The Best Most Recent Books on Antisemitism

January 2023. Antisemitism is on the rise. So are antisemitic beliefs. There are many outstanding books and resources on antisemitism. Today, we wanted to give a short list of the best, most recent books written on the topic. For a list of our recommendations of the best books on antisemitism click here.

Antisemitism: Here and Now by Deborah Lipstadt

Background: Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt is the current United States Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor Antisemitism. Before her confirmation, she was the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University where she was a world-renown historian and expert on the Holocaust and antisemitism.

Why you should read this book: If you only have time to read one book, you need an easy-to-understand reference for a particular question, this is our choice for the best most recent book on antisemitism. Lipstadt gives a thorough review of what antisemitism is, where it comes from, and the many, many, many forms it takes. She provides examples from across the current political and religious spectrum, from around the world, and throughout history. She writes it as a series of short, easy-to-understand letters between her and a student and her and a faculty member. Her book is straight-forward, sober and instructive. It is a perfect option both for someone who wants to read about antisemitism for the first time and for those who are already somewhat familiar with the subject.

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Why do People Discriminate Against Jews? by Jonathan Fox and Lev Topor

Background: Most people are not familiar with the scholarly side of antisemitism research. Jonathan Fox is the Yehuda Avner Professor of Religion and Politics, director of the Religion and State (RAS) project and a senior research fellow at Bar-Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. Lev Topor is an Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy (ISGAP) Visiting Scholar at the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, UK, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Cyber Law and Policy (CCLP) at the University of Haifa and a visiting Research Fellow at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (Summer 2022).

Why you should read this book: Their book is the first to systematically document empirical cases and variations in antisemitism, and quantitively test major theories of antisemitism on a large global sample. They divide empirical antisemitic cases into government-based religious discrimination (GRD) and societal religious discrimination (SRD). The former are actions taken against Jews by their government. The latter are incidents perpetuated by their fellow citizens. Their main area of investigation is to describe the variation in antisemitic cases across the world and then investigate why governments actively discriminate against their Jewish populations.

Their main finding is that governments are more likely to discriminate against Jews when governments actively promote official state religions, when there are anti-Israel attitudes and behavior, and most importantly when a high percentage of the population believes in antisemitic conspiracy theories. You should read this book because it is systematic, painstaking, incredibly well-researched and because it makes a significant social scientific contribution to our understanding of government- and societal-based antisemitism.

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People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn

Background: Dara Horn is a professor, novelist, essayist and two-time recipient of the National Book Award. She has a PhD in comparative literature from Harvard University. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Yeshiva University and Harvard as the Gerald Weinstock Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies.

Why you should read this book: Dara Horn’s book is a superb collection of essays on antisemitism. Her main argument is that societies love to fetishize dead Jews and Jewish life while at the same time doing so little to protect Jews in the present and having done so little to protect Jewish life in the past.

Horn’s book is important because on one hand, it explores the world’s underlying problem with strong, sovereign Jews while at the same time its appropriation of and obsession with Jewish suffering. She shows that the pathological obsession with Jewish deaths leads to a warped view of history where idyllic, utopian Jewish life is memorialized and the perpetrators are today centered as the savior and moral underdog.

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Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel

Background: David Baddiel is a Jewish and British author, comedian, screenwriter, presenter and commentator. He is also one of the most important voices in the United Kingdom on the rise of antisemitism, particularly in left-wing spaces such as the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. In 2016, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, a British non-profit was the first to label the Labour Party as institutionally antisemitic. For examples of antisemitism in the Labour Party, see here, here, here and here. In 2018, Campaign Against Antisemitism filed a complaint with the United Kingdom’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

In 2020, the EHRC reported that the Labour Party was responsible for three breaches of the Equality Act (2010): “political interference in antisemitism complaints,” “failure to provide adequate training to those handling antisemitism complaints,” and “harassment.” It is against the backdrop of the rise of left-wing antisemitism in the political and cultural spheres that David Baddiel wrote Jews Don’t Count to a left-wing audience that thinks of itself as anti-racist.

Why you should read this book: This is not a book for moderates, centrists or conservatives. This is solely a book for liberals, leftists, social democrats, socialists or anyone that considers themselves on the left-side of the political spectrum and who views themselves as anti-racist; in fact, it is for those whose central political ideological motivation is opposition to racism. Baddiel brilliantly shows that Jews in present-day British culture in the arts, sports, literature and social commentary are exempt from any assumption or acknowledgement that Jews are a minority that suffer from discrimination. Jews are assumed to be white, cis, wealthy and too powerful to ever suffer from racism*.

Even more, it is wrongly assumed, especially in left-wing circles, that publicly criticizing, mocking or attacking Jews for their power and weath is a nobel and brave endeavor because one is “punching up.” Baddiel’s polemic is a must-read because it dismantles these ideas and through each painstaking example across the cultural spectrum shows the anti-racism blindspot when it comes to Jews.

* In the United Kingdom, unlike in the United States, the word racism, for example, anti-Jewish racism, is commonplace when describing antisemitism. Racism is used to describe antisemitism because Jews, while not a race (despite being racialized throughout history), are a distinct ethnic minority.

By Aaron Gold. Aaron Gold is a writer and the founder of The Hasmonean.

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