(Reviewer: Chuck Volpe, Vol. 65, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2010)
Anthony Julius first entered the public arena as Princess Diana’s lawyer, testimony in itself to his professional acumen and his ability to transcend royal social constraints. But it was his representation of Deborah Lipstadt in the landmark David Irving case involving Holocaust denial that first saw him melding together his fierce commitment to Jewish causes and his legal skills.
His latest book is a further example of this amalgam. This ground-breaking project – Trials of the Diaspora – a History of anti-Semitism in England – is the first ever comprehensive history of antisemitism in England. In the introduction Julius makes the point that England is unique in being continuously innovative in developing the various tropes and forms that antisemitism has taken over the centuries. England, he says, always arrived first.
Julius breaks English antisemitism into four distinct variants, each of which he investigates in detail. The first is the antisemitism of mediaeval England up to 1290, which was the year in which Edward I expelled the Jews from England and which was the first expulsion of an entire Jewish population in history. In the years prior to this, the legal status of Jews was an odd one – they were both legal persons and also the negotiable property of the Crown. “The Jew can have nothing that is his own, for whatever he acquires, he acquires not for himself, but for the king” explained the 13th Century English jurist, Henry de Bracton.
The second major strand is literary antisemitism. This developed and thrived in the 400 years following the expulsion, a period during which Jews were entirely absent from England. During this time, the real Jew was replaced by the fantasy Jew, whose ‘crimes’ – “ritual murder, usury, child abuse, avarice, misanthropy, and hatred of Christians and the Church” – became the standard fare of English literary antisemitism. The natural and appropriate punishments for these ‘crimes’ were humiliation, expropriation, forced conversion and death.
This negative image of the Jew, Jewish history and Judaism, as depicted in the works of Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dickens, TS Eliot and others, has established a permanent place for itself in the English literary canon, the body of literature which is formative of national self-understanding and which is taught in schools and universities. This infusion of negative stereotypes is even more harmful on account of it being subconscious.
The third strain Julius addresses is modern antisemitism, which covers the period from the ‘readmission’ of England’s Jews in the mid-17th Century through to the late 20th Century. This antisemitism is one of condescension, insult and partial exclusion; pervasive but contained. It is an antisemitism reluctant to be recognised for what it is, both on the part of the perpetrator and the victim. However, it places constraints on Jews encouraging an anxious conformance – a “don’t make waves” mentality.
Finally, Julius deals with contemporary antisemitism, which emerged after the Six-Day War, and which treats Zionism and the State of Israel as illegitimate enterprises. This ‘New Antisemitism’ is distinguishable from the ‘old antisemitism’ in a number of respects – it is adopted by people who profess deep hostility to antisemitism, many of its advocates are self-identifying Jews, and it comes from the Left rather than the Right. To overcome the belief amongst anti-Zionists that they can’t possibly be antisemites, he draws an analogy between the fellow travellers of the Soviet Union (FTSU) and the fellow travellers of antisemitism (FTAS).
Julius describes current antisemitism/antiZionism through the lens of a powerful historical imagination. In order to understand anti-Zionism, he argues, one has to understand antisemitism. He draws attention to the fact that the massive presence of the Holocaust has occluded the earlier history of antisemitism, with the result that Jews living today are unfamiliar with antisemitism in its pre-Holocaust form. This lack of familiarity stands in the way of understanding the specific antisemitic forms which today take the form of anti-Zionism.
Throughout the book Julius’ legal mind is evident in the lucid, incisive and logical stream of thought that characterises his writing. He assumes nothing, leaves nothing unsaid – at times, taking the reader through meticulously-reasoned steps on the way to his conclusion.
But he has no illusions about what he is likely to accomplish, in spite of the book’s encyclopaedic reach. On the flyleaf, he presents us with a quotation from Theodore Herzl: “[…] Everything rational and everything sentimental that can possibly be said in their [the Jews] defence has been said already”. Julius ends by saying that while the book is unlikely to change the minds of antisemites – for hatred cannot be dissolved by rational means – it does show how ideas can become effective forces in history.
For me, the value of the book lies elsewhere. Through its unravelling of the complex processes behind antisemitism, which Julius describes as “the noises and gestures of the person who has embraced that tangled bundle of sentiments and beliefs about Jews”, it serves as an aid to understanding this vile prejudice, and consequently, to challenge it.
Trials of the Diaspora is a book to be read by ordinary people; by those endowed with natural fellow-feeling, a sense of justice, and a belief in a better future. It is a book for gentiles but, especially, it is a book for Jews. This is so because antisemitism affects Jews more than anyone else. They are the objects of its hatred and they are the ones to suffer from it. It affects them psychologically and sometimes it affects them physically. It affects them by moulding their self-image as people and as Jews. The only antidote for this poison is to understand its nature and Julius helps us do this.
Finally, the book lays bare the sheer depravity of antisemitism, together with the negativity it engenders and its consequences not only Jews but for society in general.
This is a big volume (800 pages) but it covers vast ground and is engaging throughout. It is guaranteed to occupy a place of honour on many a bookshelf.
Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England by Anthony Julius, Oxford University Press, 2009, 854pp
Chuck Volpe is a Port Elizabeth-based businessman and Jewish communal leader. He is currently chairman of the Eastern Cape Council of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
