Language:
English
Year of publication:
2010
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Political Studies Review
Angaben zur Quelle:
22,1-2 (2010) 59-73
Keywords:
Jews History 1500-
;
Jews
;
Judaism Relations
;
Christianity
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism
Abstract:
Despite the small size of the Jewish community in Switzerland, Swiss public discourse is preoccupied with things Jewish. Whereas the media and reading public are fascinated with the vanished culture of long-dead Jews, they are largely uncomfortable with the living Jewish communities in Switzerland, Israel, and elsewhere. Argues that the roots of the Swiss anti-Jewish attitude lies in history. The special bottom-up character of the Swiss body politic, with its semi-autonomous cantons and communities, has enabled medieval stereotypes to survive into modernity. Equal rights were granted to Jews in the 19th century only under foreign pressure, thus the Jews came to symbolize the end of the old order and to be seen as foreign agents and forerunners of modernization. During the mass immigration in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, authorities introduced rules impeding the immigration and naturalization of East European Jews. The nation united around the principle of not being Jews; being Jewish became the opposite of being Swiss. Since 1990 the attitude toward Jews has been aggravated by several controversies, such as that of restitution of lost Jewish property, Swiss collaboration with Nazi Germany, and the lifting of the ban on Jewish ritual slaughter. Antisemitism disguised as anti-Israelism is rampant.
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