# Hip Hip Hurray

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hip-hip-hurray/620662>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [May 2, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hip-hip-hurray/620662 "2012-05-02T17:32:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![oscaroscar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f19dbf/32.png) [@oscaroscar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oscaroscar)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hip-hip-hurray/620662/1 "2012-05-02T17:32:05Z")

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"This theory obliges us to believe that a significant fraction of the rioters were students of Latin. " – or that their priests were students of Latin. Church and state often colluded to foment pogroms.

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**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hip-hip-hurray/620662/2 "2012-05-02T19:54:13Z")

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[ol]  
[li][Was “hip hip hurrah” originally an anti-Semitic taunt?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/747/was-hip-hip-hurrah-originally-an-anti-semitic-taunt)[/li][li]The riots crossed the main Catholic/Protestant lines in Germany, and eyewitnesses accused the Church of not doing enough to stop it, but not of instigating it.[/li][li]Knowledge of Latin was universal among the educated at the time. If you wanted to go to University, you needed Latin to get in. I myself attended a six-year school founded at about that same time for the specific purpose of providing a stream of Latin-speaking boys for the local college.[/li][/ol]On the other hand, all explanations involving acronyms before WWII (except in Hebrew) are extremely suspect. Furthermore, the notion that “HEP” signifies, “Hierosolyma est perdita,” and was a Crusader taunt (and there is no evidence that it ever was) is also pretty much unbelievable, because, although the Crusaders were certainly guilty of gross anti-Semitic acts from time to time, the whole point of the Crusades was that the Holy Land had been lost by the _Christians_. From the viewpoint of the Crusaders, shouting “Hierosolyma est perdita” at Jews is the wrong insult for the wrong enemy.