SOURCE: Nochlin, Linda. “Starting with the Self: Jewish Identity and Its Representation.” In The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity, edited by Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb, pp. 7-19. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995.

In the following essay, Nochlin explores the representation of Jews in the visual arts and the underlying assumptions, cultural and literary, that they reflect. She concludes, however, that there are no sweeping generalizations that can be made about how Jews are depicted in art.

“Why do they hate us so much?” This is not merely an anguished cry torn from the heart—although, of course, it is that, too—but rather a perfectly rational question to ask in the face of the plethora of hostile, denigrating, and debasing representations of Jews—the Jew, Jewishness—collected and analyzed in the texts of this volume. That these representations are often contradictory—Jews are...