Not as bad as the French

This is a long book, but its argument can be shortly stated. Anthony Julius believes that anti-Semitism is a persistent and influential theme in English history, which is all the more dangerous for being unacknowledged by most anti-Semites and concealed behind a facade of complex, subtle and hypocritical social convention.

He sustains the argument over nearly 600 pages of densely annotated text, in a book which is in equal measure wonderful and infuriating. It is immensely learned. It is thorough. Its patient accumulation of detail challenges conventional English images of their own society. Much of the analysis is observant and shrewd. But much of it is also laboured, sanctimonious and lacking in any real sense of proportion. Julius is too honest a writer and too good an advocate to ignore the counter-arguments. But having acknowledged them, he is far too ready to brush them aside.

Julius defines anti-Semitism as meaning hostility to Jews without any rational basis. It follows, as he accepts, that ‘while every anti-Semite is an enemy of the Jews, not every enemy of the Jews is an anti-Semite. Only the Jews’ irrational enemies can be described as anti-Semitic.’ By this definition, which I think most people would accept, our history has often been darkened by anti-Semitism. The worst period, which Julius calls the ‘murderous phase’, was the Middle Ages.

To medieval Englishmen, Christianity provided the framework for their whole existence, for their public institutions and their private lives. This inevitably meant that they often defined themselves in opposition to the only non-Christian community of which they had any direct experience, namely the Jews. It was an attitude which readily lent itself to persecution. Between the 11th and the 13th centuries the small Jewish community of England was subjected to abuse, oppression and occasional violence, until it was finally expelled from the country in 1290.