Law and Jewish Difference: Ambivalent Encounters

After centuries of persecution and discrimination, Jews are today often seen as a successful and well-integrated religious minority group in a 'Judeo-Christian West'. This book qualifies this narrative by exploring the legacy of Christian ambivalence towards Jews in contemporary secular law. By placing disputes over Jewish practices, such as infant male circumcision and the construction of eruvin, within a longer historical context, the book traces how Christian ambivalence towards Jews and Christianity's narrative of supersession became secularised into a cultural repertoire that has shaped central ideas and knowledge underpinning secular law. Christian ambivalence, this book argues, continues to circumscribe not only the rights and equality of Jews but of other non-Christians too. In considering the interaction between law and Christian ambivalence towards Jews, the book engages with broader questions about the cultural foundations of Western secular law, the politics of religious freedom, the racialisation of religion, and the ambivalent nature of legal progress.

經過數個世紀的迫害和歧視，猶太人如今常被視為在「猶太基督教西方」中成功且融入良好的宗教少數群體。本書通過探索當代世俗法律中基督教對猶太人的矛盾態度的遺產，對這種敘述進行了限定。通過將對猶太人實踐的爭議，例如嬰兒男性割禮和 eruvin 的建造，置於更長的歷史背景中，本書追溯了基督教對猶太人的矛盾態度以及基督教的取代敘述如何被世俗化成一種文化庫存，塑造了支撐世俗法律的核心思想和知識。本書主張，基督教的矛盾態度不僅限制了猶太人的權利和平等，也限制了其他非基督徒的權利和平等。在考慮法律與基督教對猶太人的矛盾態度之間的互動時，本書涉及更廣泛的問題，包括西方世俗法律的文化基礎、宗教自由的政治、宗教的種族化以及法律進步的矛盾性質。