The Origins of and Resistance to Anti-Semitism
I have been doing research on the origins and spread of anti-Semitism, and one thing I find hopeful is how anti-Semitism is not eternal. It was specifically created at a time and place and was difficult to propagate.
Anti-Semitism as RC understands it—the pattern of seeing us Jews as different and sinister, making us visible agents of oppression, and setting us up for scapegoating—was born in Western Europe in the so-called Dark Ages and along with fear and hatred of Islam became a unifying principle of Christian Europe about the time of the First Crusade. It was used not only for economic reasons but also to help create a united “Christendom” militarized to “take back Jerusalem,” massacring Jews on the way.
It took many hundreds of years to embed anti-Semitism into the consciousness of non-Jews. Church authorities (partly motivated by the doctrinal dispute between Jews and Christians about the Messiah) pleaded with kings to enforce laws against Christians working, eating, celebrating, doing business, or intermarrying with Jews, and it’s clear from the historical record that most people ignored them for a very long time.
Jews occupied all classes of Roman society. We served in the military, owned land, and were slaves, slaveholders, craftspeople, and free laborers. It took hundreds of years for legislation, and various crises used to restimulate people, to restrict Jews’ rights and create a system in which we could be marked as different and be separated, ritually humiliated, and blamed. On the one hand, this is a tragic (and scary) story. On the other hand, it is a big contradiction [to distress] for me to know how long and hard the Jews’ neighbors resisted the oppression. They continued to value, connect with, and love Jews—until eventually they were hurt, confused, and manipulated into anti-Semitism.
When anti-Semitism was rife in Western Europe, it was not yet as established in Eastern Europe. For hundreds of years Poland, in particular, was known as the “paradise of the Jews.” Plenty of forces were fighting to infect Poland with anti-Semitic patterns—for economic, geopolitical, and doctrinal reasons—but it took a long time and much effort to get those patterns to take hold.
Basel, Switzerland
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of Jews
(Present Time 192, July 2018)