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The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism
This classic book on antisemitism traces the events of twenty-three centuries, including Christian involvement in this tragic story.
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First published November 2, 2004
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January 31, 2015
Father Edward Flannery, who died in 1998, was a Catholic priest who was the first director of Catholic-Jewish Relations for the U.S. Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, a position he held from 1967 to 1976. His book was published in 1985.
Flannery's famous statement ... "it is little exaggeration to state that those pages of history Jews have committed to memory are the very ones that have been torn from Christian history books" ... was quoted by Dr. Eugene J. Fisher, his successor at the U.S. Bishops' Committee, in Dr. Fisher's comments praising my novel The Heretic for bringing those pages back to Christian view.
Father Flannery pulls no punches in his denunciation of the Catholic Church for its role in promulgating antisemitism and providing the foundation for Hitler's Holocaust ...
*** Pope Pius XII's silence during the Holocaust rested on the acquiescence of the German episcopacy, which in turn rested on the still wider apathy or collusion with Nazism of German Catholics, themselves so ill prepared for any better response by accustomed antisemitic attitudes so often aided and abetted in the past by the Church itself ... the Pope's "subjects" in Germany were little prepared to heed any denunciations of Hitler and Nazism
*** Judaism lived on as a theological challenge to the Christian claim to be a new and true Israel … the threat of that challenge can hardly be overestimated
*** in the minds of the Church Fathers the only solution to the appeal of the old Israel was to discredit the Jew theologically … to depict the Jew as rejected, even cursed, by God … diabolical, the slayer of God Himself … antisemitism based on theological rivalry
*** modern racial antisemitism - as exemplified by the Nazi regime - would not have been possible without centuries of anti-Judaic and antisemitic precedents … from the beginning, Hitler had his target, the Jews, already set up, defenseless, and discredited
Flannery's conclusion sets a monumental challenge for contemporary Christians ...
*** Christians must come to full recognition of the preponderant role played by the Christian churches in the development of antisemitism … and the huge crime committed by Christianity against the Jews … deplorable … should stain the souls of all Christians ... antisemitism is a denial of Christian faith, a failure of Christian hope, a malady of Christian love
Flannery's famous statement ... "it is little exaggeration to state that those pages of history Jews have committed to memory are the very ones that have been torn from Christian history books" ... was quoted by Dr. Eugene J. Fisher, his successor at the U.S. Bishops' Committee, in Dr. Fisher's comments praising my novel The Heretic for bringing those pages back to Christian view.
Father Flannery pulls no punches in his denunciation of the Catholic Church for its role in promulgating antisemitism and providing the foundation for Hitler's Holocaust ...
*** Pope Pius XII's silence during the Holocaust rested on the acquiescence of the German episcopacy, which in turn rested on the still wider apathy or collusion with Nazism of German Catholics, themselves so ill prepared for any better response by accustomed antisemitic attitudes so often aided and abetted in the past by the Church itself ... the Pope's "subjects" in Germany were little prepared to heed any denunciations of Hitler and Nazism
*** Judaism lived on as a theological challenge to the Christian claim to be a new and true Israel … the threat of that challenge can hardly be overestimated
*** in the minds of the Church Fathers the only solution to the appeal of the old Israel was to discredit the Jew theologically … to depict the Jew as rejected, even cursed, by God … diabolical, the slayer of God Himself … antisemitism based on theological rivalry
*** modern racial antisemitism - as exemplified by the Nazi regime - would not have been possible without centuries of anti-Judaic and antisemitic precedents … from the beginning, Hitler had his target, the Jews, already set up, defenseless, and discredited
Flannery's conclusion sets a monumental challenge for contemporary Christians ...
*** Christians must come to full recognition of the preponderant role played by the Christian churches in the development of antisemitism … and the huge crime committed by Christianity against the Jews … deplorable … should stain the souls of all Christians ... antisemitism is a denial of Christian faith, a failure of Christian hope, a malady of Christian love
February 27, 2009
An important work. That a Roman Catholic priest could, in 1964, have published this unflinching study of Christian-sanctioned anti-Semitism was miraculous - the Church itself took another year to off the Good Friday prayer for the "perfidious Jews." A book that forced me to realize that Good is often underground, germinating, when things seem bleakest.
January 31, 2024
If I said that this work was a resource to every expression of antisemitism in history, I would not be far from the truth. Its research is exhaustive and gives some understanding of why antisemitism seems to be the default setting of every age. I have added it to my blog War in the Balkans because of the Holocaust of the Jews in Croatia and Serbia during World War 2, and I will ask the question: to what extent can antisemitism be held accountable for the world’s response to the present Israeli Hamas conflict?
Edward Flannery was an American Catholic priest who published the work in 1965. On the subject of antisemitism, he doesn’t mince words. ‘The vast majority of Christians…are all but totally ignorant of…the immense suffering of Jews throughout the Christian era... because the antisemitic record does not appear in history books.’
I am a Christian and it grieves me to read that antisemitism, although present in ancient Rome and Ptolemaic Egypt (Maccabees 1 and 2), was cemented throughout the fourth century of the Christian era and into the early fifth century. It stemmed from ‘the full flowering of that theology which laid Jewish miseries to divine punishment to Christ’s crucifixion’. Neglecting St Paul’s exposition on God’s election and salvation of Israel in Romans 9 -11, the church fathers ‘turned upon the synagogue with the greatest vigour’. Indeed, the language of St John Chrysostom against the Jews reminded me of Hitler. Only St Augustine was faithful to St Paul. ‘Christians,’ he wrote, ‘have a duty to love Jews and to lead them to Christ,’ but ‘he is at the same time at a loss to understand their unbelief, this animosity towards Christians, and their unending misfortunes.’
During this same century, the centre of the Talmud was established in Babylonia and ‘It was forgotten or ignored that the Jewish dispersion began many centuries before Christ and that Palestine was never completely emptied of Jews.’
At this time, violence was perpetrated by both sides and some countries showed less tolerance than others. In Rome Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) respected the legal rights of Jews and ‘the Pauline teaching of special affection for Israel’. Under the Emperor Justinian (483-565), however, who reigned from Constantinople, rules restricting Jewish life were passed with liberality: what Jews could own, where they could be seen, the professions from which they were barred, where synagogues could be open or closed and where Judaism was outlawed.
From 1096, matters deteriorated in Germany, France, Austria and England, as the first Crusaders, eager to free the Holy Land from the Muslims, turned first upon European Jews. In what the author refers to as the ‘the superstitious zealotry of the mob’ Jews were offered baptism or death, and thus many were slaughtered. ‘From January to July of 1096 it is estimated that up to 10,000 died, probably one fourth to one third of the Jewish population of Germany and Northern France at that time.’ Once the Crusaders arrived in the Holy Land, the slaughter continued. ‘In 1099 at journey’s end in Jerusalem the soldiers of Godfrey de Bouillon found the Jews assembled in a synagogue and set it ablaze.’
With the onslaught of the Second Crusade in 1147, St Bernard was forced to condemn further antisemitism in Europe by again recalling St Paul. “Who is this man that he should make out [St Paul] to be a liar and render void the treasure of Christ’s love and pity?” In 1272 following incidences in the Rhineland and Bavaria, Pope Gregory X forbade forced baptisms and violence. Many Jews migrated to Palestine and, of those who remained, 100,000 throughout Germany and Austria were killed by mobs stirred up by noblemen.
The development of the Jews as usurers and money lenders was an outcome of the laws restricting their lives and brought its own resentment from Christians. ‘By the end of the thirteenth century, Jews were expelled from France, England and most of Germany. In almost all cases, the expulsions found the origin in the business of usury.’ Yet the list of things they were accused of is a tribute to Mediaeval imagination and the zealous peasant jumped at any excuse for murder and for the widespread burning of the Talmud. Jews were even blamed for the Black Death (1347-50). ‘Apparently, no enormity was too great to lay at the door of the Jews.’ In a chilling foretaste of the twentieth century, ‘the massacres were greatest in Germany’ and ‘by the end of the fifteenth century no more than three or four German cities still harboured a Jewish population… Most left Germany for Poland or Lithuania.’ Upon their failure to accept his teaching, Martin Luther also turned his fury against the Jews in the following century.
Popes and Christian leaders condemned the atrocities. In 1418 Martin V ‘issued a decree which guaranteed protection [for the Jews] of their lives, rites, privileges and festivals [and] forbade forced baptism.’ St Bernadinus of Sienna (1380-1444) wrote, “As to the Jews, I say here what I say elsewhere: no one who has concern for his soul can injure the Jews, whether it be their persons or their faculties, or in any other way, for even to Jews, Christian piety and love must be shown since they possess a human nature.”
Only in Rome were the Jews never persecuted from the fall of the Western Empire until the close of the sixteenth century. ‘Jewish-Christian relations were intimate’ even to permitting intermarriage. Northern Italy had ample wealth and plenty of Christian usurers without them and they mostly benefitted from the friendliness of the Popes.
Until the end of the fourteenth century Jews also flourished in Spain, when the power and wealth attained by a few and their relationships with the royal family eventually provoked a downward spiral of resentment and persecution. 50,000 perished in a single massacre and worse was to come. In the wake of the Reconquista came an intense desire to strengthen the Christian state, and a conversion campaign was aimed at the Jews. Antisemitism against both Jews and converted Jews increased over the course of the fifteenth century and contained a strong racist element. However, the biggest problem was the ‘compromisers’, those Jews who by nominally accepting Christianity grew to power and wealth by having, as it is said, a foot in both camps.
Enter the Spanish Inquisition.
‘In 1479…Ferdinand and Isabella untied the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon’ and in 1483 the ‘fanatical Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor General.’ He was the most brutal and the most feared inquisitor and his job was to ‘ferret out’ Jews. Beginning with the dodgy converts, he continued to all the other Jews in Spain. ‘In 1492 the monarchs issued the fatal decree. All Jews must leave the realm by July 30th under penalty of death’. 300,00 departed.
Writing in the twelfth century, Peter Abelard nevertheless sums up the entire Middle Ages. ‘To believe that the fortitude of the Jews in suffering would be unrewarded was to declare that God was cruel. No nation has ever suffered so much for God.’
From the seventeenth century commenced the Age of the Jewish Ghetto in Europe. Many Jews moved east to Palestine, the Balkans, Turkey or Poland where life was safer. However, a series of attacks upon Polish Jews by Russians, Cossaks and Swedes during one decade in the second half of the seventeenth century killed between 100,000 and 500,000 Jews destroyed 700 Jewish communities. ‘With the exception of the Nazi period…the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries constituted the [lowest point] of post-Biblical Jewish history.’
In France, the Enlightenment and the change in ideas swept in by the French Revolution brought some measure of emancipation at the end of the eighteenth century, but the racist antisemitism present in Prussia is considered to be the beginnings of Nazi antisemitism. (Note the difference between religious antisemitism and racist antisemitism.) ‘From this point Germany became the undisputed cultural centre of antisemitism and the source of an endless stream of antisemitic books and pamphlets.’ The German-born Karl Marx is an example of a Jewish antisemite.
As religious faith [in Europe] declined… and the spirit of rationalism and scepticism rose, the need to justify the segregation [of the Jews] in purely secular terms grew…If the plight of the Jews did not stem from the crucifixion, it came from themselves, their ethnic make up; Jews, in a word, were innately perverse.’
Here begins a section marked ‘rationalistic antisemitism’ in which the French writer Voltaire stresses the rationalist grounds of his ‘utter contempt’ for the Jews and Judaism. ‘Jews are… “the most imbecile people on the face of the earth, enemies of mankind, a people most obtuse, cruel and absurd, whose history is disgusting and abominable.”’ His ideas were echoed by the German philosophers Fichte, Hegel, Herder, Schleiermacher and Harnack, and studied later by Hitler.
Thus ended the nineteenth century and we all know what happened in the twentieth.
A Reflection on the October 7th Attacks on Israel and the Present Conflict in Gaza.
In the middle of January 2024, I witnessed Marxist groups outside Newtown railway station in Sydney ardently collecting pro-Palestinian signatures. As there has always a Jewish presence in Palestine, why not collect pro-Israeli signatures? It is antisemitism that governs the choice. Why do the Federal Greens refuse to condemn the Hamas attacks of October 7th? Why is the NSW Teachers Federation openly pro-Palestinian? Why does Sydney’s art and literary scene consider it appropriate to simplify the present complex situation in Palestine to Israeli attacks on Gazan children? Why are the two sides unequally reported in the media?
Because ‘hatred of Jews [is] a serious social and ethical problem,’ concludes Edward Flannery, and the Australians referred to above are following the tradition of mob mentality outlined in his book. History has established a culture in which it is acceptable to disbelieve Jews.
As an example, regarding the brutal Hamas rapes of Israeli women on October 7th 2023, ‘bone-chilling horrors – such as repeated gang rapes that were so brutal they left women and girls with broken pelvises and mutilated genitals’, I quote from Human rights groups’ hypocrisy on Hamas rape - opinion - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) 25th December 2023.
‘Amnesty International so far has issued 29 press releases entirely or mostly about Gaza since October 7. They, too, have been filled with baseless allegations about Israeli murders, “apartheid,” and the like. To this day, Amnesty still has not issued any statement about the Hamas rapes.’
And another article from Microsoft Why are feminists silent on Hamas's use of rape as a weapon of war? (msn.com) 20th January 2024.
‘The denial of widespread, preplanned mass rape and sexual violence on October 7 must therefore be treated with the same revulsion as Holocaust denial. Hamas has denied that the rapes occurred, despite overwhelming evidence. Speak up, an Egypt-based feminist initiative, inconceivably has launched a campaign to discredit Israeli victims, with coalition groups joining across the Middle East and a letter condemning The New York Times investigation into sexual violence by Hamas. Speak up boasts over 68,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), and 250,000 Facebook members. Turkish public broadcasting has published an article claiming to debunk “outlandish Israeli claims of rape.” Unbelievably, their efforts have found sympathetic ears in Western academia…Ingrained antisemitism on the extreme Left leads to this moral failure.’
How else can we explain it?
Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine liberation Organization, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. ‘He and the Israeli leaders Peres and Rabin received the Peace Prize for having opted for the olive branch by signing the so-called Oslo Accords in Washington. The agreement was aimed at reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.’ Yasser Arafat – Facts - NobelPrize.org
How quickly we forget.
Edward Flannery was an American Catholic priest who published the work in 1965. On the subject of antisemitism, he doesn’t mince words. ‘The vast majority of Christians…are all but totally ignorant of…the immense suffering of Jews throughout the Christian era... because the antisemitic record does not appear in history books.’
I am a Christian and it grieves me to read that antisemitism, although present in ancient Rome and Ptolemaic Egypt (Maccabees 1 and 2), was cemented throughout the fourth century of the Christian era and into the early fifth century. It stemmed from ‘the full flowering of that theology which laid Jewish miseries to divine punishment to Christ’s crucifixion’. Neglecting St Paul’s exposition on God’s election and salvation of Israel in Romans 9 -11, the church fathers ‘turned upon the synagogue with the greatest vigour’. Indeed, the language of St John Chrysostom against the Jews reminded me of Hitler. Only St Augustine was faithful to St Paul. ‘Christians,’ he wrote, ‘have a duty to love Jews and to lead them to Christ,’ but ‘he is at the same time at a loss to understand their unbelief, this animosity towards Christians, and their unending misfortunes.’
During this same century, the centre of the Talmud was established in Babylonia and ‘It was forgotten or ignored that the Jewish dispersion began many centuries before Christ and that Palestine was never completely emptied of Jews.’
At this time, violence was perpetrated by both sides and some countries showed less tolerance than others. In Rome Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) respected the legal rights of Jews and ‘the Pauline teaching of special affection for Israel’. Under the Emperor Justinian (483-565), however, who reigned from Constantinople, rules restricting Jewish life were passed with liberality: what Jews could own, where they could be seen, the professions from which they were barred, where synagogues could be open or closed and where Judaism was outlawed.
From 1096, matters deteriorated in Germany, France, Austria and England, as the first Crusaders, eager to free the Holy Land from the Muslims, turned first upon European Jews. In what the author refers to as the ‘the superstitious zealotry of the mob’ Jews were offered baptism or death, and thus many were slaughtered. ‘From January to July of 1096 it is estimated that up to 10,000 died, probably one fourth to one third of the Jewish population of Germany and Northern France at that time.’ Once the Crusaders arrived in the Holy Land, the slaughter continued. ‘In 1099 at journey’s end in Jerusalem the soldiers of Godfrey de Bouillon found the Jews assembled in a synagogue and set it ablaze.’
With the onslaught of the Second Crusade in 1147, St Bernard was forced to condemn further antisemitism in Europe by again recalling St Paul. “Who is this man that he should make out [St Paul] to be a liar and render void the treasure of Christ’s love and pity?” In 1272 following incidences in the Rhineland and Bavaria, Pope Gregory X forbade forced baptisms and violence. Many Jews migrated to Palestine and, of those who remained, 100,000 throughout Germany and Austria were killed by mobs stirred up by noblemen.
The development of the Jews as usurers and money lenders was an outcome of the laws restricting their lives and brought its own resentment from Christians. ‘By the end of the thirteenth century, Jews were expelled from France, England and most of Germany. In almost all cases, the expulsions found the origin in the business of usury.’ Yet the list of things they were accused of is a tribute to Mediaeval imagination and the zealous peasant jumped at any excuse for murder and for the widespread burning of the Talmud. Jews were even blamed for the Black Death (1347-50). ‘Apparently, no enormity was too great to lay at the door of the Jews.’ In a chilling foretaste of the twentieth century, ‘the massacres were greatest in Germany’ and ‘by the end of the fifteenth century no more than three or four German cities still harboured a Jewish population… Most left Germany for Poland or Lithuania.’ Upon their failure to accept his teaching, Martin Luther also turned his fury against the Jews in the following century.
Popes and Christian leaders condemned the atrocities. In 1418 Martin V ‘issued a decree which guaranteed protection [for the Jews] of their lives, rites, privileges and festivals [and] forbade forced baptism.’ St Bernadinus of Sienna (1380-1444) wrote, “As to the Jews, I say here what I say elsewhere: no one who has concern for his soul can injure the Jews, whether it be their persons or their faculties, or in any other way, for even to Jews, Christian piety and love must be shown since they possess a human nature.”
Only in Rome were the Jews never persecuted from the fall of the Western Empire until the close of the sixteenth century. ‘Jewish-Christian relations were intimate’ even to permitting intermarriage. Northern Italy had ample wealth and plenty of Christian usurers without them and they mostly benefitted from the friendliness of the Popes.
Until the end of the fourteenth century Jews also flourished in Spain, when the power and wealth attained by a few and their relationships with the royal family eventually provoked a downward spiral of resentment and persecution. 50,000 perished in a single massacre and worse was to come. In the wake of the Reconquista came an intense desire to strengthen the Christian state, and a conversion campaign was aimed at the Jews. Antisemitism against both Jews and converted Jews increased over the course of the fifteenth century and contained a strong racist element. However, the biggest problem was the ‘compromisers’, those Jews who by nominally accepting Christianity grew to power and wealth by having, as it is said, a foot in both camps.
Enter the Spanish Inquisition.
‘In 1479…Ferdinand and Isabella untied the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon’ and in 1483 the ‘fanatical Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor General.’ He was the most brutal and the most feared inquisitor and his job was to ‘ferret out’ Jews. Beginning with the dodgy converts, he continued to all the other Jews in Spain. ‘In 1492 the monarchs issued the fatal decree. All Jews must leave the realm by July 30th under penalty of death’. 300,00 departed.
Writing in the twelfth century, Peter Abelard nevertheless sums up the entire Middle Ages. ‘To believe that the fortitude of the Jews in suffering would be unrewarded was to declare that God was cruel. No nation has ever suffered so much for God.’
From the seventeenth century commenced the Age of the Jewish Ghetto in Europe. Many Jews moved east to Palestine, the Balkans, Turkey or Poland where life was safer. However, a series of attacks upon Polish Jews by Russians, Cossaks and Swedes during one decade in the second half of the seventeenth century killed between 100,000 and 500,000 Jews destroyed 700 Jewish communities. ‘With the exception of the Nazi period…the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries constituted the [lowest point] of post-Biblical Jewish history.’
In France, the Enlightenment and the change in ideas swept in by the French Revolution brought some measure of emancipation at the end of the eighteenth century, but the racist antisemitism present in Prussia is considered to be the beginnings of Nazi antisemitism. (Note the difference between religious antisemitism and racist antisemitism.) ‘From this point Germany became the undisputed cultural centre of antisemitism and the source of an endless stream of antisemitic books and pamphlets.’ The German-born Karl Marx is an example of a Jewish antisemite.
As religious faith [in Europe] declined… and the spirit of rationalism and scepticism rose, the need to justify the segregation [of the Jews] in purely secular terms grew…If the plight of the Jews did not stem from the crucifixion, it came from themselves, their ethnic make up; Jews, in a word, were innately perverse.’
Here begins a section marked ‘rationalistic antisemitism’ in which the French writer Voltaire stresses the rationalist grounds of his ‘utter contempt’ for the Jews and Judaism. ‘Jews are… “the most imbecile people on the face of the earth, enemies of mankind, a people most obtuse, cruel and absurd, whose history is disgusting and abominable.”’ His ideas were echoed by the German philosophers Fichte, Hegel, Herder, Schleiermacher and Harnack, and studied later by Hitler.
Thus ended the nineteenth century and we all know what happened in the twentieth.
A Reflection on the October 7th Attacks on Israel and the Present Conflict in Gaza.
In the middle of January 2024, I witnessed Marxist groups outside Newtown railway station in Sydney ardently collecting pro-Palestinian signatures. As there has always a Jewish presence in Palestine, why not collect pro-Israeli signatures? It is antisemitism that governs the choice. Why do the Federal Greens refuse to condemn the Hamas attacks of October 7th? Why is the NSW Teachers Federation openly pro-Palestinian? Why does Sydney’s art and literary scene consider it appropriate to simplify the present complex situation in Palestine to Israeli attacks on Gazan children? Why are the two sides unequally reported in the media?
Because ‘hatred of Jews [is] a serious social and ethical problem,’ concludes Edward Flannery, and the Australians referred to above are following the tradition of mob mentality outlined in his book. History has established a culture in which it is acceptable to disbelieve Jews.
As an example, regarding the brutal Hamas rapes of Israeli women on October 7th 2023, ‘bone-chilling horrors – such as repeated gang rapes that were so brutal they left women and girls with broken pelvises and mutilated genitals’, I quote from Human rights groups’ hypocrisy on Hamas rape - opinion - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) 25th December 2023.
‘Amnesty International so far has issued 29 press releases entirely or mostly about Gaza since October 7. They, too, have been filled with baseless allegations about Israeli murders, “apartheid,” and the like. To this day, Amnesty still has not issued any statement about the Hamas rapes.’
And another article from Microsoft Why are feminists silent on Hamas's use of rape as a weapon of war? (msn.com) 20th January 2024.
‘The denial of widespread, preplanned mass rape and sexual violence on October 7 must therefore be treated with the same revulsion as Holocaust denial. Hamas has denied that the rapes occurred, despite overwhelming evidence. Speak up, an Egypt-based feminist initiative, inconceivably has launched a campaign to discredit Israeli victims, with coalition groups joining across the Middle East and a letter condemning The New York Times investigation into sexual violence by Hamas. Speak up boasts over 68,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), and 250,000 Facebook members. Turkish public broadcasting has published an article claiming to debunk “outlandish Israeli claims of rape.” Unbelievably, their efforts have found sympathetic ears in Western academia…Ingrained antisemitism on the extreme Left leads to this moral failure.’
How else can we explain it?
Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine liberation Organization, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. ‘He and the Israeli leaders Peres and Rabin received the Peace Prize for having opted for the olive branch by signing the so-called Oslo Accords in Washington. The agreement was aimed at reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.’ Yasser Arafat – Facts - NobelPrize.org
How quickly we forget.
February 12, 2013
not a happy read, but an important work. antisemitism is still a strong presence in our world, and it draws from a long history of being accepted. it's time to change this.
April 1, 2013
Very well written, full of history that most books do not address
June 8, 2021
A terribly distressing read about the history of antisemitism with an emphasis on Church antisemitism....simply appalling how the Church had forgotten its own Jewish roots.
March 10, 2022
This review is being written as conflict rages in Ukraine with 300,000 Jews caught in the middle of it, and upon receipt of the appalling news that the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial, commemorating the slaughter of more than 30,000 Jews outside Kiev by the Nazis in 1941 (this was where the Holocaust really began) has been damaged by Russian shelling. One wonders to what degree the spectre of anti-Semitism will rise again over this poor, blood-soaked land.
Father Flannery’s exhaustive analysis traces the history of anti-Semitism from its beginnings as a strictly theological battle in the early centuries of the church through the development of the doctrine of the Jews as “Christ-killers” in the Middle Ages and the “racial myth” of the Hebrews as an “inferior breed of humanity”, culminating in the Holocaust; and finally carrying through to the mid-1980’s with developments in the Soviet Union.
Although the book is primarily directed at a Catholic audience, Christians of all stripes are shown that there is much in the history of Christian-Jewish interaction that, in the book’s concluding words, “calls for repentance”. It is unflinching in its descriptions of the pogroms during the First Crusade; the massacres and forced migrations when Jews (always a convenient scapegoat!) were blamed for the Black Death in the 1340’s; the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and the Inquisition; the horrific Chmielnicki slaughters in the 1640’s in Ukraine and Poland; and the development of the ghetto.
Of course, the Holocaust was more devastating in terms of its impact upon Jewry than all of the above put together; but the reason the author spends less time on it, and upon the subsequent “Doctors’ Plot” and other persecutions the Jews had to endure in the Soviet Union, is that he feels the latter two were derived from Nazi and Communist philosophy as distinct from Christian teaching, history and culture. He desires every Christian who reads the book to answer its fundamental question: why have Christians down through the ages been the greatest detractors, and most determined persecutors, of the Jewish people, since their Savior and all His early followers were Jews, they share the Old Testament scriptures and many common beliefs, the Pauline Epistles advocate tolerance and understanding for the Jews, and the Book of Revelation assigns them a prominent role in the events of the end times?
Those who read this book should heed Father Flannery and ponder this question in their own hearts, and strive to answer it honestly and forthrightly. The book would be of great value to Messianic Jews trying to reach other Jews with message of Yeshua as Messiah. And though the book was written in 1964 and last updated in 1985, its message is still pertinent, for, as recent and current events sadly and unfortunately show, autocracy, racism, extreme nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism—they seem to go hand-in-hand—are all still festering beneath the surface of society and in the human soul, and are all to ready to break out, like a malignancy, into the open once again.
**** review by Chuck Graham ****
Father Flannery’s exhaustive analysis traces the history of anti-Semitism from its beginnings as a strictly theological battle in the early centuries of the church through the development of the doctrine of the Jews as “Christ-killers” in the Middle Ages and the “racial myth” of the Hebrews as an “inferior breed of humanity”, culminating in the Holocaust; and finally carrying through to the mid-1980’s with developments in the Soviet Union.
Although the book is primarily directed at a Catholic audience, Christians of all stripes are shown that there is much in the history of Christian-Jewish interaction that, in the book’s concluding words, “calls for repentance”. It is unflinching in its descriptions of the pogroms during the First Crusade; the massacres and forced migrations when Jews (always a convenient scapegoat!) were blamed for the Black Death in the 1340’s; the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and the Inquisition; the horrific Chmielnicki slaughters in the 1640’s in Ukraine and Poland; and the development of the ghetto.
Of course, the Holocaust was more devastating in terms of its impact upon Jewry than all of the above put together; but the reason the author spends less time on it, and upon the subsequent “Doctors’ Plot” and other persecutions the Jews had to endure in the Soviet Union, is that he feels the latter two were derived from Nazi and Communist philosophy as distinct from Christian teaching, history and culture. He desires every Christian who reads the book to answer its fundamental question: why have Christians down through the ages been the greatest detractors, and most determined persecutors, of the Jewish people, since their Savior and all His early followers were Jews, they share the Old Testament scriptures and many common beliefs, the Pauline Epistles advocate tolerance and understanding for the Jews, and the Book of Revelation assigns them a prominent role in the events of the end times?
Those who read this book should heed Father Flannery and ponder this question in their own hearts, and strive to answer it honestly and forthrightly. The book would be of great value to Messianic Jews trying to reach other Jews with message of Yeshua as Messiah. And though the book was written in 1964 and last updated in 1985, its message is still pertinent, for, as recent and current events sadly and unfortunately show, autocracy, racism, extreme nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism—they seem to go hand-in-hand—are all still festering beneath the surface of society and in the human soul, and are all to ready to break out, like a malignancy, into the open once again.
**** review by Chuck Graham ****
November 26, 2019
Με συνοπτικό τρόπο και πυκνή γραφή, διατρέχει την ιστορία του αντισημιτισμού στην Ευρώπη και τον ευρύτερο χώρο της Μεσογείου, από τα ελληνιστικά χρόνια έως σήμερα, με φιλερβαϊκό βλέμμα. Ο αντισημιτισμός δεν ήταν φαινόμενο του μεσοπολέμου με αποκορύφωση το Ολοκαύτωμα. Είναι τόσο παλιό όσο και η ιστορία της εβραϊκής Διασποράς.Πρωταγωνιστές είναι Αυτοκράτορες, ηγεμόνες, Πάπες, επίσκοποι, ραβίνοι, φιλόσοφοι και λαϊκές μάζες, οι οποίοι με τις αποφάσεις τους, τα κηρύγματά τους, τις ενέργειές τους και τις ιδέες τους καλλιέργησαν ή αναζωπύρωσαν εκατέρωθεν μύθους και πάθη, προστάτευσαν ή εξέθεσαν τις εβραϊκές κοινότητες.Μοναδικό ιστορικό φαινόμενο ο αντισημιτισμός ! Ανεξαρτήτως τόπου, έθνους, ιδεολογίας, χρόνου, από την μεσαιωνική Ευρώπη ως την κομμουνιστική ΕΣΣΔ, οι κατηγορίες ίδιες, ίδιας φύσης και οι διωγμοί.Εντύπωση προκαλεί η παραδοχή του συγγραφέα του βιβλίου πως ο απομονωτισμός, τα γκέτο, τα πογκρόμ, οι απελάσεις, το κάψιμο του Ταλμούδ, η ιερά Εξέταση,οι συκοφαντίες περί παγκόσμιας εβραϊκής συνωμοσίας ξεκίνησαν από εβραίους (βλ. Τορκεμάδα, Ντονίν, Μπράφμαν, Μαρξ, Ερενμπουργκ) και ανατροφοδοτούσαν το "φυσικό" μηδενιστικό μίσος των εθνών κατά των Εβραίων! Ένας φαύλος κύκλος εβραϊκού πείσματος, εμμονών, υπομονής, υποταγής, αντίδρασης, θεολογικής ερμηνείας των δεινών και εθελούσιου απομονωτισμού που εναλλάσσονταν με προσπάθειες ενσωμάτωσης στις τοπικές κοινωνίες επί 2.300 χρόνια. Πρόκειται για βιβλίο με εξαιρετικό ενδιαφέρον.
June 5, 2019
Probably the most important piece of writing for Catholics on anti-Semitism; Fr. Flannery does not sugarcoat any of the historical details and makes good use of primary sources for the purpose of illustrating. It raises serious questions about the sustainability and prospects for interfaith dialogue under certain theological views that are still subject to debate within the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, some of the more optimistic assessments of Flannery's book about the prospects for interfaith dialogue between Catholics and Jews post-Vatican II have not panned out as he or Pope JPII had hoped. Perhaps reading and taking seriously the substance of Flannery's work would help with that, though it seems to be a relatively low priority both for conservative and reforming movements within contemporary Catholicism.
May 4, 2020
Hard to read because of the sickening reality detailed within, but also, the author's writing style was redundant.
July 14, 2025
I read this book in October 2023, amidst a surge in antisemitism across the world. The horror of the October 7th attack on Israeli citizens was followed by the all too predictable sound of Jews being blamed for their own misfortunate. In my own country of the United Kingdom, a poisonous atmosphere developed, which, at the time of writing this review, continues to grow more noxious. Antisemitic views are firmly entrenched in the mainstream, with Jewish citizens feeling the effects. Many things change but the oldest hatred remains strong.
Why are the Jews subject to such hatred? This is the question that Fr Edward Flannery explores in his work, ‘The Anguish of the Jews’. Fr Flannery was a Roman Catholic priest who dedicated his ministry to improving Jewish-Catholic relations. In this book, he does a masterful job in exploring the origins and the evolution of antisemitism, examining its manifestations through the ages into the contemporary era. He starts with the development of antisemitism in pagan antiquity, tracing it through the Roman Empire, down through Christendom, and into modernity. Antisemitism is examined in all forms: Theological; economic; national; racial, reaching a hellish crescendo in the Holocaust; and contemporary ‘anti-Zionism’. Fr Flannery avoids sensationalism, and while noting that his focus on the negative content of history does not tell the ‘whole story’, the one that is told is a sad tale indeed.
In attempting to explain the ‘why’ of antisemitism, Fr Flannery stands firmly on theology. It is, fundamentally, a diabolic disposition against the People that God spoke to first as part of the unfolding of salvation history. How far you sympathise with this perspective will depend on whether or not you share Fr Flannery’s Christian faith. Staying within the theological tradition but also incorporating psychology, an insightful observation is that many Catholics who espouse antisemitism often follow the most rigid, fearful form of this faith. Does a subconscious resentment of the Catholic faith, unable to be consciously pinned on the Jewish founder of Christians, instead manifest itself by a lashing out on the people out of which Christian sprang? More broadly, is antisemitism fundamentally a hatred of something within oneself which, unable to be expressed or exorcised, is transferred onto the perpetual Jewish scapegoat? In my opinion, it is a very interesting though. But what I think people of good will can agree on is there is something fundamentally evil about a hatred that passes from generation to generation and which masquerades itself as good. And much respect must be given to Fr Flannery for trying to exorcise this particular evil out of the Roman Catholic Church.
Why are the Jews subject to such hatred? This is the question that Fr Edward Flannery explores in his work, ‘The Anguish of the Jews’. Fr Flannery was a Roman Catholic priest who dedicated his ministry to improving Jewish-Catholic relations. In this book, he does a masterful job in exploring the origins and the evolution of antisemitism, examining its manifestations through the ages into the contemporary era. He starts with the development of antisemitism in pagan antiquity, tracing it through the Roman Empire, down through Christendom, and into modernity. Antisemitism is examined in all forms: Theological; economic; national; racial, reaching a hellish crescendo in the Holocaust; and contemporary ‘anti-Zionism’. Fr Flannery avoids sensationalism, and while noting that his focus on the negative content of history does not tell the ‘whole story’, the one that is told is a sad tale indeed.
In attempting to explain the ‘why’ of antisemitism, Fr Flannery stands firmly on theology. It is, fundamentally, a diabolic disposition against the People that God spoke to first as part of the unfolding of salvation history. How far you sympathise with this perspective will depend on whether or not you share Fr Flannery’s Christian faith. Staying within the theological tradition but also incorporating psychology, an insightful observation is that many Catholics who espouse antisemitism often follow the most rigid, fearful form of this faith. Does a subconscious resentment of the Catholic faith, unable to be consciously pinned on the Jewish founder of Christians, instead manifest itself by a lashing out on the people out of which Christian sprang? More broadly, is antisemitism fundamentally a hatred of something within oneself which, unable to be expressed or exorcised, is transferred onto the perpetual Jewish scapegoat? In my opinion, it is a very interesting though. But what I think people of good will can agree on is there is something fundamentally evil about a hatred that passes from generation to generation and which masquerades itself as good. And much respect must be given to Fr Flannery for trying to exorcise this particular evil out of the Roman Catholic Church.
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