The Changing Faces of Antisemitism

The Changing Faces of Antisemitism is Muriel Seltman’s examination into the roots of antisemitism. Starting with the Gospels and moving forward across time, she identifies the causes of modern, globalised antisemitism.

It was Muriel Seltman’s own experience of unwitting antisemitism that was the catalyst for her writing this book – the discovery that many well-meaning people, whose religious education has been Christian and who know that Jesus was Jewish ethnically, find it hard to accept that he was a devoutly religious Jew.

‘The principal aim of this book is to counter unwitting antisemitism in people who are unaware of their own deeply-conditioned prejudice. People find the idea of Jesus as a devout Jew very difficult to accept,’ observes Muriel. ‘Of course, everyone knows that “Jesus was a Jew” but this is usually seen as meaning that he was Jewish ethnically. There’s a widely-held belief that Jesus was a Christian by religion, the founder of Christianity and hostile to the Jewish religion. The Gospels show that Jesus was a religious Jew. He was extremely devout,’ she adds.

The opening chapters deal with the Jewishness of Jesus and the Gospel treatment of the trial and crucifixion, showing that it was not the Jews who killed Jesus – it was the Roman secular authorities in collusion with the Jewish religious authorities who were responsible for the crucifiixion. From then on, the Church set about distancing Jesus from his Jewishness and this was followed by the development of Christian, Muslim and secular antisemitism (including that of Martin Luther and Karl Marx), which persists today but in new forms.

Muriel Seltman taught mathematics and history of mathematics at various levels for several decades. As well as writing on the history of mathematics she is the author of Bread and Roses (a presentation of nontheism) and What’s Right? What’s Left? about her time in North Korea and China. Muriel Seltman lives in Eltham, London.