Anti Semitism

Anti - Semitism

Student Handout

Historical Background- Chief Rabbi

Causes vs. Excuses

The Big Six

1. Economic: Jews are hated because they possess too much wealth and power.
2. Chosen People: Jews are hated because they arrogantly claim they are the chosen people.
3. Scapegoat: Jews are a convenient group to single out and blame for all the troubles.
4. Deicide: Jews are hated because they killed Jesus.
5. Outsiders: Jews are hated because they are different than the rest of society.
6. Racial Theory: Jews are hated because they are an inferior race.

Are they causes or excuses?

Is there a real cause?  Can it be prevented?

Anti Semitism Part II

1. A Unique Hatred

a) Longevity 

b) Universality 

c) Intensity 

d) Confusion / Paradox

•      lazy and inferior race / dominating the economy

•      maintaining separateness / assimilate

•      pacifists and as warmongers/ capitalist exploiters /  revolutionary communists

•      Chosen-People mentality / inferiority complex

2. Lame Attempts to De-Judaize Anti Semitism (Removing the Jewish Element from Anti-Semitism)

•      Anne Frank

•      Broadway’s Version

3. Hitler's Straightforward Approach

-       A return to a state of jungle-type existence

-       We have no need for Christian virtue.
Our leader is our savior.
The pope and rabbi shall be gone.
We shall be pagans once again.

o   Song of the "Hitler Youth"

•      Return to Barbarianism

•      Liberator of Humanity

5. The Source for Anti- Semitism: Sinai = Sinah

-       Target for those whose strongest drive is to liberate mankind from the shackles of conscience and morality.

-       Those who want the world to be a place of spiritual darkness.

-       They object to morality.

-       Burden of being good

-       Feelings of guilt

-       Herman Rauchning

"Jews are hated not so much because they killed Jesus, but because they produced him."

-       Sigmund Freud

6. The Jews: Light Unto the Nations

-       Monotheism

-       Human rights

-       Sick and the elderly should be cared for

-       Assisting the poor and disadvantaged

-       Peace

-       Justice

-       Family

-       Education

-       Charity

6. How Do Non-Jewish Historians View Jews?

 - John Adams

7. The Cause is the Solution

Anti Semitism - Teacher Notes

1. Everyone should write a time in their life they experienced AS

How did they feel

IS there anything you could have done differerntly

Usually there is nothing different you could have done

2. Video from Chief Rabbi

If there is a cause, the effect should vanish.

If, on the other hand, one thing is an excuse for another, then even after taking away the excuse, the effect will remain.

A child who is chronically late to school may say in his defense, "But I don’t have a watch. How do you expect me to get to school in time if I don’t have a watch?"

If his parents would buy him a watch and he would still be late for school, then it is clear that the lack of a watch was just an excuse for his lateness, not its cause.

Concerning anti-Semitism, if we succeed in identifying the reason for anti-Semitism, then eliminating that should put an end to hatred for the Jews. However, if we can eliminate it and the hatred remains, then we know that what we thought was a cause is actually an excuse.

The Six Common Reasons for anti-Semitism

Keep this distinction in mind as we explore the six most frequently offered reasons for anti-Semitism. As we touch upon each of these explanations, we will try to ascertain whether it is the cause of the hatred, or merely an excuse.

Historians and sociologists have come up with numerous theories to explain anti-Semitism. We will examine these one by one, and discuss the validity of each.

• Economic: Jews are hated because they possess too much wealth and power.
• Chosen People: Jews are hated because they arrogantly claim they are the chosen people.
• Scapegoat: Jews are a convenient group to single out and blame for all the troubles.
• Deicide: Jews are hated because they killed Jesus.
• Outsiders: Jews are hated because they are different than the rest of society.
• Racial Theory: Jews are hated because they are an inferior race.

Let us examine these six frequently-given reasons and determine if they are truly causes or excuses.

1.   The Economic Theory of Anti-Semitism

The Economic Theory of Anti-Semitism postulates that Jewish wealth and power arouses the envy of other groups, and this in turn leads to great resentment.

This theory has surfaced in different guises throughout history. One of the ways it became popularized was through The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,the minutes of fictional “secret meetings” in which Jewish leaders conspire to rule the world. Protocols is a viciously anti-Semitic book created by the Russian secret police.

This fictional account has provided an excellent excuse for campaigns of persecution against Jews, influenced the masses to believe the myth that Jews control governments. It is the second most widely published book in history.

Do people today still believe that Jews have some mysterious financial and organizational advantage over the rest of humanity?

Show video of humorous response to protocls

Ancient Chinese Secret

A True Story:

A Jewish physicist who works for Exxon Corporation spent many months working on a project in coordination with a world-renowned scientist from China. The two men developed a good working relationship and became friendly with one another.

One day the Chinese scientist commented to the Jew, "You know, ever since we first met I've been meaning to ask you a question: Why did you become a physicist? Why didn't you just go into business?"

"What kind of question is that?" \ the Jewish scientist replied. "I became a physicist because I wanted to be a physicist!"

"But aren't you Jewish?" the Chinese man persisted.

"So what difference does that make?"

"Well," the Chinese scientist patiently explained, "there would be countless risks involved if I would go into business, but for you it's risk-free!"

"Forgive me, but I'm not following you," said the Jew. "What sort of business is risk-free?"

"For you – any business! Come on," he said with a conspirational wink, "we all know you have the Organization behind you."

"Huh? What 'organization' are you talking about?"

"Come on, everybody knows that all Jewish men get money from the Organization when they get married. That's how all the Jews get started in business. There's no risk involved, because if the business fails, the Organization buys out the debt and then funnels more start-up money to the Jew. This goes on until the fellow hits upon a business that prospers!"

No such fantastically endowed international organization exists. Yet the assumption of this world-class scientist demonstrates that the myth of Jewish access to unlimited wealth is alive and well today.

Applying the Litmus Test

Does this attitude explain anti-Semitism? Is the Economic Theory a cause or anexcuse for anti-Semitism?

First, consider universal attitudes toward the rich. We don’t see any sustained historical persecution against wealthy non-Jews. Thus, if the haters decide to single out wealthy Jews and ignore wealthy non-Jews, economics cannot be regarded as the cause for hatred.

Second, if we remove the element of wealth and power from the Jews, does the anti-Semitism vanish?

The Jews who lived in the shtetels of Poland and Russia during the 17th-20th centuries were poor and powerless, utterly lacking any form of influence whatsoever. Yet they were hated. Often they were persecuted and subjected to unspeakable torments. On many occasions entire villages were ransacked and their Jewish inhabitants massacred in cold blood. Under those circumstances, anti-Semitism did not distinguish between rich and poor, between strong and weak, between powerful and powerless.

Likewise, anti-Semites in the Middle Ages initiated countless pogroms against Jews (without first investigating their bank accounts or investment portfolios).

When the Nazis liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto, there were no Jewish businesses to destroy. In fact, the impoverished conditions there were appalling. The Jews in the ghetto could not have been thought of as "rich" by anyone’s standards, and yet the Nazis felt they had to be eliminated.

Poor Jews have always been hated equally as rich Jews. When a Jew meets with financial success, it may set the anti-Semite’s teeth on edge, but the Jew’s success is clearly not what created the anti-Semite. Money therefore cannot be the cause of anti-Semitism.

The Fugu Plan

How about power? Can it be the cause of anti-Semitism?

If someone who is rich and powerful comes to you for a favor, would you persecute him? No, you help him – having such a person indebted to you is a great insurance policy. Case in point is the Arab oil-producing countries who are widely appeased, despite their standards that often fly in the face of Western values.

There was one nation that did treat the Jews as if they were powerful and rich. The Japanese never had much exposure to Jews, and knew very little about them. In 1919 Japan fought alongside the anti-Semitic White Russians against the Communists. At that time the White Russians introduced the Japanese to the book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Japanese studied the book and, according to all accounts, naively believed its propaganda. Their reaction was immediate and forceful – they formulated a plan to encourage Jewish settlement and investment into Manchuria. The Japanese decided that these wealthy and powerful Jews are precisely the people with whom they want to do business!

The Japanese called their plan for Jewish settlement "The Fugu Plan." The "fugu" is a highly poisonous blowfish. After the toxin-containing organs are painstakingly removed, it is used as a food in Japan, and is considered an exquisite delicacy. If it is not prepared carefully, however, its poison can be deadly.

The Japanese saw the Jews as a nation with highly valuable potential, but, as with the fugu, in order to take advantage of that potential, they had to be extremely careful. Otherwise, the Japanese thought, the plan would backfire and the Jews would annihilate Japan with their awesome power.

Duuring World War II, the Japanese were allies of the Nazis, yet they allowed thousands of European refugees – including the entire Mir Yeshivah – to enter Shanghai and Kobe during the war. They welcomed these Jews into their country, not because they bore any great love for the Jews, but because they believed that Jews had access to enormous resources and power which could greatly benefit Japan. (This is all detailed in the book, The Fugu Plan, by Marvin Tokayer.)

If anti-Semites truly believe that Jews rule the world, then why don’t they relate to the Jews like the Japanese did?

The fact that Jews are generally treated as outcasts proves that people do not really believe that Jews are as wealthy or powerful as claimed. In other words, the anti-Semites do not take their own propaganda seriously.

Whatever Happened to Jewish Power?

If there is any truth to the notion that Jews control governments, why couldn’t those powerful Jews convince any country to accept the refugees who were struggling to escape the European inferno during the Holocaust? If "World Jewry" is so powerful and wields such political influence, surely at least onegovernment would have agreed to take them in as refugees and allowed them to stay until the end of the war...

The film Voyage of the Damned dramatically demonstrates how government buried its head in the sand while the wholesale slaughter of Jews went unchecked. As such, the claim that Jews control governments rings painfully absurd.

Jews as Moneylenders

In this same vein, many people say that anti-Semitism has been caused by the fact that Jews were money-lenders in many societies and supposedly extracted their "pound of flesh" from their non-Jewish compatriots.

In fact, just the opposite is true. Jews were forced to become moneylenders precisely because of the severe employment limitations which anti-Semitic trends imposed on them. Anti-Semitic laws made it impossible for Jews to own land, to attend universities or to enter any common occupations. Money was the only commodity in which they were allowed to deal, so lacking any other option, they became money-lenders.

Hence, we see that Jews were not hated because they were money-lenders; rather, they were money-lenders because they were hated.

Powerful Jews or weak Jews, rich Jews or poor Jews – they’ve all been hated equally.

Obviously, the economic reason for anti-Semitism is really an excuse.

2. The Chosen People Theory

Knowledge of Jewish "choseness" is undeniably widespread. Several years ago, the University of California conducted a study of anti-Semitism. Non-Jewish Americans were presented with 18 unfavorable statements about Jews, and asked whether they believed any of them. By far the most widely-held belief among those surveyed (59%) was that "Jews consider themselves to be G-d's chosen people."

Let's test whether this belief is indeed a legitimate cause of anti-Semitism - or whether it is merely another excuse. If Jewish "choseness" is in fact the cause of anti-Semitism, then hatred against the Jews should disappear when Jews drop the claim that they are chosen.

Late in the 19th century, the Jews living in Germany and Austria collectively rejected their "choseness" and were assimilated by their host nation. In fact, they believed that the non-Jews among whom they lived were the true chosen people. "Berlin is our Jerusalem!" they loudly proclaimed. Gentile society was their social environment of choice, and Germany their beloved motherland.

Did anti-Semitism disappear? We all know the tragic answer to that question. The Jews in Germany and Austria experienced the most vicious outpouring of anti-Semitic hatred in history. Precisely when Jews rejected their claim to "chosenness," they suffered the most virulent forms of anti-Semitism.

Clearly, the Chosen People Theory does not pass this litmus test.

Other "Chosen" Peoples

Another test of the Chosen People Theory is to see how humanity responds to other peoples who claim to be "chosen." If the claim that Jews are chosen gives rise to anti-Semitism, then all groups who make similar claims of having been "chosen" should also become targets of persecution and hatred.

Christianity and Islam represent two other major religious groups that claim to have been chosen. Christian theology accepts that G-d gave the Bible to the Jews and made the Jews His special messengers. However, it is the Christian belief that once the Jews rejected Jesus, the Christians became G-d's new chosen people.

Muslims likewise believe that the Jewish Bible is the word of G-d. However, Muslim theology claims that when Mohammad appeared on the scene, G-d made the Muslims His chosen people.

If Christians and Muslims both claim that they are chosen, then why hasn't this historically generated hatred against them?

Indeed, nearly every nation on earth has at one time or another claimed to be chosen. Americans claimed Manifest Destiny - that their actions were divinely willed - when they annexed Texas and Alaska, against the wishes of the inhabitants of those areas. The Chinese chose to name their country China because the word means "center of the universe." The name Japan means "source of the sun." For Native Americans, the same word means both "human being" and "Indian" - implying that every non-Indian belongs to some subspecies.

These nations are not hated for having claimed superiority. A claim that one is chosen does not in and of itself cause hatred. If it did, then so many other nations would be the targets of the intense, universal hatred that is in fact unique to the Jews.

3. The Scapegoat Theory

The Scapegoat Theory is cited frequently as a cause of anti-Semitism. Some historians use it to account for the emergence of German anti-Semitism in the late 1930s.

Their reasoning is as follows:

Hitler, like many totalitarian dictators before him, needed to divert blame for his nation's problems by ascribing them to an innocent victim. He randomly selected the Jews as his scapegoat and launched a massive defamatory campaign to alienate them from mainstream German society. He succeeded in his efforts, and as a result, the overwhelming majority of Germans came to hate Jews.

The Scapegoat Theory gives rise to a time-worn question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? In other words, does a group become hated as a consequence of being singled out as a scapegoat, or is it selected as a scapegoat because it is hated?

The first prerequisite for a prospective scapegoat is someone that the citizens of the country are willing to hate from the start. If we would attempt to divert attention from our own shortcomings by blaming a group that is not already hated by society, the people would not accept it. A fair portion of the population will demand to see evidence of the group's guilt and refuse to let us off the hook.

Imagine what would have happened if Adolf Hitler would have stood before one of those huge crowds in Nuremberg National Coliseum and declared:My fellow Germans, there is a group among us that is the scourge of humanity! They are dominating the German people and destroying our motherland! If Germany is to regain its esteemed status, these people must be persecuted and ultimately eliminated. Who are these people? They are the midgets among us!

Because there is no preexisting hatred against midgets, people with freckles, or bicycle-riders, governments don't try to scapegoat them.

The Jews are chosen consistently as scapegoats because it is so easy to rile hatred against them. Jews are a people that everyone is more than happy to persecute.

Therefore, the Scapegoat Theory is not the cause of anti-Semitism. Rather, anti-Semitism is what makes the Jews a convenient scapegoat target. If anything, the Scapegoat Theory is simply a barometer indicating the level of hatred that already exists against Jews in any given society. It reveals how much anti-Semitism is already present, waiting to be stirred up.

The Scapegoat is obviously an excuse, not a reason.

4. Deicide: The Killers-of-Jesus Theory

Christians have long claimed that the Jews killed Jesus, and that is why they hate Jews.

Is this the real cause for hatred? If it is, why were Christians not angry at Jews 2,000 years ago, at the time the Jews supposedly killed Jesus?

Christian anti-Semitism did not begin until long after the death of Jesus. It was not until several centuries later that the Church fathers decided that Jews as a group should be persecuted because they "killed Jesus." Bernard Blumenkranz, author of Jews and Christians in the Western World, documents that the intense and ongoing Christian persecution of the Jews did not truly begin until the advent of the Crusades - over 1,000 years after Jesus' death!

Furthermore, once Christian hatred for Jews got under way, it became worse with the passage of time. Logically, time should have eased the strong feelings, as all of us can attest to the fact that anger gradually decreases with time. Time has a way of healing all wounds.

For example, in 1866, following the Civil War in America, a Northerner would have felt much tension if he had visited the South. Today, a visit to the Southern United States arouses no such emotions. Have you ever heard of a resident of New York feeling apprehensive about vacationing in Florida?

The farther away one is from an event, the less rage one feels - provided the event is the actual cause of the rage!

Therefore, if Christians hate Jews because they killed Jesus, that rage should have climaxed following Jesus' death, and petered out during the two millennia since then. History indicates the very opposite pattern - there were no recorded incidents of anti-Semitism immediately after Jesus' death, yet there were thousands of such incidents many centuries later. From this we see that Jesus' death is not the cause of Christian anti-Semitism.

Who Killed Jesus?

According to the New Testament, it was only the Romans who killed Jesus. While Jews are mentioned as accomplices, the Gospels of Matthew, John and Mark all specifically state that the Romans killed Jesus.

If the killing of Jesus is the cause of Christian hatred, why have only the Jewish accomplices been categorically persecuted? Christians should hate Romans at least as much as they hate Jews!

Obviously, Jesus' death is an excuse, not the reason for anti-Semitism.

5. OUTSIDERS

Maybe Jews are hated simply because they are different. Traditionally, Jews were characterized by different dress, different laws and sometimes, even a different language. Certainly this discrimination is what the Chinese experienced in early America, and what the Frenchman experienced in England. Sociologists refer to this phenomenon as "the dislike of the unlike."

This theory sounds like a sensible cause for anti-Semitism: Jews have been hated because they were different. Throughout history, Jews kept to themselves. Their ethical, cultural and social systems were different from those of their neighbors. Most pointedly, the Jews' fondest dream was always their return to Zion. They were law-abiding citizens who contributed to their host nations and even took to the battlefield to defend it, but their hearts always pointed in the direction of the Promised Land. It is undeniably true that throughout history, Jews were the ultimate "outsiders."

But what happens when Jews shed their cultural differences and become genuine "insiders"? If the Outsider Theory is correct, then the solution to anti-Semitism should be assimilation. Anti-Semitism should decrease in ratio to the Jews' ability to integrate into their host societies. Is this really what happens?

In the 18th century, the Enlightenment reached Europe, giving equal rights to all people, regardless of religion.

In December 1789, during a discussion in the French National Assembly in which French Jews were granted equal rights, Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnere declared: "To the Jews as individuals, everything. To the Jews as a nation, nothing."

The Jews of Europe jumped at the opportunity to attain equality, hoping at long last to rid themselves of the "dislike of the unlike" phenomenon. They shed their foreign dress, shaved off their beards, and attended universities and theaters. They adopted the language, culture and styles of their non-Jewish neighbors, and intermarried with them. They purged their prayers of any mention of the return to Zion. In short, they became more French than the French.

Napoleon was quick to capitalize on this development of Jews adapting to French culture. In 1807, he convened a kangaroo court to pressure the Jews to shed any lingering commitment to Jewish nationhood, forcing the Jews to declare their exclusive loyalty to France.

Jewish acceptance of this attitude widened. In Germany, Reform Jews declared, "Berlin is our Jerusalem; Germany is our Fatherland." Having endured centuries of hatred, the Jews of Europe anticipated a warm welcome from their gentile neighbors.

But they were sorely disappointed. The Dreyfuss affair, in which falsified charges of treason were brought against a Jewish French officer, was contrived to show that Jews could never be loyal citizens of their host countries.

Shortly thereafter, Hitler's rise to power once again pulled the rug out from under the Jews' sense of security in their assimilationist approach. Nazism sent a strong message to Jews: We hate you, not because you're different, but because you're trying to become like us! We cannot allow you to infect the Aryan race with your inferior genes.

So long as Jews remained outsiders, the Outsider Theory reflected some degree of logic. Once the Jews attempted to become insiders, the Outsider Theory was dashed to pieces ― because it never had been the real cause of the hatred.

6. The Racial Theory

This gave rise to a new excuse: the inferiority of the Jewish race. You can shed the external trappings of your life, shave your beard, get rid of your yarmulke, even change your religion. But you can never change your race.

The overriding problem with this theory is that it is self-contradictory: Jews are not a race. Anyone can become a Jew ― and members of every race, creed and color in the world have done so at one time or another.

There is no distinguishing racial physical feature common only to Jews. Even the idea of a "Jewish nose" is a myth. Anti-Semites don't hate only those Jews who have distinctively Jewish physical features; they hate all Jews. They hate Eastern European Jews; they hate Israeli, Russian and Yemenite Jews; they hate blond, blue-eyed Dutch Jews, as well as dark-skinned, Mediterranean Jews. Any Jew will do.

Anti-Semitism cannot be explained as racism for the very simple reason that Jews are a nation, not a race.

Too Many Reasons Mean No Real Reason

The "Six Reasons" don't hold water ― they are excuses!

Hatred for Jews over the past 2,000 years has been continuous, universal and vicious, but the explanation for that hatred constantly changes. This fact alone alerts us to the need to look for what lies at the core of those explanations.

Picture yourself at a job interview. The interviewer tells you outright that you cannot be considered for the job because you lack computer skills. You enroll in a computer course, and in a month you have gained the necessary skills.

You return to the company, and the interviewer says he tells you he still cannot hire you, because you lack training in finance and management. You study diligently, and within a short time you have mastered the subject.

When you return to the company a third time, you are told that the real reason they cannot hire you is your hairstyle; you simply do not reflect the image the company wishes to represent to the public.

This fiasco sends you a very clear message: The reasons the company had been feeding you all along were nothing but excuses. The interviewer only used excuses to cover up some deeper reason for his refusal to hire you.

This situation is much like the common explanations for anti-Semitism: Even when the reasons are no longer applicable, the anti-Semitism remains.

This does not mean we should totally discount these reasons. Even though they may be excuses and not the source of the hatred, they do influence the masses to hate Jews. They may exacerbate the hatred, but they certainly don't explain it.

The problem is that each of the explanations focuses on issues external to the Jew. They have nothing to do with the essence of the Jew.

Unique Hatred

We have touched on the six most common explanations for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. None of these standard reasons holds up as the core reason for anti-Semitism. Under scrutiny, they prove to be mere excuses. We must look afresh at this hatred to find a true root cause.

Of all discriminatory forms for hatred, anti-Semitism is unique in four ways:

1) Longevity ― anti-Semitism has been going on for an exceptionally long time. One of the most authoritative books on anti-Semitism is The Anguish of the Jews: A History of Anti-Semitism, authored by a Catholic priest Edward Flannery. He writes: As a historian of anti-Semitism looks back over the millennia of horrors he has recorded, an inescapable conclusion emerges. Anti-Semitism is different because of its longevity and consistency.

2) Universality ― anti-Semitism is found worldwide. Throughout history, in every region where Jews have lived, they have been hated. No matter where they settle, no matter whom their host, anti-Semitism eventually rears its ugly head.

Between the years 250 C.E. and 1948 ― a period of 1,700 years ― Jews in Europe experienced an average of one expulsion every 21 years. Jews were expelled from England, France, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Bohemia, Moravia and 71 other countries.

3) Intensity ― hatred against the Jews is vented in a particularly virulent way. A group that is hated usually becomes the butt of ethnic jokes, and is subject to discrimination. Jews, on the other hand, are subject to attempts at genocide. The Chmelnicki pogroms, the Holocaust, and Iran's nuclear threats are attempts to exterminate a people that represent just a tiny minority of the world's population.

4) Confusion ― there is surprisingly little agreement on exactly what anti-Semites hate! When one group hates another, that hatred can be traced to a few simple, well-defined reasons. In Bosnia, people are persecuted over territory and religion; in Ireland, it's national independence and religion. Blacks are hated by some for racial reasons. But no one has yet offered a single, universally-accepted reason to explain why people hate the Jews.

If you will ask an anti-Semite to state his reasons, those reasons are often self-contradictory. Consider this paradox:

• Jews are hated for being a lazy and inferior race ― but also for dominating the economy and taking over the world.

• Jews are hated for stubbornly maintaining their separateness ― and, when they do assimilate ― for posing a threat to racial purity through intermarriages.

• Jews are seen as pacifists and as warmongers; as capitalist exploiters and as revolutionary communists; possessed of a Chosen-People mentality, as well as of an inferiority complex.

What then is The Reason?

Removing the Jewish Element from Anti-Semitism

Almost without exception, the reasons for anti-Semitism offered by different scholars have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Jews are Jewish (e.g. Jews are rich or they're different).

These reasons effectively "de-Judaize" anti-Semitism by equating it with any other common type of hatred. According to this attitude, the Holocaust ― the most systematic attempt to exterminate a people in the history of humanity ― had nothing to do with "Jewish" reasons. Jews simply happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In his book Why the Jews?, Dennis Prager cites a glaring example of an attempt to sell the public on the idea that there is nothing Jewish about anti-Semitism. On April 11, 1944, demonstrating an uncanny wisdom that far surpassed her age, Anne Frank wrote in her diary: Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly until now? It is God Who has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, Who will raise us up again.

Who knows ― it might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and that reason alone do we now suffer. We can never become just Netherlanders, or just English, or representatives of any other country for that matter. We will always remain Jews.

Anne Frank made a point of stressing that Jews have something of special value to give to the world, and that is precisely what the world has resented in persecuting the Jews. Anne Frank identified anti-Semitism as a hatred of Jewishness, a loathing altogether different from the bigotry or racism that other peoples experience.

Amazingly, when Anne Frank's story was reconstructed by Lillian Hellman into a Broadway play, her words were completely changed. "Why are Jews hated?" asks Anne. "Well, one day it's one group, and the next day another..."

On Broadway, audiences were made to believe that Jews have been hated just as any other people has been hated. In other words, there is nothing Jewish about anti-Semitism.

But what do anti-Semites themselves say about this topic?

Hitler's Straightforward Approach

Scholars have made consistent attempts to prove that there is nothing uniquely Jewish that engenders Anti-Semitism. Let us see if comments from known Jew-haters reveal what they find so objectionable.

One individual who had no use for the multitude of whitewashed explanations offered by scholars was Adolf Hitler, the man responsible for the most devastating scourge of anti-Semitism in the history of mankind.

Hitler openly acknowledged the uniqueness of the Jews as a people. Hitler realized that Jews can never be successfully integrated with the rest of humanity, and he made it his objective to ensure that they never would be.

Hitler's form of anti-Semitism was not a means to an end; it was a goal in and of itself. The Nuremberg Laws, established in 1935, effectively disenfranchised and dismantled the Jewish community of Germany ― but this was not enough to satisfy Hitler.

In the late 1930s, Germany was rebuilt and its morale restored, but Hitler's eye remained trained on the Jews. Seven years after the Nuremberg Laws mangled and mutilated the Jews in body and spirit, the Final Solution was launched in the Wansee Conference of 1942. Hitler saw the Jews as something far more menacing than mere scapegoats; the Jewish nation was his mortal enemy, and so became his target for absolute destruction.

Hitler viewed National Socialism as a new world order, a way to create mankind anew.

How is this renewal of mankind to take place? Hitler declared:

The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us ― between Germans and Jews. All else is facade and illusion. Behind England stands Israel, and behind France, and behind the United States. Even when we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he remains our world enemy.

Why Did Hitler Target the Jews?

Eliminating the Jews was the key to Hitler's utopia. His driving ambition was to free the world from the shackles of conscience and morality; to turn the world away from monotheism. He fashioned his own brand of religion out of a philosophy based on indulging all of man's basest desires. The "Hitler Youth" sang this song:

We have no need for Christian virtue.
Our leader is our savior.
The pope and rabbi shall be gone.
We shall be pagans once again.

Hitler's picture of the perfect world was a return to a state of jungle-type existence, where "might makes right." He said: In a natural order, the classes are peoples superimposed on one another in strata, instead of living as neighbors. To this order we shall return as soon as the after-effects of liberalism have been removed.

The only serious obstacle standing in Hitler's way was the Jews. Hitler knew that it was the Jews who carried the message of one God ― of all men created equal; of love your neighbor; of helping the poor and the infirm.

Hitler hated the message of the Jews because it was diametrically opposed his vision of what the world should be. He said: They refer to me as an uneducated barbarian," Hitler said. "Yes we are barbarians. We want to be barbarians; it is an honored title to us. We shall rejuvenate the world. This world is near its end.

Hitler told his people: Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortifications of a false vision known as conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and personal independence which only a very few can bear.

In Every Jew's Soul

Hitler's only real target was the Jews, because they were all that stood between him and success. So long as the Jews survived, Hitler could never triumph. The Jewishly-rooted concepts of God and morality had taken hold in the world, and Hitler knew that either his own ideologies or those of the Jews would prevail. The world would not abide both. Hitler said: The Ten Commandments have lost their vitality. Conscience is a Jewish invention; it is a blemish, like circumcision. Furthermore, Hitler knew that the Jewish threat to his ideals is embodied in every single Jew. He said:

If only one country, for whatever reason, tolerates a Jewish family in it, that family will become the germ center for fresh sedition. If one little Jewish boy survives without any Jewish education, with no synagogue and no Hebrew school, it [Judaism] is in his soul.

The Jewish spirit, Hitler explained, is the product of the Jewish person. Destroying their holy places alone would not be enough. In Hitler's words:

Even had there never existed a synagogue or a Jewish school or the Old Testament, the Jewish spirit would still exist and would exert its influence. It has been there from the beginning, and there is no Jew ― not a single one ― who does not personify it.

The evil of Hitler lay not in his understanding of who the Jewish people are. His evil grew from his reactions to that understanding. Ironically, Hitler had a clearer understanding of who the Jewish people are, and what they have accomplished, than many Jews have today.

Hitler introduced to mankind a unique strain of anti-Semitism. To the world at large, this brand of anti-Semitism seemed new, but there was nothing revolutionary about it to the Jews.

Long before any practical manifestation of anti-Semitism made its appearance in the world, the Torah made it known that anti-Semitism would play an integral role in Jewish history. In fact, we were told, Jews would be hated for exactly the reasons Hitler so brazenly outlined.

The Talmud (Tractate Shabbos 89) cites the source of anti-Semitism using a play on words: The Torah – the source of the Jewish system of laws, values and moral standards – was received at Mount Sinai. The Hebrew pronunciation of "Sinai" is almost identical to the Hebrew word for "hatred" – sinah. "Why was the Torah given on a mountain called Sinai?" asks the Talmud. "Because the great sinah – the tremendous hatred aimed at the Jew – emanates from Sinai."

At Sinai Jews were told that there is one God, Who makes moral demands on all of humanity. Consequently, at Sinai the Jewish nation became the target for the hatred of those whose strongest drive is to liberate mankind from the shackles of conscience and morality.

At Sinai the Jewish nation was appointed to be "a light unto the nations." There are those who embrace Jews and the Jewish faith because of that light; but there are also those who want the world to be a place of spiritual darkness. They object to morality. Those would-be harbingers of darkness attack the Jews as the lightning rod for their hatred.

Herman Rauchning had been Hitler’s personal confidante, but he abandoned Nazism and attempted to alert the free world to the scope and danger of the Nazi threat. He wrote: It is against their own insoluble problem of being human that the dull and base in humanity are in revolt in anti-Semitism. Nevertheless Judaism, together with Hellenism and Christianity, is an inalienable component of our Christian Western Civilization – the eternal "call to Sinai," against which humanity again and again rebels. (The Beast From the Abyss, by Hermann Rauchning)

This "call to Sinai" – the message entrusted to and borne by the Jews – ultimately transforms the world. Yet it is this very message that draws forth the wrath of those who would give their last ounce of strength to resist it.

The Real Reason for Hatred of Jews

Why do people hate this message – the eternal "call to Sinai" – and harbor such animosity for those who carry it?

A great many people simply can’t cope with the burden of being good. However, when they act in ways that are bad, they can’t cope with the resultant feelings of guilt. Try as they may, they can never cut themselves loose from the standards of absolute morality dictated by the Torah. Stuck in this "Catch-22" situation, people turn with their mounting frustrations against the Jews, who they perceive as personifying humanity’s collective conscience.

Sigmund Freud recognized this tendency, and explained: "Jews are hated not so much because they killed Jesus, but because they produced him."

Thousands of years ago, before the Torah was given, people built their lives Pagan idol Pagan idol around philosophies that were based on their own concepts of right and wrong. Then, when the Jews entered the theological arena, they showed people all the mistakes they had been making:

Pagan gods are nonsense – there is only one God for all of mankind, Who is invisible, infinite and perfect. Infanticide and human sacrifice are unacceptable. Every human being is born with specific rights. No one can live as he pleases, for everyone must surrender his will to a higher Authority.

On a certain conscious level, people recognize the Jews’ message as truth. Those unwilling to embrace the truth have found that the only way to rid themselves of it is to destroy the messengers – for the message itself is too potent to be dismissed.

That is what is so irksome about the Jews, and that is why, for some people, nothing less than total destruction of the Jews will do. If Judaism were just another ideology, people could laugh it off and continue on their merry way. But deep in his soul, every human being recognizes the essential truths of morality – people can’t just laugh it off.

Any individual’s claim to superiority bothers people only to the extent that they believe it is true. If someone who is indisputably ugly saunters up to a nice-looking fellow at a party and says, "I’m better-looking than you," what would be the other’s response? More than likely he would simply shrug his shoulders and ignore him, because the comment would not bother him in the least.

If, on the other hand, the best-looking guy in the room comes up to the same fellow and makes the identical comment that will raise his dander. The reason is that one doesn’t resent people who say they are superior; one resents people who are superior.

That is why the Christians’ hatred of the Jews was particularly intense. They, more than those of other religions, were threatened by the Jewish message. Jews said that Jesus was not God. This statement assumes a "wrongness" about Christianity. The Church Fathers understood that if the Jews are right, and they remain Jews, this implies that Christianity is bankrupt.

Therein lies Judaism’s colossal threat to Christianity. Other groups’ denial of Jesus is a great disappointment to Christians, but the Jews’ denial is intolerable. Jesus came to the Jews! The very group that produced him, those people who had the most knowledge and authority on such matters, those who represented the last word on religion – were the first to reject Jesus.

The Jewish threat to Christianity has nothing to do with their having "killed" Jesus. The source of Christian fear runs much deeper: Jewish existence invalidates the essential tenet of Christian theology.

What is this message that the Jewish people are bringing to the world, that so many find so threatening?

The Jews: Light Unto the Nations

The profound message that Jews bear to humanity has gained such widespread acceptance that people tend to take it for granted. Yet the ideas which originated at Sinai have literally changed the world.

Few people give much thought anymore to the source of the basic moral underpinnings of Western society. Concepts such as basic human rights, the notion that the sick and the elderly should be cared for – not murdered or left to die – and the idea of society assisting the poor and disadvantaged, all seem to "come naturally" nowadays.

In short, Jewish concepts have civilized the world.

Any serious student of history who has gained some awareness of what world standards were like before the Jews came along can easily recognize the enormous impact that Judaism has had.

How Do Non-Jewish Historians View Jews?

Those who understand world philosophic trends prior to the advent of the Jewish influence can identify clearly that it was the Jews who moved the world away from paganism and toward standards of morality and justice.

John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote to a friend: "I insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men that any other nation . . . they are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this earth … They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe, and have influenced the affairs of mankind more, and more happily, than any other nation, ancient or modern."(Letter of John Adams to F.A. Van der Kemp, 1808; Pennsylvania Historical Society)

Christian scholar and historian Paul Johnson wrote in his bestseller, History of the Jews: One way of summing up 4,000 years of Jewish history is to ask ourselves, what would have happened to the human race if Abraham had not been a man of great sagacity; or if he had stayed in Ur and kept his higher notions to himself, and no specific Jewish people had come into being. Certainly the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. 

All the great conceptual discoveries of the intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they have been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the ideas of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience, and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience, and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal, and love as the foundation of justice; and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind.

In Ancient and Medieval History, Hayes and Moon wrote: Only if you have some knowledge of the human sacrifices, the vicious temple rites, the degrading superstitions and customs that were practiced... can you realize how much the modern world owes to the Hebrew prophets, whose monotheism and moral teachings entered into Christianity and Islam...

T.R. Glover highlighted this very idea in his book, The Ancient World: Mankind – East and West, Christian and Muslim – accepted the Jewish conviction that there is only one God. Today it is polytheism that is so difficult to understand, that is so unthinkable.

Jewish morals and ideals have gained near-universal acceptance. And with that, it has produced people virulently resistant to the Jewish message.

The Cause is the Solution

The solution to anti-Semitism is exactly the same as the cause: It is Jewish values and beliefs that cause anti-Semitism, and it will be Jewish values and beliefs that ultimately will eliminate anti-Semitism.

The message that the Jews bear is the recipe for conquering evil. The more effectively Jews transmit their special message, the closer they come to making a holocaust – whether aimed against Jews or against any other group – impossible.

Only when Jews act as Jews – only when the Torah's message of ethics and morality is known throughout the world – can we ever hope to experience a world in which evil has been eradicated.

Therein lies the exquisite irony of Jewish history. Although Jews posed no military, political or economic threat, and were never more than a tiny fraction of the world’s population, they were always a major power in the eyes of mankind. Why? Because of the message they carry – the Torah.

Jewish ideas influence the world, but the world cannot absorb the message properly unless the Messengers – the Jews – know it and teach it.

Instead of "Why the Jews," the question is really: “Why Be Jewish?”

The answer to that question is critical for yourself, for the Jewish people and, ultimately, for the world. When Jews must live in an anti-Semitic society, within the context of a past brimming with anti-Semitism, they must possess a strong inner sense of why their being Jewish is meaningful and worthwhile, and why it is worth the effort.

What's the best way to gain a positive, upbeat perception of being Jewish?

The answer is obvious: Jewish education.