Why do people hate Jews?

Great Debates
1

I grew up in the conservative, old-south bible belt. I didn’t know what a Jew was (apart from that Hitler killed lots of them) until I read the bible when I was 14, and even then I wasn’t real clear on who or what they were in today’s society (in fact, I’m still not 100% clear on this, what the hell does “he/she does/doesn’t look Jewish” mean? :confused: )

I didn’t actually meet a Jew until I visited Miami when I was 20.

So I’ve totally missed the Jews are evil, Jews control Hollywood, and Jews control the media busses. What’s with all this hatred of Jewish people?

I know the answer that many of you will be tempted to give is the standard “those people are dumb/ignorant/hateful/Republican…etc.” but let’s try to get past that. That’s the answer I’d give a 12 year old (assuming I knew the real answer.) I mean, people don’t generally hate Germans or Nigerians or people with unibrows, so there’s got to be a reason (I’m guessing a few dozen reasons), however unfounded, for this widespread hatred of Jews. I’m interested in the base, “low-level” reasons here.

2

I’ve always reckoned that it is essentially jealousy. Jews have the reputation of being successful.

They also have the reputation for looking after one another, which causes resentment and jealousy too, I think.

The stuff about killing Jesus and wanting to rule the world is used to deflect attention from this jealousy.

3

Deep down, jealousy.

Even rabidly anti-Jewish Muslims hate Jews because of jealousy - while they’re wallowing in the misery of their underdeveloped, underestimated, and dead-end world, the Jews are successful and, much to their horror and chagrin, able to totally kick the rear ends of large land and air Arab armadas. It’s easier for them to blame their problems on Jews rather than on themselves.

Another reason is distinctiveness. From the very beginning, what with the commandment to circumcise all men and later on with dietary and ritual rules and laws, the Jewish people have been very prominently different from the rest of any population they’ve been in. (Really observant ones, of course.) People tend not to like those who’re different from them. That’s the very beginning of anti-Semitism. Then other peoples took over that sentiment and arguments.

In any case, anti-Semitism is stupid and vile. (But then as someone who’s more pro-Jew and pro-Israel than some Jews themselves, I’m somewhat biased. Jews are cool. Judaism rocks.)

(Side note: there is movement of rabid anti-Semites growing in the world, wherein people characterize Jews (especially Jews in Israel) as racist, fascist, genocidal, violent, intolerant maniacs who’re worse than Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam put together. I pit them. Their attitude towards Arabs (especially Palestinians) is revoltingly and vomit-inducingly condescending. Arabs can take care of themselves without the patronage of WASPs, thankyouverymuch. I met one of these people, and I still cannot believe such a person exists.)

Y Jew-haters MV

WRS/Thû - Chag Chanukkah Sameach!

4

I know in medieval Europe, Christians couldn’t do certain jobs (Like moneylending) so Jews did it. This gave them a negative association with money, such as controlling people’s financial interests, or being miserly. I guess people get paranoid when this minority group is put in charge of all the money transactions going on in their banks and stuff. Of course, since its apparently below them to do that job themself, why should they complain? :confused:

5

You grew up in the SOUTH, in the Bible belt (where Jews are revered), and had never heard of 'em ;j !?!?

:confused:

6

Is this a serious question?

I was back home visiting last summer, hanging out with my best friend and his new wife. My friend somehow worked my atheism into conversation, and after explaining to his wife what it was, she shrieked “OH MY GOD!” I thought she saw a snake or something to that effect, so I went on full alert mode and asked what was wrong. She said “It’s just that I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus.”

She is the status quo where I grew up.

7

Jews often don’t assimilate completely into the population. As WeRSauron mentioned, people who are different are often discriminated against. Part of the reason for the lack of assimilation is that Jews do not want to change some of their customs. Some of the customs are an essential part of the culture and they don’t see any reason they should change them. The problem is that it sometimes makes them conspicuous. Plus there’s that whole “God’s Chosen People” thing. Tends to make others think you’re snotty or something :wink:

In Medieval Europe the discrimination against success had a religious basis, beyond the natural antipathy different branches of a religious schism usually have to begin with, and even beyond the tarring Jews got in the New Testament when the early Christians tried to suck up to the Romans. Christians were prohibited by the Church from lending money for profit. What every bank does now and what makes economies work efficiently was called “usury” and was considered to be disgusting, in a “you shovel s#!+ for a living?!” kind of way.

Jews, being non-Christian, were exempt from that prohibition. It’s not like excommunication would be a big threat. Many a landowner or lord found himself in serious debt to a Jewish moneylender due to over borrowing. Leveling accusations against “outsiders” who didn’t follow the same religion, visibly resisted following local custom, and who benefitted from exploiting a perfectly reasonable but taboo economic niche was often an easy thing to do. Certainly easier than paying one’s debts. It doesn’t take too many incidents of prominent figures stirring up riots for their own benefit before pogroms are an institution and people grow up with prejudicial attitudes toward Jews. After that, you don’t need a “reason” anymore.

What I think is odd is that prejudice against Jewish people is called anti-Semitism. Arabs are Semitic too, but almost no one calls discrimination against Arabic people “anti-Semitism.”

8

This might explain your question.

I agree with WeRSauron entirely. Anti-semitism is on the rise.

9

Indeed, as is anti-Americanism. One wonders in both cases if approach and policy can have anything whatsoever to do with it?

On the other hand it is a lot easier to be intellectually bankrupt and express disingenuous victimhood based on externalized loci of control, by saying things like “they hate us because we exist/are better off than them/have freedom”.

It’s never that simple or one-sided.

10

“Arabs can take care of themselves without the patronage of WASPs, thankyouverymuch.” eh WeRSauron? A bit rich coming from an Israel fanatic, I’d say.

11

Anti-Americanism, while stupid, is not comparable to anti-Semitism. Anti-Americanism can have a tenuous connection to rationality in those that condemn Americans for the faults of the US. While you can hardly find a rational reason to damn all Jews as a group – especially when it includes believers and non-believers. What possible rational motive could exist that allows you to hate a secular Jew in Hong Kong as well as a faithful Jew in Yemen?

Anyway I’m not so sure anti-Americanism is on the rise. I remember the sentiments under Reagan – not pretty. I expect there were quite a lot of anti-Americanism during the Vietnam War too. And of course Nazi Germany never was too keen on America either.

There’s this joke from the start of the twentieth century (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism):
A: “Who’s to blame for the economic crisis? (or the plague or insert calamity)”
B: “The Jews and the bicycle riders.”
A: “Why the bicycle riders?”
A: “Why the Jews?”

I think that’s the traditional explanation. Anti-Semitism is basically an irrational hatred. There is no logical reason. And it makes no difference what the Jews did, since the hatred wasn’t based on anything they did in the first place. You could insert any other minority group (homosexuals, Gipsies, Slavs, Communists) and it would work just as well. Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism though this scapegoat theory flawed and tried to put anti-Semitism into a historical perspective, showing which historical processes gave rise to this hatred.

(How is Arendt viewed these days anyhow? I read in passing that Hardt & Negri in Empire though she was rubbish through and through. But then I think Hardt & Negri are rubbish through and through.)

12

Only before I’ve had my coffee in the morning.

13

And what then is the cause of hundreds upon hundreds of years of anti-semitism in various countries?

14

There must have been an element of “Scapegoatism” to it over the years. A lot of hatred of Israel/Zion and America in Saudi Arabia seems to be a way to distract the populace from their bad lot. I can easily imagine this being the case in Europe and Russia way back when, probably even ancient Egypt.

People: “We’re hungry, we need work and food”
Rulers: "It’s those damned Jews. "

15

People like to have someone to call ‘The Man’…someone to blame fer keepin em down. When there’s no one else, just blame the Jews for your sorry plight.

16

Jews were associated with the evils of capitalism (as detailed above) and communism (many, possibly most Communist icons were Jewish).

They got it from both sides, often at the same time: the Nazis hated them for both reasons.

[insert Jewish exclamation of despair here]

17

A big one that no one’s mentioned yet is that the Jews killed Christ. OK, I wrote that in a provocative way on purpose: that some believe the Jews killed Christ.

There is an “infamous” scene in “The Passion of the Christ” (and in the Bible too, of course; I think it’s in John), where the crowd is asked whether they wish to have Barrabas or Jesus freed. I’m paraphrasing here, but, the crowd chooses Barrabas. When asked if they’re sure, the (Jewish) crowd responds, something like “Yes, Yes, and let his blood be upon us and our descendants.”

Thus was born the idea that the Jews accepted responsibility for killing Christ for all time. You can look it up in the Bible yourself. The traditional Christian “Passion play” replays this scenario every Christmas and reinforces this.

Another thing not mentioned here is something called the “blood libel,” where, about 1000 years ago, Christians accused the Jews of using the blood of Christian babies in their religious ceremonies, with the predictable results after the accusation was hurled. Nice, huh?

18

Even more rediculous than this were the “desecration of the host” accusations. In short, Jews would be accused of stealing wafers from the Eucharist. They were then accused of “mocking” the wafer and stabbing it. One eyewitness account even claimed to see the wafer moan and bleed. The Jews were thus accused of reinacting their crime of deicide.

Zev Steinhardt

19

The piece at http://www.aish.com/seminars/whythejews/ suffers from the fallacy of assuming a consistent cause.

Some people hate specifically certain rich Jews as nepotistic weasels. Others hate to see adherents of a supposedly false & evil religion prosper; others hate to see them even survive. Some people distrust the strange; some just like having someone to hate. Many people are genuinely concerned, & with cause, for their economic position; the world has finite resources, & poor corners of central Europe & western Asia have seriously limited resources; so considering one’s tribesmen as more valuable than “outsider” competitors is understandable.

And the Nazis (since people always refer to them) were motivated by a theory of Geopolitik which claimed that Germany as a nation needed to expand; hence the dispossession of land & capital from those not of the “German race”-- which included even German-speaking Jews, who as part of another nation with a far-flung culture independent of state & majority-culture identities, had insufficient stake in an expanded German nation-state. (The Gypsies got some ugly treatment too, & the Slavs were probably saved by their numerousness.) The Nazis, incidentally, saw Jews as part of a subspecies of man called “Semites,” hence the term “Anti-Semitism.” (Hitler: “The Jews are definitely a race, but they are not human.”) But medieval Europeans weren’t anti-Semitic, they were maybe anti-Jewish, anti-nonChristian, or anti-moneylender, depending on whom you asked.

The thing is, once Anti-Judaism takes hold as an idea, it tends to survive even if a previous generation’s cause is no longer believed in. The “excuses” may be serious attempts to explain a traditional prejudice, or legitimately new reasons that a particular group hates what might be called “the Jews,” however that’s defined. And a lot of Anti-Judaism is believed by the deceived, who follow false propaganda.

Now, me, I’m not anti-Jewish in a classic sense, but I’m less sympathetic to Israel (not the same thing as World Jewry) than the average Yank. I didn’t start out that way, but I’ve grown less partial to Israel over time. When things that looked like ethnic cleansing were going on in places like Hebron, I got downright hostile. But some people will accuse me of being “anti-Semitic” because I’m not sufficiently pro-Israel. Which is funny, considering my mongrel & part-“Semite” ancestry.

[chip on shoulder] So when somebody says “anti-Semitism is growing,” remember that part of it is people like me, who just think that the Jews are not a race, they are human. [/chip on shoulder]

20

Oh, & I meant to add, I believe in treating people decently, insofar as that’s possible, even if they are Gentiles whose ancestors have had the temerity to be squatting on your Promised Land for twenty-odd generations. :rolleyes:

(Not to mention that the Jews are a religion that believes itself to be a race, as much as a race in a genotypic sense, so claims of inheritance ultimately come down to a test of belief. Oy.)