Abstract
Jewish self-hatred initially gained currency as a description of internalized antisemitism, a social-psychological phenomenon in which a person’s identity is damaged. The concept also increasingly acquired a secondary sense as an accusation of betrayal in Jewish communal politics. As a result of this usage, scholars often doubt the concept’s analytic objectivity and academic utility. This chapter not only reviews the debate about whether the concept’s polemical taint outweighs its analytical value but also suggests some criteria for its more precise use by drawing a few handy (if imperfect) distinctions. In doing so, the essay highlights the importance of Jewish self-hatred for the study of antisemitism: the concept opens a window onto both one kind of psychological harm that marks some Jews’ response to antisemitism and the anxieties that spur other Jews’ reaction to this response.
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Notes
- 1.
My qualifications about communal or individual perceptions should be taken for granted throughout the essay. In other words, for the purposes of this essay, “Judaism” is whatever a community says it is or whatever an individual understands her community to expect of its accepted members (e.g., support for Israel). I assume no normative essence of Judaism, only an agent-relative description.
- 2.
Hatred, though in the name, is one of several possible, non-exclusive emotional states covered by the term “self-hatred.” Others are shame, guilt, anger, and resentment.
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Goldberg, S. (2021). Jewish Self-Hatred. In: Goldberg, S., Ury, S., Weiser, K. (eds) Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism. Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51658-1_12
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