Anti-Semitism Influence Essay, Research Paper

The word rests in a conversation like a foul stench and with it comes unbidden

images and accusations. Today in many circles this word alone is possibly the

most horrendous name to place on a person. Maybe though, not because of what it

means, but because of what it brings to mind. Automatically and unwanted,

pictures come to our mind of goose stepping Nazis and concentration camps,

bodies piled high and what we think of as the air fills with the scent of

burning flesh. Our worst nightmares and human kinds worst behavior?s. Yet,

many of us do not know where the term came from or even what it means beyond

their simple ideas. Even dictionaries only give the blandest description of the

term. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines anti-Semitism as "having or

showing prejudice against Jews," "discriminating against or

persecuting Jews," "…hostility [toward Jews]." but there really

isn?t a lot to be learned from that, that we didn?t already know. So I knew

I had to dig deeper. So I started to look for references to Nazi?s and Hitler

as well as Martin Luther. I began to even look for sites of the Ku Klux Klan in

efforts to find some background on the term that brings so much angst into the

mind as this. Although I admit, I did find a wonderful article in an unexpected

location, unexpected only because I had already consulted so many encyclopedias

and found nothing. Yet Funk and Wagner told me this: ?ANTI-SEMITISM,

political, social, and economic agitation and activities directed against Jews.

The term is now used to denote anti-Judaic acts or sentiments based on any

grounds, including religious ones. The adjective Semitic originally was applied

to all descendants of Shem, the eldest son of the biblical patriarch Noah; in

later usage, it refers to a group of peoples of southwestern Asia, including

both Jews and Arabs. The word anti-Semitism was coined about 1879 to denote

hostility only toward Jews. This hostility is supposedly justified by a theory,

first developed in Germany in the middle of the 19th century, that peoples of

so-called Aryan stock are superior in physique and character to those of Semitic

stock.? www.funkandwagnalls.com/ I was surprised to learn that it had to do

with more then just the Jews, but Arabs as well. Else where, I found a little

more to back this up; ?Anti-Semitism, from a strict adherence to the compound

structure and meaning of the word itself, can be defined simply as being against

(antagonistic toward, opposed to) the Semitic people. In a grammatical and

etymological sense (as pertaining to race), such a definition would include all

the descendants of Shem (e.g., the Arabic nations as well as the nation of

Israel). The word "anti-Semitism" though is not really used in a broad

sense pertaining to the entire Semitic line. Rather, the word is invariably used

in a much more restrictive sense, referring to opposition exhibited toward only

one branch of the Semitic line — opposition exhibited toward the descendants of

Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. The Jewish people alone, among the Semitic

people, have been the target of persecution after persecution during the past

three and one-half millenniums; and "anti-Semitism" is an expression

which has come into use pointing to these persecutions. Other Semitic nations

are not in view at all.? gracenet.com/lamp/TODA1.html And a little more on the

background; ?Today one hears protests that the word anti- Semitism should not

be used, because there are other Semites besides the Jews. The term however, was

coined in 1879 by a racist named Wilhelm Marr. He was searching for a more

scientific sounding term then Jew when he founded the League of Anti-Semites. In

the European context, the word Semite was used strictly for the Jews.? Page 36

Christians and Jews in Germany. Uriel Tal. The term can further be broken own

into both racial and religious anti-Semitism. ?Both religious and racial

anti-Semitism were to be found in the Second Reich. Religious anti-Semitism

insisted that a Jew could not retain his Jewish identity, and it demanded that

he converts and assimilates. Fredrick Paulsen, a prominent liberal humanist and

outspoken critic of racial anti-Semitism, explained in his ?System of

Ethics? that ?to remain a complete Jew and a complete German is

impossible.? Racial anti-Semitism treated the Jew as a parasite, a biological

inferior that conversion and assimilation would not cure, a danger to the body

politic.? Uriel Tal, Christian?s and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics,

and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914, trans. Noah Jonathan Jacobs (Ithaca

NY Cornwell University 1975) Page 291. This of course brings a little more

directly to the issue at hand. The people that are and have been anti-Semites.

Hitler and the Third Reich automatically come to mind. Yet sitting in the

background of that totally deplorable incident sits a man that we knowingly

would never have placed with Hitler at all. Martin Luther. It would seem that

Martin Luther?s writings inspired much of the Holocaust. This causes a lot of

problems for some people. In speaking to people when I was working and

researching this paper, many people had no idea that Martin Luther had leanings

that way at all. In fact most people simply can?t believe that the Father of

Protestantism could have ever been so mislead. Yet I do not believe that Luther

held these beliefs out of a mislead doctrine. No, I believe that they were

simply a reaction from what must have been a bitter personal disappointment and

shaming. This does not excuse him, not does it change the fact that he was in

fact and anti-Semite, but certainly, it would remind us that even the greatest

from among us are libel to allow our disappointments to colour our thinking, no

matter how inspired it may be. ?No apologist can claim that Martin Luther bore

his anti-Jewishness out of youthful naivete’, uneducation, or out of unfounded

Christianity. On the contrary, Luther in his youth expressed a great optimism

about Jewish conversion to Christianity. But in his later years, Luther began to

realize that the Jews would not convert to his wishes. His anti-Jewishness grew

slowly over time. His logic came not from science or reason, but rather from

Scripture and his Faith. His "On the Jews and Their Lies" shows

remarkable study into the Bible and fanatical biblical reasoning. Luther, at age

60 wrote this dangerous "little" book at the prime of his maturity,

and in full knowledge in support of his beliefs and Christianity. Few people

today realize that Luther wrote ‘On the Jews and Their Lies.’ (He also wrote

such works like "Against the Sabbatarians.") Freethinkers should

become aware of the anti-Semitic influence that Luther has brought on the world.

His vehement attack on Jews and his powerful influence on the believers of the

Germans has brought a new hypothesis to mind: that the Holocaust, and indeed,

the eliminationist form of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany may not have occurred

without the influence from Luther’s book "On the Jews and Their Lies."

Today, white-supremacists and Neo-Nazis continue to spread Luther’s Jewish

hatred and use quotes from this book as "proof" of their

convictions.? members.icanect.net/~zardoz/luther.htm Yet, Luther had not

always been so. ?At the beginning of his career, Luther was apparently

sympathetic to Jewish resistance to the Catholic Church. He wrote, early in his

career: The Jews are blood relations of our Lord; if it were proper to boast of

flesh and blood, the Jews belong more to Christ than we. I beg, therefore, my

dear Papist, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to

revile me as a Jew. But Luther expected them to convert to his purified

Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against Jews? While there

is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis

for modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism does differ in being based on

pseudo-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had

converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them. None of this

justifies what follows, but it may help to comprehend what is happening? ?Paul

Halsall June1997 [email protected] www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/luther-jews.html

Also, ?Luther appeared to be a breath of fresh air in the midst of a dismal

situation. Initially he had high regard for the Jewish people because he

expected them to convert en masse once they were presented with a Christian

message free from ?Papal Paganism? In his treatise ?That Jesus Christ Was

born A Jew? 1523? He wrote? If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts

and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would have sooner become

a hog then a Christian.? At this time he took a firm stand against the

mistreatment of the Jews, and advocated a new relationship with the? Therefore

I would request and advise that one deal gently with them, (the Jews) and

instruct them From Scripture; then some of them may come along. Instead of this

we are trying only to drive them by Force, slandering them, accusing them of

having Christian blood if they don?t stink, and I know not What other

foolishness. So long as we treat them like dogs, how can we expect to work any

good Among them? Again, when we forbid them to labour and do business and have

any human fellowship With us, thereby forcing them into usury, how is that

supposed to do them any good? If we really Want to help them, we must be guided

in our dealings with them not by Papal law but by the law of Christian Love?

Alas. Luther became irritated when the Jewish people continued to resist

conversion. In 1526 he complained of the Jews stubbornness, and by the 1530?s

he was presenting the common medieval stereotypes accorded to the Jews. In

?Conversations in Table Talk? he caricatured Jews as stiff-necked,

ironhearted, stubborn as the devil, and usurers. In 1543, at the end of his

life, he wrote three derogatory treatises against the Jews, which anti-Semites

would quote for the next 400 years. So horrible were his statements that Julius

Streicher, Hitler?s hate-sheet editor and propagandist in Der Sturmer, cited

Luther at his Neurenburg trial to justify his actions.? Note martin Luther to

George Spalatin, Wittenburg, 1514 in Perserved Smith, ed.and trans, Luther?s

correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters. Philadelphia: Lutheran

Publication Society 1913 pages 28-29 Martin Luther, That Jesus Christ was Born a

Jew, 1523 trans. Walther I, Brandt, in Luther?s Works. Philadelphia:

Muhlenburg, 1962) 45:229 And so we see that no real malice was originally

intended, but that after dealing with deep disappointment and shame, Luther

lashed out bitterly. Yet he is a man and therefore still responsible for his

actions, and therefore still could be called an anti-Semite. What did he do and

write that is so bad, that one could label him so? I will explain. I will put

forth that Luther was both a racial and religious anti-Semite and them further

prove that it was his writings that helped to fan the flame of anti-Semitism

that turned into the Holocaust and the KKK movements that we see today. In

putting forth that Luther was a religious anti-Semite, I first place under

observation the premise for his writing his pro-Jewish book ?That Jesus Christ

was Born a Jew?. Alone the fact that he wrote in hopes that Jews would convert

to Lutheranism would have him branded. ?Luther’s Enthusiasm for Mission Work.

Luther did not always show himself to be a hopelessly anti-Semitic man. In his

1523 work "Jesus Christ was born a Jew" he makes reference to the

origins of Christianity. He wanted to convert the Jews to the belief he found

after years of searching. Luther wanted the Jews to recognize and confess the

"true belief". www.luther.de/e/juden.html In going back to our working

definition of religious anti-Semitism we find that it is based on a need for the

Jew to convert and assimilate. Later, in a letter he would say; ?But what am I

doing? My heart is fuller of these thoughts than my tongue can tell. I have come

to the conclusion that the Jews will always curse and blaspheme God and his King

Christ, as all the prophets have predicted. He who neither reads nor understands

this, as yet knows no theology, in my opinion. And so I presume the men of

Cologne cannot understand the Scripture, because it is necessary that such

things take place to fulfill prophecy. If they are trying to stop the Jews

blaspheming, they are working to prove the Bible and God liars.? But trust God

to be true, even if a million men of Cologne sweat to make him false. Conversion

of the Jews will be the work of God alone operating from within, and not of man

working-or rather playing-from without. If these offences be taken away, worse

will follow. For they are thus given over by the wrath of God to reprobation,

that they may become incorrigible, as Ecclesiastes says, for every one who is

incorrigible is rendered worse rather than better by correction. Farewell in the

Lord; pardon my words, and pray the Lord for my sinning soul.? "Martin

Luther’s to George Spalatin," from Luther?s Correspondence and Other

Contemporary, Letters, trans. by P. Smith (1913), Vol. 1, pp. 28-29.

www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1514luther.html So we see he was absolutely

determined that the Jews would and should convert to Christianity. When they

refused to do this as he ha anticipated, then he became frustrated and bitter,

and his desire for them to convert would be articulated in much stronger terms.

?Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have

their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer

self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced

most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them.? And also, ?If I had to

refute all the other articles of the Jewish faith, I should be obliged to write

against them as much and for as long a time as they have used for inventing

their lies– that is, longer than two thousand years.? However it is difficult

for one to find quotes that lend themselves specifically to a religious

anti-Semitism. It is much, much eisier to find racial slurs within Luther?s

writings. But even then, you find them peppered with comments about their

blasphemies towards God? for we must never forget that Luther?s main

complaint was a religious one, not a personal one. The following are a series of

quotes, all taken from Luther?s book ?The Jews and Their Lies? all are

excellent examples of the man?s growing hatred for the Jewish race. Therefore

the blind Jews are truly stupid fools… — ?…their blindness and arrogance

are as solid as an iron mountain? — ?Moreover, they are nothing but thieves

and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing, which they

have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they

live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as

arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security.? — ? Alas, it

cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God, which permits anyone to sink

into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I

were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such

evil and misfortune as God’s wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie

and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway,

they have their reward for constantly giving God the lie.? — ? I brief,

dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule– if my

counsel does not please your, find better advice, so that you and we all can be

rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty

sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which

the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord

Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all Christians, all authority, and ourselves. Do

not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us…. . With this

faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience.?

– ? He who hears this name [God] from a Jew must inform the authorities, or

else throw sow dung at him when he sees him and chase him away.? — ?

…they remain our daily murderers and bloodthirsty foes in their hearts. Their

prayers and curses furnish evidence of that, as do the many stories which relate

their torturing of children and all sorts of crimes for which they have often

been burned at the stake or banished.? — ?Undoubtedly they do more and

viler things than those which we know and discover.? So we see what a litany

of hate and hurt spews forth from one of the most beloved father?s of the

church. Yet it gets worse, for I do not call Luther the Father of the Nazi for

no reason, no indeed. ?The Nazis did not discard the past, they built on it.

They did not begin a development. They completed it.? – Raul Hilberg ,

Holocaust historian www.tulane.edu/~so-inst/d1.htm Probably the most surprising

thing that Luther ever wrote, even after reading all these previous quotes, was

his six-step plan for further treatment of the Jewish race. It reads very much

like what we would expect to read in a Storm Trooper?s handbook. ?What shall

we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they

live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of

their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their

lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of

divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With

prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we

might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves.

Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the

throat. I shall give you my sincere advice: First to set fire to their

synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so

that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in

honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are

Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing,

and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in

the past unknowingly – and I myself was unaware of it – will be pardoned by God.

But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for

the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about,

blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it

would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we

very well know. Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.

For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might

be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to

them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are

living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us

before God. Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings,

in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from

them. (Remainder omitted) Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to

teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly

forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the

saying of Moses (Deuteronomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey

their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they

teach you in accord with the law of the Lord." Those villains ignore that.

They wantonly employ the poor people’s obedience contrary to the law of the Lord

and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the

pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You

are Peter," etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that

issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God,

and therefore he forfeited the right to teach. Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct

on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business

in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like.

Let they stay at home. (…Remainder omitted). Sixth, I advise that usury be

prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken

from them and put aside for safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that,

as said above, they have no other means of earning a livelihood than usury, and

by it they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess. Such money should

now be used in no other way than the following: Whenever a Jew is sincerely

converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred

florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set himself

up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children, and the

maintenance of the old or feeble. For such evil gains are cursed if they are not

put to use with God’s blessing in a good and worthy cause. Seventh, I commend

putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands

of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the

sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen. 3[:19]}. For

it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of

our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove,

feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their

lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out

these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.? So the question now is posed,

did Hitler and alter on, the KKK use his writings as a base for their own ends.

Yes they did. ?In page after page of Hitler’s ranting against the Jews in Mein

Kampf, one soon comes to realize that echoes of Martin Luther are being heard.

Julius Streicher, the chief party ideologist of anti-Semitism, argued in his

defense at the Nuremberg trials that he had never said anything about the Jews

that Martin Luther had not said four hundred years earlier? www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/back/hakeem/holocaust4.html

and, ?More then 120 American organizations were activily dissemating anti-Semitatic

propaganda between 1933 and 1940. Anti-Sematic flyers blanketed the US. One

declaired ?Jesus Christ, Martin Luther, Mohammed, Pope Clement VIII, Benjamen

Franklin, Ulysses Grant, James A Garfeild, and Henry Ford unite with 50 other

famous personages in saying: ?Jews are traiters to America and should not be

trusted.? 98-99 So vehemently did Luther speak against the Jews, and the fact

that Luther represented an honorable and admired Christian to Protestants, that

his written words carried the "memetic" seeds of anti-Jewishness up

until the 20th century and into the Third Reich. Luther’s Jewish eliminationist

rhetoric virtually matches the beliefs held by the Hitler and much of the German

populace in the 1930s. Luther unconsciously set the stage for the future of

German nationalistic fanaticism. William L. Shirer in his "The Rise and

Fall of the Third Reich," puts it succinctly: "Through his sermons and

his magnificent translations of the Bible, Luther created the modern German

language, aroused in the people not only a new Protestant vision of Christianity

by a fervent German nationalism and taught them, at least in religion, the

supremacy of the individual conscience. But tragically for them, Luther’s siding

with the princes in the peasant rising, which he had largely inspired, and his

passion for political autocracy ensured a mindless and provincial political

absolutism which reduced the vast majority of the German people to poverty, to a

horrible torpor and a demeaning subservience. Even worse perhaps, it helped to

perpetuate and indeed to sharpen the hopeless divisions not only between classes

but also between the various dynastic and political groupings of the German

people. It doomed for centuries the possibility of the unification of

Germany." In Mein Kampf, Hitler listed Martin Luther as one of the greatest

reformers. And similar to Luther in the 1500s, Hitler spoke against the Jews.

The Nazi plan to create a German Reich Church laid its bases on the "Spirit

of Dr. Martin Luther." The first physical violence against the Jews came on

November 9-10 on Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) where the Nazis killed Jews,

shattered glass windows, and destroyed hundreds of synagogues, just as Luther

had proposed. In Daniel Johah Goldhagen’s book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners,

(Alfred A. Knoph, NY 1996), he writes: "One leading Protestant churchman,

Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther’s antisemitic

vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht’s orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the

foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the

coincidence of the day: ‘On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the

synagogues are burning in Germany.’ The German people, he urged, ought to heed

these words ‘of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people

against the Jews.’"