JWST319X

Cross-listed with HIST329R. Hatred of the Jews has a long history, stretching from antiquity to the present. Based on many causes -- religious animosity, economic challenges, racial fears, political anxieties -- antisemitism may have waxed and waned over the past two thousand years, but it has proven a remarkably resilient and often deadly concept. This course will examine the main claims of the antisemites from antiquity to the present, the causes for the emergence of antisemitic invective and behavior in different periods and places, and the ways Jews devised to cope with the threat that anti-Jewish hostility posed. We will focus on primary sources as well as scholarly analyses. Hopefully we will come to understand how different societies coped with an unusual religo-ethnic minority group and how that minority group understood its place in those societies.