In the transatlantic West, the trope of the “imagined Jew” continues to shape legal reasoning, international politics, cultural narratives, and national myths. As both a figurative term and a conceptual framework, the Jew – along with conceptualized tropes of Israel and Zion – is alternately cast as a threatening outsider and conspirator to modern society or as a symbol of prosperity and alliance, a polarity that took on new relevance after the massacre of October 7th.
This volume offers a comparative approach by bringing together nine case studies, by experts in legal history, sociology, and intellectual history, tracing the application of the imagined Jew from 1700 to the present across Britain, Spain, the United States, France, and Germany. It examines how legal systems, literature, and political discourse have staged “the Jew” as a metaphorical actor – at once evoking a glorified past, projecting possible futures, and demanding action in the present.
Drawing on sources ranging from seventeenth-century court cases to twentieth-century memory politics and contemporary debates over Israel-related antisemitism, the book uncovers how imagined Jewishness has been mobilized as a cultural and political metaphor in moments of crisis and transformation. The chapters illuminate both the emancipatory and exclusionary potential of this figure: from Sephardic models of respectability in Enlightenment London to Yiddish counter-narratives in Britain, from Spain’s national mythmaking to the ongoing struggles over Holocaust memory in Germany.
By placing these diverse contexts side by side, this pensive collection shows how the imagined Jew functions as a third space – a site where societies negotiate identity, morality, and power – a question rendered all the more urgent by the resurgence of antisemitism worldwide.
