Cohn-Sherbok - Anti-Semitism

For my mother

First published in 2002
This edition first published in 2009

The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL 5 2 QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved
Dan Cohn-Sherbok, 2002, 2009

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I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to Lon Poliakovs multi-volume History of Anti-Semitism, which served as a source of information and source material used throughout this study, as well as these other works: Roberto Finzi, Anti-Semitism; Edward Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews; Graham Keith, Hatred without a Cause; Albert Lindemann, Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide; Lionel Steiman, Paths to Genocide; Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition; Robert Wistrich, Antisemitism. I would also like to thank Christopher Feeney and his colleagues for their support and encouragement.

T his past year my wife and I were staying over the Christmas vacation in our flat in Kensington in London near the Israeli Embassy. At the end of December Israel launched a massive bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip; for a week the Embassy was surrounded by police and metal barriers. In the background were mounted riot police. In the late afternoons a crowd of Palestinians gathered behind the barricades and shouted slogans in support of the Palestinian cause. Interspersed among the crowd were placards denouncing Israeli policy, as well as children waving Palestinian flags.

Over the weekend tens of thousands of protesters against the war marched from Hyde Park down Kensington Church Street. My wife and I were having lunch in a cafe on their route and watched from our table near the window. The throng was composed of young Arabs, as well as the elderly wearing badges and holding flags. Many of those in the crowd were ordinary British citizens sympathetic to the cause.

After lunch we made our way across the street and were caught up in a flood of protesters. One took a multicoloured badge from his coat with the slogan Free Palestine and handed it to me. Join us, he said as he marched off into the distance. My wife pinned it on my lapel and we followed the crowd as they descended in the direction of the Embassy. I must have been the only rabbi caught up in the march. Yet, despite my Jewish credentials, I had no hesitation joining the protesters, even if this happened by accident.

Every day as I watched television and read the newspapers, I was sickened by the horror of this onslaught. I could not help but be reminded of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War, who fought against the Germans. Few in number, these brave fighters engaged in a hopeless struggle against insuperable odds. Eventually they were killed and the Warsaw Ghetto set alight.

Paradoxically the Jewish community seems blind to the obvious parallels. Supporters of Israel are anxious to point out that Hamas has officially refused to recognise the existence of the Jewish State in the Middle East. For this reason suicide bombers are willing to give up their lives in the struggle to free the Holy Land from what are perceived as foreign invaders and usurpers. Hamas is intent on driving the Jewish population into the sea. Given such determination on the part of Palestinians, Israel has no choice to defend itself. No doubt such reasoning contributed to the recent shift to the right in the Israeli elections this February.

Such an argument is persuasive. But, in my view, this assault against Gaza will not destroy Israels enemies. On the contrary, it will harden the hearts of those Palestinians who watch helplessly as Gaza is bombed and destroyed. Arab nations will support their brothers and sisters who are massacred. And beyond the Arab world, sympathetic supporters of the Palestinians will turn against the Jewish state, as well as Jews in the diaspora. Already, we are hearing the cry for Jewish children to be killed wherever they live.

The twenty-first century thus bears witness to the continuing hostility that has been expressed towards Jewry for nearly 4,000 years. Today, it is the peoples of the Islamic world who have become proponents of rabid anti-Semitism; in the last century the Nazis sought to bring about the genocide of the Jewish people; in previous centuries, the Church attempted to eliminate Jews through conversion, persecution and murder.

Why is it that Jews have been so bitterly hated for nearly four millennia? The aim of this volume is to answer this question by surveying the history of anti-Semitism from a global perspective. As will be seen, numerous factors created a climate of Jew-hatred. Scripture records that the Jews were oppressed by the Egyptian Pharaoh; through Moses deliverance the ancient Israelites escaped bondage, eventually settling in the land that God had promised the Patriarchs. There they established a kingdom, but were subject to constant attack from their neighbours.

In the Graeco-Roman world, Jews were viewed as aliens and xenophobic. In the Hellenistic world, the common view was that anything non-Greek was uncivilized. In this context Judaism was regarded with contempt. With the emergence of Christianity such hostility towards Jewry intensified. Drawing upon Hellenistic ideas that had penetrated the Jewish religion, Christianity absorbed pagan hostility to the Jewish people and utilized aspects of Pharisaic Judaism to distance itself from the faith from which it had evolved. Eventually, such anti-Jewish sentiment became an essential element of Christianity.

The New Testament served as the basis for the early Churchs vilification of the Jews. According to the Church Fathers, the Jewish people are lawless and dissolute. Because of their rejection of Christ, the Jewish nation has been excluded from Gods grace and is subject to his wrath. This Adversos Judaeos teaching of the early Church Fathers continued into the medieval period. During the Crusades Christian mobs massacred Jewish communities. Jews were charged with killing Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes, blaspheming Christ and Christianity in their sacred literature, and causing the Black Death by poisoning wells. Throughout the Middle Ages Jews were detested, and the image of the satanic Jew became a central feature of Western iconography. Repeatedly, Jews were accused of satanic activities and viewed as a sub-species of the human race.

In the post-medieval period such negative stereotypes of the Jews became a central feature of Western European culture. In France Jews were depicted in the most terrible fashion. In England Jews were as detested as they were in Germany. Such Christian anti-Semitism was most forcibly expressed in Martin Luthers diatribes against German Jews. Elsewhere Jewish converts to Christianity became subject to the Inquisition. Initially tribunals were established in Spain to seek to those converts suspected of practising Judaism in secret. Later the Inquisition spread to Portugal.