ABSTRACT

As Anthony Julius has observed, ‘Anti-Semites are not all the same.’1 Critics such as Julius who have approached the subject by surveying various national cultures generally reach the conclusion that there are distinct variations within the phenomenon of modern antisemitism. For example, Louise A. Mayo concludes that ‘negative images of Jews were less virulent and positive ones more widespread in America than elsewhere, yet hostile stereotypes did persist in the face of professed American ideals and the real role of Jews in America. . . . It is [however] difficult to disagree with Harold Isaacs’s view that Jews who came to America from Europe “found the barriers against them located much further out than any that had hemmed them in before.’”2 Similarly for Julius, British antisemitism was attenuated while its French counterpart cultivated an overt aesthetic program.