Understanding Antisemitism Today

Antisemitism is the longest hatred. While it has common themes that have endured throughout history, it is also highly contextual and adaptive. In order to address the troubling growth in antisemitism across the US and around the globe, we need to understand it historically and as it is manifesting today. In the first part of the workshop, therefore, we will examine several images and texts that surface some central motifs that have animated the history of antisemitism and that continue to inflect it today. In the second part of the workshop, we will place these historical motifs into conversation with contemporary expressions of antisemitism in select cases so that we can understand how antisemitic themes and tropes are utilized today. As part of the workshop, we will examine various definitions of antisemitism.