Part of a series on
Antisemitism
Part of Jewish history
History · Timeline · Resources
Manifestations Anti-globalization related · Arab Christian · Islamic · Holocaust denial · Nation of Islam New · Racial · Religious Secondary · Academic · Worldwide Incidents 2008–2009
Allegations Blood libel · Deicide · Dreyfus affair  · Host desecration Jewish Bolshevism · Jewish lobby Judeo-Masonism · Kosher tax Stab-in-the-back legend · Well poisoning Zionist Occupation Government
Antisemitism in print On the Jews and Their Lies Protocols of the Elders of Zion The International Jew Mein Kampf Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews The Culture of Critique series
Persecutions Expulsions · Ghettos · Pogroms Jewish hat · Judensau Yellow badge · Spanish Inquisition Segregation · Jewish quota The Holocaust · Nazism · Neo-Nazism
Opposition UN Watch Anti-Defamation League Community Security Trust FRA · Stephen Roth Institute Wiener Library · SPLC · SWC UCSJ · SCAA · Yad Vashem
Category
v t e

Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. In a 2005 U.S. governmental report, antisemitism is defined as "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."^[1] A person who holds such views is called an "antisemite". Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions of hatred of or discrimination against individual Jews to organized violent attacks by mobs, state police, or even military attacks on entire Jewish communities. Extreme instances of persecution include the pogroms which preceded the First Crusade in 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290, the massacres of Spanish Jews in 1391, the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the expulsion from Portugal in 1497, various Russian pogroms, the Dreyfus Affair, and the Final Solution by Hitler's Germany and official Soviet anti-Jewish policies.

While the term's etymology might suggest that antisemitism is directed against all Semitic peoples, the term was coined in the late 19th century in Germany as a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred"),^[2] and that has been its normal use since then.^[3]

Etymology and usage[link]

Usage[link]

Despite the use of the prefix anti-, the terms Semitic and anti-Semitic are not directly opposed to each other. Antisemitism refers specifically to prejudice against Jews alone and in general,^[3][4] despite the fact that there are other speakers of Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs, Ethiopians, or Assyrians) and that not all Jews speak a Semitic language.

The term anti-Semitic has been used on occasion to include bigotry against other Semitic-language peoples such as Arabs, but such usage is not widely accepted.^[5][6]

Both terms anti-Semitism and antisemitism are in common use. Some scholars favor the unhyphenated form antisemitism to avoid possible confusion involving whether the term refers specifically to Jews, or to Semitic-language speakers as a whole.^{[7][8][9][10]} For example, Emil Fackenheim supported the unhyphenated spelling, in order to "dispel[] the notion that there is an entity 'Semitism' which 'anti-Semitism' opposes."^[11]

Etymology[link]

Cover page of Marr's The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, 1880 edition

Although Wilhelm Marr is generally credited with coining the word anti-Semitism (see below), Alex Bein writes that the word was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase "anti-Semitic prejudices".^[12] Steinschneider used this phrase to characterize Ernest Renan's ideas about how "Semitic races" were inferior to "Aryan races." These pseudo-scientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. He coined the term "the Jews are our misfortune" which would later be widely used by Nazis.^[13] In Treitschke's writings Semitic was synonymous with Jewish, in contrast to its use by Renan and others.

In 1873 German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet "The Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit. Observed from a non-religious perspective." ("Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum. Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet.")^[14] in which he used the word "Semitismus" interchangeably with the word "Judentum" to denote both "Jewry" (the Jews as a collective) and "jewishness" (the quality of being Jewish, or the Jewish spirit). Although he did not use the word "Antisemitismus" in the pamphlet, the coining of the latter word followed naturally from the word "Semitismus", and indicated either opposition to the Jews as a people, or else opposition to Jewishness or the Jewish spirit, which he saw as infiltrating German culture. In his next pamphlet, "The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit", published in 1880, Marr developed his ideas further and coined the related German word Antisemitismus – antisemitism, derived from the word "Semitismus" that he had earlier used.

The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year he founded the "League of Antisemites" ("Antisemiten-Liga"), the first German organization committed specifically to combatting the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence, and advocating their forced removal from the country.

So far as can be ascertained, the word was first widely printed in 1881, when Marr published "Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte," and Wilhelm Scherer used the term "Antisemiten" in the January issue of "Neue Freie Presse". The related word semitism was coined around 1885.

Definition[link]

Though the general definition of antisemitism is hostility or prejudice against Jews, and, according to Olaf Blaschke, become an 'umbrella term for negative stereotypes about Jews,' ^[15] a number of authorities have developed more formal definitions.

Holocaust scholar and City University of New York professor Helen Fein defines it as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions – social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence – which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews."

Elaborating on Fein's definition, Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne writes that, to antisemites, "Jews are not only partially but totally bad by nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this bad nature: (1) Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a collective. (2) Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies. (3) Jews bring disaster on their 'host societies' or on the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the antisemites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish character."^[16]

For Sonja Weinberg, as distinct from economic and religious anti-Judaism, antisemitism in its modern form shows conceptual innovation, a resort to 'science' to defend itself, new functional forms and organisational differences. It was anti-liberal, racialist and nationalist. It promoted the myth that Jews conspired to 'judaise' the world; it served to consolidate social identity; it channeled dissatisfactions among victims of the capitalist system; and it was used as a conservative cultural code to fight emancipation and liberalism.^[17]

Antisemitic caricature by C.Léandre (France, 1898) showing Rothschild with the world in his hands

Bernard Lewis defines antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest. According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil." Thus, "it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic" unless this hatred or persecution displays one of the two features specific to antisemitism.^[18]

There have been a number of efforts by international and governmental bodies to define antisemitism formally. The U.S. Department of State defines antisemitism in its 2005 Report on Global Anti-Semitism as "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."^[1]

In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (now Fundamental Rights Agency), then an agency of the European Union, developed a more detailed working definition, which states: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." It adds "such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity." It provides contemporary examples of antisemitism, which include: promoting the harming of Jews in the name of an ideology or religion; promoting negative stereotypes of Jews; holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of an individual Jewish person or group; denying the Holocaust or accusing Jews or Israel of exaggerating it; and accusing Jews of dual loyalty or a greater allegiance to Israel than their own country. It also lists ways in which attacking Israel could be antisemitic, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor, or applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.^[19]

1889 Paris, France elections poster for self-described "candidat antisémite" Adolphe Willette: "The Jews are a different race, hostile to our own... Judaism, there is the enemy!" (see file for complete translation)

Evolution of usage[link]

In 1879, Wilhelm Marr founded the Antisemiten-Liga (Antisemitic League). Identification with antisemitism and as an antisemite was politically advantageous in Europe in the latter 19th century. For example, Karl Lueger, the popular mayor of fin de siècle Vienna, skillfully exploited antisemitism as a way of channeling public discontent to his political advantage.^[20] In its 1910 obituary of Lueger, The New York Times notes that Lueger was "Chairman of the Christian Social Union of the Parliament and of the Anti-Semitic Union of the Diet of Lower Austria.^[21] In 1895 A. C. Cuza organized the Alliance Anti-semitique Universelle in Bucharest. In the period before World War II, when animosity towards Jews was far more commonplace, it was not uncommon for a person, organization, or political party to self-identify as an antisemite or antisemitic.

In 1882, the early Zionist pioneer Judah Leib Pinsker wrote that antisemitism was an inherited predisposition:

Judeophobia is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.' ... 'In this way have Judaism and Anti-Semitism passed for centuries through history as inseparable companions.'... ...'Having analyzed Judeophobia as an hereditary form of demonopathy, peculiar to the human race, and having represented Anti-Semitism as proceeding from an inherited aberration of the human mind, we must draw the important conclusion that we must give' up contending against these hostile impulses as we must against every other inherited predisposition.^[22]

In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Goebbels announced: "The German people is anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."^[23]

After Hitler's fall from power, and particularly after the extent of the Nazi genocide of Jews became known, the term "antisemitism" acquired pejorative connotations. This marked a full circle shift in usage, from an era just decades earlier when "Jew" was used as a pejorative term.^[24][25] Yehuda Bauer wrote in 1984: "There are no antisemites in the world... Nobody says, 'I am antisemitic.'" You cannot, after Hitler. The word has gone out of fashion."^[26]

Forms[link]

Jews (identified by the mandatory Jewish badge and Jewish hat) being burned during the Black Death in 1348.

It is often emphasized that there are different forms of antisemitism. René König mentions social antisemitism, economic antisemitism, religious antisemitism, and political antisemitism as examples. König points out that these different forms demonstrate that the "origins of antisemitic prejudices are rooted in different historical periods." König asserts that differences in the chronology of different antisemitic prejudices and the irregular distribution of such prejudices over different segments of the population create "serious difficulties in the definition of the different kinds of antisemitism."^[27] These difficulties may contribute to the existence of different taxonomies that have been developed to categorize the forms of antisemitism. The forms identified are substantially the same; it is primarily the number of forms and their definitions that differ. Bernard Lazare identifies three forms of antisemitism: Christian antisemitism, economic antisemitism, and ethnologic antisemitism.^[28] William Brustein names four categories: religious, racial, economic and political.^[29] The Roman Catholic historian Edward Flannery distinguished four varieties of antisemitism:^{[30][page needed]}

• political and economic antisemitism, giving as examples Cicero and Charles Lindbergh;
• theological or religious antisemitism, sometimes known as anti-Judaism;
• nationalistic antisemitism, citing Voltaire and other Enlightenment thinkers, who attacked Jews for supposedly having certain characteristics, such as greed and arrogance, and for observing customs such as kashrut and Shabbat;
• and racial antisemitism, with its extreme form resulting in the Holocaust by the Nazis.

Louis Harap separates "economic antisemitism" and merges "political" and "nationalistic" antisemitism into "ideological antisemitism". Harap also adds a category of "social antisemitism".^[31]

• religious (Jew as Christ-killer),
• economic (Jew as banker, usurer, money-obsessed),
• social (Jew as social inferior, "pushy," vulgar, therefore excluded from personal contact),
• racist (Jews as an inferior "race"),
• ideological (Jews regarded as subversive or revolutionary),
• cultural (Jews regarded as undermining the moral and structural fiber of civilization).

Cultural antisemitism[link]

Louis Harap defines cultural antisemitism as "that species of anti-Semitism that charges the Jews with corrupting a given culture and attempting to supplant or succeeding in supplanting the preferred culture with a uniform, crude, "Jewish" culture.^[32] Similarly, Eric Kandel characterizes cultural antisemitism as being based on the idea of “Jewishness” as a "religious or cultural tradition that is acquired through learning, through distinctive traditions and education." According to Kandel, this form of antisemitism views Jews as possessing "unattractive psychological and social characteristics that are acquired through acculturation."^[33] Niewyk and Nicosia characterize cultural antisemitism as focusing on and condemning "the Jews' aloofness from the societies in which they live."^[34] An important feature of cultural antisemitism is that it considers the negative attributes of Judaism to be redeemable by education or religious conversion.^[35]

Religious antisemitism[link]

Religious antisemitism is also known as anti-Judaism. Under this version of antisemitism, attacks would often stop if Jews stopped practicing or changed their public faith, especially by conversion to the official or right religion, and sometimes, liturgical exclusion of Jewish converts (the case of Christianized Marranos or Iberian Jews in the late 15th century and 16th century convicted of secretly practising Judaism or Jewish customs).^[36]

Although the origins of antisemitism are rooted in the Judeo-Christian conflict, religious antisemitism, other forms of antisemitism have developed in modern times. Frederick Schweitzer asserts that, "most scholars ignore the Christian foundation on which the modern antisemitic edifice rests and invoke political antisemitism, cultural antisemitism, racism or racial antisemitism, economic antisemitism and the like."^[37] William Nichols draws a distinction between religious antisemitism and modern antisemitism based on racial or ethnic grounds: "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion . . . a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." From the perspective of racial antisemitism, however, "... the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear."

Economic antisemitism[link]

The underlying premise of economic antisemitism is that Jews perform harmful economic activities or that economic activities become harmful when they are performed by Jews.^[38]

Linking Jews and money underpins the most damaging and lasting antisemitic canards.^[39] Antisemites say that Jews control the world finances, a theory promoted in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and later repeated by Henry Ford and his Dearborn Independent. In the modern era, such myths continue to be spread in books such as The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews published by the Nation of Islam, and on the internet.

A caricature from the German antisemitic Der Stürmer, around Christmas 1929. It urged Germans to avoid buying from Jewish shops.

Derek Penslar writes that there are two components to the financial canards:^[40]

a) Jews are savages that "are temperamentally incapable of performing honest labor"

b) Jews are "leaders of a financial cabal seeking world domination"

Abraham Foxman describes six facets of the financial canards:

1. All Jews are wealthy ^[41]
2. Jews are stingy and greedy^[42]
3. Powerful Jews control the business world^[43]
4. Jewish religion emphasizes profit and materialism^[44]
5. It is okay for Jews to cheat non-Jews^[45]
6. Jews use their power to benefit "their own kind"^[46]

Gerald Krefetz summarizes the myth as "[Jews] control the banks, the money supply, the economy, and businesses – of the community, of the country, of the world".^[47] Krefetz gives, as illustrations, many slurs and proverbs (in several different languages) which suggest that Jews are stingy, or greedy, or miserly, or aggressive bargainers.^[48] During the nineteenth century, Jews were described as "scurrilous, stupid, and tight-fisted", but after the Jewish Emancipation and the rise of Jews to the middle- or upper-class in Europe were portrayed as "clever, devious, and manipulative financiers out to dominate [world finances]".^[49]

Leon Poliakov asserts that economic antisemitism is not a distinct form of antisemitism, but merely a manifestation of theologic antisemitism (because, without the theological causes of the economic antisemitism, there would be no economic antisemitism). In opposition to this view, Derek Penslar contends that in the modern era, the economic antisemitism is "distinct and nearly constant" but theological antisemitism is "often subdued".^[50]

Racial antisemitism[link]

Soviet prisoner of war, August 1941. At least 50,000 Jewish soldiers were shot after selection.

Racial antisemitism is prejudice against Jews as a racial/ethnic group, rather than Judaism as a religion.^[51]

Racial antisemitism is the idea that the Jews are a distinct and inferior race compared to their host nations. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, it gained mainstream acceptance as part of the eugenics movement, which categorized non-"Europeans" as inferior. It more specifically claimed that the "Nordic" Europeans were superior. Racial antisemites saw the Jews as part of a Semitic race and emphasized their "alien" extra-European origins and culture. They saw Jews as beyond redemption even if they converted to the majority religion. Anthropologists discussed whether the Jews possessed any Arabic-Armenoid, African-Nubian or Asian-Turkic ancestries.

Racial antisemitism replaced the hatred of Judaism with the hatred of Jews as a group. In the context of the Industrial Revolution, following the emancipation of the Jews, Jews rapidly urbanized and experienced a period of greater social mobility. With the decreasing role of religion in public life tempering religious antisemitism, a combination of growing nationalism, the rise of eugenics, and resentment at the socio-economic success of the Jews led to the newer, and more virulent, racist antisemitism.

According to William Nichols, religious antisemitism may be distinguished from modern antisemitism based on racial or ethnic grounds. "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion . . . a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism, "Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear."^[52]

In the early 19th century, a number of laws enabling emancipation of the Jews were enacted in Western European countries.^[53][54] The old laws restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited their property rights, rights of worship and occupation, were rescinded. Despite this, traditional discrimination and hostility to Jews on religious grounds persisted and was supplemented by racial antisemitism, encouraged by the work of racial theorists such as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and particularly his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Race of 1853–5.Nationalist agendas based on ethnicity, known as ethnonationalism, usually excluded the Jews from the national community as an alien race.^[55] Allied to this were theories of Social Darwinism, which stressed a putative conflict between higher and lower races of human beings. Such theories, usually posited by white Europeans, advocated the superiority of white Aryans to Semitic Jews.^[56]

Political antisemitism[link]

This section requires expansion.

William Brustein defines political antisemitism as hostility toward Jews based on the belief that Jews seek national and/or world power." Yisrael Gutman characterizes political antisemitism as tending to "lay responsibility on the Jews for defeats and political economic crises" while seeking to "exploit opposition and resistance to Jewish influence as elements in political party platforms."^[57]

According to Viktor Karády, political antisemitism became widespread after the legal emancipation of the Jews and sought to reverse some of the consequences of that emancipation. ^[58]

Apocalyptic antisemitism[link]

This section requires expansion.

Adolf Hitler's millennial and messianic vision which culminated in the Holocaust is sometimes referred to as an "apocalyptic antisemitism".^[59][60]

Conspiracy theories[link]

Holocaust denial and Jewish conspiracy theories are also considered a form of antisemitism.^{[61][62][63][64][65][65] [66] [67]} Zoological conspiracy theories have been propagated by the Arab media and Arabic language websites, alleging a "Zionist plot" behind the use of animals to attack civilians or to conduct espionage.

New antisemitism[link]

Starting in the 1990s, some scholars have advanced the concept of New antisemitism, coming simultaneously from the left, the right, and radical Islam, which tends to focus on opposition to the creation of a Jewish homeland in the State of Israel,^[68] and argue that the language of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are used to attack the Jews more broadly. In this view, the proponents of the new concept believe that criticisms of Israel and Zionism are often disproportionate in degree and unique in kind, and attribute this to antisemitism.^[69] It is asserted that the new antisemitism deploys traditional antisemitic motifs, including older motifs such as the "Blood Libel".^[68]

Critics of the concept view it as trivializing the meaning of antisemitism, and as exploiting antisemitism in order to silence debate and deflect attention from legitimate criticism of the State of Israel, and, by associating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, misused to taint anyone opposed to Israeli actions and policies.^[70]

History[link]

Many authors see the roots of economic antisemitism in both pagan antiquity and early Christianity. Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:

1. Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in ancient Greece and Rome which was primarily ethnic in nature
2. Christian anti-semitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages which was religious in nature and has extended into modern times
3. Traditional Muslim antisemitism which was – at least in its classical form – nuanced in that Jews were a protected class
4. Political, social and economic antisemitism of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe which laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism
5. Racial antisemitism that arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism
6. Contemporary antisemitism which has been labeled by some as the New Antisemitism

Chanes suggests that these six stages could be merged into three categories: "ancient antisemitism, which was primarily ethnic in nature; Christian antisemitism, which was religious; and the racial antisemitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."^[71]

Ancient world[link]

The first clear examples of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced back to Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE.^[36] Alexandria was home to the largest Jewish community in the world and the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew 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 of Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon, and in Apion and Tacitus.^[36] Agatharchides of Cnidus ridiculed the practices of the Jews and the "absurdity of their Law", making a mocking reference to how Ptolemy Lagus was able to invade Jerusalem in 320 BCE because its inhabitants were observing the Shabbat.^[36] One of the earliest anti-Jewish edicts, promulgated by Antiochus Epiphanes in about 170–167 BCE, sparked a revolt of the Maccabees in Judea.

In view of Manetho's anti-Jewish writings, antisemitism may have originated in Egypt and been spread by "the Greek retelling of Ancient Egyptian prejudices".^[72] The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria describes an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died.^[73][74] The violence in Alexandria may have been caused by the Jews being portrayed as misanthropes.^[75] Tcherikover argues that the reason for hatred of Jews in the Hellenistic period was their separateness in the Greek cities, the poleis.^[76] Bohak has argued, however, 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, and that many Greeks showed animosity toward any group they regarded as barbarians.^[77] Statements exhibiting prejudice against Jews and their religion can be found in the works of many pagan Greek and Roman writers.^[78] Edward Flannery writes that it was the Jews' refusal to accept Greek religious and social standards that marked them out. Hecataetus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the early third century BCE, wrote that Moses "in remembrance of the exile of his people, instituted for them a misanthropic and inhospitable way of life." Manetho, an Egyptian historian, wrote that the Jews were expelled Egyptian lepers who had been taught by Moses "not to adore the gods." The same themes appeared in the works of Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon, and in Apion and Tacitus. Agatharchides of Cnidus wrote about the "ridiculous practices" of the Jews and of the "absurdity of their Law" and how Ptolemy Lagus was able to invade Jerusalem in 320 BC because its inhabitants were observing the Sabbath.^[36] Edward Flannery describes antisemitism in ancient times as essentially "cultural, taking the shape of a national xenophobia played out in political settings."^[79]

There are examples of Hellenistic rulers desecrating the Temple and banning Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision, Shabbat observance, study of Jewish religious books, etc. Examples may also be found in anti-Jewish riots in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE. Philo of Alexandria described an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died.

The Jewish diaspora on the Nile island Elephantine, which was founded by mercenaries, experienced the destruction of its temple in 410 BCE.^[80]

Relationships between the Jewish people and the occupying Roman Empire were at times antagonistic and resulted in several rebellions. According to Suetonius, the emperor Tiberius expelled from Rome Jews who had gone to live there. The 18th century English historian Edward Gibbon identified a more tolerant period in Roman-Jewish relations beginning in about 160 CE^{[citation needed]}. However, when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the state's attitude towards the Jews gradually worsened.

James Carroll asserted: "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors such as pogroms and conversions had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."^[81][82]

Persecutions in the Middle Ages[link]

Part of a series on
Jews and Judaism
Etymology Who is a Jew? Jewish peoplehood Jewish identity
Religion God in Judaism Names Principles of faith Mitzvot 613 Halakha Shabbat Holidays Prayer Tzedakah Land of Israel Brit Bar and Bat Mitzvah Marriage Bereavement Philosophy Ethics Kabbalah Customs Synagogue Rabbi
Texts Tanakh Torah Nevi'im Ketuvim Targum Talmud Mishnah Gemara Rabbinic Midrash Tosefta Mishneh Torah Tur Shulchan Aruch Zohar
Communities Ashkenazi Sephardi Mizrahi Bukharan Kurdish Mountain Romaniotes Related groups: Lemba Khazars Karaim Krymchaks Samaritans Crypto-Jews Mosaic Arabs
Population Land of Israel Israeli Jews Palestinian Jews Europe Russia Poland Germany Netherlands Austria Hungary Romania United Kingdom France Portugal Spain Italy Greece Bulgaria Asia Iraq Yemen Syria Lebanon Iran Turkey Georgia India Pakistan China Africa Morocco Algeria Tunisia Libya Egypt Ethiopia South Africa North America United States Canada Latin America Argentina Brazil Mexico Oceania Australia New Zealand Judaism by country Lists of Jews Rabbis Historical population comparisons
Denominations Alternative Conservative Humanistic Karaite Liberal Orthodox Haymanot Reconstructionist Reform Renewal Traditional
Culture Minyan Wedding Niddah Pidyon haben Music Cuisine Hiloni Shidduch Zeved habat Conversion to Judaism
Languages Hebrew Biblical Yiddish Juhuri Judæo-Iranian Ladino Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic
History Timeline Leaders Ancient Kingdom of Judah Temple in Jerusalem Babylonian captivity Yehud Medinata Jerusalem in Judaism Timeline Hasmonean dynasty Sanhedrin Schisms Pharisees Jewish–Roman wars Christianity and Judaism Islamic–Jewish relations Diaspora Middle Ages Sabbateans Hasidism Haskalah Emancipation The Holocaust Aliyah Israel history Arab–Israeli conflict Land of Israel Baal teshuva Persecution Antisemitism history
Politics Zionism Labor Revisionist Religious Green General Bundism World Agudath Israel Feminism Politics of Israel Left Right
Category Portal WikiProject
v t e

From the 9th century CE, the medieval Islamic world classified Jews (and Christians) as dhimmi, and allowed them to practice their religion more freely than they could do in medieval Christian Europe. Under Islamic rule, there was a Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain that lasted until at least the 11th century,^[83] when several Muslim pogroms against Jews took place in the Iberian Peninsula; those that occurred in Córdoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.^[84][85][86] Several decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were also enacted in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen from the 11th century. Jews were also forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad several times between the 12th and 18th centuries.^[87] The Almohads, who had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147,^[88] were far more fundamentalist in outlook, and they treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians emigrated.^[89][90][91] Some, such as the family of Maimonides, fled east to more tolerant Muslim lands,^[89] while some others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.^[92]

During the Middle Ages in Europe there was persecution against Jews in many places, with blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. A main justification of prejudice against Jews in Europe was religious. The persecution hit its first peak during the Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096) flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were destroyed. In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in Germany were subject to several massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions, including, in 1290, the banishing of all English Jews; in 1396, the expulsion of 100,000 Jews in France; and in 1421, the expulsion of thousands from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.^[93] In medieval and Renaissance Europe, a major contributor to the deepening of antisemitic sentiment and legal action among the Christian populations was the popular preaching of the zealous reform religious orders, the Franciscans (especially Bernardino of Feltre) and Dominicans (especially Vincent Ferrer), who combed Europe and promoted antisemitism through their often fiery, emotional appeals.^[94]

As the Black Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews were used as scapegoats. Rumors spread that they caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed. Although Pope Clement VI tried to protect them by issuing the July 6, 1348, papal bull and an additional bull in 1348, several months later, 900 Jews were burned alive in Strasbourg, where the plague had not yet affected the city.^[95]

Seventeenth century[link]

During the mid-to-late 17th century the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over 3 million people), and Jewish losses were counted in hundreds of thousands. First, the Chmielnicki Uprising when Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and southern areas he controlled (today's Ukraine). The precise number of dead may never be known, but the decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, which also includes emigration, deaths from diseases and captivity in the Ottoman Empire, called jasyr.^[96][97]

European immigrants to the United States brought antisemitism to the country as early as the 17th century. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam, implemented plans to prevent Jews from settling in the city. During the Colonial Era, the American government limited the political and economic rights of Jews. It was not until the Revolutionary War that Jews gained legal rights, including the right to vote. However, even at their peak, the restrictions on Jews in the United States were never as stringent as they had been in Europe.^[98]

Enlightenment[link]

In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia limited the number of Jews allowed to live in Breslau to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families and encouraged a similar practice in other Prussian cities. In 1750 he issued the Revidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die Judenschaft: the "protected" Jews had an alternative to "either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin" (quoting Simon Dubnow). In the same year, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa ordered Jews out of Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on the condition that Jews pay for their readmission every ten years. This extortion was known as malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752 she introduced the law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II abolished most of these persecution practices in his Toleranzpatent, on the condition that Yiddish and Hebrew were eliminated from public records and that judicial autonomy was annulled. Moses Mendelssohn wrote that "Such a tolerance... is even more dangerous play in tolerance than open persecution."

In 1772, the empress of Russia Catherine II forced the Jews of the Pale of Settlement to stay in their shtetls and forbade them from returning to the towns that they occupied before the partition of Poland.^[99]

Islamic antisemitism in the nineteenth century[link]

Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries. Benny Morris writes that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th century traveler: "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 Jewish gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan."^[100]

Secular or racial antisemitism[link]

In 1850 the German composer Richard Wagner published Das Judenthum in der Musik ("Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The essay began as an attack on Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries (and rivals) Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but expanded to accuse Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture. Antisemitism can also be found in many of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, published from 1812 to 1857. It is mainly characterized by Jews being the villain of a story, such as in "The Good Bargain (Der gute Handel)" and "The Jew Among Thorns (Der Jude im Dorn)."

The Dreyfus Affair was an infamous antisemitic event of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery captain in the French army, was accused in 1894 of passing secrets to the Germans. As a result of these charges, Dreyfus was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. The actual spy, Marie Charles Esterhazy, was acquitted. The event caused great uproar among the French, with the public choosing sides regarding whether Dreyfus was actually guilty or not. Émile Zola accused the army of polluting the French justice system. However, general consensus held that Dreyfus was guilty: eighty percent of the press in France condemned him. This attitude among the majority of the French population reveals the underlying antisemitism of the time period.^[101]