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are developed, changed, challenged and
identities
defended over time, in interaction with our
social environment; alter-ascribed identi-
ties reflected onto us may confirm or coun-
ter our self-recognized ones. As we need
positive rather than negative identities,
we try to reach an agreement with at least
significant others and groups on who and
what we are. This poses special challenges
for minority groups, whose self-recognized
social identities may not be heard, and the
alter-ascribed ones be tainted with preju-
dice (Liebkind 1992; 2006). For example,
the self-recognized Jewish identity of Soviet
Jewry was countered when in the pre-1967
period they began to develop what would
become a Jewish national movement,
where Jewish identity included both iden-
tification with Israel and the pre-existing
conception of all Jews as a people across
national borders: According to Gjerde
(2018), this “went far beyond the limits of
what Soviet authorities considered accept-
able Jewish identity” (Gjerde 2018, 280).
When not conforming to approved Soviet
Jewish identities, therefore, Jews who sub-
scribed to national Jewish identities and
supported Zionism were considered part of
a vast anti-Soviet conspiracy (Gjerde 2018,
291).
On defining and identifying antisemitism
While the goal of this article is not to define
antisemitism, it is necessary to briefly
reflect on the debate surrounding its defini-
tion. As Czimbalmos and Pataricza (2024)
Approaching Religion * Vol. 16, No.1 * March 2026
summarize, like other forms of discrimi-
nation, antisemitism includes both easily
recognizable and more subtle expressions
(Czimbalmos and Pataricza 2024, 15). To
cover these, several definitions of antisem-
itism (e.g. the Jerusalem Declaration, the
Nexus Document) have been proposed.
Perhaps the most well-known and widely
recognized is that of the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
from 2016. The IHRA definition serves as
a guideline and is recommended by the
European Commission in its 2022 conclu-
sions on combating racism and antisem-
itism, as well as in its 2018 declaration on
countering antisemitism. Nevertheless, it
is often regarded insufficient for scientific
analysis (Czimbalmos and Pataricza 2024,
15-16) and criticized for not providing an
unchanging essence for all cases of anti-
semitism. However, the philosopher Eve
Garrard (2020) maintains that this is irrel-
evant; there are too many other concepts in
the same boat for this complaint to count.
Another putatively moral objection is the
claim that it represents an attack on the
freedom of speech of critics of Israel. But
this is simply not true, as it is full of con-
ditional verbs: something “may’, “could” or
“might” be antisemitic, but need not be. The
only view which this definition threatens is
that criticism of Israel can never, in any cir-
cumstances, be antisemitic. Although this
is not even remotely plausible, some crit-
ics of the IHRA definition seem to find it
attractive (Garrard 2020).
Often used in research is Helen Fein’s
definition of antisemitism as:
a persisting latent structure of hos-
tile beliefs towards Jews as a collective
manifested in individuals as attitudes,
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and in culture as myth, ideology, folk-
lore and imagery, and in actions—
social or legal discrimination, politi-
cal mobilization against the Jews, and
collective or state violence—which
results in and/or is designed to dis-
tance, displace, or destroy Jews as