Anti-Semitism and its Metaphysical Origins

This book articulates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of Jew hatred as a metaphysical aspect of the human soul. Proceeding from the Jewish thinking that the anti-Semites oppose, David Patterson argues that anti-Semitism arises from the most ancient of temptations, the temptation to be as God, and thus to flee from an absolute accountability to and for the other human being.

Introduction: anti-Semitism as deicide; 1. Preliminary explanations; 2. The arrogation of God: Christian theological anti-Semitism; 3. Islamic jihadism: religious-fanatic anti-Semitism; 4. The elimination of God: philosophical anti-Semitism in modern thought; 5. National socialist anti-Semitism; 6. Antihistorical anti-Semitism: Holocaust denial; 7. Anti-Zionist anti-Semitism; 8. Jewish Jew hatred; 9. Sounding the depths of the anti-Semitic soul: Arthur Miller's Focus; Concluding reflection: the messianic side of the soul of Adam.

David Patterson holds the Hillel Feinberg Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas, Dallas. A winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the Koret Jewish Book Award, he has published more than thirty books and 150 articles and book chapters. His most recent books include Genocide in Jewish Thought (Cambridge, 2012), A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad (Cambridge, 2010), Emil L. Fackenheim: A Jewish Philosopher's Response to the Holocaust (2008), Open Wounds: The Crisis of Jewish Thought in the Aftermath of Auschwitz (2006), Wrestling with the Angel (2006), Along the Edge of Annihilation (1999), and Sun Turned to Darkness (1998). He is the editor and translator of The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry (2002) and the co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature (with Alan L. Berger, 2002).