ABSTRACT
Of course, there was anti-Judaism already in antiquity linked, among other things, to the fact Judaism had introduced monotheism at a time where all the other pantheons around the Mediterranean were inhabited by many gods. Religious anti-Judaism of the Middle Ages was already pervaded by sexual images: thus, according to certain legends, circumcision was equated with castration – an idea that even made its way into “scientific” theories of the nineteenth century – and being circumcised, the Jew was considered an “incomplete man” and consequently “feminine”. Weininger’s arguments show clearly that sexual images in antisemitism were based on long traditions in Christianity in which the feminine represented physical “materiality,” whereas Jewishness stood for “ambiguity”. The fact that the sexual images of racist antisemitism actually conceal theological concepts becomes particularly clear when considering the secular ideas of purity and sacrifice.
