During the turbulent times of the Middle
Ages and leading to our own era, there have been a number of wars with particularly
religious emphasis. From 1208 to 1228, for instance, the Catholic Church led
crusades against the Albigensions (a Christian "heretic" movement
in Western Europe), which totally destroyed them. The Inquisition burned thousands
of Christians at the stake and eliminated religious dissent in Southern Europe.
For over a century, from 1559, much of Europe echoed a series of religious
wars between Catholics and Protestants. One of the most famous atrocities
of this period was the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in which thousands
of Huguenots were massacred in Paris, and thousands more in the countryside.
In the seventeenth century, Protestant churches in Poland were destroyed by
Catholics in anti-Protestant riots in towns like Poznan, Cracow, and Lublin.
[HAGEN, p. 198]
Within this context of intra-religious warring,
in conjunction with famines, pestilence, and other wide-spread catastrophes,
"what is astonishing," writes Alan Edelstein, "given the situation
of medieval European Jewry, and what bears examination, is not that many were
attacked, expelled, or forcibly converted, but that more were not." [EDELSTEIN]
"Any judgment on the Christian treatment
of Jews [across history]," agrees Nicholas de Lange, another Jewish scholar,
"should also take account of the treatment of other religions, and indeed
of dissident movements within Christianity. Against this background, the treatment
of Jews can actually seem astonishingly humane and generous." [DE LANGE,
p. 35] "Christianity mercilessly persecuted paganism and heresies,"
says Abram Leon," [but] it tolerated the Jewish religion." [LEON,
p. 73] "We shall have to admit," wrote famed Jewish historian Salo
Baron, "that church censorship has rarely interfered with the autonomous
development of Jewish culture." [BARON, Ancient, p. 266]
Yet modern Jewry's deep animosity towards
Christianity stems from the accusation that institutional Christianity (as
distinct from riotous mobs and individuals) was seminal to anti-Semitism in
the Middle Ages, and even earlier, laying a religious foundation for the hostility
towards Jews in the Western world to our own time. It can easily be argued, however, (as did Benjamin Disraeli, and
others) that official Christian protection
of Jewry is as much responsible for Judaism's survival as anything else.
"It may be asserted," wrote Salo Baron," that had it
not been for the Catholic Church, the Jews would have not survived the Middle
Ages in Christian Europe." [SCHORSCH,
p. 38] Yet an important part of the Jewish victim tradition is the perceived
monolithic oppression of Christianity, presumably emanating from the traditional
Christian notion that "Jews killed Jesus," and epitomized in attacks
by medieval mobs and thugs against Jews, especially during the fervor of the
Crusades in 1068. "Anyone who reads the Talmudic tractate Avodah Zara,"
says Michael Lerner, "cannot escape the impression that Jews have come
to believe that all non-Jews are so dangerous that they should be avoided."
[LERNER, Goyim, p. 434]
Cecil Roth, a prominent Jewish historian
in the first half of this century, argues that the Jewish persecution by Christianity
throughout the ages -- a staple of popular Jewish folklore -- has been greatly
exaggerated:
"Jewish historiography towards Christianity,
and especially Catholicism, is
typical of the errors which a too slavish
following of the German
tradition has inspired ... The same lack
of understanding and the same
violence of contrast have been carried
into other aspects of Jewish
history. No attempt whatsoever has been
made to understand the
psychology of persecution. Any Jew-baiter
is necessarily represented
as a bloodthirsty desperado ... Any [Jewish]
apostate as a mere self-
seeking humbug. All persons who have
favored the Jews inevitably
figure as saints and heroes, while whoever
opposes or oppressed them
automatically become ruffians and hypocrites
... Almost every Jew is
made to figure as a peaceful, unoffending
saint, with no blemish
whatsoever to mar his character or to
explain his mistreatment ... [But]
blood ran as quickly in the ghetto as
outside ... [Jewish] violence was
not unknown in the synagogue itself.
[Jewish] sordidness was present in
plenty to enhance by contrast the glories
of martyrdom." [ROTH, p.
421-423]
Based upon the ancient Judaic mythos
of eternal victimization, Jewish animosity -- and often hatred -- towards
Christianity runs deep to this day. Yet, says Salo Baron, "It would be a mistake ... to believe
that hatred was the constant keynote of Judeo-Christian relations, even in
[medieval] Germany or Italy. It is the nature of historical records to transmit
to posterity the memory of extraordinary events, rather than of the ordinary
flow of life." [LIBERLES, p. 347]
Judaism had, of course, antipathy for Christianity
from the latter's very inception. Christianity evolved out of Judaism; it
was founded and propagated by Jews dissatisfied with the direction of the
seminal faith as guided by its leaders. "Popular hatred of the Temple
priest and the rich," says Lenni Brenner, "became the basis of Christianity,
and the New Testament must be seen as the last major production of the Jewish
religious genre." [BRENNER, p. 42] The new faith branched out of Judaism
as a distinctly different -- and to Jewish minds heretical -- religious view.
At this point in history, Judaism was the dominant religious force (vis a
vis Christianity) in Jerusalem; Christianity was embryonic and Jews were the
persecutors. Christians hoped that Jews would join their new, universalistic
faith.
Edward Flannery writes that
"The synagogue resented Christianity's
claims and in the emerging
conflict struck the first blow. Hellenist
Jewish converts to the Church
were driven from Jerusalem. [Saint] Stephen
was killed, as were the two
Jameses, though James the Less was killed
through the action of the high
priest, not the majority of Jews. Peter
was forced out of Palestine by the
persecution of Herod Agrippa I, and Paul
endured flagellations,
imprisonment, and complaints by Jews to
Roman authorities, and threats
of death at Jewish hands. Barnabas' death
(60 AD) at the hands of Jews in
Cypress is unanimously reported by early
hagiographers." [FLANNERY,
p. 27]
By 80 AD Jewish ritual had incorporated
a daily curse against Christians: "May the minim [heretics] perish in an instant; may they be effaced from the
book of life and not be counted among the Just." [FLANNERY, p. 28] In 117 CE Jews were involved in the
death of St. Simeon, the bishop of Jerusalem, and unrepenting Christians were
massacred by Jews in the Bar Kocha revolt (132-135 AD) against the Romans.
Christians were severely persecuted under
Roman rule, while Jews -- after initial revolts against Rome -- largely prospered.
"Christians were subject to mounting and systematic persecution from
the time of Emperor Trajan (98-117 CE) onwards," notes Robin Spiro, "The
Jews, by and large, fared better than the Christians at the hands of the Romans,
and retained the majority of their special privileges." [SPIRO, p. 17]
As Christianity grew in later centuries, attacks, riots, pogroms, rebellions
-- or whatever else one chooses to polemically label them -- were instigated
by Jews against Christians in Palestine and other parts of the Old World.
Simon Dubnov notes that "in 556, during bouts in the circus in Caesarea,
the Samaritans, assisted by Jewish youths, attacked the Christians. The Christians
were beaten soundly. Several churches were razed and Stephanus, the governor
of Palestine, was killed ... In Antiocha ... in 608, the local Jews rebelled;
since they predominated in numbers they killed many Christians, including
the patriarch Anastasias, whose body they dragged through the city streets
... In other localities (Scytopolis, for instance) the Jews were hostile toward
the Christians. During commercial transactions, they would not even accept
money directly from the hands of a Christian; they had to throw their coins
into water, where the Jews would then retrieve them." [DUBNOV, p. 24-25
v. 2]
When the Persians invaded Palestine in 614,
Jews joined as "auxiliaries" in slaughtering Christian neighbors.
"Jewish warriors," says Simon Dubnov, "along with Persians,
now assaulted numerous Christian churches (a church legend exaggerates the
number of dead to 90,000). Many churches, including the one of Christ's grave,
were razed to the ground ... In hostile acts towards Christians the Jew did
not lag behind the Persians. Bitter resentment ... found an outlet in atrocities."
[DUBNOV, p. 216, v. 2] According
to a Christian monk of the times, Strategius of Mar Saba, Jews bought "a
large number" of Christian prisoners from the Persians, "who they
then slaughtered just as one might buy cattle to slaughter." [SCHAFER,
p. 192] "Even as the Persians were approaching Palestine," notes
Peter Schafer, "the Jews appear to have risked an open revolt against
the Christians and allied themselves with the Persians." [SCHAFER, p.
140] The Persians were soon driven
out, however, by Heraclius of Christian Byzantium. When a Jewish leader, Benjamin
of Tiberias, was asked why he had previously justified the cruelties against
Christians, the Jewish patriot is reported to have answered, "Because
they were the enemies of my religion." [DUBNOV, p. 218, v.2]
For centuries a range of ridiculing and
hostile defamatory material about Christ was popularly circulated in the Jewish
communities, eventually written as Sefar Toledoth Yeshu. "It enjoyed
wide circulation among the general Jewish population." [JACOB, W., 1974,
p. 11] The earliest known copy found in modern times was discovered in a synagogue
built in the seventh century. Christ,
it was said, practiced witchcraft and was the illegitimate son of a Roman
soldier or, by other accounts, a "disreputable man of the tribe of Judah." [SHAHAK, p. 98, FLANNERY, p. 34, GOLDSTEIN,
p. 148] The book, “in Hebrew and Yiddish was, but is not now, in common circulation,"
wrote Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner in 1926, "yet the book may still
be found in (manuscript) and in print among many educated Jews. Our mothers
knew its contents by hearsay -- of course with all manner of corruptions,
charges, omissions, and imaginative additions -- and handed them on to their
children." [KLAUSNER, p. 48] In
the early years of Christianity Rabbi Tarphon of Jerusalem declared that "Christians
were worse than heathens and one Rabbi Meir proclaimed that the New Testament
was "a revelation of sin." [FLANNERY, p. 34]
The Talmud also accused Jesus of a variety
of sexual indiscretions and that he had been condemned by God to boil for
eternity in "boiling excrement." Jewish religious texts also enjoined
pious Jews to burn whatever New Testament volumes they came across. (Israel
Shahak notes that this was publicly performed in Israel in 1980 by a Jewish
religious organization, Yad Le'alchim). [SHAHAK, p. 21]
A Chabad-sponsored Internet web site notes that
"The Talmud (Babylonian edition) records
other sins of 'Jesus of Nazarene':
1) He and his disciples practiced sorcery and
black magic, led Jews astray
into idolatry, and were sponsored
by foreign, gentile powers for the
purpose of subverting Jewish worship
(Sanhedrin 43a).
2) He was sexually immoral, worshipped statues
of stone (a brick is mentioned),
was cut off from the Jewish people
for his wickedness, and refused to repent
(Sanhedrin 107b, Sotah 47a).
3) He learned witchcraft in Egypt and, to perform
miracles, used procedures
that involved cutting his flesh
-- which is also explicitly banned in the Bible
(Shabbos 104b).
The false, rebellious message of
Jesus has been thoroughly rejected by the
vast majority of the Jewish people,
as G-d commanded. Unfortunately,
however, this same message has brought
a terrible darkness upon the
world; today, over 1.5 billion gentiles
believe in Jesus. Those lost souls
mistakingly think they have found
salvation in Jesus; tragically, they are
in for a rude awakening." [NOAH'S
COVENANT WEB SITE, 2001]
"The very name Jesus," says Shahak,
"was for Jews a symbol of all that is abominable, and this popular tradition
still exists. The Gospels are equally detested, and they are not allowed to
be quoted (let alone taught) even in modern Israel schools. ... For theological
reasons, mostly rooted in ignorance, Christianity as a religion is classed
by rabbinical teaching as idolatry. All Christian emblems and pictorial representations
are regarded as idols ... " [SHAHAK, p. 98]
Another Israeli, Israel Shamir, notes that the
Toledoth is being rejuvenated today in Israel:
"Last year [2000], the biggest Israeli
tabloid Yedioth Aharonoth reprinted in its
library the Jewish anti-Gospel, Toledoth Yeshu,
compiled in the Middle Ages.
It is the third recent reprint, including one
in a newspaper. If the Gospel is the
book of love, Toledoth is the book of hate for
Christ. The hero of the book
is Judas. He captures Jesus by polluting his
purity. According to Toledoth,
the conception of Christ was in sin, the miracles
of Christ were witchcraft,
his resurrection but a trick." [SHAMIR,
I., 2001]
In
1997, notes Yossi Halevi, "a group of pro-Israel Pentecostals from Oklahoma
were gathered outside the room on Jerusalem's Mt. Zion traditionally associated
with Jesus' Last Supper, when several Ultra-Orthodox men passing by ostentatiously
covered their noses with their prayer shawls, to protect them from the 'stench;'
one of them spat on the ground." [HALEVI, Y., p. 16] In Jewish tradition,
notes Leon Poliakov, "Christians, significantly, were feared as wild
animals much more than hated as men." [WOLFSON, p. 6]
This age-old Jewish contempt is integral
to the reciprocal Christian religious animosity towards Jews in the Middle
Ages, especially after such material was revealed by Jewish apostates to the
surrounding Christian populace. But it is not likely that most "Christian"
hostility towards Jews through the ages was based solely upon religious beliefs,
although their contesting world view certainly could inflame non-Jewish hostility.
As even Mark Twain noted, "With most people, of a necessity, bread and
meat take first rank, religion second. I am convinced that the persecution
of the Jews is not due in any large degree to religious prejudice." [TWAIN]
At Hebrew classes," says Evelyn Kaye,
who was raised in an Orthodox community, "we learned only about the role
of the Jews in Greek and Roman times. The other aspects of the world were
dismissed completely ... At Hebrew classes, we understood that no one ever
mentioned the name of Jesus under any circumstances ... Any discussion of
Jesus was taboo ... We learned nothing about the spread of Christianity, or
its development. We heard nothing of Christian suffering in defense of faith
... I absorbed the idea that as soon as Jesus had arrived and started Christianity,
Jews were persecuted ever after." [KAYE, p. 79]
Secular Jewish author Earl Shorris recalled
in 1982 the first time he bought a Christmas tree, and the emotions he had
when he decided to throw the tree out after both he and his son cut their
hands on Christmas ornaments ("one of the cruciform balls"):
"I resolved to save the lives of the Shorris
family by getting the Christmas tree
out of my house. Like David approaching the
giant of Gath in the valley of
Elah, I advanced upon the Goliath of Christmas
trees. For a moment I was
afraid, but I knew that righteousness was on
my side and I snatched the great
tree from its moorings and bore it out to the
trash bin. Disregarding the
mystical signs that hung from its limbs, I
broke it in half with my bare hands
and cast it down into the dark barrel, the
Sheol of Christmas trees. Then all
the family -- the mother, the wounded men,and
even the babe -- rejoiced." [SHORRIS,
E., 1982, p. 40]
"A number of years ago," notes Maurice
Friedman about common Jewish perspective on Christianity,
"one of my oldest friends, now a minister,
told me of his hope of establishing
a community church which would attract many
of the Jews in New York City
who no longer have any religious commitment.
'Will you have a cross at the
altar?' I asked.
'Of course,' he replied. 'It is
a universal religious symbol.'
'That is where you are wrong,'
I said. 'Even to the non-religious Jews
the cross is a symbol of anti-Semitism from
which the Jew has had to suffer.'"
[FRIEDMAN, M., 1965, p. 211]
There are still excessive anti-Christian
currents within much of Jewry today -- even including among its educated leaders.
Michael Wyschogrod, a Jewish philosophy professor, wrote in 1989:
"For many Jews, the cross is a source
of contamination. From time to
time, I have helped organize Jewish-Christian
meetings at Catholic
locations. There will almost always be
some invited Jewish participants
who inquire whether there are any crucifixes
in the meeting rooms or in
the room in which the participants sleep.
If so, some participants will
refuse to attend or inquire whether the
crucifixes can be covered over
or removed. What is going on here?"
[WYSCHOGROD, p. 146]
Rabbi Daniel Lapin wrote an entire book
in 1999 about Jewry's defamation of Christianity. As he notes,
"A scenario I have seen several times
took place during a Rotary
luncheon I once attended. The invocation
was given as it always is,
but on this occasion, unbeknownst to me,
the presenter violated an
unwritten rule by invoking the name of Jesus.
One of the prominent
members who is also a leader of the local
Jewish community exploded
in a paroxysm of rage ... Why do Jews think
it acceptable to decree
how Christians may pray? Why do so many
Jews feel that they must
take offense and react angrily at the invoking
of the name of Jesus?"
[LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 300]
[See Chapter 20 for more discussion of traditional -- and current -- Jewish
anti-Christian bigotry]