A Convenient Hatred Quotes

“In 1555 the church had a new pope, Paul IV, and he was even more determined to end all heresies than earlier popes had been. Almost immediately, Paul issued a bull in which he stated: It is absurd and inconvenient that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal slavery, can… show such ingratitude towards Christians and affront them by asking for their mercy. [They] have become so bold as to not only live amongst Christians but near their churches without any distinctive clothing.13 He therefore ordered that Jews in Rome and the Papal States wear special clothing and be confined to ghettos.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“The Middle East is the only place in the world where three continents come together. It is a crossroads that links Asia, Africa, and Europe. Life at a crossroads can be dangerous.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act into law. The new law effectively closed the United States to most Jewish immigrants.
During the debate, Coolidge told the American people:
"Restricted immigration is not an offensive but purely a defensive action... We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“united nation in 1870—12 years after Edgardo’s”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Von Laurin”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“As Elie Wiesel noted, “Although we today are not responsible for the injustices of the past, we are responsible for the way we remember the past and what we do with that past.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“The 2002 trial of a member of an al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany—the same cell to which Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 attacks, belonged—suggested that antisemitism played a part in those attacks. Shahid Nickels, a former member of that cell, testified that he, Atta, and other members regarded New York City as “the center of world Jewry.” They believed that from that center in New York, Jews controlled the U.S. government, the media, and the economy.9”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Zionism is to the Jewish people what the liberation movements of Africa and Asia have been to their own people….”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Throughout the 1970s, Soviet and Arab leaders falsely linked Zionism to racism and imperialism by arguing that Zionism was “an imperialistic militant ideology of racial hatred which should be universally condemned.”35 That language had a powerful impact on nations that had only recently been under colonial rule and were still struggling with the consequences of racism and imperialism.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“In Arab nations, many people opposed Zionism because they believed that the UN had no right to establish a Jewish state on what they considered Arab land. They also saw the Zionist claim to Israel as a continuation of Western domination. And, for some, anti-Zionism was increasingly rooted in a belief that God had given Muslims ownership and responsibility for all of the Middle East.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Most young American Jews in the 1960s also knew very little about the Holocaust. Brooks Susman, who would later become a rabbi, told an interviewer, “My parents hid it from us. They didn’t want us to be injured or brutalized by it. ‘We went to war. We beat Hitler. It can never happen again. You don’t need to know about”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“The first step in “saving” Germany from the Jews and other inferior races, from this perspective, was the destruction of the Weimar Republic. Like other extremist groups, the Nazis hired thugs and organized a private army to kill supporters of the republic.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“In 1929, Einstein, who had once lived in Switzerland, wrote: When I came to Germany fifteen years ago I discovered for the first time that I was a Jew; and I owe this discovery more to Gentiles than to Jews…. I saw worthy Jews basely caricatured, and the sight made my heart bleed. I saw how schools, comic papers, and innumerable other forces of the Gentile majority undermined the confidence of even the best of my fellow Jews, and felt that this could not be allowed to continue.4”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Antisemitism did not begin in Germany, or anywhere else, in 1918; Jews had been regarded as dangerous outsiders for centuries, and anti-Jewish feeling usually intensified in times of war and other upheaval. But during World War II, for the first time in history, a government, with the support of many of its people, had systematically hunted and then murdered Jews for no reason other than the fact that their parents or grandparents were Jews.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“You could taste antisemitism everywhere; the air of Germany was permeated by it. All the unavoidable consequences of military defeat, revolution, a ruinous inflation, the Versailles [peace treaty], the loss of the territories in the east and west, the unsettling social changes following in their wake—each and every thing was blamed on the Jews and/or the Communists, who for the convinced Jew-hater were interchangeable.1”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Many Americans shared his views. The new law was extremely popular and seemed to solve the nation’s “immigrant problem,” at least for the time being. The problem in Europe was not as easily resolved. There, the notion that “the Jews” were a “nation within a nation” plotting world domination would lead to genocide—an effort to murder all of Europe’s Jews.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act into law. The new law effectively closed the United States to most Jewish immigrants. During the debate, Coolidge told the American people, Restricted immigration is not an offensive but purely a defensive action…. We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“In the end the Senate decided that there was no emergency, nor were there grounds for a general ban on immigration. Still, like their counterparts in the House of Representatives, many senators were uneasy about the “quantity” and “quality” of the nation’s newest arrivals. In 1921, the House and the Senate passed the first of several laws limiting immigration.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“So the myth that Jews belonged to a distinct and inferior race continued to grow throughout Europe. That myth gave individuals and governments a new excuse for discrimination and persecution. It was based not on ethnicity or religion (although the myth was sometimes expressed in religious and cultural terms) but on “race.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“In May 1860, Adolphe Crémieux and other French Jewish leaders held a meeting in Paris to create a new organization known as the Universal Israelite Alliance. They explained why Jews needed such a group: [A]ll other important faiths are represented in the world by nations—embodied, that is to say, in governments that have a special interest and an official to represent and speak for them. Ours alone is without this important advantage; it corresponds neither to a state nor to a society nor again to a specific territory; it is no more than a rallying-cry for scattered individuals—the very people whom it is therefore essential to bring together.17”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Soon after the independent Kingdom of Italy was formed, Jews became citizens in the new nation, entitled to the full protection of the law. Almost immediately, the authorities informed the Mortaras that their son was now free to rejoin his family. But by then it was too late: the boy was 18 and studying to become a priest.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“The “age of enlightenment” ended some of the isolation, discrimination, and humiliation Jews had experienced in earlier times in Europe. Jews now had more freedom than in the past. Yet these changes did not end antisemitism. Instead this new age, with its emerging nationalism, promoted dangerous new stereotypes that would haunt Jews in years to come. They were increasingly seen as a hostile “nation within a nation”—one whose loyalty was almost always in question.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“By the mid-1700s, people were becoming aware of that dramatic rise in immigration, and it aroused strong feelings. One Tory opponent of the Naturalization Act claimed that the bill would naturalize “hordes” of foreign Jews.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“In many ways, England was home to the first modern Jewish community in the world.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“injustice is directly created by that fine policy which denies the poor Jews protection and residence, but receives with open arms those very same Jews as soon as they have “thieved their way to wealth.”8”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Privileged Jews were known as court Jews (because of their relationship with the king). Many were very rich, and some had rights that were almost equal to those of Christians. The vast majority of Jews, however, had few rights and at best just barely made a living. Historians estimate that about 10 percent were homeless. They could not live in Berlin or other German cities unless a privileged Jew was willing to support them.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“The power of stereotypes like those Voltaire expressed helps to explain why the ghetto gates were slow to open. It may also explain why many of those prejudices have survived for so long.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Even the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, with their commitment to reason, failed to recognize the ways they stereotyped others.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Many young Jewish men—and a few young women—responded enthusiastically to the idea of broadening their education. But they quickly found that knowledge of German culture could take a Jew only so far. German Christians accepted a mere handful of geniuses and privileged Jews—enough to pride themselves on their “enlightenment” without confronting their prejudices.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“Mendelssohn was keenly aware of the difference between the respect he received and the disdain shown to other Jews. In a letter to a Benedictine monk, he expressed his frustration: “Throughout this so-called tolerant land I feel hemmed in; my life is so restricted on all sides by genuine intolerance.”2 Yet he continued to believe that much of that prejudice would eventually disappear if young Jews combined their religious training with secular studies. It was a controversial idea at a time when many Jews feared that secular learning would lead to the loss of their culture, customs, and traditions. Mendelssohn disagreed. He insisted that it was possible to be both a Jew and a German.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism