ANTI-SEMITISM. The term anti-Semitism is relatively recent, coined only at the end of the nineteenth century, when it became the identifying symbol of an innovative anti-Jewish political platform that projected the Jews as an alien element in European society. The term was intended to encompass the entire spectrum of contemporary and historic anti-Jewish thinking and behavior and to convey a sense of the monolithic quality of all anti-Jewish thinking and behavior. Use of the innovative term spread quickly among adherents of the new political program and among their opponents as well. Subsequently, the term has been widely utilized as a synonym for all or at least most anti-Jewish attitudes and actions.

The present survey will accept popular usage of the term anti-Semitism as synonymous with historic and early twenty-first-century anti-Jewish attitudes and actions. It will, however, dissent from any sense of the monolithic quality of anti-Jewish thinking. This...