Historian Jonathan Elukin (Trinity College), visiting fellow at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, argues that Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages were more complex than a simple story of constant persecution, and that projecting a single, continuous “antisemitism” from antiquity to the present is misleading and constrains how Jewish history is understood. Drawing on David Engel, he explains that “anti-Semitic” originated as a 19th-century Central European political label for movements opposing Jewish emancipation, later becoming the noun “antisemitism” as Jewish observers connected varied anti-Jewish phenomena across time and place. Elukin critiques searches for an ancient origin point (classical “Judeophobia,” early Christian “anti-Judaism”) and shows how Jews often survived, thrived, and were protected despite episodes of violence, expulsions, and accusations. He emphasizes modern antisemitism’s distinct contexts (mass politics, conspiracy thinking), warns against treating antisemitism as an autonomous force, and urges holding broad narratives alongside literal, contextual historical analysis.
