Universalism, Nationalism, and the Jews

Abstract

This essay explores the role, both in the creation of antisemitic myth, and in its attempted explanation, of a range of popular beliefs framed in terms of the concepts of particularism, universalism and nationalism. It distinguishes between different senses of “universalism,” between different types of antisemitism, and between several senses in which Judaism and Jewish culture can reasonably be said to be both “particularist” and “universalist” in content or tone. It questions, among other received ideas, whether universalism is an unqualified good, and whether nationalist sentiment is the source of the only, or even the worst kind of antisemitism.