Anti-Semitism or Judeophobia

Anti-Semitism or Judeophobia

The word anti-Semitism is confusing as, in its usual usage, it means prejudice against Jews. Occasionally it means bigotry against those that speak a Semitic language, but this is not its common use. It would be better, if used at all, to spell it antisemitism as it is not usually meant to refer to Semites at all.

The word originated in Germany in the late 1800’s when Jews were beginning to be thought of as a race rather than a religion. The distinction is important because with the beginning of the enlightenment Jews were now considered a race. This meant that Jews could no longer simply convert to Christianity to become part of the majority and easily participate in the secular lifestyle available to Christians.
With a little research into the history of Judaism, it is impossible to define a Jew as a member of a race or as a Semite. Even the Exodus from Egypt included many slaves that were not related to Abraham, and were not necessarily Semitic, and yet were soon included in the Nation of Israel. Now of course there are Indian, Black, Chinese, Japanese and blond and blue eyed white Jews. This has developed because of conversions and intermarriage. The result is a mixture of peoples, races, and cultures all of whom are considered to be equal by Jewish law. It is therefore hard to call this group of varied people either a race or Semitic.
So it seems that we are now using the word anti-semitic to apply to a group that is not semitic. As long as everyone knew what people meant was there any harm done?
I suggest there was. By branding Jews as Semites, Christian Europe could easily say they
were culturally and socially different from themselves so make them out to be “the other”. In fact they originally were a different cultural group but more and more they were the same cultural group with a different religion and different rituals. Unless Jews were expelled from a country, as happened with Spain, Portugal and England among others, they would live in the same country for sometimes a thousand years, intermarry and pick up most of the cultural traits and ideas of that country. There was often virtually no difference between an enlightened Jew and an enlightened Christian. So to call one
a Semite made no sense except to discriminate against him. Jews may be a religious group, a cultural group, or a national group, but what they are not, as a group, is Semitic.

Recently the word Islamophobic has become common. Now phobic means that in some way the person is acting irrationally. In this case the implication is that anyone that dislikes Islam or Muslims is in some way irrational. There is no such implication
in the word anti-Semite. I therefore suggest that people that dislike Judaism or Jews should be called Judeophobic. Their dislike of Jews and Judaism is usually irrational, and originally based on the erroneous Christian idea that Jews were Christ killers or on the verses in the Koran or Hadith encouraging Muslims to kill and oppress Jews and other infidels. Today antisemitism is mostly fueled by the irrational Islamic hatred of Jews and supported by a left over Christian antisemitism. Let’s call this irrational thought by its true name, Judeophobia, as it has nothing to do with the semitic Arabs, nor is it more than simply being irrationally opposed to Jews and Judaism