Philo-Semitism or Judeophilia is an interest in, respect for and an appreciation of Jewish people, their history and the influence of Judaism, particularly on the part of a gentile. Within the Jewish community, philo-Semitism includes an interest in Jewish culture and a love of things that are considered Jewish.
Etymology
The controversial term "philosemitism" arose as a pejorative in Germany to describe the positive prejudice towards Jews, in other words a philosemite is a "Jew-lover" or "Jew-friend".
Concept
The concept of philo-Semitism is not new, and it was arguably avowed by such thinkers as the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who described himself as an "anti-anti-Semite," although he also criticized the Jewish people for their historical role in forming modern morality. Philo-Semitism is an expression of the larger phenomenon of allophilia, admiration for foreign cultures as embodied in the more widely known Anglophilia and Francophilia. The rise of philo-Semitism has also prompted some to reconsider Jewish history, and they argue that while antisemitism must be acknowledged, it is wrong to reduce the history of the Jewish people to one merely of suffering. The case of the myths created around the supposed special relationship between Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the founding father ofCzechoslovakia, and influential Jews from the US or elsewhere, myths created by Masaryk and adopted in amended forms by Czechoslovak Jews, let cultural historian Martin Wein quote Zygmunt Bauman's and Artur Sandauer's concept of an "allosemitic" worldview, in which, in Wein's words, "antisemitism and philosemitism overlap and share stereotypes, producing exaggerated disregard or admiration for Jews or Judaism." In this sense, Wein quotes Masaryk's statements about a decisive Jewish influence over the press, and him mentioning Jews and freemasons in the same breath, when it came to lobbies he allegedly managed to win over.
Very few Jews live in East Asian countries, but Jews are viewed in an especially positive light in some of them, partly owing to their shared wartime experiences during the Second World War. Examples include South Korea and China. In general, Jews are positively stereotyped as intelligent, business savvy and committed to family values and responsibility, while in the Western world, the first of the two aforementioned stereotypes more often have the negatively interpreted equivalents of guile and greed. In South Korean primary schools the Talmud is mandatory reading. During World War II, Japan made efforts to help Jews escape their demise at the hands of the Nazis, despite the fact that the country was then a member of the Axis alliance. The Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara facilitated the escape of more than 6,000 Jewish refugees to Japanese territory, risking his career and the lives of his family members; in 1985, he was honored by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations. Annual surveys of a large number of countries conducted by the ADL have consistently shown very low levels of antisemitism in Southeast Asia, persisting only at permyriad levels in Laos. These surveys, others, and polling and analysis about Israel have shown that India has low levels of antisemitism and relatively strong support for Israel, at the 55–65 per cent level, now surpassing the United States in the last respect.
The American singer Madonna, although she does not practice Judaism, has studied Kabbalah with the Kabbalah Centre New Age-style organisation, has given her son a bar mitzva celebration and taken a Hebrew name: Esther. She once called herself an "ambassador for Judaism"—during a meeting with Prime Minister of IsraelShimon Peres, where they exchanged gifts, Madonna giving him a volume of the Zohar inscribed "To Shimon Peres, the man I admire and love, Madonna".
