Recently my 12-year-old son asked me, “Mom, why does everyone hate Jewish people?” I realized I don’t have an answer to his question beyond, “Ignorance and irrationality.” I honestly hadn’t spent much time thinking about why. I’ve lived with anti-Jewish bigotry, been affected by it, and have seen the psychological wounds caused by it, as well as of course being aware of attacks on, and the torture and murder of other Jews. Generally, I prefer not to dwell on it. My identity as a Jew is based on the spiritual teachings, traditions, sacred texts, philosophical approach to living, values, holy days, and my connection to a sense of shared history – not on how others may feel about Judaism, assuming they know anything at all about the religion or its various movements, great thinkers, or cultural influences. Which for the most part, they don’t.
For years, I avoided reading Night, Elie Wiesel’s personal account of his youth in a concentration camp. I thought his story would be unbearably painful. I also worried that the book would feel like what I’ve come to think of as “Nazi porn” – portrayals of Jews meant to inspire pity while still providing the thrill of seeing Jews treated like crap. The book wasn’t like that at all, though – stark and straightforward, it turned out to be one of the most life-affirming stories I have ever read. Wiesel showed me it wasn’t about “us” vs. “them,” it was about the dynamics of human cruelty, ignorance, denial, and what it takes to survive such devastation. “Us” vs. “them” treatments of bigotry obscure the core human truth of the experience, and tend to reinforce the stereotypes they’re meant to dissolve.
When someone speaks out against a blatant display of bigotry, why is it that others who are not the target so often accuse those who are of making a big deal out of nothing? Of whining, complaining, being a victim, being hysterical, competing for victim status that rightfully belongs to someone else, or failing to just get over it, which they certainly should have done by now, etc.? Shouting down the voices of those who do not wish to be discriminated against does not erase the problem. Those who speak out against bigotry are not the source of the problem. They didn’t create it, they didn’t cause it, and they do not perpetuate it.
In an effort to grasp the trajectory of anti-Jewish bigotry, I’ve turned to Antisemitic Myths, an anthology of antisemitic writings from the Middle Ages to the present, edited by Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer, which is published by Indiana University Press. They explain it as well as anyone in their introduction:
Antisemitism has very little to do with the actual behavior of Jews or the constraints of their highly ethical religion – indeed, antisemites usually are totally ignorant of the rich tradition of rabbinical writings that discuss, often wisely and insightfully, biblical themes and Jewish law – but is rooted in delusional perceptions that are accepted as authoritative and passed on and embellished from generation to generation. As such, antisemitism affords a striking example of the perennial appeal, power, and danger of mythical thinking – of elevating to the level of objective truth beliefs that have little or no basis in fact but provide all-encompassing, emotionally satisfying explanations of life and history. In the period from the late nineteenth century through World War II, the widespread belief in the myth of the world Jewish conspiracy demonstrates that even highly educated, intelligent people can be moved and unified by baseless myths that provide gratifyingly simple explanations and resolutions for the complexities of the modern world. Democratic society is continually threatened by such an abandonment of reason and regression to mythical modes of thought and behavior.
What can I tell my son when he comes home from school and says a classmate told him, “the Jews turned evil,” or “the Jews killed Jesus”?
Anti-Jewish bigotry seems to have begun in earnest with the Christian Fathers of the 3rd-7th centuries, who sought to demonize Jews not only for their refusal to accept Jesus and Christianity, but to actually blame them for committing deicide. St. John Chrystostom of the 4th century described Jews as a disease, the epitome of depravity, forsaken by God, and wild beasts that needed to be killed. Most of this seems to have been intended to discourage Christians from continuing to practice Jewish ritual, but his words spread across Europe and his ideas were perpetuated through Luther and all the way into the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.
During the First Crusade, 1095-1099, Jews were massacred as “Christ-killers.” They were tortured and burned to death, their property was confiscated, they were barred from public office, kept under curfew, forced to wear identifying markers on their clothing, and often depicted in early Christian art as devils with horns and tails. During the Middle Ages all sorts of crazy-ass rumors were launched – claims that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children so they could use their blood in rituals, that Jews crucified Christian children at Easter, that the Jews tormented Christ by abusing communion wafers (a crime equated with murder, for which many Jews were themselves tortured and murdered), and that the Jews caused the Black Plague by poisoning the water.
Jews were barred from the trades and craft guilds. They didn’t have a lot of economic options. Because Christians wouldn’t do banking, money lending was one of the few professions open to the Jews. Hence, the lingering stereotype of the “greedy” Jew. The kings from whom they purchased their charters were the only ones who could enforce debt collection, for which the kings would take a fee of 10 percent or more plus “late fees.” If a Jew died without an heir, his property, money, and amounts due on outstanding debts all went to the king.
When the Jews were expelled from Spain, they initially fled to Portugal, and were followed by the Inquisition. Forced conversions sometimes involved the taking of Jewish children from their families to be raised as Christians. New Christians remained suspect long after conversion. Anyone with Jewish ancestry had to wear a yellow hat even into the 18th century. Jewishness became a race in the minds of the Christians.
Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543, in which he described the Jews as “a defiled bride, an incorrigible whore, and an evil slut.” His main problem seemed to be that Jews wouldn’t convert. He proposed that Jews’ homes and schools be burned, that they be barred from the highways, that their Talmuds, money, and possessions be confiscated, that they be forced into manual labor. The Talmud, which is the defining text of Judaism, was rejected by the Church for not being of Divine origin and deemed therefore to be heretical.
Another influential hater was Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, a professor who lived in the late 1600s, author of Judaism Exposed. He studied yet misinterpreted Jewish texts by failing to read them within the context in which they were written, then blamed the Jews for his misinterpretations, which he further embellished with his own biases. He, too, promoted the notion that Jews should live in conditions of degradation because of their inherently evil nature.
After the European Enlightenment, when Jews were allowed out of the ghettos and tried to assimilate with the mainstream cultures of the nations in which they lived, some of them upset the nationalists, who didn’t want them to be integrated, by becoming successful. The Catholic Church objected to civil equality, freedom of religion, public education, freedom of the press, and the secularization of society. The tension between the Church’s promotion of the view of Jews as evil Christ-killers and ritual murderers - and the nationalists’ view of Jews as uppity foreigners - were mutually reinforcing.
Voltaire hated the Church, but he also complained that the Hebrew Bible mentions no Afterlife, apparently unaware of the fact that the Hebrews didn’t believe in an Afterlife, but the Jews did – although why a guy from the Enlightenment crowd cared about this, I can’t guess. He said, “We find in [the Jews] only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Still, we ought not to burn them.” That is only a small sample of his frothing and ranting on the subject of Jews – there is nothing rational in his complaints. But at least he didn’t advocate burning.
A Jesuit journal known as Catholic Civilization ran from 1850-1939. This journal asserted that Jews hated Jesus and hated Christians. In 1857 the CC published, “Judaism is an Asiatic disease which, like the bubonic plagues, cannot be destroyed, its spread contained, or its malignity diminished once it enters European soil….” There is plenty more unfounded invective, including, as late as the 1870s, the demented insistence that Jews routinely engaged in the ritual crucifixion of Christian children. In the 1890s, Pope Leo XIII denied a request from the Catholic Press to retract these accusations, saying that to do would cause a scandal. In 1891 the CC wrote: “The Jewish nation does not work but trades in the substance and labor of others; it produces nothing but lives and grows fat on the products of the arts and industry of nations that give them refuge. It is the octopus which, with its huge tentacles, embraces and sucks into itself everything….To overthrow the Christian, and especially the Catholic, religion, the Jews have had to work secretly, hiding behind others whom they send ahead, not letting the Jewish trickery be uncovered, getting the fortress to crumble in the name of liberty….This emancipation was the goal secretly intended by the French Revolution, which invented the famous rights of man, to give Jews rights equal to those of Christians….”
Does any of this strike you as oddly familiar, if we were to remove the term “Jews” and replace it with almost any other so-called “racial” or ethnic minority, those infiltrating foreigners trying to take down the establishment? Do you see how freaking insane this shit is? There was even a 1911 German Catholic book for kindergartners that contained a story about Christian child martyred/murdered by Jews in the Middle Ages.
From around 1500 – late 1700s, following the expulsions from Spain and Portugal, Jewish communities formed international business connections with one another, as is common in diaspora cultures. Sometimes Jews worked as finance ministers and war contractors to kings. Later, in the 1800s, some Jews built railroads and launched businesses. These successes revived the view of Jews as inherently greedy and materialistic. The dominant culture usually gets nervous when minorities succeed.
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was a fiction trumped up by the tsar’s secret police in Paris, ca. 1890-1905, which claimed that Jews had formed a secret world government (a story that many, unfortunately, believed at the time, and many still do.) Henry Ford, for example, believed that an international Jewish banking conspiracy was responsible for World War I. Ford believed that the Jews invented the monetary and banking systems as well as capitalism, the stock markets, and economics.
Although Karl Marx had Jewish ancestry, his father had converted in order to be able to work, and his family was Lutheran. They kept their background a secret. Marx knew nothing of Judaism, and equated it with capitalism. He also equated Jews with fleas, lice, and dirt, calling them “loan mongers” since “Christ drove the money-changers from the temple.” He wrote an essay entitled The Jewish Question in 1843, in which he claimed that the German Jews sought emancipation in order to practice their “materialism, usury, and huckstering.” He claimed that although Jews had no power in Germany, they still controlled the entire economic future of Europe.”The Jew is deprived of political rights in theory while in practice he wields enormous power and exercises wholesale a political influence whose retail use by law is denied him….the materialistic spirit of Judaism has kept itself alive in Christian society and achieved there its highest expression….Burgeois society continuously brings forth the Jew from its own entrails….Money is the zealous one god of Israel, beside which no other god may stand.” This is ironic in light of the other popular stereotype of the Jew as scary Marxist revolutionary. That one sure came back to bite you on the ass, didn’t it, Karl?
You can perhaps see how the Christian view of Jews as criminals who could only maybe sort of be saved through conversion prepared the way for people to accept the Nazi’s view that Jews were genetically inferior and should just be exterminated. In Nazi Germany, the taint of Jewish ancestry, regardless of one’s religious persuasion, still consigned one to the concentration camps. Children and grandchildren of interfaith marriages raised as Lutherans could join the German Army at first, sporting swastikas on their sleeves – but later, they were kicked out and killed along with everyone else.
So far, my original impression appears to be accurate – that anti-Jewish bigotry is based in ignorance and irrationality. The whole time I’m reading about it I’m thinking: You can’t make this shit up. Later, if there is interest from the group, I may continue on this topic. I wanted to do this in appreciation for Jay in Portland's attempt to discuss the recent rise in anti-Jewish religious hate crimes, which triggered an argument over which group should be awarded the title of those hated the longest rather than inspiring a discussion about why hate crimes are increasing.