A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (22 page)

Josel of Rosheim as a representative of “the Jews” is shown with a “golden calf.” In the Bible, when Moses returns after receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, he is so outraged to find Jews worshipping a golden calf that he breaks the two tablets.

At a time when every state had an official religion, religious divisions and political struggles for power were often closely linked. Even after the German princes had ruthlessly put down the peasants’ revolt, the conflict between Catholics and Luther’s followers continued. Now, however, it was the princes who took the lead in the growing division between the two. In 1526, a Lutheran majority in the diet passed a law allowing each prince to decide whether his state church would be Roman Catholic or Lutheran.

The electors hoped the compromise would end the conflict. But three years later, Catholics held a majority in the diet and overturned the compromise that allowed the princes to decide whether their state church would remain Catholic. In a show of solidarity, Lutheran reformers, now in the minority, issued a
protestatio
(Latin for “protestation”) to affirm their beliefs: this is how they came to be known as “Protestants” (and how the reforms they championed became known as the “Protestant Reformation”). The following year, the split between Catholics and Protestants widened. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, the Protestants presented a formal statement of their beliefs to the emperor, and the Catholics responded with a refutation.

To complicate matters, the Holy Roman Empire itself was at the time increasingly vulnerable to attack. In the east, the threat came from the Ottoman Empire, which had overrun Hungary in 1529 and then laid siege to Vienna, the capital of what is now Austria. In the west, the danger came from France and England. To keep his empire from being divided among his enemies, Charles realized that he would have to make concessions within its borders. He hoped that the assembly at Augsburg would lead to such compromises.

Among the leaders who attended the diet was Josel of Rosheim. He held meetings there with rabbis and Jewish merchants and businessmen. The group hoped to ease tensions with Christians by formally endorsing a code of conduct that would guide their financial dealings with their neighbors. Josel presented the code to the princes at Augsburg. He told the gathering that in return, he and other Jews would like to live in the empire without fear of expulsion. They also wished to be free to travel and trade without restrictions, and they wanted protection from false accusations. He asked for these concessions “because we, too, are human beings, created by the Almighty, to live on earth with you.”
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Although Josel appealed to a common humanity, the princes did not take his speech to heart. They were too busy preparing for civil war. Only Charles seemed willing to listen.

At the diet in Augsburg, Josel showed Charles a copy of the charter Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had issued in 1157. It renewed “for all time” the privileges Henry IV had granted to Jews just before the first crusade in 1096 (see
Chapter 4
). Those privileges included the freedom of Jews to travel safely and worship openly in their synagogues throughout the empire. After reading the document, Charles declared it was binding, and he renewed it a few years later.

The emperor also ruled that Jews could not be brought to trial on trumped-up charges of kidnapping or ritual murder. Anyone who
imprisoned a Jew on a charge not authorized by the emperor would be fined, and the fine would double if the Jew was found innocent. In addition, the emperor allowed Jews to raise interest rates on loans, since Jews had to pay higher taxes than their neighbors.

As the conflict between Catholics and Protestants intensified, Jews had to choose sides. It is impossible to remain a bystander in a war fought in your backyard. Yet neither side was particularly sympathetic to the plight of Jews. Luther was primarily interested in converting them. Charles, although he had renewed their charter, was not only the Holy Roman emperor but also king of Spain and Portugal. In those countries, he had supported the expulsion of Jews and the Inquisition—he even established an inquisition in Mexico, Peru, and Spain’s other American colonies. Yet in the end, Josel and many other Jews decided to support Charles because of his willingness to protect their rights in exchange for their help and loyalty.

By 1537, a disappointed Luther became convinced that most Jews had no intention of converting to Christianity. If conversion was not a possibility, Luther believed there was no reason to tolerate the Jews. He therefore persuaded one of his strongest supporters—the prince of Saxony—to expel Jews from his territory. They could no longer live in, engage in business in, or even pass through Saxony. Aware of the prince’s close relationship with Luther, Josel tried to meet with Luther to discuss the expulsion order. Luther refused to see him. In response to a letter from Josel, Luther urged him to convert and then added, “I would willingly do my best for your people but I will not contribute to your [Jewish] obstinacy by my own kind actions. You must find another intermediary with my good lord.”

Josel did find another intermediary—a Lutheran scholar from Alsace. In 1537, Wolfgang Capito wrote the letter of introduction to the prince that Josel needed. When he met with the prince, Josel managed to persuade him to cancel the order of expulsion. But at Luther’s request, the order was later reinstated.

In the years that followed, Josel tried repeatedly to meet with Luther but was turned away. Then, in 1542, just three years before Luther’s death, the reformer published a new essay, “Concerning the Jews and Their Lies.” In it, Luther asked what Christians should “do with this damned, rejected race of Jews.” His answer:

First, their synagogues or churches should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it…
.

Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed. For they perpetrate the same things there that they do in their synagogues…
.

Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmud in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught…
.

Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more…
.

Fifthly… traveling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews…. Let them stay at home…
.

Sixthly, they ought to be stopped from usury. All their cash and valuables of silver and gold ought to be taken from them and put aside for safe keeping…
.

Seventhly, let the young and strong Jews and Jewesses be given the flail, the ax, the hoe, the spade, the distaff, and spindle, and let them earn their bread… as is enjoined upon Adam’s children…
.

If, however, we are afraid that they might harm us personally, or our wives, children, servants, cattle, etc., when they serve us or work for us… then let us apply the same cleverness [expulsion] as the other nations, such as France, Spain, Bohemia, etc., and settle with them for that which they have extorted usuriously from us, and after having divided it up fairly let us drive them out of the country for all time.
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After reading the essay, Josel decided to create a pamphlet that would refute Luther’s charges. To do so, he needed the permission of a prince or even members of a city council. (Nowhere in Europe in the 1500s were people—including Luther—free to publish or even speak in public without permission from a local or national government.) In 1542, no council was willing to grant Josel the right to publish a pamphlet. The best he could do was to persuade the Strasbourg city council to ban Luther’s book in their city.

Two years later, in 1544, Luther stirred up more controversy with a sermon entitled “Admonition against the Jews.” It repeated old libels against Jews, including false accusations of ritual murder, poisoning of wells, and black magic. The sermon conflicted with the earlier essay in which Luther expressed outrage at “blood libels” and other attempts to slander the Jews (page 118).

Josel and other Jewish leaders found this new sermon particularly worrisome, because a number of Protestant rulers, including the princes of Saxony and Hesse, used Luther’s writings to guide their decisions. Indeed, those writings would continue to shape opinions long after Luther’s death. In the 1930s and 1940s—nearly 400 years after they were written—Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party would quote them as “proof” of how evil and dangerous “the Jews” were.

Over the years, a number of Lutherans and other Protestants have tried to explain the viciousness of Luther’s attacks not only on Jews but also on Catholics, Muslims, and even some Protestants. Some scholars think his attacks may reflect a fear that his reforms had failed to bring about the changes he had envisioned. Based on a careful examination of Luther’s writings during the last years of his life, other scholars think he came to believe that he was living at the “end of days” (see
Chapter 2
) and that the need for sinners to repent was more urgent than ever. In their view, Luther increasingly saw himself as a prophet whose voice was not being heard. Still others maintained that Luther seemed to regard the actions of Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and even some Protestants as part of a satanic conspiracy. His language may have reflected his sense of urgency as well as his outrage and frustration.

Luther believed that individuals ought to follow their consciences. As he had told Charles, “It is neither safe nor honest to act against one’s conscience.” Many of his followers agreed—even though following their consciences sometimes meant criticizing Luther himself. One of those critics was Andreas Osiander, a Lutheran from Nuremberg. In 1543, he wrote to a Jewish humanist in Italy expressing his dismay at Luther’s essays on Jews. Osiander expressed those same views in a letter to Luther. After Luther’s death, Osiander’s words were used as evidence of his “unreliability” because he had failed to stand with Luther on the matter of toleration of the Jews.

In 1529, Osiander had received a letter from a nobleman asking whether Jews committed ritual murder. Osiander replied with a long essay
that stated, in part, “I have not been able to find, to think of, or to hear anything which could have moved me to believe such suspicion and accusation. Rather, I have found, on the contrary,… that injustice has been done to the Jews in this matter.”
¹¹
To support that conclusion, Osiander offered 20 reasons why ritual murder charges were based on lies rather than reality. He noted, for example, that Jews lived in places where there were no Christians. If Jews really needed Christian blood for religious purposes, how, he wondered, were they able to practice their religion in those lands?

Osiander argued that to imprison, torture, or execute Jews on charges that they stood against “God’s Word, Nature, and Human Reason” was to do the work of the devil, “the Father of Lies.” Osiander’s essay was made public in 1540, after several Jews found a copy of it and decided to have it printed without securing permission in advance. They planned to use it to defend Jews accused of ritual murder in the town of Sappenfeld.

Jews also searched for other allies in their efforts to promote toleration. Those allies included not only Osiander but also Philipp Melanchthon, a grandnephew of Reuchlin and one of Luther’s closest advisers. In 1539, Protestant electors at a meeting in Frankfurt were debating whether to expel Jews from their territories. In an emotional speech, Melanchthon changed the direction of the debate by describing an incident that took place in Berlin in 1510. At the time, he was a young priest. Just before the execution of 38 Jews convicted of desecrating the host, their accuser confessed to Melanchthon that he had lied.

The young priest immediately rushed to his bishop to ask for permission to inform Duke Joachim of Brandenburg of the confession so that he could stop the execution. His request was denied. Instead the bishop ordered Melanchthon to remain silent even as the 38 Jews were murdered. Now, 29 years later, he was finally able to openly tell what had happened. In the audience was Duke Joachim, who heard the story for the first time.

Josel of Rosheim was also in the audience. He recalled that as a result of the speech, the dukes gave up plans to expel the Jews—and all of them with the exception of the prince of Saxony kept their word.

In 1520, soon after Martin Luther set fire to the papal bull that condemned him and his books, he had called for a special council to reform the Catholic Church. Two years later, the electors of the Holy Roman Empire made a similar appeal to the pope; they had the support of Emperor Charles V,
who thought such a council might help reunite the church and end the Protestant Reformation. Both appeals were ignored.