Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism refers to bias, political, social, and economic agitation and discriminatory activities directed against Jews. The contemporary definition of anti-Semitism includes bias based on religion, ethnicity, and race. The roots of anti-Semitism, however, were religious and based in large part on historical events and monotheistic beliefs that separated Judaism from other major civilizations and religions in ancient times.

The word Semitic was used historically to identify the descendants (both Jews and Arabs) of Shem, the eldest son of the biblical Noah. The term anti-Semitic was purportedly coined by the German Wilhelm Marr in 1879 to describe the anti-Jewish campaigns occurring in Europe. Anti-Semitism was a misnomer, though, because it implies discrimination against all Semites—both Jews and Arabs—but the term has since been used to describe all anti-Jewish discrimination. Although there is no clear explanation for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism, social scientists suggest that anti-Semitism grows during periods of crisis and instability, when fears and frustrations are deflected to scapegoats (such as in the 1880s and pre–World War II Germany).

The hostility against Jews in the late 1880s was based on the ethnologist theory that people of Semitic lineage were inferior to those of Aryan decent. Drawing from the concepts of Social Darwinism, discrimination against Jews expanded from religious to racial discrimination and thus limited any possibility of Jewish assimilation. Although most respected ethnologists rejected this theory, it continued to gain popularity, due in a large part to the widely read writing of the French philosopher Comte Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and the German economist Karl Duhring, and was used to justify the persecution of Jews that has existed for thousands of years. It thus set the stage for Hitler's Final Solution: Nazi Germany's systematic murder of approximately 6 million Jews.

Although the term was coined in the late 1800s, the monotheistic beliefs of Jews had clashed with other predominate cultures for hundreds of years. In the Roman Empire, Jews were discriminated against politically, and very few were allowed to become Roman citizens. After Constantine the Great made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire in the early fourth century, Jews were regarded as the killers of Jesus Christ and discrimination against Jews on religious grounds spread throughout the Western world.

In the seventh century, Jewish refusal to acknowledge Mohammed as a prophet formed the foundation of anti-Semitism in the Middle East.

Throughout history, Jews have been massacred (especially during the Crusades and in Nazi Germany), required to wear identifying clothes and markings (beginning as early as 1215), segregated into ghettos (as early as the 1431 Council of Basel decree), and economically crippled through restrictions or quotas on enrollment in higher education and restrictions on the types of business activities open to them (Jews throughout Europe could not own land and were not allowed to join commerce guilds).

In the United States, anti-Semitism peaked after World War I and was part of a general wave of resentment of minority groups, also including Roman Catholics and African Americans. Anti-Semitic sentiments grew as economic conditions declined during the Great Depression. It was not until 1965 that the Second Vatican Council Nostra Aetate of the Catholic Church finally repudiated and reversed the church's 1900 years of unofficial anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic teachings and practices by declaring that the Jewish people were not to be held responsible for the death of Christ. Nevertheless, periodic outbreaks of acts of vandalism to synagogues continue to occur. One contemporary manifestation of anti-Semitism is seen in the neo-Nazis and White supremacist groups who are responsible for modern anti-Semitic propaganda (such as the denial of the Holocaust) and violence against Jews.

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