A prejudice against people of Jewish heritage. It has inspired the Holocaust, physical abuse, slander, economic and social discrimination, vandalism and other crimes. Religious antisemitism is based on the idea that all Jews are eternally and collectively responsible for killing Jesus (known as deicide). It has been formally renounced by most major churches, led by the Catholic Church. Although Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, they do not make the antisemitic claim against Jews because they do not believe that Jesus was crucified. Economic and political antisemitism is rooted in widespread 19th- and 20th-century claims that Jews were engaged in a plot to rule the world.
There is some debate about the appropriate spelling of the word.
Some argue the use of the word “Semitic” is misleading and confusing used in the context of hatred of Jews and . In its argument for eliminating the hyphen, the ADL noted the word “was first used by a German historian in 1781 to bind together languages of Middle Eastern origin that have some linguistic similarities. The speakers of those languages, however, do not otherwise have shared heritage or history. There is no such thing as a Semitic peoplehood.”
The style guides of The Associated Press, The New York Times and other media organizations began to change their guidance on the preferred spelling of the word from anti-Semitism to antisemitism in the early 2020s to reflect changing thinking about the word. The unhyphenated spelling is favored by many scholars and institutions, including the World Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Read more about the spelling of antisemitism on the websites of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the Jewish Virtual Library and the Anti-Defamation League.
Updated November 2023
