Antisemitism Studies

Abstract:

This article offers a comparison between the events of Alexandria, Egypt, in 38 CE, and the pogroms of nineteenth century Imperial Russia, which demonstrates the emergence of lexical and historical problems when labels are used to define events belonging to different chronological periods and cultural environments. The article argues that the word "pogrom," used to define Russian assaults against the Jews in the Pale of Settlement, has acquired semantic characteristics that cannot be applied to the events of Alexandria almost 2,000 years earlier.