By G. Daniel Cohen
G. Daniel Cohen, the Samuel W. and Goldye Marian Spain Associate Professor of History, and Mendel Kranz, the Samuel W. and Goldye Marian Spain Postdoctoral Fellow, are organizing an international conference “Rethinking Anti-Antisemitism and Philosemitism.
The conference, will be held on the Rice campus Jan. 9–11, 2025, and will coincide with the publication of Cohen’s new monograph “Good Jews: Philosemitism in Europe After the Holocaust.”
My book, “Good Jews. Philosemitism in Europe After the Holocaust,” will be published by Cambridge University Press in spring 2025. In this study, I explore the concept of philosemitism — an ostensibly positive regard or admiration for Jewish people and culture — in nuanced terms. While appearing to counter antisemitism, philosemitism can reinforce stereotypes and frame Jewish identity in limiting or instrumental ways. While antisemitism vilifies Jews by attributing negative traits to them, philosemitism often flips the narrative by ascribing positive but equally reductive qualities. For example, Jews may be seen as paragons of intellectual brilliance, resilience or moral integrity. Such views, while ostensibly complimentary, confine Jewish identity to a narrow set of stereotypes and fail to engage with the diversity and complexity of Jewish life. In sum, philosemitism can often operate as a “mirror image” of antisemitism, where Jews are idealized rather than demonized, but still categorized and confined as people uniquely different from others, or foreign to us. This dynamic can relegate Jewish individuals to symbolic roles rather than acknowledging their full complexity.
While appearing to counter antisemitism, philosemitism can reinforce stereotypes and frame Jewish identity in limiting or instrumental ways. While antisemitism vilifies Jews by attributing negative traits to them, philosemitism often flips the narrative by ascribing positive but equally reductive qualities.
There is, however, another story to tell about philosemitism. Antisemitism, of course, immediately reinvented itself after the Holocaust. In Germany, what has been called “secondary antisemitism” replaced the “primary antisemitism” of the Nazi era: no longer racial hate but “guilt-defensive” antagonism against surviving Jews. No longer “sub-humans,” Jews were now reviled for tormenting German consciousness. German-Jewish writers summarized this mindset thus: “The Germans will never forgive us for Auschwitz.” The haunting image of the surviving Jew, argued the German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno, impeded the repression of the Nazi past by reminding Germans of their crimes.
Yet after the Holocaust, positive attitudes toward Jews nonetheless provided a counterpoint to antisemitism. This philosemitism was sometimes shallow or performative, serving as a way for societies to signal moral virtue without engaging deeply with ongoing antisemitism or the actual experiences of Jewish communities. Philosemitism always risks reducing Jewish people to tools for other agendas rather than engaging with them as equals. But despite its ambivalence, philosemitism became part and parcel of the postwar European experience. The phenomenon took three main forms: anti-antisemitism (the protection of Jews from antisemitism); Holocaust memory (the Jewish genocide as central crime of the Second World War); and acceptance — when not support — of Zionism and Israel. Guilt, of course, accounted for this philosemitic turn, but deflection of guilt equally motivated this change of heart. As one historian wrote, “The Jew became the enemy we must love.”
My book follows the evolution of European philosemitism chronologically in Western Europe between 1945 and 1989 and in the European Union since its inception. It begins with the reinvention of antisemitism in Western Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. Although Jew-hatred did not disappear, a new moratorium on public antisemitism demarcated democracy from fascism. Unrepentant Nazis, former pro-German collaborators, or traditionalist Catholics transgressed the taboo, but the delegitimation of antisemitism in the public arena forced Judeophobia to take cover behind favorable views of Jews: tactical philosemitism in occupied Germany and the early Federal Republic is a case in point. I also examine the rise of anti-antisemitism in Western Europe, a singular struggle against Jew-hatred no longer apart of universal antiracism but distinct of it.
In another section, I examine how Catholic and Protestant theologians redefined their relationship to Judaism after the Holocaust. Another chapter focuses on “Israelophilia”: how the state of Israel captured the imagination of West Europeans from 1948 to 1967. In a chapter on the 1960s and 1970s, I show how the Holocaust entered public culture and how antisemitism and Holocaust denial became punishable hate-speech in law. The last part of the book deals with the post-1989 period until Oct. 7, 2023: an age of “Euro-optimism” conducive to affinities between the “idea of Europe” and Jewishness.
The rise of new antisemitism after 2000, however, tempered this enthusiasm. Postcolonial scholars, for their part, inveigh against “state philosemitism,” which allegedly drives a wedge between “white” Jews and racialized groups on the other, Muslims chiefly among them. Radical critiques of philosemitism in Germany charge that the Federal Republic’s “remembrance culture” unduly shielded the Holocaust from comparability; and that Germany’s commitment to Israel’s security in the name of “reason of state” disregards the plight of Palestinians. The cataclysmic events of Oct. 7, 2023, only added urgency to the following question: Did Europe’s philosemitic moment after the Holocaust come to an end?
My colleague, Mendel Kranz, and I have organized an international gathering on this and other issues. The conference, “Rethinking Anti-Antisemitism and Philosemitism,” which is supported by the program in Jewish studies at Rice, will be held Jan. 9–11, 2025.