chal-converts:

comedownstairsandsayhello:

libhobn:

jewishhenna:

kuttithevangu:

kuttithevangu:

The #1 thing I’m looking forward to with my master’s thesis is when my drafts will inevitably come back with “antisemitism” corrected to “anti-Semitism” and then I get to explain that Jewish scholars do things differently

I guess the most professionally academic thing to do here is find the explanation for why we spell it as one word, and then quote that as a footnote on my first use of it

Here’s the footnote I used in my most recent paper — feel free to steal it! 

“The question of whether to write “anti-Semitism” or “antisemitism” is thorny. I follow the lead of Jewish Studies scholars who argue that antisemitism refers not to a hatred of ‘Semitism’ but specifically to the hatred of Jews, and therefore should be left unhyphenated (while I acknowledge that this position is far from universal). See, e.g., Doris Bergen, “Christians, Protestants, and Christian Antisemitism in Nazi Germany,” Central European History, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1994), 329; and Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (University of California Press, 1996), 16-17.”

This is the reason I write it the way I do. There’s no such thing as “semitism”; antisemitism was always meant to refer to Jew-hatred.

Good explanation. The term “Semitic” comes from a late 18th century German pseudoscientific racial theory that tried to trace the lineage of different ethnic groups back to the biblical Noah’s sons (Ham, Japheth, and Shem). This is, needless to say, total horseshit. Linguists still use the term “Semitic” for the family of languages that includes Hebrew and Arabic, but aside from that, the term is not legitimately used anymore. There is not now and never has been an ethnic group calling themselves “Semites.”

The term “antisemitism” specifically was coined in 1879 by German racial theorist Wilhelm Marr as a deliberate attempt to make hatred of Jews appear rational and scientifically validated. It was never meant to refer to hatred of all so-called “Semitic” peoples, just Jews. It replaced the more usual term “Judenhass” (Jew-hate), which Marr thought sounded vulgar.

Simon Schama uses “Judeophobia” in his books except when referring to the specifically German race-theory-based phenomenon, which seems a little more precise to me. Judenhass is still probably the most accurate term.

I always thought this was just a stylistic choice, so this is really good to know!