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|title=Anti-Judaism: A History of a Way of Thinking

|author=David Nirenberg

|publisher=Head of Zeus

|date=July 2013

|summary=A fascinating, scholarly tour de force of the role Judaism has played in the history of ideas of the Western world.

}}

Initially the choice of title seemed an odd one on account of the more widely used term, anti-Semitism. The distinction is quickly made though, that unlike the latter, anti-Judaism does not need real Jews to flourish, but is fuelled by an idea alone. In fact this is a core tenet of Nirenberg’s thesis. Throughout history the idea of ‘Judaism’ is raised as an existential spectre in societies where there may be no Jewish members at all. This is a chilling reality, and Nirenberg charts the course of how this came to be.