Antisemitism is a sign of inferiority: The Problem of the BORROWED GOD

Commentary

By Liah Greenfeld 

Antisemitism is a sign of inferiority. They are aware of their inferiority; they know that they are inferior. And as they know themselves best, who are the others to argue with them? We cannot dispute the inferiority of the antisemites, but we can analyze and explain it. The purpose of this commentary is to explain the roots of antisemitism, arguing that it is not merely a form of prejudice but a manifestation of deep-seated inferiority. It traces the origins of Jew-hatred to early Christian and Islamic traditions, highlighting how borrowed monotheism created a psychological complex of envy and resentment toward Jews. Unlike other forms of xenophobia, antisemitism is uniquely irrational and enduring, thriving on the existential insecurity of those who feel inferior to their Jewish counterparts. The piece also contrasts the ubiquity of antisemitism in monotheistic religions with its absence in non-monotheistic cultures like India and China, offering a fresh perspective on this ancient hatred.

Early Roots of Antisemitism

Antisemitism is the modern name for the very old sentiment of Jew-hatred. It appeared, in the 2^nd century AD/CE, as the patristic anti-Jewish polemic (that is, verbal attack) openly called “against the Jews” and by the 4^th century was already a venerable tradition, perhaps the most venerable Christian tradition, with its own proper name, “contra Iudaeos” or “adversus Iudaeos” in Latin.

From its earliest origins, antisemitism, adversus Iudaeos, was expressed in a furiously emotional language. It was -- and propagated – hatred. To quote from just one sermon of just one 4^th century Christian saint: the Jews were “the most worthless of all men. They are lecherous, greedy, rapacious…. They worship the Devil. Their religion is a sickness. … Christians may never cease vengeance, and the Jew must live in servitude forever. God always hated the Jews. It is essential that all Christians hate them.” (St. Ambrose, 379 AD)

The sentiment was from the start directed to the Jews as the group, not a group of particular individuals but all those at any time born to the Jewish group or in any way part of it, whatever form it took (religious community, community of exiles, sovereign political community, etc.). The Jews were hated for something essential and invisible, for being Jews. A common justification for hating the Jews was that about a century before the first non-Jewish Christians appeared, some Jews opposed the Christian Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and followed him, after his death becoming Apostles and near-apostolic figures; these Christian Jews accused the leaders of the Jews who disagreed with them in accepting and even approving the brutal execution of Jesus by the Romans and thus having a hand in killing Jesus. But this could not explain the hatred of the Jews, the entire group, in the past and in the present, irrespective of the degree of their responsibility for the death of Jesus or even the theoretical possibility that they could be responsible for it. Those who were babies at the time of the event, for instance, could not be ascribed such responsibility on any rational grounds, and this applied to every Jew born after Jesus was crucified. The hatred of the Jews, antisemitism, the “adversus Iudaeos” polemic, therefore, was and is irrational.

In this it is drastically different from any other case of intergroup hostility or, as it is now called, xenophobia. All the other cases are historically circumscribed, connected to specific misdeeds, grievances, and agents, and as a result, rational. For this reason, none, but antisemitism has lasted for millennia or even centuries and none has given rise to a phenomenon sui generis, unlike any other.

Borrowed God?

As the Christian tradition “adversus Iudaeos” developed through the first Christian millennium, it was, in the 7^th century, joined by an independent tradition from its new antisemitic tradition, which arose with Islam and was fully present in the Quran. From the 7^th century on, antisemitism represented a central feature in both mass monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. At the same time, it remained absolutely absent within and unfamiliar to the other half of humanity: in the civilizations and religions of China and India.

The ubiquity of antisemitism in Christianity and Islam and its absence in China and India strongly suggests that the source of antisemitism is to be sought in what is common to Christianity and Islam (monotheism) and separates both not only from China and India (which are not monotheistic) but also from Jewish monotheism. This distinguishing quality of the two antisemitic religions, characterized by the irrational Jew-hatred, is that in both cases the religion is not original but borrowed from the Jews. The God Christians and Muslims worship – the one and only deity who is the foundation of all their beliefs and who gives meaning to their lives – is the Jewish God.

Borrowed monotheism inevitably leads to 1) the complex of religious inferiority and 2) existential envy – ressentiment, hatred -- towards the people whose God is borrowed/from whom God is borrowed. Antisemitism, in other words, is implicit in it.

The borrowing of God from the Jews implies that at one pivotal historical moment, the Jews were the model for the people about to become Christians and Muslims. This model was freely chosen, which means that the future Christians and Muslims admired the Jews, wanted to imitate, become like them in the most significant aspect of their being, that which made them the Jews -- in other words, believed that the Jews were superior to them, and that they, themselves, were inferior to the Jews. They also believed that by their efforts they could become equal or even superior to the Jews, better Jews, as it were. This desire for equality or superiority, that is the satisfaction with their Christian or Muslim identity, however, depended on the Jews’ acceptance of these newcomers to monotheism as equal or superior Jews. But the Jews, naturally, did not accept this. This left the borrowers with the nagging sense of the inerasable superiority of their Jewish model and insupportable, humiliating suspicion of their own permanent inferiority – the self-destabilizing complex of inferiority.

Their initial admiration of the Jews gave way to a much less benign sentiment of envy – existential envy, that is, the envy of the Jews’ existential significance, which, by comparison, deprived the borrowers’ very existence of value. A powerful irritant, constantly rekindled by the Jews’ obdurate self-confidence, this envy poisoned the borrowers of God from within, festered, and turned to hatred. Actuated by hatred, they then transformed the Jewish model into the anti-model, ascribing to it as many vices as they previously discerned in it virtues and making the struggle against it a central orientation of their religions.

The attention of Christians and Muslims is of necessity, fixed on Jews. Their identity (as Christians and as Muslims) is not self-sufficient; it depends on a justification of their separation from the Jews, on explaining why they (Christians and Muslims), believers as they are in the Jewish God – are not Jews themselves. Psychologically, this cannot be explained by their being unaccepted by the Jews as Jews; it must be explained by some egregious failing on the part of the Jews.

Disclaimer: This paper is the author's individual scholastic contribution and does not necessarily reflect the organization's viewpoint.

Author’s Bio - Liah Greenfeld is a University Professor and Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Anthropology at Boston University, USA.  She is an Israeli-American, Russian-Jewish interdisciplinary scholar engaged in the scientific explanation of human social reality on various levels, beginning with the individual mind and ending with the level of civilization.