"Inventing the Jew" follows the evolution of stereotypes of Jews from the level of traditional Romanian and other Central-East European cultures (legends, fairy tales, ballads, carols, anecdotes, superstitions, and iconographic representations) to that of 'high' cultures (literature, essays, press writings, and socio-political literature), showing how motifs specific to 'folkloric antisemitism' migrated to 'intellectual antisemitism'. This comparative perspective also highlights how the images of Jews have differed from that of other 'strangers' such as Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Turks, Armenians, and Greeks. The gap between the conception of the 'imaginary Jew' and the 'real Jew' is a cultural distance that differs over time and place, here seen through the lens of cultural anthropology. Stereotypes of the 'generic Jew' were not exclusively negative, and are described in chapters on the physical and professional portrait, the moral and intellectual, the magic and mythological, and religious images.