A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (4 page)

As the manuscript took shape, Margot invited Seth Klarman, the chair of our board of directors, and a group of our colleagues to read the book. Their suggestions, questions, criticisms, and concerns influenced the final product in small ways and large. So did helpful comments from other interested educators and theologians. As the book neared completion, Margot began to involve Facing History’s entire staff and board in the work. They too raised questions and offered meaningful advice.

The deep conversations that resulted from these reviews turned the process into a true Facing History experience. As always, the goal was not to agree on every point but to expand our understanding of this important history and its impact on our own identities. It is only through a deep confrontation with a particular history that we gain insights into universal themes. My hope is that this book will spark more insights, further conversation, and additional learning. Only by facing history and ourselves can we begin to meet the challenges of the present and build a more just and tolerant future.

Phyllis Goldstein

“I faced history one day and found myself.”

—a Facing History and Ourselves student

Facing History and Ourselves is a leader in history and civic education. The organization’s quality resources, professional development, and public forums provide opportunities for people of all ages to explore the connection between history and their own lives.

For more than 35 years, Facing History has been linking the past to the moral and ethical questions of our time through a rigorous examination of the root causes of antisemitism, racism, and other hatreds. History matters. The world we live in did not just happen; it is the result of choices made by countless individuals and groups. Even the smallest of those decisions can have enormous consequences.

Facing History and Ourselves has grown from an innovative course taught in a single school system to an international organization with nine offices in North America, an international hub in London, and partnerships that span the globe. By harnessing the latest technology, the organization has been able to increase its impact and extend its reach.

Facing History publications include
Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior; Fundamental Freedoms: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Identity and Belonging in a Changing Great Britain; Stories of Identity: Religion, Migration, and Belonging in a Changing World; What Do We Do with a Difference? France and the Debate over Headscarves in Schools
; and
Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement
.

For additional information about Facing History and Ourselves and its timely and relevant publications, visit the interactive website at
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(586
BCE
–135
CE
)

The Middle East is the only place in the world where three continents come together. It is a crossroads that links Asia, Africa, and Europe. Life at a crossroads can be dangerous. In ancient times, the Middle East was often in turmoil, much as it is today. The armies of one group after another conquered all or part of the region and then imposed their own way of life on the people they conquered. Many cultures disappeared completely during those years. Yet Jewish culture survived and even flourished. Still, some historians believe that the hatred of Jews that is known today as antisemitism began in the Middle East in ancient times. If so, where and when did it begin? What caused it? To what extent was it similar to antisemitism in modern times?

In the centuries before the Common Era,
^*
it was not unusual for Jews as well as other peoples to move from one country to another. Some felt they had no choice—they were fleeing an invading army, or perhaps they were being forced into slavery or exile after their homeland was conquered. Most, however, packed up their belongings in order to escape poverty at home or to seek opportunities abroad, just as people do today. Unlike most people today, people in ancient times usually migrated as part of a large extended family. The newcomers would negotiate with local rulers for the right to establish roots in a new land.

The process of moving must have been as unsettling then as it is now. Newcomers in an unfamiliar place are often fearful and anxious: Will they be accepted? How will they fit in and find their own place in this new setting? We can hear these concerns in the book of Psalms, one of the
oldest books of the Hebrew Scriptures (writings included in the Christian Bible as the Old Testament), when the author of Psalm 137 asks, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

In the ancient world, Jews were not easily distinguished from their neighbors. They did the same kinds of work, built similar homes, and in many ways lived similar lives. Yet there was at least one important difference: Jews worshipped the one God—invisible and indivisible—at a time when most people prayed to a wide array of gods who looked like animals or humans. In such a world, the Jews’ devotion to the one God was seen as strange or odd. Monotheism was still a new idea.

When one group defeated another, the newly conquered people were expected to accept the gods of the victor. After all, the new gods had triumphed and were therefore entitled to praise and honor. But most Jews, committed to the one God, refused to pay their respects to the gods of their conquerors. Their stubborn refusal raised questions for their conquered neighbors as well as their conquerors: Why did Jews refuse to worship the same gods everyone else did? Why did they stand apart? Their allegiance to God made Jews seem like outsiders who refused to conform to the dominant group’s beliefs. Their behavior almost always aroused curiosity; sometimes it also provoked suspicion and charges of disloyalty.

Some scholars have traced the beginnings of antisemitism to the experiences of Jews in the Diaspora—a Greek word that means “scattering.” The word has come to describe the communities Jews established beyond Israel, which was the kingdom established by Saul, David, and Solomon in biblical times (in about the eleventh and tenth centuries
BCE
). After Solomon’s death, quarrels among the twelve tribes of Israel led to the creation of two separate kingdoms. Ten of the twelve tribes formed a kingdom known as Israel in the north and the other two tribes built a kingdom in the south called Judea.

In 721
BCE
, Assyria, a neighboring empire, captured Samaria, the capital of Israel, the northern kingdom. The Assyrians forced members of the ten tribes from their land, and eventually they disappeared from history, probably absorbed into other groups. About 135 years later, in 586
BCE
, the Babylonians conquered Judea, the southern kingdom. They destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and forced thousands of Jews into exile in Babylonia. These Judean Jews did not disappear from history.

The exiled Jews who settled in Babylonia were able to maintain their identity, in part because they were allowed to practice their religion. They
not only kept their beliefs but also deepened and enriched their understanding of those beliefs by beginning to compile and write down the Torah (the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, which are also the first five books of the Christian Bible’s Old Testament).

Little is known about the day-to-day lives of these Babylonian Jews. We do know that in 538
BCE
, soon after the Persians (people who lived in what is now Iran) conquered Babylonia, their emperor, Cyrus, allowed Jews to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Only a small minority left; many families had by this time put down roots in Babylonia and decided to remain there. It had become their home.

Those families were part of the growing number of Jews who lived outside Judea. Although they differed from one another in many ways, most of them struggled to maintain a Jewish identity even as they built new loyalties. Two incidents that took place in Egypt more than 400 years apart—one on the island of Elephantine and the other in Alexandria, a bustling port in the northern part of Egypt—show some of the difficulties of divided loyalties.

Elephantine is an island in the Nile River in southern Egypt. By 600
BCE
, well before the Babylonian conquest of Judea, Jewish families had already been living on Elephantine for generations. They were not exiles or refugees. They had chosen to leave their homeland and could have returned if they wished to do so. In those days, emperors often hired foreign soldiers to protect their borders because they did not want to arm their own people. They preferred to place their trust in outsiders who were well paid to be loyal to their employer. Like neighboring rulers, Egypt’s pharaohs had hired companies of Jewish, Syrian, and other foreign soldiers to protect their lands. And some of those soldiers had been stationed on Elephantine.

In order to obtain certain religious and civil rights, Jewish soldiers negotiated with the pharaohs who hired them to guard Egypt’s borders. Those rights were honored not only by succeeding pharaohs but also by each of Egypt’s conquerors. For example, after Persia conquered Egypt in 525
BCE
, the Jewish soldiers on Elephantine transferred their loyalty to the new ruler. Because soldiers were in great demand, the Jews and other foreign soldiers who served the Persians received land as well as salaries. They and their families built permanent homes on the island.

J
EWISH
C
OMMUNITIES IN THE
D
IASPORA
(500
BCE
–100
CE
)

In ancient times, most Jewish settlements in the Diaspora—the area beyond Judea—were on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Much of what is known about the “Jewish force” comes from the Elephantine archives that date to about 500
BCE
. These documents show an established Jewish community. There are records of marriages, births, and deaths, as well as wills and purchase agreements.

For example, a deed dated 437
BCE
reveals that Ananiah, an official at the Jewish temple on the island, and his wife, Tamut, an Egyptian slave owned by a man named Mueshullam, purchased a two-story mud-brick house. The seller was a Persian soldier. The family’s new neighbors included other Persians and an Egyptian who managed the garden at a local temple dedicated to Khnum, an Egyptian god. Letters are also part of the archives. Some of these letters boast of accomplishments, while others demand protection of religious and civil rights.

The documents in the archives suggest that the Jews of Elephantine maintained their identity as Jews and that their religious life centered on the temple they had built on the island. They probably kept the dietary laws of Judaism, meaning they would not eat certain foods, and they probably did not work on one day each week, their Sabbath—a custom that did not exist in Egyptian society.

However, the Jews of Elephantine did not strictly follow what we have come to know as Jewish law. They sacrificed animals, such as sheep and goats, in their temple, even though the high priests in Judea had ruled many years earlier that such sacrifices could take place only in the Temple in Jerusalem. No one knows why Jews on Elephantine chose to disobey the high priests in Jerusalem. Their temple may have been built before the ruling was issued. Or the Jews who settled on the island may have left Judea in the first place because they disagreed with the high priests. What is known is that the sacrifices the Jews of Elephantine made in their temple were a source of conflict with Egyptians as well as with other Jews.

The Jews and the Egyptians were often at odds because the Egyptians worshipped Khnum, the ram-god who they believed controlled the annual flooding of the Nile River—an event essential to Egypt’s survival. Elephantine was the center of Khnum ‘s worship, and the Egyptian priests who served him were outraged that Jews included rams among their sacrifices. The Egyptians considered the practice blasphemy—open contempt for their god. However, as long as the rulers of Egypt protected the religious rights of the Jews, the Egyptians were silent.

Then, in the spring of 410
BCE
, a group of Egyptians saw an opportunity to force out the Persian conquerors and the Jews who worked for them. That summer, with the support of a local ruler named Vidranga, the rebels made a point of burning the Jewish temple and several nearby homes on the island. The Jews fought back, killing a number of Egyptians.

Three years later, the rebellion was history. But the Jews of Elephantine did not yet have permission to rebuild their temple. Their anxious leaders sent a petition to the Persians, reminding them of the long history of the “Jewish force” on the island and its loyalty to Persia during the recent rebellion.
¹