Why are Jews hated so much?

Great Debates
101

The word for the ancient Judaic agreement with God is translated as “covenant”, yes? A promise or oath that compels all involved parties to a binding compact? What does the covenant obligate God to do?

It’s not just that the Judaic tradition was given to the Jews by their deity: their deity, the One True God et cetera, chose them. The relationship is far deeper than God simply giving an arbitrary set of rules to some random people and telling them to follow them.

Being an outsider requires paying a price of one kind or another.
All actions have a cost, but “doing your own thing” carries a cost

102

Well, it certainly it is true that Vorlon’s misinterpretation has been used to justify much antisemitism in the past.

“Chosen” refered to being chosen to learn about the one god as revealed to Abraham. Some Jewish scholars believe that Abraham was chosen specifically because his tribe was so small … thus success of that idea was on the strength of the idea and not from the strength of the tribe.

The covenant is described in the Ten Commandaments. Item one: I just saved your sorry asses from bondage. You now owe me dudes. Items two through ten: your end of the deal. If you follow through you will be a kingdom of preists and a holy nation. But dudes, I hold you accountable for following these terms. Don’t bitch that no one else is held as acountable as you. I didn’t save their butts.

103

I’m not saying that Jews believe that they’re better than everyone else (well, of course some do, but that’s true of every group).

As the Jews believe that they were chosen (for whatever reason) to learn about the One True God et cetera, that inherently sets them apart from other groups in a way that, say, being Pakistani or Italian or Inuit doesn’t.

The combination of ethnic, cultural, and religious traits that are all bound together in being a “Jew” make it easy for stupid people to construct a special, exclusionary category in their minds. The factors that have allowed Judaism to exist for as long as it has also make it easier to think about Jews in ways that lead to bigotry. Is that a fault of Judaism? Of course not. It is a consequence.

Success breeds jealously, and as a memetic system, Judaism has been very successful.

104

Well, every cultural identity sets one apart from others, doesn’t it? Chinese culture believes that China is the center of the Universe. Aborigines believe that only they have remembrance of Dreamtime. Mulims believe that they know Alllah, the “one true God.” Christians believe that only they will be saved.

But I think that your basic point is valid. The historic tendency to be an “other” in the midst of dominant cultures, yet not absorbed. The being drops of oil scattered among the waters … maintaining a seperateness even though its very form is dependent upon that which it is scattered, a nation among nations. The refusal to gladly accept the truth of Allah, or of Christ, the stiffnecked loyalty to their own beliefs, even when faced with death. These have made Jews the target of those who have fear of anything “other”. And those people always exist.

105

try this site

I have disabled this link. Anyone desiring to find hate-filled sites, brimming lies, distortions, and arguments for “racial purity” can find them all too easily, without SDMB being an enabler. – CKDH

106

Something I picked up from Harry Kemelman’s “Rabbi” series a while ago (maybe not a definitive source, but interesting still):

when a Christian reaches higher levels of study in a given field, he or she is brought up against his or her beliefs and must proceed with an intellectual…what’s the word…insert a fancy word that means “Can I believe in this stuff or not?” In the field of science - Creationism and whatnot; in law- legislative morality; in medicine it might be the issue of playing God. The Jews were unencumbered by things (and I’m not quite sure why) that were common in Christians, and they placed a much higher value on education, thus they attained the higher levels of knowledge and expertise in their fields than the average Christian.

I’m sure that was a half-assed explanation on my part, but it made a lot of sense to me as he wrote it.

107

I think the OP’s subject line is flawed.

“Why are jews hated so much” perhaps should be modified to “why are jews hated by so many in many situations?” or somesuch.

What I mean is, I don’t really see any widespread anti-semitism in modern-day america. In fact, I’m sure I could count the number of times I have even been exposed through the media to an american expressing anti-semitism on two hands (throwaway barbs from black activists excepted: they rarely go into detail about their hatred.)

I have never personally been exposed to anyone professing anti-semitism.

In fact, whenever I see a report in the media (again, very rarely), about american anti-semites, I’m not sure whether to :confused: or :rolleyes:. I know this seems a bit insensitive, but it seems positively wacky to me to be an american anti-semite. It just doesnt make any sense: its a foreign concept to me.

I wish that prejudice against other groups of people made as little sense to me, but they are much more widespread (for instance, I have encountered many first-hand examples of racists and misogynists.)*

When me and my little sister (then 7) and my mom were watching Life Is Beautiful (why she was watching it i dont know,) my mom finally gave a generalized description of why they were being imprisoned. She didnt understand either: then again, I wonder if she would have been as perplexed had they decided to round up all the blacks.

*and perhaps even more examples of misandrists, but again, it is mainly revealed in “throwaway” comments, that, if built up, do reveal the content of one’s character, but over the short term, may be seen just as a one-off lame attempt at humor.

108

Quite alot of the reasons given here do’t really sit that well for a general explanation, for example people have said “because they’re richer” and “because they have a higher standard of education”, while both of these are true in the US today, they are not universal and when you go back into the 19th centuary to Europe (where the majority of the Jews lived pre-WWII) you see that the majority of Jews were what as known as ‘Ostjuden’ or ‘East Jews’ and they lived in isolation from gentiles by subsistance farming in Poland, and the former USSR. In the 18th centuary you see that their is some emigration westward into Germany, Austro-Hungary, etc. many of these immigrants were extremely succesful (Freud, Einstein, Marx and Engels were just a few notables among their descendants) but they were still vastly outnumbered by the Ostjuden.

So what I am saying is that antisemitism predates what many people here are saying are the causes as the ‘volkisch’ antisemtism which gave rise to modern antisemitism has it’s root in the middle ages(having said that there were a small minority of Jewish families during the middle ages who did become very successful and wealthy). Therefore again, I have to say that the blame most probably lies with Christian ideas and the intolerance for other cultures that seems to exist in all ideologys.

109

Come follow me around for a few days in rural America.

110

Unlike those terrific christians, what with conquering everybody and that.
That person just lost ALL of my repsect. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

111

Just to support Vorlon’s and MC’s points:

When did Constatine create institutional anti-semitism? When Jews wouldn’t readily convert and join the new state religion.

Martin Luther initially liked Jews and thought that they’d flock to his new, true faith. When they stubbornly said, no thanks, he became a vicious antisemite.

Mohammed initially allied with surrounding Jewish tribes. When they failed to accept that his was the new true faith … well.

Nobody likes rejection.

I hear that Constatine’s Sword covers it quite well. Anyone read it? (It is on my eventually must read list.)

112

DSeid has hit on an essential point. Back in the very starting days of Christianity, the followers of Jesus strongly expected that their brothers would come over en masse to the new movement, which they viewed as a natural outgrowth rather than a revolution. Their view (that Jews had been waiting for the messiah > Jesus was the Messiah > Jews would follow Jesus) was (unreasonably, in their eyes) not supported by the rabbinical leaders of the time. This largely accounts for the distortions in the Gospels that portrayed the Pharisees as the bad guys. In fact, the religion of the common man, who they expected to come with them, was pharisaic Judaism, in contrast to the religion of the upper classes which was Sudducean. In bitterness, and partly to try and get the latter into the fold, they told the story of the rejection and murder of Jesus in terms damning to the Pharisees. (as in Luke 16:14-18)

You’ll still find many fundamentalist Christian sites that believe that the Pharisees wanted to (and did) murder Jesus.

Two important points need be made.

  1. The Judaism practiced during and since the time of the second Temple has been largely Pharisaic - what you read in the Gospels in this regard is propaganda, not truth (sorry if that hurts, but I can cite many modern studies by eminent Biblical scholars that back this view up, for example http://www.siena.edu/homepages/jcs/Colloquia/1996.pdf)

  2. It suited the leaders of the infant Church to have a scapegoat other than the Roman rulers to blame for their leader’s death. Being anti-Jewish was a religious issue, being anti-Roman was sedition!

Anti-semitism then is as old as, and a direct product of, Christianity.

113

Sorry rampisad, but that’s not entirely true. Antisemitism (how I hate that word. Why not just call it Jew-hatred, which it is?) existed before the Christian church. A well written book on the subject is The Anguish of the Jews by Edward Flannery, a Catholic Priest, who covers the antisemitism of the Christian church. However, it is clear from the sources he brings, that it existed before the Christian church ever came about.

That’s not to excuse the church’s role in it in later centuries.

Zev Steinhardt

114

I’m still not convinced that anti-semtism pre-dates the diasphora and Christianity. Though as mentioned above their were several earlier diasphoras which led to sizeable Jewish populations in areas such as Babylon which, though I have yet to see evidence of it, could of conceivably led to the classic culture clashes which I believe are the root cause of anti-semitism (though in Babylonia which was at the time in Persia the Jews would of had alot in common with the local population, for example aramaic.

The book mentioned in the above post seems to use bible quotes in order to show that the ancient Egyptians were anti-semitic, but in truth that does not appear to be the case. As I said before it is unlikely that the Egyptian diasphora actually involved the entire Jewish population of Israel as their is no record of this in Egyptian sources (IIRC the only time the Israelites get a mention in ancient Egyptian sources is to say that they were wiped out by a particular pharoh, which is obviously incorrect) and it was not Egyptian practice to deport entire populations. Obviously many Israelites were taken into slavery, but in the ancient world that doesn’t denote any specific hatred for a certain people. The exile probably effected the Jewish elite (of whom Moses must of been a member of) and is displays the hallmarks of an attempt to remove any focus of a rebellion.

The Assyrian exile is something that almost certainly must of happened, but again reading too much into it is to ignore the fact that the Assyrians nearly always deported conquered populations so that rebellions were less likely to take root.

115

Ze’ev

Like all good Jews, let’s agree to disagree (halevai).

Specific hatred of Jews per se, as opposed to antagonism for national/economic reasons, was not a feature of the Jewish experience prior to the growth of Christianity. The Jewish people may have been initially seen as enemies (by the Babylonians, by the Greeks, by the Assyrians, or the Romans), but in no way were they viewed as different from those nations’ other many enemies. Once defeated, they could lead the same (sometimes miserable) lives that other conquered nations did, or in some cases were even better tolerated, as was the case in the Babylonian exile and after the Macedonian invasion. One example of this is the punishment poured down on the Samaritans by Philip of Macedonia, for their enmity to the Judaeans (see Graetz book I chapter XX). Another was the conversion of Roman Senator (and member of the royal family) Flavius Clemens to Judaism.

Christians, on the other hand, hated the Jews because they were Jews, because they of all people had rejected Jesus, or later because their NT told them to despise the “pharisees”. This is borne out by the fact that even in countries where the Jews were not numerically or economically a threat, they were persecuted.

116

Rampisad, let’s not forget that the whole miracle of Purim took place because people hated Jews. Tacitus, a pre-Christian Roman historian had some choice tidbits about us (some of the better ones underlined by me):

There was a pogrom against the Jews of Alexandria, Egypt in 38 CE, which, while after Jesus’ death, can easily be considered pre-Christian.

When I get home, I’m sure I will be able to find more instances.

Zev Steinhardt

117

To be perfectly honest, the ancient Jews weren’t always particularly welcoming of other cultures either. (That was a stance held by most ancient peoples, actually: unfotunately, there’s no surviving tradition of ancient Greeks or Egyptians or Romans et cetera. Rightly or wrongly, the Jews are seen as being a continuous tradition that stretches back millennia.)

The Jews probably weren’t treated all that badly in Egypt or Babylon (especially Babylon). The Babylonians were positively liberal by ancient standards: they allowed their subjects to retain their cultural practices and religions. The only reason there could be so many complaints in the Torah/OT about them was that the Jews were allowed to continue their traditions. If they’d been treated truly harshly, they would have been destroyed as a people/culture.

Historically speaking, it’s not just that Judaism has been different, it’s made itself and worked to keep itself that way. It’s debatable whether that’s a completely good thing (I’d prefer a bit more change in the system, myself), but the backlash is inevitable. (Not correct, or justified, but inevitable.)

118

One factor needs to be mentioned as well, I feel.
And that’s nepotism.
This is certainly what is often perceived to be the case. That they rather give a vacant position to another Jew than to a gentile.
Probably Jews do not have a greater tendency, than others, to look after their own. Giving a job to your nephew rather than to a stranger wouldn’t be typically Jewish. But after a one or two generations it just sticks out more that there are a lot of Jews in a certain company or profession.

119

Are you saying that this is the impression or that this is reality? If the latter, I must ask for a cite, as I find this very hard to believe. I’ve never heard this charge as a particularly Jewish issue.

120

Well, even in this thread several professions have been named where the number of jews is ‘disproportianate’ to the percentage they represent in the population. Lawyers and the media spring to mind, off the top of my head. In pre-war Europe the arts and medicine seemed to be dominated by Jews.

What I meant to say is that this is not indicative of any conspiracy or such but the result of nepotism. When you are the person being turned down for a job it is easy to blame the Jews for hogging the jobs, instead of your skills. This is a reason why Jews are hated. The prime example would be Hitler himself, being turned down as an artist. Do you really need a cite for that?