Perspectives on Racism: Anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages
Repetitive cycles of pogroms, expulsions, and massacres
throughout the ages continued to isolate Jews, making them
increasingly fearful and suspicious of the Christian world
that surrounded them, and forcing them to cling even more
strongly to their faith for survival. The Crusaders
massacred tens of thousands. England expelled them in 1290
and France in 1306, with many German towns shortly following
suit. They were slaughtered in retaliation for their
rumoured causing of the Black Death in Europe, and there
were countless burnings at the stake for alleged ritual
murders.
In spite of forced conversions in Spain, the killings
continued there because of suspicions of 'bad blood' and of
the secret practice of Judaism. The Inquisition saw
thousands burned at the stake or abused, imprisoned, and
stripped of their property ('More than one pyre blazed; and
the blood sacrifices of the Inquisition are without number'
[Schoeps 1963: 36]). Spain and Portugal expelled all Jews in
1492 under penalty of death. Some were welcomed in Turkey
and Italy. Continued persecutions and expulsions from
Germany and other western European countries meant that the
only safe havens for Jews were Poland, Lithuania, Galicia,
and the Ukraine, until the Ukrainian Cossacks ravaged Poland
and destroyed seven hundred Jewish communities in 1648. The
surviving remnants found their way back to some of the
western European countries, including Germany, where they
lived under lock and key in walled ghettos. Those who did
not go to the cities remained impoverished in small farming
villages in Eastern Europe.
Enforced segregation strengthened Jewish solidarity and
devotion to religious study, but it isolated Jews from the
larger society and made them objects of ridicule. They were
no longer feared as a danger to Christian society, but were
demeaned in art and literature, reviled in sermons, and
mocked in public. Locked up in ghettos and isolated in rural
towns, they were closed off from the effects of sweeping
political, cultural, and religious changes that brought
Europe into the modern era between the sixteenth and
eighteenth centuries. Moreover, Martin Luther and his
followers continued to preach a virulent anti-Semitism. It
is not surprising that the first-large scale Nazi pogrom -
'Kristallnacht' in November 1938 'was performed in honour of
the anniversary of Luther's birthday' (Hay 1950:169). The
widespread use of the printing press contributed to the
flooding of Europe with anti-Semitic pamphlets and books.
So-called enlightened philosophers advocated equal rights
for all people, but advised Jews to abandon their customs
and merge with the Christian majority. Voltaire, an avowed
Jew-hater, wrote that they were the 'enemies of mankind' and
were fully deserving of all the persecutions and massacres
that came their way. Nevertheless, the Enlightenment was
ultimately beneficial for Jews. Its emphasis on equal
rights, and the French and American revolutions, led to the
Jews' emancipation from the ghettos to take their part as
'equals' in European society.
[Continued]
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Anti-Semitism in
Canada
Realities, Remedies & Implications for Anti-Racism
Dr. Karen Mock