Antisemitism, racism and religion
Oliver Goldsmith, Illustrated Races, 1774
Yesterday in Golders Green, London, an area with a high Jewish population, four ambulances were set on fire. They belonged to a Jewish charity. The British media condemned the attack as an expression of antisemitism. Since you are reading this post I’m guessing that you were not one of the arsonists and would disapprove of their action regardless of how you feel about antisemitism.
Antisemitism is often understood as a type of racism. However they have different histories and give us different meanings. Here is a brief summary of the differences and a question about the religious dimension.
Burning four ambulances is an act of destruction, but not on the same scale as killing around 70,000 Gazans which the Israeli government has done, equally deliberately. Those ambulances were there to help people who, even if Jewish, were most unlikely to be anything to do with Israeli government policy. The link, assuming there is one, is antisemitism.
The origin of Judaism
When the Persian emperor Cyrus conquered the Babylonian empire in the 6th century BCE he inherited, among other lands, the city of Jerusalem and a small area of land around it which until 50 years earlier had been an independent state. Some of the older people remembered those days and looked forward to re-establishing some form of independence.
The result was a small mini-state within a huge empire. It had its own laws, as listed in the first five books of the Bible. Among the practical effects were these two:
1) The laws were designed to protect the peasants – 85-90% of the population – from being economically squeezed by taxes and rents. From that time on, for a few centuries, Jewish peasants were better off than other peasants. Out of that situation some characteristics of the Jewish lifestyle developed, like the commitment of families to look after all their members and help each other out financially.
2) Because the laws were so different – and mattered – it became essential to establish exactly who was a Jew and who was not. Inevitably, the distinction became part of the Jewish tradition. As they moved to other countries they congregated in their own communities because this made it easier to continue their distinctive practices, like their diets and the Sabbath rest.
Early Christianity and antisemitism
By the first century CE the benefit to peasants was reducing because of Roman tax policy: Jewish peasants were being squeezed just as much as others. The followers of Jesus were at first one of many Jewish movements, but were rejected by other Jews when they refused to support the war against Rome in 66-70 CE.
Some New Testament texts, especially in John’s gospel, give a misleading impression of ‘Jews’. An example is the resurrection appearance in John 20:19:
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’
Why fear of the Jews? Most of those disciples, possibly all of them, were Jews themselves.
The Greek word for ‘Jews’, Ioudaioi, technically meant the people who lived in the Roman province of Judea. Galilee was outside Judea. But, more important, Jesus’ campaign on behalf of peasants was mainly directed against the local government at the temple in Jerusalem.
That local government, theoretically authorised to administer the laws protecting peasants, was in fact governing on behalf of the Romans against the interests of the peasants. The ‘Jews’ those disciples would have been afraid of were the agents of the Jerusalem temple, not the ordinary peasants. However the context got forgotten and texts like this became part of the antisemitic tradition that has existed ever since then.
Antisemitism was revived in late eleventh century Europe when the invasions declined and commercial activities revived. Among the revivals was lending money at interest. This practice was forbidden by the Jewish scriptures, but only in some cases. It was Christians who universalised the ban. Jews often became moneylenders partly because they were banned from other activities. Attacks on them increased. Artistic representations of them began to make them look different. Tracts described them as sub-human. Those who had in fact been driven to destitution by moneylenders had good reason to be angry with the system. Many projected their anger onto Jews.
Antisemitism, therefore, has a distinct history because Judaism has a distinct history. The idea of a ‘chosen race’ was at first the result of a constitutional-economic opportunity; but it stuck, and others disliked being unchosen. Christianity grew out of Judaism along with tensions between the two. All this worked – in a sense, was rationalised – by confusing ethnicity with religious affiliation.
Racism
Racism has a different history. In ancient times, of course, people noticed how foreigners were different. They spoke a different language, had a different diet and looked different. They might also have been understood to have been created by a different god – so it was possible to believe they were a different kind of animal. Even so, modern racism was unknown to them. Greeks and Romans could force slaves to spend their lives in the mines digging out silver or copper – the kind of thing nobody would choose to do – but that was because they were slaves, not because they were foreigners.
Racism as we know it developed its political significance in later medieval Europe, with the rise of nation states. Before then, popes and kings might encourage soldiers to attack Jews and Moslems because of their beliefs; but from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries kings seeking to maximise their own kingdoms encouraged their subjects to fight against rival kingdoms.
They defined those rivals as enemies. No longer was Europe ‘Christendom’ as opposed to Islam; instead France, Spain and England were defined over against each other. Ethnic distinctions were invented, along with the idea of a ‘pure race’ as superior to mixed races. I spent my childhood at a time when a marriage between a white person and a black person ‘wasn’t fair on the children’. ‘Our’ race was, obviously, superior.
All this has now been refuted, of course; if you get your DNA tested you will turn out to be a real mongrel, just like everyone else. But in the meantime racism has justified imperialism in ways which are still defended by families celebrating great-grandparents who ‘brought civilisation’ to ‘primitive’ societies.
The difference
Antisemitism has remained influential partly because it easily confuses religious with ethnic differences. Racism stresses ethnic differences rather than religious ones. Today, however, we are hearing more about ‘Christian nationalism’ as though the far right feels the need for a religious authority to underpin it. Why is this?
Is it because it seems more attractive when it appeals to some transcendent authority, much like most political campaigns?
Or is it because some far right leaders have convinced themselves that Christianity is nationalistic?
What do you think? You can add a comment here.
I have just read your article Jonathan. It discusses an important issue that is pervasive and seldom out of the news. The international consequences are significant and there for all to see. ‘Anti-semitism’ has become a corrupted and misapplied political football, to prevent honest deliberation of current events. It is a tool of manipulation as I think the Golders Green incident exemplifies, a rather obvious fraudulent event. It is also worth comparing and contrasting the British Government’s response to it and that of ambulances attacked by Israel in Gaza, where civilians and aid workers, some of whom were British were actually murdered, to illustrate how tilted it is.