Anti-Semitism: Anthology “What is Anti-Semitism?”: Is it all a matter of definition?

At the beginning of the year, Berlin’s Senator for Culture Joe Chialo tried to link the allocation of public funding to a commitment to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The core of it is: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which can be expressed as hatred towards Jews.” After some violent protests against the obligation to confess in general and the IHRA definition in particular, Chialo backed down due to legal concerns.

A recently published volume on understandings of anti-Semitism by Peter Ullrich, Sina Arnold, Anna Danilina, Klaus Holz, Uffa Jensen, Ingolf Seidel and Jan shows that Chialo’s initiative was not a good idea, regardless of how the IHRA definition is judged Weyand published. Because Chialo’s measure collides with the hard-won principle of political education that what is controversial in science must also be discussed controversially.

Controversial understandings

The definition of the IHRA has been criticized in science as being too vague and therefore susceptible to instrumentalisation. Since 2021, it has also been confronted with two competing or complementary definitions: the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) and the Nexus Document. The core of the JDA is: “Anti-Semitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” One way out of the dilemma is, as some states in the USA do, to make decisions To provide people with multiple definitions of anti-Semitism and – based on the overlap between them – to trust that actors can deal well with the differences.

As Ullrich and colleagues emphasize, the controversy over understandings of anti-Semitism is by no means accidental or the result of shortcomings on one side, but is rooted in the matter itself. Anti-Semitism is far too complex a phenomenon, both historically and currently, for there to be a single definition that covers it all. Different definitions and terms of anti-Semitism each bring specific aspects of their subject into focus – and all of them have blind spots.

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The fact that the (German) anti-Semitism discourse is often characterized by insinuations, distortions and accusations is probably also due to the fact that many participants do not (yet) sufficiently recognize their own perspective. The volume is a very convincing plea to do exactly that and to attribute good intentions to other actors. Accordingly, perspectives that contradict your own are presented while emphasizing their strengths in order to problematize them on this basis.

A manual

The volume is divided into four sections. The first three parts have the character of a manual. First, ten “basic terms” are highlighted with which anti-Semitism is typified in research. This is followed by introductions to 13 “problem areas” that are relevant to understanding anti-Semitism. Finally, 13 “positions” are presented with which theorists have answered the question of what anti-Semitism is. While the handbook articles are written by a total of 22 authors, the fourth and final part consists of a 75-page text by Peter Ullrich, who systematizes and questions the concepts of anti-Semitism from a scientific-theoretical perspective.

With its handbook character, the volume fills a gap and draws a broad panorama of understandings of anti-Semitism. Katharina Kellenbach, for example, emphasizes in her entry on anti-Judaism that modern anti-Semitism cannot be clearly differentiated from religious hostility against Jews, so that it is perhaps not as “modern” as is often assumed. Meron Mendel reflects on “contested speaking positions” and, following Thomas McCarthy, demands that “those affected” should have the first, but not the last, word in the discussion. The “positions” also include theorists who have so far hardly appeared in the German-speaking anti-Semitism debate, such as the genocide researcher Helen Fein, who died in 2022, and the American historian Jonathan Judaken.

After the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, what the volume has to say about anti-Semitism in and around the Middle East conflict is of particular interest. “The decisive criterion for Israel-related anti-Semitism,” says Thomas Haury, “is not the radicality of the rejection or the correctness of the arguments, but whether they reproduce anti-Semitism.” Accordingly, not every one-sided, poorly justified or vehemently presented “criticism of Israel” is anti-Semitic. According to Haury, anti-Semitic semantics have served “increasingly as a foil for interpretation” since the 1930s, “with which the dimension of anti-Semitism was massively and almost inextricably drawn into the real conflict.”

Like Dan Diner recently in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” of January 23, 2024, Peter Lintl and Peter Ullrich emphasize that the conflict over Israel/Palestine is fundamentally a national conflict over land, which “at least from the perspective of the Palestinians as well (anti-)colonial features”. In doing so, they problematize Nathan Sharansky’s “3-D test”, which has also been widely used in Germany, but only serves seriously as an initial test of suspicion of anti-Semitism: “The three criteria of the test for detecting anti-Semitism (delegitimation, demonization, double Standards) are not only strategies of both sides that are structurally based in the conflict itself, but rather, as conflict research shows, they are part of many conflicts.«

In another entry in the “Problem Areas” Ullrich reconstructs “two families of anti-Semitism concepts.” The “substantive” concept makes anti-Semitism dependent on the existence of anti-Semitic semantics that is directed against Jews as Jews. The “abstract-formal” term, on the other hand, diagnoses anti-Semitism when general negative characteristics and strategies are turned against a Jewish entity, for example Israel is declared an “apartheid state”. The JDA is therefore on the substantive side, the IHRA definition somewhere between the two families of terms.

Reasons for pluralism

In his synthesizing final reflections, which impress with great analytical precision, Ullrich also emphasizes the “necessary vagueness” of definitions of anti-Semitism and points out surprises in their application. This can be clearly illustrated using the example of the German anti-Semitism commissioner. Some of them are not very squeamish about the exclusion of anti-Zionist Jews, which has repeatedly earned them accusations of anti-Semitism.

With the JDA, the commissioners must be defended against such allegations, even if their practices may be criticized as illiberal or otherwise misguided. They do not exclude Jews as Jews, but as anti-Zionists. The IHRA definition, on the other hand, puts them in trouble. It is no secret that some of the commissioners have a negative perception of cosmopolitan Diaspora Jewry and are very passionate about their work, which brings them very close to the core of the IHRA definition. So there are not only democratic theoretical reasons for pluralism in the definitions, but this could also be in the self-interest of everyone involved.

The volume opens up ways to break down the hardened fronts of the anti-Semitism discussion – and will therefore not be well received by those whose political identities depend on these fronts. The only criticism that can be criticized is that he does not consistently follow through with his approach in the entry about “postcolonial anti-Semitism”. Although Jan Weyand tries to differentiate, he falls into the trope that postcolonial approaches would make the Shoah a “crime among others” and therefore accuses them of “relativizing” them. On the other hand, various postcolonial authors, especially Dirk Moses, see the Shoah as an extreme case. The goodwill that the band shows towards others can also apply to themselves. In any case, it is at the very top of the quality scale of anti-Semitism theory.

Urs Lindner is a philosopher at the Max Weber Kolleg at the University of Erfurt and currently a fellow at the Center for Anti-Semitism Research at the TU Berlin.

Peter Ullrich/Sina Arnold/Anna Danilina/Klaus Holz/Uffa Jensen/Ingolf Seidel and Jan Weyand (eds.): What is anti-Semitism? Terms and definitions of anti-Semitism. Wallstein, 315 pages, br., 24 €.

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