History of anti-Semitism
Encyclopedia
The history of antisemitism – defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group – goes back many centuries; antisemitism has been called "the longest hatred." Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:
Chanes suggests that these six stages could be merged into three categories: "ancient antisemitism, which was primarily ethnic in nature; Christian antisemitism, which was religious; and the racial antisemitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
In practice, it is difficult to differentiate antisemitism from the general ill-treatment of nations by other nations before the Roman
period, but since the adoption of Christianity
in Europe, antisemitism has undoubtedly been present. The Islamic world has also seen the Jews historically as outsiders. The coming of the scientific and industrial revolution in 19th century Europe bred a new manifestation of antisemitism, based as much upon race as upon religion, culminating in the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps of World War II. The formation of the state of Israel
in 1948 has created new antisemitic tensions in the Middle East.
Indeed, he asserts that "one of the great puzzles that has confronted the students of anti-semitism is the alleged shift from pro-Jewish statements found in the first pagan writers who mention the Jews... to the vicious anti-Jewish statements thereafter, beginning with Manetho
about 270B.C.E. In view of Manetho's anti-Jewish writings, antisemitism may have originated in Egypt and been spread by "the Greek
retelling of Ancient Egypt
ian prejudices". As examples of pagan writers who spoke positively of Jews, Feldman cites Aristotle
, Theophrastus
, Clearchus of Soli
and Megasthenes
. Feldman concedes that, after Manetho, "the picture usually painted is one of universal and virulent anti-Judaism."
The first clear examples of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced back to Alexandria
in the 3rd century BCE. Alexandria was home to the largest Jewish community in the world and the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible
, was produced there. Manetho
, an Egyptian priest and historian of that time, wrote scathingly of the Jews and his themes are repeated in the works of Chaeremon
, Lysimachus
, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon
, and in Apion
and Tacitus
. One of the earliest anti-Jewish edict
s, promulgated by Antiochus Epiphanes in about 170–167 BCE, sparked a revolt of the Maccabees
in Judea
.
The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria describes an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died. The violence in Alexandria may have been caused by the Jews being portrayed as misanthropes
. Tcherikover argues that the reason for hatred of Jews in the Hellenistic period was their separateness in the Greek cities, the poleis
. Bohak has argued, however, that early animosity against the Jews cannot be regarded as being anti-Judaic or antisemitic unless it arose from attitudes that were held against the Jews alone, and that many Greeks showed animosity toward any group they regarded as barbarians.
Statements exhibiting prejudice against Jews and their religion can be found in the works of many pagan Greek
and Roman
writers. Edward Flannery writes that it was the Jews' refusal to accept Greek religious and social standards that marked them out. Hecataetus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the early third century BCE, wrote that Moses "in remembrance of the exile of his people, instituted for them a misanthropic and inhospitable way of life." Manetho
, an Egyptian historian, wrote that the Jews were expelled Egyptian lepers
who had been taught by Moses
"not to adore the gods." The same themes appeared in the works of Chaeremon
, Lysimachus
, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon
, and in Apion
and Tacitus
. Agatharchides of Cnidus wrote about the "ridiculous practices" of the Jews and of the "absurdity of their Law," and how Ptolemy Lagus
was able to invade Jerusalem in 320 BC because its inhabitants were observing the Sabbath
. Edward Flannery describes antisemitism in ancient times as essentially " cultural, taking the shape of a national xenophobia played out in political settings."
There is a recorded instance of an Ancient Greek
ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, desecrating the Temple in Jerusalem
and banning Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision
, Shabbat
observance and the study of Jewish religious books, during the period when Ancient Greece dominated the eastern Mediterranean. Statements exhibiting prejudice towards Jews and their religion can also be found in the works of a few pagan Greek and Roman writers, but the earliest occurrence of antisemitism has been the subject of debate among scholars, largely because different writers use different definitions of antisemitism. The terms "religious antisemitism" and "anti-Judaism
" are sometimes used to refer to animosity towards Judaism as a religion rather than to Jews defined as an ethnic or racial group.
were antagonistic from the very start and resulted in several rebellions
.
Several ancient historians report that in 19 CE the Roman emperor Tiberius
expelled Jews from Rome. According to the Roman historian Suetonius
, Tiberius tried to suppress all foreign religions. In the case of Jews, he sent young Jewish men, under the pretence of military service, to provinces noted for their unhealthy climate. He dismissed all other Jews from the city, under threat of life slavery for non-compliance. Josephus
, in his Jewish Antiquities, confirms that Tiberius ordered all Jews to be banished from Rome. Four thousand were sent to Sardinia
but more, who were unwilling to become soldiers, were punished. Cassius Dio reports that Tiberius banished most of the Jews, who had been attempting to convert Romans to their religion. Philo of Alexandria reported that Sejanus
, one of Tiberius's lieutenants, may have been a prime mover in the persecution of the Jews.
The Romans refused to permit Jews to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem after its destruction by Titus
in 70 CE, imposed a tax on Jews (Fiscus Judaicus
) at the same time, ostensibly to finance the Temple of Jupiter in Rome, and renamed Judaea
as Syria Palestina. The Jerusalem Talmud
relates that, following Bar Kokhba's revolt
(132–6 CE), the Romans destroyed very many Jews, "killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils." However, some historians argue that Rome suppressed revolts in all its conquered territories and point out that Tiberius expelled all foreign religions from Rome, not just the Jews.
Some accommodation, in fact, was later made with Judaism, and the Jews of the Diaspora
had privileges that others did not. Unlike other subjects of the Roman Empire, they had the right to maintain their religion and were not expected to accommodate themselves to local customs. Even after the First Jewish–Roman War, the Roman authorities refused to rescind Jewish privileges in some cities. And although Hadrian
outlawed circumcision as a mutilation normally visited on people unable to consent, he later exempted the Jews. According to the 18th century historian Edward Gibbon
, there was greater tolerance from about 160 CE. Between 355 and 363 CE, permission was granted by Julian the Apostate
to rebuild the Second Temple of Jerusalem.
It has been argued that European antisemitism has its roots in Roman policy.
was written, ostensibly, by Jews who became followers of Jesus
, there are a number of passages in the New Testament that some see as antisemitic, or that have been used for antisemitic purposes, including:
Some biblical scholars point out that Jesus and Stephen are presented as Jews speaking to other Jews, and that their use of broad accusations against Israel is borrowed from Moses
and the later Jewish prophets. Other scholars hold that verses like these reflect Jewish-Christian tensions that were emerging in the late 1st or early 2nd century. Today, nearly all Christian denominations place little emphasis on verses such as these, and reject their misuse.
After Jesus' death, the New Testament portrays the Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem as hostile to Jesus' followers, and as occasionally using force against them. Stephen is executed by stoning. Before his conversion, Saul puts followers of Jesus in prison. After his conversion, Saul
is whipped at various times by Jewish authorities. He is accused by Jewish authorities before the Roman courts. However, opposition by gentiles is also described, and more generally, there are widespread references in the New Testament to the suffering experienced by Jesus' followers at the hands of others, particularly the Romans.
. The Council of Antioch (341) prohibited Christians from celebrating Passover with the Jews whilst the Council of Laodicea
forbade Christians from keeping the Jewish Sabbath.
The Roman emperor Constantine I
instituted several laws concerning the Jews: they were forbidden to own Christian slaves or to circumcise their slaves. The conversion of Christians to Judaism was outlawed. Religious services were regulated, congregations restricted, but Jews were allowed to enter Jerusalem on Tisha B'Av
, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple.
Discrimination became worse in the 5th century. The edicts of the Codex Theodosianus
(438) barred Jews from the civil service, the army and the legal profession. The Jewish Patriarchate was abolished and the scope of Jewish courts restricted. Synagogues were confiscated and old synagogues could be repaired only if they were in danger of collapse. Synagogues fell into ruin or were converted to churches. Synagogues were destroyed in Tortona
(350), Rome (388 and 500), Raqqa (388), Minorca
(418), Daphne (near Antioch
, 489 and 507), Genoa
(500), Ravenna
(495), Tours
(585) and in Orléans
(590). Other synagogues were confiscated: Urfa in 411, several in Judea between 419 and 422, Constantinople
in 442 and 569, Antioch
in 423, Vannes
in 465, Diyarbakir
in 500 Terracina
in 590, Cagliari
in 590 and Palermo
in 590.
is the killing of a god. In the context of Christianity, deicide refers to the responsibility for the death of Jesus. The accusation of Jews in deicide
has been the most powerful warrant for antisemitism by Christians.
The earliest recorded instance of an accusation of deicide against the Jewish people as a whole — that they were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus — occurs in a sermon of 167 CE attributed to Melito of Sardis
entitled Peri Pascha, On the Passover. This text blames the Jews for allowing King Herod and Caiaphas to execute Jesus. Melito does not attribute particular blame to Pontius Pilate
, mentioning only that Pilate washed his hands of guilt. The sermon is written in Greek, but may have been an appeal to Rome to spare Christians at a time when Christians were widely persecuted.
The Latin word deicidas, from which the word deicide is derived, was used in the 4th century by Peter Chrystologus in his sermon number 172. Though not part of Roman Catholic dogma
, many Christians, including members of the clergy
, once held Jews to be collectively responsible for killing Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews present at Jesus’ death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time had committed the sin of deicide, or God-killing.
s, expulsions, forced conversion
s and killings. In the 12th century, there were Christians who believed that some, or possibly all, of the Jews possessed magical powers and had gained these powers from making a pact with the devil
. Judensau
images began to appear in Germany.
The persecution of the Jews in Europe reached a climax during the Crusades
. At the time of the First Crusade
, in 1096, a German Crusade
destroyed flourishing Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube. In the Second Crusade
in 1147, the Jews in France were the victims of frequent killings and atrocities. The Jews were also subjected to attacks during the Shepherds' Crusade
s of 1251 and 1320. Following these crusades, Jews were subject to expulsions, including, in 1290, the banishing of all English Jews. In 1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France and in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of those expelled fled to Poland.
As the Black Death
plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews often became the scapegoats. Rumors spread that they had caused this epidemic by deliberately poisoning wells
. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by the ensuing hatred and violence. Pope Clement VI
tried to protect Jews by a papal bull
dated July 6, 1348, and by an additional bull soon afterwards, but several months later, 900 Jews were burnt alive in Strasbourg
, where the plague had not yet affected the city.
imposed dhimmi
status on both Christian and Jewish minorities, although Jews were allowed more freedom to practise their religion in the Muslim world
than they were in Christian Europe.
In Muslim Spain
, the Jews prospered under the tolerant rule of the Ummayad caliphate, and Cordova
became a centre of Jewish culture. However, the advent of the Almoravides from North Africa in the 11th century saw harsh measures taken against both Christians and Jews. As part of this repression there were pogroms against Jews in Cordova in 1011 and in Granada in 1066
.
The Almohad
s, who by 1147 had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories, took a less tolerant view still and treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians took a third option if they could, and fled. Some, such as the family of Maimonides
, went east to more tolerant Muslim lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms. At certain times in the Middle Ages, in Egypt
, Syria
, Iraq
and Yemen
, decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted. Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad
.
, and it was an occupation forbidden to Christians. Not being subject to this restriction, Jews made this business their own, despite possible criticism of usury in the Torah
and later sections of the Hebrew Bible
. Unfortunately, this led to many negative stereotypes of Jews as insolent, greedy usurers
and the understandable tensions between creditors (typically Jews) and debtors (typically Christians) added to social, political, religious, and economic strains. Peasants who were forced to pay their taxes to Jews could see them as personally taking their money while unaware of those on whose behalf these Jews worked.
Jews were subject to a wide range of legal disabilities
and restrictions throughout the Middle Ages, some of which lasted until the end of the 19th century. Even moneylending and peddling were at times forbidden to them. The number of Jews permitted to reside in different places was limited; they were concentrated in ghettos and were not allowed to own land; they were subject to discriminatory taxes on entering cities or districts other than their own and were forced to swear special Jewish Oaths
, and they suffered a variety of other measures. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that Jews
and Muslims must wear distinguishing clothing. The most common such clothing was the Jewish hat, which was already worn by many Jews as a self-identifying mark, but was now often made compulsory.
The Jewish badge was introduced in some places; it could be a coloured piece of cloth in the shape of a circle, strip, or the tablets of the law (in England), and was sewn onto the clothes. Elsewhere special colours of robe were specified. Implementation was in the hands of local rulers but by the following century laws had been enacted covering most of Europe. In many localities, members of Medieval society wore badges to distinguish their social status. Some badges (such as those worn by guild
members) were prestigious, while others were worn by ostracised outcasts such as leper
s, reformed heretics
and prostitutes
. As with all sumptuary law
s, the degree to which these laws were followed and enforced varied greatly. Sometimes, Jews sought to evade the badges by paying what amounted to bribes in the form of temporary "exemptions" to kings, which were revoked and re-paid for whenever the king needed to raise funds. By the end of the Middle Ages
, the hat seems to have become rare, but the badge lasted longer and remained in some places until the 18th century.
The People's Crusade
that accompanied the first Crusade
attacked Jewish communities in Germany, France, and England, and killed many Jews. Entire communities, like those of Treves
, Speyer
, Worms
, Mainz
, and Cologne
, were murdered by armed mobs. About 12,000 Jews are said to have perished in the Rhineland
cities alone between May and July 1096. Before the Crusades, Jews had practically a monopoly on the trade in Eastern products, but the closer connection between Europe and the East brought about by the Crusades raised up a class of Christian merchant traders, and from this time onwards, restrictions on the sale of goods by Jews became frequent. The religious zeal fomented by the Crusades at times burned as fiercely against Jews as against Muslims, although attempts were made by bishops during the first Crusade and by the papacy during the second Crusade
to stop Jews from being attacked. Both economically and socially, the Crusades were disastrous for European Jews. They prepared the way for the anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III
.
The Jewish defenders of Jerusalem retreated to their synagogue to "prepare for death" once the Crusaders had breached the outer walls of the city during the siege of 1099
. The chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi
states that the building was set on fire whilst the Jews were still inside. The Crusaders were supposedly reported as hoisting up their shields and singing "Christ We Adore Thee!" while they encircled the burning building." Following the siege, Jews captured from the Dome of the Rock
, along with native Christians, were made to clean the city of the slain. Numerous Jews and their holy books (including the Aleppo Codex
) were held ransom by Raymond of Toulouse. The Karaite Jewish community of Ashkelon
(Ascalon) reached out to their coreligionists in Alexandria
to first pay for the holy books and then rescued pockets of Jews over several months. All that could be ransomed were liberated by the summer of 1100. The few who could not be rescued were either converted to Christianity or murdered.
In the County of Toulouse, in southern France, toleration and favour shown to Jews was one of the main complaints of the Roman Church against the Counts of Toulouse at the beginning of the 13th century. Organised and official persecution of the Jews became a normal feature of life in southern France only after the Albigensian Crusade
, because it was only then that the Church became powerful enough to insist that measures of discrimination be applied. In 1209, stripped to the waist and barefoot, Raymond VI of Toulouse was obliged to swear that he would no longer allow Jews to hold public office. In 1229 his son Raymond VII, underwent a similar ceremony.
. According to the authors of these so-called blood libel
s, the 'procedure' for the alleged sacrifice was something like this: a child who had not yet reached puberty was kidnapped and taken to a hidden place. The child would be tortured by Jews, and a crowd would gather at the place of execution (in some accounts the synagogue itself) and engage in a mock tribunal to try the child. The child would be presented to the tribunal naked and tied and eventually be condemned to death. In the end, the child would be crowned with thorns and tied or nailed to a wooden cross. The cross would be raised, and the blood dripping from the child's wounds would be caught in bowls or glasses and then drunk. Finally, the child would be killed with a thrust through the heart from a spear, sword, or dagger. Its dead body would be removed from the cross and concealed or disposed of, but in some instances rituals of black magic
would be performed on it. This method, with some variations, can be found in all the alleged Christian descriptions of ritual murder by Jews.
The story of William of Norwich
(d. 1144) is often cited as the first known accusation of ritual murder against Jews. The Jews of Norwich
, England were accused of murder after a Christian boy, William, was found dead. It was claimed that the Jews had tortured and crucified him. The legend of William of Norwich became a cult, and the child acquired the status of a holy martyr. Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln
(d. 1255), in the 13th century, reputedly had his belly cut open and his entrails
removed for some occult
purpose, such as a divination ritual
, after being taken from a cross. Simon of Trent
(d. 1475), in the fifteenth, was held over a large bowl so that all his blood could be collected, it was alleged.
During the Middle Ages, such blood libels were directed against Jews in many parts of Europe. The believers of these accusations reasoned that the Jews, having crucified Jesus, continued to thirst for pure and innocent blood, at the expense of innocent Christian children.
Jews were sometimes falsely accused of desecrating consecrated hosts in a reenactment of the Crucifixion
; this crime was known as host desecration
and carried the death penalty.
for their return was utilized to enrich the French crown during the 13th and 14th centuries. The most notable such expulsions were from Paris by Philip Augustus in 1182, from the whole of France by Louis IX
in 1254, by Charles IV
in 1306, by Charles V
in 1322 and by Charles VI
in 1394.
To finance his war against Wales
in 1276, Edward I of England
taxed Jewish moneylenders. When the moneylenders could no longer pay the tax, they were accused of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, Edward abolished their "privilege" to lend money, restricted their movements and activities and forced Jews to wear a yellow patch
. The heads of Jewish households were then arrested with over 300 being taken to the Tower of London
and executed. Others were killed in their homes. All Jews were banished from the country in 1290, where it was possible that hundreds were killed or drowned while trying to leave the country. All the money and property of these dispossessed Jews was confiscated. No Jews were known to be in England thereafter until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell
reversed the policy.
, 40 Jews were burnt in Toulon
as quickly after the outbreak as April 1348. "Never mind that Jews were not immune from the ravages of the plague; they were tortured until they "confessed" to crimes that they could not possibly have committed. In one such case, a man named Agimet was ... coerced to say that Rabbi Peyret of Chambéry
(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."
and Isabella I of Castile
to institute the Spanish Inquisition
. The Inquisition used torture
to elicit confessions and delivered judgment at public ceremonials known as autos da fe before they gave their victims over to the secular authorities for punishment. Under this dispensation, some 30,000 were condemned to death and executed by being burnt alive.
In 1492, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile issued an edict of expulsion
of Jews from Spain, giving Jews four months to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. Some 165,000 emigrated and some 50,000 converted to Christianity.
Portugal followed suit in December 1496. However, those expelled could only leave the country in ships specified by the King. When those who chose to leave the country arrived at the port in Lisbon, they were met by clerics and soldiers who used force, coercion and promises to baptize them and prevent them from leaving the country. This episode technically ended the presence of Jews in Portugal. Afterwards, all converted Jews and their descendants would be referred to as New Christians or marranos. They were given a grace period of thirty years during which no inquiry into their faith would be allowed. This period was later extended until 1534. However, a popular riot in 1504 resulted in the deaths of up to five thousand Jews, and the execution of the leaders of the riot by King Manuel
. Those labeled as New Christians were under the surveillance of the Portuguese Inquisition
from 1536 until 1821.
Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal, known as Sephardi Jews
from the Hebrew word for Spain, fled to North Africa, Turkey and Palestine within the Ottoman Empire
, and to Holland, France and Italy. Within the Ottoman Empire, Jews could openly practise their religion. Amsterdam
in Holland also became a focus for settlement by the persecuted Jews from many lands in succeeding centuries.
Martin Luther
, an Augustinian friar and an ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation
, wrote antagonistically about Jews in his pamphlet On the Jews and their Lies, written in 1543. He portrays the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriates them and provides detailed recommendations for a pogrom
against them, calling for their permanent oppression and expulsion. At one point he writes: "...we are at fault in not slaying them..." a passage that "may be termed the first work of modern antisemitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust
."
Luther's harsh comments about the Jews are seen by many as a continuation of medieval Christian antisemitism. Muslow and Popkin assert that, "the antisemitism of the early modern period was even worse than that of the Middle Ages; and nowhere was this more obvious than in those areas which roughly encompass modern-day Germany, especially among Lutherans."
In his final sermon shortly before his death, however, Luther preached: "We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they might become converted and would receive the Lord."
was a boy from the city of Trento, Italy, who was found dead at the age of two in 1475, having allegedly been kidnapped, mutilated, and drained of blood. His disappearance was blamed on the leaders of the city's Jewish community, based on confessions extracted under torture, in a case that fueled the rampant antisemitism of the time. Simon was regarded as a saint, and was canonized by Pope Sixtus V
in 1588.
, the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Amsterdam
, later New York City, sought to bolster the position of the Dutch Reformed Church
by trying to stem the religious influence of Jews, Lutherans, Catholics and Quakers. He stated that Jews were "deceitful", "very repugnant", and "hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ". However, religious plurality was already a cultural tradition and a legal obligation in New Amsterdam and in the Netherlands, and his superiors at the Dutch West India Company
in Amsterdam
overruled him.
During the mid-to-late-17th century the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over 3 million people). The decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, including emigration, deaths from diseases and captivity in the Ottoman Empire
. These conflicts began in 1648 when Bohdan Khmelnytsky
instigated the Khmelnytsky Uprising
against the Polish aristocracy and the Jews who administered their estates. Khmelnytsky's Cossack
s massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and southern areas that he controlled (now the Ukraine
). This persecution led many Jews to pin their hopes on a man called Shabbatai Zevi who emerged in the Ottoman Empire at this time and proclaimed himself Messiah
in 1665. However his later conversion to Islam dashed these hopes and led many Jews to discredit the traditional belief in the coming of the Messiah as the hope of salvation.
" saw the dismantling of archaic corporate, hierarchical forms of society in favour of individual equality of citizens before the law. How this new state of affairs would affect previously autonomous, though subordinated, Jewish communities became known as the Jewish question
. In many countries, enhanced civil rights were gradually extended to the Jews, though often only in a partial form and on condition that the Jews abandon many aspects of their previous identity in favour of integration and assimilation with the dominant society.
In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia
limited the number of Jews allowed to live in Breslau to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families and encouraged a similar practice in other Prussia
n cities. In 1750 he issued the Revidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die Judenschaft: forcing these "protected" Jews to "either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin." In the same year, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa
ordered Jews out of Bohemia
but soon reversed her position, on condition that they pay for their readmission every ten years. This extortion
was known as malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752 she introduced a law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II
abolished most of these practices in his Toleranzpatent, on the condition that Yiddish
and Hebrew
were eliminated from public records and that judicial autonomy was annulled.
In accordance with the anti-Jewish precepts of the Russian Orthodox Church
, Russia's discriminatory policies towards Jews intensified when the partition of Poland in the 18th century resulted, for the first time in Russian history, in the possession of land with a large population of Jews. This land was designated as the Pale of Settlement
from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia. In 1772, the empress of Russia Catherine II forced the Jews of the Pale of Settlement to stay in their shtetls and forbade them from returning to the towns that they occupied before the partition of Poland.
, similar laws promoting Jewish emancipation
were enacted in the early 19th century in those parts of Europe over which France had influence. The old laws restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited their property rights, rights of worship and occupation, were rescinded.
Despite this, traditional discrimination and hostility to Jews on religious grounds persisted and was supplemented by racial antisemitism, encouraged by the work of racial theorists such as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and particularly his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Race of 1853–5. Nationalist agendas based on ethnicity, known as ethnonationalism, usually excluded the Jews from the national community as an alien race. Allied to this were theories of Social Darwinism
, which stressed a putative conflict between higher and lower races of human beings. Such theories, usually posited by white Europeans, advocated the superiority of white Aryan
s to Semitic
Jews.
peace conference (1814–5) were unsuccessful. In 1819, German Jews were attacked in the Hep-Hep riots
. Full Jewish emancipation
was not granted in Germany until 1871, when the country was united under the Hohenzollern dynasty.
In 1850, the German composer Richard Wagner
published Das Judenthum in der Musik
("Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym
in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
. The essay began as an attack on Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries (and rivals) Felix Mendelssohn
and Giacomo Meyerbeer
, but expanded to accuse Jewish influences more widely of being a harmful and alien element in German culture
.
The term "antisemitism" was coined by the German agitator and publicist, Wilhelm Marr
in 1879. In that year, Marr founded the Antisemites League and published a book called Victory of Jewry over Germandom. The late 1870s saw the growth of antisemitic political parties in Germany. These included the Christian Social Party
, founded in 1878 by Adolf Stoecker
, the Lutheran chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, as well as a German Social Antisemitic Party and an Antisemitic People's Party. However, they did not enjoy mass electoral support and at their peak in 1907, had only 16 deputies out of a total of 397 in the Reichstag.
(1870–1) was blamed by some on the Jews. Jews were accused of weakening the national spirit through association with republicanism, capitalism and anti-clericalism, particularly by authoritarian, right wing, clerical and royalist groups. These accusations were spread in antisemitic journals such as La Libre Parole, founded by Edouard Drumont
and La Croix
, the organ of the Catholic order of the Assumptionists
.
Financial scandals such as the collapse of the Union Generale Bank and the collapse of the French Panama Canal operation
were also blamed on the Jews. The Dreyfus affair
saw a Jewish military officer named Captain Alfred Dreyfus
falsely accused of treason in 1895 by his army superiors and sent to Devil's Island
after being convicted. Dreyfus was acquitted in 1906, but the case polarised French opinion between antisemitic authoritarian nationalists and philosemitic anti-clerical republicans, with consequences which were to resonate into the 20th century.
Between 1881 and 1920, approximately 3 million Ashkenazi Jews
from Eastern Europe
immigrated to America, many of them fleeing pogroms and the difficult economic conditions which were widespread in much of Eastern Europe during this time. Pogroms in Eastern Europe, particularly Russia
, prompted waves of Jewish immigrants after 1881. Jews, along with many Eastern and Southern European immigrants, came to work the country's growing mines and factories. Many Americans distrusted these Jewish immigrants.
The earlier wave of Jewish immigration from Germany, the latter (post 1880) came from "the Pale" - the region of Eastern Poland, Russia and the Ukraine where Jews had suffered so under the Czars. Along with Italians, Irish
and other Eastern and Southern Europeans, Jews faced discrimination in the United States in employment, education and social advancement. American groups like the Immigration Restriction League
, criticized these new arrivals along with immigrants from Asia
and southern and eastern Europe, as culturally, intellectually, morally, and biologically inferior. Despite these attacks, very few Eastern European Jews returned to Europe for whatever privations they faced here, their situation in the US was still improved.
Beginning in the early 1880s, declining farm prices also prompted elements of the Populist movement to blame the perceived evils of capitalism and industrialism on Jews because of their alleged racial/religious inclination for financial exploitation and, more specifically, because of the alleged financial manipulations of Jewish financiers such as the Rothschilds. Although Jews played only a minor role in the nation's commercial banking system, the prominence of Jewish investment bankers such as the Rothschilds
in Europe, and Jacob Schiff
, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
in New York City, made the claims of anti-Semites believable to some.
The Morgan Bonds scandal injected populist anti-Semitism into the 1896 presidential campaign
. It was disclosed that President Grover Cleveland
had sold bonds to a syndicate which included J. P. Morgan
and the Rothschilds house
, bonds which that syndicate was now selling for a profit, the Populists used it as an opportunity to uphold their view of history, and prove to the nation that Washington and Wall Street were in the hands of the international Jewish banking houses.
Another focus of anti-Semitic feeling was the allegation that Jews were at the center of an international conspiracy to fix the currency and thus the economy to a single gold standard.
which lasted for three years. A hardening of official attitudes under Tsar Alexander III and his ministers, resulted in the May Laws
of 1882, which severely restricted the civil rights of Jews within the Russian Empire
. The Tsar's minister Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev stated that the aim of the government with regard to the Jews was that: "One third will die out, one third will leave the country and one third will be completely dissolved [into] the surrounding population". In the event, a mix of pogroms and repressive legislation did indeed result in the mass emigration of Jews to western Europe and America. Between 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War, an estimated 2.5 million Jews left Russia – one of the largest mass migrations in recorded history.
in 1828. In 1839, in the eastern Persian city of Meshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue and destroyed the Torah scrolls
, and it was only by forced conversion that a massacre was averted. There was a massacre of Jews in Barfurush in 1867.
Concerning the life of Persian Jews
in the middle of the 19th century, a contemporary author wrote:
In 1840, in the Damascus affair
, the Jews of Damascus
were falsely accused of having ritually murdered a Christian monk and his Muslim servant and of having used their blood
to bake Passover bread
. A Jewish barber was tortured until he "confessed" to this crime; two other Jews who were arrested died under torture, while a third converted to Islam to save his life.
In 1864, around 500 Jews were killed in Marrakech
and Fez
in Morocco
. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis
, and an Arab mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, on Jerba Island
. Jews in Morocco were attacked and killed in the streets in broad daylight. In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople
to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia.
One symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. A 19th century traveler observed: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine
. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan."
.
In Russia, under the Tsarist regime, antisemitism intensified in the early years of the 20th century and was given official favour when the secret police forged the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document purported to be a transcription of a plan by Jewish elders to achieve global domination. Violence against the Jews in the Kishinev pogrom
in 1903 was continued after the 1905 revolution by the activities of the Black Hundreds. The Beilis Trial
of 1913 showed that it was possible to revive the blood libel accusation in Russia.
The 1917 revolution ended official discrimination against the Jews but was followed, however, by massive anti-Jewish violence by the anti-Bolshevik White Army and the nationalist Ukrainian army under Symon Petliura in the Russian Civil War
. From 1918–21, between 100,000 and 150,000 Jews were slaughtered. White emigres from revolutionary Russia fostered the idea that the Bolshevik regime, with its many Jewish members, was a front for the Jewish World Conspiracy, outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had by now achieved wide circulation in the west.
, founded by Charles Maurras
. These groups were critical of the whole political establishment of the Third Republic
. Following the Stavisky Affair
, in which a Jewish man named Serge Alexandre Stavisky was revealed to be involved in high level political corruption, these groups encouraged serious rioting which almost toppled the government in the 6 February 1934 crisis
. The rise to prominence of the Jewish socialist Léon Blum
, who became first minister of the Popular Front Government in 1936, further polarised opinion within France. Action Française and other right-wing groups launched a vicious antisemitic press campaign against Blum which culminated in an attack in which he was dragged from his car and kicked and beaten whilst a mob screamed 'Death to the Jew!'
Antisemitism was particularly virulent in Vichy France
during WWII
. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to identify Jews for deportation and transportation to the death camps (about 75.000 were killed). The antisemitic demands of right-wing groups were implemented under the collaborating Vichy regime of Marshall Henri Phillippe Petain, following the defeat of the French by the German army in 1940. A Statut des Juifs of that year, followed by another in 1941, purged Jews from employment in administrative, civil service and judicial posts, from most professions and even from the entertainment industry – restricting them, mostly, to menial jobs. Vichy's officials aided and abetted the Nazis in arresting and transporting over seventy-three thousand Jews to their deaths in the extermination camps in Poland.
In Germany, following World War I, Nazism
arose as a political movement incorporating antisemitic ideas, expressed by Adolf Hitler
in his book Mein Kampf
. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazi regime sought the systematic exclusion of Jews from national life. The Nuremberg Laws
of 1935 outlawed marriage or sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews. Antisemitic propaganda by or on behalf of the Nazi Party began to pervade society. Especially virulent in this regard was Julius Streicher
's pornographic publication Der Stürmer
, which published the alleged sexual misdemeanors of Jews for popular consumption. Mass violence against the Jews was encouraged by the Nazi regime, and on the night of 9–10 November 1938, dubbed Kristallnacht
, the regeme sanctioned the killing of Jews, the destruction of property and the torching of synagogues.
As Nazi occupation extended eastwards in World War II, antisemitic laws, agitation and propaganda were brought to occupied Europe, often building on local antisemitic traditions. In occupied Poland, Jews were forced into ghettos: in Warsaw
, Kraków
, Lvov, Lublin
and Radom
. Following the invasion of Russia in 1941, a campaign of mass murder in that country was conducted against the Jews by Nazi death squads called the Einsatzgruppen
. On 20 January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich
, deputed to find a "final solution" to the "Jewish problem", chaired the Wannsee Conference
at which all the Jews resident in Europe and North Africa were earmarked for extermination. Of the eleven million who were targeted, some six million men, women and children were killed by the Nazis between 1942 and 1945. This systematic genocide
is known as the Holocaust. To implement this horrific plan, Jews were transported to purpose-built extermination camps in occupied Poland, where they were killed in gas chambers
. Extermination camps were located at Auschwitz-Birkenau
, Chełmno, Bełżec, Majdanek
, Sobibór
and Treblinka
.
In the first half of the 20th century, Jews in the United States faced discrimination in employment, in access to residential and resort areas, in the membership of clubs and organizations and in tightened quotas on Jewish enrollment and teaching positions in colleges and universities. The lynching of Leo Frank
by a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia
, in 1915, turned the spotlight on antisemitism in the United States and led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League
, as well as to renewed support for the Ku Klux Klan
, which had been inactive since 1870.
Antisemitism in the United States
reached its peak during the 1920s and 1930s. The pioneer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford
propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent
. During the 1940s, the pioneer aviator
Charles Lindbergh
and many other prominent Americans led the America First Committee
in opposing any involvement in the war against fascism. Following a visit to Germany in 1936, Lindbergh wrote: "While I still have my reservations, I have come away with great admiration for the German people... Hitler must have far more vision and character than I thought… With all the things we criticize he is undoubtedly a great man…" Although America First avoided any appearance of antisemitism and voted to drop Henry Ford as a member for this reason, Ford continued his good friendship with Lindbergh, who visited him in the summer of 1941. One month later; Lindbergh gave a speech in Des Moines, Iowa in which he expressed the decidedly Ford-like view that: "The three most important groups which have been pressing this country towards war are the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt Administration." In his diary Lindbergh wrote: "We must limit to a reasonable amount the Jewish influence… Whenever the Jewish percentage of the total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur. It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country." During race riots in Detroit in 1943, Jewish businesses were targeted for looting and burning.
The German American Bund held parades in New York City in the late 1930s which featured Nazi uniforms and flags with swastika
s alongside American flags. Some 20,000 people listened to Bund leader Fritz Julius Kuhn at Madison Square Garden
in 1939 criticizing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld" and calling his New Deal
the "Jew Deal". By espousing a belief in the existence of a Bolshevik
-Jewish conspiracy in America, Kuhn's activities came under the scrutiny of the US House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and when the United States entered World War II most of the Bund's members were placed in internment camps, and some were deported at the end of the war.
Antisemitism in the USSR reached a peak in 1948–53 when several hundred Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were killed in a campaign against the so-called rootless cosmopolitan
.
The Kielce pogrom
and "March 1968 events" in communist Poland were further incidents of antisemitism in Europe. A common theme behind the anti-Jewish violence in Poland were blood libel
rumours.
The cult of Simon of Trent was disbanded in 1965 by Pope Paul VI
and his future veneration was forbidden, although a handful of extremists still promoted the fiction.
ing conspiracy theories began to seep into progressive circles, including stories about how a "New World Order
", also called the "Shadow Government" or "The Octopus", was manipulating world governments. Antisemitic conspiracism was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups. Some on the left adopted the rhetoric, which it has been argued, was made possible by their lack of knowledge of the history of fascism
and its use of "scapegoating, reductionist
and simplistic solutions, demagoguery
, and a conspiracy theory of history."
Towards the end of 1990, as the movement against the Gulf War
began to build, a number of far-right and antisemitic groups sought out alliances with left-wing anti-war coalitions, who began to speak openly about a "Jewish lobby
" that was encouraging the United States to invade the Middle East. This idea evolved into conspiracy theories about a "Zionist-occupied government
" (ZOG), which has been seen as equivalent to the early-20th century antisemitic hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
. The anti-war movement as a whole rejected these overtures by the political right.
In the late 20th century, leaving aside injudicious name-calling by senator Ernest Hollings
to fellow Democrat Howard Metzenbaum
on the floor of the Senate, the Crown Heights riots of 1991 were a violent expression of tensions within a very poor urban community, pitting African American
residents against followers of Hassidic Judaism. In the context of the first US-Iraq war, on September 15, 1990 Pat Buchanan
appeared on The McLaughlin Group
and said that "there are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East – the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States." He also said: "The Israelis want this war desperately because they want the United States to destroy the Iraqi war machine. They want us to finish them off. They don't care about our relations with the Arab world." When he delivered a keynote address at the 1992 Republican
National Convention, known as the Culture War Speech, Buchanan described "a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America".
nations, on Arab television shows and on websites.
In 2004, the United Kingdom set up an all-Parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism, which published its findings in 2006. The inquiry stated that: "Until recently, the prevailing opinion both within the Jewish community and beyond [had been] that antisemitism had receded to the point that it existed only on the margins of society." However, it found a reversal of this progress since 2000 and aimed to investigate the problem, identify the sources of contemporary antisemitism and make recommendations to improve the situation.
- Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in ancient Greece and Rome which was primarily ethnic in nature
- Christian anti-semitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages which was religious in nature and has extended into modern times
- Traditional Muslim antisemitism which was—at least in its classical form—nuanced, in that Jews were a protected class
- Political, social and economic antisemitism of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe which laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism
- Racial antisemitism that arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism
- Contemporary antisemitism which has been labeled by some as the New Antisemitism
Chanes suggests that these six stages could be merged into three categories: "ancient antisemitism, which was primarily ethnic in nature; Christian antisemitism, which was religious; and the racial antisemitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
In practice, it is difficult to differentiate antisemitism from the general ill-treatment of nations by other nations before the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
period, but since the adoption of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
in Europe, antisemitism has undoubtedly been present. The Islamic world has also seen the Jews historically as outsiders. The coming of the scientific and industrial revolution in 19th century Europe bred a new manifestation of antisemitism, based as much upon race as upon religion, culminating in the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps of World War II. The formation of the state of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in 1948 has created new antisemitic tensions in the Middle East.
Early animosity towards Jews
Feldman argues that "we must take issue with the communis sensus that the pagan writers are predominantly anti-Semitic.Indeed, he asserts that "one of the great puzzles that has confronted the students of anti-semitism is the alleged shift from pro-Jewish statements found in the first pagan writers who mention the Jews... to the vicious anti-Jewish statements thereafter, beginning with Manetho
Manetho
Manetho was an Egyptian historian and priest from Sebennytos who lived during the Ptolemaic era, approximately during the 3rd century BC. Manetho wrote the Aegyptiaca...
about 270B.C.E. In view of Manetho's anti-Jewish writings, antisemitism may have originated in Egypt and been spread by "the Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
retelling of Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
ian prejudices". As examples of pagan writers who spoke positively of Jews, Feldman cites Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, Theophrastus
Theophrastus
Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He came to Athens at a young age, and initially studied in Plato's school. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle. Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus his writings, and...
, Clearchus of Soli
Clearchus of Soli
Clearchus of Soli was a Greek philosopher of the 4th-3rd century BCE, belonging to Aristotle's Peripatetic school. He was born in Soli in Cyprus....
and Megasthenes
Megasthenes
Megasthenes was a Greek ethnographer in the Hellenistic period, author of the work Indica.He was born in Asia Minor and became an ambassador of Seleucus I of Syria possibly to Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra, India. However the exact date of his embassy is uncertain...
. Feldman concedes that, after Manetho, "the picture usually painted is one of universal and virulent anti-Judaism."
The first clear examples of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced back to Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
in the 3rd century BCE. Alexandria was home to the largest Jewish community in the world and the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, was produced there. Manetho
Manetho
Manetho was an Egyptian historian and priest from Sebennytos who lived during the Ptolemaic era, approximately during the 3rd century BC. Manetho wrote the Aegyptiaca...
, an Egyptian priest and historian of that time, wrote scathingly of the Jews and his themes are repeated in the works of Chaeremon
Chaeremon
Chaeremon was an Athenian dramatist of the first half of the fourth century BCE. He was generally considered a tragic poet like Choerilus. Aristotle said his works were intended for reading, not for representation...
, Lysimachus
Lysimachus
Lysimachus was a Macedonian officer and diadochus of Alexander the Great, who became a basileus in 306 BC, ruling Thrace, Asia Minor and Macedon.-Early Life & Career:...
, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon
Apollonius Molon
Apollonius Molon or Molo of Rhodes , Greek rhetorician who flourished about 70 BC.He was a native of Alabanda, a pupil of Menecles, and settled at Rhodes. He twice visited Rome as an ambassador from Rhodes, and Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Julius Caesar both took lessons from him...
, and in Apion
Apion
Apion , Graeco-Egyptian grammarian, sophist and commentator on Homer, was born at the Siwa Oasis, and flourished in the first half of the 1st century AD....
and Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
. One of the earliest anti-Jewish edict
Edict
An edict is an announcement of a law, often associated with monarchism. The Pope and various micronational leaders are currently the only persons who still issue edicts.-Notable edicts:...
s, promulgated by Antiochus Epiphanes in about 170–167 BCE, sparked a revolt of the Maccabees
Maccabees
The Maccabees were a Jewish rebel army who took control of Judea, which had been a client state of the Seleucid Empire. They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 164 BCE to 63 BCE, reasserting the Jewish religion, expanding the boundaries of the Land of Israel and reducing the influence...
in Judea
Judea
Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
.
The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria describes an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died. The violence in Alexandria may have been caused by the Jews being portrayed as misanthropes
Misanthropy
Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings...
. Tcherikover argues that the reason for hatred of Jews in the Hellenistic period was their separateness in the Greek cities, the poleis
Polis
Polis , plural poleis , literally means city in Greek. It could also mean citizenship and body of citizens. In modern historiography "polis" is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, so polis is often translated as "city-state."The...
. Bohak has argued, however, that early animosity against the Jews cannot be regarded as being anti-Judaic or antisemitic unless it arose from attitudes that were held against the Jews alone, and that many Greeks showed animosity toward any group they regarded as barbarians.
Statements exhibiting prejudice against Jews and their religion can be found in the works of many pagan Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
writers. Edward Flannery writes that it was the Jews' refusal to accept Greek religious and social standards that marked them out. Hecataetus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the early third century BCE, wrote that Moses "in remembrance of the exile of his people, instituted for them a misanthropic and inhospitable way of life." Manetho
Manetho
Manetho was an Egyptian historian and priest from Sebennytos who lived during the Ptolemaic era, approximately during the 3rd century BC. Manetho wrote the Aegyptiaca...
, an Egyptian historian, wrote that the Jews were expelled Egyptian lepers
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...
who had been taught by Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
"not to adore the gods." The same themes appeared in the works of Chaeremon
Chaeremon
Chaeremon was an Athenian dramatist of the first half of the fourth century BCE. He was generally considered a tragic poet like Choerilus. Aristotle said his works were intended for reading, not for representation...
, Lysimachus
Lysimachus
Lysimachus was a Macedonian officer and diadochus of Alexander the Great, who became a basileus in 306 BC, ruling Thrace, Asia Minor and Macedon.-Early Life & Career:...
, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon
Apollonius Molon
Apollonius Molon or Molo of Rhodes , Greek rhetorician who flourished about 70 BC.He was a native of Alabanda, a pupil of Menecles, and settled at Rhodes. He twice visited Rome as an ambassador from Rhodes, and Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Julius Caesar both took lessons from him...
, and in Apion
Apion
Apion , Graeco-Egyptian grammarian, sophist and commentator on Homer, was born at the Siwa Oasis, and flourished in the first half of the 1st century AD....
and Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
. Agatharchides of Cnidus wrote about the "ridiculous practices" of the Jews and of the "absurdity of their Law," and how Ptolemy Lagus
Ptolemy I Soter
Ptolemy I Soter I , also known as Ptolemy Lagides, c. 367 BC – c. 283 BC, was a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great, who became ruler of Egypt and founder of both the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Ptolemaic Dynasty...
was able to invade Jerusalem in 320 BC because its inhabitants were observing the Sabbath
Shabbat
Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
. Edward Flannery describes antisemitism in ancient times as essentially " cultural, taking the shape of a national xenophobia played out in political settings."
There is a recorded instance of an Ancient Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, desecrating the Temple in Jerusalem
Temple in Jerusalem
The Temple in Jerusalem or Holy Temple , refers to one of a series of structures which were historically located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, the current site of the Dome of the Rock. Historically, these successive temples stood at this location and functioned as the centre of...
and banning Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision
Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
, Shabbat
Shabbat
Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
observance and the study of Jewish religious books, during the period when Ancient Greece dominated the eastern Mediterranean. Statements exhibiting prejudice towards Jews and their religion can also be found in the works of a few pagan Greek and Roman writers, but the earliest occurrence of antisemitism has been the subject of debate among scholars, largely because different writers use different definitions of antisemitism. The terms "religious antisemitism" and "anti-Judaism
Anti-Judaism
Religious antisemitism is a form of antisemitism, which is the prejudice against, or hostility toward, the Jewish people based on hostility to Judaism and to Jews as a religious group...
" are sometimes used to refer to animosity towards Judaism as a religion rather than to Jews defined as an ethnic or racial group.
Roman Empire
Relations between the Jews in Palestine and the occupying Roman EmpireRoman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
were antagonistic from the very start and resulted in several rebellions
Jewish-Roman wars
The Jewish–Roman wars were a series of large-scale revolts by the Jews of Iudaea Province and Eastern Mediterranean against the Roman Empire. Some sources use the term to refer only to the First Jewish–Roman War and Bar Kokhba revolt...
.
Several ancient historians report that in 19 CE the Roman emperor Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...
expelled Jews from Rome. According to the Roman historian Suetonius
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....
, Tiberius tried to suppress all foreign religions. In the case of Jews, he sent young Jewish men, under the pretence of military service, to provinces noted for their unhealthy climate. He dismissed all other Jews from the city, under threat of life slavery for non-compliance. Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
, in his Jewish Antiquities, confirms that Tiberius ordered all Jews to be banished from Rome. Four thousand were sent to Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
but more, who were unwilling to become soldiers, were punished. Cassius Dio reports that Tiberius banished most of the Jews, who had been attempting to convert Romans to their religion. Philo of Alexandria reported that Sejanus
Sejanus
Lucius Aelius Seianus , commonly known as Sejanus, was an ambitious soldier, friend and confidant of the Roman Emperor Tiberius...
, one of Tiberius's lieutenants, may have been a prime mover in the persecution of the Jews.
The Romans refused to permit Jews to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem after its destruction by Titus
Titus
Titus , was Roman Emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, thus becoming the first Roman Emperor to come to the throne after his own father....
in 70 CE, imposed a tax on Jews (Fiscus Judaicus
Fiscus Judaicus
The Fiscus Iudaicus or Fiscus Judaicus was a tax collecting agency instituted to collect the tax imposed on Jews in the Roman Empire after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE in favor of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome.-Imposition:The tax was initially imposed by Roman...
) at the same time, ostensibly to finance the Temple of Jupiter in Rome, and renamed Judaea
Iudaea Province
Judaea or Iudaea are terms used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel...
as Syria Palestina. The Jerusalem Talmud
Jerusalem Talmud
The Jerusalem Talmud, talmud meaning "instruction", "learning", , is a collection of Rabbinic notes on the 2nd-century Mishnah which was compiled in the Land of Israel during the 4th-5th century. The voluminous text is also known as the Palestinian Talmud or Talmud de-Eretz Yisrael...
relates that, following Bar Kokhba's revolt
Bar Kokhba's revolt
The Bar Kokhba revolt 132–136 CE; or mered bar kokhba) against the Roman Empire, was the third major rebellion by the Jews of Judaea Province being the last of the Jewish-Roman Wars. Simon bar Kokhba, the commander of the revolt, was acclaimed as a Messiah, a heroic figure who could restore Israel...
(132–6 CE), the Romans destroyed very many Jews, "killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils." However, some historians argue that Rome suppressed revolts in all its conquered territories and point out that Tiberius expelled all foreign religions from Rome, not just the Jews.
Some accommodation, in fact, was later made with Judaism, and the Jews of the Diaspora
Diaspora
A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...
had privileges that others did not. Unlike other subjects of the Roman Empire, they had the right to maintain their religion and were not expected to accommodate themselves to local customs. Even after the First Jewish–Roman War, the Roman authorities refused to rescind Jewish privileges in some cities. And although Hadrian
Hadrian
Hadrian , was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138. He is best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome, he re-built the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma. In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and was philhellene in...
outlawed circumcision as a mutilation normally visited on people unable to consent, he later exempted the Jews. According to the 18th century historian Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
, there was greater tolerance from about 160 CE. Between 355 and 363 CE, permission was granted by Julian the Apostate
Julian the Apostate
Julian "the Apostate" , commonly known as Julian, or also Julian the Philosopher, was Roman Emperor from 361 to 363 and a noted philosopher and Greek writer....
to rebuild the Second Temple of Jerusalem.
It has been argued that European antisemitism has its roots in Roman policy.
The New Testament and early Christianity
Although the majority of the New TestamentNew Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
was written, ostensibly, by Jews who became followers of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, there are a number of passages in the New Testament that some see as antisemitic, or that have been used for antisemitic purposes, including:
- Jesus speaking to a group of PhariseesPhariseesThe Pharisees were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews during the Second Temple period beginning under the Hasmonean dynasty in the wake of...
: "I know that you are descendants of AbrahamAbrahamAbraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
; yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you... 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." (John 8:37-39, 44-47, RSVRevised Standard VersionThe Revised Standard Version is an English translation of the Bible published in the mid-20th century. It traces its history to William Tyndale's New Testament translation of 1525. The RSV is an authorized revision of the American Standard Version of 1901...
)
- Saint StephenSaint StephenSaint Stephen The Protomartyr , the protomartyr of Christianity, is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Churches....
speaking before a synagogue council just before his execution: "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy SpiritHoly SpiritHoly Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it." (Acts 7:51-53, RSV)
Some biblical scholars point out that Jesus and Stephen are presented as Jews speaking to other Jews, and that their use of broad accusations against Israel is borrowed from Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
and the later Jewish prophets. Other scholars hold that verses like these reflect Jewish-Christian tensions that were emerging in the late 1st or early 2nd century. Today, nearly all Christian denominations place little emphasis on verses such as these, and reject their misuse.
After Jesus' death, the New Testament portrays the Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem as hostile to Jesus' followers, and as occasionally using force against them. Stephen is executed by stoning. Before his conversion, Saul puts followers of Jesus in prison. After his conversion, Saul
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...
is whipped at various times by Jewish authorities. He is accused by Jewish authorities before the Roman courts. However, opposition by gentiles is also described, and more generally, there are widespread references in the New Testament to the suffering experienced by Jesus' followers at the hands of others, particularly the Romans.
Attacks on synagogues
When Christianity became the state religion of Rome in the 4th century, Jews became the object of religious intolerance and political oppression. Christian literature began to display extreme hostility towards Jews, which occasionally resulted in attacks and the burning of synagogues. This hostility was reflected in the edicts both of church councils and state laws. In the early 4th century, intermarriage between unconverted Jews and Christians was prohibited under the provisions of the Synod of ElviraSynod of Elvira
The Synod of Elvira was an ecclesiastical synod held in Elvira, now Granada, in what was then the Roman province of Hispania Baetica, which ranks among the more important provincial synods, for the breadth of its canons. Its date cannot be determined with exactness, but is believed to be in the...
. The Council of Antioch (341) prohibited Christians from celebrating Passover with the Jews whilst the Council of Laodicea
Council of Laodicea
The Council of Laodicea was a regional synod of approximately thirty clerics from Asia Minor that assembled about 363–364 AD in Laodicea, Phrygia Pacatiana.-Historical context:...
forbade Christians from keeping the Jewish Sabbath.
The Roman emperor Constantine I
Constantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
instituted several laws concerning the Jews: they were forbidden to own Christian slaves or to circumcise their slaves. The conversion of Christians to Judaism was outlawed. Religious services were regulated, congregations restricted, but Jews were allowed to enter Jerusalem on Tisha B'Av
Tisha B'Av
|Av]],") is an annual fast day in Judaism, named for the ninth day of the month of Av in the Hebrew calendar. The fast commemorates the destruction of both the First Temple and Second Temple in Jerusalem, which occurred about 655 years apart, but on the same Hebrew calendar date...
, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple.
Discrimination became worse in the 5th century. The edicts of the Codex Theodosianus
Codex Theodosianus
The Codex Theodosianus was a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperors since 312. A commission was established by Theodosius II in 429 and the compilation was published in the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 438...
(438) barred Jews from the civil service, the army and the legal profession. The Jewish Patriarchate was abolished and the scope of Jewish courts restricted. Synagogues were confiscated and old synagogues could be repaired only if they were in danger of collapse. Synagogues fell into ruin or were converted to churches. Synagogues were destroyed in Tortona
Tortona
Tortona is a comune of Piemonte, in the Province of Alessandria, Italy. Tortona is sited on the right bank of the Scrivia between the plain of Marengo and the foothills of the Ligurian Apennines.-History:...
(350), Rome (388 and 500), Raqqa (388), Minorca
Minorca
Min Orca or Menorca is one of the Balearic Islands located in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to Spain. It takes its name from being smaller than the nearby island of Majorca....
(418), Daphne (near Antioch
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...
, 489 and 507), Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
(500), Ravenna
Ravenna
Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...
(495), Tours
Tours
Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...
(585) and in Orléans
Orléans
-Prehistory and Roman:Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the Carnutes tribe where the Druids held their annual assembly. It was conquered and destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then rebuilt under the Roman Empire...
(590). Other synagogues were confiscated: Urfa in 411, several in Judea between 419 and 422, Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
in 442 and 569, Antioch
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...
in 423, Vannes
Vannes
Vannes is a commune in the Morbihan department in Brittany in north-western France. It was founded over 2000 years ago.-Geography:Vannes is located on the Gulf of Morbihan at the mouth of two rivers, the Marle and the Vincin. It is around 100 km northwest of Nantes and 450 km south west...
in 465, Diyarbakir
Diyarbakir
Diyarbakır is one of the largest cities in southeastern Turkey...
in 500 Terracina
Terracina
Terracina is a town and comune of the province of Latina - , Italy, 76 km SE of Rome by rail .-Ancient times:...
in 590, Cagliari
Cagliari
Cagliari is the capital of the island of Sardinia, a region of Italy. Cagliari's Sardinian name Casteddu literally means castle. It has about 156,000 inhabitants, or about 480,000 including the outlying townships : Elmas, Assemini, Capoterra, Selargius, Sestu, Monserrato, Quartucciu, Quartu...
in 590 and Palermo
Palermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
in 590.
Accusations of the killing of God
DeicideDeicide
Deicide is the killing of a god. The term deicide was coined in the 17th century from medieval Latin *deicidium, from de-us "god" and -cidium "cutting, killing")...
is the killing of a god. In the context of Christianity, deicide refers to the responsibility for the death of Jesus. The accusation of Jews in deicide
Jewish deicide
Jewish deicide is a belief that places the responsibility for the death of Jesus on the Jewish people as a whole.This deicide accusation is expressed in the ethnoreligious slur "Christ-killer." As a part of Second Vatican Council , the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Paul VI issued a declaration...
has been the most powerful warrant for antisemitism by Christians.
The earliest recorded instance of an accusation of deicide against the Jewish people as a whole — that they were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus — occurs in a sermon of 167 CE attributed to Melito of Sardis
Melito of Sardis
Melito of Sardis was the bishop of Sardis near Smyrna in western Anatolia, and a great authority in Early Christianity: Jerome, speaking of the Old Testament canon established by Melito, quotes Tertullian to the effect that he was esteemed a prophet by many of the faithful...
entitled Peri Pascha, On the Passover. This text blames the Jews for allowing King Herod and Caiaphas to execute Jesus. Melito does not attribute particular blame to Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilatus , known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate , was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus...
, mentioning only that Pilate washed his hands of guilt. The sermon is written in Greek, but may have been an appeal to Rome to spare Christians at a time when Christians were widely persecuted.
The Latin word deicidas, from which the word deicide is derived, was used in the 4th century by Peter Chrystologus in his sermon number 172. Though not part of Roman Catholic dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
, many Christians, including members of the clergy
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
, once held Jews to be collectively responsible for killing Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews present at Jesus’ death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time had committed the sin of deicide, or God-killing.
Middle Ages
There was continuing hostility to Judaism from the late Roman period into medieval times. During the Middle Ages in Europe there was a full-scale persecution of Jews in many places, with blood libelBlood libel
Blood libel is a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, usually Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays...
s, expulsions, forced conversion
Forced conversion
A forced conversion is the religious conversion or acceptance of a philosophy against the will of the subject, often with the threatened consequence of earthly penalties or harm. These consequences range from job loss and social isolation to incarceration, torture or death...
s and killings. In the 12th century, there were Christians who believed that some, or possibly all, of the Jews possessed magical powers and had gained these powers from making a pact with the devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
. Judensau
Judensau
Judensau is an image of Jews in obscene contact with a large sow , which in Judaism is an unclean animal, that appeared during the 13th century in Germany and some other European countries; its popularity lasted for over 600 years.-Background and images:The Jewish prohibition of pork comes from...
images began to appear in Germany.
The persecution of the Jews in Europe reached a climax during the Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
. At the time of the First Crusade
First Crusade
The First Crusade was a military expedition by Western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquest of the Levant, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem...
, in 1096, a German Crusade
German Crusade, 1096
The call for the First Crusade touched off new persecutions of Jews in which peasant crusaders from France and Germany attacked Jewish communities.-Background:The preaching of the First Crusade inspired an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence...
destroyed flourishing Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube. In the Second Crusade
Second Crusade
The Second Crusade was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa the previous year to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Crusade by Baldwin of Boulogne in 1098...
in 1147, the Jews in France were the victims of frequent killings and atrocities. The Jews were also subjected to attacks during the Shepherds' Crusade
Shepherds' Crusade
The Shepherds' Crusade refers to separate events from the 13th and 14th century. The first took place in 1251 during the Seventh Crusade; the second occurred in 1320.-Shepherds' Crusade, 1251:...
s of 1251 and 1320. Following these crusades, Jews were subject to expulsions, including, in 1290, the banishing of all English Jews. In 1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France and in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of those expelled fled to Poland.
As the Black Death
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews often became the scapegoats. Rumors spread that they had caused this epidemic by deliberately poisoning wells
Well poisoning
Well-poisoning is the act of malicious manipulation of potable water resources in order to cause illness or death, or to deny an opponent access to fresh water resources....
. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by the ensuing hatred and violence. Pope Clement VI
Pope Clement VI
Pope Clement VI , bornPierre Roger, the fourth of the Avignon Popes, was pope from May 1342 until his death in December of 1352...
tried to protect Jews by a papal bull
Papal bull
A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....
dated July 6, 1348, and by an additional bull soon afterwards, but several months later, 900 Jews were burnt alive in Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
, where the plague had not yet affected the city.
Relations in the Islamic world
From the 9th century onwards, the medieval Islamic worldIslamic Golden Age
During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...
imposed dhimmi
Dhimmi
A , is a non-Muslim subject of a state governed in accordance with sharia law. Linguistically, the word means "one whose responsibility has been taken". This has to be understood in the context of the definition of state in Islam...
status on both Christian and Jewish minorities, although Jews were allowed more freedom to practise their religion in the Muslim world
Muslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
than they were in Christian Europe.
In Muslim Spain
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...
, the Jews prospered under the tolerant rule of the Ummayad caliphate, and Cordova
Cordova
-Places:*Cordova, Alabama, USA*Cordova, Alaska, USA*Cordova, Cebu, Philippines*Cordova, Illinois, USA*Cordova, Maryland, USA*Cordova, Nebraska, USA*Cordova, New Mexico, USA*Cordova, South Carolina, USA*Cordova, Tennessee, USA*Córdoba, Argentina...
became a centre of Jewish culture. However, the advent of the Almoravides from North Africa in the 11th century saw harsh measures taken against both Christians and Jews. As part of this repression there were pogroms against Jews in Cordova in 1011 and in Granada in 1066
1066 Granada massacre
The 1066 Granada massacre took place on 30 December 1066 when a Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, which was at that time in Muslim-ruled al-Andalus, assassinated the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred many of the Jewish population of the city.-Joseph ibn Naghrela:Joseph...
.
The Almohad
Almohad
The Almohad Dynasty , was a Moroccan Berber-Muslim dynasty founded in the 12th century that established a Berber state in Tinmel in the Atlas Mountains in roughly 1120.The movement was started by Ibn Tumart in the Masmuda tribe, followed by Abd al-Mu'min al-Gumi between 1130 and his...
s, who by 1147 had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories, took a less tolerant view still and treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians took a third option if they could, and fled. Some, such as the family of Maimonides
Maimonides
Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn in Arabic, or Rambam , was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages...
, went east to more tolerant Muslim lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms. At certain times in the Middle Ages, in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted. Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
.
Occupational and other restrictions
Restrictions upon Jewish occupations were imposed by Christian authorities. Local rulers and church officials closed many professions to Jews, pushing them into marginal roles considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting and moneylending, occupations only tolerated as a "necessary evil". Catholic doctrine at the time held that lending money for interest was a sinSin
In religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...
, and it was an occupation forbidden to Christians. Not being subject to this restriction, Jews made this business their own, despite possible criticism of usury in the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
and later sections of the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
. Unfortunately, this led to many negative stereotypes of Jews as insolent, greedy usurers
Usury
Usury Originally, when the charging of interest was still banned by Christian churches, usury simply meant the charging of interest at any rate . In countries where the charging of interest became acceptable, the term came to be used for interest above the rate allowed by law...
and the understandable tensions between creditors (typically Jews) and debtors (typically Christians) added to social, political, religious, and economic strains. Peasants who were forced to pay their taxes to Jews could see them as personally taking their money while unaware of those on whose behalf these Jews worked.
Jews were subject to a wide range of legal disabilities
Disabilities (Jewish)
Disabilities were legal restrictions and limitations placed on Jews in the Middle Ages. They included provisions requiring Jews to wear specific and identifying clothing such as the Jewish hat and the yellow badge, restricting Jews to certain cities and towns or in certain parts of towns , and...
and restrictions throughout the Middle Ages, some of which lasted until the end of the 19th century. Even moneylending and peddling were at times forbidden to them. The number of Jews permitted to reside in different places was limited; they were concentrated in ghettos and were not allowed to own land; they were subject to discriminatory taxes on entering cities or districts other than their own and were forced to swear special Jewish Oaths
Oath More Judaico
The Oath More Judaico or Jewish Oath was a special form of oath, accompanied by certain ceremonies and often intentionally humiliating or dangerous, that Jews were required to take in European courts of law until the 20th century...
, and they suffered a variety of other measures. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and Muslims must wear distinguishing clothing. The most common such clothing was the Jewish hat, which was already worn by many Jews as a self-identifying mark, but was now often made compulsory.
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
members) were prestigious, while others were worn by ostracised outcasts such as leper
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...
s, reformed heretics
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
and prostitutes
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
. As with all sumptuary law
Sumptuary law
Sumptuary laws are laws that attempt to regulate habits of consumption. Black's Law Dictionary defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc." Traditionally, they were...
s, the degree to which these laws were followed and enforced varied greatly. Sometimes, Jews sought to evade the badges by paying what amounted to bribes in the form of temporary "exemptions" to kings, which were revoked and re-paid for whenever the king needed to raise funds. By the end of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, the hat seems to have become rare, but the badge lasted longer and remained in some places until the 18th century.
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of military campaigns sanctioned by the Papacy in Rome, which took place from the end of the 11th century until the 13th century. They began as endeavors to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims but developed into territorial wars.The People's Crusade
People's Crusade
The People's Crusade is part of the First Crusade and lasted roughly six months from April 1096 to October. It is also known as the Peasants' Crusade or the Paupers' Crusade...
that accompanied the first Crusade
First Crusade
The First Crusade was a military expedition by Western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquest of the Levant, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem...
attacked Jewish communities in Germany, France, and England, and killed many Jews. Entire communities, like those of Treves
Trèves
-France:Trèves is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:* Trèves, in the Rhône department* Trèves, in the Gard department* Trèves, former commune of the Maine-et-Loire department, now part of Chênehutte-Trèves-Cunault...
, Speyer
Speyer
Speyer is a city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located beside the river Rhine, Speyer is 25 km south of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. Founded by the Romans, it is one of Germany's oldest cities...
, Worms
Worms, Germany
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.Established by the Celts, who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over the title of "Oldest City in Germany." Worms is the only...
, Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
, and Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, were murdered by armed mobs. About 12,000 Jews are said to have perished in the Rhineland
Rhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
cities alone between May and July 1096. Before the Crusades, Jews had practically a monopoly on the trade in Eastern products, but the closer connection between Europe and the East brought about by the Crusades raised up a class of Christian merchant traders, and from this time onwards, restrictions on the sale of goods by Jews became frequent. The religious zeal fomented by the Crusades at times burned as fiercely against Jews as against Muslims, although attempts were made by bishops during the first Crusade and by the papacy during the second Crusade
Second Crusade
The Second Crusade was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa the previous year to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Crusade by Baldwin of Boulogne in 1098...
to stop Jews from being attacked. Both economically and socially, the Crusades were disastrous for European Jews. They prepared the way for the anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III
Pope Innocent III
Pope Innocent III was Pope from 8 January 1198 until his death. His birth name was Lotario dei Conti di Segni, sometimes anglicised to Lothar of Segni....
.
The Jewish defenders of Jerusalem retreated to their synagogue to "prepare for death" once the Crusaders had breached the outer walls of the city during the siege of 1099
Siege of Jerusalem (1099)
The Siege of Jerusalem took place from June 7 to July 15, 1099 during the First Crusade. The Crusaders stormed and captured the city from Fatimid Egypt.-Background:...
. The chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi
Ibn al-Qalanisi
Hamza ibn Asad abu Ya'la ibn al-Qalanisi was an Arab politician and chronicler in Damascus in the 12th century.He descended from the Banu Tamim tribe, and was among the well-educated nobility of the city of Damascus...
states that the building was set on fire whilst the Jews were still inside. The Crusaders were supposedly reported as hoisting up their shields and singing "Christ We Adore Thee!" while they encircled the burning building." Following the siege, Jews captured from the Dome of the Rock
Dome of the Rock
The Dome of the Rock is a shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. The structure has been refurbished many times since its initial completion in 691 CE at the order of Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik...
, along with native Christians, were made to clean the city of the slain. Numerous Jews and their holy books (including the Aleppo Codex
Aleppo Codex
The Aleppo Codex is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The codex was written in the 10th century A.D.The codex has long been considered to be the most authoritative document in the masorah , the tradition by which the Hebrew Scriptures have been preserved from generation to generation...
) were held ransom by Raymond of Toulouse. The Karaite Jewish community of Ashkelon
Ashkelon
Ashkelon is a coastal city in the South District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, south of Tel Aviv, and north of the border with the Gaza Strip. The ancient seaport of Ashkelon dates back to the Neolithic Age...
(Ascalon) reached out to their coreligionists in Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
to first pay for the holy books and then rescued pockets of Jews over several months. All that could be ransomed were liberated by the summer of 1100. The few who could not be rescued were either converted to Christianity or murdered.
In the County of Toulouse, in southern France, toleration and favour shown to Jews was one of the main complaints of the Roman Church against the Counts of Toulouse at the beginning of the 13th century. Organised and official persecution of the Jews became a normal feature of life in southern France only after the Albigensian Crusade
Albigensian Crusade
The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Catholic Church to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc...
, because it was only then that the Church became powerful enough to insist that measures of discrimination be applied. In 1209, stripped to the waist and barefoot, Raymond VI of Toulouse was obliged to swear that he would no longer allow Jews to hold public office. In 1229 his son Raymond VII, underwent a similar ceremony.
Blood libels and host desecration
On many occasions, Jews were accused of drinking the blood of Christian children in mockery of the Christian EucharistEucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
. According to the authors of these so-called blood libel
Blood libel
Blood libel is a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, usually Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays...
s, the 'procedure' for the alleged sacrifice was something like this: a child who had not yet reached puberty was kidnapped and taken to a hidden place. The child would be tortured by Jews, and a crowd would gather at the place of execution (in some accounts the synagogue itself) and engage in a mock tribunal to try the child. The child would be presented to the tribunal naked and tied and eventually be condemned to death. In the end, the child would be crowned with thorns and tied or nailed to a wooden cross. The cross would be raised, and the blood dripping from the child's wounds would be caught in bowls or glasses and then drunk. Finally, the child would be killed with a thrust through the heart from a spear, sword, or dagger. Its dead body would be removed from the cross and concealed or disposed of, but in some instances rituals of black magic
Black magic
Black magic is the type of magic that draws on assumed malevolent powers or is used with the intention to kill, steal, injure, cause misfortune or destruction, or for personal gain without regard to harmful consequences. As a term, "black magic" is normally used by those that do not approve of its...
would be performed on it. This method, with some variations, can be found in all the alleged Christian descriptions of ritual murder by Jews.
William of Norwich
William of Norwich was an English boy whose death was, at the time, attributed to the Jewish community of Norwich. It is the first known medieval accusation of ritual murder against Jews....
(d. 1144) is often cited as the first known accusation of ritual murder against Jews. The Jews of Norwich
Norwich
Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...
, England were accused of murder after a Christian boy, William, was found dead. It was claimed that the Jews had tortured and crucified him. The legend of William of Norwich became a cult, and the child acquired the status of a holy martyr. Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln
Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln
Hugh of Lincoln was an English boy, whose death prompted a blood libel with ramifications that reach until today. Hugh is known as Little Saint Hugh to distinguish him from Saint Hugh, otherwise Hugh of Lincoln. The style is often corrupted to Little Sir Hugh...
(d. 1255), in the 13th century, reputedly had his belly cut open and his entrails
Disembowelment
Disembowelment is the removal of some or all of the organs of the gastrointestinal tract , usually through a horizontal incision made across the abdominal area. Disembowelment may result from an accident, but has also been used as a method of torture and execution...
removed for some occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
purpose, such as a divination ritual
Haruspex
In Roman and Etruscan religious practice, a haruspex was a man trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy, hepatoscopy or hepatomancy. Haruspicy is the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry...
, after being taken from a cross. Simon of Trent
Simon of Trent
Simon of Trent ; also known as Simeon; was a boy from the city of Trento, Italy whose disappearance was blamed on the leaders of the city's Jewish community based on their confessions under torture, causing a major blood libel in Europe.-Background:Shortly before Simon went missing, Bernardine of...
(d. 1475), in the fifteenth, was held over a large bowl so that all his blood could be collected, it was alleged.
During the Middle Ages, such blood libels were directed against Jews in many parts of Europe. The believers of these accusations reasoned that the Jews, having crucified Jesus, continued to thirst for pure and innocent blood, at the expense of innocent Christian children.
Jews were sometimes falsely accused of desecrating consecrated hosts in a reenactment of the Crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
; this crime was known as host desecration
Host desecration
Host desecration is a form of sacrilege in Christianity involving the mistreatment or malicious use of a consecrated host— the sacred bread used in the Eucharistic service or Mass...
and carried the death penalty.
Expulsions from France and England
The practice of expelling Jews, the confiscation of their property and further ransomRansom
Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or it can refer to the sum of money involved.In an early German law, a similar concept was called bad influence...
for their return was utilized to enrich the French crown during the 13th and 14th centuries. The most notable such expulsions were from Paris by Philip Augustus in 1182, from the whole of France by Louis IX
Louis IX of France
Louis IX , commonly Saint Louis, was King of France from 1226 until his death. He was also styled Louis II, Count of Artois from 1226 to 1237. Born at Poissy, near Paris, he was an eighth-generation descendant of Hugh Capet, and thus a member of the House of Capet, and the son of Louis VIII and...
in 1254, by Charles IV
Charles IV of France
Charles IV, known as the Fair , was the King of France and of Navarre and Count of Champagne from 1322 to his death: he was the last French king of the senior Capetian lineage....
in 1306, by Charles V
Charles V of France
Charles V , called the Wise, was King of France from 1364 to his death in 1380 and a member of the House of Valois...
in 1322 and by Charles VI
Charles VI of France
Charles VI , called the Beloved and the Mad , was the King of France from 1380 to 1422, as a member of the House of Valois. His bouts with madness, which seem to have begun in 1392, led to quarrels among the French royal family, which were exploited by the neighbouring powers of England and Burgundy...
in 1394.
To finance his war against Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
in 1276, Edward I of England
Edward I of England
Edward I , also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved early in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons...
taxed Jewish moneylenders. When the moneylenders could no longer pay the tax, they were accused of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, Edward abolished their "privilege" to lend money, restricted their movements and activities and forced Jews to wear a yellow patch
Yellow badge
The yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
. The heads of Jewish households were then arrested with over 300 being taken to the Tower of London
Tower of London
Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...
and executed. Others were killed in their homes. All Jews were banished from the country in 1290, where it was possible that hundreds were killed or drowned while trying to leave the country. All the money and property of these dispossessed Jews was confiscated. No Jews were known to be in England thereafter until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
reversed the policy.
The Black Death
Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by violence during the ravages of the Black Death, particularly in the Iberian peninsula and in the Germanic Empire. In ProvenceProvence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
, 40 Jews were burnt in Toulon
Toulon
Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....
as quickly after the outbreak as April 1348. "Never mind that Jews were not immune from the ravages of the plague; they were tortured until they "confessed" to crimes that they could not possibly have committed. In one such case, a man named Agimet was ... coerced to say that Rabbi Peyret of Chambéry
Chambéry
Chambéry is a city in the department of Savoie, located in the Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France.It is the capital of the department and has been the historical capital of the Savoy region since the 13th century, when Amadeus V of Savoy made the city his seat of power.-Geography:Chambéry...
(near Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
) had ordered him to poison the wells in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, and elsewhere. In the aftermath of Agimet's "confession", the Jews of Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
were burned alive on February 14, 1349."
Spain and Portugal
In the Catholic kingdoms of late medieval and early modern Spain, oppressive policies and attitudes led many Jews to embrace Christianity. Such Jews were known as conversos or Marranos. Suspicions that they might still secretly be adherents of Judaism led Ferdinand II of AragonFerdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand the Catholic was King of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, jure uxoris King of Castile and then regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of...
and Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon brought stability to both kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor...
to institute the Spanish Inquisition
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
. The Inquisition used torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
to elicit confessions and delivered judgment at public ceremonials known as autos da fe before they gave their victims over to the secular authorities for punishment. Under this dispensation, some 30,000 were condemned to death and executed by being burnt alive.
In 1492, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile issued an edict of expulsion
Alhambra decree
The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year.The edict was formally revoked on 16 December 1968, following the Second...
of Jews from Spain, giving Jews four months to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. Some 165,000 emigrated and some 50,000 converted to Christianity.
Portugal followed suit in December 1496. However, those expelled could only leave the country in ships specified by the King. When those who chose to leave the country arrived at the port in Lisbon, they were met by clerics and soldiers who used force, coercion and promises to baptize them and prevent them from leaving the country. This episode technically ended the presence of Jews in Portugal. Afterwards, all converted Jews and their descendants would be referred to as New Christians or marranos. They were given a grace period of thirty years during which no inquiry into their faith would be allowed. This period was later extended until 1534. However, a popular riot in 1504 resulted in the deaths of up to five thousand Jews, and the execution of the leaders of the riot by King Manuel
Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...
. Those labeled as New Christians were under the surveillance of the Portuguese Inquisition
Portuguese Inquisition
The Portuguese Inquisition was formally established in Portugal in 1536 at the request of the King of Portugal, João III. Manuel I had asked for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515 to fulfill the commitment of marriage with Maria of Aragon, but it was only after his death that the Pope...
from 1536 until 1821.
Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal, known as Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...
from the Hebrew word for Spain, fled to North Africa, Turkey and Palestine within the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, and to Holland, France and Italy. Within the Ottoman Empire, Jews could openly practise their religion. Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
in Holland also became a focus for settlement by the persecuted Jews from many lands in succeeding centuries.
Anti-Judaism and the Reformation
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
, an Augustinian friar and an ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
, wrote antagonistically about Jews in his pamphlet On the Jews and their Lies, written in 1543. He portrays the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriates them and provides detailed recommendations for a pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
against them, calling for their permanent oppression and expulsion. At one point he writes: "...we are at fault in not slaying them..." a passage that "may be termed the first work of modern antisemitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
."
Luther's harsh comments about the Jews are seen by many as a continuation of medieval Christian antisemitism. Muslow and Popkin assert that, "the antisemitism of the early modern period was even worse than that of the Middle Ages; and nowhere was this more obvious than in those areas which roughly encompass modern-day Germany, especially among Lutherans."
In his final sermon shortly before his death, however, Luther preached: "We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they might become converted and would receive the Lord."
Canonization of Simon of Trent
Simon of TrentSimon of Trent
Simon of Trent ; also known as Simeon; was a boy from the city of Trento, Italy whose disappearance was blamed on the leaders of the city's Jewish community based on their confessions under torture, causing a major blood libel in Europe.-Background:Shortly before Simon went missing, Bernardine of...
was a boy from the city of Trento, Italy, who was found dead at the age of two in 1475, having allegedly been kidnapped, mutilated, and drained of blood. His disappearance was blamed on the leaders of the city's Jewish community, based on confessions extracted under torture, in a case that fueled the rampant antisemitism of the time. Simon was regarded as a saint, and was canonized by Pope Sixtus V
Pope Sixtus V
Pope Sixtus V , born Felice Peretti di Montalto, was Pope from 1585 to 1590.-Early life:The chronicler Andrija Zmajević states that Felice's family originated from modern-day Montenegro...
in 1588.
Seventeenth century
In the mid-17th century, Peter StuyvesantPeter Stuyvesant
Peter Stuyvesant , served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York...
, the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....
, later New York City, sought to bolster the position of the Dutch Reformed Church
Dutch Reformed Church
The Dutch Reformed Church was a Reformed Christian denomination in the Netherlands. It existed from the 1570s to 2004, the year it merged with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands to form the Protestant Church in the...
by trying to stem the religious influence of Jews, Lutherans, Catholics and Quakers. He stated that Jews were "deceitful", "very repugnant", and "hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ". However, religious plurality was already a cultural tradition and a legal obligation in New Amsterdam and in the Netherlands, and his superiors at the Dutch West India Company
Dutch West India Company
Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx...
in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
overruled him.
During the mid-to-late-17th century the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...
was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over 3 million people). The decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, including emigration, deaths from diseases and captivity in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. These conflicts began in 1648 when Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state...
instigated the Khmelnytsky Uprising
Khmelnytsky Uprising
The Khmelnytsky Uprising, was a Cossack rebellion in the Ukraine between the years 1648–1657 which turned into a Ukrainian war of liberation from Poland...
against the Polish aristocracy and the Jews who administered their estates. Khmelnytsky's Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
s massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and southern areas that he controlled (now the Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
). This persecution led many Jews to pin their hopes on a man called Shabbatai Zevi who emerged in the Ottoman Empire at this time and proclaimed himself Messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
in 1665. However his later conversion to Islam dashed these hopes and led many Jews to discredit the traditional belief in the coming of the Messiah as the hope of salvation.
Eighteenth century
In many European countries the 18th century "Age of EnlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
" saw the dismantling of archaic corporate, hierarchical forms of society in favour of individual equality of citizens before the law. How this new state of affairs would affect previously autonomous, though subordinated, Jewish communities became known as the Jewish question
Jewish Question
The Jewish question encompasses the issues and resolutions surrounding the historically unequal civil, legal and national statuses between minority Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jews, particularly in Europe. The first issues discussed and debated by societies, politicians and writers in western and...
. In many countries, enhanced civil rights were gradually extended to the Jews, though often only in a partial form and on condition that the Jews abandon many aspects of their previous identity in favour of integration and assimilation with the dominant society.
In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
limited the number of Jews allowed to live in Breslau to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families and encouraged a similar practice in other Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n cities. In 1750 he issued the Revidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die Judenschaft: forcing these "protected" Jews to "either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin." In the same year, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa of Austria
Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma...
ordered Jews out of Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
but soon reversed her position, on condition that they pay for their readmission every ten years. This extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
was known as malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752 she introduced a law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
abolished most of these practices in his Toleranzpatent, on the condition that Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
and Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
were eliminated from public records and that judicial autonomy was annulled.
In accordance with the anti-Jewish precepts of the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
, Russia's discriminatory policies towards Jews intensified when the partition of Poland in the 18th century resulted, for the first time in Russian history, in the possession of land with a large population of Jews. This land was designated as the Pale of Settlement
Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...
from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia. In 1772, the empress of Russia Catherine II forced the Jews of the Pale of Settlement to stay in their shtetls and forbade them from returning to the towns that they occupied before the partition of Poland.
Nineteenth century
Following legislation supporting the equality of French Jews with other citizens during the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, similar laws promoting Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
were enacted in the early 19th century in those parts of Europe over which France had influence. The old laws restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited their property rights, rights of worship and occupation, were rescinded.
Despite this, traditional discrimination and hostility to Jews on religious grounds persisted and was supplemented by racial antisemitism, encouraged by the work of racial theorists such as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and particularly his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Race of 1853–5. Nationalist agendas based on ethnicity, known as ethnonationalism, usually excluded the Jews from the national community as an alien race. Allied to this were theories of Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
, which stressed a putative conflict between higher and lower races of human beings. Such theories, usually posited by white Europeans, advocated the superiority of white Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
s to Semitic
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
Jews.
Germany
Civil rights granted to Jews in Germany, following the occupation of that country by the French under Napoleon, were rescinded after his defeat. Pleas to retain them by diplomats at the Congress of ViennaCongress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
peace conference (1814–5) were unsuccessful. In 1819, German Jews were attacked in the Hep-Hep riots
Hep-Hep riots
The Hep-Hep riots were early 19th century pogroms against German Jews. The antisemitic communal violence began on August 2, 1819 in Würzburg and soon reached as far as regions of Denmark, Poland, Latvia and Bohemia. Many Jews were killed and much Jewish property was destroyed.-Historical...
. Full Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
was not granted in Germany until 1871, when the country was united under the Hohenzollern dynasty.
In 1850, the German composer Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
published Das Judenthum in der Musik
Das Judenthum in der Musik
Das Judenthum in der Musik is an essay by Richard Wagner, attacking Jews in general and the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Felix Mendelssohn in particular, which was published under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik of Leipzig in...
("Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik was a music magazine published in Leipzig, co-founded by Robert Schumann, his teacher and future father-in law Friedrich Wieck, and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke...
. The essay began as an attack on Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries (and rivals) Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
and Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
, but expanded to accuse Jewish influences more widely of being a harmful and alien element in German culture
Culture of Germany
German culture began long before the rise of Germany as a nation-state and spanned the entire German-speaking world. From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular...
.
The term "antisemitism" was coined by the German agitator and publicist, Wilhelm Marr
Wilhelm Marr
Wilhelm Marr was a German agitator and publicist, who coined the term "antisemitism" .-Life:Marr was born in Magdeburg as the only son of an actor and stage director. He went to a primary school in Hannover, then to a high school in Braunschweig...
in 1879. In that year, Marr founded the Antisemites League and published a book called Victory of Jewry over Germandom. The late 1870s saw the growth of antisemitic political parties in Germany. These included the Christian Social Party
Christian Social Party (Germany)
The Christian Social Party was a right-wing political party in the German Empire, founded in 1878 by Adolf Stoecker as the Christlichsoziale Arbeiterpartei . The party combined a strong Christian and conservative programme with progressive ideas on labour, and tried to provide an alternative for...
, founded in 1878 by Adolf Stoecker
Adolf Stoecker
Adolf Stoecker was the court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm II, a politician, and a German Lutheran theologian who founded one of the first Christian Social Gospel political parties in Germany, the Christian Social Party.-Life:Stoecker was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony.A staunch Protestant,...
, the Lutheran chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, as well as a German Social Antisemitic Party and an Antisemitic People's Party. However, they did not enjoy mass electoral support and at their peak in 1907, had only 16 deputies out of a total of 397 in the Reichstag.
France
The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian WarFranco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
(1870–1) was blamed by some on the Jews. Jews were accused of weakening the national spirit through association with republicanism, capitalism and anti-clericalism, particularly by authoritarian, right wing, clerical and royalist groups. These accusations were spread in antisemitic journals such as La Libre Parole, founded by Edouard Drumont
Edouard Drumont
Édouard Adolphe Drumont was a French journalist and writer. He founded the Antisemitic League of France in 1889, and was the founder and editor of the newspaper La Libre Parole.- Early life :...
and La Croix
La Croix
La Croix is a daily French general-interest Roman Catholic newspaper. It is published in Paris and distributed throughout the country, with a circulation of just under 110,000 as of 2009...
, the organ of the Catholic order of the Assumptionists
Assumptionists
The Augustinians of the Assumption constitute a congregation of Catholic religious , founded in Nîmes, southern France, by Fr. Emmanuel d'Alzon in 1845, initially approved by Rome in 1857 and definitively approved in 1864 . The current Rule of Life of the congregation draws its inspiration from...
.
Financial scandals such as the collapse of the Union Generale Bank and the collapse of the French Panama Canal operation
Panama scandals
The Panama scandals was a corruption affair that broke out in the French Third Republic in 1892, linked to the building of the Panama Canal...
were also blamed on the Jews. The Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
saw a Jewish military officer named Captain Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish background whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French and European history...
falsely accused of treason in 1895 by his army superiors and sent to Devil's Island
Devil's Island
Devil's Island is the smallest and northernmost island of the three Îles du Salut located about 6 nautical miles off the coast of French Guiana . It has an area of 14 ha . It was a small part of the notorious French penal colony in French Guiana until 1952...
after being convicted. Dreyfus was acquitted in 1906, but the case polarised French opinion between antisemitic authoritarian nationalists and philosemitic anti-clerical republicans, with consequences which were to resonate into the 20th century.
United States
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
immigrated to America, many of them fleeing pogroms and the difficult economic conditions which were widespread in much of Eastern Europe during this time. Pogroms in Eastern Europe, particularly Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, prompted waves of Jewish immigrants after 1881. Jews, along with many Eastern and Southern European immigrants, came to work the country's growing mines and factories. Many Americans distrusted these Jewish immigrants.
The earlier wave of Jewish immigration from Germany, the latter (post 1880) came from "the Pale" - the region of Eastern Poland, Russia and the Ukraine where Jews had suffered so under the Czars. Along with Italians, Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
and other Eastern and Southern Europeans, Jews faced discrimination in the United States in employment, education and social advancement. American groups like the Immigration Restriction League
Immigration Restriction League
The Immigration Restriction League, was founded in 1894 by people who opposed the influx of "undesirable immigrants" that were coming from southern and eastern Europe. They felt that these immigrants were threatening what they saw as the American way of life and the high wage scale...
, criticized these new arrivals along with immigrants from Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
and southern and eastern Europe, as culturally, intellectually, morally, and biologically inferior. Despite these attacks, very few Eastern European Jews returned to Europe for whatever privations they faced here, their situation in the US was still improved.
Beginning in the early 1880s, declining farm prices also prompted elements of the Populist movement to blame the perceived evils of capitalism and industrialism on Jews because of their alleged racial/religious inclination for financial exploitation and, more specifically, because of the alleged financial manipulations of Jewish financiers such as the Rothschilds. Although Jews played only a minor role in the nation's commercial banking system, the prominence of Jewish investment bankers such as the Rothschilds
Rothschild family
The Rothschild family , known as The House of Rothschild, or more simply as the Rothschilds, is a Jewish-German family that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century...
in Europe, and Jacob Schiff
Jacob Schiff
Jacob Henry Schiff, born Jakob Heinrich Schiff was a German-born Jewish American banker and philanthropist, who helped finance, among many other things, the Japanese military efforts against Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.From his base on Wall Street, he was the foremost Jewish leader...
, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was a bulge bracket, investment bank founded in 1867 by Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb. Under the leadership of Jacob H. Schiff, it grew to be one of the most influential investment banks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, financing America's expanding railways and growth...
in New York City, made the claims of anti-Semites believable to some.
The Morgan Bonds scandal injected populist anti-Semitism into the 1896 presidential campaign
United States presidential election, 1896
The United States presidential election held on November 3, 1896, saw Republican William McKinley defeat Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a campaign considered by political scientists to be one of the most dramatic and complex in American history....
. It was disclosed that President Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...
had sold bonds to a syndicate which included J. P. Morgan
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892 Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric...
and the Rothschilds house
Rothschild family
The Rothschild family , known as The House of Rothschild, or more simply as the Rothschilds, is a Jewish-German family that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century...
, bonds which that syndicate was now selling for a profit, the Populists used it as an opportunity to uphold their view of history, and prove to the nation that Washington and Wall Street were in the hands of the international Jewish banking houses.
Another focus of anti-Semitic feeling was the allegation that Jews were at the center of an international conspiracy to fix the currency and thus the economy to a single gold standard.
Russia
Long-standing repressive polices and attitudes towards the Jews in Russia were intensified after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on 13 March 1881. This event was blamed on the Jews and sparked widespread anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian EmpireAnti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire
The term pogrom as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated antisemitic rioting saw its first use in the 19th century.The first pogrom is often considered to be the 1821 Odessa pogroms after the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were killed...
which lasted for three years. A hardening of official attitudes under Tsar Alexander III and his ministers, resulted in the May Laws
May Laws
Temporary regulations regarding the Jews were proposed by minister of internal affairs Nikolai Ignatyev and enacted on May 15 , 1882, by Tsar Alexander III of Russia...
of 1882, which severely restricted the civil rights of Jews within the Russian Empire
Antisemitism in the Russian Empire
Antisemitism in the Russian Empire appeared in hatred toward Jewish religion or ethnic Jews.-Involvement of the Orthodox Church:Yuri Tabak describes the history of antisemitism in Russia as having the same forms "already traditional in the West"...
. The Tsar's minister Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev stated that the aim of the government with regard to the Jews was that: "One third will die out, one third will leave the country and one third will be completely dissolved [into] the surrounding population". In the event, a mix of pogroms and repressive legislation did indeed result in the mass emigration of Jews to western Europe and America. Between 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War, an estimated 2.5 million Jews left Russia – one of the largest mass migrations in recorded history.
The Muslim world
In the 19th century, the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries. There was a massacre of Jews in BaghdadBaghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
in 1828. In 1839, in the eastern Persian city of Meshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue and destroyed the Torah scrolls
Sefer Torah
A Sefer Torah of Torah” or “Torah scroll”) is a handwritten copy of the Torah or Pentateuch, the holiest book within Judaism. It must meet extremely strict standards of production. The Torah scroll is mainly used in the ritual of Torah reading during Jewish services...
, and it was only by forced conversion that a massacre was averted. There was a massacre of Jews in Barfurush in 1867.
Concerning the life of Persian Jews
Persian Jews
Persian Jews , are Jews historically associated with Iran, traditionally known as Persia in Western sources.Judaism is one of the oldest religions practiced in Iran. The Book of Esther contains some references to the experiences of Jews in Persia...
in the middle of the 19th century, a contemporary author wrote:
...they are obliged to live in a separate part of town... for they are considered as unclean creatures... Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt… For the same reason, they are prohibited to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans… If a Jew is recognized as such in the streets, he is subjected to the greatest insults. The passers-by spit in his face, and sometimes beat him… unmercifully… If a Jew enters a shop for anything, he is forbidden to inspect the goods… Should his hand incautiously touch the goods, he must take them at any price the seller chooses to ask for them.
In 1840, in the Damascus affair
Damascus affair
The Damascus affair was an 1840 incident in which the accusation of ritual murder was brought against members of the Jewish community of Damascus. Eight notable Jews of Damascus were falsely accused of murdering a Christian monk, imprisoned and tortured. Several of the imprisoned died of torture,...
, the Jews of Damascus
History of the Jews in Syria
Syrian Jews derive their origin from two groups: those who inhabited Syria from early times and the Sephardim who fled to Syria after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain . There were large communities in Aleppo, Damascus, and Qamishli for centuries. In the early twentieth century a large...
were falsely accused of having ritually murdered a Christian monk and his Muslim servant and of having used their blood
Blood libel
Blood libel is a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, usually Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays...
to bake Passover bread
Matzo
Matzo or matzah is an unleavened bread traditionally eaten by Jews during the week-long Passover holiday, when eating chametz—bread and other food which is made with leavened grain—is forbidden according to Jewish law. Currently, the most ubiquitous type of Matzo is the traditional Ashkenazic...
. A Jewish barber was tortured until he "confessed" to this crime; two other Jews who were arrested died under torture, while a third converted to Islam to save his life.
In 1864, around 500 Jews were killed in Marrakech
Marrakech
Marrakech or Marrakesh , known as the "Ochre city", is the most important former imperial city in Morocco's history...
and Fez
Fes, Morocco
Fes or Fez is the second largest city of Morocco, after Casablanca, with a population of approximately 1 million . It is the capital of the Fès-Boulemane region....
in Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis
Tunis
Tunis is the capital of both the Tunisian Republic and the Tunis Governorate. It is Tunisia's largest city, with a population of 728,453 as of 2004; the greater metropolitan area holds some 2,412,500 inhabitants....
, and an Arab mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, on Jerba Island
Djerba
Djerba , also transliterated as Jerba or Jarbah, is, at 514 km², the largest island of North Africa, located in the Gulf of Gabes, off the coast of Tunisia.-Description:...
. Jews in Morocco were attacked and killed in the streets in broad daylight. In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia.
One symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. A 19th century traveler observed: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine
Gaberdine
A gaberdine or gabardine is a long, loose gown or cloak with wide sleeves, worn by men in the later Middle Ages and into the 16th century....
. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan."
Twentieth century
In the 20th century, antisemitism and Social Darwinism culminated in an unparalleled act of genocide, called the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews were exterminated in Nazi occupied Europe between 1942 and 1945 under the National Socialist regime of Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
.
Russia
Kishinev pogrom
The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Chişinău, then the capital of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire on April 6-7, 1903.-First pogrom:...
in 1903 was continued after the 1905 revolution by the activities of the Black Hundreds. The Beilis Trial
Menahem Mendel Beilis
Menahem Mendel Beilis, 1874 – July 7, 1934, was a Ukrainian Jew accused of ritual murder in Kiev in the Russian Empire in a notorious 1913 trial, known as the "Beilis trial" or "Beilis affair". The process sparked international criticism of the antisemitic policies of the Russian Empire...
of 1913 showed that it was possible to revive the blood libel accusation in Russia.
The 1917 revolution ended official discrimination against the Jews but was followed, however, by massive anti-Jewish violence by the anti-Bolshevik White Army and the nationalist Ukrainian army under Symon Petliura in the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
. From 1918–21, between 100,000 and 150,000 Jews were slaughtered. White emigres from revolutionary Russia fostered the idea that the Bolshevik regime, with its many Jewish members, was a front for the Jewish World Conspiracy, outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had by now achieved wide circulation in the west.
France
In France, antisemitic agitation was promoted by right-wing groups such as Action FrançaiseAction Française
The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...
, founded by Charles Maurras
Charles Maurras
Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme...
. These groups were critical of the whole political establishment of the Third Republic
Third Republic
Third Republic may refer to:* French Third Republic * Third Republic of South Korea * Third and current Democratic Republic of the Congo * Third and current Hellenic Republic of Greece...
. Following the Stavisky Affair
Stavisky Affair
The Stavisky Affair was a 1934 financial scandal generated by the actions of embezzler Alexandre Stavisky. It had political ramifications for the French Radical Socialist moderate government of the day...
, in which a Jewish man named Serge Alexandre Stavisky was revealed to be involved in high level political corruption, these groups encouraged serious rioting which almost toppled the government in the 6 February 1934 crisis
6 February 1934 crisis
The 6 February 1934 crisis refers to an anti-parliamentarist street demonstration in Paris organized by far-right leagues that culminated in a riot on the Place de la Concorde, near the seat of the French National Assembly...
. The rise to prominence of the Jewish socialist Léon Blum
Léon Blum
André Léon Blum was a French politician, usually identified with the moderate left, and three times the Prime Minister of France.-First political experiences:...
, who became first minister of the Popular Front Government in 1936, further polarised opinion within France. Action Française and other right-wing groups launched a vicious antisemitic press campaign against Blum which culminated in an attack in which he was dragged from his car and kicked and beaten whilst a mob screamed 'Death to the Jew!'
Antisemitism was particularly virulent in Vichy France
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
during WWII
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to identify Jews for deportation and transportation to the death camps (about 75.000 were killed). The antisemitic demands of right-wing groups were implemented under the collaborating Vichy regime of Marshall Henri Phillippe Petain, following the defeat of the French by the German army in 1940. A Statut des Juifs of that year, followed by another in 1941, purged Jews from employment in administrative, civil service and judicial posts, from most professions and even from the entertainment industry – restricting them, mostly, to menial jobs. Vichy's officials aided and abetted the Nazis in arresting and transporting over seventy-three thousand Jews to their deaths in the extermination camps in Poland.
Nazism and the Holocaust
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
arose as a political movement incorporating antisemitic ideas, expressed by Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in his book Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazi regime sought the systematic exclusion of Jews from national life. The Nuremberg Laws
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...
of 1935 outlawed marriage or sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews. Antisemitic propaganda by or on behalf of the Nazi Party began to pervade society. Especially virulent in this regard was Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...
's pornographic publication Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer was a weekly tabloid-format Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923 to the end of World War II in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic...
, which published the alleged sexual misdemeanors of Jews for popular consumption. Mass violence against the Jews was encouraged by the Nazi regime, and on the night of 9–10 November 1938, dubbed Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
, the regeme sanctioned the killing of Jews, the destruction of property and the torching of synagogues.
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
, Lvov, Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
and Radom
Radom
Radom is a city in central Poland with 223,397 inhabitants . It is located on the Mleczna River in the Masovian Voivodeship , having previously been the capital of Radom Voivodeship ; 100 km south of Poland's capital, Warsaw.It is home to the biennial Radom Air Show, the largest and...
. Following the invasion of Russia in 1941, a campaign of mass murder in that country was conducted against the Jews by Nazi death squads called the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
. On 20 January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
, deputed to find a "final solution" to the "Jewish problem", chaired the Wannsee Conference
Wannsee Conference
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews, that Reinhard Heydrich...
at which all the Jews resident in Europe and North Africa were earmarked for extermination. Of the eleven million who were targeted, some six million men, women and children were killed by the Nazis between 1942 and 1945. This systematic genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
is known as the Holocaust. To implement this horrific plan, Jews were transported to purpose-built extermination camps in occupied Poland, where they were killed in gas chambers
Gas Chambers
Gas Chambers is a fast, hollow and shallow point break type of wave. Being that it is a high performance wave it is well suited for the average to pro level surfer. Gas Chambers is located on the North Shore of Oahu about a 1/4 of a mile north of Ehukai Beach Park and 1/2 a mile west of Sunset...
. Extermination camps were located at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
, Chełmno, Bełżec, Majdanek
Majdanek
Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...
, Sobibór
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
and Treblinka
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
.
United States
Between 1900 and 1924, approximately 1.75 million Jews immigrated to America's shores, the bulk from Eastern Europe. Where before 1900, American Jews never amounted even to 1 percent of America's total population, by 1930 Jews formed about 3½ percent. This dramatic increase combined with the upward mobility of some Jews contributed to a resurgence of antisemitism.In the first half of the 20th century, Jews in the United States faced discrimination in employment, in access to residential and resort areas, in the membership of clubs and organizations and in tightened quotas on Jewish enrollment and teaching positions in colleges and universities. The lynching of Leo Frank
Leo Frank
Leo Max Frank was a Jewish-American factory superintendent whose hanging in 1915 by a lynch mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia drew attention to antisemitism in the United States....
by a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia
Marietta, Georgia
Marietta is a city located in central Cobb County, Georgia, United States, and is its county seat.As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 56,579, making it one of metro Atlanta's largest suburbs...
, in 1915, turned the spotlight on antisemitism in the United States and led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
, as well as to renewed support for the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, which had been inactive since 1870.
Antisemitism in the United States
Antisemitism in the United States
Jewish Americans have flourished since colonial times in what became the United States, which before the Second World War had a general history of racism directed to non-Christian, non-northwest European groups. Antisemitism in the United States has however lacked the extent and severity of its...
reached its peak during the 1920s and 1930s. The pioneer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent
The Dearborn Independent
The Dearborn Independent, a/k/a The Ford International Weekly, was a weekly newspaper established in 1901, but published by Henry Ford from 1919 through 1927. It was notorious for its antisemitic content , and its publication in English of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...
. During the 1940s, the pioneer aviator
Aviator
An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...
and many other prominent Americans led the America First Committee
America First Committee
The America First Committee was the foremost non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into World War II. Peaking at 800,000 members, it was likely the largest anti-war organization in American history. Started in 1940, it became defunct after the attack on Pearl Harbor in...
in opposing any involvement in the war against fascism. Following a visit to Germany in 1936, Lindbergh wrote: "While I still have my reservations, I have come away with great admiration for the German people... Hitler must have far more vision and character than I thought… With all the things we criticize he is undoubtedly a great man…" Although America First avoided any appearance of antisemitism and voted to drop Henry Ford as a member for this reason, Ford continued his good friendship with Lindbergh, who visited him in the summer of 1941. One month later; Lindbergh gave a speech in Des Moines, Iowa in which he expressed the decidedly Ford-like view that: "The three most important groups which have been pressing this country towards war are the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt Administration." In his diary Lindbergh wrote: "We must limit to a reasonable amount the Jewish influence… Whenever the Jewish percentage of the total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur. It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country." During race riots in Detroit in 1943, Jewish businesses were targeted for looting and burning.
The German American Bund held parades in New York City in the late 1930s which featured Nazi uniforms and flags with swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
s alongside American flags. Some 20,000 people listened to Bund leader Fritz Julius Kuhn at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
in 1939 criticizing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld" and calling his New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
the "Jew Deal". By espousing a belief in the existence of a Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
-Jewish conspiracy in America, Kuhn's activities came under the scrutiny of the US House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and when the United States entered World War II most of the Bund's members were placed in internment camps, and some were deported at the end of the war.
Eastern Europe after World War II
Rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan was a Soviet euphemism widely used during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1948–1953, which culminated in the "exposure" of the alleged Doctors' plot...
.
The Kielce pogrom
Kielce pogrom
The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community in the city of Kielce, Poland on July 4, 1946, perpetrated by a mob of local townsfolk and members of the official government forces of the People's Republic of Poland...
and "March 1968 events" in communist Poland were further incidents of antisemitism in Europe. A common theme behind the anti-Jewish violence in Poland were blood libel
Blood libel
Blood libel is a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, usually Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays...
rumours.
The cult of Simon of Trent was disbanded in 1965 by Pope Paul VI
Pope Paul VI
Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...
and his future veneration was forbidden, although a handful of extremists still promoted the fiction.
United States after World War II
During the early 1980s, isolationists on the far right made overtures to anti-war activists on the left in the United States to join forces against government policies in areas where they shared concerns. This was mainly in the area of civil liberties, opposition to United States military intervention overseas and opposition to US support for Israel. As they interacted, some of the classic right-wing antisemitic scapegoatScapegoat
Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals , individuals against groups , groups against individuals , and groups against groups Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any...
ing conspiracy theories began to seep into progressive circles, including stories about how a "New World Order
New World Order (conspiracy)
In conspiracy theory, the term New World Order or NWO refers to the emergence of a totalitarian one-world government.The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an...
", also called the "Shadow Government" or "The Octopus", was manipulating world governments. Antisemitic conspiracism was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups. Some on the left adopted the rhetoric, which it has been argued, was made possible by their lack of knowledge of the history of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and its use of "scapegoating, reductionist
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
and simplistic solutions, demagoguery
Demagogy
Demagogy or demagoguery is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes...
, and a conspiracy theory of history."
Towards the end of 1990, as the movement against the Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
began to build, a number of far-right and antisemitic groups sought out alliances with left-wing anti-war coalitions, who began to speak openly about a "Jewish lobby
Jewish lobby
The term Jewish lobby is used to describe organized lobbying attributed to Jews on domestic and foreign policy decisions, as a political participant of representative government, conducted predominantly in the Jewish diaspora in a number of Western countries...
" that was encouraging the United States to invade the Middle East. This idea evolved into conspiracy theories about a "Zionist-occupied government
Zionist Occupation Government
Zionist Occupation Government or Zionist Occupied Government is an antisemitic conspiracy theory which holds that Jews secretly control a given country, while the formal government is a puppet regime....
" (ZOG), which has been seen as equivalent to the early-20th century antisemitic hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent, antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for achieving global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the twentieth century...
. The anti-war movement as a whole rejected these overtures by the political right.
In the late 20th century, leaving aside injudicious name-calling by senator Ernest Hollings
Ernest Hollings
Ernest Frederick "Fritz" Hollings served as a Democratic United States Senator from South Carolina from 1966 to 2005, as well as the 106th Governor of South Carolina and Lt. Governor . He served 38 years and 55 days in the Senate, which makes him the 8th-longest-serving Senator in history...
to fellow Democrat Howard Metzenbaum
Howard Metzenbaum
Howard Morton Metzenbaum was an American politician who served for almost 20 years as a Democratic member of the U.S. Senate from Ohio . He also served in the Ohio House of Representatives and Senate from 1943 to 1951.-Early life:Metzenbaum was born in Cleveland, to a poor Jewish family, the son...
on the floor of the Senate, the Crown Heights riots of 1991 were a violent expression of tensions within a very poor urban community, pitting African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
residents against followers of Hassidic Judaism. In the context of the first US-Iraq war, on September 15, 1990 Pat Buchanan
Pat Buchanan
Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan is an American paleoconservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster. Buchanan was a senior adviser to American Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and was an original host on CNN's Crossfire. He sought...
appeared on The McLaughlin Group
The McLaughlin Group
The McLaughlin Group is a syndicated half-hour weekly public affairs television program in the United States, where a group of five pundits discuss current political issues in a round table format. It has been broadcast since 1982, and is currently sponsored by MetLife...
and said that "there are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East – the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States." He also said: "The Israelis want this war desperately because they want the United States to destroy the Iraqi war machine. They want us to finish them off. They don't care about our relations with the Arab world." When he delivered a keynote address at the 1992 Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
National Convention, known as the Culture War Speech, Buchanan described "a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America".
Twenty-first century
The first years of the 21st century have seen an upsurge of antisemitism. Several authors argue that this is antisemitism of a new type, which they call new antisemitism . Blood libel stories have appeared numerous times in the state-sponsored media of a number of ArabArab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
nations, on Arab television shows and on websites.
In 2004, the United Kingdom set up an all-Parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism, which published its findings in 2006. The inquiry stated that: "Until recently, the prevailing opinion both within the Jewish community and beyond [had been] that antisemitism had receded to the point that it existed only on the margins of society." However, it found a reversal of this progress since 2000 and aimed to investigate the problem, identify the sources of contemporary antisemitism and make recommendations to improve the situation.
See also
- Jewish historyJewish historyJewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...
- Timeline of antisemitismTimeline of antisemitismThis timeline of antisemitism chronicles the facts of antisemitism, hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group. It includes events in the history of antisemitic thought, actions taken to combat or relieve the effects of antisemitism, and events that affected the...
- Timeline of Jewish historyTimeline of Jewish historyThis is a timeline of the development of Jews and Judaism. All dates are given according to the Common Era, not the Hebrew calendar....
- History of ancient Israel and JudahHistory of ancient Israel and JudahIsrael and Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms of ancient Palestine. The earliest known reference to the name Israel in archaeological records is in the Merneptah stele, an Egyptian record of c. 1209 BCE. By the 9th century BCE the Kingdom of Israel had emerged as an important local power before...
- History of antisemitism in the United StatesHistory of antisemitism in the United StatesHistorians have long debated the extent of antisemitism in America's past and contrasted American antisemitism with its European counterpart. Earlier students of American Jewish life minimized the presence of antisemitism in the United States, which they viewed as a late and alien phenomenon on the...
- History of IsraelHistory of IsraelThe State of Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948 after almost two millennia of Jewish dispersal and persecution around the Mediterranean. From the late 19th century the Zionist movement worked towards the goal of recreating a homeland for the Jewish people...
- History of PalestineHistory of PalestineThe Southern Levant is the southern portion of the geographical region bordering the Mediterranean between Egypt and Mesopotamia . A narrow definition would take in roughly the same area as the modern states of Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jordan, while a wider definition would...
- History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet UnionHistory of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet UnionThe vast territories of the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest populations of Jews in the diaspora. Within these territories the Jewish community flourished and developed many of modern Judaism's most distinctive theological and cultural traditions, while also facing periods of...
- History of the Jews in PolandHistory of the Jews in PolandThe history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...
- Anti-ZionismAnti-ZionismAnti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...
- Arab-Israeli conflict
- Righteous Among the NationsRighteous Among the NationsRighteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
- Antisemitism (resources)
- From Swastika to Jim CrowFrom Swastika to Jim CrowFrom Swastika to Jim Crow is a 2000 documentary that explores the similarities between Nazism in Germany and racism in the American south . In 1939, the Nazi government expelled Jewish scholars from German universities...
- Scepter of JudahScepter of JudahThe Scepter of Judah was a text produced by the Sephardi historian Solomon Ibn Verga. It first appeared in Turkey in 1553.The work was essentially a comprehensive analysis of sixty-four different persecutions that the Jewish people had suffered since antiquity. Hardly an insular text, it made use...
Further reading
- Abella, Irving M and Troper, Harold M. None is too many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948. ISBN 0-88619-064-9
- Ansky, S, translated by Joachim NeugroschelJoachim NeugroschelJoachim Neugroschel was a well known literary translator from French, German, Italian, Russian, and Yiddish, and also to German. He also published poetry and was a poetry magazine founder.- Biography :...
. The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement During World War I. ISBN 0-8050-5944-X. S. AnskyS. AnskyShloyme Zanvl Rappoport , known by his pseudonym S. Ansky , was a Russian Jewish author, playwright, and researcher of Jewish folklore.... - Anti-Semitism, Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1974. ISBN 0-7065-1327-4
- Berger, David (ed.). History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism. ISBN 0-8276-0636-2
- Chesler, Phyllis. The New Anti-Semitism. ISBN 0-7879-6851-X
- Foxman, Abraham. Never Again?: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism. ISBN 0-06-054246-2
- Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of European Jews, Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1985. ISBN 0-8419-0910-5
- Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews. ISBN 0-06-015698-8
- Julius, Anthony, 2010. Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England Oxford University Press; 811 pages; Examines four distinct versions of English anti-Semitism, from the medieval era (including the expulsion of Jews in 1290) to what is argued is anti-Semitism in the guise of anti-Zionism today.
- Lewis, Bernard. Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice. ISBN 0-393-31839-7
- Nafziger, George and Walton, Mark, 2003. Islam at War, Greenwood Publishers Group. ISBN 0-275-98101-0. George NafzigerGeorge NafzigerDr. George F. Nafziger is an American writer and editor of numerous books and articles in military history.- Biography :He was born on March 1, 1949, in Lakewood, Ohio to Betty Elizabeth Olson and George Andrew Nafziger....
- Rosenberg, Elliot But Were They Good for the Jews? Over 150 Historical Figures Viewed From a Jewish Perspective. ISBN 1-55972-436-6
- Rubenstein, Joshua. Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. ISBN 0-300-08486-2
- Veidlinger, Jeffrey. The Moscow State Yiddish Theater. ISBN 0-253-33784-4
External links
- Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933-1939: Antisemitism on the Yad VashemYad VashemYad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
website - Antisemitism through the Ages Exposition at Florida Holocaust Museum
- Anti-Semitism: What Is It?
- Anti-Semitism & Responses
- Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Anti-Semitism
- Voices on Antisemitism Podcast Series from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Never Again: The Holocaust Timeline
- Yiddish in the USSR (by S. L. Shneiderman)
- Solomon Mikhoels
- MidEastWeb: Israel-Arab Conflict Timeline
- Islamic Antisemitism And Its Nazi Roots
- United Nations and Israel
- The U.N.'s Dirty Little Secret
- Anti-Semitism in the United Nations
- The Forgotten Jewish Exodus: Mizrahi Timeline
- Jews indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa
- Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism
- Materials for the International Conference The "Other" as Threat: Demonization and Antisemitism Jerusalem, June 1995
- SWC Museum of Tolerance Antisemitism: A Historical Survey
- Antisemitism in the UC Berkeley today; response to "Antisemitism in the UC Berkeley today"
- Global Anti-Semitism: Selected Incidents Around the World in 2006
- Why the Jews