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Jews
Why were jews hated so much?
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Lots depend on the time and place you are focussing on. The Roman emperors were the first to identify Jews as a group and occasionally attempt to pull them into line. Certain Jewish sects objected to paying taxes that implied the emperor was a god. Others wanted a monotheistic society and so attacked worshippers of Diana etc - this provoked serious rioting and deaths in Caesarea Maritima in the late first century AD. But above all not paying tax and swearing loyalty to the emperor was a big no-no back then.
In and around the 1000s AD, lending money at interest was seen as un-christian, so was a niche and popular roe played by Jews. However as a small and visually identifiable group, powerful debtors found it easy o find reasons not to pay their debts - one of the English kings did this and his encouraged communites to trun on Jews (Clifford's tower at York - some nasty business there).
The terrifying progress of the Black Death led to anyone different or not christian being given the treatment or chased off.
I'm sure you can find loads of links to 19th century antisemitism and the events of the 20th century orchestrated by the nazis.
Jews have developed a strong sense of cultural and political identity that has become a strength in the 20th and 21st centuries.
But if we think around the edges of other groups you can see similar phases of assimilation and persecution - sometimes though they just didn't get written about, or the groups went underground to the extent that they faded out. Take the Cathars, for example.
In and around the 1000s AD, lending money at interest was seen as un-christian, so was a niche and popular roe played by Jews. However as a small and visually identifiable group, powerful debtors found it easy o find reasons not to pay their debts - one of the English kings did this and his encouraged communites to trun on Jews (Clifford's tower at York - some nasty business there).
The terrifying progress of the Black Death led to anyone different or not christian being given the treatment or chased off.
I'm sure you can find loads of links to 19th century antisemitism and the events of the 20th century orchestrated by the nazis.
Jews have developed a strong sense of cultural and political identity that has become a strength in the 20th and 21st centuries.
But if we think around the edges of other groups you can see similar phases of assimilation and persecution - sometimes though they just didn't get written about, or the groups went underground to the extent that they faded out. Take the Cathars, for example.
Fascinating response from Mosaic.
I think that it is an integral part of cultural identity that people tend to distrust and fear people who are inherently different in their customs, dress, language and so on. A minority culture will naturally band together because it is more comfortable to live and work alongside others who share your language and customs. This naturally leads to an element of ghettoisation, whether intentional or not, which exacerbates tensions.
This thread runs thorughout the world, with cultural attitudes shifting and developing as time moves forward.
In Elizabethan times in England, the Jews were seen as people to be reviled and mistrusted - hence the personna of Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice, vengeful and thwarted in equal measure, which would chime with society attitudes of that time.
Various cultures have held the view that Jews are responsible for the wider financial travails in the world - most noteably of course Hitler with his Final Solution which encompassed other races and genetic groupings seen as unfit to continue alongside the Ayrian future.
As Mosaic has mentioned, persecution of minorities is by no means exclusively a feature of the Jewish experience, but is an occuptational hazard in any society or culture where a majority exists which, by default means that minorities also exist, which can lead to one seeking superiority over the other, which is a sad reflection of human nature.
I think that it is an integral part of cultural identity that people tend to distrust and fear people who are inherently different in their customs, dress, language and so on. A minority culture will naturally band together because it is more comfortable to live and work alongside others who share your language and customs. This naturally leads to an element of ghettoisation, whether intentional or not, which exacerbates tensions.
This thread runs thorughout the world, with cultural attitudes shifting and developing as time moves forward.
In Elizabethan times in England, the Jews were seen as people to be reviled and mistrusted - hence the personna of Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice, vengeful and thwarted in equal measure, which would chime with society attitudes of that time.
Various cultures have held the view that Jews are responsible for the wider financial travails in the world - most noteably of course Hitler with his Final Solution which encompassed other races and genetic groupings seen as unfit to continue alongside the Ayrian future.
As Mosaic has mentioned, persecution of minorities is by no means exclusively a feature of the Jewish experience, but is an occuptational hazard in any society or culture where a majority exists which, by default means that minorities also exist, which can lead to one seeking superiority over the other, which is a sad reflection of human nature.
Many Jews in history have been involved in banking, money lending, and so on.
I think this bred resentement amongst non-Jews that the Jews were very rich, and they were having to go cap in hand to Jews to borrow money, or open a bank account or whatever.
But of course it has got way out of hand, and you only have to watch "Who do you think you are" to see how often Jews have been persecuted. Not just by the Nazis but by Russia and even when Spain took over in the North Africa they forced all Jews to turn Roman Catholic and those that did not were either killed or expelled from the country (June Brown from Eastenders relatives).
I know when the composer Mahler (Jewish) took over as conductor of an Orchestra in Austria there was huge protest at the time and an anti-Jewish newspaper in the area campaigned to get him removed.
I read somewhere that anti-Jewish racism is the most common in the UK, which surprised me.
I think this bred resentement amongst non-Jews that the Jews were very rich, and they were having to go cap in hand to Jews to borrow money, or open a bank account or whatever.
But of course it has got way out of hand, and you only have to watch "Who do you think you are" to see how often Jews have been persecuted. Not just by the Nazis but by Russia and even when Spain took over in the North Africa they forced all Jews to turn Roman Catholic and those that did not were either killed or expelled from the country (June Brown from Eastenders relatives).
I know when the composer Mahler (Jewish) took over as conductor of an Orchestra in Austria there was huge protest at the time and an anti-Jewish newspaper in the area campaigned to get him removed.
I read somewhere that anti-Jewish racism is the most common in the UK, which surprised me.
Boxie, as a child at a catholic school in the early 1960s we were told quite plainly that the Jews were responsible for Christ's death.
This line seemed to fade away after the Second Vatican Council and the air of ecumenicalism that crept in after about 1968.
But it was easier I think to repeat hurt and prejudice than to question what the Holy See was up to in the late 1930s.
At the end of it all, people are very simple herd-animals and are predisposed to act like those around them, and can find excuses even for acts of fightfulness if served out to the 'different'.
This line seemed to fade away after the Second Vatican Council and the air of ecumenicalism that crept in after about 1968.
But it was easier I think to repeat hurt and prejudice than to question what the Holy See was up to in the late 1930s.
At the end of it all, people are very simple herd-animals and are predisposed to act like those around them, and can find excuses even for acts of fightfulness if served out to the 'different'.
The specifically Christian hatred of Jews probably started when St. Paul had the bright idea of globalizing a recent Jewish messianic sect. By the time the gospel of John was written we see "the Jews" used as a pejorative term for anyone who doubted Jesus' extraordinary claims. "His blood be on our heads and our children's" St. John has them saying. Quoted, I understand, in The Passion of Christ. This is the source of the Catholic church's vilification of Jews as deicides.
Another reason for anti-Jewish sentiment is the claim of the Jewish religion itself: that they are a people chosen by God and have a God-given title to all the land between the Euphrates and wherever. You don't have to be an unpleasant bigot like Gibson to find these claims distasteful.
Another reason for anti-Jewish sentiment is the claim of the Jewish religion itself: that they are a people chosen by God and have a God-given title to all the land between the Euphrates and wherever. You don't have to be an unpleasant bigot like Gibson to find these claims distasteful.
Don't most religions claim to be the only true path to god?
I think it's easy to oversimplify what was going in in the hatching of Christianity in the first few centuries AD. If you go into the sources - written and archaeological - you find huge confusion about what was included or excluded in Christianity, and whether Christians were Jews. A measure of this is the difficulty pagans had in telling Jews and Christians apart.
The Christian religious writings that have come down to us have had so many edits it gets problematical in my opinion to rely on them as the only picture of the times.
I think what I am saying is the later edits and revisions of these books allowed powerful interests to find it useful to persecute Jews from time to time.
I think it's easy to oversimplify what was going in in the hatching of Christianity in the first few centuries AD. If you go into the sources - written and archaeological - you find huge confusion about what was included or excluded in Christianity, and whether Christians were Jews. A measure of this is the difficulty pagans had in telling Jews and Christians apart.
The Christian religious writings that have come down to us have had so many edits it gets problematical in my opinion to rely on them as the only picture of the times.
I think what I am saying is the later edits and revisions of these books allowed powerful interests to find it useful to persecute Jews from time to time.
if you read about the attack on the jews of the rhineland whilst the first crusaders marauded, pillaged and slaughtered their way through europe towards constantinople/jerusalem, it gives you a flavour of the hatred felt.
http://en.wikipedia.o..._in_the_First_Crusade
http://en.wikipedia.o..._in_the_First_Crusade
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