Christian Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is the hatred of the Jewish people and or race. The term was first used by a German in 1879, William Marr, who founded the "League for Anti-Semitism." Marr advanced the view that Jews constituted a distinct racial group which was both physically and morally inferior. According to Marr, there was indisputable scientific evidence that the Jews were predisposed to be a "slave race" while the "Aryans" which included the Teutonic and Nordic peoples, were the "Master Race."
Although the term "anti-Semitism" is thus relatively modern, documented prejudice, social and economic isolation, persecution and violence against the Jews predates Marr and his supporters by more than 2,300 years. In what is acknowledged to be the first historical reference to an anti-Semitic act, the Biblical account of the Purim story (the Book of Esther) recounts how the Jewish people narrowly escaped destruction in Persia in the 5th century B.C.E. All Jews in the kingdom were targeted for annihilation because one Jewish official refused to bow to the top aide of the king. Only as a result of the intervention of the queen, a Jew, who pleaded for saving her people, were the Jews saved from mass murder.
Classical anti-Semitism in the pre-Christian world followed along the same lines as the Purim story. For most of recorded history, the Jewish people had been the subjects of conquerors, such as the Persians, Greeks, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Romans. Most Jews refused to convert to the religion of their hosts and instead maintained their own religion, rituals and customs, often at great personal sacrifice.
The Jewish religion forbids Jews to bow down to any person or god other than the Creator. In the story of Purim, the failure of Mordecai, the Jewish, Persian official, to bow down to Haman, the top aide to the king, created conflict. This conflict between observing the Jewish religion and being sensitive to local customs was the basis for much of the anti-Semitism the Jewish people endured.
Examples are the following:
Evidence of anti-Semitism has been found in the writings of those who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 4th century, B.C.E. In the first century C.E., Apion, a writer from Alexandria, wrote the "History of Egypt" which was the source for many of the false accusations about Jewish religious rituals which have plagued Jews throughout later history.
Classical Roman writers such as Cicero and Ovid wrote about the differences between Jewish observances and those of the Romans in less than flattering terms.
Anti-Semitism has a long history, extending back to the Greco-Roman world and culminating in the Nazi Holocaust. Before the nineteenth century, most anti-Semitism was religiously motivated, based on oft-repeated Christian allegations that the Jews had killed Jesus, and that their refusal to accept Jesus as the Messiah made them reprobates who deserved second-class status.
Racial anti-Semitism
The dominant form of anti-Semitism from the nineteenth century until today has been racial anti-Semitism. With its origins in the cultural anthropological ideas of race that started during the Enlightenment, racial anti-Semitism focused on Jews as a racially distinct group, regardless of their religious practice, viewing them as sub-human and worthy of animosity. With the rise of racial anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories about Jewish plots in which Jews were acting in concert to dominate the world became a popular form of anti-Semitic expression. The highly explicit ideology of Adolf Hitler's Nazism was the most extreme example of this phenomenon, leading to the genocide of European Jewry called the Holocaust.
In Islamic countries, until recently, Jews were generally treated much better than they were in Christian Europe. Muslim attitudes to Jews changed dramatically after the establishment of the State of Israel. It is in the Islamic world that one today finds the most rabid examples of anti-Semitism. Often it masquerades as legitimate criticism of Zionism and Israel's policies, but goes beyond this to attack the Jews more broadly.
From New World Encyclopedia
Christian Anti-Semitism
Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. His childhood was typical of young Jewish boys of his time. He was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, received a religious education, learned a trade, kept the law of Moses, and spoke both Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Jews of his day. Upon reaching the age of 30, he began to preach and teach about the kingdom of God, calling people to repentance, and ministering to the sick. Many people began to follow him. His inner circle of disciples, who after Jesus' death became the leaders of the first century church, were also Jews. For a number of years the early believers in Jesus as the Messiah were culturally and ethnically similar to, and even at times worshipping alongside, their mainstream counterparts. But a number of religious and political events in the latter half of the first century and the early part of the second began to drive a wedge between church and synagogue.
Scriptural Setting
Matthew 27:20-25
“But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified. When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people (who were in attendance there), and said, His blood be on us (those in attendance there?), and on our children.
"His blood be on us, and on our children" is the source and justification of the idea "They killed our Lord", that any Jew is just as guilty of killing Christ as clamored for his crucifixion, and the only way to be rid of this guilt was to convert. Thus the Jews have been called “Christ Killers” for many centuries.
“I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”
This quote from Revelations might simply have meant that the rabbis were claiming that Jesus wasn't the Messiah, that he used magic rather than performing real miracles, and so on; however, without any context, it is easy to read this in a much more sinister light.
Jesus was a Jew, and all his disciples and early followers were also Jews. The stories in the gospels are of intra-Jewish encounters, debates, disagreements and conflicts. In the gospels Jesus is presented as a harsh critic of official Judaism, accusing it of 'sinfulness and treachery.' In a prophetic fashion he again and again condemns the Pharisees for their understanding of the Mosaic law:
“But woe to you Pharisees! for you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” (Luke 11:42)
“For the sake of your tradition you made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, " This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” (Matthew 15:6-9)
Many of Jesus' parables, such as the 'wedding feast' (Matthew 22:1-14), present the Jewish people and leaders as failing and being rejected by God. There is a strong supersessionist theology in parables like the 'tenants in the vineyard' (Matthew 21:33-46) where the Jews are replaced in God's providence.
The Gospel of John particularly portrays "the Jews" in general as rejecting Jesus, and even quotes Jesus as speaking of "the Jews" as a group to which he does not seem to belong (John 18, 19). Finally anyone who did not follow Jesus was effectively sidelined as John's Gospel said, "I am the way the truth and the life: no one comes to the Father but by me." (John 14:6) Jesus goes even further in this polemic against his opponents "the Jews":
"You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. … He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God." (John 8: 42-47)
The Gospels minimize the role of the Romans in the crucifixion of Jesus. Instead his death is blamed on the Jewish leaders and people. Matthew's Gospel describes an infamous scene before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate in which "all the [Jewish] people" clamored for Jesus' death, shouting, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!" (Matt 27:24)
In the Book of Acts, Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew, confronts a Jewish council in Jerusalem just before his execution and indicts the Jews as a consistently rebellious people against God: "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered." (Acts 7:51-53)
Paul was also a Jew and proud of it. His letters contain passages affirming the continuing place of the Jews in God's providence but also some denigrating and denying it.
Paul consistently taught that people could not be saved by following the law of Moses, but only through faith in Christ (Galatians 2:16). However, he was not thereby trying to undercut the basis of Judaism; rather he was pursuing his commission as the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul opposed those Jewish-Christians who would make it a requirement that all Christians must follow Jewish law, for it would be a huge obstacle to his evangelical program. His purpose was to open a wide gate for Gentiles to become Christians, without the superfluous and burdensome requirements to be circumcised, keep a kosher diet, and so on.
These criticisms of Jews and Judaism were all part of debates and arguments between different parties of Jews. For instance, when Jesus argued with the Pharisees over whether it was proper to heal on the Sabbath, his view was congruent with many rabbis of his day, the great Hillel among them, who were of the same opinion. When Paul taught that Gentile Christian believers need not be circumcised, he was extending the existing Jewish norm that regarded non-Jews as righteous before God as long as they followed the nine simple Noachide laws. It is the nature of argument that both sides exaggerate to make their point; thus Paul's presentation of the meaning of the Law was a caricature which did not accurately represent first century Judaism. Still, these were arguments within the family. However, once Christians stopped thinking of themselves in any sense as Jews, these New Testament passages took on a different color, and became indictments against Jews generally.
In fact the image of Jews that Christians have had for the past 2000 years has been that obtained from such passages in the New Testament. This is why Jews and more recently some Christians trace the roots of anti-Semitism to the teaching of the New Testament.[10]
Dangerous to Appear Jewish
Although it is impossible to know for certain, it is speculated that part of the reason for this anti-Semitism was to distinguish and separate Christianity from Judaism. At first, the followers of Christ didn't consider their religion to be any different from Judaism; they considered it to be the true Judaism. However, thinking like this might make it easier for these followers to "back-slide" to traditional Judaism, so it would be advantageous to make a distinction between them.
It was not safe after the death of Christ to look or be identified with Jews. Rome had complete control over the Jewish land and its people. With the Jewish revolts against the Romans in the first century made being Jewish dangerous and deadly.
Jewish Conversion to Christianity
Another probable reason for early (and later) anti-Semitism was that Jews not converting was a stronger denial of Christianity than pagans not converting. A lot of the New Testament deals with interpreting Old Testament prophecies to show that they predicted the coming of Christ. Since the Old Testament, in a certain sense, belongs to the Jews, the Jews not converting is a strong denial of these interpretations, and thus of Christianity itself. For example, the fourth century St. John Chrysostom told his flock that where the Jews gather:
Christ was supposed to be the Messiah of the Jews, and came for them first, so why do they reject Him? This conflict between Christianity and Judaism is probably a lot of what fueled religious anti-Semitism.
Roman Rule
When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century (325 AD), some anti-Semitic measures were carried out by the state or the Church. It was made illegal for the Jews to proselytize, but any non-Christian proselytization was illegal; they also greatly diminished or revoked whatever legal autonomy Jews might have in their settlements, so they no longer had any leeway in enforcing Judaic laws on their fellow Jews. However, citizens and lower level members of the Church were often harsher. For example, in the 4th and 5th centuries there were examples of Christians who either stole or burned synagogues; those in power in the government attempted to force the Christian to pay restitution, but Christian "saints" intervened and prevented this.
Acts 15: A question arose in the church whether Gentile (non-Jewish) believers in Jesus as the Messiah would be required to follow Jewish practices before being accepted as Christians. The church leaders ruled that they would not have to observe the entire Jewish law, only certain practices. As a result of the ruling on this issue, and the large-scale missionary efforts of the Apostle Paul to the Gentiles, the ethnic composition of the first century church began to rapidly change from a Jewish majority to a Gentile majority. To mainstream Jews, this change appeared as a willingness on the part of the early church to be a lawless society. They also feared this would allow pagan influences into the Jewish-Christian circles and eventually, Israel.
The destruction of the Second Temple (see "Who Are The Jews") contributed both to the growth of the early church and rabbinic Judaism. Demoralized after such a loss of Jewish national and religious life, people were grasping for something to believe in. Hope in a Messiah to save the people from the oppression of Rome began to grow. In 132 C.E., Simon Bar Kochba ("Son of the Star'), previously known as Simon Ben Cosiba, was endorsed by the leading Jewish intellectual of the time, Rabbi Akiba, to be the promised Messiah. Many people were skeptical, but the rabbis followed Akiba's precedent and hailed him as the Messiah. Bar Kochba led a revolt against Rome in 135 C.E. One segment of the population, however, refused to join in the revolt and wage war under the banner of Bar Kochba _ the Jews who had believed in Jesus as the Messiah. Bar Kochba killed a number of them, seeing them as enemies, heretics and traitors to the national cause.
Outraged at this, the growing Mediterranean church began to harbor bitterness against the Jewish people. The surviving Jewish believers in Jesus, who felt both a loyalty to Israel as well as to the Western church, were being alienated by both groups _ by the church because they were Jewish, and by Israel because of their obvious lack of support for Bar Kochba. As a result, two Messianic sects formed, the Ebionites and the Nazarenes, seeking to establish congregations which were more culturally Jewish. Embarrassed by the growing bitter anti-Semitism of the Western church, these sects disassociated themselves from the Western church in the second century. By 450 C.E., these groups had disappeared, and Christianity was becoming less and less tolerant of anything having to do with its Jewish roots. All things Jewish were suspect. The idea of a Jewish Christian maintaining a Jewish lifestyle became increasingly incomprehensible.
In the second century, theologians and church fathers became more concerned with "making the break" with anything Jewish, beginning to take an uncompromising posture of theological and political opposition. Blanket policies condemning Jews began to color New Testament interpretation. Some examples are:
By the second century C.E., both Judaism and Christianity were trying to distinguish each from the other in the eyes of Rome, as both had unique political concerns. Once it was clear to Rome that Christianity was not a sect of Judaism, Christianity was regarded as an illegal sect and was no longer under the protective umbrella of the legal status of Judaism. With the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire by Constantine in the fourth century, however, Christianity soon began to enjoy a position of superiority over Judaism which caused serious consequences for Judaism. The new "Christian" empire began to enact such changes as:
Subsequent writings by church fathers (and church leaders throughout church history) condemned Jews, accusing them of being idolaters, torturers, spiritually deaf, blasphemers, gluttons, adulterers, cannibals, Christ-killers, and beyond God's forgiveness. Church Father John Chrysostom in particular pushed the idea of Jewish sensuality, gluttony, stubbornness and rejection by God.
With the rise of the Church-State, certain religio-political attitudes such as Jesus ruling the world through the Roman Christian government became evident in the Church. This attitude of superiority, flamed by the ever-increasing integration of the Church into Roman government, continued on into the Middle Ages and was translated into repeated actual restrictions on Jews, as is evidenced by the following examples.
Official, Church sanctioned anti-semitism didn't start until the 6th century. In 535 Jews weren't allowed to hold public office, and in 538 they weren't allowed to be out in the streets during Passion Week. (These canonical laws were passed at the Synod of Clement and the 3rd Synod of Orleans, respectively).
State Rule
During the 6th century various anti-semitic rules, not ordered by canonical law, were implemented by the state. Under the Justinian Code, Judaism was left with almost no legal protections, the Mishnah was banned, the synagogues in North Africa were closed, and there were even some orders to put Jews to death; in the 7th century some kingdoms engaged in forced conversions of the Jews. The killings and forced conversions happened in spite of the fact that the Church was against it.
However, even for all this, the period of time from the institution of the Holy Roman Empire to The First Crusade (430 to 1095) is considered to be a better period for the Jews than what came afterwards. This is even considering some of the Church canonical laws passed during that period:
The Catholic Church launched a series of nine holy wars from 1096-1272. The purpose of these wars was to march to the Holy Land of Palestine and liberate it from Moslem "infidels." Along the way, the crusaders massacred all "infidels" in their path who refused to be baptized on the spot to Christianity. Thousands of Jews were massacred in Germany and France.
In the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of all kinds of slanders and were scapegoats for the problems of the day.
During this period, Jews were permitted to be moneylenders and act as financiers, only because this activity, while necessary for a prosperous economy, was viewed by the Church as sinful. Because Jews enjoyed a monopoly over an activity viewed as sinful, a Jewish stereotype was perpetuated.
The Inquisition was a tribunal established in the Middle Ages (13th Cent.) by the Catholic Church in Rome designed to suppress heresy. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX formally established the papal Inquisition and sent Dominican friars to South France and Northern Italy to conduct inquests. The Dominican order had set as one of their goals the conversion of Jews to Christianity. This aim, backed by the power of the Inquisition, brought on a wave of persecution.
The goal of the Inquisition was not the destruction of the heretics but rather their repentance. Burning at the stake was not common. The ordinary penalties were penance, fines and imprisonment. Penalties were often carried out by the local government, especially the death penalty. Because the fines extracted and the property of the accused were turned over to the local government which often returned a portion to the Church, graft, bribery and blackmail were common.
The church rulers were often satisfied with assurances of goodwill. The secular rulers, however, used the persecution of heresy as a weapon to further their own designs.
Unlike the Medieval Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with only the reluctant approval of Pope Sixtus IV. The Roman Church's only hold over the Spanish Inquisition was the appointment of the inquisitor general, the first of which was Tom_s de Torquemada. The popes never reconciled themselves to the practices of that inquisition. Attempts by Sixtus IV to interfere with an inquisition that had become too severe were thwarted by Ferdinand and Isabella who now had a potent tool to subvert the population of Spain.
"The purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was to discover and punish converted Jews (and later Muslims) who were insincere. However, all Spaniards began to fear its prying eyes. The death penalty was used more often than in the Roman Inquisition, and rules that condemned one for heresy were far stricter, often outlawing things the Roman Church approved.
After some fourteen years of torture and death by burning, in 1492, by edict, the Spanish Jews were given the choice of exile or baptism. Almost all Jews chose to leave at this time.
In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church sometimes encouraged anti-Judaism—in 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council declared that all Jews should wear distinctive clothing. At other times it condemned and tried to prevent popular anti-Judaism—in 1272 Pope Gregory X issued a papal bull stating that the popular accusations against Jews were fabricated and false. However, the popular prejudice was just as violent as much of the racial anti-Semitism of a later era. Jews faced vilification as Christ-killers, suffered serious professional and economic restrictions, were accused of the most heinous crimes against Christians, had their books burned, were forced into ghettos, were required to wear distinctive clothing, were forced to convert, faced expulsions from several nations and were massacred.
Deicide. Though not part of official Catholic dogma, many Christians, including members of the clergy, have held the Jewish people collectively responsible for rejecting and killing Jesus (see Deicide). Jews were considered arrogant, greedy, and self-righteous in their status as "chosen people." The Talmud's occasional criticism of both Christianity and Jesus himself provoked book burnings and widespread suspicion. Ironically these prejudices led to a vicious cycle of policies that isolated and embittered many Jews and made them appear all the more alien to Christian majorities.
Passion plays. These dramatic stagings of the trial and death of Jesus have historically been used in remembrance of Jesus' death during Lent. They often depicted a racially stereotyped Judas cynically betraying Jesus for money and a crowd of Jews clamoring for Jesus' crucifixion while a Jewish leader assumed eternal collective Jewish guilt by declaring "his blood be on our heads!" For centuries, European Jews faced vicious attacks during Lenten celebrations as Christian mobs vented their fury on Jews as "Christ-killers."
Well Poisoning. Some Christians believed that Jews had gained special magical and sexual powers from making a deal with the devil against Christians. As the Black Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, rumors spread that Jews caused it by deliberately poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by resulting violence. "In one such case, a man named Agimet was … coerced to say that Rabbi Peyret of Chambery (near Geneva) had ordered him to poison the wells in Venice, Toulouse, and elsewhere. In the aftermath of Agimet’s "confession," the Jews of Strasbourg were burned alive on February 14, 1349.
Host Desecration. Jews were also accused of torturing consecrated host wafers in a reenactment of the Crucifixion; this accusation was known as host desecration. Such charges sometimes resulted in serious persecutions.
Demonic. Jews were portrayed as possessing the attributes of the Devil, the personification of evil. They were depicted with horns, tails, the beard of a goat and could be recognized by a noxious smell. "Christian anti-Semitism stemmed largely from the conception of the Jew as the demonic agent of Satan."[18] Despite witnessing Jesus and his miracles and seen the prophecies fulfilled they rejected him. They were accused of knowing the truth of Christianity, because they knew the Old Testament prophecies, but still rejecting it. Thus they appeared to be scarcely human (dehumanism).
Among socio-economic factors were restrictions by the authorities, local rulers, and frequently church officials. Jews were very often forbidden to own land, preventing them from farming. Because of their exclusion from guilds, most skilled trades were also closed to them, pushing them into marginal occupations considered socially inferior, such as tax- and rent-collecting or money lending. Catholic doctrine of the time held that money lending to one's fellow Christian for interest was a sin, and thus Jews tended to dominate this business. This provided the foundation for stereotypical accusations that Jews are greedy and involved in usury. Natural tensions between Jewish creditors and Christian debtors were added to social, political, religious, and economic strains. Peasants, who were often forced to pay their taxes and rents through Jewish agents, could vilify them as the people taking their earnings while remaining loyal to the lords and rulers on whose behalf the Jews worked. The number of Jewish families permitted to reside in various places was limited; they were forcibly concentrated in ghettos; and they were subjected to discriminatory taxes on entering cities or districts other than their own.
The Crusades began as Catholic endeavors to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims and protect the pilgrim routes, but the crusaders were inflamed by a zeal to attack any and all non-believers. Mobs accompanying the first three Crusades, anxious to spill "infidel" blood, attacked Jewish communities in Germany, France and England and put many Jews to death. Entire communities, including those of Treves, Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Cologne, were massacred during the First Crusade by a mob army. The religious zeal fomented by the Crusades at times burned as fiercely against the Jews as against the Muslims, though attempts were made by bishops and the papacy to stop Jews from being attacked. Both economically and socially, the Crusades were disastrous for European Jews.
England. To finance his war to conquer Wales, Edward I of England taxed the Jewish moneylenders. When the Jews could no longer pay, they were accused of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, the Jews saw Edward abolish their "privilege" to lend money, choke their movements and activities and require them to wear a yellow patch. The heads of many Jewish households were then arrested, over 300 of them taken to the Tower of London and executed, while others were killed in their homes. The complete banishment of all Jews from the country in 1290 led to thousands killed and drowned while fleeing. Jews did not return to England until 1655.
France. The French crown enriched itself at Jewish expense during the twelfth-fourteenth centuries through the practice of expelling the Jews, accompanied by confiscation of their property, followed by temporary readmissions for ransom. The most notable such expulsions were: from Paris by Philip Augustus in 1182, from the entirety of France by Louis IX in 1254, by Charles IV in 1322, by Charles V in 1359, by Charles VI in 1394.
Spain. There had been Jews in Spain possibly since the time of Solomon. They had been relatively secure during Muslim rule of Andalusia. However, the Reconquista (718-1492) took 400 years to re-convert Spain to Catholicism. In Christian Spain however they came under such severe persecution that many converted to Catholicism. Such converts, conversos, were called marranos, a term of abuse derived the prohibition against eating pork (Arabic maḥram, meaning "something forbidden"). Christians suspected that marronos remained secret Jews; and so they continued to persecute them. In 1480 a special Spanish Inquisition was created by the state to search out and destroy conversos who were still practising Judaism and were thus legally heretics. It was under the control of the Dominican prior Torquemada and in less than 12 years condemned about 13,000 conversos. Of the 341,000 victims of the Inquisition. 32,000 were killed by burning, 17,659 were burned in effigy and the remainder suffered lesser punishments. Most of these were of Jewish origin.
In 1492, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile issued General Edict on the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and thousands of Spain's substantial Jewish population were force to flee to the Ottoman Empire including the land of Israel/Palestine. There were then about 200,000 Jews in the kingdom but by the end of July 1492 they had all been expelled. They formed the Sephardi Jewish community which was scattered throughout the Mediterranean and Muslim worlds.
Many marranos communities were established all over Europe. They practiced Catholicism for centuries while secretly following Jewish customs. Often they achieved important positions in the economic, social and political realms. But their position was precarious and if discovered they were often put to death. It was not until 1989 that the last marranos community finally emerged from hiding in Portugal, shed their Roman Catholic exterior and started to practice Judaism openly.[19]
Germany. In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia limited the city of Breslau (Wrocław in today's Poland) to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families and encouraged similar practice in other Prussian cities. In 1750 he issued Revidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die Judenschaft: the "protected" Jews had an alternative to "either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin."[20] In the same year, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa ordered Jews out of Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on condition that Jews pay for readmission every ten years. In 1752 she introduced a law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II abolished most of persecution practices in his Toleranzpatent, on the condition that Yiddish and Hebrew be eliminated from public records and Jewish judicial autonomy be annulled.
There were also many local expulsions and/or the forced ghettoization of Jews in cities throughout Europe.
Martin Luther (1483-1546) founded a new Christian faith, Protestantism, in the 16th century. He had been an ordained priest, but disputed Church policy with respect to the sale of indulgences (a partial remission of the punishment for a sin). Once a supporter of the Jews, he was frustrated by their unwillingness to embrace his own religion. Martin Luther became one of the most intensely bitter anti-Semites in history. His writings described Jews as the anti-Christ, worse than devils. Jews were poisoners, ritual murderers, and parasites, he preached, and they should be expelled from Germany. His view was that synagogues should all be burned to the ground, and all Jewish books should be seized.
Remember.Org (Holocaust Society)
In his final sermon shortly before his death, however, Luther reversed himself and said: "We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they might become converted and would receive the Lord."[23] Still, Luther's harsh comments about the Jews are seen by many as a continuation of medieval Christian anti-Semitism.
Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth centuries, the Catholic Church still incorporated strong anti-Semitic elements, despite increasing attempts to separate anti-Judaism—the opposition to the Jewish religion on religious grounds—and racial anti-Semitism. Pope Pius VII (1800-1823) had the walls of the Jewish Ghetto in Rome rebuilt after the Jews were released by Napoleon, and Jews were restricted to the Ghetto until the end of the papacy of Pope Pius IX (1846-1878), the last Pope to rule Rome. Pope Pius XII has been criticized for failing to act in defense of the Jews during the Hitler period. Until 1946 the Jesuits banned candidates "who are descended from the Jewish race unless it is clear that their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather have belonged to the Catholic Church."
The advent of racial anti-Semitism was linked to the growing sense of nationalism in many countries. The nationalist dream was of a homogenous nation and Jews were viewed as a separate and often "alien" people who made this impossible. This prejudice was exploited by the politicians of many governments. Nineteenth century comparative anthropology and linguistics had led to the notion of race as the significant cultural unit. The Aryan race was thought to be more ancient (coming from India) and superior in its achievements to the Semitic race. From this point conversion was no longer a solution to the Jewish problem. German society was particularly obsessed with racist doctrines and racist views were articulated by Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Bauer, Marx, Treitschke and Richard Wagner as well as a host of lesser known figures from all sections of society. Marx in particular portrayed Jews as exemplars of money grabbing exploitative capitalists. Many anti-Semitic periodicals were published and groups were formed which concerned themselves with issues of racial purity and the contamination of the Aryan blood line by intermarriage with Jews.
As the spirit of religious tolerance spread, racial anti-Semitism gradually superseded anti-Judaism. In the context of the Industrial Revolution, following the emancipation of the Jews from various repressive European laws, impoverished Jews rapidly urbanized and experienced a period of greater social mobility. Jews rapidly rose to prominent positions in academia, science, commerce, the arts, industry and culture. This led to feelings of resentment and envy. For example the greatest poet of the German language, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a Jew and, "his ghostly presence, right at the centre of German literature, drove the Nazis to incoherent rage and childish vandalism".[25] Such success contributed further to myth of Jewish wealth and greed as well as the notion that the Jews were trying to take over the world.
Symptomatic of racial anti-Semitism was the Dreyfus affair, a major political scandal which divided France for many years during the late nineteenth century. It centered on the 1894 treason conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army. Dreyfus was, in fact, innocent: the conviction rested on false documents, and when high-ranking officers realized this they attempted to cover up the mistakes. The Dreyfus Affair split France between the Dreyfusards (those supporting Alfred Dreyfus) and the Antidreyfusards (those against him) who in the twentieth century formed an anti-Semitic movement that came to power in the Vichy regime and sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death. The venomous anti-Semitism exposed by the affair led Theodor Herzl to conclude that the only solution was for Jews to have their own country. He went on to found the Zionist movement.
Pogroms were a form of race riots, most common in Russia and Eastern Europe, aimed specifically at Jews and often government sponsored. Pogroms became endemic during a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots that swept Russia for about thirty years starting in 1881. In some years over 100,000 Jews were expelled or left Russia mostly for the United States. From 1881, thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families reduced to extremes of poverty; women sexually assaulted, and large numbers of men, women, and children killed or injured in 166 Russian towns. The tsar, Alexander III, blamed the Jews for the riots and issued even more restrictions on Jews. Large numbers of pogroms continued until 1884. Bureaucratic measures were taken to regulate and discriminate against Jews. An even bloodier wave of pogroms broke out in 1903-1906, leaving an estimated 2,000 Jews dead and many more wounded. A final large wave of 887 pogroms in Russia and Ukraine occurred during the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which 70,000-250,000 civilian Jews were killed by riots led by various sides.
During the early to mid-1900s, pogroms also occurred in Poland, other East European territories, Argentina, and the Arab world. Extremely deadly pogroms also occurred during World War II beside the Nazi Holocaust itself, including the Romanian Iaşi pogrom in which 14,000 Jews were killed, and the Jedwabne massacre in Poland which killed between 380 and 1,600 Jews. The last mass pogrom in Europe was the post-war Kielce pogrom of 1946.
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 used a pseudo-scientific basis for racial discrimination against Jews. People with four German grandparents (white circles) were of "German blood," while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or more Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right). One or two Jewish grandparents made someone "mixed blood." Since the racial differences between Jews and Germans are small, the Nazis used the religious observance of a person's grandparents to determine their "race." (1935 Chart from Nazi Germany used to explain the Nuremberg Laws)
Anti-Semitism was officially adopted by the German Conservative Party at the Tivoli Congress in 1892. Official anti-Semitic legislation was enacted in various countries, especially in Imperial Russia in the nineteenth century and in Nazi Germany and its Central European allies in the 1930s. These laws were passed against Jews as a group, regardless of their religious affiliation; in some cases, such as Nazi Germany, having a Jewish grandparent was enough to qualify someone as Jewish.
In Germany, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 prevented marriage between any Jew and non-Jew, and made it that all Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews, were no longer citizens of their own country (their official title became "subject of the state"). This meant that they had no basic citizens' rights, e.g., to vote. In 1936, German Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them having any influence in education, politics, higher education and industry. On November 15, 1938, Jewish children were banned from going to normal schools. By April 1939, nearly all Jewish companies had either collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or had been persuaded to sell out to the Nazi government. Similar laws existed in Hungary, Romania, and Austria.
Racial anti-Semitism reached its most horrific manifestation in the Holocaust during World War II, in which about six million European Jews, 1.5 million of them children, were systematically murdered. A virulent anti-Semitism was a central part of Hitler's ideology from the beginning, and hatred of Jews provided both a distraction from other problems and fuel for a totalitarian engine that powered Nazi Germany.
The Nazi anti-Semitic program quickly expanded beyond mere hate speech and the hooliganism of brown-shirt gangs. Starting in 1933, repressive laws were passed against Jews, culminating in the Nuremberg Laws (see above). Sporadic violence against the Jews became widespread with the Kristallnacht riots of November 9, 1938, which targeted Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship, killing hundreds across Germany and Austria.
During the war, Jews were expelled from Germany and sent to concentration camps. Mass murders of Jews occurred in several Eastern European nations as the Nazis took control. The vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust were not German Jews, but natives of Eastern Europe. When simply shooting Jews and burying them in mass graves proved inefficient, larger concentration camps were established, complete with gas chambers and crematoria capable of disposing of thousands of human lives per day. Jews and other "inferior" people were rounded up from throughout Nazi-controlled Europe and shipped to the death camps in cattle cars, where a few survived as slave laborers but the majority were put to death.