cover image Satanizing of the Jews

Satanizing of the Jews

Joel Carmichael. Fromm International, $18.95 (210pp) ISBN 978-0-88064-132-6

Unlike other forms of prejudice, anti-Semitism took on a mystical character with the advent of Christianity, asserts Carmichael. Images of Jews as inhumanly evil and satanically powerful were promulgated by the early Church Fathers. The Crusaders exploited the ancient theme of Jews as demonic murderers of God, and after Luther's campaign of violent anti-Semitism, the stereotype of Jew as primordial sinner became central to the catechism taught to children. Carmichael, a specialist in Christianity ( The Death of Jesus ) and Russian history, follows the lineage of ``mystical anti-Semitism'' from Christian medieval theology through secularized modern Christendom to its ultimate, demented manifestation notion of Holocaust as a `flowering' of anything seems offensive in Hitler and the Holocaust. He views Arab hostility to Israel as a collective enmity distinct from the mystical variety of Jew-hatred and rooted in the conviction that Jews should be subjugated to Islam. This important, lucid critique offers a provocative perspective on centuries of bigotry. (May)