Anti-semitism: Lazare

Bernard Lazare, a Jewish intellectual, attempts to look at the hatred of Jews and it's causes in his book Antisemitism: It's history and causes (1894)

The reading is really challenging against Jews and is about the dogmatic topic known as Anti- semitism.

In chapter one Lazare chooses to look at the history of the hatred towards the Jews. He seems to suggest that Jews cause their own hatred as they separate themselves from civilisation. They ignore human laws so they can follow the divine laws and govern themselves. Lazare says that their isolation has been their weakness.

Modern anti-semites trace first demonstrations back to Ancient Egypt, Genesis ' Egyptians must not eat bread with Hebrews.'

331, BC- When Jesus was born Jews flourished everywhere. Lazare said that they were hated in all the cites as they never entered as citizens but as a privileged class, the bourgeois. They lived apart in separate quarters and intermarried themselves so there was no fear of 'pollution'. At Alexandra Jews were ship owners, farmers and were generally very wealthy. Ptolemies made the Jews farmers of revenues, Lazare says this is another one of the causes of great hatrid. Therefore he believed it was their monopoly of trade and economic reasons that caused the hatrid.

The biggest example of the hatrid against Jews was the Dreyfus case. Dreyfus was a wealthy Jew that the French targeted. He was wrongly sentenced for something he didn't do. Because he was wealthy some say that the french picked on him because of it and the fact that he might be making money from spying, as Jews were believed to be cunning with money, which is nonsense.

The Dreyfus case split the people in France, anti semisits and non anti semistits.

Lazare also looks at Nationalism. Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms. It is split into two spectrum's, one is the idea that nationality is purely a racial division. The Germans be lived in racial purity and tried to make sure their race was pure, this was a very Hegelian view.

Jews live all over the world are remain distinct from other nationality's. They do this by their social conditions and the religion they follow.

The other type of nationalism is purely the legal side. It's hard to determine how we define our nationality, is it legal or is it racial? In Britain I do think it is legal, you can take the citizen test to become a British citizen. However parties such as the BNP would purely argue that our 'British nationality' is down to our race. They believe we are only a British citizen if we can trace our ancestors and prove it, again this is slight nonsense.

Overall the impression taken on the Jews over history shows ridicule and hatrid, but really all they are doing is insuring that they keep their own nationality, no matter where they are living, and keeping their own rules.

I think this is a good example of a society closest to Marx's idea of socialism. However other nations have shown their  jealously and are against the Jews ideas about remaining pure. The fact that they are wealthy and isolated from society also effects this.