A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (9 page)

Moses gives water to the tribes of Israel. The fresco was found in the remains of a synagogue in Syria. It dates to the third century, as does a nearby church. At that time, Jews and Christians often lived and prayed side by side.

Why did Chrysostom believe Jews were degenerate? Because of their “odious assassination of Christ.” And for this crime, Chrysostom declared, there was “no expiation possible, no indulgence, no pardon.” In his view, the rejection and dispersal of the Jews was the work of God, not of emperors. He insisted that God had always hated the Jews, and therefore, on Judgment Day, God would say to Judaizers, “Depart from Me, for you have had dealings with murderers.”
⁴

Chrysostom’s attacks had little to do with Jewish practice or belief. He was not interested in real Jews; it was the “Judaizing” Christians he was attacking. In opposing them, however, he demonized “the Jews.” And he was not alone. Other Christian leaders in Chrysostom’s day wrote in similar ways about Jews. Sophronius Eusebius Heironymus (later St. Jerome) was a monk who translated the Old Testament (the Christian name for
the Hebrew scriptures) and the New Testament from Greek to Latin. His rhetoric was more subdued than Chrysostom’s, but his message was similar: “The Jews… seek nothing but to have children, possess riches, and be healthy. They seek all earthly things but think nothing of heavenly things; for this reason they are mercenaries.”
⁵

Aurelius Augustinus (later St. Augustine), a leading theologian of the early church who lived about 50 years after Chrysostom, took a more complex view of Jews—a view that would have major consequences for the Jews of Europe. Augustine wrote that God had dispersed the Jews but had not destroyed them. In his view, God had kept Jews alive as a permanent reminder that Christianity had replaced Judaism as the true faith. He argued that the humiliated, defeated Jews showed what happens to those who reject God’s truth.

Although Augustine did not want the Jews to be murdered, he did want them to suffer for what he claimed they had done to Jesus. And he wanted them to be present at the “end of days,” when Jesus returned, so that they could see that they had been wrong. Like Chrysostom, Augustine described and defined Jews in terms of the purpose he thought they served for Christians—examples of the punishment inflicted by God on non-Christian believers. Such a view of Jews tended to deny their humanity and their existence as people with their own beliefs and purposes.

The language used by Chrysostom, Augustine, and other church leaders was designed to persuade Christians to cut all ties between themselves and Judaism. It had the desired effect. That language shaped attitudes and supported opinions long after the fourth century ended. It was also reflected in numerous acts of violence against Jews. As early as 414, church leaders in Alexandria led an assault on synagogues that destroyed the city’s Jewish community for a time. Similar events occurred in other parts of the empire. The perpetrators were rarely punished. Increasingly, the tightening links between the political power of the Roman emperors and the religious power of church leaders left Jews isolated and vulnerable. More and more, they were viewed as outsiders—a status that would have a profound effect on Jewish life at other times and in other places.

(395–750
CE
)

The way a people (whether an ethnic group, a nation, or a religious community) defines itself has enormous significance. That definition indicates who holds power in the group (such as rabbis or priests, kings and noblemen, or men in general) and how the group as a whole sees itself in relation to the larger world. It also determines who belongs and who does not. From the fourth through the eighth centuries of the Common Era, Jews in the Middle East and beyond were increasingly seen as outsiders—people who do not belong. That view had consequences in a world in which politics and religion were tightly linked.

In 395
CE
, the Roman Empire was formally divided into two parts. People in the western part, which included much of North Africa and parts of Spain, spoke mainly Latin; those in the east spoke mainly Greek. Although the western part of the empire eventually collapsed, the eastern part managed to survive and even expand. It became known as the Byzantine Empire, and its capital was Constantinople. (Byzantium was the site on which Constantine built Constantinople, which is now known as Istanbul.) To its east was the Persian Empire, which had dominated western Asia for more than a thousand years.

In the sixth and seventh centuries, the Byzantine and Persian Empires competed for land and power. To defeat its enemy, each needed money and armies. Each also demanded the loyalty of its people. In the Byzantine Empire, demands for loyalty were connected to an insistence on belonging to the dominant religion—Christianity. The two kinds of loyalty, religious and political, were intertwined. For example, the Christian governor of Carthage, a city located near modern-day Tunis in Tunisia, challenged the loyalty of his subjects with these words: “Are you servants of the emperor? If you are, you must be baptized.”

Fragment of a bowl from the early Byzantine Empire. Both details, including a shofar (a ram’s horn blown on some Jewish holidays) and an ark used to store the Torah, indicate it was made by or for Jews.

Byzantine rulers issued laws aimed at eliminating “the madness of Jewish impiety,” “all heresies, all perfidies, and schisms,” and “the error and insanity of stupid paganism.” But many of these laws, though harsh, were not always enforced. In an empire that by the sixth century stretched from what is now Iraq in the east to Egypt and beyond in the west, there was always a gap between the written law and its enforcement.

However, when laws were enforced, punishments were swift and without mercy. For example, after riots broke out in Constantinople in 532, the emperor Justinian sent in troops to massacre all those involved—more than 30,000 people in all. Little is known about these riots or the people who participated in them. However, we do know how the emperor felt about the massacre. Procopius, a historian of the time, wrote that “Justinian did not see [the massacre] as murder if the victims did not share his own beliefs.”

In the seventh century, similar riots took place within the Byzantine Empire; they provided the Persians with an opportunity to expand their own empire at the expense of their neighbor. In 611, the Persian army
poured into what is now Syria and Palestine. In that year, they conquered Antioch; in 613, Damascus; and by 614, they were threatening Palestine. Throughout the region, the soldiers devastated cities and burned churches.

Many Jews in the Byzantine Empire welcomed the Persians. Some saw their arrival as an opportunity to win independence or even just a little more freedom. The official religion of the Persian Empire was Zoroastrianism (Zoroastrians are followers of the Iranian prophet Spitaman Zarathushtra, who lived and preached near the Aral Sea about 3,500 years ago). But the empire was home to many Jews, Christians, and Buddhists as well as Zoroastrians and pagans. So many Jews served in the Persian army that Persian commanders avoided going into battle on Jewish holy days. As a result, an Armenian historian named Sebeos observed, “As the Persians approached Palestine, the remnants of the Jewish nation rose against the Christians, joined the Persians and made common cause with them.”
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In Jerusalem, the Persians, with the help of their Jewish allies, murdered about 60,000 Christians and sold 35,000 into slavery. It was a horrible massacre, one that Christians throughout the region vowed never to forget. They were also outraged by the outcome of the battle: the Persians handed over the city to the Jews. The Jews, in turn, expelled all Christians from Jerusalem. But Jewish rule lasted just three years. In 617, the Persians made peace with the Christians and agreed to return Palestine to Byzantine rule. When Jews in Palestine refused to accept the peace agreement, the Persians attacked them.

By 629, the Byzantines were in control of Jerusalem again. Although Jews scrambled to make peace with the authorities, Christian religious leaders demanded that the Jews be punished for their earlier disloyalty. Some were put to death, while others fled to the desert or to Persian territory. As the Byzantines launched campaigns to convert the Jews by force, many more Jews fled the empire.

In this age of empires, Jews’ insistence on maintaining their own religion and their own cultural traditions made them outsiders in both the Persian and the Byzantine Empires. Where could Jews find a place to freely practice their religion? A few found a haven beyond the borders of the great empires in the harsh desert of the Arabian Peninsula. Little is known about when the first Jews arrived in the region, but certainly some Jewish families were living there before the destruction of the second Temple in 70
CE
. Their numbers increased during the various struggles for power
under Roman rule. Over the centuries, they were also joined by Arabs who had converted to Judaism.

Like other groups in Arabia, Jews settled in places in the desert that were watered by natural springs. In these oases, they grew dates and other crops and traded with their fellow townspeople and the Bedouin nomads of the desert. Over time, they organized themselves into tribes and clans much like those of their Arab neighbors.

To survive in a place with little or no government, a group needs allies. Jewish tribes formed alliances with Arab tribes and participated in the frequent raids and feuds among tribes. By the sixth century, Jews were so well established on the peninsula that the king of Yemen converted to Judaism.

Despite their integration into Arabian society, Jews for the most part remained distinct: they worshipped one God, observed the Sabbath on Saturday, followed Jewish dietary laws, and prayed three times a day. Some Christians—particularly those who were considered heretics by church leaders in Rome and/or Constantinople—also settled in Arabia. Like Jews, they too formed distinct communities, even though they were also well integrated into the local culture.

In the seventh century, around the time the Byzantines regained control of Jerusalem, a new religion called Islam developed in Arabia. It was influenced by both Judaism and Christianity, and it profoundly altered life throughout the Arabian Peninsula.

Islam began with the teachings of Muhammad, an Arab who was born around 570
CE
and who made his home in Mecca in southwestern Arabia. An orphan, he was a poor member of the Quraysh, a wealthy tribe in Mecca. Like other tribes in that area, the Quraysh had grown rich from the caravan routes that crisscrossed the desert. Camel trains loaded with goods of all kinds made regular stops in Mecca. The city was also an important religious center. People from all parts of Arabia came there to worship the hundreds of stone idols kept in a temple known as the Kaaba.

Muhammad earned his living by managing a camel caravan for a wealthy widow, whom he later married. When he was in his forties, he began to travel into the desert to meditate. While there, Muhammad had a revelation that changed not only his own life but also the lives of many people worldwide over the past 1,300 years. The revelation that Muhammad shared with his family and friends was that Allah (the Arabic
word for God) was the one, only, and almighty God, full of compassion and kindness; that he, Muhammad, had been called to spread God’s message; and that the Day of Judgment was coming, and when it arrived, those who did not serve God faithfully would be engulfed in flames.

To his followers, Muhammad was a prophet sent by God. They saw him as the last in a long line of prophets that included Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Like earlier prophets, Muhammad preached that there is but one God, whose commandments must be obeyed. For this reason, a follower of Muhammad is known as a
Muslim
: in Arabic, the word means “one who submits to God.” The religion a Muslim follows is called
Islam
, which means “surrender or submission to the will of God.”

Muhammad preached to anyone in Mecca who would listen. Although he had some success, many people mocked him, including some members of his own tribe. They feared that if Muhammad’s message gained wide acceptance, people would stop coming to Mecca to worship at the Kaaba and to trade in the markets; this would mean a loss of income and economic power.

Eventually, Muhammad decided to leave Mecca because so many people there were opposed to his teachings. The Islamic calendar begins in 622, the year Muhammad and his followers left Mecca for the city of Medina, located at an oasis about 280 miles to the north.

In Muhammad’s day, Jews made up about half of Medina’s population. Most were farmers or jewelers. Some also made weapons and armor for a living. Although Jews had probably lived in Medina longer than the Arabs, they did not control the city; it was dominated by two large confederations of tribes that worshipped many gods—the Aws and the Khazraj. Both groups had settled in Medina sometime during the fifth century and had long battled for control of the city.