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A review by aeudaimonia
Anti-Judaism by David Nirenberg
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
4.75
One of the best books I've read this year, Anti-Judaism takes an intellectual approach similar to Edward Said's Orientalism: tracing through history the development of anti-Judaism as a system of thought up to, as Nirenberg quotes Nietzsche, the "creeping calamity" of the Holocaust. While some chapters take us outside the Western Christian context, specifically those covering Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and early Islam, it should be required reading for anyone who is or was raised Christian.
My only qualm is that each chapter could be its own 400-page book (currently it boasts of a little under 500 pages, excluding another 100 pages of notes). Fleshing out each time period could easily have taken 1000+ pages. Not everyone's cup of tea, but the last main chapter covered everything from Karl Marx and Max Weber to Joseph Goebbels and Nazi propaganda to the Cassirer/Heidegger debate and the perceived Judaization of mathematics. It needed more space to breathe. With that said, this book is an effective springboard for readers who want to study in more depth, and Nirenberg's bibliography provides literally hundreds of avenues to do so.
My only qualm is that each chapter could be its own 400-page book (currently it boasts of a little under 500 pages, excluding another 100 pages of notes). Fleshing out each time period could easily have taken 1000+ pages. Not everyone's cup of tea, but the last main chapter covered everything from Karl Marx and Max Weber to Joseph Goebbels and Nazi propaganda to the Cassirer/Heidegger debate and the perceived Judaization of mathematics. It needed more space to breathe. With that said, this book is an effective springboard for readers who want to study in more depth, and Nirenberg's bibliography provides literally hundreds of avenues to do so.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Antisemitism