1. The volume, consisting of five sections, presents a collection of essays on philosemitism, which is analyzed in its historical development and in light of its complex and often controversial relation to its alleged opposite, namely antisemitism. The book is opened by a brilliant introductory essay by the two editors, whose works, particularly Adam Sutcliffe’s Judaism and Enlightenment (2003) and Jonathan Karp’s The Politics of Jewish Commerce (2008), are of fundamental importance to understand the development of Jewish-Gentile relations in the early modern era. In fact, antisemitism is traditionally well-researched, and many histories of the hostility toward Jews in western civilization exist. On the other hand, only a handful of studies on philosemitism have been published to date, and most of them deal with specific aspects of this phenomenon (e.g. its conceptualizations, its contribution to the survival of European Jewry, and its manifestations in specific geographical and historical contexts, particularly early modern England). There is still no history of philosemitism comparable, for instance, to Léon Poliakov’s multi-volume History of Antisemitism, or Gavin Langmuir’s magisterial books Toward a Definition of Antisemitism and History, Religion and Antisemitism, both published in 1990. Thus, the introductory chapter by Karp and Sutcliffe is a remarkable attempt to reconstruct the history of philosemitism by tracing the main intellectual, cultural and socio-political dynamics that transformed Jewish-Gentile relations from Greco-Roman antiquity to the modern era. In their introduction, the two historians concentrate on crucial factors in the evolution of Jewish-Gentile relations. They attach particular importance to medieval Church policy, the use of political Hebraism in the early modern era, the Jews’ economic utility in the Age of Mercantilism, and the ambiguities of philosophical philosemitism, which finds its most explicit and controversial expression in Nietzsche’s views of the Jews and Jewish culture. Karp and Sutcliffe adequately highlight the decisive role that the emergence and consolidation of the Christian Church played in shaping the relationships between Jews and non-Jews. In fact, the understanding of Christian views and ecclesiastical policy on the Jewish people is critical to comprehend the evolution of philosemitism, and antisemitism as well, from late antiquity to the early modern era. The first part of this volume sheds light on this issue.
2. In his opening chapter, Robert Chazan analyzes the interrelations between New Testament imagery, formal Church doctrine and ecclesiastical policy on Jews. Chazan presents an alternative reading of the relationships between the Jewry of Medieval Christian Europe and the ideological, cultural and political authority of the Church. Chazan maintains that, although discriminatory, Church policy on the Jews aimed at their preservation. However, one might well argue that Chazan’s assessment of the medieval Church’s responsibility in the development and spread of anti-Jewish hostility is too mild. In fact, the definition of the theological and legal status of the Jews in Canon Law started, and then catalyzed, the intellectual, juridical-political and socio-cultural process that made the Jews of Western Europe what historian Kenneth Stow has famously called ‘an alienated minority’. Part I presents two more chapters, which deal both with the revival of Christian Hebraism in the early modern era. Abraham Melamed’s chapter covers the rise of a new interest in Jewish culture among Christian scholars between the Age of Renaissance and the early Enlightenment, a topic thoroughly explored by Frank Manuel and Stephen Burnett in their seminal studies published in the 1990s. Melamed offers a brief but exhaustive account of this historical phenomenon. He particularly focuses on major figures such as Reuchlin, Postel, Bodin, Pascal and Newton, who are considered to be emblematic examples of the attitudes toward Judaism among Christian philologists, philosophers, political thinkers and biblical scholars in the early modern time. Sutcliffe’s chapter concentrates on one of the main aspects of Christian Hebraism, namely the political use of Judaism in some republican currents of the seventeenth century, with particular emphasis on such authors as Cunaeus, Selden and Harrington. In the past few years, numerous essays on this topic were published, including Eric Nelson’s successful book The Hebrew Republic (2010). Though, Sutcliffe rejects the partial and now widespread thesis that, in the early modern era, republican concepts emerged as mainly ‘a process of Jewish influence’ (p. 88). He rather places this ‘philosemitic moment’ in the context of a more significant process, namely the rethinking of the main categories of European political thought between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment – a process that J.G.A. Pocock has named ‘the Machiavellian moment’.
3. The second section of the volume consists of three essays by historians Adam Shear, Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall and Howard Lupovitch, who deal respectively with three intellectuals commonly labeled as philosemites: the English Newtonian scholar William Whiston, the French clergyman and revolutionary leader Henri Grégoire, and the nineteenth-century Hungarian writer Mór Jókai. Shear’s chapter on Whiston is illuminating. In fact, while attacking the medieval rabbis, whom he considered guilty of having corrupted the Scriptures, the Newtonian thinker gave a positive evaluation of ancient, original Judaism. In this respect, Shear highlights that Whiston’s philosemitism was still based on ‘chimerical notions’ (p. 109) and entailed the hope to convert the Jews to Unitarian Christianity. Another controversial author was Grégoire. The French clergyman’s Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political Regeneration of the Jews, which appeared on the eve of the French Revolution, is commonly regarded as a masterpiece of philosemitism. Nevertheless, as Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall points out in her chapter, Grégoire’s plea for Jewish emancipation presented a contemptuous view of the Jewish people. The French abbé considered the Jews as ‘degenerate’ people, affected by many moral vices and physical defects, and likely to be emancipated only if they discarded fundamental elements of their culture and lifestyle and accepted the majority’s ways of thinking and living. As a matter of fact, his project for a ‘regeneration’ of the Jews had a strong impact on the emancipatory policies of the revolutionary and Napoleonic era, which eventually promoted the assimilation of the Jews into surrounding society. The playwright and novelist Mór Jókai is perhaps the most original of the three authors examined in this section of the volume. Lupovitch points out that the Hungarian writer’s attitude to the Jews resulted from his effort to discard the anti-Jewish myths that he had contracted in his youth, and led him to depict the Jews as ‘blood-and-flesh’, and often virtuous, human beings.
4. Part III focuses on Victorian England, with an essay by Nadia Valman, and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with two chapters by Lars Fischer and Alan Levenson. Fischer’s and Levenson’s essays are of fundamental importance. Both historians show that, in the period between the unification of 1871 and the eve of the Nazi ascent to power in the 1930s, Germany experienced the emergence of philosemitic as well as anti-Semitic tendencies. Germany was actually the main battlefield in the cultural war over the position of the Jews in Europe after emancipation, in a time when, on the one hand, state policy led the Jews to assimilate into surrounding society and, on the other, new criteria for redrawing the borders between Jews and non-Jews were elaborated and popularized. It was indeed in that time that racial antisemitism, whose origins can be traced back to some sections of Enlightenment culture, became widespread and deep-rooted in European society. However, German and, in general, European attitudes toward the newly emancipated Jews were not monolithically hostile. As the three essays in this section show, that era also saw a continuation of the Enlightenment debates on Jewish emancipation, viewed as part of a more general emancipation of humankind. On this point, Fischer stresses that the term philosemitism was originally a pejorative label, and numerous intellectuals sympathetic to the Jews tried to defend themselves from the charge of philosemitism: they rather attempted to prove that their attitude toward the Jews was simply an impartial expression of humanitarian sentiments. Nevertheless, also humanitarian attitudes were often the result of deep-rooted myths, as explained by Nadia Valman in her essay on Anthony Trollope’s and George Eliot’s literary works. In fact, Victorian England saw the emergence of the literary myth of the beautiful, virtuous, honest Jewess, and this depiction of Jewish women originated in a long lasting Christian fascination with the Jewess as an exotic, spiritual and attractive figure.
5. The fourth section analyzes philosemitism in the United States. Jonathan Karp focuses on the absorption of themes related to Jewish culture into mid-twentieth century African-American culture. In fact, the idea that Jewish communities were economically autonomous particularly influenced the educator Booker T. Washington, while the writer Zora Neale Hurston emphasized the significance of political Hebraism, and the musician Paul Robeson regarded Jewish culture as the source of African-American folk music and spirituality. Julian Levinson examines postwar American literature, with special focus on the reception of the works of Jewish writers such as Saul Bellow, Delmore Schwartz and Alfred Kazin among non-Jewish literary circles and authors, some of whom regarded the artist as symbolically a Jew. Yaakov Ariel investigates philosemitic tendencies among evangelical Christians, with particular emphasis on pro-Zionist views and religious-based support for Jews among various Protestant groups, especially millenarians.
6. Finally, Part V presents two chapters by Wulf Kansteiner and Ruth Ellen Gruber on philosemitism in postwar Germany and postmillennium Central Europe. This section offers an insight into the contemporary world and stimulates reflection on the manifestation of new and complex attitudes toward the Jewish people. Kansteiner underscores the German media’s efforts to present the Jews in an exclusively positive light, and observes that this phenomenon led to a more normalized view of the Jew among the German population in the second half of the twentieth century. Gruber analyzes the recent growth of tourism to Jewish destinations in Central Europe, especially Prague and Kazimierz, near Krakow. She points out that the transformation of some traditional Jewish places into popular tourist destinations is leading to a sort of discomfort, among Jews, to endorse a form of philosemitism aimed at promoting a profitable business.
7. In conclusion, this volume is an extremely useful resource to understand philosemitism in its historical development, and confirms that philosemitism can be analyzed only in light of its opposite, namely antisemitism. In fact, the phenomena of philosemitism and antisemitism prove to be the two faces of the same coin, that is to say, the attitude that Zygmunt Bauman has called ‘allo-Semitism’ and that Karp and Sutcliffe explain with the following words: ‘Jews have characteristically occupied intermediary, analytically incongruous roles, standing out as anomalous in the social order, and, in the eyes of modernity’s discontents in particular, the representatives par excellence of the invisible “sliminess” of the forces of change’ (p. 5). For the simple fact of being different and having different habits, beliefs and roots, the Jews have mostly been regarded as unfitting the structure of the orderly world. Therefore, their mere existence has often been perceived as undermining the reassuring, monotonous, homogeneous, and illusorily solid social and cultural foundations and institutions that human societies use to construct for their survival. For this reason, the study of Jewish-Gentile relations, and accordingly of the differences and interrelations between so-called philosemitism and antisemitism, goes beyond the borders of mere historical investigation and involves other fields of knowledge, such as sociology, psychology, political thought, and the philosophical reflection on the intellectual dynamics that have shaped the western mind throughout history. It is thus to be hoped that the volume edited by Karp and Sutcliffe will promote a wider and deeper interest in this aspect of Jewish-Gentile relations, which needs to be reassessed and further researched through an interdisciplinary approach.