Mandeville’s cosmopolitan tolerance of other religions coexisted with demonization of Jews

Evidence

In Mandeville’s Travels, a text that takes as its subject the magnificent diversity of the world, the relatively tolerant account of various religions includes a striking exception in its characterization of the Jews: they are demonized, identified with the enclosed tribes of Gog and Magog. The threat they pose to the Christians is at once distant and proximate: the enclosed tribes, located at the farthest northern reaches of the ecumene, will not emerge until the Apocalypse. At that time, their conquest will be facilitated by the modern-day Jews spread abroad in the world, who will act as interpreters for them and lead them into the cities of the Christians. In this text, paranoia is the flip side of toleration, and the celebration of diversity abroad requires the ostracism of difference at home. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 232

Categorization

• SEED: The insight that ‘paranoia is the flip side of toleration’ — celebration of diversity abroad requires ostracism of difference at home — is a potent angle for an essay on modern liberal tolerance.
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece’s pattern of examining how identity/political signaling operates through exclusion, though the subject differs.