Anti-Judaism and antisemitism

Since ancient times, antisemites claiming to be critics of Judaism have spread antisemitism by promoting false claims about Judaism based on distortions of passages from the Talmud and Midrash.^[1][2]

Some antisemites judge the distorted passages by their own standards, and ignore the fact that the passages were written two thousand years ago by those in different cultures.^[1][2] Some antisemites also do so when they dislike something related to Judaism.^[1][2]

A common talk point of self-declared critics of Judaism is that "Jews hate or conspire against Christianity".^[1][3]

Christianity originated as a persecuted sect of Judaism in Roman Judea.^[4] Early Christians were mostly Jewish before non-Jewish converts became the majority and split with Judaism over theological differences.^[5] Christianity became the Roman state religion in 380 AD.^[4]

While antisemitism already existed in Ancient Egypt, far longer than Christianity,^[6] Jews have been blamed for the death of Jesus since the 1st century.^[7][8] The blame reportedly started with descriptions about the Crucifixion in the New Testament.^[9][10] Another conflict between Jews and Christians was whether the Torah^[11] was still valid.^[12]

The conflict extended to circumcision,^[13] when Paul used "Judaizers" to call Jews who demanded non-Jewish converts to circumcise.^[13][14] Paul believed that faith in Christ alone was enough for someone to be saved by God.^[5][14] Paul asked Christians not to follow the Old Covenant while accusing Jews of "turning from the [Holy] Spirit to the flesh" to look good to God.^[5]

Particularly, John Chrysostom's homily series Adversus Judaeos^[a][15] is seen by many historians as having inspired antisemites to justify pogroms, expulsions and discrimination against Jews in the following 1,600 years.^[16][17] Such antisemites include Nazi Germany's ruler Adolf Hitler, who reprinted and circulated Chrysostom's text among Germans within Nazi territories to justify the Holocaust.^[17][18]

In the early decades of Christianity, Church Father Ignatius of Antioch (c. 50–117) claimed that those who followed Jewish custom were "partakers with those who killed Jesus".^[19]

Church Father Justin Martyr (100–165) claimed that God's covenant (also known as the Old Covenant or Mosaic Covenant) with the Jews^[b] was no longer valid and that Christians had replaced them because the Jews "[had] slain the Just One [Jesus]",^[19] who would deserve exile and persecution in the centuries to come.^[19]

Church Father John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), who served as the archbishop of Constantinople, wrote in his homily series Adversus Judaeos (Ancient Greek: Κατὰ Ἰουδαίων Kata Ioudaiōn, "against the Jews"):^[18]

[The synagogue is worse than] a brothel and a drinking shop [...] a den of scoundrels, the repair of wild beasts, a temple of demons, the refuge of brigands and debauchees, and the cavern of devils, a criminal assembly of the assassins of Christ [. ...] demons dwell in the synagogue and also in the souls of the Jews.

As there were only two other ordained individuals in Antioch legally recognized as Christian preachers, Chrysostom managed to promote his ideas to most local Christians.^[20]

A minority of conservative Catholics, commonly called the radical traditionalist Catholics,^[21] despite theologically opposed to Martin Luther, share similar views to him regarding Jews. According to American civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center, radical traditionalist Catholics tend to hold these views:^[21]

• "Catholics cannot trust Jews"
• "Jews are the perpetual enemy of Christ"
• "Jews have "infiltrated" the Catholic Church to make changes for themselves"
• "Jews are responsible for Jesus' death, and this broke their covenant with God"

Radical traditionalist Catholics dislike the Vatican as they oppose the Vatican II reforms rolled out in 1965,^[21] which included Pope Paul VI's rejection of the 1,600-year official position that "Jews are responsible for Jesus' death":^[22]

What happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.

In Nazi Germany (1933‒45), "criticism" of Judaism was a major theme in state propaganda.^[2] Top Nazi racial theorist Alfred Rosenberg justified intellectual attacks on Judaism:^[2]

[w]e are not doing so out of disregard of freedom of thought [...] but to attack a legal viewpoint which completely contradicts that of all countries.

Rosenberg and other Nazis saw the Jewish emphasis on following the commandments for small details in life as a sign of "lack of moral understanding",^[2] while accusing Jews of "double moral standards" in dealing with gentiles.^[2] Some Nazis were experts on Judaism themselves,^[2] who were able to attack Judaism in a way more convincing to the public.^[2]

Jews started living in the Arabian Peninsula in the 6th century BC, when Babylonian Empire's conquest of the Kingdom of Judah forced Jews out of Judea. Multiple immigration waves of Jewish exiles made them the leading ethnoreligious group in the Arabian Peninsula, where Judaism was different from the multi-god religion of ancient Arabs,^[23] many of whom arrived later than the Jews due to their nomadic nature.^[23]

Jews thrived in the Arabian Peninsula until Muslims conquered the area, when they, along with other indigenous peoples, were required to pay jizya for their existence to be allowed.^[23][24] The payment of jizya granted Jews the status of dhimmi under which they were prohibited – under the threat of execution – from criticizing any aspects of Islam, sharing Jewish ideas to Muslims or touching a Muslim woman.^[25] Jews were also not allowed to:^[25]

• drink wine in public
• ride horses or camels
• pray or mourn in loud voices
• build synagogues taller than mosques
• construct houses taller than Muslim houses

Nation of Islam (NOI) is a Black nationalist religious movement founded in 1930,^[26] which played a notable role in the Civil Rights Movement (1954‒68) in the United States (US).^[26] Since its founding, it has been a subject of controversy due to its promotion of ideas commonly seen as antisemitic.^[27][28]

In 1984, its leader Louis Farrakhan called Judaism a "gutter religion [...] structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit" that "abused God's name for self-defense" after meeting Mummar Gaddafi in Libya.^[29] In 1985, at an NOI meeting, Farrakhan said that the Jews deserved the Holocaust by screaming that "And don't you forget, when it's God who puts you in the ovens, it's forever!"^[30]

Over the past decades, Farrakhan made several speeches demonizing Jews and Judaism.^[27][28] In 2020, Louis Farrakhan was classified by the American civil rights group Anti-Defamation League as "the most popular antisemite in America".^[31]

A similar, and equally influential, movement is the Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI).^[32] The BHI is founded on the pseudoscientific belief that African Americans are the "real descendants" of ancient Israelites.^[32] Some factions of the movement also see Native and Latino Americans as the descendants of ancient Israelites.^[32]

From the 1970s onward, followers of the BHI have a history of committing terrorist attacks on American Jews, including but not limited to the 2019 Jersey City shooting (7 dead and 3 injured) and the Monsey Hanukkah stabbing (1 dead and 4 injured).^[33] While differing in theology, the BHI and NOI are both antisemitic.^[28] Particularly, they both believe that "Jews ran the Atlantic slave trade" and "European Jews descended from the Khazars".^[28]

Dara Horn, an American novelist, essayist and professor of literature, wrote in The Atlantic that:^[34]

This is the permission structure for anti-Semitism [sic]: claim whatever has happened to the Jews as one's own experience, announce a "universal" ideal that all good people must accept, and then redefine Jewish collective identity as lying beyond it. Hating Jews thus becomes a demonstration of righteousness. The key is to define, and redefine, and redefine again, the shiny new moral reasoning for why the Jews have failed the universal test of humanity.

In the same article, Horn doubted Holocaust education's effectiveness based on persistent antisemitism in society,^[34] while pointing out that antisemitism functions by appropriating what has happened to Jews and reframing their experience as part of a "universal" fight that redefines Jewish identity as going against certain ideals.^[34] She said that attacks on Jews under the guise of anti-Zionism follow the same ancient pattern of marginalization and vilification.^[34] Some critics expressed similar concerns about the matter.^[35]

American historian David Nirenberg (b. 1964) held a special view about the issue.^[14] Nirenberg saw anti-Judaism as a basic element of Western culture,^[14] which had existed for far longer than Christianity.^[14]

In their works, ancient Western intellectuals ‒ especially Greek philosophers ‒ presented Judaism as a symbol of anything they disliked and made it a part of their people's subconcious.^[14]

Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek historian, wrote in 320 BC that Jews did not escape from Egypt but were expelled as undesirables.^[14] Hecataeus also accused Jews of living an "unsocial and intolerant mode of life".^[14] Hecataeus' bias was shared by a later Egyptian priest called Manetho, who called Jews "lepers and other unclean people".^[14]

Over the following centuries, the idea that Judaism equals something bad became a stereotype passed on from generation to generation.^[14] It was constantly weaponized by Christians in theological disputes,^[14] including Martin Luther who labelled Catholic Church's "legalistic understanding of God's justice" as "Jewish".^[14] The Puritans did the same in the English Civil War when they fought the Anglicans.^[14] In modern context, Nirenberg also implied that anti-Zionism was a product of anti-Judaism,^[14] when the State of Israel is seen by antisemites as the source of real-world problems.^[3][14]

Canadian historian Gavin Langmuir (1924‒2005) said that anti-Judaism was about exaggerated accusations against Jews, while antisemitism was rooted in falsehood.^[36] Langmuir saw the accusation of "Jews killing Jesus" as an example of anti-Judaism,^[36] while accusations of well poisoning is an example of antisemitism.^[36] Langmuir believed that anti-Judaism and antisemitism had existed together since the 12th century and reinforced each other over the centuries.^[36]

Polish anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir commented on the issue:^[37]

When secularism became fashionable, Jews were loathed as ‘dark reactionaries’. Under capitalism, they were persecuted as communists, and under communism, as capitalist [...] whereas ebbing nationalism allows Jews to be stigmatised as crazed chauvinists.

French historian Jules Isaac (1877–1963), author of the 1948 book Jésus et Israël,^[38] proposed the Eighteen Points for Christian-Jewish reconciliation,^[39] which was considered by the Seelisberg Conference of Christians and Jews in 1947:^[40]

In his 1956 book Génése de l’Anti-Sémitisme ("Has Anti-Semitism Roots in Christianity?"), Isaac agreed that pagan antisemitism existed before Christ but made it clear:^[40]

[Pagan antisemitism was] directed at a people considered separatist and unassimilable [. ... while] Christianity added theology to historical xenophobia and condemned Jews as a people of deicides to be cursed, punished, driven into exile.

American philosopher Steven Katz (b. 1944), the founding director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University in Massachusetts, wrote:^[17]

The decisive turn in the history of Christian anti-Judaism, a turn whose ultimate disfiguring consequence was enacted in the political antisemitism of Adolf Hitler.

Walter Laqueur (1921–2018), a German-American Jewish historian, said that the conditions for the 4th-century Christian church were "brutal and aggressive" as it was "fighting for survival and recognition", leading to the lack of demand for mercy and forgiveness,^[16] particularly due to the anti-Christian Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (reigned 361–363).^[4] The three centuries of persecution of Christians did not end until the late 4th century,^[4] when the Christian church became the state religion of the Roman Empire under Theodosius I (reigned 379–395),^[4] who closed pagan temples in the process.^[4]

William Nichols, a religious professor at University of British Columbia (UBC) and former Anglican Church minister, said:^[42]

[f]rom the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews [. ...] 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.

• Dual-covenant theology
• Secondary antisemitism
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion