Meaning of philo-Semitism | Babel Free

Definitions

Interest in or appreciation of Jewish people, their history, or the influence of Judaism, particularly on the part of a gentile.

uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

“The new civilizationism is a paradoxical combination of “identitarian” Christianity, secularism, philo-Semitism, Islamophobia, and even some elements of liberalism such as support⟳ for gender equality and gay rights.”

“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.””

CEFR level