What Is a Semite?
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What is the origin of the term Semite? Does antisemitism refer to bigotry against all “Semitic” peoples?
Armchair academics often parse the terms “Semite” and “anti-Semite” and wonder about their origins: do they refer only to Jews, or maybe they’re more inclusive and refer to all “Semitic” peoples as well, which, ironically, includes Arabs? Some even suggest that Jews, as Zionists, exhibit antisemitic attitudes towards Israel’s Arab minority.
Do they have a point?
In this article:
What does Semite mean?
The term “Semite” derives from the biblical name, Shem (שם)—Shem is one of Noah’s three sons mentioned in Genesis 6:10, “Noah fathered three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth”—and 18th century proto-linguists first used it as a way to classify languages.
As new language theories emerged in the 1700s—particularly how different languages share common features like word roots and grammatical structures—languages were grouped together based on biblical paradigms, under the assumption that modern nations and languages originate with Noah’s sons, the survivors of the biblical flood.
Those linguistic distinctions were conflated with other cultural, biological, and religious factors as well, which led to classifying people in ways that today would be called “race.”1
Who are the Semites?
The term Semite is a misnomer, and Semitic people do not exist.2 In the 19th century, as new notions of nationalism arose in Europe, some theorists devised ways to distinguish between what they saw as native populations and others. In Germany, native Germans were classified as “Aryan”—an unusual choice in that the term refers to “Iranians”—and Jews, who were considered outsiders, as “Semites.” In 1879, that opposition to Jews was given the name, “anti-Semitism.”3
What are the Semitic Languages?
Semitic languages are—or were—spoken throughout parts of the Middle East and Northeastern Africa and include Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic, Phoenician, Moabite, and others. Ironically, although the name comes from the biblical personality, Shem, many Semitic language speakers—according to the biblical genealogy—actually descend from Shem’s brothers Japheth and Ham.
According to some scholars, the Hyksos—who ruled for a period in Egypt—are considered a “Semitic” people because their names indicate they spoke a western Semitic language.
What is an antisemite?
An antisemite is a person who hates Jews. The term, antisemitism, was coined in 1879 by German journalist and race theorist, Wilhelm Marr, in his pamphlet, the Path to Victory of Germanism Over Judaism.4 Marr expanded on themes he raised in an earlier work, which warned that Jews—as a distinct racial group, or “Semites”—were infiltrating, and diluting, pure German culture. The term stuck, and today is used almost universally to describe hatred and bigotry against Jews.
Given the term’s history, many groups—including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Yad Vashem, and others—are careful to spell the term as one word (antisemitism), and not with a hyphen (anti-Semitism). According to the IHRA, “The hyphenated spelling allows for the possibility of something called ‘Semitism,’ which not only legitimizes a form of pseudo-scientific racial classification that was thoroughly discredited by association with Nazi ideology, but also divides the term, stripping it from its meaning of opposition and hatred toward Jews.”
- The idea of races—as in superior vs inferior races—possibly dates back to the aftermath of the Christian massacre of Spanish Jews in 1391. Following that pogrom, many Jews converted to Christianity and began assimilating (as Christians) into Spanish society. Yet, despite their religious conversion, Jewish conversos—because they were converts—were still considered tainted with “inferior” Jewish blood, a fact that disturbed Spanish Catholics. Those racist fears—that Jews were diluting pure Christian stock—ultimately led to the Inquisition and expulsion of 1492.
- See professor Bernard Lewis’s Semites & Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice, excerpts of which are reprinted here: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/who-are-the-semites/
- For two fascinating overviews of this phenomenon, see here and here.
- This is what it looks like in German: Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum
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