Thursday, February 25, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
Scholar Manfred Gerstenfeld passed away this morning.
Anshel Pfeffer of Haaretz wrote in 2013 that Gerstenfeld "is without doubt the greatest authority on anti-Semitism today." Yet as far as I can tell, he only started researching and writing about antisemitism in earnest when he was already in his mid-60s. He had written a number of books about Judaism and environmentalism beforehand. (He received his PhD. in environmental studies in 1999, when he was 62. )
Some of Gerstenfeld's books are available for download at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which he was the chairman from 2000-2012. I loved his book The War of a Million Cuts, which was in some ways a summation of his scholarship on modern antisemitism.
I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Gerstenfeld in his Jerusalem home in 2016. Here are two excerpts of that interview.
The first is about the history of antisemitism over the centuries, where he also discusses the IHRA definition.
And here he speaks about European antisemitism, which he had written extensively about.
We have lost a giant, but Manfred Gerstenfeld's works live on.
