Book recommendations?

[Violet_Crumble]

I've got to write an essay for a course I'm doing and I'm looking for books that go into the history of anti-Semitism. I was at the library tonight, but there's so many books that I don't know where to start. So does anyone have any book recommendations?

Violet...

[Xipe Totec]

1. Well, here is my favorite

"The Last Jew" by Noah Gordon.

"Set in Spain under the Inquisition, this latest big historical novel from Gordon (Shaman; The Rabbi) follows the adventures of young Yonah Helkias as he stays true to his Jewish faith, escapes from misadventures and finds love. In Toledo, in 1489, a precious reliquary of a Christian saint, crafted by Yonah's silversmith father, disappears; Yonah's older brother, who was delivering the relic, is found dead; and compassionate physician Bernardo Espina begins to investigate the theft and murder. Meanwhile, the Inquisition starts to target Jews, including conversos like Espina (Jews by birth who have entered the Catholic church). The bulk of the novel takes place three years later, when the deadline for all Jews to leave Spain has arrived. Yonah, aged 13, joins thousands of his co-religionists headed for Spanish borders and ports, but instead of departing, Yonah remains behind."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312300530/sr=8-2/qid=1142127233/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-3484858-4967359?%5Fencoding=UTF8

[Betsy Ross]

2. The two on my bookshelf:

Antisemitism by Hannah Arendt and Anti-Semite and Jew by Jean-paul Sartre. I'm sure there are many good, more recent books, but these two are classics. Don't forget to post your essay.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. Internet resource

http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/judeophobia.htm

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Thanks to all of you...

I'll keep an eye out for those ones next time I'm at the library, and I'll have a read through that internet resource tomorrow when I'm a bit wider awake than I am right now. I did borrow Antisemitism by Robert Wistrich and Yehuda Bauer's A History Of The Holocaust has a few chapters on the history of Jews and antisemitism...

Betsy, my essay's not due till the end of April, so it might be a while before I have a finished thing to show you. I'm doing Genocide Studies this semester, and the topic I'm writing about is the motivations for Holocaust denial and the denial of the Armerian genocide. I started reading a book on Holocaust denial where the author says that there are several motivations for the denial, but even the examples he used where he says it's down to things like a desire to make Fascism look good or to try to absolve Germany of blame, to me they're still saying things that sound antisemitic or have links to antisemitic organisations, so I think my argument is going to be that for both genocides there's a main motivation for the denial of each - nationalism for the Armenian genocide, and antisemitism for the Holocaust....

Thanks again for the help...

Violet...

[Lithos]

5. Two to read on the history of Anti-Semitism

_Anti-Semitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present_ by Marvin Perry
_Why the Jews?_ by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin

Note: It looks like you are more interested in the broader issue of group aggression. That's a bit tougher, the broader issue of group aggression and the specific facets evinced thru torture, genocide, war, rivalry and racism all fall back to dehumanization of one group by another. However, the why's such as fear, xenophobia, greed, envy and how it specifically manifests itself are complicated and often morph over time so that while the aggression becomes institutionalized, the underlying reasoning has changed. That kind of essay is hard to write, several books have been written that seem to fall flat imho. Course it is also fairly easy to become "preachy" and make it seem that a touch of psychotherapy would fix matters. Truthfully as long as fear exists along with people who are willing to leverage that fear for their own greed, I feel there will be group aggression of one sort or another.

L-