philo-Semitism

English

Alternative forms

• philosemitism

Noun

philo-Semitism (uncountable)

1. Interest in or appreciation of Jewish people, their history, or the influence of Judaism, particularly on the part of a gentile.
   • 1881 March, The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, page 350:

     To an Englishman, German liberalism is a hybrid creature, lame of three legs and blind of one eye, and thus it is necessary to explain — if indeed explanation in its rational sense be possible — the position of the German Liberals in this matter of philo-Semitism.

   • 2020 January 28, Mairov Zonszein, “Christian Zionist philo-Semitism is driving Trump’s Israel policy”, in The Washington Post‎^[1]:

     The great sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argued that philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism both fall under “allosemitism”: literally Othering the Jew. He defined it not as resentment of what is different, which is xenophobia, but rather of what defies order and clear categories. In 1997, he wrote, “The Jew is ambivalence incarnate. And ambivalence is ambivalence mostly because it cannot be contemplated without ambivalent feeling: it is simultaneously attractive and repelling.”

Antonyms

• anti-Semitism

Related terms

• philo-Semitic

Translations

interest in or appreciation of Jews

• Czech: filosemitismus m inan
• Dutch: filosemitisme (nl) n
• French: philosémitisme (fr) m
• German: Philosemitismus (de) m
• Polish: filosemityzm (pl) m
• Spanish: filosemitismo m

Further reading

• philo-Semitism on Wikipedia.Wikipedia