(Jewish Group) Antisemitism in History: The Deep Roots of an Enduring Hatred

In the new Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust, which chronicles the country’s inaction and indifference toward European Jewry in the lead-up to and during World War II, historian Daniel Greene says that antisemitism is an ideology of hate that’s adept at holding completely contradictory views. This means that Jews have been simultaneously blamed for the ills of capitalism and the propagation of communism; for being the “unwashed masses,” insular and inbred, arriving on Ellis Island; and the “privileged,” “cosmopolitan elite,” who hold outsize power and influence. One scene in Burns’s documentary drives that home. In 1938, U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt organized the Evían Conference in France, inviting 32 participating nations to deal with the German “political refugee” question. At a time when Germany’s assimilated, mostly city-dwelling Jews were in desperate need of a place to take them in, most countries, including the U.S., made excuses for why they couldn’t ease immigration restrictions. Representatives for four South American countries jointly said they had no need for “merchants and intellectuals.” And when Eastern Europe’s poorer, less-educated Jews were caught in the Nazi’s crosshairs as Germany cannibalized the continent and unconfirmed reports of mass slaughter began to circulate, the world’s most powerful nations maintained strict quotas, even as escape became nearly impossible.

In a way, the Jew has always been a cipher able to, in the antisemite’s mind, embody and be blamed for whatever is ailing a nation or a people. As The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg points out, antisemitism is distinct from other prejudices in that it attempts to explain how the entirety of the world works and is buried in the heart of most conspiracy theories. It’s spoken of as one of humanity’s oldest hatreds, and the list of antisemitic canards is a long one: from the dawn of Christianity when Jews were blamed for the crucifixion of Christ; to the Middle Ages when they were accused of ritualistic blood-drinking and the spread of the bubonic plague; to the early 20th-century hoax document, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which popularized the Jewish “global cabal” conspiracy; to Germany’s scapegoating of the Jews for everything that was wrong the country — economic devastation, lost world-standing — after the end of the first World War.

The whys of antisemitism are complex. Why Jews, specifically? Judaism is, after all, the first monotheistic religion, paving the way for how the majority of the world worships. Its rituals aren’t all that different from those of other major religions. But historically, Jews were also steadfast in their beliefs, with many refusing to accept Jesus Christ as their savior as Christianity and its crusades swept the globe (not only did Jesus not fit the Jews’ biblical criteria for a messiah, a man being a “son of God” was seen as antithetical to the core teachings of Judaism). Because of their refusal to convert, they were depicted as “agents of the devil,” suffering through inquisitions, torture-induced conversions, and countless massacres. This steadfastness and a general aversion to proselytizing helped breed accusations of insularity and, relatedly, “disloyalty” even as they were forcefully excluded from Christian society and often physically segregated.

But, especially in modern times, being Jewish isn’t just about being religious. It has been described as an ethnicity, a culture, a nation, and a race, with plenty of disagreement about which term is most applicable, even among Jews themselves. Because of deep cultural and ancestral ties, a secular Jew who has never seen the inside of a synagogue may feel they are just as Jewish as an ultra-Orthodox person who has little contact with the secular world. Not that most modern antisemitic movements have made the distinction either. To them, our religious practice or lack thereof is inconsequential; they believe there’s something innate in us that makes us “evil” or “manipulative” or “selfish” or “money-grubbing” or “untrustworthy” or whatever adverse quality it is they want to assign. (Re, the “money-grubbing” trope: For centuries, Jews were banned from owning land or holding many kinds of jobs, and “since the early Church did not permit usury [lending money at interest], Jews came to fill the vital [but unpopular] role of moneylenders for the Christian majority,” the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explains.)

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