David Nirenberg

Nirenberg's 2013 book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition is not a history of anti-Semitism, rather, it focuses "on the role of anti-Judaism as a constitutive idea and an explanatory force in Christian and post-Christian thought—though it starts with Egyptian arguments against the Jews and includes a discussion of early Islam, whose writers echo, and apparently learned from, Christian polemics."[5] Pulling on an array of sources from across the centuries, Nirenberg demonstrates the potency of "imaginary Jews" in "works of the imagination, profound treatises, and acts of political radicalism."[6] Described by reviewers "an extraordinary scholarly achievement,"[5] and as a "magisterial work of intellectual history."[7]

Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition argues "that a certain view of Judaism lies deep in the structure of Western civilization and has helped its intellectuals and polemicists explain Christian heresies, political tyrannies, medieval plagues, capitalist crises, and revolutionary movements."[5]

David A. Bell of Princeton University describes it as "supremely learned, beautifully written, and powerfully argued, it takes on nothing less than the Western tradition itself. And it makes a case we cannot afford to ignore."[8] Christopher Smith of King's College London notices that Anti-Judaism represents, "the culmination of a career volte-face in respects to his methodological approach. His 1996 work Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages rejected a longue durée history of anti-Semitism." Whereas, "in Anti-Judaism, Nirenberg allows for a continuation of trends in the development of a shared concept of anti-Judaism built on and progressed over" a period of three thousand years.[9] Some historians, while praising Nirenberg's oeuvre, have expressed dissatisfaction with the parts concerning contemporary history (for instance, Maurice Kriegel.[10])

Nirenberg's "important"[11] 1996 book Communities of Violence; Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, challenged interpretations that set inter-communal medieval violence (specifically, attacks on lepers, Jews, and Muslims) into larger teleological frameworks. It argued that each event must be understood in its own terms, in the context of economic and social tensions available for exploitation in a specific time and place. He argues that primacy should be given to understanding the local meaning of inter-communal violent events, and that violent events can be better understood as one of the mechanisms that in fact contributed to social stability and kept the overall amount of violence low. The book makes these broader arguments by focusing on Aragon in the 1300s.

Nirenberg questions the longue duree approach that sets individual riots, attacks and pogroms into a series that he characterizes as a "march of intolerance" culminating in modern events, most notably the Holocaust.[12] The book has been understood as a challenge to the entire concept of minority history, reinterpreting groups often cast as "other" or "marginal" as integral parts of the societies in which they dwelt.[13] It has also been criticized for facile use of functionalist Anthropology and of the essayist René Girard's model.[14]

• Aesthetic Theology and Its Enemies: Judaism in Christian Painting, Poetry, and Politics, Brandeis University Press (2015).
• Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today, University of Chicago Press (October 2014). ISBN 022637985X.
• Judaismus als Politischer Begriff, Historische Geisteswissenschaften Frankfurter Vorträge, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen (October 2013).
• Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, W.W. Norton (2013). ISBN 0393347915.
• Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism (with Herbert Kessler), University of Pennsylvania Press (2011).
• Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, Princeton University Press (1996). Paperback edition, February, 1998. Spanish translation: Comunidades de Violencia: Persecución de minorías en la edad media, Peninsula Editorial (2001); French translation: Violence et minorités au Moyen Age, Presses Universitaires de France (2001). ISBN 9780691165769.

• "What Is Islam? (What Is Christianity? What Is Judaism?)." Raritan 35 (Fall 2016): 1–14.
• "Love." In What Reason Promises: Essays on Reason, Nature, and History, edited by Wendy Doniger, Peter Galison, and Susan Neiman, 46–54. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.
• (With Leonardo Capezzone) "Religions of Love: Judaism, Christianity, Islam." In The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions, edited by Adam Silverstein and Guy G. Stroumsa, 518–535. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697762.013.20. ISBN 9780199697762.
• "Power and Piety: Is the Promotion of Violence Inherent to Any Religion?" Nation (April 29, 2015).
• "Posthumous Love in Judaism." In Love After Death: Concepts of Posthumous Love in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Bernhard Jussen and Ramie Targoff, 55–70. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015.
• "'Judaism' as Political Concept: Toward a Critique of Political Theology". Representations. Regents of the University of California. 128 (1): 1–29. Fall 2014. doi:10.1525/rep.2014.128.1.1..
• (Coauthored with Ricardo Nirenberg) "Badiou's Number: A Critique of Mathematical Ontology." Critical Inquiry 37 (4) (2011): 583–614. doi:10.1086/660983. JSTOR 660983.
• "Shakespeare's Jewish Questions." Renaissance Drama (2010): 77–113. JSTOR 41917471.
• "Love and Capitalism." New Republic 240, no. 17 (September 2009): 39-42.
• "The Politics of Love and its Enemies." Critical Inquiry 33, no. 3 (2007): 573-605. doi:10.1086/513528. JSTOR 513528.
• Sarah Stroumsa, "Double Game: Maimonides in his World". London Review of Books 32 (18) (September 23, 2010): 31–32. ISBN 978 0 691 13763 6.