Talk:Economic antisemitism

Jewish people really are over-represented in banking and noticing that fact is not anti-semitic.

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Jews and money
I removed this text from the lead. I'm not sure if it belongs in the article at all so I'm putting it here for now.


 * The relationship of Jews and money has been considered by a wide variety of authors, includingAbraham Foxman in his book Jews and Money, Gerald Krefetz in his book Jews and Money,Werner Sombart in his book The Jews and Modern Capitalism, J. J. Goldberg in his book Jewish Power, Salo Wittmayer Baron and Arcadius Kahan in their book Economic history of the Jews, Werner Eugen Mosse in his book Jews in the German Economy, Jerry Muller in his book Capitalism and the Jews, Gideon Reuveni in his book The Economy in Jewish History, Derek Penslar in his book Shylock's children: economics and Jewish identity in modern Europe, Jacob Neusnerin his book The Economics of the Mishnah, and Karl Marx in his On the Jewish Question.

--Pseudo-Richard 16:45, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Economic antisemitism
[Slrubenstein's comment was originally made on my Talk Page with this edit. I have moved it here so that it can be more easily seen by all interested editors. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 21:01, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate your invitation. I am afraid that real life obligations give me no time to work closely with WP. I did glance at your draft and have one reaction/suggestion. This reflects my views on anti-Semitism, not just my ideas about how to edit a good article. I cannot give you citations, but I do believe that my view fits with mainstream academic vies of anti-Semitism.

My view has two premises (again, I think many but not all historians would agree) first, one has to distinguish between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. They are not unrelated, and many features of anti-Semitism are based on/grew out of anti-Judaism ... so in my view, one task for any article on anti-Semitism is not only to explain how it is not simply anti-Judaism (because one can convert to Christianity and not be victimized by anti-Judaism people, but still be victimized by anti-Semites), but also to explain in what ways anti-Semitism "grew out" of anti-Judaism.

Second, I see anti-Semitism as a set of practices, including social institutions (in other words, it is not just one individual beating me up, it is the state not allowing me to vote), as well as a set of beliefs which can be expressed in words. e.g. the notorious anti-Semitic canards. I think it is obvious that people, individually or collectively, informally or informally, would not engage in anti-Semitic practices unless they already had anti-Semitic beliefs. BUT - and here you and I may differ, because based on a very hasty glance I don't think your draft shows this -anti-Semitic practices and institutions can breed anti-Semitic beliefs. In other words, concrete social relations can produce anti-Semitic feelings.

These two premises are linked in one way that is very important for the article you are drafting:institutions developed as forms of anti-Judaism before the Renaissance or the Enlightenment (English speaking people, and as far as I know French and German and Italian speaking people, did not think of themselves as European until the 17th century, they thought of themselves as living in "Christendom") may be the cause of anti-Semitic beliefs in the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, in pats of Europe where the Church dictated laws, Jews may have been the only people allowed to lend money for interest, and Jews may have been prohibited from farming land; this is anti-Judaic, because once someone converted to Christianity they were no longer allowed to land money but could own or rent land to farm. Such laws or conventions may have established customs and social relations that outlasted the laws, so that even when Christians were allowed to lend money, many Jews continued to do this too, or even when Jews were allowed to own land, the vast majority of Jews continued to favor urban life. And then this could lead to anti-Semitic stereotypes and canards.

I could be wrong about this, consider it a hypothetical example to show how anti-Judaism could lead to forms of anti-Semitism, and how institutions and practices could lead to belief. For what it is worth, I do think that you will find many mainstream scholars who share this view, but it is a view and there certainly are others who hold different views (although the ones I know of are fringe).

You would of course need reliable sources - articles from peer reviewed journals or books published by major university presses and other presses that serve academe (Berghan, Routledge). But I would encourage you to keep an eye out for views and facts that make sense in light of what I just suggested. And you should consider this when figuring out the best way to organize the article.

Good luck! Slrubenstein  |  Talk 09:51, 1 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I have tried to consider some of the points above but I suspect I will need to revisit what you wrote a couple of times to fully digest and process it.  I will comment that the relationship of anti-Judaism and antisemitism is a topic that more properly belongs in Antisemitism and History of antisemitism.  I have attempted to start addressing these topics in those articles; however, it's a "whole 'nother ball of wax" so I've not really had a chance to research this and give it the treatment it deserves. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 08:14, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Relationship of this article to Noleander's failed attempt to write an article about Jews and money
An editor has made comments on my Talk Page criticizing this article because it attempts to build on parts of Noleander's failed attempt to write an article about Jews and money. I have freely admitted that my goal has been to salvage the worthwhile parts of Noleander's (now deleted) article. However, this article is not simply a trimmed-down version of his article. It is based on a complete rethinking of the topic that focuses on the specific topic of "Economic antisemitism", a phrase which is used quite frequently in the scholarly literature on antisemitism and that is, in fact, frequently mentioned as the most important form of antisemitism. I have worked mightily to remove the flaws from Noleander's article to the point of either moving entire sections into separate articles or dropping them altogether. I have carefully reworked every section in the article and researched the topic carefully (more carefully than Noleander did). In the end, my article is really about a much narrower topic and actually a different one than Noleander's was. His was about the purported link between Jews and money. Mine is about antisemitism based on economic grounds and using economic means. I can see why his was deleted. I don't believe mine suffers from the same flaws. The topic of economic antisemitism is an important one. See Antisemitism and History of antisemitism for a fuller exposition of the kinds of antisemitism.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 08:22, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

POV: Prevalence of Jews as moneylenders or as professionals
I recognize that this is a difficult topic and I have struggled to make it NPOV although it's really hard when most of the scholarly sources (even Jewish ones!) tend to accept uncritically the POV in question (specifically the prevalence of Jews as moneylenders in the medieval era). There are a couple of sources who reject the premise that Jews were mostly moneylenders. I don't have time to dig up those specific sources right now but, in brief, one comments that in Islamic lands, Jews were distributed across all the occupations and, if there was an imbalance, it was mostly in Northern Europe.

A similar problem exists with the supposed over-representation of Jews in "the professions" (e.g. medicine, law, academia) after the emancipation.

In general, the problem is that most scholars accept these assertions uncritically and labor to explain why these phenomena came to be rather than to question the base assumption (i.e. by recognizing that most Jews were not moneylenders in the medieval period and most Jews were not doctors or lawyers in the modern era).

I would welcome a thoughtful and source-based discussion on these issues rather than one which arbitrarily rejects the topic because of the strong POV among the scholarly sources.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:48, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe they are not POV, but: scholarly VER sources?

Zezen (talk) 18:08, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

The Lead
I think the opening is possibly problematic: Although clumsy - and I am not proposing this - my worry might lead to this modified verision:
 * Economic antisemitism is one of the major forms of antisemitism...
 * The phrase is used in two ways


 * Economic antisemitism is a phrase used to describe two major forms of antisemitism...

Best wishes (Msrasnw (talk) 09:51, 7 July 2011 (UTC))


 * Thanks for looking over the article text. I understand the issue that you raised.  However, I don't think the specific text that you proposed will work.  If you look at the "Forms" section of Antisemitism, you will see that, in every case, sources mention "economic antisemitism" as "one" of several forms of antisemitism.  I will look over this issue and try to come up with a solution that addresses your concerns. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:39, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

The first sentence is circular and superfluous. ("Economic antisemitism is one of the major forms of antisemitism. It comprises...") Do you really need to tell the reader than antisemitism is antisemitism? Get straight into what it actually is: ""Economic antisemitism comprises various stereotypes and canards based on the economic status, occupation or economic behavior of Jews." PiCo (talk) 01:16, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out. I fixed this shortly after you made the comment but I just noticed that I never thanked you for the input. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 15:45, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Some concerns
Earlier I left a comment on an editor's talk page that was reproduced here. Now I would actually like to comment on the article. I have a few concerns. The first two have to do with content, the second two with process. First, I have questions about some sources. Max Dimont, for example, wrote a very popular book on Jewish history - but in addition to the book being dated, Dimont is not a professional historian. I do not think his book is a reliable source because it is (1) not by an expert and (2) out of date. Second, the article juxtaposes very different kinds of sources - this comes very close to violating NOR by synthesizing different views. To comply with NPOV and NOR, it is important to identify views clearly and provide enough context so that we can understand why one view is different from another. Mixing up material from different sources really undermines this. For one thing, I think we need to establish more clearly who it is that believes that "economic antisemitism" is a thing? I can imagine alternate views - that economic differences are a cause of anti-semitism, that an anti-semite is an antisemite and they make fun of Jews for all sorts of things money being one but the antisemitism is fundamentally the same, and so on. Which scholars 'say'' that "anti-semitism" is an object that in its own right merits study?

Second set of comments, on process. Much of this seems to be from the article written by - I forget, was it Noleander? But there was a huge RfC or ArbCom case over it. the conclusion was that the article written was hopelessly problematic. So i am very troubles that this article has so much in common with that. We should have started with a clean slate, building up from reliable research, and not trying to fix a terrible article. Second, I have never seen a daughter article created de novo. We have an article on anti-Semitism and the editors here have good judgement tested by time. I think the thing to do is to create in that article a section on economic antisemitism, if editors there think this is the best way to incorporate the relevant research into the article. Then, the section could grow as committed editors collaborate on how best to organize and present the information from sources people agree are reliable. Then once this section gets too big, it can be spun off as its own article. But I would be more confident about itsquality, then. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 20:45, 7 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Well... we continue to disagree on some points especially the process ones but your input is valued and I will try to address them as best as I can.


 * Regarding quality of sources and the "mixing" of them, I understand your point although I am of two minds on the solution. I would prefer to address the substance of the article content rather than the quality of the source.  In other words, I would rather ask "Is assertion X valid and does it belong in this article?"  If the answer is "Yes", then the fact that Dimont (or some other less than top-grade source) is used to support the assertion is a secondary problem.  Put another way, if the assertion is dead-on, it should not be a problem to find a better source.  I just haven't gone to that effort yet.


 * A different problem exists with Sombart. He is a professional but he wrote a century ago.  Anything asserted by him should be checked against more recent sources.  It's not that his assertions shouldn't be discussed but we should check to see if there are more recent views that criticize his conclusions and present those views in place of or alongside Sombart's views.  (I know there are those who criticize Sombart but I haven't had the time to track these down and figure out how to work them into the article.)  NB: Just because Sombart has been criticized and rejected by some doesn't mean that everything he ever said is discredited.  We have to figure out what has been rejected and what hasn't.


 * Regarding process, I don't know if I would go so far as to say Noleander's article was "hopelessly problematic" but I will concede that it was deeplyh flawed. This article represents what was left after I threw out the really awful stuff and removed stuff that didn't fit with the flow.  Originally, the draft article had the unwieldy title Antisemitic canards related to money, finance and banking.  It was serendiptous that, during my research, I ran across multiple discussions of "economic antisemitism" mentioned as one of the major forms of antisemitism.  I realized that this was exactly the topic that I was working with.


 * You asked "Which scholars 'say'' that "anti-semitism" is an object that in its own right merits study?" I think you meant to ask which scholars say that "economic anti-semitism" is an object that in its own right merits study?" because the question as you wrote it seems to have too easy an answer.  To answer the question that I think you meant, several scholars mention "economic antisemitism" as one of the major forms of antisemitism.  Some of these scholars are cited in the Antisemitism article (look in the "Forms" section).  The term shows up in chapter titles and section headings of what appear to me to be scholarly works.  It will take me a short while but I can build you a list of scholars who mention the phrase "economic antisemitism".  You could probably get a good approximation by just searching for the phrase in "Google Books".


 * Now, I grant that the books in Google Books are not all of equal scholarly standing. Some may be intended for a popular audience and some may be better respected among academic circles.  However, at a first approximation, I think it is obvious that "economic antisemitism" is a real phrase and one that scholars recognize, study and discuss.


 * I don't argue that Noleander's primary sources (mostly Foxman, Penslar and Perry) are all high-quality sources. My article adds a number of other sources that I hope are of equal or better quality.  That said, I would still prefer to discuss the value of specific content rather than focus on the quality of a source.  After all, if source C got it from source B who got it from source A and source A is high-quality, then all we have to do is find out where source A said it.


 * I know this is not how you (Slrubenstein) like to see articles written. Unfortunately, this is the way I write articles and this is the way most articles in Wikipedia are written.  I suspect that even Antisemitism was written in the haphazard Wikisloppy way.  If it were written the way you like to see articles written, it would surely have spent more attention to providing a high-level overview of the major phases in the historical development of the phenomenon and the relevant factors in each rather than getting bogged down in the details of specific examples of antisemitism.  Alas, this is Wikipedia and it is the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit".


 * This is what the Antisemitism article looked like on June 13th before I started working on it.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 21:45, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm going to kind of work backwards in comments. I'm not going to respond to them all, just the ones that concern me (at various levels of concern).
 * Editing Antisemitism is not prima facie evidence of being an unbiased or competent editor. In fact, since this article is not that article, I'm not sure what the relevance is other than you're trying to provide evidence that you're not biased.  I edit literally a hundred evolution related articles.  I don't think I have, in over 8 years of editing, made a claim that I am pro-evolution.  The evidence is in my edits themselves.  You do not have to "prove" your bias or non-bias.  Trust me, we can tell.  As a Jew, I've got many decades of experience of and knowledge of code-words, veiled racism, and outright bigotry.  There are things you say that bother me, but it might be from a casual knowledge that you have of Judaism and antisemitism rather than overt hostility.  But trying to prove your bona fide's is very concerning.
 * Noleander's article was nothing but veiled antisemitism at best. He/she (I thought she was a she, but I don't usually read the drama forums around here) wrote what pretended to be an NPOV article, but ended up quote mining or even incorrectly quoting what could have been good sources.  That "she" (I'll stick with that) used good sources, but in an offensive manner, begs the question of why you didn't rewrite the whole article.  Using the original article as your source is like plagiarizing Stormfront.  Oh wait.
 * Google books IS a bad source. You are self selecting for books that can be put on Google books.  That eliminates academic sources and publications that actually take some work to find.  Not to brag, I wrote an FA here that required me to buy books, read them, and quote them in the article.
 * I disagree with your contention that you should write first and find the citation second. A well-written article is from an expert or good amateur who has read a citation, and knows how to write it without plagiarizing explicitly.  You actually learn this way, because you have an open mind.
 * I completely agree with slrubenstein's comments, especially, as I've said, that we should toss out the old one and restart from the beginning.
 * I still think that the name of this article is kind of silly. It really belongs in a general article called Myths about Jews or something.  But that's just an opinion.   Orange Marlin  Talk• Contributions 22:08, 7 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I just want to add that Google Books and Google Scholar are terrible reesearch tools; most academic librarians and active research scholars not only do not use it, they actively seek its demise. It gives a highly distorted image of scholarly research, distorted for reasons that have to do with the fact that it is a commercial venture and not an academic one.  The best say to do research, I suggest, is to start with the leading academic journals.  If you are not sure what they are, you can use citationindexes, problematic but much better than google!) to see which journals score hightes on the impact factor and immediacy index.  Then, go to those journals and do a basic search (e.g. ecponomic anti-Semitism) and see what you come up with.  And books reviewed are woth reading, dito any articles.  If you search the five or six leading journals in the field and find no articles from the past five or ten years, this tells you that this is a marginal topic and clearly, one best left as a section in the main anti-semitism article. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 22:15, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Re Orangemarlin's comment that "trying to prove your bona fide's is very concerning", I was just trying to distance myself from the perceived antisemitism of Noleander. I have been editing antisemitism-related articles for a couple of years and there has not been one squawk about my edits. I don't know of any that have been controversial (except for one guy who seemed to think that the idea of antisemitism existing in the U.S. was ludicrous). I think that earns me at least a modicum of good faith. This doesn't mean that I expect that everything I have done on other articles or this one to be considered unchallengeable. I'm quite open to discussing any perceived flaws and fixing them. All I ask is that people not question my motives in trying to write this article. And they have done so because somehow they think I am trying to be Noleander's proxy. I state categorically that I am not.

It might be as Slrubenstein suggests that the topic is not encyclopedic (I think it is and will try to demonstrate this later when I have more time). It might be that some of the text in this or other articles falls into unintended antisemitic patterns of thinking. I don't claim to be immune to that. All I'm asking is that you not see my efforts here as a sneaky attempt to push antisemitic text into Wikipedia. I would be hurt, insulted and offended by such an allegation.

As for Slrubenstein's comments about research, I concede his points. Sorry but I'm not going to do that level of research. I don't have the knowledge, resources or the time to do it. I further suspect that 90%+ of Wikipedia is not written that way. If someone wants to come along and "do it the right way", I'll gladly step back and yield to their superior knowledge, resources and time. Until then, let's not let "the ideal get in the way of the adequate". Most of the points made in this article are made in multiple books on antisemitism. A few are not. A few, such as the ones cited to Sombart, need some critical review. Even Foxman, Penslar and Dimont make some assertions that I was not too comfortable with. I will say that Wikipedia is not meant to be a scholarly work. If there are ideas which are in the popular mind, we should mention them even if scholars question them. Then, we should mention the scholarly view as well.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 23:21, 7 July 2011 (UTC)


 * " I don't have the knowledge, resources or the time to do it. I further suspect that 90%+ of Wikipedia is not written that way."  And that's why 90% of Wikipedia is just plain shit.  A couple of things.  I made no implication about your personal biases, but don't claim that you're not something or another.  Let your edits show it.  It's like the guy who says "I've got a black friend" as his proof that he's not a racist.  It's just wrong.  But, I reviewed your edits, and I have a couple of issues, but nothing big.  In the end, if we can't do this article right, and it really has its basis in the big-nosed Jewish moneylender caricature that Europeans used for hundreds of years, then why do it at all?  It's not worthy of this long of an article.  I think the article is antisemitic at its core, because its core is Noleander's original text.  You have got to start over. Orange Marlin  Talk• Contributions 01:23, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * You might not have made implications about my personal biases but other editors have. Let's just leave the "I've done a lot of editing on antisemitism articles" alone for now.  I just wanted to make the point that I've been doing this for a while and I'm not just doing this as a proxy or buddy of Noleander, an allegation that other editors have made.


 * As for the comment that this article might really have its basis in the "big-nosed Jewish moneylender caricature", my response is "Of course, it does! That's exactly the point.  Many books about antisemitism make reference to the caricature (well, maybe not "big-nosed" and "moneylender" together but definitely the moneylender caricature) and they elaborate by mentioning some or all of the other topics in this article.  That's what makes this article encyclopedic, the fact that people who write serious books studying antisemitism mention "economic antisemitism" as one of the major forms of antisemitism and the fact that they trace it back as far as ancient Egypt and classical Greece and Rome and then follow its course through history.  In a nutshell, the Enlightenment and the emancipation of the Jews make the basis of religious antisemitism less defensible to European intellectuals so they turn to economic, social and pseudo-scientific racial antisemitism.  All of this is then melded together to become the apocalyptic antisemitism of Hitler's Nazi Germany."  And yes, I have sources to back up that text.  It's just that it belongs more in the Antisemitism article than in this one because it is about the context in which economic antisemitism exists. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 02:42, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Pseudo-Richard writes: "As for Slrubenstein's comments about research, I concede his points. Sorry but I'm not going to do that level of research.  I don't have the knowledge, resources or the time to do it."  I respect you for saying this, but - and I say this with respect too - this means that you should not be trying to write this article.  I do not say this to put you down.  I am sure that there are areas where you do have the appropriate knowledge, resources, and time to do the kind of research one must do to write an encyclopedia article.  You know, I have never written an article on particle physics or macro-economics, although I think both areas are incredibly important.  I just do not have the knowledge, resources or time to do the kind of research I would need to do to write an article on one of these topics.  Or on one of Wagner's operas, or on Shakespeare.  The idea of making Wikipedia an open-access wiki is to attract a diverse and large number of editors; the idea is that each person would write about something they have expertise on, or have the time and resources to do the research to gain the expertise.  Pseudo-Richard, you have just basically disqualified yourself from writing this article.  This does not discredit you, there is no reason in the world to think that everyone or anyone is qualified to write this article.  Why don't you work on articles on topics you do have expertise on, or do have the time and resources to research adequately? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 11:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Because Wikipedia is the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Because most of Wikipedia would disappear if held to the standards that you have set up.  Because I have created articles this way that have lasted years.  As an example, look at History of antisemitism in the United States (spun off admittedly from History of antisemitism but reorganized and expanded significantly by me).


 * I have just recently improved the article on Antisemitism significantly (forgive my lack of modesty here) by introducing overviews of the forms of antisemitism and the more or less generally accepted view of how antisemitism developed over the millennia. These were either lightly treated or not treated at all in the article until a week or so ago.  Articles like antisemitism tend to be clothes-racks for people to toss in their pet instance of antisemitism resulting in an article which provides a lengthy description of the trees but no vision of the forest.  I just did a quick scan of Antisemitism and noticed that the section on the "Nineteenth century" is particularly weak.  It wastes time providing an anecdotal account of one observer's view of antisemitic attitudes in a Muslim country and discussing antisemitism in Wagner and Grimm.  The former discussion is a travesty of discussing  antisemitism in 19th century Islamic countries.  The latter discussion is sort of OK except that it gives undue weight to these topics while missing most of the 19th century history of antisemitism.  Instead of yammering at me about how you hate this article has been written, why aren't we all working to improve the Antisemitism article?


 * Wikipedia's strength is that it accepts contributions from everyone, keeping the part that is worthwhile and improving upon it as more contributions are provided by other editors. If someone wants to assert that there is a better outline for the article, I am more than willing to consider it and adapt the existing content to it.  If someone wants to take issue with any of the article content and propose revisions to it or even propose eliminating the content completely, I am more than willing to engage in that dialogue.  There are certainly sections that I would like to discuss with people because I myself have concerns about them.  I threw out stuff that appeared to be clearly questionable and left stuff in that looked sort of OK but was perhaps marginal.  I would love to have a discussion about those in order to improve them or delete them.


 * I remain fully willing to defer to those who are more knowledgeable and have access to better resources than I. However, until such persons show up and start working on these various topics, I remain committed to having this important topic presented in Wikipedia following, of course, all the Wikipedia policies of no original research, no synthesis, reliable sources and verifiability.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 15:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Are you deliberately misrepresenting me, or are you just thick? Did I not explicitly say that anyone could edit Wikipedia?  Did I suggest that you should not edit Wikipedia? Do you really not understand why I choose not to edit the article on partical physics? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 18:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Your implication is that one should only edit articles that one is an expert in (or at least extremely knowledgeable about). That, to my "thick" understanding, is why you choose not to edit the article on particle physics.  I also choose not to edit physics-related articles because I assume that those articles are well-covered by people who know a lot more about the topic than I do.  (Wouldn't be hard, a physics major would certainly know more than me about the topic.)  However, Wikipedia runs more or less on the philosophy that if you have even a scrap of knowledge about something you can contribute it.  There are clearly articles where people try to do that and run into a buzzsaw of committed editors who stand guard to make sure crap doesn't get in.  Global warming would be one of those.  However, even though I am not an expert or even particularly knowledgeable about the topic, I was able to contribute by creating the article Adaptation to global warming.  It was almost immediately AFD'ed and I only managed to save it from deletion by working my butt off to improve it.  However, I did save it and though I haven't worked on it in five years, other editors have come in and improved it to the point where it now has 72 footnotes where my original article had none (it was early in my Wikipedia career and I didn't footnote much).  Once again, this is how Wikipedia works.  Don't like it?  Citizendium is thattaway. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 14:58, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Notability of "economic antisemitism"
Slrubenstein wrote:
 * "For one thing, I think we need to establish more clearly who it is that believes that "economic antisemitism" is a thing? I can imagine alternate views - that economic differences are a cause of anti-semitism, that an anti-semite is an antisemite and they make fun of Jews for all sorts of things money being one but the antisemitism is fundamentally the same, and so on."

Pseudo-Richard responds:
 * Yes, for example, "Leon Poliakov asserts that economic antisemitism is not a distinct form of antisemitism, but merely a manifestation of theologic antisemitism (because, without the theological causes of the economic antisemitism, there would be no economic antisemitism).  In opposition to this view, Derek Penslar contends that in the modern era, the economic antisemitism is "distinct and nearly constant" but theological antisemitism is "often subdued"."  (The preceding text is in the article text.  Poliakov's view seems to be a minority view (based on my having read somewhere between 10-20 different sources.  NB: Of course, Googling for "economic antisemitism" yields sources that use the term.  To show that the term is NOT used much in the scholarly domain, we would have to look for major works on antisemitism that make no mention of the term.  Not quite the type of thing that Google is good at.  --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 04:09, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Slrubenstein wrote: "Which scholars 'say that "anti-semitism" is an object that in its own right merits study?"

Pseudo-Richard responds:
 * Well... it depends on what you mean by "an object that in its own right merits study". I have yet to see a book titled "Economic antisemitism" although Penslar's book "Shylock's children: economics and Jewish identity in modern Europe" and Foxman's book "Jews and Money" come close.  However, "economic antisemitism" is a major subtopic of many books that discuss antisemitism.  I have collected some of those here.  Does this satisfy you that it is a term used by scholars and authors who write serious books about antisemitism? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 04:09, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I just want to e sure to avoid original research. An easy way to avoid this is to begin with reliable sources that explicitly use the phrase "economic antisemitism" and start by providing an account of their views, classifying different views and putting them in their context.  This is how most good articles on complex topics (e.g. feminism) begin; once the major views are laid out with distinct views presented in context, it is easy to discuss alternate ways to organize the article that reveal gaps that call for further research. My concern is, this article sems to have been written in the opposite way. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 12:04, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Have you looked [here? I provided a litany of sources that explicitly use the phrase "economic antisemitism".  I have read significant portions of those sources and more.   I elected not to use some of the sources that came up in Google Books because they discussed "economic antisemitism" in specific countries such as Austria or Lithuania.  I didn't want to get into that level of detail and I was worried that statements made about "economic antisemitism" in one country might not be universally applicable so rather than risk unintentional synthesis, I omitted those sources.  I may someday go back and work the material those sources into the articles on [[History of the Jews in Lithuania]], History of the Jews in Austria, etc.


 * Have I read every word in the sources I listed? No, admittedly not.  I'll keep working on it; however, I believe I've read enough to know what they have to say at the summary level and that is ultimately what this article is.  Wikipedia articles are always "works in progress".  As I read more and understand more, I improve the articles I'm working on.  If someone has a better understanding than I do, they are welcome to pitch in and improve it alongside me.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 15:16, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

It seems a small number of sources use the phrase, but do they mean the same thing by it? Jayjg (talk) 03:39, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Depends on what you mean by "small number of sources". Using Google Books, I got:
 * "antisemitism"          - 803,000 hits
 * "racial antisemitism"   - 3,020 hits
 * "political antisemitism" - 3,400 hits
 * "social antisemitism"   - 1,630 hits
 * "religious antisemitism" - 942 hits
 * "economic antisemitism" - 479 hits
 * I'm surprised that "economic antisemitism" is used so infrequently compared to the other terms but the fact that Bernard Lazare used it in 1894 (34 years after the word "antisemitism" was first used by Moritz Steinschneider ) suggests that it is not a recent neologism. I can't tell whether the infrequency is because people don't talk about the concept much or because they don't use the term "economic antisemitism" to refer to the concept.  Certainly, the phenomena in question (e.g. moneylending, greed, unethical business behavior, etc.) are often discussed in connection with antisemitic canards.


 * Do all the sources "mean the same thing by it?" Of course, it would be impossible to tell without reading the each one of the tens of unique sources represented by the 479 hits.  However, since I've read a number of them, I will report that most of them mean "antisemitic canards related to money, occupation and business practices".  A smaller number of them mean "antisemitic laws and restrictions on occupation and business ownership".  If you insist, I could build a catalog of what various sources mean by the phrase but I don't really think this would be a meaningful exercise.


 * I don't think it is necessary that "all of them mean the same thing by it". What I think is necessary is that the concept be definable without being having a number of different definitions which might contradict each other.  I think it is relatively easy to come up with a definition of "economic antisemitism" that fits all the sources that I've seen (numbered in the low tens, say 20-30).
 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 05:43, 10 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Google Books is not a good tool, because it does not give any indication of how reliable the sources are (indeed, the reason it is so widely criticized by librarians and scholars is that it includes so many unreliable sources and does not include enough reliable sources, especially recent scholarship. Moreover, Jayjg is asking the crucial question; what do they mean by this phrase?  Are they identifying a new form of anti-semitism, or a facet of anti-semitism?  Pseudo-Richard admits that we cannot know these things using Google books as if this meant that Jayjg's question is trivial or tedious.  In fact, that we cannot find out these things using Google Books just means Google Books is not the right tool to use to answer Jayjg's question.


 * So if Google Books is not the right tool to use to answer Jayjg's question, why did Psuedo-Richard use it to try to answer Jayjg's question?

I acknowledge that Google Books is not a good tool but it's the tool I got so I used it. If somebody has a better tool, it would be great if they would share the results of using the tool they have available to them.

Slrubenstein asked "Are they identifying a new form of anti-semitism, or a facet of anti-semitism?" It seems pretty clear from the sources that they are referring to "a facet of anti-semitism". Often the term is used as part of a group of qualifiers to antisemitism: i.e. economic, social, political, racial and religious. The key point (IMO) that are made is that the religious basis for antisemitism is deprecated for European antisemites after the Enlightenment and the emancipation so they have to find some other reason to argue for antisemitism so the focus shifts to economic grounds throughout much of the 19th century. (NB: economic antisemitism had always been there. It's just that religious antisemitism took a back seat after the Enlightenment and the emancipation.)  Later in the 19th century, pseudo-scientific arguments are advanced for the racial inferiority of Jews. All of this sets up the antisemitic context in which Hitler's antisemitism is formed. Hitler's mad genius is to mix in messianism and millenialism to create what a few authors characterize as "apocalyptic antisemitism".

When I admit that "we cannot know these things using Google books", what I mean is that I am admitting that I cannot try to make too much of the Google Books results. What I meant to say is that, you cannot use the numeric results from Google Books, you have to actually go and read the sources. I have read quite a number of sources that came up through Google Books searching. One advantage of using Google Books is that I can provide links to online copies of my sources so other editors can check to see if I have interpreted the source correctly. All of my citations have online links to the sources. (This was raised by one editor as a criticism of Noleander's article Jews and money. Noleander's citations didn't provide links to the sources and many of his citations were to books that were not available online.  That is not a requirement of WP:V but at least one editor raised it as an issue.  I forget where.  It was either during the AFD discussion about Jews and money or in the ARBCOM proceeding.)

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 15:37, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I think one thing Google books is probably faithfully relaying here is that "economic antisemitism" is a relatively rarely used term/concept compared to, say, "racial antisemitism". In addition, the term is apparently used to mean two different things. In my experience, "economic antisemitism" is generally not thought of as a specific kind of antisemitism on its own, but rather, as a manifestation of the other kinds of antisemitism, particularly religious or racial. I'm really uncomfortable with the formulation you have here, it doesn't even seem to fit the standard taxonomies. Jayjg (talk) 16:42, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Jayjg, You wrote ""economic antisemitism" is generally not thought of as a specific kind of antisemitism on its own, but rather, as a manifestation of the other kinds of antisemitism”. I don't have this same impression.  Do you have quotes from reliable sources to back up your assertion?
 * You also wrote "it doesn't even seem to fit the standard taxonomies". Could you clarify what you mean by "the standard taxonomies"?  Are they different from the ones mentioned by Lazare, Brustein, Flannery and Harap?  (Please refer to User talk:Pseudo-Richard/Economic antisemitism)  Have I perhaps stumbled across non-standard taxonomies?  Who are the sources who establish what the "standard taxonomies" are? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 04:41, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Most descriptions of antisemitism include "religious antisemitism", which covers much of Christian history, and "racial antisemitism", which covers the pseudo-scientific antisemitism based on race introduced by racial theorists in the 19th century, and epitomized by Nazi theories. Very few (that I'm aware of), describe a unique "economic antisemitism". For example, Walter Laqueur's The changing face of antisemitism: from ancient times to the present day mentions "economic antisemitism" in only one sentence, and not as a unique kind of antisemitism. Jayjg (talk) 04:57, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

@Pseudo-Richard "I acknowledge that Google Books is not a good tool but it's the tool I got so I used it." Are you kidding? Well, this really shows how unqualified you are for this job. If a carpenter needs to use a screw-driver to drive a screw into something, and doesn't have a screw-driver but has a hammer, do you think she will hammer the screw in? If she did, she would be thrown off the job, even if she were a volunteer. If you do not have the right tools for the job, you just do not do the job. All you end up doing is damage, otherwise. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 17:51, 10 July 2011 (UTC)


 * It seems Noleander did read several books in order to develop his article Jews and money. AFAICT, he attempted to do things your way and yet he came up with the monstrosity Jews and money which was deeply flawed.  I think my reading of sources found via Google Books has improved his article dramatically (or, to be precise, has improved the portion of his article that I felt was salvageable after I threw out the stuff that I felt was dicey).  Is further improvement possible?  Certainly.  IWBNI I could get some help in improving the article. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 04:41, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

My motives in editing this article
Note: I don't like that I am being asked to defend my motives in writing this article but since the question has been asked, I am willing to respond, although with a measure of annoyance. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 15:37, 10 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Above, Pseudo-Richard admitted that he does not know much about this topic, does not have the resources to research it, and does not have the time. So why is he putting so much time into this article? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 14:04, 10 July 2011 (UTC)


 * The reason why I have put so much time into this article is that I think it is an important elaboration of the topic of antisemitism. Really... most of the topic headings in this article can be found mentioned in quite a number of sources about antisemitism.  I haven't used any sources that talk about economic antisemitism in specific countries because I didn't want to be the one to suggest that just because source A made comment X about country Z, comment X was applicable to economic antisemitism in all countries. (Doing that would have had the potential for accidentally performing original research and synthesis)  And yet, much of the history of economic antisemitism in particular and antisemitism in general is the aggregate of what happened in specific countries.  What I'm saying here is there's even more sources out there that I've read but not actually used yet.


 * The reason I've put so much time into this article is that, while much of what Noleander wrote was valuable, some of it was crap, even antisemitic crap. I had to look over his outline carefully and consider every passage, tossing out the stuff that was clearly crap and even some stuff that was marginal.  There's still some stuff I kept that is marginal and I wish we could just discuss those rather than spending all this time discussing my motives and my methods.


 * What I want is a good article about a topic that has been identified by multiple sources as one of the major forms of antisemitism. Why can't we work together to create that?  Don't like my outline?  Suggest changes to it.  Don't like a section or a paragraph?  Make recommendations to improve it or even recommend deleting it.  As I've said, some of it was marginal and I only kept it because I wanted to see what other people thought or because I thought it could be rescued with more work than I felt competent to do.


 * One reason that I'm "spending so much time on this article" is because there is this "threat of AFD" that is hanging over it. (See my discussion with User:Mathsci over at my Talk Page).  I have a wide range of interests and the focus of my interest shifts over time.  I created History of antisemitism in the United States because of my interest in Judaism (explained below) and because I'm a United Statesian.  I learned a lot from researching this topic.  But, at some point, I had learned as much as I wanted to and shared it in the article so I moved on.  The article remains on my watchlist so I can monitor for anybody vandalizing it or shifting it away from NPOV but I haven't worked on that article much until recently.


 * I'd like to get this article to the point where it is likely to survive an AFD. Once it gets that far, I might move on again and leave it to other editors to expand and improve it.  This is the Wikipedia way.


 * The top topic on my backburnered list is starting a series on Antisemitism in Country X. In my research, I've run across a lot of sources that discuss antisemitism (yes, including economic antisemitism) in countries such as Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Austria, Germany, France and Russia.  It seems that there could be an article about antisemitism in each of those countries using the sources that I've found.  That, however, is a major undertaking and I want to finish working on this article before moving on to that project.
 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 15:53, 10 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Slrubenstein wrote:


 * Pseudo-Richard's previous answer to me amounts to, "because I can." Well, of course anyone is physically able to edit Wikipedia, that is why we always have to put up with vandals.  But Pseudo-Richard isn't a vandal he is a registered user, so saying "because I can" is really not an appropriate reply.


 * I really have to wonder about the motives of anyone who edits an article on a topic that they do not have expertise, and cannot do research - as I myself said, I refrain from editing articles on Shakespeare and Particle Physics. Sure, I like to edit.  But I respect these topics enough to let experts work on them, or people who have the time and resources to do quality research.  So I really have to wonder about the motives of people who edit even though they have not read the mainstream and leading books and articles or have not taken the time to read the books and articles. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 14:04, 10 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Slrubenstein, are you asserting that, with the exception of my edits, the antisemitism-related articles have been written by experts who have read the mainstream and leading books and articles? If so, one has to wonder why the articles have been in such sad shape prior to my contributions.  (I'm not saying they aren't still in sad shape.  I'm just saying that I think they're in somewhat better shape after my recent edits.)  Do you assert that Antisemitism and History of antisemitism are in worse condition or no better condition since I edited them?  Do you assert that I have added no value by creating History of antisemitism in the United States?  You may not like the way I create/edit articles.  You may not like this article though I can't understand why since it's sources are from "the mainstream and leading books and articles".  However, I take issue with the assertion that my edits are not improving Wikipedia.  If you really feel that way, you belong over at Citizendium.


 * As for my motives, you may wonder all you like... my motives for editing Wikipedia are encapsulated in this saying which I've coined  "I learn a lot from Wikipedia, some of it is even true".  It is quite true that I have learned a lot from Wikipedia over the years.  The "some of it is even true" is a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment that there is also some crap in Wikipedia articles and everything has to be considered suspect and tested with the standard of commonsense.  That having been said, it's been quite useful and informative for me, even if most of all the articles are not written by experts.


 * My motive in writing Wikipedia articles is that it provides me a chance to learn and share what I've learned. My personal motive in writing antisemitism articles is that, although I'm Chinese-American, I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York where most of my friends were Jews.  (Yeah, I know that sounds like "some of my best friends are Jews" but it's not meant that way).  I read Leon Uris' Exodus when I was in 6th grade and went on to read most of his Jewish-related novels (e.g. Mila 18).  So I developed an early interest in Judaism and I've remained interested in Judaism for my entire life though the level of interest has ebbed and flowed since it's not a central interest of my life.  Doesn't make me an expert.  Not by a longshot.  But at least it explains why I'm interested in the topic.


 * I'm also interested in history and religion. This will be evident if you look over my contribution history.  I'm Catholic (sort of) which explains why another area where I edit a lot of Catholic articles.  I think I've earned some respect among editors of those articles  although I'm neither a strong defender nor a strong critic of the Church.  I've worked on a lot articles that criticize the Catholic Church although my motive in editing those articles is neither to attack nor defend the Church but simply to ensure NPOV as best as I can.  I don't see editing antisemitism-related articles as "criticizing Judaism".  In fact, if anything, I see it more as defending Judaism by documenting antisemitism.  Now I hope you will stop casting aspersions on my motives.  It's really quite tiresome, unkind and silly.  It also smacks of Wikibullying.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 14:46, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Historical development of antiJudaism and antisemitism
Slrubenstein wrote:

My view has two premises (again, I think many but not all historians would agree) first, one has to distinguish between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. They are not unrelated, and many features of anti-Semitism are based on/grew out of anti-Judaism ... so in my view, one task for any article on anti-Semitism is not only to explain how it is not simply anti-Judaism (because one can convert to Christianity and not be victimized by anti-Judaism people, but still be victimized by anti-Semites), but also to explain in what ways anti-Semitism "grew out" of anti-Judaism.

Second, I see anti-Semitism as a set of practices, including social institutions (in other words, it is not just one individual beating me up, it is the state not allowing me to vote), as well as a set of beliefs which can be expressed in words. e.g. the notorious anti-Semitic canards. I think it is obvious that people, individually or collectively, informally or informally, would not engage in anti-Semitic practices unless they already had anti-Semitic beliefs. BUT - and here you and I may differ, because based on a very hasty glance I don't think your draft shows this -anti-Semitic practices and institutions can breed anti-Semitic beliefs. In other words, concrete social relations can produce anti-Semitic feelings.

These two premises are linked in one way that is very important for the article you are drafting:institutions developed as forms of anti-Judaism before the Renaissance or the Enlightenment (English speaking people, and as far as I know French and German and Italian speaking people, did not think of themselves as European until the 17th century, they thought of themselves as living in "Christendom") may be the cause of anti-Semitic beliefs in the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, in pats of Europe where the Church dictated laws, Jews may have been the only people allowed to lend money for interest, and Jews may have been prohibited from farming land; this is anti-Judaic, because once someone converted to Christianity they were no longer allowed to land money but could own or rent land to farm. Such laws or conventions may have established customs and social relations that outlasted the laws, so that even when Christians were allowed to lend money, many Jews continued to do this too, or even when Jews were allowed to own land, the vast majority of Jews continued to favor urban life. And then this could lead to anti-Semitic stereotypes and canards.

OK... I've now had a chance to read the above more closely and I have to say that, based on having read many sources on antisemitism, I think Slrubenstein's view is not completely wrong but it is somewhat off-the-mark, especially in its use of the term "anti-Judaism". This is not, AFAICT, how most scholars use the term. Also, I have not seen any scholars talk about "institutional anti-Judaism" as contrasted to antisemitism. This is not a distinction that I have seen drawn. No doubt there is institutional antisemitism and popular antisemitism and these two do interact but I have never seen a source say that "institutional antiJudaism" led to "anti-Semitic stereotypes and canards". Of course, when I say this, I am discounting Christian apologetics from the sources. There may well be some Christian apologists who take this tack.

The following discussion more properly belongs at Talk:History of antisemitism but I will start it here since Slrubenstein's comment was made here. I'll be glad to move it there if there is general consensus to do so.

I'm sorry it is so long. I started by composing a response to Slrubenstein but it became hard to discuss just "antiJudaism" and "antisemitism" without discussing the whole history of antisemitism.

The best summary that I have found of the history of antisemitism comes from Jerome Chanes. Other sources say similar things but Chanes does the best job of putting it all together in a simple and concise formulation. The following is excerpted from the lead of History of antisemitism

The history of antisemitism – defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group – goes back many centuries; antisemitism has been called "the longest hatred." Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:
 * 1) Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in ancient Greece and Rome which was primarily ethnic in nature
 * 2) Christian anti-semitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages which was religious in nature and has extended into modern times
 * 3) Traditional Muslim antisemitism which was - at least in its classical form - nuanced in that it Jews were a protected class
 * 4) Political, social and economic antisemitism of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe which laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism
 * 5) Racial antisemitism that arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism
 * 6) Contemporary antisemitism which has been labeled by some as the New Antisemitism

Chanes suggests that these six stages could be merged into three categories: "ancient antisemitism, which was primarily ethnic in nature; Christian antisemitism, which was religious; and the racial antisemitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

In brief, Chanes is suggesting that there are two major inflection points in the history of antisemitism. The introduction of a religious component with the rise of Christianity and the shift of emphasis away from that religious component after the Enlightenment.

Generally, those who trace antisemitism back to ancient Egypt and classical Greece and Rome acknowledge that the antisemitism back then was different from modern antisemitism. Back then, anti-Judaism/anti-semitism was "primarily ethnic in nature". However, reading what various pagan authors had to say about the Jews, I must say that a lot of it sounds awfully familiar. And at least one source raises the question of why Jews were singled out for this negative qualification. Another source (Feldman) comments that many pagan authors had positive things to say about Jews up until Manetho (ca. 270BC) after which "the picture usually painted is one of universal and virulent anti-Judaism."

There are those who argue that, during the era of early Christianity, anti-Jewish sentiment was rooted primarily in religious polemics as the Christians differentiated themselves and separated from the Jews. However, since the Christians were mostly residents of the Roman Empire, they inherited the classical antisemitic prejudices of the pagan authors mentioned above. One source comments that these antisemitic attitudes mostly came from those in the Greek portion of the Roman Empire. According to the source, the Jews in the Persian/Babylonian regions were not subject to similar vilification.

There is at least one source that asserts that Jews were better off in the period 600-1000C.E. than in the period after 1000C.E. It's not clear to me what changed. Not that many sources make this assertion so, while I am inclined to believe it's true, it doesn't seem to be something the sources focus on. The point to make here is that the comments about antisemitism in the "medieval period" should not be read to cover the entire period from 600-1300C.E. Some of the assertions about "antisemitism in the medieval period" more properly describe antisemitism from 1100-1300.

The Crusades certainly transformed Europe's attitudes towards the Jews. Since there was all this polemic/propaganda/invective in favor of the Christian God and against the infidel, there was a natural focus on the infidel in Europe alongside the infidel in the Holy Land. It is asserted by at least one source that almost every crusade started with a pogrom against the Jews. (of course, pogrom was not the word that was used but it's the most convenient word to use here) At this point, antisemitism is a mix of religious antiJudaism (usually referred to as "religious antisemitism" when discussed in the context of the medieval period) and economic antisemitism. I don't remember any sources using the phrase "anti-Judaism" after the early Christian era or after the Patristic period.

Between 1100 and 1500, the Jews are expelled from England, France, Spain and most of western Europe. Where do they go? Those that don't convert to Christianity go to North Africa, the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe where they are generally well-received. A family of Marrano Jews run the finances of the Ottoman Empire. Jews similarly do well in Poland. However, as always, there are poor Jews and wealthy, influential Jews. We should not fall into the trap of assuming that all Jews in these regions were prosperous, wealthy and influential.

There isn't much discussion of antisemitism during the Renaissance and Reformation (or, at least, I haven't focused on those periods enough) with the exception of noting the antisemitism of Martin Luther. Some time during this period, the Jewish quarters transformed into ghettos.

This last fact is significant because Jews are simultaneously envied for their wealth (as merchants, moneylenders and Court Jews) and despised for the poverty of the ghettos.

Thus, when the Jews are emancipated in the 19th century, there are stereotypes of them as poor and dirty. At the same time, they are freer to move in European society and to enter occupations and professions formerly proscribed to them. Their success and "overrepresentation" in doing so leads to a negative response as their success is envied and attributed to clannishness, greed, dishonesty, etc.

19th century pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia cause waves of mass emigration. Many of these Jews come to Western Europe where they are looked upon as poor, dirty foreigners.

Because the Enlightenment has deprecated the religious basis of religious antisemitism, the focus turns towards economic antisemitism which was always there but becomes more prominent as religious antisemitism recedes (it doesn't go away, it just is no longer the primary focus).

There is, of course, social antisemitism as well although this aspect of antisemitism is not discussed as extensively in the sources.

The key development is the rise of pseudo-scientific racial antisemitism which is ultimately combined by Hitler with the economic, social and political antisemitism of the 19th century to create the "apocalyptic antisemitism" of Nazi Germany. This apocalyptic antisemitism combines elements of messianism and milleniallism to produce the Holocaust.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:24, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Pseudo, I did not make the comment here. So please do not misrepresent me.  Also, I did not use the phrase "institutional anti-Judaism," so again, please do not misrepresent me.  It seems to me like you are inventing a bunch of new concepts based on very limited reading of Jewish history.  More support for what I wrote above: although anyone can edit Wikipedia, it does not mean that everyone has something to contribute to every article. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 18:39, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

1) You're right. Your comment was first made on my Talk Page and it was I who moved it here.  What I should have said is: since the discussion is already here, it seems a bit arbitrary of me to move it again to Talk:History of antisemitism without a general agreement to do so. 2) You're right again. You never used the word "institutional antiJudaism". It's a phrase I coined that conflates your two points above. Your exact wording was "anti-Semitic practices and institutions can breed anti-Semitic beliefs." You further wrote: These two premises are linked in one way that is very important for the article you are drafting:institutions developed as forms ofanti-Judaism before the Renaissance or the Enlightenment (English speaking people, and as far as I know French and German and Italian speaking people, did not think of themselves as European until the 17th century, they thought of themselves as living in "Christendom") may be the cause ofanti-Semitic beliefs in the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, in pats of Europe where the Church dictated laws, Jews may have been the only people allowed to lend money for interest, and Jews may have been prohibited from farming land; this is anti-Judaic, because once someone converted to Christianity they were no longer allowed to land money but could own or rent land to farm. Such laws or conventions may have established customs and social relations that outlasted the laws, so that even when Christians were allowed to lend money, many Jews continued to do this too, or even when Jews were allowed to own land, the vast majority of Jews continued to favor urban life. And then this could lead to anti-Semitic stereotypes and canards.

The above text is what led me to the sloppy conclusion that you were arguing for an "institutional anti-Judaism" which was somehow different from "antisemitic stereotypes and canards". I've read some sources that lay out and analyze various explanations for antisemitism including psychological and economic ones. Perhaps the transference that you describe from formalized institutions to popular "anti-Semitic stereotypes and canards" and back would fall into that domain. I don't think this discussion of causes and mechanisms fits properly into this article since the scope is specifically "economic antisemitism". I think it fits better in Antisemitism although it's possible that some sources may make arguments along the lines you made. I didn't see any but I wasn't looking specifically for it either. The closest that I can remember is the general assertion that "religious antisemitism" was supposed to stop as soon as a Jew converted to Christianity. (although the experience of the conversos is a famous example that it didn't actually work that way in reality)

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Law is an institution. A law prohibiting Jews from certain occupations is a form of anti-Judaism if it is not justified through some racial logic, and if, upon converting to Christianity, the former Jew is no longer subject to discrimination.  So this is an example of an institution that developed as a form of anti-Judaism. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 21:36, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Criticisms of this article
This article needs to be rethought because in a number of places it actually reproduces the same generalizations that are made by economic antisemites. Just because one can site a source for a statement doesn't mean it actually is the best source for information on a particular topic. So a statement on Jewish occupations that just cites a number of sources that make generalizations about Jewish occupations without giving any actual data or statistics on Jewish occupational distributions in any country in any period is engaging in the same stereotypes without data that antisemites engage in, even if the source is from the Anti-Defamation League. If you are going to write about Jewish occupational distributions you need to have data on that topic, not generalizations. I hope that the editors will flag this article and require it to provide relevant data for the statements it is making. And it is ironic that an article that is supposed to be explaining and hopefully discouraging antisemitism, and I would hope that this is one of the missions of Wikipedia, would use similar arguments as the prejudices it is supposedly trying to dispel. — Precedingunsigned comment added byRosePesotta (talk •contribs) 20:04, 16 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Rose, thank you for your comment. I readily grant you that it is very difficult to find sourced data regarding the distribution of Jews in various professions.  I put some significant effort into a Google Books search and found relatively little in the way of quantitative data.  It is my hope that someone who has access to better sources might provide more and higher quality data.


 * It is clear that many people over the centuries have perceived Jews to be over-concentrated in certain professions. Even many Jews have shared this perception.  I have been able to find only scant evidence as to whether this perception was based in fact or prejudice.  If anyone can bring more and better sources to shed light on this area, I would very much appreciate it.


 * I will comment that, even if Jews were over-concentrated in certain professions, there is the much more controversial discussion of why this was so. For example, some have asserted that Jews were moneylenders because they were prohibited from other professions.  Others would assert that Jews were moneylenders because they were greedy and manipulative.


 * It is important to note that it is not Wikipedia's mission to "dispel prejudices". That would suggest that Wikipedia is about truth and, although this may seem wrong, Wikipedia is not about truth but about presenting all relevant points-of-view in an NPOV manner.  Of course, when discussing anti-semitism, it is very difficult to present anti-semitic views in an NPOV manner.  If one does it badly, one can quickly become accused of being an anti-semite.  Nonetheless, Wikipedia's commitment to NPOV requires that we not start from a stance of attempting to "dispel" anti-semitic canards and myths.  We should certainly not assert that these canards are true and we should certainly present sourced evidence that they are not.  However, to view our mission as the dispelling of these canards and myths is to abandon NPOV and we must not do that.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 02:08, 17 July 2012 (UTC)


 * This is true for many professions, yes. For example, over 170 Nobel Prize winners have been Jews, or 20% of all Nobel Prize winners, while constituing less than 1% of the world's population.  To me, that's not a bad thing. That's an amazing thing, and something to be proud of, not to twist into anti-Semitic allegations.  Why is this so?  Well a lot of people say because Jews are scattered across the world and live in Diaspora, and need to be able to support themselves and continue for over 3000 years and establish themselves, and education also plays a large part in Jewish cultural life.  It's unfortunate when this is used as anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories. -- Activism  1234  05:07, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Reference for more info
http://books.google.com/books?id=VK0llzUqQ2YC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=why+were+jews+scapegoats&source=bl&ots=IjjDqZ6yJy&sig=Dehs3EngmZg-0yvVSKV3q2wPg2s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ulcbUOLyLIrJ6wHGuIG4Aw&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=why%20were%20jews%20scapegoats&f=false - explains that factors unrelated to economics caused anti-Semitism, and that Jews weren't hated because they lent $, but rather lent $ because they were hated, and thus that itself didn't cause anti-Semitism. The researchers couldn't find any instance of economic factors leading to anti-Semitism, only increasing it. -- Activism  1234  05:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion to add settings for an archive bot to work
Everything here looks healthy but the bot may help in the future.

Wikipedia provides some reasonably clear Talk page guidelines. One of the sections within the guidelines concerns: When to condense pages. It says: "It is recommended to archive or refactor a page either when it exceeds 75 KB, or has more than 10 main sections". At the point of this edit the page contained a quite tolerable 77 KB Gregkaye (talk) 15:51, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
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Propination laws in Poland
Propination laws caused antisemitism. Not mentioned here.Xx236 (talk) 07:16, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Bauer and Marx
It is erroneous to say Bauer and Marx "agreed" on Jews. Marx's views on judaism are, one could argue, antisemitic, but much less so than Bauer's. Bauer's view saw the Jews as inherently objectionable, while Marx's views were a criticism of Jewish culture, from a man who was himself Jewish. In fact, much of On The Jewish Question, is response to and criticism of Bauer.2601:642:C481:4640:9DB9:2FCB:A5D5:2B48 (talk) 01:18, 10 May 2021 (UTC)