After centuries of persecution and discrimination, Jews are today often seen as a successful and well-integrated religious minority group in a 'Judeo-Christian West'. This book qualifies this narrative by exploring the legacy of Christian ambivalence towards Jews in contemporary secular law. By placing disputes over Jewish practices, such as infant male circumcision and the construction of eruvin, within a longer historical context, the book traces how Christian ambivalence towards Jews and Christianity's narrative of supersession became secularised into a cultural repertoire that has shaped central ideas and knowledge underpinning secular law. Christian ambivalence, this book argues, continues to circumscribe not only the rights and equality of Jews but of other non-Christians too. In considering the interaction between law and Christian ambivalence towards Jews, the book engages with broader questions about the cultural foundations of Western secular law, the politics of religious freedom, the racialisation of religion, and the ambivalent nature of legal progress.

‘This is a major work in the study of law, race, racism, and Christianity. It demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of the complex relationship between religious difference and processes of racialisation. Developing the concept of ‘ambivalence’, Mareike Riedel presents an invaluable and stimulating study of the encounter between Jewishness and western legalities. This book is an essential read for all those interested in religion, race, and the law.’

Didi Herman - Emerita Professor, University of Kent

‘In this erudite and lucid work, Mareike Riedel provides a highly illuminating account of the historical, geopolitical, and theological dynamics of Christian ambivalence toward Jewish identity and religion as reflected in European and Anglophone legal systems. The book provides a sensitive analysis of Jewishness in law across the centuries and into the present; it casts significant light on how this identity has been distinctively constitutive of Christian (and subsequently modern secular) legal subjectivity and carefully delineates the treatment of Jewish identity from the ways in which other religious (notably Muslim) minorities are regarded under a Christian-secular law.’

Margaret Davies - Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor, Flinders University