Ayden Kryshka Week 6: The history of Jewish people
Throughout history, the Jewish people have faced the same narrative over and over again, being used as scapegoats for things society cannot understand and being persecuted across centuries and continents. The tension faced by the Jewish people is an unsettling constant. This is found to be true in the cruel edicts of the Roman Empire, the medieval European Persecution, the horrors of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and the oppression in Soviet Russia.
In the times of the Roman Empire, at least until Antoninus Pius revoked the cruel laws placed upon the Jewish people and Jerusalem. Nevertheless, until he decided to change these unfair and harsh edicts, the rules placed upon them banned the following: keeping the Sabbath, the study of the Torah, and the act of circumcision. To many people, both now and then, it looked like Hadrian wanted to destroy the Jewish people. Along with the bans, as mentioned above, the Jewish people residing in Roman-occupied territory were also required to pay a poll tax.
In Europe, the Antisemitism faced by Jews was based on religion. Due to propaganda spread by the Roman Church, many Roman people found the Jews responsible for the death of their savior, Jesus. In Europe, the persecution of Jews was full-blown. However, it was not limited to blood libels (false allegations that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children in rituals), expulsions, forced conversions, and massacres. Though the persecution was happening throughout the whole of the medieval ages, it reached its peak during the Crusades. During the 1st Crusade, the Jewish peoples on the Rhined and Danube were almost wholly destroyed. During the 2nd Crusade, the same thing happened to the Jews of France. After the Crusades, English Jews were expelled from English territory, most choosing to relocate to Poland. Over 100,000 were expelled from France, and thousands more from Australia. Following this, during the Black Death, the Jewish people were used as scapegoats, with people accusing them of spreading the disease by poisoning wells. These accusations led to the Black Death Persecutions, which destroyed hundreds of Jewish Communities.
In the times of Nazi Germany, Jews were treated the worst they have in all of history. With over 6 million Jews dying during WWII and the Holocaust. In 1942 Nazi leaders implemented the Final Solution, the genocide of all Jews in Europe; because of this bill Germany sped up the holocaust by establishing extermination camps, with the sole purpose of killing the Jewish people as well as people Hitler deemed undesirable, such as those who openly opposed him. This was genocide on a scale matched by none other. It was an industrialization of genocide. People were trapped in overcrowded ghettos and then taken by trains, often overcrowded and disease-ridden, to die. Most of these deaths came from gas chambers and firing squads, but some people who knew of the atrocities happening to their people decided the better way out would be to take their own lives. Though few, escaping was not unheard of. In particular, the few escapes made by people imprisoned in Auschwitz were made possible by the Polish underground, run by people in the camp and surrounding it.
Now, onto one of the more modern examples of the persecution of the Jewish people, that of Soviet Russia. By the end of the 1940s, very few Jewish institutions were left, and those left were under heavy surveillance. The communist leadership of the former USSR opposed Judaism and, as a matter of fact, any other religion. By 1948, the antisemitism had soared to new heights. In the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, multifarious Yiddish poets, artists, doctors, writers, and painters were arrested or killed.
So now for how this impacts me. As for how this impacts my identity, I would say very much; it means much more, at least in my opinion, to claim you are a Jew rather than a Christian per se. Not because I believe one is better than the other but because to be Jewish is to claim that I’m a descendant of survivors and I’m proud to be who I am even though some people might not like me for it. So how does the history of the Jewish people affect your identity.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews
https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/how/persecution-and-ghettos/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Roman_Empire
I found this extremely informative and i think it is extremely important that we are aware of the history and past of our people. It's interesting because you would think with all that information and history available to everyone all over the internet, everyone would see the past persecution, scapegoating, and unfairness towards the jews and stand up to fight against Anti-semiticsm.
ReplyDeleteFrom someone who is Jewish and has gone to a Jewish day school my whole life, this is something that I hear about very frequently. We are taught about every time that the Jews faced antisemitism and how so many people tried to kill us. After a while of hearing this it has become second nature to know that we should be scared about out Jewish identity. But, I really enjoyed your prospective on it. Instead of hiding our identities, we should be proud that we are Jewish and that we are still alive and thriving after so many tried to extinguish us.
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