A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (6 page)

While the delegations were still in Rome, Caligula was assassinated and a new emperor, Claudius, was named. Alexandrians responded to the news by resuming the violence. This time, the Jews armed themselves and fought back. The fighting was so ferocious that some have called it a war. Determined to end the conflict, Claudius issued an order addressed to the people of Alexandria in 41
CE
; his words were read aloud throughout the city. The order stated, in part:

With regard to the responsibility for the disturbances and rioting, or rather, to speak the truth, the war, against the Jews, although your ambassadors, particularly Dionysios the son of Theon, argued vigorously and at length in the disputation, I have not wished to make an exact inquiry, but I harbor within me a store of immutable indignation against those who renewed the conflict. I merely say that, unless you stop this destructive and obstinate mutual enmity, I shall be forced to show what a benevolent ruler can be when he is turned to righteous indignation. Even now, therefore, I [urge] the Alexandrians to behave gently and kindly toward the Jews who have inhabited the same city for many years, and not to dishonor any of their customs in their worship of their god, but to allow them to keep their own ways, as they did in the time of the god Augustus and as I too, having heard both sides, have confirmed
.

The Jews, on the other hand, I order not to aim at more than they have previously had,… and not to intrude themselves into the games presided over by the [Greeks], since they enjoy what is their own, and in a city which is not their own they possess an abundance of all good things. Nor are they to bring in or invite Jews coming from Syria or [other parts of] Egypt, or I shall be forced to conceive graver suspicions. If they disobey, I shall proceed against them in every way as seeking to spread a sort of public sickness throughout the world
.

If you both give up your present ways and are willing to live in gentleness and kindness with one another, I for my part will do for the city as much as I can, as one that has long been closely connected with us.
⁴

Despite Claudius’s edict, Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians continued to jockey for power in Alexandria. And the rhetoric that had roused such strong feelings in Alexandria resonated throughout the Roman Empire. As a result, the violence that began in Alexandria in 38
CE
spread to other parts of the empire, including Judea.

Roman emperors recognized the right of Jews to practice their religion because it predated the Roman Empire, but they failed to understand why Jews stubbornly refused to accept Roman gods. So, from time to time, an emperor would try to force Jews to accept him as a god, as Caligula had done. Jews were outraged by such demands. Many of them came to view the Roman conquest as a religious insult. The Romans, in turn, often regarded the Jews’ refusal to accept Roman gods as an act of disloyalty.

An incident that took place in 4
BCE
reveals how swiftly and brutally the Romans responded to any sign of rebellion. That year, several Jewish groups in Judea mounted small uprisings. Roman soldiers responded by sweeping through the countryside, raping women, killing villagers, and destroying nearly everything in their path. In Jerusalem, the Romans executed anyone even suspected of taking part in the uprisings. They killed the rebels by nailing them to crosses and then leaving them to die a slow and horrific death. According to Josephus Flavius, a Jewish general who sided with the Romans and later became a historian, the Romans erected 2,000 crosses just outside the gates of Jerusalem after putting down the revolt. On each cross hung a Jew. The message was clear.

In 66
CE
, 25 years after Claudius’s edict to the Alexandrians, Jews in Judea once again launched a revolt against Rome. Known as the Great Rebellion, it was a fight that many Jews were convinced they could not win; they had too few soldiers, weapons, and other resources. They were also divided among themselves, each group with its own view of Jewish law and its own ideas about the best way to handle Rome. Some Jews believed that they had to go to war to stop the Romans from violating the Temple. Others thought a war would be suicidal. Like so many rebellions in history, a struggle for liberation became a civil war as Jews fought each other as well as the Romans.

The war ended with the destruction of the second Temple on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av in 70
CE
. Josephus, who witnessed the fighting, described what happened that day:

While the holy house was on fire, everything was plundered that came to hand, and ten thousand of those that were caught were slain; nor was there a commiseration of any age, or any reverence of gravity; but children, and old men, and profane persons, and priests, were all slain in the same manner…. The flame was also carried a long way, and made an echo, together with the groans of those that were slain; and because this hill was high, and the works at the temple were very great, one would have thought that the whole city had been on fire. Nor can one imagine anything either greater or more terrible than this noise; for there was at once a shout of the Roman legions, who were marching all together, and a sad clamour of the seditious, who were now surrounded with fire and sword.
⁵

Anger over the Romans’ disrespect for Jewish customs and beliefs continued to smolder for decades. Between 115 and 117
CE
, Jews in Alexandria and other cities along the coast of North Africa began their own rebellions against Rome. Like the Great Rebellion in Judea, these ended in defeat. A few years later, in 123
CE
, Jews in Judea once again tried to break away from Rome by launching a series of surprise attacks. The Romans responded by sending to Judea an army legion (a force of 3,000 to about 6,000 soldiers) to put down the rebellion.

Then, in about 132
CE
, the emperor Hadrian announced a plan to rename Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, in part to honor the Roman god Jupiter Capitolinus. Hadrian also planned to build a temple in honor of Jupiter where the Jewish Temple had stood. These and other acts of contempt toward Jews and their religion prompted a new rebellion.
Jewish rebels under the leadership of Shimon Bar-Kokhba captured 50 fortified Jewish towns and 985 undefended villages and towns, including Jerusalem. Jews from other countries and even some non-Jews joined the anti-Roman rebels. Early victories inspired Jews to mint coins with slogans such as “The freedom of Israel” written in Hebrew. But the war was not over.

The turning point came when Hadrian sent to Judea one of his best generals, Julius Severus. His army included soldiers from Egypt, Britain, Syria, and other parts of the empire. Because of the size of the rebellion, Severus did not attack directly. Instead, he surrounded the fortresses to keep food and water from reaching the people who lived behind the walls. Only when hunger had weakened the rebels did the Romans attack. In the end, they destroyed every single fortress and village held by the rebels.

The final battle of the war took place at Bethar, the city where Bar-Kokhba had his headquarters. Bethar was a military stronghold because of its strategic location on the main road to Jerusalem. It also housed the Sanhedrin (the Jewish high court). In 135
CE
, Hadrian’s army laid siege to the city. Its walls are said to have fallen on the ninth day in the Hebrew month of Av, the Jewish fast day that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples. Every Jew in the city was slaughtered—children, women, and men.

The Jewish war was now essentially over. Hadrian changed the country’s name from Judea to Palestine. He also demolished the city of Jerusalem and forced thousands of Jews into slavery. According to a Roman decree, Jews could not rebuild the city or live there. Only Romans had that right. Jews were permitted to enter only on the ninth day of Av to mourn the loss of the Temple.

In the first and second centuries, the Romans ruled an empire that was greater than any the world had yet known. It included not only much of the Middle East but also a large part of Europe. Within that empire, many groups continuously competed for power and influence. The Romans sometimes encouraged these rivalries, because this helped them maintain control of their empire.

Statements about Jews like those made by Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans sound strongly antisemitic today. But it is not clear that people in those days were antisemitic in the sense that the term is currently used. In some ways it appears that Jews were treated no differently from other
groups conquered by the Romans, even though the customs and practices that set Jews apart from other groups, such as their monotheism, were a recurring source of tension and even hostility.

Still, many of the key elements that define modern antisemitism can be traced to this time in history. A variety of stereotypes and myths lie at the heart of every hatred, including antisemitism. Stereotypes are the labels “we” attach to “them” and the assumptions “we” make about “them”—sometimes without ever meeting “them.” In this context, myths are lies based on those faulty assumptions, and they tend to endure because they appeal to strong emotions rather than to reason.

Both the Greeks and the Romans created stereotypes that dehumanized and demonized Jews as a group. Those stereotypes persisted long after the empires of Greece and Rome had crumbled. The Romans also claimed that Jews were conspiring to take over their empire, even though Jews in the ancient Middle East were a small minority with few allies. Over the course of many centuries, that myth would acquire a deadly force that undermined the usual “live and let live” attitudes of many rulers.

(29–414
CE
)

In the first century of the Common Era, Jesus of Nazareth lived as a Jew among Jews. He prayed in the synagogue, observed Jewish laws (including the dietary laws), and probably wore the fringes on his clothing (
tzitziot
in Hebrew) as required for Jewish men. His earliest followers did the same. Yet by the end of the fourth century, Jesus’s followers had left the synagogue and established a new religion known as Christianity. (The word
Christianity
refers to a religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Christ
was not part of Jesus’s name, though his followers soon began using it that way. It is a title that comes from the Greek word meaning “anointed” or “chosen.” The English word
messiah
comes from a Hebrew word that has the same meaning.)

The separation of Christianity from Judaism did not happen simply or quickly. It was not a single event but rather a sometimes painful process that took generations to complete. And in this separation can be found the roots of hostility between Jews and Christians and the roots of some aspects of modern antisemitism.

Little is known about the early life of Jesus. He was raised in the Jewish town of Nazareth, less than 100 miles north of Jerusalem in the area known as Galilee. By all accounts, Jesus lived as a Jew and, like other Jews, obeyed the laws of the Torah. At about the age of 30, he began his ministry and was often referred to as “rabbi” (meaning “teacher”).

Jesus was also killed as a Jew. Crucifixion was a method of execution commonly used by the Romans. In 4
BCE
, the Romans crushed a Jewish revolt and crucified 2,000 Jewish rebels outside the walls of Jerusalem (see
Chapter 1
). It was the Romans, in fact, who crucified Jesus as a Jewish troublemaker.

For centuries, “the Jews” have been held responsible for Jesus’s death. Did they actually play any part in it? Many scholars point out that only the Romans had the power or authority to put Jesus to death. Furthermore, the very question suggests that Jews were a united people with some influence over Rome in the first century of the Common Era. But in fact, Jews at that time were deeply divided over issues of faith and practice. Jews who held similar views banded together; many of these groups were intolerant of Jews with different views. Only a few had ties to the Romans.

If any Jews were involved in Jesus’s death, they were probably Sadducees—a group associated with the high priests and other leaders of the Temple in Jerusalem. But the Sadducees certainly did not speak or act for the Pharisees, who seem to have been scrupulous in observance of traditional Jewish laws and whose concern for common people put them in opposition to the Sadducees. Nor did they speak for the Essenes, who abandoned Jerusalem in protest against the way the Temple was being run.

Each of these and many other groups had its own idea of what it meant to be faithful to God’s will and its own plan for the future of the Jewish people. Perhaps that is why Jesus’s closest followers did not blame “the Jews” as a group for his death. They were Jews themselves and continued to live as Jews.

Many of Jesus’s closest followers believed that God would intervene in history at the “end of days” by crushing injustice and evil and establishing peace on Earth. Then the dead would rise and the scattered people of Israel would return to their homeland. As the “end of days” neared, righteous Jews, as opposed to those who were sinful, would at first be in danger but would ultimately prevail under the leadership of a messiah. The followers of Jesus often reminded their fellow Jews that after the destruction of the first Temple in 586
BCE
, the prophets had envisioned such a time.

After Jesus’s crucifixion, those followers were more certain than ever before that they were living in the “end of days.” They proclaimed amazing news: they had seen Jesus and he had talked with them and eaten with them. They believed his tomb was empty and he had been resurrected—that is, after God had raised Jesus from the dead, he ascended to heaven. These convictions gave new energy to the movement. Earlier, it had centered on Jesus’s teachings. Now his followers reminded other Jews of the words of the prophets and insisted that Jesus was the “anointed one,” the “son of God” who would return to fulfill those promises.