THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF

…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 … (, 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 and Judaism, has roots of ancient origin, pre-dating the Christian era and evolving throughout the 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 , 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 , 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 , 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. 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 in Hebrew.

The most significant development of this period, however, was the accusation by Church leaders that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of 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 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 – 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 -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 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 . As clerical authorities built shrines to martyred “victims” and secular officials assiduously investigated these allegations, this hideous fantasy of ritual murder, known as the (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 . 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 , some branches of proved less Judeophobic than the Church, while other sects, particularly , 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 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 , 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 and suffered numerous state-sponsored (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 the most insidious element into antisemitic thought. Human groups became identified not by collective cultural traits but rather ion the basis of immutable racial or biological categories. In England in 1850, Herbert Spenser come up with the theory of which held that human groups, like lower species of life, were involved in a struggle for existence. According to this mis-application of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, weaker human groups should be allowed to die so that stronger groups might survive. Hence, to improve the condition of those individuals or groups somehow deemed inferior would violate the laws of nature. Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which was first published in 1899 and later became the text for Nazi racism, contrasted an idealized German “race-soul” with the racially inferior Jew. After the turn of the century, racialism and the exclusionist policies it spawned became associated exclusively with antisemitism.1

The historical hatred of Jews which at first had demanded religious conversion and later had insisted on social expulsion, but the twentieth century had been radicalized to the point that for Jews any opportunity

1 This statement applies mostly to Europe. In the United States, much of the “eugenics” movement dealt with African Americans, and some U.S. states had laws prohibiting mixed marriages between blacks and whites. for compromise, accommodation, or assimilation had been eliminated. The groundwork for annihilation had been laid.

THE HOLOCAUST

Beginning with the selection of as chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazi party put forth a platform of anti-Jewish legislation which culminated in the Nuremburg Laws of 1935. These basically excluded Jews from German political and economic life and laid the groundwork for the “Final Solution.” In November, 1938, Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues were vandalized and burned in an event that has become known as “” (Night of Broken Glass). Soon after Kristallnacht, Jews in Germany and German-occupied Europe were forced into Ghettos and then Labor and Death Camps. The Nazis planned to exterminate 11 million Jews throughout Europe, and succeeded in killing around 6 million before Allied victory in 1945.

ANTISEMITISM TODAY

At the end of World War II, world opinion generally supported the creation of a Jewish State in the Palestine region of British-Controlled territory in the Middle East. In May, 1948, the nation of Israel was founded. Since the 6 Days War in 1967, however, antisemitism since has often taken the form of anti- Israeli-ism or anti-Zionism (the name of the movement of Jews back to their holy land), as much of the world has sided with the Palestinians in the Israeli-Arab Conflict. The Israeli Jews are seen by many as aggressors towards and murderers of Arabs. This attitude is most acute, of course, in the Arab World, where antisemitism was rarely seen before 1948 (Jews and Christians were seen as a protected minority for much of Muslim history). Today, many of the European antisemitic texts such as the Protocols and writings of Martin Luther can be found in Muslim bookstores.

European antisemitism continues to be a problem, both in its classical and modern forms. The old myths and texts can still be found throughout Western and Eastern Europe and especially in the former countries of the Soviet Union, and attacks on synagogues and individual Jews still occur in Western Europe, often in the name of anti-Israeli-ism.