Antisemitism

These are the last two books I’ve read and they have a common theme: antisemitism.

Frederic Raphael (he is 92, so born in 1931) experienced antisemitism in childhood not least at Charterhouse. As far as I remember there were no Jews at Castle Park, the prep school where I was detained for five years in Dublin, and at Eton there was no antisemitism but some envy because they were excused chapel. However, there was an undercurrent of antisemitism, particularly among my grandparents’ generation. I remember Jaguars being called Jews’ canoes. Raphael is not reticent about recalling his bitterness at being bullied at Charterhouse. He might have fared better if he had not tried to hide his religion – as he admits other Jews at the school were admired – he says because their parents were rich. He sounds to me twisted and bitter. Perhaps he should have gone to Clifton where there was a boarding house for Jewish pupils that opened in 1878 and only closed in 2005 as the number of boarders dwindled.

The recent history of the Labour Party demonstrates antisemitism is by no means extinct in the UK although I doubt golf clubs still exclude Jewish members as Frederic Raphael recalls. In America this is not the case. The Palm Beach Country Club became an enclave for rich Jewish philanthropists. Bernie Madoff found it a happy hunting ground for gullible clients.

At the time of the Dreyfus Affair (1894 – 1906) antisemitism was rife in France and throughout most of Europe It made Alfred Dreyfus a popular scapegoat, framed as a German spy within the army General Staff in France. Robert Harris has fictionalised the affair, retaining all the characters and facts but adding a lot of colour to create a highly readable novel. Two things in particular struck me. His narrator Georges Picquart, the hero of the story, follows his conscience in a quest for justice for Dreyfus. He is dismissed from the army but later reinstated with promotion becoming Minister of War for three years from 1906. He was then an Army Corps commander until his death after falling from his horse in 1914. Alfred Dreyfus is reinstated at his old rank and retired as a Lt Col after the First World War. There seems some injustice here. Secondly the real spy, Charles Esterhazy, is never brought to justice. He fled to England in 1898 where he lived until his death in 1923.
The history of antisemitism is broadly summarised by Jerome Chanes in six stages.

1. Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in Ancient Greece and Rome which was primarily ethnic in nature
2. Christian antisemitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages which was religious in nature and has extended into modern times
3. Muslim antisemitism which was—at least in its classical form—nuanced, in that Jews were a protected class
4. Political, social and economic antisemitism during the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe which laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism
5. Racial antisemitism that arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism
6. Contemporary antisemitism which has been labeled by some as the new antisemitism

(Antisemitism: a Reference Handbook by Jerome Chanes)