- Antisemitism and the Holocaust.
This is a very long topic, and I don't think I could even begin to do it justice in a post. However, I'll touch on certain things, and if you wish you can ask further questions. And I'm sooo sorry its as long as it is. If I could have made this shorter and felt like I had done the topic justice, I would have.
Let me first say, and I cannot stress this enough, Christians today have (with very few exceptions) turned their backs on antisemitism. It will be difficult for you guys to hear about the past, but
PLEASE know that I do NOT think of Christians today as antisemites, and this post in no way is meant to bash you or your faith in Jesus. I'm simply seeking to be informative about the history of antisemitism (since I was asked), so if you would be so kind as to keep that in mind...
Antisemitism has existed as long as there have been Jews. In fact, we joke about our holidays being "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat." LOL You may recall that Pharaoh passed an edict calling for the murder of all Jewish male babies. When the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and took the Jews captive, he would have expected them to simply assimilate as other peoples had. In the story of Esther, Haman literally plots the genocide of the Jews. The Greeks engaged in cultural genocide, forcing Hellenism on all the peoples they conquered, including the Jews. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, and exiled the Jews. They even went so far as to rename Judea "Palestine" (after the Philistines) in an effort to wipe Jews from history.
However, no one persecuted us for as long or to such a deep extent as Christians. By the second century, the new religion of Christianity had become differentiated from Judaism, and an animosity developed. Christians went out of their way to avoid doing anything Jewish, such as stopping all observance of the Shabbat and Passover.
It was during this time that Replacement Theology aka Supersessionism developed. This theology says that although the Jews were once God's people, God has abandoned physical Israel. The Church is the New Israel and now all the promises given to the Jews belong to Christians. Every once in a great while, you still hear this doctrine echoed by a few Christians today who claim that Christians are the REAL Jews. Replacement Theology directly undermines Jewish identity and our covenant. It has contributed to the marginalization, persecution, and exclusion of Jews from Christian societies by framing us as having been superseded or rejected by God. Major proponents of this theology include Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine.
Things went from bad to worse in the 4th century when the Council of Nicea decided Jesus was God. This was when Christians began accusing Jews of "deicide"--the murder of God. And I don't mean just the Jews in the courtyard of Jesus' trial, but all Jews right up to the present. It resulted in the destruction of synagogues, riots, and violence against Jews. This is when the phrase "Christ-Killer" came into history, a phrase that would be used to incite violence against Jews right up into the 20th century.
In the fourth century, a particular Christian bishop, John Chrysostom, deserves to be singled out for his passionate set of sermons called "Against the Jews," designed to inflame Christian anger. He accused Jews of being immoral, participating in ritual murder, and other heinous acts. He called for Jews to be excluded from public life and social interactions with Christians. "The Jews are a bloodthirsty race, a race that, by their wicked deeds, have called down upon themselves the wrath of God... They are a race that slaughters the prophets and kills the saints." "The Jews are a race that is cursed, a race that is polluted, a race that is a servant to every other race." "The synagogue is worse than a brothel... It is the den of scorpions, the place of the devils... It is a den of thieves and robbers."
Also during this same era, Augustine needs to be noted for teachings that became entrenched in Christian theology. Augustine taught that Jews were suffering divine punishment for their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. He believed that God had sentenced us to be forever wandering the earth, outcast. He viewed our hardships as a consequence of our failure to accept Christ and believed this was part of God's plan to make Christianity more evident.
Common antisemitic tropes:
- The Blood Libel -- the claim that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make Passover matzah. Related to this was the idea that Jews engaged in the ritual murder of Christians.
- The Poisoning of Wells by Jews -- this was particularly common during the Black Death, as Christians blamed Jews for the Plague. Jews were also commonly blamed for economic crises.
- Greedy Jews: It was Christians that first got Jews into banking and money lending by outlawing our participation in other trades. Then they turned around and blamed us for requiring Christians to pay interest.
- Deformed Jews: This era began the tradition of portraying Jews with big noses, etc.
- Blasphemers: Jews were thought to desecrate the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and other imagined offenses.
And this era also began a long, long history of inviting Jews, knowing that they would help build the economies, and then turning around and exiling us. Probably most notable was the exile of Jews from Christian nations was England (1290), France (1306), and Spain (1492)--all of which occured on the Jewish fast day of Tisha B'av, said to be the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.
It became quite common during the Easter season for Christians to do Passion Plays depicting the trial, torture, and crucifixion of Jesus. Inevitably, these plays riled up Christians, who would go on rampages against the Jews afterwards. In fact, the connection between the plays and the violence was so strong, that many Jews were afraid of what might happen after Mel Gibson released his Passion of the Christ.
There were many forced conversions, and many Jews went to their deaths rather than convert. Perhaps the two that most readily come to my mind were in Portugal and Russia.
After the Alhambra decree banishing all non-Catholics from Spain in 1492, Jews fled to Portugal. But we went from the frying pan into the fire, because Portugal would not allow Jews to leave, but insisted on forced conversions. Jews were baptized en masse against their will. Later, these Jews were persecuted by the Inquisition because their conversions were suspect.
During the 17th and 18th centuries in Russia, especially during the reign of Tsar Alexis, Jews were forcibly converted. Any Jew who resisted conversion faced harsh penalties, including violence, forced relocation, etc. Not only were Jews forcibly baptized, but those who continued to practice Judaism in secret would be subject to arrest and punishment. The idea here was for Jews to assimilate and become Russians, obliterating us as a distinct people.
Of particular note is Martin Luther, the man who began the Protestant revolution in the 16th century. At first, he was kind to Jews, expecting us to simply become Christians when we heard the gospel. However, when the conversions never materialized, he became angry and bitter. He wrote a text called "On the Jews and Their Lies" that was a tirade, and which advocated all sort of punishments that Jews deserved: the burning of all synagogues, the burning of all Jewish books, the confiscation of all our property, expulsion from Christian countries, and forced conversion accompanied by severe penalties for those who resisted. This document would later become the blueprint for the Holocaust.
Perhaps the worst persecution of Jews before the Holocaust were the pogroms of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Pale of Settlement (a territory encompassing parts of Russia, Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus where Jews were segregated to). These attacks were characterized by brutal violence, and the government response was often inadequate or or even supportive. I met an older Jew who told me a nightmarish story passed on by his grandparents. When they were children they hid in the cupboard while Cossacks wearing crosses hacked their parents to death as they shouted "Christ Killers!" These pogroms led to the most massive migration of Jews in history.
What can I say about the Holocaust that would even begin to do justice to the suffering and deaths of six million Jews? In Auschwitz, a group of Orthodox Rabbis formed a beit din (tribunal) to try God for abandoning his covenant with the Jews. They found God guilty. I'm sure you have all heard the gruesome stories, so no need for me to mention them here. It is, btw, probably the best recorded event in history, due to the Germans being meticulous record keepers.
Before World War II, the global Jewish population was estimated to be around 16.6 million. The Holocaust exterminated roughly 60% of the Jews in Europe, a significant portion of the Jewish population globally. Today, Jews have STILL not recovered from that; we are still at only about 15 million today.
Unlike Christians who focused on religious discrimination, the Nazis of course were well known for their racist ideology -- they were the master race, and Slavs, Roma, etc., were inferior races good only for serving the German people. This didn't even begin to compare with their hatred towards Jews, whom they believed were a dangerous race and needed to be completely wiped off the planet--the "final solution" to the "Jewish problem."
But the Nazis could never have accomplished their genocide without the help of Christians. Most Germans during the holocaust were either Catholic or Lutheran. These Christians had been fed a steady diet of antisemitism from birth. In particular, Hitler basically treated Luther's "On the Jews and Their Lies" as an instruction manual for the holocaust. It worth noting that not all Christians were like this. There were a remnant that risked their lives to hide Jews. In Italy, every monastery and convent hid Jews, and thousands were hid in the Vatican alone. But these Christians were the exception to the rule. Indeed, in Croatia, the Catholic Ustasha were even more monstrous than the Nazis.
It was after Christians looked upon the horrors of the Holocaust that things changed. Most churches repudiated Replacement Theology and the Augustinian views. The Catholic Church in particular disavowed the idea that the Jews were communally responsible for the death of Jesus and were worthy of Christian respect. (Nostra Aetate). And indeed, probably no other group besides Jews has been more supportive of Israel than Evangelical Christians.
Today, we are seeing an enormous upswing in antisemitism, but it is not coming from Christians. It is coming from the far left and Muslims. This is not to say that all leftists and Muslim are antisemitic. Only that the hatred of Jews is coming from within these groups. The increase was alarming even before 10/7, but has reached epic proportions--Jews are hiding that we are Jews, upping security at synagogues, and many leaving for Israel.
This week, the courts ruled that UCLA could no longer have Jewish-free zones on campus. Do you know how the governing body of UCLA responded? They protested, saying that there was nothing wrong with Jewish free zones. So we are back to the Nazi idea of Judenfrei areas. It is fascinating to note that hundreds of Jews left France for Israel in the past month DURING THE ISRAEL HAMAS WAR. They feel safer in a war zone than in France.
People, we are living in Germany, 1935.
