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Turning to antisemitism as an external obstacle to Jewish integration, this chapter investigates the diversity of antisemitism, and looks at the representation of Jews in selected texts by Gentile writers. It seeks to distinguish an antisemitism based on the nationalistic concept of the ‘Volk’ from a subsequent antisemitism based on the quasi-scientific concept of ‘race’. It also sketches an ‘anti-modern mentality’ in which antisemitism was one component, and draws attention to a little-noticed variety of antisemitism, the ‘cultural antisemitism’ of the 1920s.

This chapter shows that although relationships with other Jews took up the majority of Jewish social life, Jews found themselves more integrated than at any time in German history. Many of their relationships with non-Jews would fall into what Georg Simmel called “differentiated friendships” that connect individuals according to common intellectual interests, common experiences, and common careers or situations in life. These friendships maintained a degree of reserve, avoiding certain areas of interest and feeling. Still, some of these links led to great affection, and some even ended in marriage.

This chapter shows that toward the end of the Weimar Republic the Jewish school system became an institution of protection against antisemitism and of strengthening Jewish consciousness. As the Nazis blocked this advancement by limiting access to secondary schools and higher education and strove to lower the Jewish level of education, Jews turned more toward their own history and culture, while preparing for emigration and also attempting not to lose sight of “general” history and culture.

This chapter critically examines the jurisprudence of free expression under human rights law and American constitutional doctrine, focusing on the issue of Holocaust denial. It is argued that legal prohibitions aimed at Holocaust denial are unjustifiable in any existing liberal state. The argument hinges on a revised form of a doctrine at the heart of a key American free speech case, Brandenburg v. Ohio. The revised Brandenburg doctrine holds that speech ought not to be prohibited, regardless of the viewpoint it advocates, unless the speech is a) intended and likely to bring about immediate lawless conduct, or b) reasonably expected to contribute substantially to widespread violence. This doctrine is defended, and it is shown to tell against prohibitions on Holocaust denial in existing liberal states.

This chapter introduces the overlapping, imagined notions of Jews, Vienna, and the Austrian provinces between the World Wars by examining how the national and urban representations functioned in shaping the culture of the First Republic, and explores the various reactions of Austria’s Jews to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy. This chapter also introduces “Jewishness” as a category of critical analysis. It outlines how perceived differences between the “Jewish” and the “non-Jewish” formed a broad, binary system for ordering the world, much like gender’s universal (and hierarchical) codings of the “feminine” and “masculine.” The results of this analysis indicate that a deeply engrained, hierarchical framework of “Jewishness” was played an important role in how Jews and non-Jews alike made sense of a new and often chaotic world in the interwar period.

This chapter examines four murder trials that became stages upon which tensions between city and province intertwined with Jewishness, revealing its function as a deeply engrained system used to shape contemporary interpretations of unexpected events in unstable times. Philipp Halsmann was tried and convicted twice for the murder of his father Max, a dentist from Riga, who was bludgeoned to death while the two were climbing in the Alps. The dramatic rhetoric used during the trial, along with the lack of evidence or viable motive, evoked centuries-old accusations against Jews for blood libel. These trials mirrored two other interwar murder trials in Vienna that are now interpreted as two egregious examples of antisemitic violence: the public assassinations of author Hugo Bettauer and philosophy professor Moritz Schlick. However, their non-Jewish assassins avoided heavy punishment by engaging more modern forms of antisemitism to legitimate their violent acts.

The history of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel can be analysed on three levels: the relations between the Holy See as the center of the world's Catholicism and Israel as the center of the Jewish world; the relations between the Vatican as the center of Catholicism and Israel as a political entity; and the relations between the two states. Thus far, between the Jewish world — Israel included — and the Christian one, there has been a lack of mutual knowledge. This is mainly due to the gap created by hatred, antisemitism, persecutions, crusades, and inquisitions that have left suspicion and fear in the Jewish world. The signing of the Fundamental Agreement between Israel and the Holy See in 1993 established and laid the framework for cultural exchanges, education, the fight against antisemitism, freedom of religion, and pilgrimage. However, it was the vision and courage of Pope John Paul II which helped formalize the relations between Christians and Jews in 1994.

This chapter investigates the actions and attitudes of the first Jewish MPs. It begins by analysing the nature of Jewish MPs as a group and their equivocal connection to the community, before proceeding to examine their activity and experience as politicians at party, constituency, national, and international levels — at each stage assessing the influence of their hyphenated identity. The chapter highlights the emergence of a specific Jewish agenda within British politics and details the community's attempts to protect politically aspects of their minority subculture, whilst integrating closely with general British interests and becoming involved in party politics. It also assesses the level of antisemitism the MPs encountered and discusses the contentious nature of Jewishness in the British political context.

This chapter examines the phenomenon of political conservatism among British Jews since 1945. The study of Jewish political preferences is now long established, and can of course be justified on its own terms. However, the political conservatism of modern British Jewry needs to be set as well in two complementary historical contexts. The first is that in the diaspora communities of Western Europe, Australia, and North America, Jews—particularly immigrant Jews—gravitated toward the politics of the center or the left rather than those of the right. The second is to be found in the continuing propensity of Britain's Conservative Party to fall victim to a populist xenophobic or antisemitic discourse, which often translates into policies that, superficially at least, hardly seem capable of attracting Jewish support. Put another way, whereas the judgment of history should have ensured a reaction against conservatism by the Jews of modern Britain, an opposite development occurred; and this calls for explanation.

Two basic questions arise whenever security and political crises occur: on the one hand, how much authority does a voluntary leadership command within its own community; and, on the other hand, how much influence on the national political powers can such a leadership expect to have. These general issues are examined here via a case study of one of the most protracted crises in the relations between Argentines and the Jews: the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in 1960 and his subsequent trial and execution in Israel in June 1962. This process unfolded against the backdrop of growing political instability in Argentina, in which antisemitism became a growing threat to the community's well-being.

The fall of communism in 1991 radically changed the political dimension of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union. The most obvious transformation, of course, was that which resulted from the shattering of the Soviet Union into fifteen or sixteen independent states. No longer is there a single policy toward Jews on the territory of the former Soviet Union. In the Ukraine, the Baltic, and other states, prominent political leaders have explicitly renounced antisemitism and have pledged that the new states will not discriminate against Jews and will guarantee their civil and cultural rights. This has brought about a major change in the Jewish situation and the one on which this chapter will concentrate: the opportunity to rebuild Jewish institutions and communities, which, except for some synagogues, had been destroyed by the Soviet regime back in the 1920s.