The history ofantisemitism, defined as hostile actions or discrimination againstJews as a religious or ethnic group, goes back many centuries, being called "the longest hatred".[1] Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:[2]
Chanes suggests that these six stages could be merged into three categories: "ancient antisemitism, which was primarily ethnic in nature; Christian antisemitism, which wasreligious; and theracial antisemitism of the 19th and 20th centuries".[2] In practice, it is difficult to differentiate antisemitism from the general ill-treatment of nations by other nations before theRoman period, but since the adoption of Christianity in Europe, antisemitism has undoubtedly been present. TheIslamic world has also historically seen the Jews as outsiders. The coming of theScientific andIndustrial Revolutions in 19th-century Europe bred a new manifestation of antisemitism, based as much uponrace as upon religion, which culminated in theHolocaust that occurred duringWorld War II. Theformation of the state of Israel in 1948 caused new antisemitic tensions in the Middle East.
Louis H. Feldman argues: "We must take issue with thecommunis sensus that thepagan writers are predominantly anti-Semitic."[3] 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 withManetho about 270BCE".[4] In view of Manetho's anti-Jewish writings, antisemitism may have originated in Egypt and been spread by "theGreek retelling ofAncient Egyptian prejudices".[5] As examples of pagan writers who spoke positively of Jews, Feldman citesAristotle,Theophrastus,Clearchus of Soli andMegasthenes. Feldman concedes that, after Manetho: "The picture usually painted is one of universal and virulentanti-Judaism."[citation needed]
The first clear examples of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced back toAlexandria in the 3rd century BCE.[6]Alexandrian Jewry were the largest Jewish community in the world and theSeptuagint, a Greek translation of theHebrew 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 ofChaeremon,Lysimachus,Poseidonius,Apollonius Molon, and inApion andTacitus.[6]Hecateus of Abdera is quoted byFlavius Josephus as having written about the time ofAlexander the Great that the Jews "have often been treated injuriously by the kings and governors of Persia, yet can they not be dissuaded from acting what they think best; but that when they are stripped on this account, and have torments inflicted upon them, and they are brought to the most terrible kinds of death, they meet them after an extraordinary manner, beyond all other people, and will not renounce the religion of their forefathers".[7] One of the earliest anti-Jewishedicts, promulgated byAntiochus Epiphanes in about 170–167 BCE, sparked a revolt of theMaccabees inJudea.
The ancient Jewish philosopherPhilo of Alexandria describes an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died.[8][9] The violence in Alexandria may have been caused by the Jews' being portrayed asmisanthropic.[10] Tcherikover argues that the reason for the hatred of Jews in the Hellenistic period was their separateness in the Greek cities, thepoleis.[11][page needed] However, Bohak has argued 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, because many Greeks showed animosity towards any group which they consideredbarbaric.[12]
Statements which exhibit prejudice against Jews and their religion can be found in the works of manypaganGreek andRoman writers.[13] Edward Flannery writes that it was the Jews' refusal to accept Greek religious and social standards that marked them out.Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the early third century BCE, wrote thatMoses "in remembrance of the exile of his people, instituted for them a misanthropic and inhospitable way of life". Manetho wrote that the Jews were expelled Egyptian lepers who had been taught "not to adore thegods" by Moses. The same themes appear in the works ofChaeremon,Lysimachus,Poseidonius,Apollonius Molon, and inApion andTacitus.Agatharchides of Cnidus wrote about the "ridiculous practices" of the Jews and he also wrote about the "absurdity of theirLaw", and he also wrote about howPtolemy Lagus was able to invadeJerusalem in 320 BC because its inhabitants were observing theSabbath.[6] Edward Flannery describes the form of antisemitism which existed inancient times as being essentially "cultural, taking the shape of a nationalxenophobia which was played out in political settings".[14]
In one recorded instance, anAncient Greek ruler,Antiochus Epiphanes, desecrated theTemple in Jerusalem and banned Jewish religious practices, such ascircumcision,Shabbat observance, and the study of Jewish religious books,[15] 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,[16] 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 in reference to animosity towards Judaism as a religion rather than antisemitism, which is used in reference to animosity towards Jews as members of anethnic orracial group.[citation needed]
Relations between the Jews in Judea and the occupyingRoman Empire were antagonistic from the very start and they resulted in severalrebellions. It has been argued thatEuropean antisemitism has its roots in theRoman policy of religious persecution.[17][page needed]
Several ancient historians report that in 19 CE, the Roman emperorTiberius expelled the Jews from Rome. According to the Roman historianSuetonius, Tiberius tried to suppress all foreign religions. In the case of the Jews, he sent young Jewish men, under the pretence of military service, to provinces which were noted for their unhealthy climate. He expelled all other Jews from the city, under threat of lifelong slavery for non-compliance.[18]Josephus, in hisJewish Antiquities,[19] confirms that Tiberius ordered all Jews to be banished from Rome. Four thousand Jews were sent toSardinia but more Jews, who were unwilling to become soldiers, were punished.Cassius Dio reports that Tiberius banished most of the Jews, who had been attempting to convert the Romans to their religion.[20] Philo of Alexandria reported thatSejanus, one of Tiberius's lieutenants, may have been a prime mover in the persecution of the Jews.[21]
The Romans refused to permit the Jews to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem after itsdestruction byTitus in 70 CE, imposed a tax on the Jews (Fiscus Judaicus) at the same time, ostensibly to finance the construction of theTemple of Jupiter in Rome, and renamedJudaea toSyria Palestina. TheJerusalem Talmud relates that, following theBar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE), the Romans killed many Jews, "killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils".[22] However, some historians argue that Rome brutally suppressed revolts in all of its conquered territories and they also point out that Tiberius expelled all adherents of foreign religions from Rome, not just the Jews.
Some accommodations, in fact, were later made with Judaism, and the Jews of theDiaspora had privileges that others did not have. Unlike other subjects of the Roman Empire, the Jews had the right to maintain their religion and they were not expected to accommodate themselves to local customs. Even after theFirst Jewish–Roman War, the Roman authorities refused to rescind Jewish privileges in some cities. And althoughHadrian outlawed circumcision as a form of mutilation which was normally inflicted upon people who were unable to consent to it, he later exempted the Jews from the ban on circumcision.[23] According to the 18th-century historianEdward Gibbon, there was greater tolerance of the Jews from about 160 CE. Between 355 and 363 CE,Julian the Apostate permitted the Jews to rebuild the Second Temple of Jerusalem.
Although most of theNew Testament was written, ostensibly, by Jews who became followers of Jesus, there are a number of passages in the New Testament that some consider antisemitic, and they have been used for antisemitic purposes.[24][page needed][25][page needed][26] A key accusation is that ofJewish deicide, i.e. the claim thatJews werecollectively responsible forthe killing of Jesus:[27][28]
The accusation that the Jews were Christ-killers fed Christian antisemitism[31] and spurred on acts of violence against Jews such aspogroms,massacres of Jews during the Crusades,expulsions of the Jews fromEngland,France,Spain,Portugal and other places, and torture during theSpanish andPortuguese Inquisitions.
TheQuran, theholy book ofMuslims, contains some verses that can be interpreted as expressing very negative views of some Jews.[32] After theIslamic prophetMuhammad moved toMedina in 622 CE, he made peace treaties with theJewish tribes of Arabia and other tribes. However, the relationship between the followers of the new religion and the Jews of Medina later became bitter. At this point the Quran instructs Muhammad to change the direction of prayer fromJerusalem toMecca, and from this point on, the tone of the verses of the Quran become increasingly hostile towards Jewry.[33]
In 627 CE, Jewish tribeBanu Qurayza of Medina violated a treaty with Muhammad by allying with the attacking tribes.[34] Subsequently, the tribe was charged with treason and besieged by the Muslims commanded by Muhammad himself.[35][36] The Banu Qurayza were forced to surrender and the men were beheaded, while all the women and children were taken captive and enslaved.[35][36][37][38][39][excessive citations] Several scholars have challenged the veracity of this incident, arguing that it was exaggerated or invented.[40][41][42] Later, several conflicts arose between Jews of Arabia and Muhammad and his followers, the most notable of which was inKhaybar, in which many Jews were killed and their properties seized and distributed among the Muslims.[43]
When Christianity became the state religion of Rome in the 4th century, Jews became the victims ofreligious intolerance and political oppression. Christian literature began to display extreme hostility towards Jews, which occasionally resulted in attacks against them and the burning of their synagogues. The hostility against Jews was reflected in the edicts which were imposed upon them by church councils and state laws. In the early 4th century, intermarriage between unconverted Jews and Christians was prohibited by the provisions of theSynod of Elvira. TheCouncil of Antioch (341) prohibited Christians from celebratingPassover with the Jews while theCouncil of Laodicea forbade Christians from keeping the Jewish Sabbath.[44] The Roman EmperorConstantine I instituted several laws concerning the Jews: they were forbidden to own Christian slaves and they were also forbidden to circumcise their slaves. The conversion of Christians to Judaism was also outlawed. Religious services were regulated, congregations were restricted, but Jews were allowed to enter Jerusalem onTisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple.
Discrimination against Jews became worse in the 5th century. The edicts of theCodex Theodosianus (438) barred Jews from the civil service, the army and the legal profession.[45] The Jewish Patriarchate was abolished and the scope of Jewish courts was restricted. Synagogues were confiscated and old synagogues could only be repaired if they were in danger of collapsing. Synagogues fell into ruin or they were converted to churches. Synagogues were destroyed inTortona (350), Rome (388 and 500),Raqqa (388),Menorca (418), Daphne (nearAntioch, 489 and 507),Genoa (500),Ravenna (495),Tours (585) and inOrléans (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 500Terracina in 590,Cagliari in 590 andPalermo in 590.[46]
Deicide is the killing of a god. In the context of Christianity, deicide refers to theresponsibility for the death of Jesus. Theaccusation that the Jews committed deicide has been the most powerful warrant for antisemitism by Christians.[47] 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 toMelito of Sardis entitledPeri Pascha,On the Passover. This text blames the Jews for allowingKing Herod andCaiaphas to execute Jesus. Melito does not attribute particular blame toPontius Pilate, he only mentions that Pilate washed his hands of guilt.[48] The Latin worddeicida (slayer of god), from which the worddeicide is derived, was used in the 4th century by Peter Chrystologus in his sermon number 172.[49] Though not part ofRoman Catholicdogma, many Christians, including members of the clergy, once held Jewscollectively responsible for the death of Jesus.[50] According to this interpretation, both the Jews who were present at Jesus' death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time had committed the sin of deicide, or God-killing.[51]
Hostility to Judaism continued 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, withblood libels, expulsions,forced conversions 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 thedevil.Judensau images began to appear in Germany.
Although the CatholicisedVisigothic kingdom in Spain issued a series of anti-Jewish edicts already in the 7th century,[52] persecution of Jews in Europe reached a climax during theCrusades. Anti-Jewish rhetoric such as theGoad of Love began to appear and affect public consciousness.[53] At the time of theFirst Crusade, in 1096, aGerman Crusade destroyed flourishing Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube. In theSecond Crusade in 1147, the Jews in France were the victims of frequent killings and atrocities. Following the coronation ofRichard the Lionheart in 1189, Jews were attacked in London. When king Richard left to join theThird Crusade in 1190, anti-Jewish riots broke out againin York and throughout England.[54][55] In the first large-scale persecution in Germany after the First Crusade, 100,000 Jews were killed byRintfleisch knights in 1298.[56] The Jews were also subjected to attacks during theShepherds' Crusades of 1251 and1320. In the 1330s Jews were assaulted bythe Armleder, led byArnold von Uissigheim, starting in 1336 inFranconia and subsequently by John Zimberlin during 1338–9 inAlsace who attacked more than one hundred Jewish communities.[57][58] 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 wereexpelled from Austria. Many of those expelled fled to Poland.[59]
As theBlack Death plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews often became thescapegoats. Rumors spread that they had caused this epidemic by deliberatelypoisoning wells, an accusation that appeared before in the1321 leper scare. Hundreds of Jewish communities weredestroyed by the ensuing hatred and violence.Pope Clement VI tried to protect Jews by apapal bull dated 6 July 1348, and by an additional bull soon afterwards, but several months later, 900 Jews wereburnt alive in Strasbourg, where the plague had not yet affected the city.[60] The Jews ofPrague were attacked on Easter of 1389.[61] Themassacres of 1391 marked a decline in the Golden Age forSpanish Jewry.[62]
From the 9th century onwards, themedieval Islamic world imposeddhimmi status on Christian and Jewish minorities. Nevertheless, Jews were granted more freedom to practise their religion in theMuslim world than they were in Christian Europe.[63]Jewish communities in Spain thrived under tolerant Muslim rule during theSpanish Golden Age andCordova became a centre of Jewish culture.[64]
With the entrance of theAlmoravides from North Africa in the 11th century, however, harsh measures were taken against both Christians and Jews.[64] As part of this repression there werepogroms against Jews in Cordova in 1011 and inGranada in 1066.[65][66][67] TheAlmohads, who by 1147 had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories,[68] took a less tolerant view still and treated thedhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians took a third option if they could, and fled.[69][70][71] Some, such as the family ofMaimonides, went east to more tolerant Muslim lands,[69] while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.[72][73] At certain times in the Middle Ages, in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted. Jews wereforced to convert to Islam or face death in parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad.[74] 6,000 Jews were killed by a Muslim mob during the1033 Fez massacre. There were further massacres in Fez in 1276 and 1465,[75][76][77] and inMarrakesh in 1146 and 1232.[77]
Restrictions upon Jewish occupations were imposed by Christian authorities. Local rulers and church officials closed many professions to Jews, pushing them into marginal roles which were considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting andmoneylending, occupations which were only tolerated as a "necessary evil". At that time, Catholic doctrine taught the view that lending money for interest was asin, and an occupation which Christians were forbidden to engage in. Not being subject to this restriction, insofar as loans to non-Jews were concerned, Jews made this business their own, despite possible criticism ofusury in theTorah and later sections of theHebrew Bible. This led to many negative stereotypes of Jews as insolent, greedy usurers and the 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.[citation needed]
Jews were subject to a wide range of legaldisabilities 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 inghettos 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 specialJewish Oaths, and they suffered a variety of other measures. TheFourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that Jews and Muslims must wear distinguishing clothing.[78] The most common such clothing was theJewish hat, which was already worn by many Jews as a self-identifying mark, but was now often made compulsory.[79]
TheJewish 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.[80] 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 byguild members) were prestigious, while others were worn by ostracised outcasts such as lepers, reformedheretics and prostitutes. As with allsumptuary laws, 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.[citation needed] 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 Crusades were a series of military campaigns sanctioned by thePapacy 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.
ThePeople's Crusade that accompanied the First Crusade attacked Jewish communities in Germany, France, and England, and killed many Jews. Entire communities, like those ofTreves,Speyer,Worms,Mainz, andCologne, were murdered by armed mobs. About 12,000 Jews are said to have perished in theRhineland cities alone between May and July 1096. 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 ofPope 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 thesiege of 1099.[81][82] The chronicle ofIbn al-Qalanisi states that the building was set on fire while the Jews were still inside.[83] The Crusaders were supposedly reported as hoisting up their shields and singing "Christ We Adore Thee!" while they encircled the burning building."[84] Following the siege, Jews captured from theDome of the Rock, along with native Christians, were made to clean the city of the slain.[85] Numerous Jews and their holy books (including theAleppo Codex) were held ransom byRaymond of Toulouse.[86] The Karaite Jewish community ofAshkelon (Ascalon) reached out to their coreligionists inAlexandria to first pay for the holy books and then rescued pockets of Jews over several months.[85] 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.[87]
In theCounty 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 theAlbigensian Crusade, because it was only then that the Church became powerful enough to insist that measures of discrimination be applied.[88] 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 sonRaymond VII underwent a similar ceremony.[89] In 1236, Crusaders attacked the Jewish communities ofAnjou andPoitou, killing 3,000 and baptizing 500.[90] Two years after the 1240disputation of Paris, twenty-four wagons piled with hand-writtenTalmudic manuscripts were burned in the streets.[91] Otherdisputations occurred in Spain, followed by accusations against the Talmud.
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While some popes offered protection to Jews, others implemented restrictive policies and actions that contributed to their marginalization and persecution. A key role was played byPope Innocent III who justified his calls for lay and Church authorities to restrict Jewish "insolence" by claiming God made Jews slaves for rejecting and killing Christ. He proclaimed them to be the enemies of Christ, who must be kept in a position of social inferiority and prevented from exercising power over Christians.[92]
On many occasions, Jews were accused of drinking the blood of Christian children in mockery of the ChristianEucharist. According to the authors of these so-called blood libels, the 'procedure' for the alleged sacrifice was something like this: a child who had not yet reachedpuberty 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 ofblack 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 ofWilliam of Norwich (d. 1144) is often cited as the first known accusation ofritual murder against Jews. The Jews ofNorwich, 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 acult, and the child acquired the status of a holy martyr.[104]Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1255), in the 13th century, reputedly had his belly cut open and hisentrails removed for someoccult purpose, such as adivination ritual, after being taken from a cross.Simon of Trent (d. 1475), in the fifteenth century, was held over a large bowl so that all of his blood could be collected, it was alleged.
During theMiddle Ages, such blood libels were directed against Jews in many parts of Europe. The believers in thesefalse accusations reasoned that the Jews, having crucified Jesus, continued to thirst for pure and innocent blood, at the expense of innocent Christian children.[105][page needed] Jews were also sometimes falsely accused of desecrating consecratedhosts in a reenactment of theCrucifixion; this crime was known ashost desecration and it carried the death penalty.
The practice of expelling Jews, the confiscation of their property and furtherransom for their return was used to enrich the French crown during the 13th and 14th centuries. The most notable such expulsions were from Paris byPhilip Augustus in 1182, from the whole of France byLouis IX in 1254, byPhilip IV in 1306, byCharles IV in 1322 and byCharles VI in 1394.[106]
Jewish expulsions inside England took place inBury St. Edmunds in 1190,Newcastle in 1234,Wycombe in 1235,Southampton in 1236,Berkhamsted in 1242 andNewbury in 1244.[107]Simon de Montfort banished the Jews ofLeicester in 1231.[108] During theSecond Barons' War in the 1260s, Simon de Montfort's followers ravaged the Jewries of London,Canterbury,Northampton,Winchester,Cambridge,Worcester andLincoln in an effort to destroy the records of their debts to moneylenders.[107] To finance hiswar 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 ayellow patch. The heads of Jewish households were then arrested with over 300 being taken to theTower of London and executed. Others were killed in their homes. All Jews were banished from the country in 1290,[109] where it was possible that hundreds were killed or drowned while trying to leave the country.[110][page needed] All the money and property of these dispossessed Jews was confiscated. No Jews were known to be in England thereafter until 1655, whenOliver Cromwell reversed the policy.[citation needed]
In Germany, part of theHoly Roman Empire, persecutions and formal expulsions of the Jews were liable to occur at intervals, although it should be said that this was also the case for other minority communities, whether religious or ethnic. There were particular outbursts of riotous persecution in theRhineland massacres of 1096 accompanying the lead-up to the First Crusade, many involving the crusaders as they travelled to the East. There were many local expulsions from cities by local rulers and city councils. TheHoly Roman Emperor generally tried to restrain persecution, if only for economic reasons, but he was often unable to exert much influence. As late as 1519, the Imperial city ofRegensburg took advantage of the recent death ofEmperor Maximilian I to expel its 500 Jews.[111] At this period the rulers of the eastern edges of Europe, in Poland, Lithuania and Hungary, were often receptive to Jewish settlement, and many Jews moved to these regions.[112]
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. InProvence, 40 Jews were burnt inToulon as quickly after the outbreak as April 1348.[60] "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 ofChambéry (nearGeneva) had ordered him to poison the wells inVenice,Toulouse, and elsewhere. In the aftermath of Agimet's 'confession', the Jews ofStrasbourg were burned alive on February 14, 1349."[113]
In the Catholic kingdoms of late medieval and early modern Spain, oppressive policies and attitudes led many Jews to embrace Christianity.[114] Such Jews were known asconversos orMarranos.[114] Suspicions that they might still secretly be adherents of Judaism ledFerdinand II of Aragon andIsabella I of Castile to institute theSpanish Inquisition.[114] The Inquisition used torture to elicit confessions and delivered judgment at public ceremonials known asautos de fe before they gave their victims over to the secular authorities for punishment.[115] Under this dispensation, some 30,000 were condemned to death and executed by being burnt alive.[116] In 1492, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile issued anedict of expulsion of Jews from Spain, giving Jews four months to either convert to Christianity or leave the country.[117] Some 165,000 emigrated and some 50,000 converted to Christianity.[118] The same year the order of expulsion arrived inSicily andSardinia, belonging to Spain.[119]
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 asNew Christians orConversos, and those were rumoured to practicecrypto-Judaism were pejoratively labelled asMarranos. 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, apopular riot in 1506 resulted in the deaths of up to four or five thousand Jews, and the execution of the leaders of the riot by KingManuel. Those labeled as New Christians were under the surveillance of thePortuguese Inquisition from 1536 until 1821.
Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal, known asSephardi Jews from the Hebrew word for Spain, fled to North Africa, Turkey and Palestine within theOttoman Empire, and to Holland, France and Italy.[120] 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.[121] In thePapal states, Jews were forced to live in ghettos and subjected to several restrictions as part of theCum nimis absurdum of 1555.[122]
Martin Luther, aLutheran Augustinian friarexcommunicated by thePapacy for heresy,[123] and anecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired theReformation, wrote antagonistically about Jews in his pamphletOn the Jews and Their Lies, written in 1543. He portrays the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriates them and provides detailed recommendations for apogrom 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 tothe Holocaust."[124]
Luther's harsh comments about the Jews are seen by many as a continuation of medievalChristian 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."[125] 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."[126]
Simon of Trent was a boy from the city ofTrento, 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 byPope Sixtus V in 1588.
During the 1614Fettmilch uprising, mobs led byVincenz Fettmilch looted the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt, expelling Jews from the city. Two years later emperorMatthias executed Fettmilch and made the Jews return to the city under protection by imperial soldiers.[127]
In the mid-17th century,Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of the colony ofNew Amsterdam, later New York City, sought to bolster the position of theDutch Reformed Church by trying to stem the religious influence of Jews,Lutherans, Catholics andQuakers. 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 theDutch West India Company in Amsterdam overruled him.
TheCaribbean offered Jews amongst the most freedoms of any place in the 17th century world. By the mid-century, Jews became a constant presence in theWest Indian colonies, particularly those underBritish rule. The dearth of resources and lack of common will to establish a strongChurch presence in the colonies allowed many Jews to acquire Letters ofDenization, granting them the status of English subjects. Nonetheless, Jews in colonies likeJamaica were subject to higher additional taxes, were prohibited from holding public office, and could not serve in the militia. In 1661, Merchants inBarbados petitioned for Jews to be barred from trade "the Jews are a people so subtle in matters of trade" continuing "that in a short time they will not only ingross trade among themselves, but will be able to divert the benefit thereof to other places." Such antisemitic attitudes caused many Jews to settle in theLeeward Islands; however, even across smaller colonies, Jews continued to be treated as second-class citizens.[128]
During the mid-to-late-17th century thePolish–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 theJewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, including emigration, deaths from diseases and captivity in theOttoman Empire.[129][130] These conflicts began in 1648 whenBohdan Khmelnytsky instigated theKhmelnytsky uprising against the Polish aristocracy and the Jews who administered their estates.[131] Khmelnytsky'sCossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and southern areas that he controlled (now Ukraine). This persecution led many Jews to pin their hopes on a man calledShabbatai Zevi who emerged in the Ottoman Empire at this time and proclaimed himselfMessiah 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.[132]
In theZaydi imamate ofYemen, Jews were also singled out for discrimination in the 17th century, which culminated in the general expulsion of all Jews from places in Yemen to the arid coastal plain ofTihamah and which became known as theMawza Exile.[133]
In many European countries the 18th century "Age of Enlightenment" 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 theJewish 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.[134]
According toArnold Ages, Voltaire's "Lettres philosophiques, Dictionnaire philosophique, and Candide, to name but a few of his better known works, are saturated with comments on Jews and Judaism and the vast majority are negative".[135] Paul H. Meyer adds: "There is no question but that Voltaire, particularly in his later years, nursed a violent hatred of the Jews and it is equally certain that his animosity...did have a considerable impact on public opinion in France."[136] Thirty of the 118 articles in Voltaire'sDictionnaire philosophique concerned Jews and described them in consistently negative ways.[137]
In 1744,Frederick II of Prussia limited the number of Jews allowed to live inBreslau to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families and encouraged a similar practice in otherPrussian cities. In 1750 he issued theRevidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die Judenschaft: forcing these "protected" Jews to "either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin."[138] In the same year, Archduchess of AustriaMaria Theresa ordered Jews out ofBohemia but soon reversed her position, on condition that they pay for their readmission every ten years. This was known among the Jews asmalke-geld (queen's money).[139] In 1752 she introduced a law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782,Joseph II abolished most of these practices in hisToleranzpatent, on the condition thatYiddish andHebrew were eliminated from public records and that judicial autonomy was annulled.[139] In 1768, thousands of Jews were killed by CossackHaidamaks during themassacre of Uman in theKingdom of Poland.[140]
Jews in Switzerland were greatly restricted in their freedom of work, movement and settlement, and in the 17th century, Aargau was the only federal condominium where they were tolerated. In 1774, the Jews were restricted to just two towns,Endingen andLengnau. While the rural upper class pressed incessantly for their expulsion, the financial interests of the authorities prevented it. They imposed special taxes on peddling and cattle trading, the primary Jewish professions. The Jews were directly subordinate to the governor; from 1696, they were compelled to renew a (costly) letter of protection every 16 years.[141]
During this period, Jews and Christians were not allowed to live under the same roof, nor were Jews allowed to own land or houses. They were taxed at a much higher rate than others and, in 1712, a pogrom took place in Lengnau, resulting in considerable property destruction.[142] In 1760, they were further restricted regarding marriages and procreation. An exorbitant tax was levied on marriage licenses; oftentimes, they were outright refused. This remained the case until the 19th century.[141]
In accordance with the anti-Jewish precepts of theRussian Orthodox Church,[143] Russia's discriminatory policies towards Jews intensified when thepartition 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.[144] This land was designated as thePale of Settlement from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia.[144] In 1772, the empress of RussiaCatherine II forced the Jews of the Pale of Settlement to stay in theirshtetls and forbade them from returning to the towns that they occupied before the partition of Poland.[145][better source needed]
Following legislation supporting the equality of French Jews with other citizens during theFrench Revolution, similar laws promotingJewish emancipation were enacted in the early 19th century in those parts of Europe over which France had influence.[146][147] The old laws restricting them toghettos, as well as the many laws that limited their property rights, rights of worship and occupation, were rescinded.
Despite laws granting legal and political equality to Jews in a number of countries, traditional cultural discrimination and hostility to Jews on religious grounds persisted and was supplemented byracial antisemitism.[citation needed]
The 19th century saw the emergence ofnationalist agendas based on ethnicity, known asethnonationalism, which usually excluded Jews from the national community as an alien race.[148] Allied to this were theories ofSocial Darwinism, which stressed a putative conflict between higher and lower races of human beings, and often advocated the superiority ofAryans toSemitic Jews.[149] This was particularly evident in Germany where after the unification of 1871 nationalists, striving for a German identity, sought to exclude minorities like Jews as "the other", thus not truly German.[150] Some, like the historian and politician,Heinrich von Treitschke, demanded that Jews fully assimilate and abandon their cultural identity, "for we do not want to see millennia of Germanic morality followed by an era of German-Jewish hybrid culture"[150]
While many Jews assimilated, nationalists sought new ways to exclude them, leading to the emergence of racial antisemitism. 19th century writers likeArthur de Gobineau promoted theories of "Aryan" racial supremacy. In 1835, the historian Friedrich Schubert labeled Jews "an Asiatic tribe" incapable of being part of the German nation.[150] The newly-coined term, "antisemitism", was a product of this racialized thinking, most extensively popularized byWilhelm Marr. In his 1879 pamphlet, "The Victory of Judaism over Germandom," Marr depicted a racial conflict between Germans and Jews, asserting that liberalism and Jewish emancipation had allowed them to dominate German finance and industry.[151] He argued this struggle could only end with the destruction of one race by the other and that a Jewish victory would mean the end of the German people. Marr founded the League of Antisemites in 1879, which advocated for the forced removal of Jews from Germany.[151] This racial concept of antisemitism quickly spread across Europe, to France, Austria and elsewhere, with rabidly antisemitic books and newspapers, likeÉdouard Drumont'sLa Libre Parole (The Free Speech)and its motto "France for the French", blaming Jews for all the nation's problems and portraying them as a threat to all Frenchmen.[152]
This was exacerbated by capitalism, with its mass production and industrialized agriculture, which threatened the livelihood of artisans and peasants. Nationalist politicians blamed Jews for these ills.[153] The influx of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Tsarist Russia in the 1880s also fueled antisemitism. In 1887Austrian nationalist parties, advocatingracist policies against minorities, voted for a bill to restrict the immigration of Russian and Romanian Jews.[153] Similarly,antisemitic political parties in Germany adopted a strong Christian identity and sought to restrict the immigration of Russian Jews, as a first step toward striping all rights from Jews.[154] In 1897, thepopulistKarl Leuger, became mayor of Vienna, by wielding antisemitism and policies againstSlavic minorities as a tool to gain political power and mobilize the masses.Carl Schorske, called this "politics in a new key," characterized by emotion, charismatic leadership, and mass movements, with antisemitism playing a major role, in contrast to the earlier, more rational, parliamentary liberalism.[153]Adolf Hitler, who spent the years 1907-1913 in Vienna, later described Karl Leuger as a major inspiration.[153]
While a new, nationalist antisemitism emerged, traditional Christian antisemitism endured, in response to the liberalism and Jewish emancipation of the French Revolution. Following the defeat of Napoleon, who demolished the walls of the Roman ghetto, the Vatican rebuilt its walls and Jews in thePapal States remained confined to overcrowded, squalid ghettos, until the Papal States were abolished in 1870.[155] Conversionary sermons were again mandatory, and if a Jew chose to convert, the police forcibly took his family to theHouse of Catechumens to ensure the couple remained together. Educational and professional opportunities for Jews were severely restricted.Pope Pius IX, opposing modern liberal movements, reinforced accusations of Jewish ritual murder,[155]
Thecounter-revolutionary Catholic royalistLouis de Bonald stands out among the earliest figures to explicitly call for the reversal of Jewish emancipation in the wake of theFrench Revolution.[156][157] Bonald's attacks on the Jews are likely to have influencedNapoleon's decision to limit the civil rights ofAlsatian Jews.[158][159][160][161] Bonald's articleSur les juifs (1806) was one of the most venomous screeds of its era and furnished a paradigm which combinedanti-liberalism, traditional Christian antisemitism, and the identification of Jews with bankers and finance capital, which would in turn influence many subsequent right-wing reactionaries such asRoger Gougenot des Mousseaux,Charles Maurras, andÉdouard Drumont, nationalists such asMaurice Barrès andPaolo Orano, and antisemitic socialists such asAlphonse Toussenel andHenry Hyndman.[156][162][163] Bonald furthermore declared that the Jews were an "alien" people, a "state within a state", and should be forced to wear a distinctive mark to more easily identify and discriminate against them.[156][164]
In the 1840s, the popular counter-revolutionary Catholic journalistLouis Veuillot propagated Bonald's arguments against the Jewish "financial aristocracy" along with vicious attacks against the Talmud and the Jews as a "deicidal people" driven by hatred to "enslave" Christians.[165][164] Gougenot des Mousseaux'sLe Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peuples chrétiens (1869) has been called a "Bible of modern antisemitism" and was translated into German by Nazi ideologueAlfred Rosenberg.[164] In Italy, the Jesuit priestAntonio Bresciani's highly popular novel 1850 novelL'Ebreo di Verona (The Jew of Verona) shaped religious antisemitism for decades, as did his work forLa Civiltà Cattolica, which he helped launch.[166][167] In the Papal States, Jews were baptized involuntarily, and, even when such baptisms were illegal, forced to practice the Christian religion. In some cases, the state separated them from their families, of which theEdgardo Mortara account is one of the most widely publicized instances of acrimony between Catholics and Jews in the second half of the 19th century.[168]
Civil rights granted to Jews in Germany, following the occupation of that country by the French underNapoleon, were rescinded after his defeat. Pleas to retain them by diplomats at theCongress of Vienna peace conference (1814–5) were unsuccessful.[169] In 1819, German Jews were attacked in theHep-Hep riots.[170] FullJewish emancipation was not granted in Germany until 1871, when the country was united under theHohenzollern dynasty.[171]
In his 1843 essayOn the Jewish Question,Karl Marx used the stereotype of the practical "huckstering" Jew as an example of a historical trend towards the dominance ofCapital.[172] In 1850, German composerRichard Wagner publishedDas Judenthum in der Musik ("Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym in theNeue Zeitschrift für Musik. The essay began as an attack on Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries (and rivals)Felix Mendelssohn andGiacomo Meyerbeer, but expanded to accuse Jewish influences more widely of being a harmful and alien element inGerman 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 calledVictory of Jewry over Germandom.[173] The late 1870s saw the growth of antisemitic political parties in Germany. These included theChristian Social Party, founded in 1878 byAdolf Stoecker, the Lutheran chaplain toKaiser Wilhelm I, as well as theGerman Social Antisemitic Party and theAntisemitic 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 parliament.[174]
The defeat of France in theFranco-Prussian War (1870–71) was blamed by some on the Jews. Jews were accused of weakening the national spirit through association withrepublicanism,capitalism andanti-clericalism, particularly by authoritarian, right wing, clerical and royalist groups. These accusations were spread in antisemitic journals such asLa Libre Parole, founded byEdouard Drumont andLa Croix, the organ of the Catholic order of theAssumptionists. Between 1882 and 1886 alone, French priests published twenty antisemitic books blaming France's ills on the Jews and urging the government to consign them back to the ghettos, expel them, or hang them from the gallows.[164]
Financial scandals such as the collapse of the Union Generale Bank and thecollapse of the French Panama Canal operation were also blamed on the Jews. TheDreyfus affair saw a Jewish military officer named CaptainAlfred Dreyfus falsely accused of treason in 1895 by his army superiors and sent toDevil's Island after being convicted. Dreyfus was acquitted in 1906, but the case polarised French opinion between antisemitic authoritarian nationalists andphilosemitic anti-clerical republicans, with consequences which were to resonate into the 20th century.[175]
Having been restricted in their rights of work and movement since the Middle Ages, on 5 May 1809, Jews were finally declared Swiss citizens and given limited rights regarding trade and farming. They were still restricted to Endingen and Lengnau until 7 May 1846, when their right to move and reside freely within thecanton of Aargau was granted. On 24 September 1856, theSwiss Federal Council granted them full political rights within Aargau, as well as broad business rights; however, the majority Christian population did not fully abide by these new liberal laws. The time of 1860 saw the canton government voting to grant suffrage in all local rights and to give their communities autonomy. Before the law was enacted however, it was repealed due to vocal opposition led by Johann Nepomuk Schleuniger and theUltramonte Party.[142] In1866, a referendum granted all Jews full citizenship rights in Switzerland.[141] However, they did not receive all of the rights in Endingen and Lengnau until a resolution of theGrand Council, on 15 May 1877, when Jewish citizens were given charters under the names of New Endingen and New Lengnau, finally granting them full citizenship.[142]
Between 1881 and 1920, approximately three millionAshkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe migrated to America, many of them fleeing pogroms and the difficult economic conditions which were widespread in much of Eastern Europe during this time. Many Americans distrusted these Jewish immigrants.[176] 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 theImmigration 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, their situation in the U.S. was still improved.
Beginning in the early 1880s, declining farm prices also prompted elements of thePopulist 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 theRothschilds.[177] 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, andJacob Schiff, ofKuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York City, made the claims of antisemites believable to some. The Morgan Bonds scandal injected populist antisemitism into the1896 presidential campaign. It was disclosed that the government of PresidentGrover Cleveland had sold bonds to a syndicate which includedJ. P. Morgan and the Rothschilds house, bonds which that syndicate was now selling for a profit. The Populists used it as an opportunity to prove that Washington and Wall Street were in the hands of the international Jewish banking houses. Another focus of antisemitic 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.[178]
Since 1827, Jewish minors were conscripted into thecantonist schools for a 25-year military service.[179] Policy towards Jews was liberalised somewhat underTsar Alexander II,[180] but antisemitic attitudes and long-standing repressive policies against Jews were intensified after Alexander II was assassinated on 13 March 1881, culminating in widespreadanti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire which lasted for three years.[181] A hardening of official attitudes underTsar Alexander III and his ministers, resulted in theMay Laws of 1882, which severelyrestricted the civil rights of Jews within the Russian Empire. The Tsar's ministerKonstantin 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".[181] 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 two and half million Jews left Russia – one of the largest mass migrations in recorded history.[173][182]
HistorianMartin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries.[183][184] According toMark Cohen inThe Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that Arab antisemitism in the modern world arose in the 19th century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalisms, and it was primarily imported into theArab world by nationalistically mindedChristian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized").[185]
Hundreds ofAlgerian Jews were killed in 1805.[186] There was a massacre ofIraqi Jews in Baghdad in 1828.[187] In 1839, in the eastern Persian city ofMeshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue and destroyed theTorah scrolls, and it was only by forced conversion that a massacre was averted.[183] There was a massacre of Jews inBarfurush in 1867.[187] In 1840, in theDamascus affair, theJews of Damascus were falsely accused of having ritually murdered a Christian monk and his Muslim servant and of havingused their blood to bakePassover bread. In 1859, some 400Jews in Morocco were killed inMogador. In 1864, around 500 Jews were killed inMarrakech andFez in Morocco. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed inTunis, and an Arab mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, onJerba Island.
Concerning the life ofPersian Jews 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.[188]
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 Jewishgaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan."[187] In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities inConstantinople to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia.[183]
In the 20th century, antisemitism and Social Darwinism culminated in a systematic campaign ofgenocide, called theHolocaust, in which some six million Jews were exterminated inGerman-occupied Europe between 1941 and 1945 under the National Socialist regime ofAdolf Hitler.[189]
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 notoriousProtocols of the Elders of Zion, a document purported to be a transcription of a plan by Jewish elders to achieveglobal domination.[190] Violence against the Jews in theKishinev pogrom in 1903 was continued after the 1905 revolution by the activities of theBlack Hundreds.[191] TheBeilis Trial of 1913 showed that it was possible to revive the blood libel accusation in Russia.
The 1917Bolshevik Revolution ended official discrimination against the Jews but was followed, however, bymassive anti-Jewish violence by the anti-BolshevikWhite Army and the forces of theUkrainian People's Republic in theRussian Civil War. From 1918 to 1921, between 100,000 and 150,000 Jews were slaughtered during theWhite Terror.[192] White emigres from revolutionary Russia fostered the idea that the Bolshevik regime, with its many Jewish members, was a front for the global Jewish conspiracy, outlined in theProtocols of the Elders of Zion, which had by now achieved wide circulation in the west.[193] The pogroms were committed not only by White forces, but also by Red forces, local warlords, and ordinary Ukrainian and Polish citizens.[194]
In 1918, newly independent Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe. Between 1918 and 1921, some 130pogroms resulted in an estimated 300 Jewish deaths, driven by resentment over their perceived economic power and claims of supporting "Judeo-Bolshevism".[195] Western pressure led to Poland granting Jews equal rights and religious freedoms in its 1921 Constitution. While conditions improved underJózef Piłsudski's rule (1926–1935), antisemitism grew during the Great Depression. Nationalists, likeNational Democracy ideologueRoman Dmowski, promoted Nazi-style antisemitic propaganda, claiming Poland could not accommodate 3 million Jews, demanding they emigrate.[196]
From 1935 to 1937, anti-Jewish violence killed 79 Jews and injured 500.[197] In 1936,Cardinal Hlond, the Catholic primate of Poland, publisheda pastoral letter condemning the attacks, but also accused Jews of battling the Church, promoting atheism and communism, corrupting morality, disseminating pornography, engaging in treachery and usury.[198] The Polish government likewise condemned the violence and sought ways to reduce the Jewish populace through mass emigration,[199] even exploring sending them to Madagascar.[200] In 1938, it stripped Polish citizenship from tens of thousands of Jews living abroad.[201] By the outbreak of WWII in 1939, the government was considering its own version of theNuremberg Laws.[202]
During the war the Nazis implemented the Holocaust in Poland. They used Polish police and railroad personnel to guard the ghettos and transport Jews. TheBlue Police helped enforce German anti-Jewish policies, such as the ghetto liquidations from 1942-1943.[203] Encouraged by Nazi antisemitism, local residents attacked Jews in a number of small towns, as during the 1941Jedwabne pogrom where several hundred Jews were murdered by their neighbors, and inGniewczyna Łańcucka in 1942 where residents tortured, raped, and killed dozens of their Jewish neighbors.[203]
In France, antisemitic agitation was promoted by right-wing groups such asAction Française, founded byCharles Maurras. These groups were critical of the whole political establishment of theThird Republic. Following theStavisky Affair, in which a Jewish man namedSerge Alexandre Stavisky was revealed to be involved in high-level political corruption, these groups encouraged serious rioting which almost toppled the government in the6 February 1934 crisis.[204] The rise to prominence of the Jewish socialistLéon Blum, who became prime minister of thePopular 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 while a mob screamed 'Death to the Jew!'[205] Catholic writers such asErnest Jouin, who published theProtocols in French, seamlessly blended racial and religious antisemitism, as in his statement that "from the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity."[206]Pope Pius XI praised Jouin for "combating our mortal [Jewish] enemy" and appointed him to high papal office as aprotonotary apostolic.[207][206]
Antisemitism was particularly virulent inVichy France duringWorld War II. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to identify Jews for deportation. The antisemitic demands of right-wing groups were implemented under the collaborating Vichy regime of MarshalPhilippe Pétain, following the defeat of the French by the German army in 1940. Alaw on the status of Jews 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 officials detained some 75,000 Jews who were then handed over to the Germans; approximated 72,500 Jews were murdered duringthe Holocaust in France.[208]
In Germany, following World War I,Nazism arose as a political movement incorporating racially antisemitic ideas, expressed by Adolf Hitler in his bookMein Kampf. The Nazi's blamed Jews for all of Germany's ills -defeat in WWI,the Versailles Treaty, inflation, theGreat Depression, etc. They demonized Jews as the driving force behind both internationalMarxism andcapitalism. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazi regime sought the systematic exclusion of Jews from national life. TheNuremberg Race Laws of 1935 declared that only those of "German or related blood" could be citizens, thus stripping Jews, and later Roma and Black people, of their German citizenship and political rights. The Law for the Protection of German Blood outlawed marriage or sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews.[209] The Nazis employed mass media propaganda to dehumanize Jews, even depicting them as rats and other vermin. This proved vital in motivating the later extermination of Jews and ensuring the passive consent of millions of bystanders. Mass violence against the Jews was encouraged by the Nazi regime. On the night of 9–10 November 1938, dubbedKristallnacht, the regime sanctioned the killing of Jews, the destruction of property and the torching of synagogues.[210] Already prior to WWII, German authorities rounded up thousands of Jews for the firstconcentration camps, while many other German Jews fled the country.
Initially, the Nazis sought to get rid of Jews by forcing them to emigrate, but most countries, including the United States, Great Britain, and France, refused to ease their immigration restrictions to accept more Jews, with racial prejudice playing a major role.[211] In 1940 the Nazis drew up a plan todeport Jews to Madagascar, something France and Poland had also explored before the war, but this proved to be infeasible. As Nazi control extended during World War II, antisemitic laws, agitation and propaganda were brought to occupied Europe,[212] often building on local antisemitic traditions. In theGerman-occupied Poland, where over three million Jews had lived before the war in the largest Jewish population in Europe,Polish Jews were forced into newly establishedprison ghettos in 1940, including theWarsaw Ghetto for almost half million Jews.[213][page needed] Following theinvasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, a systematic campaign of mass murder in that country was conducted againstSoviet Jews (including former Polish Jews fromSoviet-annexed territories) by Nazi death squads called theEinsatzgruppen, murdering over one million Jews and marking a turn from persecution to extermination.[214] In all, some six million Jews, about half of them from Poland, were murdered outright or indirectly through starvation, disease andoverwork in German andcollaborationist captivity between 1941 and 1945 in the genocide known as the Holocaust.[215][216][217]
On 20 January 1942,Reinhard Heydrich, deputed to find a "final solution to the Jewish question", chaired theWannsee Conference at which all the ethnic Jews and many of part-Jews resident in Europe and North Africa were marked to be exterminated.[218] To implement this plan, the Jews from Poland, Germany, and various other countries would be transported to purpose-builtextermination camps set up by Nazis in the occupied Poland and inGermany-annexed territories, where they were mostly murdered ingas chambers immediately upon their arrival. These camps, located atAuschwitz-Birkenau,Chełmno,Bełżec,Majdanek,Sobibór andTreblinka, accounted for about half of the total number of Jewish victims of Nazism.[219]
Between 1900 and 1924, approximately 1.75 million Jews migrated to America's shores, the bulk of them were from Eastern Europe. Where before 1900, American Jews never amounted to even 1 percent of America's total population, by 1930 Jews formed about 3½ percent of America's total population. This dramatic increase in the size of America's Jewish community and the upward mobility of some Jews was accompanied by a resurgence of antisemitism.[citation needed]
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 membership in clubs and organizations and in tightened quotas on Jewish enrollment and teaching positions in colleges and universities. Some sources state that the conviction (and later thelynching) ofLeo Frank, which turned a spotlight onantisemitism in the United States, also led to the formation of theAnti-Defamation League in October 1913. However,Abraham H. Foxman, the organization's National Director, disputes this claim, stating that American Jews simply needed to found an institution that would combat antisemitism. The social tensions which existed during this period also led to renewed support for theKu Klux Klan, which had been inactive since 1870.[220][221][222][page needed][223]
Antisemitism in the United States reached its peak during the 1920s and 1930s. The pioneering automobile manufacturerHenry Ford propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaperThe Dearborn Independent. The pioneering aviatorCharles Lindbergh and many other prominent Americans led theAmerica First Committee in opposing any American involvement in the new war in Europe. However, America First's leaders avoided saying or doing anything that would make them and their organization appear to be antisemitic and for this reason, they voted to drop Henry Ford as an America First member. 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."[224] 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."[225]
In the late 1930s, theGerman American Bund held parades which featured Nazi uniforms and flags withswastikas alongside American flags. AtMadison Square Garden in 1939, some 20,000 people listened to the Bund leaderFritz Julius Kuhn as he criticized PresidentFranklin Delano Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld" and calling hisNew Deal the "Jew Deal". Because he espoused a belief in the existence of aBolshevik–Jewish conspiracy in America, Kuhn and his activities were scrutinized by 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 ininternment camps, and some of them were deported at the end of the war. Meanwhile, the United States government did not allow theMSSt. Louis to enter the United States in 1939 because it was full of Jewish refugees.[226] Duringrace riot in Detroit in 1943, Jewish businesses were targeted for looting and burning.
Antisemitism in the Soviet Union reached a peak in 1948–1953 and culminated in the so-calledDoctors' Plot that could have been a precursor to a generalpurge anda mass deportation of the Soviet Jews as nation. The country's leading Yiddish-writing poets and writerswere tortured and executed in a campaign against the so-calledrootless cosmopolitans. The excesses largely ended with the death of Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin and thede-Stalinization of the Soviet Union. However, the discrimination against Jews had continued, leading toa mass emigration once it was allowed in the 1970s, followed byanother during and after the breakup of the Soviet Union, mostly to Israel.
TheKielce pogrom and theKraków pogrom in communist Poland were examples further incidents of antisemitic attitudes and violence in the Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. A common theme behind the anti-Jewish violence in the immediate post-war period in Poland were blood libel rumours.[228][229] Poland's later "March events" of 1967–1968 was a state anti-Jewish (officiallyanti-Zionist) political campaign involving the suppression of the dissident movement and a power struggle within the Polish communist party against the background of theSix-Day War and the Soviet Union's and theEastern Bloc's new radically anti-Israeli policy in support of socialist Arab countries. Both of these waves of antisemitism in Poland resulted in the emigration of most of the country's Holocaust survivors during the late 1940s and in 1968, mostly to either Israel or the United States.
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.[230] This was mainly in the area of civil liberties, opposition to United States military intervention overseas and opposition toU.S. support for Israel.[231][232] As they interacted, some of the classic right-wing antisemitic scapegoating conspiracy theories began to seep into progressive circles,[231] including stories about how a "New World Order", also called the "Shadow Government" or "The Octopus",[230] was manipulating world governments. Antisemiticconspiracism was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups.[231] Some on the left adopted the rhetoric, which it has been argued, was made possible by their lack of knowledge of the history offascism and its use of "scapegoating,reductionist and simplistic solutions,demagoguery, and a conspiracy theory of history."[231] TheCrown Heights riots of 1991 were a violent expression of tensions within a very poor urban community, pitting African American residents against followers ofHassidic Judaism.
Towards the end of 1990, as the movement against theGulf 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 toThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[230]
In Argentina, some antisemitism emerged in the form of the association of Jews topsychoanalysis beliefs during the 1930s and 40s. Psychoanalysis was invented by Austrian neurologist,Sigmund Freud, whose ideas were often associated with Jews andJewishness. Prominent Catholic priests, such as Virgilio Filippo, attacked Freudian psychoanalysis by claiming that it was an ideology created to suppress Argentine society and undermine the Catholic Church.[233] Filippo viewed psychoanalysis as part of a Jewish plan to dominate by sexual means. Filippo linked Freud’s Jewishness to his sexual perversion as "related to the sexual perversion of the Jewish physiological constitution."[233] Antisemitism was also prevalent in texts from Christian writers; a popular one being Gustavo Martínez Zuviría or "Hugo Wast."[234] Writers like Huge Wast wrote political essays to "expose" Jews for their destructive force in Argentina and in the world.[234] Wast wrote a two-part novel titledKahal (Congregation) andOro (Gold), where theKahal plot was inspired by conspiracy theories and Jewish tropes of Jews taking control of the economy, media, culture, and government, much like theProtocols of the Elders of Zion.[234] Filippo's antisemitism was a combination of traditionalCatholic antisemitism, like Hugo Wast's work, andracial antisemitism based on the ideas of Freudian psychoanalysis and its connection to Jewish biological makeup.[233]
While Islamic antisemitism has increased in the wake of theArab–Israeli conflict, there were riots against Jews in Middle Eastern countries prior to the foundation of Israel, including unrest inCasablanca,[235]Shiraz andFez in the 1910s, massacres inJerusalem,Jaffa andbroadly throughout Palestine in the 1920s,pogroms in Algeria,Turkey andPalestine in the 1930s, as well as attacks on the Jews of Iraq andTunisia in the 1940s. As Palestinian Arab leaderAmin al-Husseini decided to make an alliance with Hitler's Germany during World War II, 180 Jews were killed and 700 Jews were injured in the Nazi-inspired riots of 1941 which are known as theFarhud.[236] Jews in the Middle East were also affected by the Holocaust. Most of North Africa came under Nazi control and many Jews were discriminated against and used as slaves until the Axis defeat.[237] In 1945, hundreds of Jews were injured duringviolent demonstrations in Egypt and Jewish property was vandalized and looted. In November 1945,130 Jews were killed during a pogrom in Tripoli.[238] In December 1947, shortly after theUN Partition Plan, Arab rioting resulted in hundreds of Jewish casualtiesin Aleppo, including 75 dead.[239] InAden, 87 Jews were killed and 120 injured.[240] A mob of Muslim sailors looted Jewish homes and shops inManama. During 1948 there were further riots against Jews inTripoli,Cairo,Oujda and Jerada. As thefirst Arab–Israeli War came to an end in 1949, agrenade attack against theMenarsha Synagogue of Damascus claimed a dozen lives and thirty injured. The 1967Six-Day War led to further persecution against Jews in the Arab world, prompting an increase in theJewish exodus that began after Israel was established.[241][242][better source needed] Over the following years, Jewish population in Arab countries decreased from 856,000 in 1948 to 25,870 in 2009 as a result of emigration, mostly to Israel.[243]
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The first years of the 21st century have seen an upsurge of antisemitism. Several authors such asRobert S. Wistrich,Phyllis Chesler, andJonathan Sacks argue that this is antisemitism of a new type stemming fromIslamists, which they callnew antisemitism.[244][245][246]Blood libel stories have appeared numerous times in the state-sponsored media of a number of Arab nations, on Arab television shows, and on websites.[247][248][249] Other scholars, such asAntony Lerman, contest the notion of new antisemitism.[250]
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.[251] A 2008 report by theU.S. State Department found that there was an increase in antisemitism across the world, and that both old and new expressions of antisemitism persist.[252] A 2012 report by the U.S.Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor also noted a continued global increase in antisemitism, and found thatHolocaust denial and opposition to Israeli policy at times was used to promote or justify antisemitism.[253]
In 2025, theAnti-Defamation League released the results of a survey of 58,000 adults from 103 countries taken in 2024, estimating that 2.2 billion people, representing 46% of the world's adults, harbor deep antisemitic attitudes.[254][255]
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Amid theGaza war, federal law enforcement in the United States reported a spike in antisemitic harassment, threats and violence. A man was charged for leaving an antisemitic voicemail containing death threats against SenatorJacky Rosen.[256]
In late October, a group of prominent US law firms signed a letter condemning "reports of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and assaults on college campuses, including rallies calling for the death of Jews and the elimination of the State of Israel" urging universities to take action.[257]
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William D. Rubenstein, a respected author and historian, outlines the presence of antisemitism in the English-speaking world in one of his essays with the same title. In the essay, he explains that there are relatively low levels of antisemitism in the English-speaking world, particularly in Britain and the United States, because of the values associated withProtestantism, the rise of capitalism, and the establishment of constitutional governments that protect civil liberties. Rubenstein does not argue that the treatment of Jews was ideal in these countries, rather he argues that there has been less overt antisemitism in the English-speaking world due to political, ideological, and social structures. Essentially, English-speaking nations experienced lower levels of antisemitism because their liberal and constitutional frameworks limited the organized, violent expression of antisemitism. In his essay, Rubinstein tries to contextualize the reduction of the Jewish population that led to a period of reduced antisemitism: "All Jews were expelled from England in 1290, the first time Jews had been expelled en masse from a European country".[258]
As mentioned above,Protestantism was a major factor that curbed antisemitism in England beginning in the sixteenth century. This assertion is supported by the fact that the number of reported instances in which Jews were killed in England was significantly higher prior to the birth of Protestantism albeit this was also affected by the number of resident Jews. Protestants were comparatively more understanding of Jews relative toCatholics and other religious groups. One possible reason as to why Protestant groups were more accepting of Jews was the fact that they preferred theOld Testament rather than theNew Testament, so their doctrines shared both content and narrative with Jewish teachings. Rubenstein attests that another reason as to why "most of these [Protestants] were predisposed to be sympathetic to the Jews" was because they often "view[ed] themselves, like thebiblical Hebrews, as achosen group that had entered into a directcovenant with God."[258] Lastly, Protestantism'santi-Catholic bend contributed to lower levels of antisemitism: "All of these groups were profoundly hostile toCatholicism.Anti-Catholicism, at both the elite and mass levels, became a key theme in Britain, tending to push antisemitism aside."[258] Overall, the emergence ofProtestantism lessened the severity of antisemitism through its use of theOld Testament and its anti-Catholic sentiment.
In post-Napoleonic England, when there was a notable absence of Jews, Britain removed bans on "usury andmoneylending,"[258] and Rubenstein attests that London and Liverpool became economic trading hubs which bolstered England's status as an economic powerhouse. Jews were often associated with being the moneymakers and financial bodies in continental Europe, so it is significant that the English were able to claim responsibility for the country's financial growth and not attribute it to Jews. It is also significant that because Jews were not in the spotlight financially, it took a lot of the anger away from them, and as such, antisemitism was somewhat muted in England. It is said that Jews did not rank among the "economic elite of many British cities" in the 19th century.[258] Again, the significance in this is that British Protestants and non-Jews felt less threatened by Jews because they were not imposing on their prosperity and were not responsible for the economic achievements of their nation.Albert Lindemann also proposes in the introduction to his bookAntisemitism: A History that Jews "assumed social positions, such as moneylending, that were inherently precarious and tension creating."[259] Lindemann believes that moneylending is inevitably riddled with tension, so as long as Jews were moneylenders, they would always be at the center of the problem and synonymous with fraught financial affairs.[citation needed]
The third major factor which contributed to the lessening of antisemitism in Britain was the establishment of a constitutional government, something that was later adopted and bolstered in the United States. A constitutional government is one which has a written document that outlines the powers of government in an attempt to balance and protect civil rights. After theEnglish Civil War, theProtectorate (1640–60) and theGlorious Revolution (1688), parliament was established to make laws that protected the rights of British citizens.[260] TheBill of Rights specifically outlined laws to protect British civil liberties as well. Thus, it is not surprising that having a constitutional government with liberal principles minimized, to some extent, antisemitism in Britain.
In further attempts to minimize antisemitism within government, the United States'Declaration of Independence embraced the liberal principles that were previously put forth in England and inspired the formation of a republic that had executive, judicial, and legislative powers and even a law that served to "forbid the establishment of any religion or any official religious test for office holding."[261] Having a government that respected and protected civil liberties, especially those pertaining to religious liberties, reduced blatant antisemitism by constitutionally protecting the right to practice different faiths. These sentiments go back to the first President of the United States,George Washington, who asserted his belief in religious inclusion. Rubinstein believes that though instances of antisemitism definitely existed in Britain and America, the moderation of antisemitism was limited in English-speaking countries largely because of political and social ideologies that come with a constitutional government.
In addition to being low in the United States and Britain, antisemitism was also low in other English-speaking countries such as Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Australia has had a historically positive attitude towards Jews and as a result, it had "remarkably little overt antisemitism at any point."[262] Similarly, Ireland and New Zealand also experienced a lower presence of antisemitism. This is not to say that English-speaking countries have less antisemitic sentiment because their populations speak English, instead, the ideologies that often exist in English-speaking countries affect their acceptance of Jews.[262]
While antisemitism tended to be low in English-speaking regions of Canada, it was higher inQuebec where the native language is French. Quebec has a "long history of blaring antisemitism, enunciated by French-speaking nationalists steeped in the most extreme forms of Catholic hostility towards Jews."[263] This is important because other English-speaking parts of Canada were more tolerant of Jews than its non-English speaking parts were, which suggests a correlation between lingual diversity and the level of Jewish hate. Additionally, it seems that Quebec's firm Catholic hostility towards Jews contributed to local antisemitic behavior.[263]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)The "Goad of Love", a retelling of the crucifixion that is considered the first anti-Jewish Passion treatise, was written around 1155–80.
Bogdan Chmelnitzki leads Cossack uprising against Polish rule; 100,000 Jews are killed and hundreds of Jewish communities are destroyed.
... as many as 100,000 Jews were murdered throughout the Ukraine by Bogdan Chmielnicki's Cossack soldiers on the rampage.
{{cite web}}:Check|url= value (help)By the 1890s anti-Semitic feeling had crystallized around the suspicion that the Jews were responsible for an international conspiracy to base the economy on the single gold standard.
Assumed social positions, such as moneylending, that were inherently precarious and tension creating.
