cold...

  • Stereotypes of Jews
    Stereotypes of Jews
    Stereotypes of Jews are generalizations or stereotypes about Jews. Jewish people have been stereotyped for over two millennia throughout Europe and the Western hemisphere as scapegoats for a multitude of societal problems. Antisemitism continued throughout the centuries and reached a climax in the...

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