Jocelyn Hellig takes the time to explore the nature of antisemitism in the wide variety of places that it has flourished: Christian society, Hellenistic society, the Roman empire, Islamic society, secular society, and so forth. But was the Holocaust a necessary outcome of all this hatred, and in particular of the Christian treatment of the Jews during the previous centuries of European history?
No on both counts, argues Hellig — and for related reasons. Despite the atrocious way in which Christians treated Jews, extermination was never a real goal. They wanted the Jews to suffer and they often wanted the Jews out of their midst, but it a central tenet of Christian theology was that one day the Jews would recognize the true messiah and convert to Christianity — not a likely outcome if they were eliminated, now was it?
Augustine, for example, argued that Jews must be allowed to survive — but, by the same token, they must not be allowed to thrive because their success would be an insult to the triumph of Christianity. This was a sharp contrast to other early church fathers like Chryrsostom — had the latter’s views come to dominate, eliminationism could have indeed become an integral part of Christian antisemitism.The Holocaust may not have been possible without the centuries of Christian antisemitism, but at the same time that antisemitism did not necessitate the Holocaust.
It is, then, not automatically true that intense hatred and brutal treatment of the Jews needed to lead to their extermination. The Holocaust, like so many other instances of antisemitism, cannot be understood as simply the continuation of a centuries-old hatred; on the contrary, while directly linked to past antisemitism, it must still be studied and ultimately understood in its particular historical and cultural matrix — a matrix which was dependent upon the elimination of certain Christian doctrines about the fate of the Jews while retaining the Christian hatred for them.
Some describe this as a “secularization” of antisemitism, but that isn’t entirely accurate. Secular antisemitism existed in the past, as Hellig demonstrates, without leading to eliminationist policies. No, this was only a partial secularization: those religious doctrines which served to protect the Jews were abandoned while the basic attitudes that led to the hatred of Jews were retained. Those attitudes were now defended by non-religious arguments, it is true, but many of those arguments were generally rationalizations or extensions of Christian positions. It was no longer a fully Christian antisemitism that was preached, but an antisemitism that drew from Christianity, science, racial theories, and other sources — whatever the antisemites saw fit to use.
Hellig’s exploration of antisemitism in all its religious and secular forms is very illuminating and educational. Antisemitism has been a part of Western culture for millennia, often playing a critical role in how cultures have developed because the Jews served as the perfect “other” against which a culture could define itself. It continues to play a role, for example in the Middle East, and because of that an understanding of the history of antisemitism continues to have current relevance. Anyone seeking to expand their own knowledge of the history and development of antisemitism should consider Hellig’s book an important resource.
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