Nothing can rationally explain the extreme accusations: Jews killed babies and drank their blood. by Rabbi Ken Spiro

Transcription

1 2008 Nothing can rationally explain the extreme accusations: Jews killed babies and drank their blood. by Rabbi Ken Spiro With this class, we are about to begin discussing an excruciating period of Jewish history that is marked by constant and unrelenting Christian persecution. During this period we will see the Jews expelled from: England (1290) France (1306 and 1394) Hungary (1349 and 1360) German states (1348 and 1498) Austria (1421) Lithuania (1445 and 1495) Spain (1492) Portugal (1497) And that s only a partial list. 1

2 (As often as not, the Jews were expelled and then, when a significant economic decline was noted in their absence, they were re-admitted only to be expelled again. It was the classic can t live with them, can t live without them philosophy.) The story of these persecutions really begins around the year 1000 the first millennium. It seems that people get nervous about big dates, especially Christians, whose Book of Revelations predicts that at the end of a thousand years Satan will be released from prison, and then he s going to wreak havoc on the world. The first millennium led to a religious revival in the Christian world which historians call the New Piety. The New Piety focused especially on the historicity of Jesus. Focusing on the life of Jesus meant focusing on his death. And, even though the Christian New Testament says that the Romans killed Jesus, the Jews were blamed for wanting him to die. And so at this time, we see the notion of Jews as Christ-killers which first surfaced in the 4 th century really growing in popularity. But that alone does not explain the vehemence of Christian persecutions. To fully understand the issue, we have to look at other, more complex reasons. Replacement Theology To start off, the very existence of the Jews was an irritant to many Christians. And this is why: Christian theology accepts the Hebrew Bible. It does not quarrel with the statements therein that the Jews were a special people chosen by God to receive the Torah and bring holiness into the world. But Christian theology says that the Jews failed in their mission. This is why God sent His son (i.e. Jesus) to straighten things out, but the Jews refused to recognize him as the Messiah. As a result, God abandoned the Jews and replaced them with the new chosen people the Christians. (Hence, the Christian segment of the Bible is called the New Testament, while the Hebrew Bible 2

3 segment really the bulk of the Christian Bible is called the Old Testament. ) By this line of reasoning, however, there should no longer be any purpose for Jews in the world. They should disappear, like did so many mightier peoples. But, by the first millennium 1,000 years after the death of Jesus the Jews were still all over the place. Christian theology had to come up with some sort of answer to this problem, and it did. The Jews must have been doomed to wander the earth by God as a witness people teste veritatis in Latin. The purpose of a witness people is to survive throughout history to bear witness at the end of days that Jesus is the Messiah, when he appears again for the so-called Second Coming. But the explanations of Christian theology could not remove the sore spot that the presence at times, strong and prosperous presence of the Jews represented. At the heart of the matter was the Christian view of Judaism as a direct competitor for the soul of humanity. The hostility that the Christians felt toward the Jews can be seen readily from the writings of the early fathers of the Christian Church. 1 From John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople, we get this: Jews are the most worthless of men they are lecherous, greedy, rapacious they are perfidious murderers of Christians, they worship the devil, their religion is a sickness... The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ and for killing God there is no expiation, no indulgence, no pardon. Christians may never cease vengeance. The Jews must live in servitude forever. It is incumbent on all Christians to hate the Jews. From Gregory of Nyssa, we get more of the same: 1 Gould, Allan (editor), What Did They Think of the Jews? Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1991, pp

4 Slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of god, haters of god, men who show contempt for the law, foes of grace, enemies of the father s faith, advocates of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men whose minds are in darkness, leaven of the Pharisees, assembly of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners and haters of righteousness. In some places, such calumny incited people to violence. (We saw in class #45, for example, how the Crusader mobs devastated the Jewish population of Europe, slaughtering 10,000 Jews of an estimated population of about 20,000-30,000.) In other places, such calumny bred other forms of persecution. Money Lenders If you were a reasonable Christian listening to your Church fathers speak of the Jews, you might quite naturally conclude that such a people had no place in a decent society. And this is a conclusion that was drawn over time. Around the first millennium, we see the rise of the Christian trade guilds from which Jews were pointedly excluded. No more Jewish goldsmiths and silversmiths and glass-blowers. Jews were also excluded from owning land, holding office, and from being doctors and lawyers. They were forced to wear a distinguishing garment either a badge or a sign or a silly-looking hat which set them apart. This was not only to make them look different but also to humiliate them. Then, beginning in 1123, when the bishops of the Church undertook a series of meetings called Lateran Councils to decide Church policy, the Jews were assigned a new function in Christian society. Along with a decree 4

5 that priests must be celibate, the bishops decided that Christians were not allowed to lend each other money. (This came from a misunderstanding of biblical commandment that forbids one from charging one s brother interest when making a loan.) As for the Jews, the bishops promulgated a doctrine decreeing them servants of Christians, and then assigning to them the degrading task of lending money called usury with which the Christians were forbidden to sully their hands. The bishops were not stupid. They knew that you have to charge interest to have banking, and you had to have banking to have economic development, otherwise there is no growth and your economy stagnates. Someone had to lend money. And that someone, the bishops decided, would be the Jews. What happened next is that the Jews were not allowed to live in various cities in Europe, unless they supplied a certain number of money-lenders. However, lending money was a very precarious job. For one, it engendered a lot of animosity. After all, who likes to pay back loans? And what happened if the local nobleman or bishop decided not to pay you back? He would accuse the Jew of doing something terrible like killing a Christian baby. That way he could renege on his loans, confiscate all Jewish property, and then expel or even kill the Jews. This happened over and over again. Some have claimed that it was Jewish money-lending practices that engendered such actions and, indeed, were responsible for a great deal of anti-semitism. This is a total myth. At that time Jews charged an average interest rate of between 33% and 43% on loans. And while this may seem high by today s standards, consider that the Lombards, the Christian Italian bankers living under the nose of the Vatican, charged rates as high as 250%. So we see that the Lombard money-lending practices were many times worse and yet no one went around persecuting Lombard bankers. 2 Persecutions of the Jews, on the other hand, knew no bounds. 2 Despite the Church s prohibition against Christian involvement in usury, Christians and even members of the clergy continued the practice throughout Europe. For a more detailed description of money lending see: Baron, Salo, and Kahan, Arcadius, Economic History of the Jews, Jerusalem: Keter, 1975, pp

6 Baby Killers It is next to impossible to explain the accusations that were hurled at the Jews during this time. Jews were persecuted not only for being Christkillers but as baby-killers. The first such accusation better known as a blood libel was leveled in 1144 in Norwich, England. There, Jews were charged with kidnapping a Christian baby and draining it of blood. The charge became so popular it would sweep, in various forms, through Europe and then spread to other parts of the world. The most famous of all blood-libel legends is that of the ritual murder of the child named Hugh of Lincoln, England in The story was immortalized in a ballad so well-known in England and Scotland that it is included in the standard cannon of English and Scottish ballads compiled by Francis James Child in the 19 th century. Likewise, the best-known tale of ritual murder is the Prioress Tale, found in Chaucer s 14 th century classic work of early English fiction, Canterbury Tales. One verse of that tale goes like this: 3 From that time forward, these Jews conspired to chase this innocent child from the earth s face. Down a dark alleyway, they found and hired a murderer who owned that secret place, and as the boy passed at his happy pace, this cursed Jew grabbed him and held him, slit his little throat and cast him in a pit. Now why did Jews need blood in Christian opinion? This is a multiple-choice question: a) Jews suffered from hemorrhoids as a punishment for killing Jesus, and drinking blood was the best cure for hemorrhoids at the time. b) Jewish men menstruate and need a monthly blood transfusion. 3 Dundes, Alan, The Blood Libel: A Case in Anti-Semitic Folklore, Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, p.41. 6

7 c) Jewish men, when they re circumcised, lose so much blood because of that surgical procedure that they need to drink Christian babies blood. d) Blood is the chief ingredient in matzah, and therefore prior to every Passover Jews would be requiring a large supply. e) all of the above The correct answer? Shockingly, it s (e) all of the above. This is a very important lesson in anti-semitism. You can say anything about the Jews, and people will believe it. It s ironic that Jews, who are prohibited by Jewish law of consuming any blood whatsoever (kosher meat is carefully washed and salted to remove all traces of blood), were precisely the people accused of drinking blood. The blood libel makes even less sense when you consider that in the 13 th century the Church adopted the doctrine of transubstantiation. This is a mystical idea which maintains that when the priest says mass over the wafer and wine, these objects change into the body and blood of Jesus. Christians who consume the wafer and drink the wine are said to be mystically eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood. 4 It s ironic that the Christian world, while engaged in the ritual of drinking the blood of Jesus would accuse the Jews who are forbidden to drink blood of this totally fabricated, hideous crime. But then the accusations got even more wild. Starting in Switzerland and Germany in the 13 th century, Jews were accused of kidnapping communion wafers from churches. Why would the Jews do this in Christian view? 4 " body and blood [of Christ] are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine, transubstantiated by the divine power the bread into his body and the wine into his blood." Text from the decision of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 as cited by Lohse, Bernard in A Short History of Christian Doctrine: From the First Century to the Present, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966, p

8 To torture it. Medieval documents tell stories describing how a Jew (usually called Abraham) steals a wafer from a church, sticks a knife in it, and blood starts pouring out. And then he cuts it up into pieces and sends it to different Jews who all torture it. This would be funny if not for a fact that thousands of Jews were slaughtered as a result of such stories. For example, the entire Jewish community of Berlitz, near Berlin, was burned alive based on the accusation of torturing a wafer! 5 Jew Taxes Throughout this time, the Jews were physically marginalized beaten, burned, raped. And they were economically marginalized pillaged, robbed, taxed nearly to death. Indeed, their money was one of the reasons they were tolerated at all. Jews were a good source of income to the crown. They were specially taxed with the punitive Jew taxes. We will see later in Germany that 38 special taxes were imposed on the Jews. There was a tax to be born, a tax to die, a tax to wear a yarmulke, a tax to be married, a tax to be circumcised, a tax to buy Shabbat candles, a tax to be exempt from the German army (in which a Jew was not allowed to serve anyway). If you want to know why Jews are so good at evading taxes and why so many Jews are into accounting, it comes from literally 1,500 years of trying not to be taxed to death by their enemies. And eventually, once Jews were drained of their money, they would be expelled. In 1182, King Philip II of France, out of the need to acquire some quick-and-easy money, expelled the Jews of his kingdom and confiscated all their property. The lure of future Jewish tax revenue caused him to re-think his policy and invite the Jews back to France in To read more about this subject see: Prager, Dennis, and Telushkin, Joseph, Why the Jews? New York: Simon & Schuster, See also, Trachtenburg, Joshua, The Devil and the Jews, Philadelphia: JPS,

9 This is also what happened in England where heavy taxation of the Jewish population of about 5,000 people supplied the crown with almost 20% of all its income. In 1290 on the 9 th day of Av, which, as we have seen, is the same day that the Temple in Jerusalem was twice destroyed, and which is therefore the worst day in Jewish history the Jews were expelled from England after first being drained of their wealth by a crushing taxation. (They were not permitted to return for almost four centuries.) King Edward I declared all debts owed to the Jews cancelled and that the principal be paid directly to him. As the Edict of Expulsion stated: We, in requital of their crimes and for the Honor of the Crucified, have banished them from our realm as traitors. We... do hereby make totally null and void all penalties and usuries and whatsoever else... may be claimed on account of Jewry... pay the amount to us at such convenient times as may be determined by you. 6 Other countries would soon follow suit, but first would come another twist in the persecution of the Jews. 6 Edict of Expulsion of King Edward I as quoted by Rubin, Alexis, P. (editor) in Scattered Among the Nations: Documents Affecting Jewish History 49 to 1975, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995, pp