An Historical Track Record of Jewish Hatred and Prejudice

"The Nazis did not discard the past, they built on it." - Raul Hilberg, historian and Holocaust expert

From a perusal of the timeline of events relating to anti-Semitism, anti-Judaism and the Holocaust, prepared by Jerry Darring, one sees that history is littered with Jewish hatred and prejudice that revealed itself in many forms. Most importantly and related to this statement above is the anti-Jewish activities starting as far back as 1492 when Marranos (Jews forced into baptism then accused in the Spanish Inquisition of being insincere) were burned at the stake.

This event set precedent that Jews could not be assimilated or had a natural, inbred quality of Jewishness that cannot be expelled or converted. Three centuries later, Pope Leo XII decreed that Jews were to be ghettoized and their property confiscated, further identifying and limiting Jews to specific geographic areas. Though in Poland, where Jews thrived in communities called Shtetls they were used by the Polish government for their specific skills yet still remained "different" and "others."

The Nazis, far from inventing this antisemitic ideal that Jews were a racial people, not just a religious following, and that their race was an inferior class of human with evil, malicious, qualities threaded into their very souls. Accordingly, a Jew could never be anything but a Jew, no matter how much he assimilated into the host culture or nation. In this way, they did not throw away any special place that Jews held in society but built upon a very strong and fierce prejudice of Jews that had been simmering for hundreds (if not thousands) of years.

"They did not begin a development. They completed it." As seen throughout the timeline, Jews had been expelled, subject to libelous claims, accused of occultist and devilish acts and blamed for everything from the death of Jesus to the Black Plague to the defeat of Germany in World War I. In this way, the Nazi regime never had to develop the lies, rumors and propaganda that prosecuted the Jews of Europe.

They had all the history of 2000 years to draw from. What they did so masterfully (if not diabolically and inhumanely) was to formulate a so-called "final solution to the Jewish problem." This would complete the development of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism that had been in place already. It was the end game for a people who had always been subject to vicious lies and institutional programs of expulsion, eradication and seclusion.

The term anti-Semitism was coined by the "The Patriarch of Antisemitism," Wilhelm Marr. Marr was a German agitator who used the term to define the German Judenhass or "hew-hate" into a less intense form, known as a euphemism. He term classified the Semitic race (he meant the Jewish people, although this is a twisting of meaning as Semitics are not just Jews because Judaism is a form of religion not a race, which is what Semitic defines) as inferior to the Aryan race. In modernizing the philosophy of religious hatred against Jews to incorporate it as a (false or psuedo) scientific classification of race.

He said that biologically, Jews were inferior. In the modern usage antisemitism is a different, more encompassing term used to lump the Jews together as a race not just a religious belief and that the Semitic race had traits inherent that were distinguishable from others. By modernizing the prejudice and labeling it "antisemitism" Marr was able to more clearly define who the enemies of the German people were and why they had to be eradicated, more than just by warrant of religious belief systems but by secular, naturalistic reasons as well.

Antisemitism in any form or whatever the actual meaning of the words (which is up to intense debate in Etymology) has been a burden of the Jewish people throughout modern history. The intense desire of Jews to keep tradition and language despite being dispersed throughout the world has lead to an otherness about them. When they exist within a nation or culture as a subculture with strange rituals and a foreign language that is not only not based on Latin Romantic roots but is read with characters from right to left, the populace views them with suspicion. Questions arise of why they do not assimilate or why they refuse to accept the natural progression from the Old to the New Testament.

The excuses that are boiled down by historians into the "big six" are valid observations of why Jews have been victims of hatred over time. Economics, Superiority, Scapegoating, New Testament interpretations on the death of Jesus and Jews involvement, Differentiation and the theory brought forth by Nazis of the inferiority of the "Jewish Race" have all played a part in this crime against the Jews. As far as the explanations go, there is no validity to the supposed "causes" of antisemitism as a justified philosophy and become excuses for not only the ignorance of those who perpetrate the crime of prejudice against Jews but the failings and limitations of the cultures and nations within which the Jews have existed.

When the Jews became convenient and economically useful as moneylenders because of the Christian sin of usury the myth of Jews as money hoarders became foisted upon them. When the Jews, rightly, claim they are the "Chosen People" of God according to the Torah, they are persecuted, even though it was the Jews who brought monotheism to civilization. A tenet that more that three-quarters of the population of the world today believes! When the German state became embarrassingly punished for World War I, it was convenient for the Nazis to blame the Jews in Germany for their troubles because the antisemitic ideal had been in place for hundreds of years already.

And when Catholics put the onus of the death of Jesus on the Jews (even though it was predicted and required that Jesus die for the sins of man to save man's soul according to Christian dogma) they somehow became responsible for an event that was inevitable in any case and without proof. Of course differences between people always leads to aggression so that is expected, as is the inevitable conclusion that those who are different will also be somehow inferior.

Hatred of the Jews has been around since Judaism and the ideas of Judaism existed. One of the defining reasons is as many scholars profess, including Dennis Prager and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin authors of "Why The Jews," is that envy of the chosen people has contributed greatly to the longevity of this particular feeling. Judaism itself is defined by a sense that God chose these particular people to bring his message to the world of man. In the gift of the commandments (not only the famous ten but all 613!) God bestowed a code of morality and civility toward each other, the world and to the creator on mankind. The Jews were his messengers and he made them a "light to all nations."

Jews believe that the Torah represents the divine words of the Almighty and that within the Torah is the answer to all of life's questions on how the world works and how people should behave. Though filled with fables and stories that may not seem sensible now, they provided thousands of years of guidance for the Jewish people. With such a close-knit nation that claims to have the divinity of God on its side and to have the power to enlighten the world with God's message, it is no wonder that those who look to keep hold of personal power over others and rule or live immorally should despise the Jewish messengers of goodness.

When the Christians sect took the teachings of Jesus and the Gospels of his disciples to their own and built their religion around those words the Jewish people became enemies to their growing power. Despite common beginnings, Christianity is not a logical extension of Judaism yet Jesus was a Jew who had radical ideas about how to redefine and propagate a message of love and tolerance that was the basic core of Judaism. Instead of embracing the Jews and their contribution (namely their own savior, Jesus) the Christians rejected the Jews as evil people looking to misdirect the world from their teachings.

In this modern world the fissure between Jews and many other religions and races still exists. The longevity of this can be attributed to a multiplicity of reasons, including a perceived threat of the basic tenets of Christianity, to envy of the "light" that God bestowed on these Chosen People. Anytime a group (especially a majority group) sees another culture or sect as special, they look to reduce that group either by degrading them or eliminating them to make themselves feel superior again.

Holocaust denial and anti-Zionism as it applies to the state of Israel exist in a uniquely new form of anti-Semitism, sometimes called the New antisemitism. In a reverse of what the Nazis did by defining Jews as a sub-human race, the New antisemitism says that Israel and Zionism are in itself concepts of racism performed by the Jews. By establishing a country in the Middle East specifically for the Jews, Arabs and ultra-right wing conservatives have taken up the banner of Anti-Zionism and Ant-Judaism as their mantra.

These groups claim that the existence of Israel itself is racist and that the Jews there practice a form of racism themselves. Of course, just at the old antisemitism of the past was unfounded; this New antisemitism is just as empty of legitimacy but surely just as dangerous or even more so. In the modern era, Arabs have taken up the cause of destroying the Jews and anyone who supports them.

This aligns most Arabs against the United States (Israel's biggest supporter) which in turn makes the other nations of the world take sides either with or against the US and in turn Israel. Again, the seeds of the old antisemitism (which still thrives today in neo-Nazi and ultra-conservative organizations) are still the same as this New antisemitism except that the excuses have changed. The threat to Jews worldwide is ever-present and only by understanding and education can Jewish people expect the view to ever change or at least be tempered.

References

Raul Hilberg. The destruction of the European Jews (Yale Univ. Press, 2003, c1961).

Encyclopedia Judaica (16 Volume Set) (Hardcover) by Cecil Roth (Editor)

Nine Questions People ask about Judaism (with Joseph Telushkin) (1986) ISBN 0-6716-2261-7

Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism (with Joseph Telushkin) (2003) ISBN 0-7432-4620-9

http://dennisprager.com/

http://www.josephtelushkin.com/

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/

http://www.ushmm.org/

http://www.jewfaq.org/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

http://yalepress.yale.edu/YupBooks/book.asp?isbn=0300095570

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=358201

http://www.jewishlibraries.org/ajlweb/publications/proceedings/proceedings2002.htm

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=anti-Semitism

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/antisemitism.html

http://www.facing.org/campus/reslib.nsf

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0205/prager021505.php3

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0306/prager031406.php3

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0506/prager053006.php3

http://www.jewishlibraries.org/ajlweb/publications/proceedings/proceedings2002.htm

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=25014

http://www.artnewsblog.com/2006/02/anti-semitic-cartoon-contest.htm

http://www.artnewsblog.com/art-blog/controversy/index.htm

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20011001/200/180

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_antisemitism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raul_Hilberg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Destruction_of_the_European_Jews

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_the_Holocaust

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia_Judaica

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Marr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Prager

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Telushkin