New Ruthless Cosmopolitan Column

In my latest "Ruthless Cosmopolitan" column for JTA I write about "allosemitism" -- the concept that Jews are the perpetual "other". I describe this year's Yiddish Summer Weimar festival and also a summer exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Munich on "that certain Jewish something" that makes things and/or people Jewish.

The column can be seen at the JTA web site or at various other sites, including the Jerusalem Post.

I am aggregating all the columns on a Ruthless Cosmopolitan blog, where they can be subscribed to via RSS.


DOES A "CERTAIN JEWISH SOMETHING" REALLY SET JEWS APART?

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

WEIMAR, Germany (JTA) -- I learned a new word this summer -- "allosemitism."
Coined by a Polish-Jewish literary critic named Artur Sandauer, the term describes a concept with which I am quite familiar -- the idea of Jews as the perpetual "other."

Allosemitism can embrace both positive and negative feelings toward Jews -- everything, as the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman put it, "from love and respect to outright condemnation and genocidal hatred."

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