Introduction to the Transaction edition

The classical serendipity dream is that you find unexpectedly along the road a gold treasure. For scientific researchers, the analogue is that you find a totally forgotten and overlooked publication that is of the highest quality. The Social Roots of Discrimination is just such a work. Written by the late Peretz Bernstein, it was first published as Antisemitismus als eine Gruppenerscheinung (1926) by Fritz Bernstein. The first English translation was titled Jew-Hate as a Sociological Problem (1951).
I will start with a few biographical facts. Then I will consider the experiences of the book from 1926 up to now. In the second section I will describe the contents of the book and in the third section I will try to place it in the world of today.