A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

by Phyllis Goldstein

I first heard of antisemitism only later, when my father told me how Oswald Mosley had fomented riots in the thirties by marching his paramilitary Fascist thugs called “Blackshirts” through Jewish districts in London’s East End. It disgusted him. Mosley’s line was that it was only “big Jews” he hated, not the “little Jews.” The “big Jews” were conspiring to get Britain into war with Germany, whereas the “little Jews” were harmless. But Mosley did nothing to stop his thugs from hurling bricks through the windows of humble houses displaying lighted Sabbath candles.

Antisemitism is a very peculiar pathology that recognizes no national borders. It is a mental condition conducive to paranoia and impervious to truth. Its lexicon has no word for individuality. It is fixated on group identity. It is necessarily dehumanizing when people become abstractions.

As the eighteenth- century author Jonathan Swift wrote, you cannot reason someone out of something he has not been reasoned into.

The Middle East is the only place in the world where three continents come together. It is a crossroads that links Asia, Africa, and Europe. Life at a crossroads can be dangerous.

In the ancient world, Jews were not easily distinguished from their neighbors. They did the same kinds of work, built similar homes, and in many ways lived similar lives. Yet there was at least one important difference: Jews worshipped the one God—invisible and indivisible—at a time when most people prayed to a wide array of gods who looked like animals or humans.

When one group defeated another, the newly conquered people were expected to accept the gods of the victor. After all, the new gods had triumphed and were therefore entitled to praise and honor. But most Jews, committed to the one God, refused to pay their respects to the gods of their conquerors.

In 721 BCE, Assyria, a neighboring empire, captured Samaria, the capital of Israel, the northern kingdom. The Assyrians forced members of the ten tribes from their land, and eventually they disappeared from history, probably absorbed into other groups. About

135 years later, in 586 BCE, the Babylonians conquered Judea, the southern kingdom. They destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and forced thousands of Jews into exile in Babylonia. These Judean Jews did not disappear from history.

The exiled Jews who settled in Babylonia were able to maintain their identity, in part because they were allowed to practice their religion. They not only kept their beliefs but also deepened and enriched their understanding of those beliefs by beginning to compile and write down the Torah (the Pentateuch, or Five Books o...

so many Jews in Alexandria spoke only Greek that the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek for their benefit. Yet they remained Jews.

The Greeks and Egyptians in Alexandria understood Flaccus’s announcement to mean that they could now treat Jews as they pleased. After all, people without rights cannot appeal to the authorities for help or seek justice on their own.

Hadrian changed the country’s name from Judea to Palestine. He also demolished the city of Jerusalem and forced thousands of Jews into slavery. According to a Roman decree, Jews could not rebuild the city or live there. Only Romans had that right. Jews were permitted to enter only on the ninth day of Av to mourn the loss of the Temple.

many of the key elements that define modern antisemitism can be traced to this time in history. A variety of stereotypes and myths lie at the heart of every hatred, including antisemitism. Stereotypes are the labels “we” attach to “them” and the assumptions “we” make about “them”—sometimes without ever meeting “them.” In this context, myths are lies based on those faulty assumptions, and they tend to endure because they appeal to strong emotions rather than to reason.

The separation of Christianity from Judaism did not happen simply or quickly. It was not a single event but rather a sometimes painful process that took generations to complete. And in this separation can be found the roots of hostility between Jews and Christians and the roots of some aspects of modern antisemitism.

At the time that the early Gospels were written, the Pharisees and the early Christians were competing for the hearts and minds of their fellow Jews.

The way a people (whether an ethnic group, a nation, or a religious community) defines itself has enormous significance. That definition indicates who holds power in the group (such as rabbis or priests, kings and noblemen, or men in general) and how the group as a whole sees itself in relation to the larger world. It also determines who belongs and who does not. From the fourth through the eighth centuries of the Common Era, Jews in the Middle East and beyond were increasingly seen as outsiders—people who do not belong. That view had consequences in a world in which politics and religion were tightly linked.

Many Jews in the Byzantine Empire welcomed the Persians. Some saw their arrival as an opportunity to win independence or even just a little more freedom.

In Jerusalem, the Persians, with the help of their Jewish allies, murdered about 60,000 Christians and sold 35,000 into slavery. It was a horrible massacre, one that Christians throughout the region vowed never to forget. They were also outraged by the outcome of the battle: the Persians handed over the city to the Jews.

By 629, the Byzantines were in control of Jerusalem again. Although Jews scrambled to make peace with the authorities, Christian religious leaders demanded that the Jews be punished for their earlier disloyalty.

In this age of empires, Jews’ insistence on maintaining their own religion and their own cultural traditions made them outsiders in both the Persian and the Byzantine Empires.

A few found a haven beyond the borders of the great empires in the harsh desert of the Arabian Peninsula.

By the sixth century, Jews were so well established on the peninsula that the king of Yemen converted to Judaism.

Religious differences were often a barrier to close ties between Jews and Christians. The word religion comes from a Latin word meaning “to tie or bind together.” People who share a religion are bound together by common beliefs, values, and customs. They form a community linked not only by a faith but also by a worldview. Although almost every religion teaches respect for individual differences, believers often see nonbelievers (or believers of other faiths and traditions) not only as misguided and blind to the truth but sometimes as devious, dangerous, or even treacherous.

Why, then, were Jews allowed to live among Christians? The answer dates back to the teachings of St. Augustine (see Chapter 2). He maintained that the church had a responsibility to keep Jews alive because of their connection to Jesus, who was a Jew. Augustine regarded Jews as a permanent reminder that Christianity had replaced Judaism as the true faith. He argued that the Jews’ humiliation and loss of power showed what happens to those who reject God’s truth.

Thus, for many Christians, showing contempt for Jews became a way of affirming their own faith.

his passionate speech, the pope called upon Christians to take up arms and return Christian holy places in Jerusalem to the church. The pope promised that the sins of those who took up the cross would be forgiven, and they would go directly to heaven when they died.

both human and divine. As a result, people in northern Europe came to view Jesus as a man who identified with the poor and the powerless, a man who died painfully on the cross at the hands of his enemy—and that enemy was, in their minds, “the Jews.” It was at this time that the “deicide charge” took root in Christianity. A growing number of Christians now believed that Jews as a people were collectively guilty for the crucifixion of Jesus.

By the end of the eleventh century, Jews were being squeezed out of international trade and into occupations forbidden to Jews, Christians, and Muslims—banking, money lending, and currency exchange.

As life became more precarious for Jews in Europe, Jews in many communities became the personal property of their protectors, with no rights except those they acquired by supplying nobles with money on demand.

As accusations spread, so did the false belief that Jews routinely engaged in the practice of ritual murder. An accusation made repeatedly tends to be believed, no matter how illogical and false it is. Where there is smoke, people fear, there is fire.

In 1255, a five-year-old boy was found dead in a well in Lincoln, England. Many historians today believe that young Hugh accidentally fell into the well. But in 1255, Christians in Lincoln were absolutely certain that “the Jews” had murdered him and had then thrown his body into the

In the late 1300s, decades after the expulsion of the Jews from England, Geoffrey Chaucer, one of England’s earliest poets, included Hugh’s story in his Canterbury Tales. The cathedral in Lincoln contained a shrine to “Little St. Hugh” that was a tourist attraction for 700 years. In 1955, ten years after the Holocaust and in response to it, the plaque was removed. In its place is one with these words:

With each new rumor, each new accusation, the way Christians thought about Jews became more and more distorted. Jews were increasingly seen as a powerful threat to Christianity, mainly because until the tenth century, Judaism was a faith that encouraged outsiders to convert.

Still, by the end of the thirteenth century, most European Jews were forced to wear badges or distinguishing clothing. The aim was to humiliate Jews by setting them apart from their neighbors. The effect was twofold: the image of Jews as a threat to Christians was reinforced, and as Jews became easier to identify, they were more vulnerable to attacks.

In both Muslim and Christian lands during the 1300s and 1400s, Jews were considered outsiders no matter how long they and their families had lived in these regions. They were repeatedly told that they would be treated like everyone else if they accepted the religion of the majority.

In October 1347, several trading ships from Genoa, Italy, pulled into the harbor at Messina in Sicily. Everyone aboard those ships was dead or dying of a mysterious plague. Europeans called it the Black Death, because victims had black swellings (each the size of an egg) on their bodies and black splotches on their skin.

In the countryside, an outbreak of plague usually lasted about six months and then faded away. In cities and other places where people lived in very crowded conditions—including monasteries and schools—the disease lasted much longer, often diminishing in the winter only to reappear in the spring.

After the Black Death in the mid-1300s, the persecution of Jews intensified, and many Jews in Europe moved farther east. Some left because life at home had become too dangerous. Others headed east because they were forced from their homes. Increasingly, whenever a ruler decided that his debts were overwhelming or that he no longer needed the services Jews provided, he expelled them—no matter how long they and their families had lived in the country. In every instance, the ruler claimed their property and took charge of all money owed to them. Borrowers then had to pay their debts to the ruler instead of to the Jewish lenders.

In contrast to much of northern Europe, where Jews faced persecution, Spain was a haven. From the eighth century onward, Jews there prospered under Muslim and, later, Christian rule. By the fifteen century, Spain had the largest Jewish population in the world. One out of every ten individuals in Spain was a Jew or of Jewish descent. Jews were prominent in trade, medicine, the arts, and even government. And yet in 1492, Spain expelled its entire Jewish population. The expulsion shows how precarious life was for outsiders, particularly Jews.

both Christians and Jews, as dhimmi—people who belonged to a tolerated religion—just as the Muslims in Syria did at about the same

As dhimmi, Jews and Christians had rights, including the right to practice their religion and establish their own communities. In return, they had to obey Muslim laws, pay special taxes, and suffer discrimination and humiliation depending on the whim of a ruler.

in the eighth century and later, dhimmi status was a step forward, particularly for Jews: most had more freedom in Muslim Spain than anywhere else in Europe.

Ferdinand III of Castile (who ruled his kingdom in northern Spain from 1230 to 1252) proudly declared himself “king of three religions.” Yet even as he boasted of his toleration, there were signs of trouble. Many Christians resented the idea of Jews in high places. They complained that Jews were favored over Christians.

The preaching of two religious orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, reinforced distrust of Jews.

In 1378, a high-ranking Franciscan priest named Ferrán Martínez began a campaign against Jews in Castile. In sermon after sermon, he called on Christians to expel all Jews from Spain.

early on the morning of June 4, 1391, he and his followers attacked the Jews of Seville, the capital of Castile. They murdered hundreds of Jews in their homes and countless more in the streets. Many Jewish women and children were captured and sold into slavery.

For hundreds of years, Christians had been trying to convert the Jews, and now, for the first time, they had real success. Suddenly thousands of Jews had become Christians.

King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella created the Spanish Inquisition in 1480 primarily to deal with rumors of Judaizing by conversos.

What constituted Judaizing? Lighting candles on a Friday night, failure to attend church regularly, and even a dislike of pork were all considered signs of Judaizing.

Any Jew who remained in Spain after July of 1492 would “incur punishment by death and confiscation of all their belongings.”