Christian and Jewish History

_ A Brief Overview of Anti-Semitism _

Although the practice of Anti-Semitism has existed for two centuries, the term itself was coined in 1879 by a German racist ideologue named Wilhelm Marr. This term is usually used to describe political, economic or social agitation and activities directed against the Jews. The adjective Semitic originally was applied to all descendants of Shem, the eldest son of the biblical patriarch Noah; in later usage, it refers to a group of peoples of southwestern Asia, including both Jews and Arabs. During the Nineteenth century, theories emerged that argued the superiority of the Aryan race over the lesser-developed Semitic people of the world. The distinction between superior and well-bred races ruling over inferior races became especially popular in the intellectual circles of Great Britain, Germany, United States, and France. Social scientists like Comte Joseph Arthur Gobineau, the economist Karl Duhring and the English writer Houston Stuart Chamberlain incorporated ideas of racial superiority with anti-Semitic notions and beliefs. Their books and lectures often justified the civil, social and religious persecution of the Jews throughout recorded history. The theory most widely accepted among social scientists views anti-Semitism as being nurtured by periods of social instability and crisis, such as those existing in Germany in the 1880s and in the era preceding the Second World War. Thousands of individuals directed their frustrations and anger onto an isolated group of scapegoats, i.e. the Jews. Unfortunately racial scientists were not the only individuals endorsing racism – the most thoroughly anti-Jewish arguments were advanced and supported by some of Christianity’s greatest saints and most rational thinkers.

Historical Roots of Anti-Semitism

During the years of Roman domination, the Jews continued to practice their beliefs and worshipped a single God, in contradistinction to Rome’s plethora of gods. This single belief isolated the Jews from a number of different religions and this eventually became a pretext to their eventual discrimination from public service, the military and Roman citizenship. Once Rome collapsed, Christianity grew by consolidating their control over education, medicine, welfare services, and even took over local government. By the year 200, nearly every city in Europe has its bishop, priests and the Bishop of Rome asserted complete control over God’s Kingdom on earth. The Jews slowly became the scapegoats and focus of discriminatory laws, and many were beaten to death while being called Christ killers. During the Crusades, millions were separated into ghettoes and systematically murdered by armies of the Roman Church in order to purify the world and protect Christianity from the Children of the Devil. As the Roman church structured itself into a more official organization of followers, rules, customs, and dogma, what "emerged was a more structured, more official position toward Jews, one that scholars now call a "teaching of contempt." [1] Each faith called itself the only road to true harmony and salvation, thus igniting a conflict that continues to persist to this day. In countries where the Roman Catholic Church dominated, Jews often found themselves hunted, arrested, tortured, and often times killed in the name of Jesus Christ. The Jews held that Jesus was not the Messiah and was not the one and only way to Heaven. To the Christian or Catholic, this was not only the teaching of the Devil, but many took steps to eliminate this sacrilegious teaching from their towns and cities.

In 1215, the Catholic Lateran Council mandated that Jews must wear special clothing to identify them as being of Jewish background. Martin Luther believed the Jews were the incarnate of the Devil, he did not believe that conversion could help any person who came from a Jewish family. Although Anti Jewish sentiment continued, the eighteenth and nineteenth century a separation began to occur between the Church and State. Jews slowly assimilated their families within the political and economic order. The unification of Germany in 1871 brought Jews into greater acceptance, both within the new German government and within banking. Legally, religious discrimination against the Jews ended yet racism continued to manifest itself and new political parties emerged that promulgated an anti-Semitic platform. The trend of German anti-Semitism grew along similar lines, for example, an Austrian Christian Socialist party supported anti-Semitic programs. Anti-Semitism in France culminated in the Dreyfus affair (q.v.) between 1894 and 1906. With the liberation of Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a Jewish officer in the French army who was imprisoned for alleged treason, anti-Semitism almost disappeared as a political issue in France. The Western characteristic of emancipation never took hold in Eastern Europe. Racial discrimination and outright hostilities became increasingly severe. Jews were limited from going to schools, owning land and in 1881, persecution of the Jews climaxed when thousands of Jews in Russia were murdered, their properties confiscated and countless were deported. The government launched a deliberate program of hate and destruction in order to divert the attention of the Russian peasantry and workers into religious racism. "The ultimate aim of Russian policy in the aftermath of the events of 1881 was the total disappearance of Jewish life from Russia." [2] One of manifestations of this directed racism included the infamous forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to reveal details of an international Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. It was first published in book form in Russia in 1905 and circulated continuously thereafter by individuals like Henry Ford and Houston Stuart Chamberlain.

The First World War marked the first time that mass killing became an official policy of civilized governments. The use of poison gas against millions of soldiers broke the taboos of war and comprehensively blunted moral sensitivities. The creation of new countries and the end of tsarist Russia, Austria Hungary and Germany brought about the establishment of new territories, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Jews throughout Europe remained under the thumb of discriminatory laws and many of them immigrated to different parts of the world. "Of the approximately 9.4 million Jews in Europe in 1933, more than 78 percent lived in Poland, the USSR, Rumania, and Hungary. The greatest concentration of Jews 3.1 million-lived in Poland, about 2.5 million in the USSR, about 750,000 in Rumania, and 444,000 in Hungary." [3] In many countries of Western Europe, particularly Germany, Jews were an economically well-assimilated group of bankers, merchants, craftsmen, and professionals.

"Germany’ s churches were quite demoralized by their country’s defeat in World War I. Guided by a Lutheran theology that stressed obedience to legitimate political authority, the major Protestant communities embraced the nationalistic war aims of the Kaiser." [4] Within a short time, German churches began preaching a new gospel, not love or giving, but blatant nationalism. The church leadership within the Protestant, Lutheran, and even a few Catholic churches sought a new scapegoat for their ills, Bolshevism and the insidious influence of the Jews. These decadent beliefs, the church leaders preached, were poisoning the purity of Christianity and several leaders called for the eradication of the Jewish menace in society. The Jews were again labeled the author of sin and transgression; consequently, the Devil’s influence was growing rapidly throughout the German land. "Joining with nationalism, economic pressures, and political yearning, they helped to build the attitudes that rendered Jews irreversibly redundant." Since hate is contrary to the Christian doctrine, the preachers tampered their teachings with sermons on Jewish faith, customs, and its potential use towards the destruction of Christian civilization. Before 1930, most church leaders paid scant attention to Hitler or his Nazi party’s platform of nationalism and anti-Semitism. Once Hitler came to power in 1933, thousands of devout Christians believed the Hitler was chosen by God to lead Germany against the evil influence of Communism its Jewish supporters.

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Notes:
1. Richard Rubenstein and John Roth. Approaches to Auschwitz. p 47.
2. Auschwitz. p 96.
3. Yehuda Bauer. History of the Holocaust. p 60.
4. Auschwitz. p 201.

Works Cited
Bauer, Yehuda. A History of The Holocaust.Franklin Watts: Connecticut 1982.
Rubenstein, L. Richard. Roth K. John. Approaches To Auschwitz. John Knox Press: Atlanta 1987.

		During the years of Roman domination, the Jews continued to practice their beliefs and worshipped a single God, in contradistinction to Rome’s plethora of gods. This single belief isolated the Jews from a number of different religions and this eventually became a pretext to their eventual discrimination from public service, the military and Roman citizenship. Once Rome collapsed, Christianity grew by consolidating their control over education, medicine, welfare services, and even took over local government. By the year 200, nearly every city in Europe has its bishop, priests and the Bishop of Rome asserted complete control over God’s Kingdom on earth. The Jews slowly became the scapegoats and focus of discriminatory laws, and many were beaten to death while being called Christ killers. During the Crusades, millions were separated into ghettoes and systematically murdered by armies of the Roman Church in order to purify the world and protect Christianity from the Children of the Devil. As the Roman church structured itself into a more official organization of followers, rules, customs, and dogma, what "emerged was a more structured, more official position toward Jews, one that scholars now call a "teaching of contempt." [1] Each faith called itself the only road to true harmony and salvation, thus igniting a conflict that continues to persist to this day. In countries where the Roman Catholic Church dominated, Jews often found themselves hunted, arrested, tortured, and often times killed in the name of Jesus Christ. The Jews held that Jesus was not the Messiah and was not the one and only way to Heaven. To the Christian or Catholic, this was not only the teaching of the Devil, but many took steps to eliminate this sacrilegious teaching from their towns and cities.

		In 1215, the Catholic Lateran Council mandated that Jews must wear special clothing to identify them as being of Jewish background. Martin Luther believed the Jews were the incarnate of the Devil, he did not believe that conversion could help any person who came from a Jewish family. Although Anti Jewish sentiment continued, the eighteenth and nineteenth century a separation began to occur between the Church and State. Jews slowly assimilated their families within the political and economic order. The unification of Germany in 1871 brought Jews into greater acceptance, both within the new German government and within banking. Legally, religious discrimination against the Jews ended yet racism continued to manifest itself and new political parties emerged that promulgated an anti-Semitic platform. The trend of German anti-Semitism grew along similar lines, for example, an Austrian Christian Socialist party supported anti-Semitic programs. Anti-Semitism in France culminated in the Dreyfus affair (q.v.) between 1894 and 1906. With the liberation of Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a Jewish officer in the French army who was imprisoned for alleged treason, anti-Semitism almost disappeared as a political issue in France. The Western characteristic of emancipation never took hold in Eastern Europe. Racial discrimination and outright hostilities became increasingly severe. Jews were limited from going to schools, owning land and in 1881, persecution of the Jews climaxed when thousands of Jews in Russia were murdered, their properties confiscated and countless were deported. The government launched a deliberate program of hate and destruction in order to divert the attention of the Russian peasantry and workers into religious racism. "The ultimate aim of Russian policy in the aftermath of the events of 1881 was the total disappearance of Jewish life from Russia." [2] One of manifestations of this directed racism included the infamous forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to reveal details of an international Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. It was first published in book form in Russia in 1905 and circulated continuously thereafter by individuals like Henry Ford and Houston Stuart Chamberlain.

		The First World War marked the first time that mass killing became an official policy of civilized governments. The use of poison gas against millions of soldiers broke the taboos of war and comprehensively blunted moral sensitivities. The creation of new countries and the end of tsarist Russia, Austria Hungary and Germany brought about the establishment of new territories, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Jews throughout Europe remained under the thumb of discriminatory laws and many of them immigrated to different parts of the world. "Of the approximately 9.4 million Jews in Europe in 1933, more than 78 percent lived in Poland, the USSR, Rumania, and Hungary. The greatest concentration of Jews 3.1 million-lived in Poland, about 2.5 million in the USSR, about 750,000 in Rumania, and 444,000 in Hungary." [3] In many countries of Western Europe, particularly Germany, Jews were an economically well-assimilated group of bankers, merchants, craftsmen, and professionals.

		"Germany’ s churches were quite demoralized by their country’s defeat in World War I. Guided by a Lutheran theology that stressed obedience to legitimate political authority, the major Protestant communities embraced the nationalistic war aims of the Kaiser." [4] Within a short time, German churches began preaching a new gospel, not love or giving, but blatant nationalism. The church leadership within the Protestant, Lutheran, and even a few Catholic churches sought a new scapegoat for their ills, Bolshevism and the insidious influence of the Jews. These decadent beliefs, the church leaders preached, were poisoning the purity of Christianity and several leaders called for the eradication of the Jewish menace in society. The Jews were again labeled the author of sin and transgression; consequently, the Devil’s influence was growing rapidly throughout the German land. "Joining with nationalism, economic pressures, and political yearning, they helped to build the attitudes that rendered Jews irreversibly redundant." Since hate is contrary to the Christian doctrine, the preachers tampered their teachings with sermons on Jewish faith, customs, and its potential use towards the destruction of Christian civilization. Before 1930, most church leaders paid scant attention to Hitler or his Nazi party’s platform of nationalism and anti-Semitism. Once Hitler came to power in 1933, thousands of devout Christians believed the Hitler was chosen by God to lead Germany against the evil influence of Communism its Jewish supporters.

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