Beyond “Eternal Hatred”: Reconsidering the Nature of Antisemitism

Join the Program in Judaic Studies for this Rose and Isaac Ebel Lecture featuring Magda Teter on Tuesday, February 25. This event is part of Judaic Studies’ Lecture Series on Antisemitism.

Antisemitism is frequently called “the eternal hatred,” tracing anti-Jewish hostility from ancient times to the present. The recent resurgence of antisemitism highlights the pernicious nature of anti-Jewish stereotypes and anti-Jewish hostility but also the problems with traditional approaches and explanations. In this talk, using a comparative approach with racism, Magda Teter will try to reconsider the nature of antisemitism away from emotions such as “eternal hatred” and fear, and away from debates over definitions to help us think more deeply about the nature and social impact of anti-Jewish hostility.

Open to the public. Refreshments will be available.

More about Magda Teter

Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (2005), Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (2011), Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (2020), Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (2023), Blood Libels, Hostile Archives: Recovering Interrupted Jewish Lives (2025), and of dozens of articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Her essays have also appeared in the New York Review of Books, Public Seminar, the JTA, and others. Her book Blood Libel won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award, The George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association, and the Ronald Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society. Teter has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, HF Guggenheim Foundation, Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, the Cullman Center at the NYPL, the NEH, and others. She is currently the President of the American Academy of Jewish Research.