Sofa King, pardon my ignorance but what exactly are you trying to say? And why is this a puppet show?
what puppet show??
Remarkably well-based opening argument in the OP leads one to wonder were this thread actually belongs. That aside.
Sheesh! Yahweh! Allah Akkbar and Jesus F Christ.
I’m glad we put the Ottoman Empire back were it belonged along the way at least!
This is all so oversimplified that I don’t even know were to start.
Actually, the origins of the Jewish ‘people’ and the Diaspora. Just the other day we kind of solved this one. Following the Y line or the male descendent genetic line a majority of Jewish folks seem to come from three main areas. Western Europe, Turkey and the Middle East roughly were Israel, Lebanon and Jordan is located today. The Middle Eastern line is related to the Arabic speaking peoples of the same time. For reasons multiple and unknown these boys decided to take a hike and go all over the place a couple of thousand years ago. There is evidence they were not driven out of anywhere at this time, there is evidence they were we’ll get back to that. Wherever they settled we find that the m-line or mitochondrial genetic line proves that they interbred more or less exclusively with local gals. About two thousand years ago they stopped that and Jewish communities started forming in various places, and interbreeding with the surrounding communities stopped. Again the reasons for this are up to debate.
These findings were published just the other day and are quite the talk of the town amongst historians, theologians, rabbis and anthropologists with some interest in Jewish history. It more or less asks for a complete rethinking of the historical value of the Old Testament as well as myths and legends within the Jewish faith and within the packs that for obscure and somewhat ill founded reasons try to destroy it. See here it’s the NYT you need to be registered it’s free. I was preparing a serious and slightly more founded thread on it… but now this OP here has gone and ruined that I guess.
Although it is relevant here, I don’t have time to go into the tradition of the Diaspora and I hope someone else with a brain and some book-sense, who doesn’t fetch his/her information from cartoon-books and the discovery channel’s afternoon programming has time to settle that one in some detail.
Re the standing of the Jewish faith and Jewish people in the Caliphates, the Ottoman Empire, Christian Europe and in India this OP is so desperately simple minded that it is deplorable. You’ve just gotten into the very essence of the inter-Semitic conflict. All three of the big Semitic faiths have fluctuated between respect, tolerance, intolerance downright persecution and war for over two thousand years.
I guess the OP means the Caliphate and not the Ottoman Empire? Which of course leads to the next q. which one of the Caliphates would we prefer to discuss? When Abu Bakr founded the caliphate after Mohamed’s death in 632 he did so in Ms spirit. M was inclusive of all Semitic faiths and the Arabic tribal faiths. As a matter of fact one of the ideas he had when founding Islam was that he wanted to give all peoples of the region a common ground to stand on. Real politics and inherent tribal, ideological and regional conflicts put an end to this endeavor as the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates went through the normal conundrum of history. Remarkably enough the Caliphates stayed unusually tolerant even of local customs as they spread through conquest and assimilation. But yes there were dark moments and conflict, at times it was the Jews, at others it was the Berbers and not too seldom it was the Christians, but more often the branches of the various tribal families that struggle to be Caliphs.
Shit this is impossible. We are trying to debate a couple of thousand years of history in one thread? Arrrgghhh. The OP should ask this to be closed in my opinion… but now that it sits here in it asinine self and begs for rectification, I guess it follows that one must answer
In the most possible oversimplified manner: The Jews role in the endless series of conflict and reconciliation was vastly complicated by the lack of formal leadership and land based rule. The myths of the Diaspora and various other cultural and religious differences led to a situation were they were often enough the easiest thing to kick at when any given leader needed a scapegoat. Everything beyond that stupidly simple level I just attained cannot be handled within the complete lack of precision that the OP affords.
I have to go do better things like Golf and Opera… someone else carry on the history lesson.
Sparc
Agreed with sparc, Arrrrgh!
Oh how kind Muslim rule was to the Jews …
In 622 Jews of Arabian peninsula joined with the Arab tribes of Banu al-Aws and Banu Khazraj in supporting Muhammad, but by 624 Muhammad was driving Jewish tribes out of Arabia.
In the centuries that follow Muhammad and the birth of Islam, the Church was engaged in forcing conversion, exile, torture, and death upon Jewish communities. Mere oppression in Muslim communities was preferred. Some Muslim rulers were indeed tolerant, and Jews would often aid Muslims in driving out Christian forces, preferring Muslim to Christian rule; other Muslim rulers forced Jews to wear yellow patches, forbade them from holding many types of jobs, and subjected them to heavy special taxation. I guess if you define the abscence of torure til forced conversion or death and the lack of mass murder as tolerant, then Islam was tolerant.
Islamic leaders also expelled Jews and forced conversions (Do you really need the whole list enumerated? One of the most famous was in Yemen in the 1100s, massacres in Morocco in the 1200s, destroying syngogues in Jerusalum in the 1400s, I could go on …) Jews, mostly driven out by both Christians and Muslims didn’t start to return to Jerusalum until the 1800s. Turkey (The Ottoman Empire) was oppressing and terrorizing the Jews of Palestine during WW1 and only eased up at the intervention of US ambassador Henry Morgentau, Sr.
The moneylending bit?
Christians were officially forbidden but could do it through the use of Jewish front men. Jews were of course forbidden from other prpfessions and were occassionally required to lend money to Christians by law. These debts were sometime denied and, since a Jew’s word was inadmissable in court … well. Of course also nobility often just decided that all debts should be forgiven.
Shylock?
Jews had been exiled from England for 350 years before Shakespeare created that vile portrayal out of thin air.
The origins of antisemitism? Gotta a few hours? I’ll give a preview.
Start with Constantine. Jews weren’t flocking to be converted. How rude! Persecution commences. His son further institutionalized the hatred of those who practiced that “pernicious faith.” This hatred for refusal to “see the light” has been repeated. Mohammad (see above.) Martin Luther, who at first thought that Jews would flock to his new version of Christianity, and when rejected wrote some very hateful antisemitic tracts, and som on.
The causes of the Diaspora?
Here Jews gotta take the heat. The grandsons of the Maccabbees invited the Romans in to mediate because they couldn’t get along. Of course the Romans took over. The ill-fated Great Revolt killed off many Jews. And the Revolt by the Zealots makes the bickering between different Arab groups look like a brotherly quarrel … it finished off the historic state of Judea. Those left alive were sold off by the Romans as slaves. A Jewish presence persisted in the area, but the State was gone … the Romans took it with the help of Judea’s bickering rulers, ill-fated (should we call them intifadas?) destroyed the hope for its rebirth.
A homeless people was created, always handled as “the other”.
So where exactly is the irony?
And oh! as to dealing with this history with humor … well ya gotta laugh or you’ll cry.
Ukrainians had been very helpful to the Nazis in rounding up Jews. So when Ed Koch was mayor of New York and was invited to be the marshall of the Ukranian Day parade, he said “It’s nice to be in New York, where I can be marshall of this parade. In the old country, I’d be running in the street and you’d be running after me with a knife.”
For more on the generous treatment of Jews by Muslim rulers through history look up the Pact of Umar and dhimmis.
(Don’t get me wrong, there were some good periods for Jews in the Arab world too, but they were not the rule.)