Anti-Semitism - Modern Anti-Semitism
The Enlightenment and the
rise of racial anti-Semitism
Racial anti-Semitism, the most modern form of anti-Semitism, is a type
of racism mixed with religious persecution. Racial anti-Semites believe
that Jews are a distinct race and inherently inferior to people of other
races.
Modern European anti-Semitism has its origin in 19th century
pseudo-scientific theories that the Jewish people are a sub-group of
Semitic peoples; Semitic people were thought by many Europeans to be
entirely different from the Aryan, or Indo-European, populations, and
that they can never be amalgamated with them. In this view, Jews are not
opposed on account of their religion, but on account of their supposed
hereditary or genetic racial characteristics: greed, a special aptitude
for money-making, aversion to hard work, clannishness and obtrusiveness,
lack of social tact, low cunning, and especially lack of patriotism.
Ironically, while enlightened European intellectual society of that
period viewed prejudice against people on account of their religion to
be déclassé and a sign of ignorance, because of this supposed
'scientific' connection to genetics they felt fully justified in
prejudice based on nationality or 'race'. In order to differentiate
between the two practices, the term anti-Semitism was developed to refer
to this 'acceptable' bias against Jews as a nationality, as distinct
from the 'undesirable' prejudice against Judaism as a religion.
Concurrently with this usage, some authors in Germany began to use the
term 'Palestinians' when referring to Jews as a people, rather than as a
religious group.
Equally ironic, and further proof of its pseudo-scientific nature, it is
questionable whether Jews in general looked significantly different from
the populations conducting "racial" anti-Semitism. This was especially
true in places like Germany, France and Austria where the Jewish
population tended to be more secular (or at least less Orthodox) than
that of Eastern Europe, and did not wear clothing (such as a yarmulke)
that would particularly distinguish their appearance from the non-Jewish
population. Many anthropologists of the time such as Franz Boas tried to
use complex physical measurements like the cephalic index and visual
surveys of hair/eye color and skin tone of Jewish vs. non-Jewish
European populations to prove that the notion of a separate "Jewish
race" was a myth. In the 1990's, although this idea was long removed
from any public thought or discourse in the Western world, more advanced
technologies in DNA analysis allowed for curious anthropologists such as
Michael Hammer to revisit it, with very complex results. Some studies
(focusing on the Y-chromosome, which is carried by males only, and
therefore should in Cohanim theoretically link directly back to Aaron),
suggest a significant genetic kinship with the historic population of
the eastern Mediterranean; while others, (focusing on mitochondrial-dNA,
which is inherited from the mother only), give more ambiguous results as
they do not appear to be related to one another or to those of
present-day Middle Eastern populations.
Anti-Semitism and modernity
Many analysts of modern anti-Semitism have pointed out that its essence
is scapegoating: features of modernity felt by some group to be
undesirable (e.g. materialism, the power of money, economic
fluctuations, war, secularism, socialism, Communism, movements for
racial equality, social welfare policies, etc., etc.) are believed to be
caused by the machinations of a conspiratorial people whose full
loyalties are not to the national group. Traditionalists anguished at
the supposedly decadent or defective nature of the modern world have
sometimes been inclined to embrace such views. Indeed, it is a matter of
historical record that many of the conservative members of the WASP
establishment of the United States as well as other comparable Western
elites (e.g. the British Foreign Office) have harbored such attitudes,
and in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, some xenophobic
anti-Semites have imagined world Communism to be a Jewish conspiracy
(Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups , p. 590).
The modern form of anti-Semitism is identified in the 1911 edition of
the Encyclopædia Britannica as a conspiracy theory serving the
self-understanding of the European aristocracy, whose social power waned
with the rise of bourgeois society. The Jews of Europe, then recently
emancipated, were relatively literate, entrepreneurial and unentangled
in aristocratic patronage systems, and were therefore disproportionately
represented in the ascendant bourgeois class. As the aristocracy (and
its hangers-on) lost out to this new center of power in society, they
found their scapegoat - exemplified in the work of Arthur de Gobineau.
That the Jews were singled out to embody the 'problem' was, by this
theory, no more than a symptom of the nobility's own prejudices
concerning the importance of breeding (on which its own legitimacy was
founded).
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church
adhered to a distinction between "good anti-Semitism" and "bad
anti-Semitism". The "bad" kind promoted hatred of Jews because of their
descent. This was considered un-Christian because the Christian message
was intended for all of humanity regardless of ethnicity; anyone could
become a Christian. The "good" kind criticized alleged Jewish
conspiracies to control newspapers, banks, and other institutions, to
care only about accumulation of wealth, etc. Many Catholic bishops wrote
articles criticizing Jews on such grounds, and, when accused of
promoting hatred of Jews, would remind people that they condemned the
"bad" kind of anti-Semitism. A detailed account is found in historian
David Kertzer's book The Popes Against the Jews.
Anti-Semitism in France
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal which divided France for many
years during the late 19th century. It centered on the 1894 treason
conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army.
Dreyfus was, in fact, innocent: the conviction rested on false
documents, and when high-ranking officers realised this they attempted
to cover up the mistakes. The writer Émile Zola exposed the affair to
the general public in the literary newspaper L'Aurore (The Dawn) in a
famous open letter to the Président de la République Félix Faure, titled
J'accuse ! (I Accuse!) on January 13, 1898.
The Dreyfus Affair split France between the Dreyfusards (those
supporting Alfred Dreyfus) and the Antidreyfusards (those against him).
The quarrel was especially violent since it involved many issues then
highly controversial in a heated political climate.
Dreyfus was pardoned in 1899, readmitted into the army, and made a
knight in the Legion of Honour. An Austrian Jewish journalist named
Theodor Herzl was assigned to report on the trial and its aftermath. The
injustice of the trial and the anti-Semitic passions it aroused in
France and elsewhere turned him into a determined Zionist; ultimately
turning the movement into an international one. Also see Alfred Dreyfus
and Dreyfus affair.
Anti-Semitism was particularly virulent in Vichy France during WWII
(1939 - 1945). The French populace openly collaborated with the Nazi
occupiers to identify Jews for deportation and transportation to the
death camps. Anti-Semitism remains strong in France with frequent
vandalism and desecration of Jewish cemeteries and temples.
Modern passion plays
Passion plays, dramatic stagings representing the trial and death of
Jesus, have historically been used in Christian communities to arouse
hatred of local Jews; the plays usually depict the entire Jewish people
as condemning Jesus to crucifixion and being collectively guilty of
deicide, murdering God.
In 2003 and 2004 some have compared Mel Gibson's recent film The Passion
of the Christ to these kinds of passion plays, but this characterization
is hotly disputed; an analysis of that topic is in the article on The
Passion of the Christ.
Anti-Semitism in Poland
Desiring to emerge from the Dark Ages as a prominent European power,
Poland took notice of the typically advanced education of Jews
(particularly their literacy) and their competence in financial
management. In 1264, King Boleslaus V of Poland legislated a charter for
Jewish residence and protection, hoping that Jewish settlement would
contribute to the development of the Polish economy. This charter, which
encouraged money-lending, was a slight variation of the 1244 charter
granted by the King of Austria to the Jews. This charter was also
adopted (with variations) in Hungary, Lithuania, Bohemia, and Silesia.
While Jews were not granted the same degree of protection as other
citizens, and while Jews were excluded from privileges afforded
Christian merchants and burghers, the charter decreed by Boleslaus V
precipitated a major improvement for Jews over conditions in twelfth
century Europe. The charter included recognition of legal testimony of
Jews, fines for harming Jews or Jewish property, prohibition of blood
libels, and equal commercial rights. (However, the Polish population and
the Church did not always respect the charter. One such incident
occurred in Poznań in 1399, when the local rabbi and thirteen other
members of the Jewish community were tortured and burned at the stake
after being accused of "Host desecration" ). Due to the attractive
opportunities Poland offered for Jews at the time, as well as extreme
persecution in much of western Europe, a burgeoning Jewish population
developed in Poland. Jews were allowed to open Yeshivas and had a
measure of independence regarding judging religious legal cases. By the
sixteenth century, Poland had become the center of European Jewry and
one of most tolerant of all European countries regarding the matters of
faith. It was the only country where Catholics, Protestands, Orthodox,
Jews and even Muslims coexisted peacefully.
At the onset of the seventeenth century, however, tolerance began to
give way to increased anti-Semitism. King Sigismund III of the Swedish
House of Vasa, elected to the Polish throne, a strong supporter of the
counter-reformation, began to undermine the principles of the Warsaw
Confederation and the religious tolerance in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, revoking and limiting priviliges of all non-Catholic
faiths. In 1628 he banned publication of Hebrew books, including the
Talmud . Acclaimed twentieth century historian Simon Dubnow, in his
magnum-opus History of the Jews in Poland and Russia, detailed:
"At the end of the 16th century and thereafter, not one year passed
without a blood libel trial against Jews in Poland, trials which always
ended with the execution of Jewish victims in a heinous manner..."
(ibid., volume 6, chapter 4; "thereafter," in the above quote, refers to
no later than 1918, when Dubnow's work was published).
In the 1650s the Swedish invasion of the Commonwealth (The Deluge) and
the Chmielnicki Uprising of the Cossacks resulted in vast depopulation
of the Commonwealth, as over 30% of the ~10 million population has
perished or emigrated. In the related 1648-55 pogroms led by the
Ukrainian Haidamaks uprising against Polish nobility (szlachta), during
which approximately 100,000 Jews were slaughtered, Polish and Ruthenian
peasants often participated in killing Jews (The Jews in Poland, Ken
Spiro, 2001). The besieged szlachta, who were also decimated in the
territories where the uprising happened, typically abandoned the loyal
peasantry, townsfolk, and the Jews renting their land, in violation of
"rental" contracts. The Jewish Encyclopedia explains why Jews were
targeted in the Cossack massacres:
"The Jews increased rapidly in the Little Russian territories at the
beginning of the seventeenth century. They farmed not only the taxes,
but even the revenues of the Greek Orthodox Church. At every christening
or funeral the peasants had to pay a fee to the Jew. The lords were the
absolute rulers of their estates, and the peasants their dependent
subjects. When a lord or any other member of the nobility leased his
villages or estates to a Jew, his authority also was delegated to the
latter, who even had the power to administer justice among the peasants
("Yewen Mezulah," p. 2a). The extravagant life of the Polish landlords,
who spent most of their fortunes abroad, frequently placed them in
pecuniary difficulties, and their Jewish tax-farmers were often forced
into exactions against the advice and warnings of the wise leaders of
the Council of Four Lands, and the Jews of the Ukraine often suffered
grievously for the sins of individuals of their race. The uprising of
the peasants in the Ukraine has been ascribed by most historians to
their oppression by Jewish leaseholders, as well as to the privileges
granted to the latter by the kings and nobles of Poland. Recent
historical research, however, indicates that the Jews living in the
cities, particularly in those of the Ukraine, were not afforded the
protection enjoyed by other citizens, and moreover were excluded from
the privileges granted to the Christian merchants and burghers (Antonovich,
"Monografii po Istorii Zapadnoi i Yugo-Zapadnoi Rossii," i. 188).
Notwithstanding this, the Jews managed to gain control of the commerce
of the country, as is evidenced by the complaints of the Christian
merchants of Lemberg, Kamenetz, Kiev, and many other cities, shortly
before the Cossack uprising ("Archiv Yugo-Zapadnoi Rossii," v., part i.,
xxxiv. 134, xl. 156, cxxi. 323; "Starożytna Polska," 11, 1023, 1369; "Sbornik
Mukhanova," p. 192; Antonovich, l.c. p. 189). It was the combined
opposition to the Jews of the urban and the peasant populations that
made it possible for Chmielnicki to arm the entire country against them
within so short a time."
Historian Jacob Rader Marcus summarizes the situation as follows:
"In 1654 neighboring Russia turned against Poland, a year later the
Swedes poured in from the north, and all these groups, including the
native Poles, ravaged and massacred defenseless Jewish victims
throughout the land" (The Jew in the Medieval World, 1896).
The Eyewitness Chronicle detailes:
"Wherever they found the szlachta, royal officials or Jews, they
[Cossacks] killed them all, sparing neither women nor children. They
pillaged the estates of the Jews and nobles, burned churches and killed
their priests, leaving nothing whole." (Eyewitness Chronicle) [13]
The deathtolls of Chmielnicki uprising, as many others from the times of
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, vary. Historian Subtelny, in his
acclaimed Ukraine: A History (p.127–128), notes:
"Jewish losses were especially heavy because they were the most numerous
and accessible representatives of the szlachta regime. Between 1648 and
1656, tens of thousands of Jews—given the lack of reliable data, it is
impossible to establish more accurate figures—were killed by the rebels,
and to this day the Khmelnytsky uprising is considered by Jews to be one
of the most traumatic events in their history. Estimates of Jews killed
in the uprising have been greatly exaggerated in the historiography of
the event. According to B. Weinryb, the total of losses reported in
Jewish sources is 2.4 million to 3.3 million deaths, clearly a fantastic
figure. Weinryb cites the calculations of S. Ettinger indicating that
about 50,000 Jews lived in the area where the uprising occurred. See B.
Weinryb, "The Hebrew Chronicles on Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the
Cossack-Polish War," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1 (1977): 153-77. While
many of them were killed, Jewish losses did not reach the hair-raising
figures that are often associated with the uprising. In the words of
Weinryb (The Jews of Poland, 193-4), "The fragmentary information of the
period—and to a great extent information from subsequent years,
including reports of recovery—clearly indicate that the catastrophe may
have not been as great as has been assumed."
At the other extreme, some modern academic sources place the Jewish
death toll in the hundreds of thousands. One source, The Jew in the
Modern World (Oxford University Press), states that the uprising "left
in its wake hundreds of thousands of of Jewish dead, and, according to
one witness, 744 Jewish communities destroyed." While the Jewish
Encyclopedia considers the figure of 744 destroyed communities
"unreliable," it views authoritatively "chronicles" which state that
approximately 500,000 Jews were killed.
In the aftermath of the Deluge and Chmielnicki Uprising, many Jews fled
to the less turbulent Netherlands, which had granted the Jews a
protective charter in 1619. From then until the Nazi deportations in
1942, the Netherlands remained a remarkably tolerant haven for Jews in
Europe, excedeeing the tolerance extant in all other European countries
at the time, and becoming one of the few Jewish havens until nineteenth
century social and political reforms throughout much of Europe. Many
Jews also fled to England, open to Jews since the mid-seventeenth
century, in which Jews were fundamentally ignored and not typically
persecuted. Historian Berel Wein notes:
"In a reversal of roles that is common in Jewish history, the victorious
Poles now vented their wrath upon the hapless Jews of the area, accusing
them of collaborating with the Cossack invader!... The Jews, reeling
from almost five years of constant hell, abandoned their Polish
communities and institutions..." (Triumph of Survival, 1990).
Throughout the sixteenth to eighteenth century, many of the szlachta
mistreated peasantry, townsfolk and Jews. One rabbinic responsum from
the 1680's details an account of a Polish suzerain taking hostage the
community rabbi and Jewish council for the sake of capturing a Jewish
girl. A Polish peasant had claimed that the girl had agreed to marry
him, despite her vehement denials (Beit Hillel, Rabbi Hillel ben Naftali
Hertz). Threat of mob violence was a specter over the Jewish communities
in Poland at the time. On one occasion in 1696, a mob threatened to
massacre the Jewish community of Posin, Vitebsk. The mob accused the
Jews of murdering a Pole. At the last moment, a peasant woman emerged
with the victim's clothes and confessed to the murder. One notable
example of actualized riots against Polish Jews is the rioting of 1716,
during which many Jews lost their lives. Later, in 1723, the Bishop of
Gdańsk instigated the massacre of hundreds of Jews. John Toland, a
prominent Enlightenment figure in Ireland, wrote in 1714 that Polish
Jews "are often exposed... to unspeakable Calamities."
The legendary Walentyn Potocki, a Polish nobleman who converted to
Judaism, is said to have been burned by auto da fe on May 24, 1749. In
1757, at the instigation of Jacob Frank and his followers, the Bishop of
Kamianets-Podilskyi forced the Jewish rabbis to participate in religious
dispute with the quasi-Christian Frankists. Among the other charges, the
Frankists claimed that the Talmud was full of heresy against
Catholicism. The Catholic judges determined that the Frankists had won
the debate, whereupon the Bishop levied heavy fines against the Jewish
community and confiscated and burned all Jewish Talmuds. Polish
anti-Semitism during the seventeenth and eighteenth century was summed
up by Issac de Pinto as follows: "Polish Jews... who are deprived of all
the privilages of society... who are despised and reviled on all sides,
who are often persecuted, always insulted.... That contempt which is
heaped on them chokes up all the seeds of virtue and honour...." (Issac
de Pinto, philosopher and economist, in a 1762 letter to Voltaire). On
the other hand, it should be noted that despite mentioned incidents,
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a relative haven for Jews until the
partitions of Poland and its destruction in 1795. Also, some
18th-century sources are based on accounts invented by the partitioners,
who used propaganda to create the Commonwealth image as backward,
anarchical and dangerous country and thus justify the unprecedented
event of a complete destruction of a major European country and change
in the European balance of power.
Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia and in the Soviet Union
The Pale of Settlement was the Western region of Imperial Russia to
which Jews were restricted by the Tsarist Ukase of 1792. It consisted of
the territories of former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, annexed with
the existing numerous Jewish population, and the Crimea (which was later
cut out from the Pale).
During 1881-1884, 1903-1906 and 1914-1921, waves of anti-Semitic pogroms
swept Russian Jewish communities. At least some pogroms are believed to
have been organized or supported by the Russian okhranka; although there
is no hard evidence for this, the Russian police and army generally
displayed indifference to the pogroms (e.g. during the three-day First
Kishinev pogrom of 1903), as well as to anti-Jewish articles in
newspapers which often instigated the pogroms.
During this period the May Laws policy was also put into effect, banning
Jews from rural areas and towns, and placing strict quotas on the number
of Jews allowed into higher education and many professions. The
combination of the May Laws and pogroms propelled mass Jewish
emigration, and by 1920 some 2 million Russian Jews had emigrated, most
to the United States.
One of the most infamous anti-Semitic tractates was the Russian okhranka
literary hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, created in order to
blame the Jews for Russia's problems during the period of revolutionary
activity.
Even though many Old Bolsheviks were ethnically Jewish, they sought to
uproot Judaism and Zionism and established the Yevsektsiya to achieve
this goal. By the end of the 1940s the Communist leadership of the
former USSR had liquidated almost all Jewish organizations including
Yevsektsiya.
The anti-Semitic campaign of 1948-1953 against so-called "rootless
cosmopolitans," destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the
fabrication of the "Doctors' plot," the rise of "Zionology" and
subsequent activities of official organizations such as the Anti-Zionist
committee of the Soviet public were officially carried out under the
banner of "anti-Zionism," but the use of this term could not obscure the
anti-Semitic content of these campaigns, and by the mid-1950s the state
persecution of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the
West and domestically. See also: Jackson-Vanik amendment, Refusenik,
Pamyat.
Anti-Semitism and Islam
Anti-Semitism within Islam is discussed in the article on Islam and
anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in the Arab World is discussed in the
article on Arabs and anti-Semitism.
The Qur'an, Islam's holy book, criticizes the Jews for corrupting the
Hebrew Bible. Muslims refer to Jews and Christians as a "People of the
book"; Islamic law demands that when under Muslim rule they should be
tolerated as dhimmis - from the Arab term ahl adh-dhimma. The writer Bat
Ye'or introduced the modern word Dhimmitude as a generic indication of
this Islamic attitude. Dhimmis were granted protection of life (even
against other muslim states), wealth and honor, the right to residence,
worship, and work or trade, and were exempted from military service, the
zakah tax, and Muslim religious duties and personal law. They were
obligated to pay other taxes (jizyah and land tax), and subject to
various other restrictions regarding blaspheming Islam, the Qur'an or
Muhammed, prosleytizing, and at times a number of other restrictions on
dress, riding horses or camels, carrying arms, holding public office,
building places of worship higher than mosques, mourning loudly, wearing
shoes outside the mellah, etc. Anti-Semitism in the Muslim world
increased in the twentieth century, as anti-Semitic motives and blood
libels were imported from Europe. Some suggest this phenomenon is a
reaction to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Anti-Semitism in the 20th century
United States
In the USA, in the years leading up to America's entry into World War
II, Father Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic radio preacher, as well as
many other prominent public figures, condemned "the Jews" because they
were leading America into war. While most Jews in America supported the
interventionist camp, not all did. Jews were often condemned by populist
politicians alternately for their left-wing politics, or their perceived
wealth, at the turn of the century.
To limit the growing number of Jewish students Yale University in 1925
introduced the legacy system, which favoured the children of alumni.
American anti-Semitism underwent a modest revival in the late 20th
century; some Black Muslims claimed that Jews were responsible for the
exploitation of black labor, bringing alcohol and drugs into their
communities, and unfair domination of the economy. These claims are
generally considered spurious by impartial observers.
Germany
With the rise of the Nazis and their explicity anti-Semitic program,
hate speech referring to Jewish citizens as "dirty Jews" became common
in anti-semitic pamplets and newspapers, such as Völkischer Beobachter
and Der Stürmer. Judging by information available to researchers of
Jewish history, its origins can possibly be traced to the Middle Ages,
where isolated Jewish communities observed a strict dress code. Since
Jewish clothing seemed strange to the hostile surrounding Christian
populations of Europe, and also due to religious bigotry of some
Christians, the expression was very widely used.
One of history's most promenent antisemites: Adolf Hitler
Nazi cartoons depicting "dirty Jews" frequently portrayed a dirty,
physically unattractive and badly dressed "talmudic" Jew in traditional
religious garments similar to those worn by Hassidic Jews. Articles
attacking Jewish Germans, while concentrating on commercial and
political activities of prominent Jewish individuals, also frequently
attacked them based on religious dogmas. Accusations of responsibility
of "killing our savior Jesus Christ" and refusal by Jews to "accept the
savior" and convert to Christianity that fueled the hatred in the Middle
Ages were also repeated by Nazi propagandists.
Hatred against Jews manifested itself in such measures as the Nuremberg
Laws which banned "race-mixing" and in the Kristallnacht riots which
targeted Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship.
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