Hatred of Jews - How far does it go?

[Kitsune]

How far back would you say that teh hatred of Jews go?

[Kitsune]

edit: The reason why I am asking is that I was watching a show about the Nazis and my coworker asked to explain why people hated / hate Jews. I know it goes back to at least around 100 CE with the proto-orthodox church but does it go back further than that?

Also, any suggestions how to explain it in a relatively simple manner?

[Samuel]

Well, the neighbors of the Jews hated them for the whole "warfare" bit. The Romans and Selucidians thought Jews were a pain in the ass due to the repeat uprisings (although I think they stopped and became accepted).

Of course, the Christians hated the Jews because... well, their doctines are totally mutualy contradictory.

[Count Chocula]

OK, it's been a while since I read/studied any of this, but I'll take an ex-Catholic shot at it in the hope it will shake loose better articulated replies:

1) IIRC, Judaism was the first widespread monotheistic religion, when the dominant military and economic cultures were polytheistic (500BC?);

2) Jews tended to be outcasts in their home cultures, or at best tolerated by the majority, creating an insular subculture of Yahweh worshippers;

3) Being insular, they tended to support each other and reinforce their faith with social and economic mutual aid. Later, perhaps a few centuries BC, those factors made them successful merchants and traders, though by no means the only merchants and traders;

4) Material success, in times where starvation was an everyday fact and infant mortality was 50%, was likely to provoke envy in those with less money;

5) As a successful and easily identified sub-group within whichever society they lived, Jews became easy lightning rods for the envious and ambitious.

Even before the Nazis and all the horror of that, anti-Jewish bias was prevalent in Catholic Europe. If I recall my history correctly, Columbus left Spain for India (oops! the New World) the day that the King of Spain decreed that all Jews had to be out of the country.

If you're looking for rational reasons, well, good luck!

[Samuel]

OK, it's been a while since I read/studied any of this, but I'll take an ex-Catholic shot at it in the hope it will shake loose better articulated replies:

1) IIRC, Judaism was the first widespread monotheistic religion, when the dominant military and economic cultures were polytheistic (500BC?);

2) Jews tended to be outcasts in their home cultures, or at best tolerated by the majority, creating an insular subculture of Yahweh worshippers;

3) Being insular, they tended to support each other and reinforce their faith with social and economic mutual aid. Later, perhaps a few centuries BC, those factors made them successful merchants and traders, though by no means the only merchants and traders;

4) Material success, in times where starvation was an everyday fact and infant mortality was 50%, was likely to provoke envy in those with less money;

5) As a successful and easily identified sub-group within whichever society they lived, Jews became easy lightning rods for the envious and ambitious.

Even before the Nazis and all the horror of that, anti-Jewish bias was prevalent in Catholic Europe. If I recall my history correctly, Columbus left Spain for India (oops! the New World) the day that the King of Spain decreed that all Jews had to be out of the country.

If you're looking for rational reasons, well, good luck!

1 is pretty close to accuracy (although some trace monotheism to a certain made Egyptian king). It was a problem because the state and the church were intertwined, with the King being semi-divine in many places or, in Republics, the state being protected by a certain deity (Athens- Athena, Rome- Mars, etc.).

2 and 3 aren't very accurate- Jews purposely isolated themselves. And many were NOT wealthy. Most of the Jews in Eastern Europe fall into the poor category.

4 says nothing- Jews were already acceptable targets. The pope had more money than God Almighty and you don't see peasents bumping him off, now do you?

5 is true. After all, lots of them loaned people money in the middle ages, and when you don't want to pay back (to be fair, interest rates were INSANE)...

Lets be fair- bias varied. At the start, Jews could hire non-Jewish servants and the like and some converted to Judaism from Christianity. However, that got clamped down upon and in the 1200s, England kicked out its Jews and by the 1300s, so had France. Spain was last.

The Catholic Church also has an odd relationship. They taught that Jews killed Christ and caused all sorts of problems around Easter. On the other hand, the pope tried to protect Jews during the Black Plague. It wanes and waxes, depending on the pope and the time.

[Alyrium Denryle]

2 and 3 aren't very accurate- Jews purposely isolated themselves. And many were NOT wealthy. Most of the Jews in Eastern Europe fall into the poor category.

They did isolate themselves purposefully, however, even though many fell into the "poor" category, it was jews not christians that the nobles went to when they needed a loan. This bumped up the frequency of wealthy jews (and also put a selective pressure on them to be clever, which is why european jews have significantly higher IQs than other ethnic groups)

4 says nothing- Jews were already acceptable targets. The pope had more money than God Almighty and you don't see peasents bumping him off, now do you?

Explained rather easily by proximity.

[Samuel]

2 and 3 aren't very accurate- Jews purposely isolated themselves. And many were NOT wealthy. Most of the Jews in Eastern Europe fall into the poor category.

They did isolate themselves purposefully, however, even though many fell into the "poor" category, it was jews not christians that the nobles went to when they needed a loan. This bumped up the frequency of wealthy jews (and also put a selective pressure on them to be clever, which is why european jews have significantly higher IQs than other ethnic groups)

4 says nothing- Jews were already acceptable targets. The pope had more money than God Almighty and you don't see peasents bumping him off, now do you?

Explained rather easily by proximity.

Isn't the trick that boosted IQ, also responsible for Tay-Sachs? Or is the second just due to the small genepool?

[Zor]

I took a course on anti-semitism last year, according to which there are basically three catagories of antisemitism in the modern world...

1-Religious. This properly started with the misconception that the Jews killed Jesus rather than the Romans and ingoring that Jesus was a praticing Jew at the time, layered upon general christian intollerence of devient faiths. This is the oldest and where most of it comes. This is the oldest of which. Latter this gets mixed in with a bunch of absured things that supposedly Jews do such as stabbing Loafs of Sacromental Bread and baking Blood of Gentile children into Passover bread. This was furthered in prodestant areas by Martin Luther with his book "On the Jews and their lies".

2-Cultural, discirmination against Jews as they are seen as a diferent group from the mainstream culturally. Jewish communities being fairly insular, having to face persecution from gentiles and latter being confined to Ghettos and Shtetls and such, as well as being confined to certain proffessions (money lending, tax collection) and sumptuary laws which forced Jews to wearing articles of clothing or badges to mark them out as Jews (if this sounds familier, as my professer put it the only new thing Hitler brought in during the Holocaust was Gas Chambers). This is where you get the idea of conspiricy of Jews. For this one really to start, you need established populations of Jews, which was not really the case until considerably.

3-Racial, based off the idea that Jews are a distinct non European Race due into early studies based roughly off theorys on Indo-European Language. This only started properly as an ideology in the late 19th century.

Zor

[Samuel]

It is worth noting that both Protestantism and Islam in the beginning hoped the Jews would join the "true" religion and when they didn't, rather than accept that the Jews might be half right, they decided the Jews were evil.

[Kitsune]

The Catholic Church also has an odd relationship. They taught that Jews killed Christ and caused all sorts of problems around Easter. On the other hand, the pope tried to protect Jews during the Black Plague. It wanes and waxes, depending on the pope and the time.

It is interesting how some of the Popes who treated the Jews the best such as Pope Alexander VI are treated with disdain within the catholic church.

Others like Pope Paul IV treated them horribly. Some Catholics on other boards have talked wonderfully about him.

[Mayabird]

Isn't the trick that boosted IQ, also responsible for Tay-Sachs? Or is the second just due to the small genepool?

Small genepool combined with lack of outbreeding. It's not just Tay-Sachs; they have a lot of different recessive disorders, way over-represented. It's like that rare disorder where half of the world's cases occur in insular Mormon polygamous communities, except the Ashkenazi had over a thousand years instead of the hundred or so the Mormons had.

[Thanas]

How far back would you say that teh hatred of Jews go?

This question is quite easily answered - as far as tribalism goes. The only difference is that antisemitism prevails even today, whereas the hatred between assyrians and babylonians is as gone as those people are.

[Samuel]

How far back would you say that teh hatred of Jews go?

This question is quite easily answered - as far as tribalism goes. The only difference is that antisemitism prevails even today, whereas the hatred between assyrians and babylonians is as gone as those people are.

Not quite- there are still Assyrians.

http://www.al-bab.com/arab/background/Assyrian.htm

No one cares about them though.

Kitsune are you wriiting up a fan fic or are you just curious? You have asked several factual questions in the last couple days.

[Thanas]

How far back would you say that teh hatred of Jews go?

This question is quite easily answered - as far as tribalism goes. The only difference is that antisemitism prevails even today, whereas the hatred between assyrians and babylonians is as gone as those people are.

Not quite- there are still Assyrians.

No, there are not. The only thing they can clame is some murky lineage that due to the nature of the middle east is pretty impossible to prove. Meanwhile, what made them assyrians (their culture) is gone.

[Civil War Man]

5 is true. After all, lots of them loaned people money in the middle ages, and when you don't want to pay back (to be fair, interest rates were INSANE)...

One of the reasons for Judaism being one of the more represented religions in moneylending is that usury was considered a damnable offense. Interestingly enough, Jewish doctrine forbid it when lending money to other Jews, but was mum regarding lending money to non-Jews. Probably because the Torah assumed that they should be too busy burning down the temples of non-Jews, so you would be too busy to cut them a check. So many Jews of that time period used a loophole in their rules to get into the banking industry.

[Akhlut]

2 and 3 aren't very accurate- Jews purposely isolated themselves. And many were NOT wealthy. Most of the Jews in Eastern Europe fall into the poor category.

They did isolate themselves purposefully, however, even though many fell into the "poor" category, it was jews not christians that the nobles went to when they needed a loan. This bumped up the frequency of wealthy jews (and also put a selective pressure on them to be clever, which is why european jews have significantly higher IQs than other ethnic groups)

I sincerely doubt the parenthetical part of that statement. Jews involvement in moneylending would have made them no more clever than non-Jewish peasants figuring out how to weasel out of their huge tax burdens by clever tax loopholes ("Oh! Church tax man! Welcome! Here's our tithe! What do you mean this grain looks poor? It's from the plot we planted specifically for the tithe! We asked our priest to bless it and we prayed to God to make it grow so that it would benefit the church! I don't know why it looks so mildewed and tiny!").

Plus, we're talking 1,000 years of this, maybe 1,500 years (Jews weren't lending much cash during the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, as pagans didn't care about usury), and given that is only about 50 generations, tops, I doubt it would push that 'significantly' up more than 2 or 3 IQ points (which, while being statistically significant, is not all that impressive).

[Samuel]

5 is true. After all, lots of them loaned people money in the middle ages, and when you don't want to pay back (to be fair, interest rates were INSANE)...

One of the reasons for Judaism being one of the more represented religions in moneylending is that usury was considered a damnable offense. Interestingly enough, Jewish doctrine forbid it when lending money to other Jews, but was mum regarding lending money to non-Jews. Probably because the Torah assumed that they should be too busy burning down the temples of non-Jews, so you would be too busy to cut them a check. So many Jews of that time period used a loophole in their rules to get into the banking industry.

They dumped that in the Renisance which let the Medicis take over. It took less than a century before Christians reclaimed the finacial sector. Jews still had a reputation, even during the civil war of being money obcesed- Grant published general orders 11 to boot them out for that before being countermanded by Lincoln.

2 and 3 aren't very accurate- Jews purposely isolated themselves. And many were NOT wealthy. Most of the Jews in Eastern Europe fall into the poor category.

They did isolate themselves purposefully, however, even though many fell into the "poor" category, it was jews not christians that the nobles went to when they needed a loan. This bumped up the frequency of wealthy jews (and also put a selective pressure on them to be clever, which is why european jews have significantly higher IQs than other ethnic groups)

I sincerely doubt the parenthetical part of that statement. Jews involvement in moneylending would have made them no more clever than non-Jewish peasants figuring out how to weasel out of their huge tax burdens by clever tax loopholes ("Oh! Church tax man! Welcome! Here's our tithe! What do you mean this grain looks poor? It's from the plot we planted specifically for the tithe! We asked our priest to bless it and we prayed to God to make it grow so that it would benefit the church! I don't know why it looks so mildewed and tiny!").

Plus, we're talking 1,000 years of this, maybe 1,500 years (Jews weren't lending much cash during the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, as pagans didn't care about usury), and given that is only about 50 generations, tops, I doubt it would push that 'significantly' up more than 2 or 3 IQ points (which, while being statistically significant, is not all that impressive).

We are talking about mathematical thinking as opposed to social skills- differant parts of the brain.

Of course, since it is mostly in Eastern Europe, which wasn't the area noted for Jewish control of money lending, I am more willing to attribute it to small group size and number of educated members pushing up the stats.

[Darth Wong]

The author of "Misquoting Jesus" pointed to evidence of virulent Christian anti-Semitism very early in the history of the religion: so early that they didn't even have a set of Scriptures yet, nor had they even nailed down their doctrines.

The reason he gives is compelling: early Christians weren't trying to interpret doctrine; they were creating it. And so they had to explain to themselves why the prophesied Messiah of the Jews was rejected by those same Jews. After all, they took it as an article of faith that this man was the genuine Jewish Messiah, as prophesied by the Old Testament!

The solution was simple: by consensus, they declared that the Jews had defied the will of God, and were therefore evil. Some surviving manuscripts from that era make it pretty obvious how far this anti-Jewish sentiment went in some communities: in those versions, it was the Jews who crucified Jesus while Pilate looked the other way, rather than the Romans crucifying him at the behest of the Jews as we see in modern versions.

[Kitsune]

I read "Misquoting Jesus" a while back myself and have also ready some of his other books.

My problem is that I could not remember if it was the early church or before that in the proto-church. No that discussing it has shaken some of what I read loose, I think certain early groups were hostile while others weren't.

[ArcturusMengsk]

I've read a theory, and I'm not entirely sure where or by who it was proffered, that says that antisemitism on the part of Christians is essentially a projection of Christian self-loathing (that is to say, for instance, in the case of the Nazis, that many of them harbored pagan-pluralistic tendencies, such as Alfred Rosenberg, and tended to dislike the Jews because they perceived them to be the source of monotheism in Europe through Christianity). Whether or not that's true I don't know, but it does make sense to explain at least a subset of the anti-semitic subculture like many Odinists and whatnot.

[Pelranius]

I don't understand why anti semitism persists in certain sectors of Asian society, particularly Japanese and Taiwanese (to a lesser extent), typically among the 'right wing' opinions. The only vaguely rational response that I could come up with was that such Asian anti-semites dislike Jews for being "rivals" in business and academia, though that doesn't sound very sound given that Jews aren't very present in East Asia.

I know there were (and still are, depending on who you ask) Chinese Jews in Kaifeng, but their numbers aren't large enough or spread out to actually register in the minds of the average Japanese neo fascist.

Those people also have ridiculous levels of Islamaphobia and anti Arabism as well, despite the lack of any contact with Muslims or Arabs. Maybe it's because they think the Arabs are price gouging on oil or something?

[Samuel]

It is because the Arabs have the oil and they don't like being dependant on it. Or maybe they just get their talking points from the Western world and don't think about it.

It is worth noting that Muslims are in nearby areas- China has a Muslim population in the NW and there are many in Indo-China and Indonesia (Biggest Muslim country in the world). Given the examples that are set by these populations, I can guess they hate them on that basis (trying to break away fromthe ruling country).

[eyl]

It is because the Arabs have the oil and they don't like being dependant on it. Or maybe they just get their talking points from the Western world and don't think about it.

There was an ironic twist to this in WWII. The Japanese had imported the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and some took them seriously. However, their conclusion was that if Jews had such power, better to have them on your side, leading to Japanese-controlled territory being something of a refuge to Jews fleeing the Holocaust.