ABSTRACT
Antisemitism consists of false and hostile beliefs about Jews, the Jewish religion, Jewish institutions, or Jewish projects; these beliefs often lead to injurious things being said or done to Jews or their projects, or said about them. Few people wish to be thought cruel or stupid; fewer still wish to be thought to endorse genocide. Antisemites therefore tend to resist being described as antisemites and no longer name their programs and parties “antisemitic.” English antisemitism’s complexity and strength tend to be underestimated; its history tends to be disregarded; its literature is misinterpreted. It once threatened Jewish lives; it has for some centuries past weakened Jewish morale. And it has been the principal contributor to the antisemitic literary canon. Medieval English antisemitism was as original as it was brutal. A predatory state, an intermittently but then lethally violent populace, and an antagonistic church, combined to make Jewish lives always difficult, often intolerable, and finally impossible.
