“Why are Jews so cordially hated – and feared?”. This question has preoccupied opponents of anti-Semitism since the Hamas pogrom of 7 October 2023 (with “cordially” in this context meaning with intense feeling).
Only it is not a new question. The quote is the first sentence of the introduction to The Devil and the Jews, a classic work on anti-Jewish stereotypes, first published in 1943. The year is important. It was in the middle of the Nazi’s ‘final solution’ even though the full horror of the Holocaust was not yet apparent.
Joshua Trachtenberg, the author of the text and a full-time congregational rabbi, made the connection clear in the book’s sub-title: “The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism”. His stated goal was to show how medieval stereotypes of Jews as a collective were feeding anti-Semitism in the mid-20th century.
Trachtenberg has one great strength relative to most contemporary takes on anti-Semitism. He understands that it is necessary to take the demonological character of anti-Semitic stereotypes seriously. Not, of course, because they reflect any truth about the Jews but because it is necessary to grasp how anti-Semites think. Opposing them effectively means understanding their world view.
As Trachtenberg noted: “My concern here is with the element in the complex of anti-Jewish prejudice which renders it different, in expression and intensity, from other manifestation of racial or minority antipathy – the demonological” (pxv). This is a point many contemporary authorities on anti-Semitism fail to recognise. For them Jews are just one of many targets of hatred. They firmly reject claims that it could have an exceptional character.
It is true that even in 1943 most people, certainly in America, would not use explicitly demonological language to refer to Jews (p7). But, implicitly at least, it is a core assumption of modern anti-Semitism. For example, contemporary anti-Israel activists typically use terms such as “apartheid” and “colonialism” – usually stripped of their original meaning – as an epithet for Israel. In essence what they are saying, despite the contemporary language, is that Israel is a Satanic force in the world. It is therefore worth going back to the medieval era to see how this imagery developed.
Trachtenberg argues that many abiding stereotypes of Jews emerged in the 12th century before coming to the fore in the 13th and 14th centuries. In the centuries before that, from the 6th to the 11th centuries, there was relatively little persecution of Jews. He concedes that some anti-Jewish ideas had ancient origins. For instance, the Gospel of John has passages linking Jews to Satan. But, in his view, it was during the high Middle Ages that such imagery came to the fore.
The idea of the demonic Jew was propagated in various types of plays, folk and nursery tales, popular sermons and legend cycles (pvii-ix). It also appeared in polemical pamphlets from the 16th century onwards.
Although the over-riding idea was of Jews as a Satanic force it could take different forms. Trachtenberg observes that Jews could also be seen as a sorcerer, murderer, cannibal, poisoner and blasphemer (p159). It was also linked to the idea of Jews as usurers – allegedly lending money at exorbitant rates of interest – and heretics (p194).
Often the negative views of Jews developed over time. The first known accusation of Jews in Europe being accused of ritually slaughtering a child was in the English town of Norwich in 1144. However, it took time for the myths to evolve. Trachtenberg argues such allegations were increasingly linked to a supposed Jewish desire for Christian blood. The claim that Jews used Christian blood for unleavened bread did not emerge until the 14th century.
The blood libel was closely linked to the idea of Jews as prone to murdering children. In the German lands this became a prominent part of medieval folklore referred to as Kindermördische Juden.
Anyone who follows the contemporary anti-Israel movement will quickly recognise this notion of Jews as inherently prone to child murder. It is repeated time and again in relation to Israel’s conflict against Hamas. Supposed anti-racists who taken an anti-Zionist stance seldom if ever challenge this image of Jews as child killers by nature.
Sometimes the immediate impetus for charges against Jews is apparent. Most notably the claim that Jews are guilty of poisoning the wells. This allegation, favoured by contemporary, anti-Israel activists, emerged in relation to the Black Death of the mid-14th century. Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague pandemic which killed millions of people. Naturally the allegations took hold against pre-existing views of Jews supposedly heavily involved in sorcery and Satanic practices. In any event they led to the massacre of thousands of Jews and the expulsion of many others from their homes.
To understand why Jews were subject to particular ire from the 11th century onwards it helps to appreciate the particular role they had come to play. Jews were virtually barred from land ownership and membership of guilds. This meant they could not become farmers and they were barred from many crafts. The Crusades, which started in the late 11th century, also meant Jews could no longer be involved in facilitating trade with the Orient.
Jews became heavily concentrated in usury as a result of these restrictions. The interest on their loans were often seen as an intolerable burden by the peasantry and the emerging middle class. This meant the Jews were often hated by the rest of the population. The 12thcentury also saw the emergence of a favoured Christian merchant class. This increasingly found itself in competition with the Jews. (The specific economic role of the Jews is the focus of Abram Leon’s classic Marxist text on The Jewish Question. It was written, under the Nazi occupation, at about the same time as The Devil and the Jews).
However, Trachtenberg also puts a lot of emphasis on church policy in his explanation for increasing Jew hatred. In his view it has to be seen against the backdrop of the church gradually coming to play a predominant role in western Europe. Many Christian leaders at this time viewed Jews collectively as heretics.
The main weakness of The Devil and the Jews is that it is unclear about the relationship between medieval Jew hatred and modern anti-Semitism. Although Trachtenberg recognises a difference – with modern anti-Semitism in his view emerging in Germany in the nineteenth century – he is unclear about its nature. For him modern anti-Semitism simply inherited the tropes from the earlier era: “If the Jew is today despised and feared and hated, it is because we are the heirs of the Middle Ages” (pxiv).
As I have argued previously this approach misses what distinguishes racial thinking from earlier forms of animosity. A pre-condition for the emergence of racial thinking is, paradoxically, the widespread acceptance of the idea of equality. If political equality is regarded as a possibility – which it was not in pre-modern times – the racism becomes a way of trying to explain why it has not been realised. In other words, as Kenan Malik has argued, “race did not give birth to racism. Racism gave birth to race”.
Another challenge, from the perspective of understanding contemporary anti-Semitism, is explaining how a notion of Jews as embodying evil is implicit in its vocabulary. That is a task for another day.
Joshua Trachtenberg The Devil and the Jews is published by the Jewish Publication Society.
PS - Trachtenberg says his goal is to develop the thesis of the “diabolisation of the Jew” developed by Maurice Samuel in The Great Hatred, first published in 1940. Trachtenberg commends Samuel for puncturing an exclusively materialist interpretation of anti-Semitism. I have so far not managed to get hold of Samuel’s book.