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In Moses and Monotheism (1937), Freud presented four reasons for anti-Semitism:
The accusation you the Jews killed (crucified) our God.
You consider yourself God's firstborn and God's favorite children. We envy you.
Your custom of circumcising evokes in the rest of us fear of castration.
The Jews are responsible for Christianity and Christianity imposes on us an excessive instinctual renunciation; therefore anti-Semitism masks hatred of Christianity.
By showing the different and even contradictory psychological reasons for the hatred of the Jews, Freud also showed how his new method of inquiry, psychoanalysis, could throw new light on obscure chapters in the history of religion.
When one reads Freud's book today, one is torn between two opposing feelings: admiration for Freud's capacity to understand the historical roots of anti-Semitism and his inability to deal with the far worse secular anti-Semitism that was already rampant next door in Germany and culminated in the near-destruction of European Jewry.
Following Freud's pioneering work, in my book In the Shadow of Moloch (1992), I attempt to trace the impact of the nearly ubiquitous custom in primitive religions of sacrificing children to the deity with the belief that such a sacrifice will prolong the life of the sacrificer or grant victory in war and avert other calamities. It may not be immediately self-evident, but upon some reflection the sacrifice of children and the assumed benefits expected from the sacrifice indicate that the wish to devour