Antisemitism

Recent demonstrations and riots in favor of Palestinians and condemning Jews and Israel prompted me to review some writing I’d done in the past, especially on Anti-Semitism. So, in the cause of history, I rewrote it a bit. I composed it before Oct. 7, 2023, or before the eruption of the latest flare up between Jews, Muslims, Christians, and non-believers of any faith.

From Merriam-Webster’s dictionary online, we find the definition of Semite.

a:  a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs

b:  a descendant of these peoples

Logically, to be anti-Semitic is to be anti-Phoenicians, anti-Hebrew, anti-Arab, anti-a lot of people from that part of the world.

In our modern English, however, “anti-Semitism” has come to mean largely “anti-Jewish.”

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe according to a column published a few months ago by Charles Krauthammer. He clearly demonstrated, in moving and powerful prose, that pockets of anti-Semitism are springing up all across Europe. And this is in light of the Holocaust still alive in the memories of Europeans.

It is extraordinary to me that so many Europeans, and I am by no means excusing the descendants of Europeans like us, have harbored and expressed anti-Semitic sentiments for so long and with such vitriol.

It begs the question: why is this?

The old answers basically are theological in nature at their core but tinged and sometimes overlaid by economic and political realities, like socialism, anarchism, and communism.

Theologically, Jews were held accountable for the death of Jesus. They accused him of a bunch of sins, including blasphemy.

The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, did not find Jesus guilty of any crime against Rome and so was going to set him free. But, faced with a loud, angry, and unruly Jewish mob, and with few legionnaires stationed in Jerusalem to control them, Pilate caved and had Jesus flogged and then executed like a common criminal. End of story. Of course, not.

It was in fact the beginning of Christianity, launched by the Resurrection of Jesus from the tomb on the third day after his execution.

Over the centuries, Jews have been held accountable for the death of Jesus, although Jesus prophesied his death as necessary at the hands of the Jews, his own people. Even Judas Iscariot who betrayed him was spoken of prophetically by Jesus.

Almost half a century after the Resurrection of Jesus, the Jews of Israel and Judea rose in rebellion against Rome in 66 A.D. Roman legions once again captured Jerusalem and this time thoroughly sacked the Jewish capital in 70 A.D. The Romans destroyed the Temple and exiled thousands of Jews for good measure in a process called the Diaspora. This was the beginning of modern Jewry’s peregrinations in the world.

Colonies of Jews settled all over the Roman Empire, from Africa to Germany, and over the hundreds of years these frugal, industrious, creative, and incredibly enduring people flourished. As they flourished, especially in the areas of banking, finances, commerce, lending and so forth, they drew the attention of the neighbors, invariably Christians or Muslims.

The attention turned to envy and the persecution of Jews became a commonplace occurrence throughout Medieval Europe and into modern times.

That the Jewish people survived is a spiritual matter between them and their God. Providentially, he intervened in their life thousands of years ago—read Genesis and Exodus if you want the full story—and has been a part of their communal life ever since.

While Europeans across the board discriminated against Jews in far too many ways to list and analyze here, none came close to matching the fury of Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. They exterminated six million in the ovens of Auschwitz and other concentration camps before the armies of the allies—Americans, Russians, English, and others—blasted and shot their way into the German empire that Adolf Hitler boasted was to endure for one thousand years (it lasted about ten) and stopped the slaughter.

In 1948, keeping a promise first made by the English in 1917—the Balfour Declaration—to establish a national home for the Jewish people, modern Israel came into existence under the auspices of the United Nations. Israel has been at war with her Arab neighbors off and on since then, most of them bent on destroying the Jewish state in their midst.

We come full circle. Why anti-Semitism? Envy? Fear? Religion? A witches’ caldron of those and more ingredients?

What is perhaps the most curious turn of events is how modern Christians, especially the charismatic, Pentecostal, evangelical brand, have embraced Israel and the Jewish nation.

Part of the Christian message, contained especially in the Books of Daniel and of Revelation, is that the Second Coming of Jesus is soon to happen. Certain signs, depending upon your interpretation of Scripture, have to occur and many Christians see the world as close to the end. And for this to come about, the Jewish people and Jerusalem are deeply involved.

Anti-Semitism may be resurfacing, but I’d give it a wide berth spiritually, and I condemn it thoroughly in the natural. Hate replaces love in your calculus of life, and that denies the central—and empowering–doctrine of love in the faith of Jesus, Christianity.

We come full circle here in this small discourse on the nature of antisemitism today. It has a rabid, anti-Israel component to it that simply ignores the rights of the Jewish people to exist. The Holocaust’s monstrous eruption in the 1930s and 1940s is ignored as some kind of weird aberration in the history of humankind. It happened when hate and jealousy prevailed in Nazi Germany.

And hate and jealousy is rising to the fore of today’s devotees to destroying Israel in favor of Palestine, and, if we are to argue further, to the destruction of American political democracy and replacement by socialism or communism, where a few—the leaders and idealogues—replace the way we govern ourselves. That for another day.