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No_Procedure7454 t1_ja0svdf wrote

When did anti-semitism start? My assumption is that it began in the Roman Catholic Church soon after Christ’s death, but past that I don’t know much about Jewish history. Did Jewish persecution begin with the Roman destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and the Jews subsequent exile? What historical events took place that lead to the holocaust?

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fictionalmenrailme t1_ja265o4 wrote

Not really an expert but i remember that Nebuchadnezzar II 606BC-562BC destroyed the kingdom of judah . The destruction of Jerusalem(597BC) led to the Babylonian captivity as the city population (semits) were deported to Babylonia .

I dont know if this was helpful or not but its the first thing i remember

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LaoBa t1_ja93ctr wrote

Deportation of conquered populations was an important instrument of government of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, this deportation was not exceptional.

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Forsaken_Champion722 t1_ja2t0tr wrote

Throughout medieval and into modern western history, there was always prejudice against people with different religious beliefs. This applied not just to non-Christians, but among different Christian denominations as well. However, in the case of Jews, what I see happening is a transformation from religious to racial prejudice.

From what I can tell, Jews in Europe were viewed as white people who practiced the wrong religion. Benjamin Disraeli's family converted to Christianity when he was ten. Had they not done this, it is unlikely that he would have become prime minister, but his Jewish ancestry did not prevent it. During the 19th century, many Jews converted to Christianity and some changed their last names.

Hitler viewed Jews as a separate race. During the Holocaust, there were people who didn't know they had Jewish ancestors until the Gestapo researched their ancestry and showed up at their door. This sort of racial view of Jews seems to be the prevailing view of anti-semites today.

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TheBattler t1_ja5bfxa wrote

So like, the Eastern Mediterranean especially in the time after Alexander was super religious syncretic. The Greeks didn't posit Zeus as superior to Amun due to their conquest of Egypt, they took a more practical route to integrate into the existing Egyptian systems by equating Zeus to Amun and worshipping them as the same deity.

The obvious exception were the Jews, who became a little more ethnically closed off in opposition to the polytheism around them. You start to see writers of other ethnicities like Manetho around them talk about how strange and stupid their religion was. That's kind of a proto-antisemitism.

Eventually, you had the Romans come long and conquer the whole Mediterranean but maintaining the syncretic religions as long as their subjects acknowledged the Roman Emperor as divine. This wasn't going to fly in Judaism. You see kind of an escalation where the Romans suppress Jewish religion like destroying their Temple and Jews looking towards the Romans enemies like the Persians for help in gaining their autonomy (and who doesn't want autonomy from a militaristic Empire?). Pretty soon the Jews are viewed as subsersive elements within the Empire who collaborate with the enemy, which should sound kind of familiar.

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