Non­fic­tion

A Con­ve­nient Hatred: The His­to­ry of Antisemitism

Phyl­lis Goldstein
  • Review
By – June 1, 2012
The pub­lish­ers of this his­to­ry of anti-Semi­tism sought to pro­vide a com­plete gen­er­al his­to­ry of the top­ic, from its misty ori­gins up to its shock­ing­ly heat­ed present. Although there is cer­tain­ly some val­ue in being able to point to the shelf at a com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal vignettes on the sub­ject, this effort does not achieve more.

Writ­ten on a sim­plis­tic lev­el pre­sum­ably aimed at a young audi­ence, the book seeks to explain the var­i­ous ori­gins and out­breaks of anti-Semi­tism over the mil­len­nia. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it seems to be as con­cerned with not over­bur­den­ing the haters as reveal­ing them. Inex­plic­a­bly, Moslem anti-Semi­tism is cov­ered with­in oth­er chap­ters, and even at the present time is not giv­en its own. No one wants to damp­en enthu­si­asm for the full cov­er­age of this top­ic, but a too care­ful effort steeped more in bal­ance than expli­ca­tion and analy­sis sheds lit­tle use­ful light.
Jeff Bogursky reads a lot, writes a lit­tle and talks quite a bit. He is a media exec­u­tive and expert in dig­i­tal media.

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