The Historical Origins of Antisemitism

THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF ANTISEMITISM …Let me give you my honest advice. First, their synagogues or churches should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of God and Christianity… (Martin Luther, 1543) When Wilhelm Marr, a 19th Century German journalist, coined the term antisemitism, he was giving a new expression to a very old hatred. Antisemitism, the hatred of Jews and Judaism, has roots of ancient origin, pre-dating the Christian era and evolving throughout the Middle Ages into the modern era. Throughout their history, Jews have been the victims of a persistent pattern of persecution, culminating finally in the 20th Century in mass murder. The term denoting hatred of the Jews – antisemitism – is spelled here and hereafter unhyphenated and in the lower case. This spelling is more historically and etymologically correct since “Semitic” refers not to a race of people, as Marr and other racists of his time wrongly believed, but to a group of languages which includes Arabic as well as Hebrew. Hence, the oft-used spelling “anti-Semitism” means, literally, a prejudice against Semitic-speaking people, not the hatred of people adhering to the Jewish religion and culture. ANTISEMITISM DURING THE PRE-CHRISTIAN ERA Expressions of anti-Jewish prejudice appeared as early as the 4th Century B.C.E. in Greece and Egypt, whose people drew stark distinction between themselves and others, whom they regarded as “strangers,” “foreigners,” or “barbarians.” Jewish religious practice, based as it was on an uncompromising monotheism and strict adherence to their religious laws and social customs, only heightened endemic suspicions and excited hostility in societies already prone to ethnocentric excess. Judaism’s monotheism, in particular, ran afoul of prevailing polytheism and pantheism. Jews under the Roman Empire, forbidden by the tenets of their faith to pay religious homage to the emperor, were regarded as both irreverent and hostile to the political authority of the state. EARLY CHRISTIAN ANTISEMITISM For three centuries after the Crucifixion, Christians and Jews engaged in an intense rivalry, the product of theological antagonisms, competition for converts, and the struggle for religious and political recognition. The conversion to Christianity of the Roman emperor Constantine in the early fourth century C.E. resulted in the triumph of Christian religious and political institutions and was therefore of fateful consequence for Jews. The new Christian empire quickly translated its anti-Jewish prejudice into anti-Jewish legislation. Recognition of Judaism’s religious and legal status was withdrawn. Jews were prohibited from holding certain public office and barred from military careers. Church councils banned contact with Jews and authorized the confiscation of Jewish property. Under the Justinian Code, Jews were denied civil liberties and forbidden to build synagogues or read the Bible in Hebrew. The most significant development of this period, however, was the accusation by Church leaders that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus and were therefore the incarnation of evil. The charge of deicide would become a cornerstone of Christian teaching and a foundation of anti-Jewish thought and action for centuries. ANTISEMITISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES It is not coincidental that in 1096 both the First Crusade to liberate the Holy Land in Palestine and the first great massacre of Jews occurred. Crusading armies and bands of marauding peasants carried out depredations against the Jews throughout Europe. These groups shared what they perceived as a holy endeavor against two groups of infidels – Muslims in the Holy Land and Jews along their path. Anti-Jewish hostility did not subside with the waning of crusading fervor. The commercial revolution of the 11th century ushered in an era of economic resurgence in Europe and with it the growth of towns, finance, and credit. When the Church condemned money-lending as a sinful activity, Jews – with few other occupational options – became Europe’s principal moneylenders, providing capital to merchants, peasants, and monarchs alike. But the prosperity of the Jews rekindled longstanding resentments. Jews, already regarded as infidels and Christ-killers, now were stigmatized as usurers and bribers. By the beginning of the thirteenth century the litany of anti-Jewish slanders became more fantastic and malicious. Rumors spread throughout Christendom of the crucifixion of Christian children by Jews who, according to this calumny, used the victim’s blood in baking unleavened bread for the commemoration of Passover. As clerical authorities built shrines to martyred “victims” and secular officials assiduously investigated these allegations, this hideous fantasy of ritual murder, known as the blood libel (above right), became firmly rooted in the popular consciousness. During the same time Jews were also accused of mutilating consecrated wafers and thereby torturing the body of Christ. And, perhaps not surprisingly, when the Black Death struck Europe in 1347, Jews were blamed for poisoning wells and causing the plague. Amid this hatred, Jews had been transformed in the popular mind from a people considered socially repugnant to that of a people not fully human. ANTISEMITISM IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA As Europe embarked upon its modern era, the evolution of antisemitism was both complex and contradictory. After the Protestant Reformation, some branches of Protestantism proved less Judeophobic than the Catholic Church, while other sects, particularly Lutheranism, became obsessed with an intense hatred of the Jews. Martin Luther called for the destruction of Jewish synagogues, the confiscation of Jewish wealth, and even the involuntary servitude of Jews themselves. During the Counter Reformation backlash, Jews were forced into ghettos where their segregation served as a chilling demonstration to those who chose to defy the Church’s religious authority. The Age of Enlightenment brought with it a new secular philosophical outlook which associated traditional religion with intolerance, ignorance, and oppression. Although Christianity was the principal target of this critical-rational approach to religious thought, Judaism, too was viewed as a “superstitious” religion. True “enlightenment,” argued some philosophes, required the disavowal of the entire Judeo- Christian religious tradition. Voltaire often launched bitter, irrational diatribes against Jews and Judaism, reminiscent of earlier, “darker” ages. For Jews, the Enlightenment and its legacy of philosophic secularism were a mixed blessing. With political emancipation, Jewish life temporarily improved. But in order to participate fully and equally as citizens in the new secular communities, political authorities often demanded that Jews forsake allegiance to their religious communities. French revolutionaries issued such an ultimatum when, in 1791, they announced the emancipation of the Jews. MODERN ANTISEMITISM In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries new social and intellectual developments in Europe contributed to a new, more virulent anti-Jewish stereotype, based not on opposition to Jewish religious practice or upon the Jew as a social pariah, but instead on the belief that Jews comprised an inferior race. Romanticism was a reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. In Germany, where its ideas were first expounded, romanticism emphasized a nation’s past – its folklore, traditions, and a somewhat nebulous notion of spirit or Volk (German for “People”). From this nationalistic perspective, Jews, long viewed as rootless strangers, were regarded as foreign and hostile to the national “spirit.” Romantic historians relied on ostensibly “modern” philosophical thought and “objective” historical methods to buttress their anti-Jewish views. Socialist reformers and theorists resurrected old images of Jews as parasites and exploiters. Jews were identified with capitalism and its attendant social evils. The stereotype of the capitalist Jews, embodied by the Rothschilds, became the prime target for socialist reformers of all types. Some socialists even accused Jews of fomenting equally dangerous left-wing radicalism. This would not be the last time that antisemitic sentiment would reveal an utter lack of logic. By the end of the nineteenth century, antisemitism had become an acceptable element of social, political, and intellectual discourse throughout Europe. In France, where anti-republican elements had long associated Jews with the Revolution, Edouard Drumont’s counterrevolutionary, antisemitic tract, La France Juive, went through one hundred editions. And in 1896 Alfred Dreyfus, a French, Jewish military officer, was unjustly convicted of spying for Germany. Even his eventual vindication did not quell the rampant antisemitism his case had aroused. In Russia, Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement and suffered numerous state-sponsored pogroms (mass killings). It was also in Russia, in 1903, that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were first published. The Protocols purported to be the minutes of a meeting of international Jewish leaders plotting to seize world power. It was not until 1921 that the London Times revealed the Protocols to be a work of forgery. By that time, however, it had been translated into several languages and had been distributed and read throughout Europe. Pseudo-scientific racial theories introduced

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