Abstract

On Yom Kippur, Jews of antiquity would sacrifice two goats: one as an offering to a harsh and judging god, the other turned loose in the wilderness as a carrier of the group's sins. But throughout history, says Andrea Dworkin, women and Jews themselves have served as society's scapegoats. From the Inquisition, when women were targeted as witches and Jews as heretics, to the Nazi assault on Jewish and female bodies, these groups have been doomed to the twin fates of slaughter and exile. In Scapegoat Dworkin draws on history, literature, philosophy, and politics to create a series of pairings -- homeland/home, pogrom/rape, Palestinians/prostitutes -- that elucidate the misogyny and anti-Semitism of the past millennium's atrocities. Sure to incite debate, Dworkin presents a startling new view of how Nazism waged war on the female body. She offers a profound indictment of Israel's "scapegoating" of the Palestinians and critiques the supremacy Israeli men exert over Israeli women. Most provocatively, she imagines a world in which women betray the men of their ethnic/racial groups to fight for their own rights. Dworkin's exploration of when and how scapegoats themselves use violence will shock and disturb -- and no reader will look at the world the same way again.