Guest scholar Magda Teter discusses structural antisemitism, or the laws, policies, institutional practices and entrenched norms which single out Jews and discriminate against them. These restrictive practices, which date back to Roman
times, have served to remind Jews of their place in society and in religious structures.
This episode is the first in a special four-part mini series of short episodes on antisemitism. This series has been produced in response to rising numbers of antisemitic incidents and attacks around the world.
Each episode draws on the expertise of AJS members, providing scholarly and informed insights into antisemitism from its origins and history to its complexities today around the war in Israel/Gaza.
We’ll be releasing a new episode every week for the next four weeks and the episodes can be listened to in any order. Upcoming episodes include:
AVISHAY ARTSY: Welcome to Adventures in Jewish Studies, the podcast of the Association for Jewish Studies. In every episode, we take you on an entertaining and intellectual journey about Jewish life, history and culture, with the help of some of the world’s leading Jewish studies scholars. I’m your host for this episode, Avishay Artsy.
This episode is part of a special four-part mini series of short episodes on antisemitism that the AJS has produced in response to rising numbers of antisemitic incidents and attacks around the world. Drawing on the expertise of AJS members, each episode provides scholarly and informed insights into antisemitism from its origins and history to its complexities today around the war in Israel/Gaza. We’ll be releasing a new episode every week for the next four weeks and you can listen to the episodes in any order. In this episode we will discuss structural antisemitism. Our guest is Magda Teter, the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University, and co-director of Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies. I started by asking her to define structural antisemitism.
MAGDA TETER: Well that's an interesting thing because antisemitism has typically been described and discussed in terms of emotions. I think we are all familiar with the idea of antisemitism as the longest hatred. So very few people have been thinking and discussing antisemitism in terms of structural antisemitism. But we are of course familiar with structural racism because it's defined around the existence of laws or policies, institutional practices or entrenched social norms to explain structural racism. So we could think about structural antisemitism in terms of the existence of laws, policies, institutional practices and entrenched norms in relation to Jews.
AVISHAY ARTSY: Okay. So, I see the connection to things like structural racism, which we've heard a lot about, but how does structural antisemitism differ from, you know, an everyday act of antisemitism, like a physical or or verbal attack, something like that?
MAGDA TETER: And again when we think about structural racism we understand this in terms of creating social structures and that certainly was the case in relation to Jews. I mean let's just think about the modern antisemitism. Modern antisemitism emerged in the 19th century and it was political in a way. Its aim was to exclude Jews from equal rights of citizenship. So it addressed really legal structures, structures of the state of who belonged, who didn't belong, who had what rights in these modern states. But the story is much longer. And the laws again if we're thinking of structural aspects of discrimination, racism and here in this, our narrow conversation, antisemitism, the story is longer. Laws singling out Jews to discriminate against them, targeting them, go back to Roman times, especially Roman Christian times, after Christianity becomes a power. Then there was prohibition on holding public office, prohibition on practicing law, prohibition of serving as witnesses in lawsuits, prohibition of holding Christian slaves or servants and prohibition on intermarriage. When you think about those principles, they really echo modern then applications in the United States certainly of anti-Black laws that are very very similar. And many in fact roots of structural racism echo or go back to laws and policies and practices concerning Jews in Christendom. But not only in Christendom. In Islamic domains as well, the laws concerning the demi that is Jews but also others, other non-Muslims, were discriminatory in that way, that they were not allowed to hold public office and all those kinds of things, and there was a legal inferiority in that. So I think again we have to think beyond the typical approach to antisemitism in terms of emotion, in terms of hatred. I don't think that helps us explain the power dynamics that these entrenched laws have created over, really, millennia.
AVISHAY ARTSY: So I understand that there have been laws in the past that limited Jews’ ability to, say, hold certain jobs, get admitted to universities, buy houses in certain areas. Is this a historical thing, structural antisemitism? Does it exist today? Where does it exist? And in what forms do you see structural antisemitism continuing to take shape?
MAGDA TETER: In the American context, the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination on the basis of race and other ways and that's when we have, at least by law, end of discriminatory practices across in the United States. But that of course would be ridiculous to say that the existence of law prohibiting discrimination actually ends discrimination. And we see the effects of structural racism of the hundreds of years of subjugation of black people still in existence even though technically we do not have any discriminatory laws in the United States anymore. And it will be similarly absurd to say that there are no long-term effects of the hundreds of years of subjugation and the legal structures that were in place to subjugate Jews and treat them as inferior. For Jews it's different because the subjugated position that was embedded in laws was on a religious basis and it was to signify that they are inferior socially until they converted to either Christianity or Islam, wherever they might be. And in terms of Christianity it was about the punishment for their sins. Structures were put in place to remind them of their place in society and in religious structures.
AVISHAY ARTSY: Can you give me an example of those kinds of structures that uphold antisemitism?
MAGDA TETER: Let's think about just the calendar, the structure of the federal calendar, or in Europe of holidays. That is a calendar that’s structured around Christian holidays, right? So you have structures that obviously don't single out Jews but Jews are affected, especially Jews who are observant are affected. We have some Southern states currently promoting Christian values through law. So that is obviously a practice that will affect Jews in some ways. In 2022 there was a study that surveyed workers and then there was also a smaller study that surveyed hiring managers and recruiters and these surveys revealed that Jews reported discrimination to the higher level than even Muslims. But more importantly, I think this is about the hiring practices and the survey of managers and recruiters, almost a quarter reported and this is reported, how many did not report this, that they were less likely to advance Jewish applicants. And here it's not because of the ability of Jews but the perception of Jews that they have too much power and too much wealth, that they advance too much. So the perversity of the anti-Jewish stereotype of having too much power, too much wealth is that it can lead to discrimination and exclusion because of that perception. And of course, as one of my students said, it's very hard to feel empathy for someone who has too much power or too much wealth.
AVISHAY ARTSY: Yeah, I see. So, you're describing almost like a reverse affirmative action. There's a perception that Jews as a group have too much power and therefore we're going to keep Jews back and let other groups who are perceived as having less power take on those positions of power.
MAGDA TETER: Maybe you could put it that way. But it certainly is that perception that it is not to discriminate because they are unable, but because they've already gotten more than they deserve. I'll give you another example of something that may not be legal but there were all these surveys and studies and of course documenting of all kinds of manifestations of antisemitism under the guise of anti-Zionism sometimes, especially after October 7th. And in one article that I was reading about antisemitism in medicine, there was a report of a British Columbia faculty of medicine petitions and claims that asserted that Jewish faculty should not be allowed to adjudicate resident matching because the examining doctors were Jewish and might be racist. And then one-third of medical students signed, endorsing this call. So here you have approaches that are institutional, and the reverberations of past policies or past attitudes and past structures are still, I think, percolating here and there in different ways.
AVISHAY ARTSY: I'd like to talk about how antisemitism is being used or arguably being weaponized at this current moment. We have the Trump White House taking away research funding for colleges and universities and using antisemitism as the argument for punishing these institutions. Critics of Trump would say that that's a smokescreen, that he's weaponizing antisemitism for other purposes. Can you talk about how antisemitism is being used by the White House and whether that addresses some of the issues that you're bringing up about structural antisemitism or whether it actually contributes to the problem of antisemitism?
MAGDA TETER: Yeah, I think anytime you have a special law for a group of people, you're looking at structural issues, right? So when you have the Jews being used and here I believe this is one of the most concerning issues about the current moment and actually combating manifestations of antisemitism is its politicization, and the way the various executive orders that the Trump White House issued are clearly using, when you read them carefully, are really specifying the left. So they are not interested in combating antisemitism as a social problem for what it is. It is being used specifically to target an ideological opposite of this administration. And the university are being targeted by using antisemitism.
AVISHAY ARTSY: And are those executive orders that ostensibly target antisemitism actually helping Jews?
MAGDA TETER: It is in my mind a very clever strategy because it is going and it's already been backfiring and affecting Jews, and Jews in these various institutions. I'm hearing it anecdotally, that if Jews didn't complain, our research funding wouldn't be leaving. So it's a very clever strategy because it is very clear that the backlash will be against Jews and not necessarily directly at the administration as well. So singling and politicizing antisemitism for political reasons is one of the most concerning issues I think we are facing because it delegitimizes complaints and reports of practices of antisemitism that Jews face in current society.
AVISHAY ARTSY: So if the Trump White House approach to antisemitism isn't the right solution, what is a way to address structural antisemitism that does feel more just?
MAGDA TETER: One thing that we see, for instance, in relation to other groups is that the voices of the group are never discounted. We had all these anti-racist committees after George Floyd and others and it would have been inconceivable not to have included people of color on these committees. It is not that clear to me that this is such a given in terms of hearing Jewish voices about their lived experiences. So in my mind what I do, and when I teach the course on antisemitism which I revised from the traditional approach, which focuses on the perpetrators and on the ideas of Jews that the antisemites and people hostile to Jews have had over millennia, I began to incorporate Jews’ lived experiences. And these have typically been sort of dismissed as, “oh, Jews complain too much, what are they complaining, they are so privileged, they are so rich, they are so influential, what are they complaining about?” And again, that's another kind of manifestation of those social structures that are in place that even prevent highlighting and discussing these lived experiences in that. So I think a good example, a good way of combating it is to take a moment and actually listening to experiences of Jews and take them seriously in the same way we would take seriously manifestations of discrimination, hostility to other minority groups.
AVISHAY ARTSY: Adventures in Jewish Studies is made possible with generous support from The Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Foundation and the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation. The executive producer of the podcast is Warren Hoffman. I’m the lead producer for this episode.
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Magda Teter
Magda Teter is a Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of five books: 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: Reclaiming 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. Teter served as the VP for Publications at the AJS and is currently the President of the American Academy of Jewish Research.
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Avishay Artsy
Avishay Artsy is an audio and print journalist based in Los Angeles and a senior producer of Vox's daily news explainer podcast Today, Explained. He also hosted and produced the podcast Works In Progress at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and produced Design and Architecture at KCRW. His writing has appeared in the Jewish Journal, The Forward, Tablet, JTA, and other publications and news outlets. His audio stories have appeared on NPR's Marketplace, KQED's The California Report, WHYY's The Pulse, PRI's The World, Studio 360 and other outlets. He is also an adjunct professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Executive Producer: Warren Hoffman, PhD
Producers: Avishay Artsy and Erin Phillips
