The Rhetoric Of Antisemitism

The Rhetoric of Antisemitism was prompted by studying the decision of Vatican II (1965) to repudiate antisemitism. A close analysis revealed that the Catholic Church focused on the foundational issue in antisemitism—the charge of eternal guilt whereby Jews are forever guilty of killing Christ. This repudiation of antisemitism came with a rhetorical explanation of this hatred, a perspective rarely explored. In advancing the rhetorical perspective, this book focuses on the initial struggle Christianity experienced with Judaism, intensifying a hatred thereof, and settling on a religious dogma of eternal guilt meant to perpetuate antisemitism for eternity. Kiewe tackles the similar approach Islam has taken in its tension with Judaism and how it was turned centuries later into the Arab-Israeli conflict, significantly with the help of Nazi-antisemitism and propaganda. This volume also discusses the significant rise of antisemitism in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the forgery pamphlet The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that promoted the charge of Jewish world domination, and the more recent Durban Conference (2001) as a major turning point in conflating antisemitism and anti-Zionism, including the linguistic games used to merge antisemitism with anti-Israelism. Finally, in the decision by Vatican II to accept the guilt over antisemitism and seeking its end, both the foundation and a solution to this hatred are evident.

Discourse and Discrimination is a study of how racism, antisemitism and ethnicism are reflected in discourse. The authors first survey five established discourse analysis approaches before providing their own model and three case-studies. Drawing on a wide range of sources, they question why racism and anti-Semitism are still virulent worldwide.

In Antisemitism and the White Supremacist Imaginary: Conflations and Contradictions in Composition and Rhetoric, Mara Lee Grayson calls attention to the complicity of academic institutions and the discipline(s) of rhetoric, composition, and writing studies in the simultaneous perpetuation and denial of anti-Jewish racism. Despite the persistence of antisemitism and Christian hegemony in the United States and its academic institutions, and despite a growing body of antiracist and anti-oppressive scholarship, antisemitism remains largely unaddressed in disciplinary scholarship, curricula, and pedagogy. This book begins to fill that gap by exploring how the rhetoric through which Jewish identity is conceptualized and weaponized by the white supremacist imaginary essentializes Jewish identities and obscures the racist aims and character of antisemitism. Drawing upon rhetorical analysis, personal narrative, and original phenomenological research, Grayson highlights how deeply embedded antisemitic ideologies impact the lived experiences of Jewish teachers, students, and scholars, and perpetuate white supremacy. This book illuminates the experiential, rhetorical, historical, political, and racial dynamics of antisemitism, exposes the limitations of existing discourses of whiteness and (anti)racism, and gestures toward a future in which, through more nuanced and productive discourse, we can better support Jewish educators and students and better engage Jewish members of the discipline as accomplices in antiracism. "I take this book personally. Grayson's theoretical framework, historical overview, personal anecdotes, and phenomenological research locate antisemitism nestled in the heart of the white supremacist imaginary. I felt such sadness, anger, and pain reading this book-recognizing myself as a Jew in its stark reflection-and yet her words also charge me, explicitly in my Jewishness, with the urgent need to join others in imagining a more just world through cooperative action and frank dialogue. It's a powerful and vibrant contribution to our field." -Eli Goldblatt, Co-Author, with David Jolliffe, of Literacy as Conversation: Learning Networks in Urban and Rural Communities "In this timely and important monograph, Dr. Grayson adroitly explains the impact of antisemitism not only for rhetoric, composition, and writing scholars and students but also our contemporary moment. In lucid and engaging prose, she unpacks thousands of years of history and tropes, making this book a must-read for anyone engaged in antiracist work." -Janice W. Fernheimer, Zantker Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, University of Kentucky

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • The prescient founder of The Free Press delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains what we can do to defeat it. “A praiseworthy and concise brief against modern-day anti-Semitism.”—The New York Times On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh, as well as the continued surge of hate crimes against Jews in cities and towns across the country, raise a question Americans cannot avoid: Could it happen here? This book is Weiss’s answer. Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. With its promise of free speech and religion, its insistence that all people are created equal, its tolerance for difference, and its emphasis on shared ideals rather than bloodlines, America has been, even with all its flaws, a new Jerusalem for the Jewish people. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism. No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics as well as the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all. Weiss is one of our most provocative writers, and her cri de coeur makes a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in this uncertain moment. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.

"A source-rich historical survey of the Holocaust which pays particular attention to the role played by anti-Semitic traditions and language in the genocide"--