Spotlight on the Toxic History of Anti-Semitism: What You Need to Know

Anti-Semitism is ancient, going back to pagan times. As the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) puts it, other peoples’ religious and cultural differences with Jews in the ancient world turned into a methodical, efficient, and organized social practice of “political, economic, and social isolation” that continues to this day. It also led to policies centered on the exclusion, scapegoating, humiliation, and degradation of Jewish people, and it led to massacres, pogroms, and the Holocaust.  

For many Jews in the United States and around the world today, being the victim of violence simply because of their identity is a constant threat. What’s the cause of such irrational hatred of Jews simply because of their identity? And why has there been such an alarming resurgence of it around the world? Here is just some of what you need to know about the toxic history of anti-Semitism. 

Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World 

Judaism is one of the three monotheistic, Abrahamic faiths. The sacred texts of the other two, Christianity and Islam, overlap with Judaism in fundamental ways. Ancient monotheistic Israelites’ refusal to adopt the worship of foreign gods led to their intermittent persecution by the pagan empires around them.  

After the rise of Christianity as the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, the Jews’ refusal to convert triggered the enmity of the church, which claimed to have superseded and invalidated Judaism. After the Romans destroyed the Jewish State and its Second Temple in the year 70 of the Common Era, most Jews who inhabited the region were forced to scatter to points throughout the ancient world. 

Anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages 

The early Middle Ages saw institutionalized anti-Judaism: By the mid-sixth century CE, Jews could not marry Christians, serve in government, or serve as witnesses against Christians in court. The toxic mix of ostracization, ignorance, and hostility gave rise to bizarre, harmful ideas about Jews that have persisted since that time. Many non-Jews believed that Jews had devil-like horns, or that they poisoned the wells in times of plague.  

Prejudice was cyclical. Because Jews were forbidden in Christian Europe to practice many professional trades, they began cultivating a tradition of banking and moneylending that they could practice even as refugees and persecuted persons. From this necessity emerged the vindictive caricature of Jews as avaricious “money-lenders,” despite the fact that the kings of Europe regularly relied on support from skilled and well-connected Jewish merchants and bankers. 

Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories 

One especially persistent falsehood is that Jews have been responsible for the ritual murder of Christian children. This “blood libel” has cropped up with lethal force over the centuries since the Middle Ages, with entire Jewish communities forcibly converted, expelled, or wiped out when unwarranted suspicion descended on them. As in conspiracy theories today, there was never any basis for the charge. 

In the 16th century, after German Jews refused to be converted to Protestantism, Martin Luther published an anti-Semitic pamphlet claiming that they thirsted for the blood of Christians, and in which he advocated killing them. In 1935, the Nazis reprinted Luther’s screed. 

Anti-Semitism in the Modern World 

The blood libel theme was reanimated in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery produced by the Czarist police in 1905 Russia. Its authors’ goal was to portray Jews as enemies of the state. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Protocols is the most widely published anti-Semitic tract of modern times. 

Have you seen social media memes claiming that Jews want to “rule the world” through secretive plans to control the media and the economy? Then you’ve encountered the same spurious claims put forward by The Protocols. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 found its way to the Western world via anti-Bolshevik immigrants, these dangerous lies have been adopted in various parts of American and global popular culture. 

Racial Anti-Semitism 

Scholars of anti-Semitism point to a transition in the 19th century in which traditionally religious anti-Semitism morphed into a more racialized form. Developing alongside concepts of human evolution, this “scientific” anti-Semitism posited that Jews were a distinct, inferior, and dangerous “race.”  

This is the type of anti-Semitism that would go on to become enshrined in law and custom in the Third Reich, leading to the murder of 6 million Jews—a million and a half of them children. In this race-focused anti-Semitism, someone was considered a Jew if they had even one Jewish grandparent, regardless of their personal religious beliefs. To the Nazis, it didn’t matter if you were a visibly traditional Jew; a completely secular, assimilated Jew; or even a believing Christian. If you had “Jewish blood,” you were marked for extermination.  

The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism 

As people with lived experience of the horrors of the Holocaust pass away, anti-Semitism—and the broad array of conspiracy theories animating it—is making a comeback. The deranged gunman who opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 was allegedly inspired by internet conspiracy fantasies claiming Jews are orchestrating the “Great Replacement” of white Americans by immigrants.  

In 2021, reported anti-Semitic incidents in the US rose to a record high of more than 2,700, which was a 34 percent increase over the previous year. Jews are consistently the target of more than half of the religiously motivated hate crimes in the country. Hysterical nonsense about Jews is now commonplace, given the relentless drumbeat from the numerous podcasters, pundits, YouTube personalities, and some celebrities who are either dangerously naïve, dysfunctional, or just out for grift. It is gaining dangerous currency even in communities that should know better.  

As “Ye" and Kyrie Irving so recently showed us, even people with their own history of being persecuted can themselves adopt hateful attitudes toward other persecuted groups. As humans, we’re all susceptible to glib, easy, all-encompassing answers that attempt to make us feel better about ourselves.  

Education Helps Prevent Anti-Semitism 

Watch Ken Burns’ three-part documentary series The US and the Holocaust. Listen to an interview or podcast with Deborah Lipstadt, historian and current U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. Go to the ADL’s website. Visit a Jewish heritage or Holocaust museum or learning center near you. Their mission is to educate the community—because the history of persecution is everyone’s history.