Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews
Cambridge University Press
Edition: First Edition, 8/28/1997
EAN 9780521593694, ISBN10: 0521593697
Hardcover, 568 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 x 3.8 cm
Language: English
Esau's Tears explores the remarkable and revealing variety of modern anti-Semitism, from its emergence in the 1870s in a racial-political form to the eve of the Nazi takeover, in the major countries of Europe and in the United States. Previous histories have generally been more concerned with description than analysis, and most of the interpretations in those histories have been lacking in balance. The evidence presented in this volume suggests that anti-Semitism in these years was more ambiguous than usually presented, less pervasive and central to the lives of both Jews and non-Jews, and by no means clearly pointed to a rising hatred of Jews everywhere, even less to the likelihood of mass murder. Similarly, Jew-hatred was not as mysterious or incomprehensible as often presented; its strength in some countries and weakness in others may be related to the fluctuating, and sometimes quite different, perceptions in those countries of the meaning of the rise of the Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Preface
Part I. The Long-Range Background
1. Anti-Semitism before the modern period
overview and definition
2. Modern times (1700 to the 1870s)
Part II. The Appearance of Modern Anti-Semitism (1870–90)
3. Germans and Jews (1870–1980)
4. Anti-Semitic ideology and movement in Germany (1879 to the 1890s)
5. Socialists, Jews, and anti-Semites
6. Austria-Hungary
radical radicalism and Schlamperei
7. France
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
8. A sweet exile?
Part III. The Belle Epoque (1890–1914)
9. The failures
Russia and Romania
10. The ambiguities of 'failure' in the Belle Epoque
Germany and Austria
11. The ambiguous successes
Great Britain and the United States
Part IV. A Decade of War and Revolution (1914–24)
12. World War I
13. Jews and revolution (1917–34)
Part V. The Fascist Era
Europe between the Wars
14. Fascism and Anti-Semitism
Epilogue
Conclusions.