Dangerous liaisons: Jews and cosmopolitanism in modern times

In modern times, Jews have often been portrayed as the quintessential cosmopolitans. In the Greco-Roman period, however, when the very term ‘cosmopolitan’ first gained currency, Jews were seldom viewed as ‘citizens of the world’. On the contrary, they were often portrayed as a self-segregating, exclusionary and antisocial people who ate apart, slept apart, and adopted ritual circumcision (according to Tacitus) ‘as a mark of difference from other men’. Indeed, Tacitus (56-117 CE) singled out ‘hatred of mankind’ (odium generis humani) as the prevailing characteristic of this deplorable people (Tacitus 1894: 195). In this and other cases, Jews were portrayed not as cosmopolitans, but as the exact opposite: parochial, clannish, disloyal.