1. In ancient times, they were monotheists surrounded by polytheists. Their refusal to worship the gods of their overlords was considered a threat to the state because it risked divine retribution. This led to persecution by Babylon and the Seleucid Empire, and the same basic logic was behind the persecution of Early Christianity (which would’ve been regarded as just another Jewish sect for the first century or so).

2. The blood libel. This antisemitic conspiracy theory goes all the way back to ancient times. Greek and Egyptian writers claimed Jews abducted gentiles, sacrificed them in the Temple, and ate them.

During the persecution of Early Christianity, these tropes resurfaced with the claim that Christians stole Roman children and ate them and drank their blood as part of Communion. But once Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, this screed was retooled to target Jews. Instead of Christians stealing Roman children, it became Jews stealing Christian children. And instead of cannibalism as part of Communion, it became cannibalism as part of Passover.

Similar conspiracies cropped up during the Middle Ages, like the idea Jews were behind the Black Death because it didn’t hit their communities as hard.

3. Religious differences with monotheistic majorities. Christian bigotry towards Jews was rooted in their refusal to accept Jesus as the Messiah and a perception of Jews as “Christ-killers” (even though it was the Roman Empire who executed him). Muslim bigotry was driven by their refusal to accept Mohammed as a divinely inspired prophet and convert to Islam.

4. Medieval laws limited the trades Jews could practice and the property they could own, leading them to gravitate toward professions like medicine, law, and banking. Their proficiency at the latter led them to be stereotyped as greedy.

This is what led to the whole “Jewish elites secretly run the world” conspiracy theory, which was popularized by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This was a document secret police in Tsarist Russia fabricated for use in antisemitic propaganda. You can trace a lot of modern antisemitism back to this forgery.

5. Jews retained their own culture and ethnic identity, leading them to be regarded as outsiders more loyal to their own than to their government. Being such an obvious “other” made them the perfect scapegoat for whenever anything went wrong.

You can see examples of this from the conspiracies about them causing the Black Death all the way up to them being blamed for Germany losing World War One.

This intertwines with the last point in that rulers would often scapegoat them as a way to seize their wealth.

Jewish wouldn't assimilate to the nations they moved to. If a group of Jewish people moved to, say, Germany, the Jewish people would have a different religion, language, and customs compared to the other German people. Even if a Jewish family had three generations of descendants in Germany those grandkids would still be very clearly different from other Germans. In our modern world we may see this as no big deal, diversity is encouraged now, but for most of history it just made a target on the backs of the Jewish.

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We I could be completely wrong in my assumption here but I feel the other major Abrahamic religions (Christianity and Islam) always saw Judaism as a threat and undermined them to the core.

A lot of people posting random long answers

The real answer, is that the Jews were necessary evil

The Jews had a kingdom, the one that they claimed to be built by David. That kingdom crumbled when the Romans came along and invaded the Levant. The Jews weren't pleased by this and wanted to re-establish their independence, and generally harassed the Romans however they can, which did not endear them to the Romans but that's par for the course compared to the Germans

After that, Christianity came knocking. For obvious reasons the Jews just don't mingle with Christians, which was fine for the first few centuries but then Emperor Constantine the Great adopted Christianity and basically made it state religion.

The biggest problem with Christianity isn't just that they claim to be Judaism 2.0: the problem is it specifically bans usury

This was a big problem to Christian rulers who sometimes need to borrow money to fund whatever it is that Christian rulers want. That's why Christian rulers exploit one specific fact: Christianity banned Christians from lending money for the express hope of getting paid more, but it never bans borrowing money with the understanding you have to pay back more

So the Christian rulers borrow money from the Jews, and as everyone knows the painful part of borrowing money is paying it back. By getting paid more than they lend out the Jews naturally accumulate wealth, which caused concern among rulers. Realms may be wealthy but the kings themselves often are not, and nothing stokes the fear of a king more than his subjects growing wealthier than himself

This concern caused the rulers to shoo Jews away from important political positions, such as ministers and military commanders. This naturally pigeonholed the Jews to be merchants, which paired with their primary use of being a loanshark caused them to amass even more wealth. This caused the feedback loop of them growing wealthier and rulers growing more concerned

This also worked on the lower social strata. Merchants weren't viewed that favorably back then, Indians for example placed merchants at the bottom of social ranking even below servants because merchants - always looking for profit - are viewed full of lies and deceit.

Eventually, the Jews became a natural, easy scapegoat whenever christian rulers need someone to blame for their misfortunes. The Black Death for example was at some point blamed at the Jews. This was because by banishing the Jews the rulers can seize their assets, and since the Jews were naturally rich that's a lot of assets to prop up the king, plus in so doing whatever debt the ruler had would've been nullified

So you have a bunch of rich people who literally weren't allowed to be anything but rich, living near poor people who view them as nothing but liars and deceivers, practicing an old, different version of your religion, and basically sticking to each other not opening up because Judaism doesn't proselytize, and they get blamed for everything simply for their money

Not a wonder that Jews were not treated well

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Because we're different. For starters, In a polytheistic world, we believed in just one G-d. In a Christian and Muslim dominated world, we still believe in the scriptures they consider "outdated".

That just scrapes the surface, but overall it's our ability to survive and resist attempts to destroy us as a people. Instead, we were scattered throughout the middle east and Europe, always viewed with suspicion, and easily making a useful scapegoat. We were viewed at best as disloyal subjects, and more often as foreigners who pull the puppetstrings and control the events of history and governments. Antisemitism was one of the earliest and easiest forms of racism to engage in, it's become so deeply ingrained in most cultures that few recognize when it's right in front of rhem.

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