Abstract
This article analyzes responses to the late nineteenth-century stereotype of the Jewish banker in two different historical contexts. First, Alphonse de Rothschild's reaction to the caricatural image of himself in Toulouse-Lautrec's 1892 poster, Reine de joie, in the context of France of the Dreyfus decade. I argue that Rothschild's reported response was actually a media representation shaped by the stereotype of him. Second, the visual response constituted by a 1955 election poster of the MAPAM party (representing the radical left of Socialist Zionism) that uses the stereotype. The article demonstrates that the poster not only demonized the parties MAPAM was running against, but also used the stereotypic image of the "Old Jew" of the Diaspora as the opposite pole to the "New Jew" as productive worker building the nation with whom MAPAM identified itself. It points to the different uses of the antisemitic stereotype of the Jewish banker in France of the 1890s and in Israel of the 1950s, suggesting that in the latter, the use of the image was part of a wider discourse in which the stereotyped group attempted to redefine its identity in the public sphere of the new state. 2007
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 177-202+291 |
Journal | Relation |
Volume | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2007 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)