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Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England

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This work is a detailed and difficult account of how pervasive anti- Semitism has been in English life and literature. It moves from medieval times to the present, and has a powerful indictment of present- day anti- Semitism among the chattering classes in England. As a long- time student and lover of English Literature I was most impressed by the work on anti- Semitism in English literary life. Julius here follows the work of a great scholar the late Harold Fisch who pioneered in this area. In a recent review of Julius' work perhaps the most powerful present- day reader of the work of Shakespeare , Harold Bloom, expresses his deep sense of trouble at knowing that the greatest writer of all, nonetheless produced Shylock. There is no doubt that Julius is correct in seeing that whether it is the blood- libel in the Nun Prioress' Tale of Chaucer, or Fagin in Dickens 'Oliver Twist' the most powerful images of Jews in English Literature are negative ones. One of course can speak of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, and Joyce's Leopold Bloom as counterweights but the dull Deronda and the everyman Bloom (Created after all by an Irishman) are not real counterweights. And it is not simply Shakespeare in his time but also Marlowe, and of course in our own time T.S. Eliot's Bleistein with his cigar.
The role of academics and journalists, and also of trade- unions in the latest form of British anti- Semitism , is made painfully clear in this work. Israel is accused of all the crimes which its enemies are guilty of. In perhaps the most ridiculous case of moral inversion in modern times the predominant weight of opinion in the British Media ( most egregiously perhaps the BBC and the Guardian)finds that Israel is guilty , whatever it does, and especially of course when it defends itself.
This work is not easy to read. But it overwhelms in its meticulousness of detail and in its accuracy.

When I was a boy in Berlin in the early years of the Nazi regime, some five or ten years before the Holocaust, a young rabbi broke the conventions of rabbinical discourse and managed to bring solace and spiritual strength to the Jews of the city. He created a sensation. Jews who would never enter a synagogue otherwise made their way to hear him. This rabbi's name was Joachim Prinz and in due course he became a leader of American Jewry. But in those early 1930's, he held the rapt attention of his people, speaking approximately as follows:

"Everywhere you read and hear that you are ugly and hateful. Right now, look at the person next to you: is he hateful ? Is he ugly ? "

And suddenly Rabbi Prinz's listeners, cowed as they had been by the incessant propaganda of the haters, could see the truth: no, the Nazis were not right. They could see the irrationality of all that hatred. They could see, and they knew that they should have seen all the time, that it was not they who were the guilty ones.

This book by Anthony Julius performs something of the same function for us today that Rabbi Prinz performed for the Jews in the 1930's. All around us the "enlightened" tell us of the perfidy of the Jews. who are nowadays called Zionists. If only Israel (read, the Jews) behaved better, all would be well. In the meantime, it is important to punish the "Zionists." Boycott them ! Divest from Israeli investments ! Sanction them !

On the notion of boycott, as on many other issues, Julius is particularly revealing, showing the ancient, irrational hatreds that move people to call for boycotts of Israel, the only country so singled out.

There are scores and maybe hundreds of books on the modern anti-Semitism. I am familiar with many of them. But Julius has historical material (mostly from England) and thoughtful analyses that break absolutely new ground. The book will not and cannot change the mind of anyone who is infected with anti-Semitism, but it will greatly inform the rest of us. And yes, it will confirm that which in theory needs no confirmation: there is no reason, no excuse, nothing whatever acceptable in the anti-Semitic hatreds of our day.

If you have ever seen Elia Kazan's 1947 Academy Award winning film "Gentleman's Agreement", one is constantly reminded of its exploration of the insidiousness of "polite" antisemitism. It is easy to identify antisemitism when it is wearing a swastika armband, burning books and breaking windows. If only they were always so conspicuous! Antisemites are not (necessarily) idiots; all but the most extreme are easily able to understand that they will be shunned if they permit themselves to be seen openly. Antisemites are not (necessarily) genocidal; there are many possibilities of nature and degree. The most interesting part of this engaging book is the insightful way Julius unmasks the crypto-antisemite. These are identified by their deployment of antisemitic stereotypes, false arguments, double-standards, racialist metaphors, odious comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany, etc. This is what many of the negative reviewers of this book fail, or refuse, to understand. They suggest that Julius imagines a Nazi under every British bed or that he is an apologist for the Israeli far right. This is not the point. It is, in fact, the same tactic of delegitimisation (of Israel) that Julius discusses as a possible signpost. The point is not that Britons are all a bunch of Jew-haters (which they clearly are not) or whether Julius' politics are left or right (I don't know what they are); the point is that antisemitism lives, and has always lived, in Britain. Sometimes, its Britishness is distinctive. It doesn't just speak German (or Arabic), it isn't necessarily an uneducated thug in jackboots and it rarely announces itself. Read this book. It is well-written and draws on a wide variety of interesting sources. You will not necessarily agree with everything contained in it, but there is no denying the force of many of its observations or its contribution to scholarship.

An excellent, scholarly account of an increasingly relevant phenomenon. As the Holocaust fades from generational memory and as the Left exploits Islamism as a battering ram against which to assail its own historical enemies--bourgeois culture and its economic system--leftist elites in England find themselves embracing the latest iteration of Mosley's disease. It is all restated now; the scientific racism of Britons before WWII has been replaced by rabid anti-Zionism, disguised as criticism of the Israeli State--but it differs from legitimate criticism in that it is obsessive, and in the spirit of the Eternal Jew Haters, places the Jew (and now his state) at the center of the world. Thus, for some Arabs and many Britons, Israel has become the primary tumor, spewing cancer throughout the world.

"We cannot escape history," Abraham Lincoln once observed, and it's clear that the English cannot escape theirs.

This book needs to be read.

I received my copy of "Trials of the Diaspora" several days ago. The author ,of course, is a top attorney in London. Parts of the book are somewhat like a legal brief. It is very comprehensive and, obviously not a book that can be read in one day. Yet in almost 600 pages, Julius doesn't address what could be considered the worse example of British anti-semitism in it's history. It involved the attempt to rescue the only large remaining population of Jews still alive and not yet in the clutches of the Nazi extermination machine. In late 1944,early 1945,the Nazis contacted the Allies offering to allow the still very large Hungarian Jewish population to be freed in exchange for trucks and money. The US was interested in exploring this "deal". It was the British who sabotaged it. Anyone who isn't a Jew hater could clearly see giving some trucks and money to the Nazis ,when they were clearly already defeated except for "mopping up" would not have prolonged the war. But the British including someone at the top of the foreign office , clearly preferred to see another almost 1 million Jews dead. There was even a comment made by I believe, Anthony Eden or his assistant ,I'm paraphrasing : Who wants 1 million Jews loose in Europe?. How could Julius leave this out?

There are plenty of unintentionally funny bits in Harold Bloom's fulsome review in the New York Times (May 7, 2010) of Anthony Julius's tedious book, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Antisemitism in England. The theme of Mr. Julius is that "the Jews are always on trial" and after whining thus, in the familiar full-blown paranoiac pattern, Julius and Bloom proceed to conduct their own Beth din (rabbinic court) inquisition: "Julius casts this huge book as a series of trials, not of the Jews but of the English." (Bloom).

No one may judge the Judaic people, but Julius and Bloom presume to judge the English people. This makes perfect Talmudic sense! Israeli leader Shimon Peres said something similar after the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Jenin in 2002, when there was a call for a U.N. war crimes investigaton. "No one judges Israel!" Peres shrieked. But counterfeit "Israel" will put western civilization on trial, or at least three of its most eminent writers, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, along with the English nation as a whole.

According to Bloom:

"Trials of the Diaspora takes its title from its final epigraph, Philip Roth's pungent observation in his still undervalued novel Operation Shylock: `In the modern world, the Jew has perpetually been on trial; still today the Jew is on trial, in the person of the Israeli -- and this modern trial of the Jew, this trial which never ends, begins with the trial of Shylock.'...The best chapter in Trials of the Diaspora concerns the cavalcade of anti-Semitism in English literature, with its monuments in Chaucer's Prioress's Tale, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist...
"As an old-fashioned bardolator, I am hurt when I contemplate the real harm Shakespeare has done to the Jews for some four centuries now. No representation of a Jew in literature ever will surpass Shylock in power, negative eloquence and persuasiveness....Shakespeare, still competing with the ghost of Christopher Marlowe, implicitly contrasts Shylock with Barabas, the Jew of Malta in Marlowe's tragic farce...It is Shakespeare's continuing triumph over Marlowe that such an exchange will not work. Shylock is darker and deeper forever. For Julius, The Merchant of Venice is both an anti-Semitic play and a representation of (attack on) anti-Semitism. I dispute the latter: the humanizing of Shylock only increases his monstrosity."

If you attend Yale University and seek to plumb the depths of the literature of the West, Prof. Bloom will be your guide --the Prof. Bloom who loves Shakespeare but despises The Merchant of Venice. We can learn an instructive lesson from what Bloom hates about the play. He writes, "No representation of a Jew in literature ever will surpass Shylock in power, negative eloquence and persuasiveness...." Then he relates to us the secret of Shakespeare's power: "... the humanizing of Shylock."

Shakespeare does not make Shylock a stock character of utter revulsion. Shylock is not presented as wholly evil or completely unsympathetic. The Christians in The Merchant of Venice are not completely blameless. The Bard acknowledges Shylock's humanity and presents him as a challenge to the flawed Christians.

Shylock's final arguments are persuasive and almost carry the day, until Portia's speech, wherein she contrasts the Judaic call for "justice" (i.e. vengeance, the "pound of flesh"), with Christ's call for mercy, after which a chasm materializes that Harold Bloom, Anthony Julius and all the Zionist professors and lawyers in the world cannot traverse.

Shakespeare attacked Shylock's ideals; lesser artists would have attacked Shylock himself. They hate the sinner. Shakespeare only hated the sin. Every drama, oration, book, movie or volume of history or theology that denies the humanity of Judaic persons and refuses to love them (Luke 6:27), cannot achieve what Shakespeare achieved: "...the humanizing of Shylock only increases his monstrosity." Call it the Shakespeare Factor, this approach toward enemies, so radically different from the rabbinic mentality which paints enemies, as Bloom and Julius do, in hateful shades of pure evil, is what is missing from many writings that oppose Judaism.

Bloom: "Dickens created the second most memorable Jew in his superb Fagin. There is no third figure to compete with Shylock and Fagin....How does one estimate the lasting harm done by Shakespeare's and Dickens's egregious Jews?...nothing mitigates the destructiveness of the portraits of Shylock and Fagin. The greatness of Shakespeare and of Dickens renders their anti-Semitic masterpieces more troublesome than the litany of lesser but frequently estimable traducers..."

Charles Dickens based Fagin on a real-life receiver of stolen goods, the notorious Ikey Solomons. In a statement after the book's publication, Dickens wrote, "Fagin in Oliver Twist is a Jew because it unfortunately was true of the time to which that story refers that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew." Shylock and Fagin are truth-types, not stereotypes, something the Juliuses and Blooms of the world can't accept. The efficacy of Dickens' portrayal of Fagin rests on the Shakespeare Factor: Dickens portrayed Fagin as fully human, animated and lively. The scene of Fagin in prison awaiting execution is suffused with pathos. He is evil, but Dickens puts forth gentiles who are at least as evil (Bill Sikes) or more so (Monks).

Lawyer Julius and Prof. Bloom have a bone to pick with Chaucer (for his testimony about ritual murder in "The Prioress Tale,"), and with Shakespeare and Dickens, and they are not reluctant to demean them out of deference for the offense their attacks may give to western civilization by sullying the memory of its literary giants. This is the one-way prerogative of the Talmudic mentality: they feel entitled to bash in the faces of our heroes, but when we topple their cherished icons, we are guilty of filthy, stinking bigotry. There is no reciprocity or quid pro quo with imperious personalities like these. They assess our humanity and burnish or damn our reputation predicated upon the degree to which we are willing to succumb to their sense of entitlement.

Bloom engages in some stereotyping of his own: "Julius links anti-Semitism to sadism. He might have done even more with this, since sado-masochism is something of an English vice, and is so much a school-experience of the upper social class."

An English vice. To say that usury or fencing stolen goods are Judaic vices is rabid Shakespearean and Dickensian antisemitism, yet Bloom feels entitled to stigmatize the English as sadomasochist, as people who derive pleasure from extreme cruelty. As one of the Holy People, Bloom can libel the English nation with impunity, while the profound insights of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens constitute an "immemorial stench" (Bloom), out of a "sewer" (Julius).

In his chapter on "The Mentality of Modern English Anti-Semitism," Mr. Julius presents what Prof. Bloom terms, "the puzzle of what appears to be an incessant prejudice, never to be dispelled."

The concept of gentiles harboring never-to-be-dispelled prejudice toward Judaics is a troglodyte dogma taught to bochurim (yeshiva boys). They are indoctrinated from an early age to believe that any opposition to the religion of Judaism is irrational (based on no legitimate grievance) and ineradicable, the assumption being that all opposition to Judaism reflects a hereditary gentile predisposition toward hatred of the Holy People. This traditional rabbinic brainwash is expressed as follows: "Halacha hi beyoduah she'Eisav soneh l'Yaakov" ("It is a given law: it is known that Esau hates Jacob;" cf. Judaism Discovered, pp. 463-466).

It will come as a shock to the acolytes of Julius and Bloom that despite their morally superior liberal pretensions, they are steeped in 2,000 years of Talmudic anti-gentile darkness.

An objective and dispassionate account of centuries of hatred, ridicule and exclusion, leading up to the present Midle East conflict and its life-and-death religious implications.

By the author's own admission, this is , "A very long book," and it's not something you can just curl up with and read straight through. Rather, it is probably going to serve as an oft-consulted reference book for academic types, politicians and historians.

In essence, this book is an historical record, well-defended by an ample number of detailed footnotes. So, if anyone believes that they have found errors, or if they have legitimate criticisms, the debate can hopefully proceed on high grounds.

Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England presents a fine history of anti-Semitism in England from the middle ages to modern times. It identifies four separate versions of English anti-Semitism and offers an in-depth survey of each version. The result is a powerful coverage especially recommended for college-level or Judaic studies shelves.

The condition of the used book was excellent. The content of the book is very intensive and covers the subject of antisemitism in the U.K. in detail and the most fascinating approach. I enjoy it very much, and recommend it to anyone.Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England

1st of all I have not read anywhere past 50 pages of this book and will probably only use it as a reference on a Jewish understanding on anti-Jewishness (I eschew the term anti-semitism as it means a great deal more ethnic groups than the Jews). Thus far the book is written balanced and I expect it to become more interesting further in, not that I am rushing to re3ad it.