Im curious about the history of the stigma against Jewish people? I’m Irish and while I know about ww2 and all the only religions I’ve been taught about are Catholicism and Protestantism Sorry, what I’m trying to ask is how did the stigma against Jewish people start/why did it start in the west? I don’t know anything about it really but I’ve been reading a lot about it lately and I’d really like to know more, I’m sorry if this comes across as offensive or rude, I’m really not trying to be 😰

roachpatrol:

spaceshipoftheseus:

jumpingjacktrash:

roachpatrol:

it’s always a very brave and good act to admit ignorance and ask for information! don’t let people shame you for it, it’s worse to stay quiet and uneducated. 

there’s a whole lot of theories on why jews are marginalized, from ‘well, those jews are assholes,’ to ‘well, everyone but us jews are assholes’. really, religious and ethnic discrimination starts on different pretexts in different places, though the underlying reason usually seems to be: ‘there are significant economic incentives for dehumanizing other people enough that you can justify killing them and taking their stuff’. the secondary reason is ‘if you tell the lower classes they’re poor because of other evil people than the guys in power, they’ll fight those guys instead of you!’. because it’s an enduring human instinct to distrust and dehumanize others, it’s a frequent political strategy for ruling classes to use that instinct to establish and perpetuate stratified, discriminatory societies.

anyway, as you can probably guess from reading about the various catholic/protestant debacles, people use religious differences to discriminate against eachother a whole fucking lot. many people feel very strongly about religion, and many people feel like the way they live their life has to be the best and only way or else what the fuck, so it’s generally really easy to get passionately faithful people to go and kill weirdos. i mean, honestly, it seems like it’s a lot harder to get them to not do it.

jews tend to be outsiders because… we tend to be outsiders. jewish marginalization can be very recursive. jews aren’t accepted somewhere, so they either assimilate until they’re not jewish anymore (taking themselves out of the equation) or form protective, insular communities that then invite further marginalization or expulsion because just look at those standoffish guys who don’t belong! if jews do well anyway, their accomplishments are seen as stealing the opportunities that should have belonged to their betters, and this should be redressed by kicking them out. if they don’t do well, they’re seen as parasitical leeches, who should definitely be kicked out! and then the survivors go settle in a new place and the cycle starts again. 

so, hopefully that wasn’t too dense an explanation? here’s a wikipedia article so you can research it more on your own. 

my theory, if it’s ok to venture it, is that monotheism got them in trouble with state religions early on, and the trend just continued.

i mean, in the story of moses, he rejected the egyptian state religion and got into a literal competition with their priests. that kind of thing does not go over well with the folks in charge. jews knew this but didn’t let it stop them.

then the romans went a-conquering, and again, their state religion did not play well with stubborn monotheists. again, the guys with the armies were not best pleased.

christianity started out as a small, fringey offshoot of judaism, and christians got the same treatment as jews at first, but eventually christianity became a state religion, and the same thing happened again.

So, actually, the history of Jews in Rome is super interesting and also very relevant to the framework of Christian anti-semitism. Basically, in the ancient world, Jews were kind of Those Intense Weirdos – sure everyone has their own fav god(s), but you still give a small offering to the local gods of wherever – that’s just being polite! But Jews wouldn’t. And then you had the state cults in Rome – not, notably, what we think of as the ‘Roman pantheon’ but like a goddess named Roma, not in a lot of cool stories, considered to be the sort-of-spirit-sort-of-protector of Rome itself. And you could worship anyone ELSE you wanted, that was fine, but if you didn’t make a small salt offering to Roma during times of trouble – emperors would declare a tax/offering – that was basically considered treason. Like, it was like saying you wanted the empire to fail.

BUT!!!! Jews were actually exempt from this!!!! Because during the Egyptian civil war between Cleopatra and her brother, a war in which Cleopatra had recruited general Julius Caesar as an ally, one time Caesar was pinned down and basically a bunch of kickass Jewish mercenaries came along and saved Caesar’s bacon. (Kickass Jewish mercenaries were a thing back then.) So as consul, Caesar made a proclamation that Jews would always be permitted to “honor the customs of their fathers” – including not making sacrifices to anyone except their own god.

(It’s worth noting that despite being Those Weird Guys, Jews did have some cultural standing based on their teachings being Old As Balls. Romans respected the hell out of tradition. And this proclamation dovetailed well with that perception.)

Anyway, fast forward to the second century AD. Even though Jesus himself was a Jewish radical, most Christians are now Gentile converts, because (1) Jesus failed to be a traditional David/Maccabee style Jewish hero (messiah, anointed) and (2) Jews, as previously mentioned, are not keen on worshipping anybody but their God, especially not some human. The empire is having some difficulties, and various mandatory offerings are declared. Gentile Christians claimed they were a type of Jew, and should also get the Caesarian exemption. But the Romans had one real simple litmus test for who should get that, and it was a dick check.

Are you circumcised? Cool. Otherwise do the offering. Gentile Christians were NOT circumcised – this being one of the major theological debates of the FIRST century AD, because it is a hell of a lot harder to get converts if you have to convince adults to cut of bits of their junk for God, and as noted Christianity need converts bc most Jews weren’t going for it.

SO in the second and third centuries, you get a HUGE tradition of anti-Jewish polemical writings by guys who will later be chosen/canonized by Constantine and his various councils of bishops as the Church Fathers. They’re making tons of really nasty arguments that the terrible blind Jews REJECTED their own God/savior/tradition and are no longer heir to it, and that Christians are the real receivers of the Old Testament tradition (and therefore the legal exemption). And since the OT has a lot of material on “the Jews are fucking up so I, God, am gonna punish them until they stop worshiping Baal and get back to living right,” the Church Fathers had a LOT of material.

This also picked up and intersected with the argument that the Jews, rather than the Romans, killed Jesus, which was an ass-saving lie of desperation from the very beginning, because in the Roman Empire, crucifixion was reserved for traitors*, for enemies of the state. So saying ‘by the way our founder was crucified’ was a good way to send any potential converts running for the hills! Unless you were also saying ‘wait wait wait it was a mistake the Roman governor totally didn’t WANT to kill him, those nasty Jews insisted!!!! But he was innocent!!!!’ Even though (1) the Sanhedrin had zero authority to execute people in Judea at the time and (2) lololol we have records of Pontius Pilate and he was actually recalled to Rome and sacked for executing too many people and making Judea extra discontent and rebellious. Motherducking!!!! Roman Empire!!!!! Fired this guy for being too bloodthirsty!!!!! But no he def super didn’t want to kill *our* prophet, yep, he was super nice and we are not traitors and you should join and give us your money maybe. And a lot of wealthy Roman ladies did bc the chastity thing gave them a reason not to marry or remarry and be a tool of their husbands’.

IN CONCLUSION, early gentile Christians blamed Jews for tons and tons of shit loudly and publicly to try and look good by comparison in front of Rome so the empire wouldn’t squash them, and all that stuff became Official Church Doctrine once some of those guys successfully converted Emperor Constantine and he put their followers in charge.

*the “thieves” on either side of Jesus are probs better translated as “bandits” – basically rebels up in the hills surviving by stealing, but that was not their primary crime.

wow i didn’t know this context, it’s super interesting. thanks for the addition!