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Jews have lived in Switzerland since ancient times. This article discusses recent anti-Semitic incidents and concerns in Geneva and traces the complex history, over a number of centuries, of restrictions and progressive emancipation of Jews in Switzerland.

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgentis the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet Communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today. John and Carol Garrard tell the story of how the Orthodox Church's moral weight helped defeat the 1991 coup against Gorbachev launched by Communist Party hardliners. The Soviet Union disintegrated, leaving Russians searching for a usable past. The Garrards reveal how Patriarch Aleksy II--a former KGB officer and the man behind the church's successful defeat of the coup--is reconstituting a new national idea in the church's own image. In the new Russia, the former KGB who run the country--Vladimir Putin among them--proclaim the cross, not the hammer and sickle. Meanwhile, a majority of Russians now embrace the Orthodox faith with unprecedented fervor. The Garrards trace how Aleksy orchestrated this transformation, positioning his church to inherit power once held by the Communist Party and to become the dominant ethos of the military and government. They show how the revived church under Aleksy prevented mass violence during the post-Soviet turmoil, and how Aleksy astutely linked the church with the army and melded Russian patriotism and faith. Russian Orthodoxy Resurgentargues that the West must come to grips with this complex and contradictory resurgence of the Orthodox faith, because it is the hidden force behind Russia's domestic and foreign policies today.

In this book, acclaimed Dostoevsky biographer Joseph Frank explores some of the most important aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century Russian culture, literature, and history. Delving into the distinctions of the Russian novel as well as the conflicts between the religious peasant world and the educated Russian elite, Between Religion and Rationality displays the cogent reflections of one of the most distinguished and versatile critics in the field.

Extremism—in attitudes and actions—appears to be expanding. What makes one prone to extremism? Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery , a narrative built on diary entries of the man who forged the Protocols of the Elders of Zion , exposes the two-self nature of extremists. It also exposes the two-self nature of the Narrator, who imposes coherence on the diary entries. This essay peels off the layers of images that allow extremists of all kind to appear other than they truly are.

This chapter contains sections titled: 1 Survivors: Ruth Fainlight's “Another Survivor” and Jonathan Wilson's “From Shanghai” 2 Witnesses: Gabriel Josipovici's “He” and Alan Isler's “The Affair” 3 Tricksters: Wolf Mankowitz's “The Finest Pipe‐Maker in Russia,” James Lasdun's “Ate/Menos or The Miracle,” and Elena Lappin's “Noa and Noah” 4 Wanderers: Dan Jacobson's “The Zulu and the Zeide” and Clive Sinclair's “The Evolution of the Jews” 5 Exiles: Michelene Wandor's “Song of the Jewish Princess” and Neil Gaiman's “In the End” References and Further Reading

As Stephen Eric Bronner, a political science professor at Rutgers University, writes in the historical afterword, the medium of comic books forced [EISNER] to abbreviate the complex history of \"The Protocols.\" The effect is not unlike watching the best of PBS documentaries: You learn about serious subjects painlessly, even enjoyably, if not always with the knowledge that comes from reading traditional books. Still, Eisner is not a man to dismiss, and I now take the genre seriously. It worked. \"The Protocols\" not only helped to freeze the czar's hesitant steps to liberalization, but also incited a new round of pogroms. And the influence of \"The Protocols\" spread beyond Russia. Eisner reproduces a 1920 article about the Jews by Winston Churchill, staunch Zionist and philo-Semite, who still failed to disavow \"The Protocols.\" Yet when The Times of London in 1921 exposed it as a hoax, no one imagined that it could survive so conclusive a refutation. For one, in Syria, \"The Protocols\" is indeed a bestseller, according to MEMRI, the Middle East media research group. And recently, Arab television broadcast \"Knight Without a Horse,\" a 41- part drama based on \"The Protocols\" and sponsored in part by Egyptian state television. As Eisner notes, the Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Youssuf praised the series for revealing that \"The Protocols\" is the central line that dominates Israeli policies.

Will Eisner, the legendary pioneer of the graphic novel who died this year, spent two decades studying the historical hatred of Jews and how this ultimately led to the pernicious authorship of \"The Protocols.\" In his outstanding final work, \"The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,\" [Eisner] may not have had the final word, but he may very well have produced the ultimate illustration of how absurdly comical and cancerous \"The Protocols\" has been to mankind. Eisner's graceful, detailed drawings take readers to the hot spots around the world where \"The Protocols\" appeared. \"The Plot\" reads like a thriller about a disease that spreads out of control -- from its incubation to its first infection to the ferocity of its viral stamina. Apparently, no matter what you do, there is no cure for this epidemic. Eisner shows us newspaper articles and various editions of \"The Protocols\" adorned with caricatures possessing hooked noses and long, larcenous fingers actually hooked into the globe. Yet by 1922 the book had been published in 16 languages and had sold half a million copies in America alone. It was quoted in \"Mein Kampf,\" and there were two separate French translations in 1934. In 1937, a Swiss court ruled that \"The Protocols\" was defamation; in 1964, a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate condemned \"The Protocols\" as a fake. Yet the book still sells in this country and is popular with Islamic extremists throughout the Middle East. And as recently as 1992 \"The Protocols\" was required reading for some Roman Catholic schoolchildren in Mexico, according to Eisner.

For Heidegger, the first beginning is Greek. The beginning is thus brought about by a people, whereas the decline is brought about by the mixing and indistinction of peoples. But this too is for Heidegger brought about by a figure-people, a caricature of a people, drawn from the vulgarity and banality of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whose proximity to Heidegger’s language on calculation, democracy, manipulation and internationalism is clear enough as to leave no doubt. This is the case regardless of whether Heidegger read the Protocols or not, for he very clearly absorbed its language, as had his age more generally. Heidegger believes he is collecting banalities for the sake of higher ends, by way of a deconstruction/destruction of metaphysics which, for Heidegger, also points toward the necessity of a destruction of the West that will liberate it from its own destructive elements: a destruction of destruction. Could this be the sign of a constitutive self-rejection at the heart of the West?