Medieval to Premodern Antisemitism: From Blog Posts to Book
The purpose of “Medieval to Premodern Antisemitism” and these blog posts is to combine them into a published book entitled Safe Schools for Jewish Students: An Educator’s Guide to Preventing Antisemitism and Strengthening Belonging.
Go here for the full Table of Contents.
Chapter 2 – Medieval to Premodern Antisemitism
Medieval Antisemitism: Prejudice Meets Opportunity
In the Medieval period, the work restrictions imposed on Jews led to one of their negative stereotypes. Jews were forbidden from owning land, so they could not be farmers. They were forbidden from joining Cristian guilds, so their work options became limited. Jews became traders, one of the few jobs that handled money. Over time, as money became a necessity for survival in the 12th century, Christians were banned from money lending so kings of Europe used Jews as intermediaries to be their money lenders, debt collectors, and tax collectors. The stereotype of the greedy Jew was birthed.
The hatred of Jewish debt collectors manifested into violence. In 1190 in York, England, the nobles massacred the Jews out of revenge, burning the records of debt. King Richard did nothing to protect the Jewish people.
King Philip II of France was deep in debt, so he kidnapped Jews and held them for ransom, confiscating their property and expelling them from France. King Philip II permitted Jews to return in 1198, but required them to pay high taxes. The cycle repeated in 1306 when King Philip IV of France arrested 100,000 Jews, confiscated their property, and banished them. However, when the king’s successor Louis X discovered that having his own agents collect taxes resulted in the peasants not liking those tax collectors either, he allowed the Jews to return to France. This cycle of expelling and readmitting the Jews in France repeated for almost 200 years.
Premodern Antisemitism: Race, Nation, and Conspiracy
Science became the highest authority in the 19th century. As our understanding of biology, evolution, and other sciences advanced, so did the advancement of pseudosciences.
Social Darwinism was the idea of categorizing people by race, evaluating which ones are superior to others. Since the survival of the fittest was the natural order of evolution, it was believed that the superior race would overcome the inferior races. The behavior of Jews did not change, they stuck to their rituals and traditions. Therefore, the belief held, the Jewish ability to adapt was not as evolved as other races.
The problem, the antisemitic argument of racial eugenics claimed, was that the Jewish inferior blood could adulterate superior species. As a result, Jews could pollute pure blood enough to ultimately weaken the superior species and streamline the Jewish plan of dominating the world.
Georg Ritter von Schönerer, one of Adolf Hitler’s influencers, believed Jews were an alien race and could never be assimilated into Germany and called for “the elimination of Jewish influence in all fields of public life.”
Though times of antisemitism was familiar to Jews over the centuries, in the past many escaped prosecution by converting to a different religion. Here, however, simple conversion didn’t rid the person of inferior Jewish blood. Viennese mayor Karl Lueger, another influence of Hitler, declared in his campaign in 1895, “I decide who is a Jew.”
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Author Biography of Safe Schools for Jewish Students
Ezra Barany loves riveting readers with Jewish thrillers. His first two books in The Torah Codes series were award-winning international bestsellers. In his free time, he has eye-opening discussions on the art of writing novels with his wife and book coach Beth Barany. A high school physics teacher, Ezra lives in Oakland with his beloved wife and two cats working on the next book. Ezra, not the cats.
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