Anti-Semitism Influence Essays - Racism, Discrimination, Orientalism

Anti-Semitism Influence The word rests in a conversation like a foul stench and with it comes unbidden images and accusations. Today in many circles this word alone is possibly the most horrendous name to place on a person. Maybe though, not because of what it means, but because of what it brings to mind. Automatically and unwanted, pictures come to our mind of goose stepping Nazis and concentration camps, bodies piled high and what we think of as the air fills with the scent of burning flesh. Our worst nightmares and human kinds worst behavior's. Yet, many of us do not know where the term came from or even what it means beyond their simple ideas. Even dictionaries only give the blandest description of the term. Webster's New World Dictionary defines anti-Semitism as "having or showing prejudice against Jews," "discriminating against or persecuting Jews," "...hostility [toward Jews]." but there really isn't a lot to be learned from that, that we didn't already know. So I knew I had to dig deeper. So I started to look for references to Nazi's and Hitler as well as Martin Luther. I began to even look for sites of the Ku Klux Klan in efforts to find some background on the term that brings so much angst into the mind as this. Although I admit, I did find a wonderful article in an unexpected location, unexpected only because I had already consulted so many encyclopedias and found nothing. Yet Funk and Wagner told me this: "ANTI-SEMITISM, political, social, and economic agitation and activities directed against Jews. The term is now used to denote anti-Judaic acts or sentiments based on any grounds, including religious ones. The adjective Semitic originally was applied to all descendants of Shem, the eldest son of the biblical patriarch Noah; in later usage, it refers to a group of peoples of southwestern Asia, including both Jews and Arabs. The word anti-Semitism was coined about 1879 to denote hostility only toward Jews. This hostility is supposedly justified by a theory, first developed in Germany in the middle of the 19th century, that peoples of so-called Aryan stock are superior in physique and character to those of Semitic stock." www.funkandwagnalls.com/ I was surprised to learn that it had to do with more then just the Jews, but Arabs as well. Else where, I found a little more to back this up; "Anti-Semitism, from a strict adherence to the compound structure and meaning of the word itself, can be defined simply as being against (antagonistic toward, opposed to) the Semitic people. In a grammatical and etymological sense (as pertaining to race), such a definition would include all the descendants of Shem (e.g., the Arabic nations as well as the nation of Israel). The word "anti-Semitism" though is not really used in a broad sense pertaining to the entire Semitic line. Rather, the word is invariably used in a much more restrictive sense, referring to opposition exhibited toward only one branch of the Semitic line -- opposition exhibited toward the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. The Jewish people alone, among the Semitic people, have been the target of persecution after persecution during the past three and one-half millenniums; and "anti-Semitism" is an expression which has come into use pointing to these persecutions. Other Semitic nations are not in view at all." gracenet.com/lamp/TODA1.html And a little more on the background; "Today one hears protests that the word anti- Semitism should not be used, because there are other Semites besides the Jews. The term however, was coined in 1879 by a racist named Wilhelm Marr. He was searching for a more scientific sounding term then Jew when he founded the League of Anti-Semites. In the European context, the word Semite was used strictly for the Jews." Page 36 Christians and Jews in Germany. Uriel Tal. The term can further be broken own into both racial and religious anti-Semitism. "Both religious and racial anti-Semitism were to be found in the Second Reich. Religious anti-Semitism insisted that a Jew could not retain his Jewish identity, and it demanded that he converts and assimilates. Fredrick Paulsen, a prominent liberal humanist and outspoken critic of racial anti-Semitism, explained in his "System of Ethics" that ?to remain a complete Jew and a complete German is impossible.' Racial anti-Semitism treated the Jew as a parasite, a biological inferior that conversion and assimilation would not cure, a danger to the body politic." Uriel Tal, Christian's and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914, trans. Noah Jonathan Jacobs (Ithaca NY