Semites

A collection of four essays. Reflects on the notion of the Semite, or "Semitic race" - a figment of Western imagination created in an epoch of secularization, similar to another figment, that of the "Aryan race". Ch. 1 (pp. 13-38), "The Semitic Hypothesis (Religion's Last Word)" [first presented as a paper at "tRACEs", a conference held at the University of California, Irvine], reflects specifically on "anti-Semitism", meaning rejection of the Semites. Argues that the notion of the Semite permitted the West to formalize the image of the enemy and of the "Other". Jews and Arabs are equally victims of this image, with Arabs gradually coming to replace the Jews as the paradigmatic "Other" after the Holocaust. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)