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The Holocaust
Roots, History, and Aftermath
David M. Crowe
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The Holocaust
Roots, History, and Aftermath
David M. Crowe
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About This Book
This book details the history of the Jews, their two-millennia-old struggle with a larger Christian world, and the historical anti-Semitism that created the environment that helped pave the way for the Holocaust. It helps students develop the interpretative skills in the fields of history and law.
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CHAPTER 1
Jewish History
Ancient Beginnings and the Evolution of Christian Anti-Judaic Prejudice Through the Reformation
CHRONOLOGY
āSecond Millenium B.C.E. (Before the Common Era): Abraham receives covenant from Hebrew God YHWH
āThirteenth Century B.C.E.: Moses leads Hebrews on Exodus and receives Ten Commandments
ā1025ā926/925 B.C.E.: Israel created by Sol, David, Solomon
ā966ā926/925 B.C.E.: Solomon builds Temple in Jerusalem for Ark of Covenant
ā722ā586 B.C.E.: Israel conquered by Assyrians and Chaldeans
ā586 B.C.E.: Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem and Temple; Babylonian Captivity begins
ā586ā200 B.C.E.: Jewish Bible, Tanakh, completed
ā164ā64 B.C.E.: Maccabean rebellion leads to recreation of Israeli state
ā64 B.C.E.: Pompey conquers Palestine for Rome
ā37ā4 B.C.E.: Herod the Great rebuilds Jerusalem and Second Temple
ā6ā4 B.C.E.: Birth of Jesus (Joshua) of Nazareth
ā66ā70 C.E. (Common Era): Jewish War and the Great Revolt leads to Roman destruction of Second Temple
ā73 C.E.: Masada falls to Romans
ā70ā100 C.E.: Christian Gospels written
ā132ā135 C.E.: Bar Kochba rebellion
ā312ā337 C.E.: Reign of Constantine the Great
ā325 C.E.: Council of Nicaea
ā354ā430 C.E.: St. Augustine. Wrote City of God and Tractus adversus judaeos
ā476 C.E.: Traditional date for collapse of Western Roman Empire
ā527ā565: Reign of Byzantine (Eastern Roman) emperor Justinian I. Corpus Iuris Civilis
ā768ā814: Charlemagne
ā1095ā1099: First Crusade and Christian conquest of Jerusalem
ā1147ā1149: Second Crusade
ā1187ā1192: Third Crusade
ā1135ā1204: Moses Maimonides
ā1141: Jews accused of āritual murderā in Norwich, England
ā1198ā1216: Reign of Innocent III
ā1202ā1204: Fourth Crusade
ā1290: Edward I expels Jews from England
ā1306: Jews expelled from France by Philip IV
ā1347ā1351: Black Death
ā1492: Ferdinand and Isabella expel Jews from Spain
ā1517: Martin Luther writes his Ninety-five Theses
ā1543: Luther writes On the Jews and Their Lies and On Schem Hemphoras and the Lineage of Christ
ā1484ā1531: Life of Protestant reformer Ulrich Zwingli
ā1508ā1564: Life of Protestant reformer John Calvin
ā1553: Pope Julius III orders Italian Jews to live in ghettos
In the introduction to his The Gift of the Jews, Thomas Cahill says that the Jews were the creators of Western culture. Whether or not one agrees with this assertion, the fact remains that the Jewish people, their religion, Judaism, and Jewish culture and history have deeply affected Western civilization. For non-Jews in particular, studying the Holocaust is usually the only contact they have with Jewish history. To avoid seeing Jews only in light of their Holocaust victimization, and to understand the rich dynamics of the Jewish past before not only the Holocaust but also during the two millenia of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic discrimination and hatred that preceded it, it is important to see the Jews in a broader historical perspective. Embedded in this history are not only the rich stories and contributions so important to Jewish and Christian history but also examples of Jewish determination to maintain and defend their beliefs no matter what the cost. The deep commitment Jews have to their faith traditions, their culture, and their history has made them unique in Western culture. During the Holocaust, the Germans and their collaborators did everything possible to mass murder the Jews of Europe and to destroy their ancient religious, cultural, and historic traditions.
Jewish Beginnings
The history of the Jews, or as they were known in ancient times, the Hebrews, began almost 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. As members of the Semitic subfamily of languages that included Arabic, Ethiopic (Amharic), Phoenician, and Aramaic, the Hebrews traced their historical-spiritual roots to Abraham, the father, or patriarch, of the Hebrew people. Jewish tradition says that Abraham received a covenant from the new Hebrew god, YHWH, that would give the Hebrews, in return for their worship of YHWH alone, a promised land in Canaan. This faith and covenant formed one of the cornerstones of the early Hebrew faith. In the Jewish scriptures, various names have been used for the name of God that describe Godās various characteristics, including El, Elohim, and Adonai. In the Middle Ages, Christian scholars ātransformed the word YHWH with the vowelization for the word āAdonaiā into Jehovah.ā1
Abraham passed on his covenant with God to his son, Isaac, and then to his grandson, Jacob or Israel, and his descendants. The twelve tribes of the ancient Hebrews or Israelites were named after Jacobās sons. The tribe of Jacobās fourth son, Judah, would come to play a dominant role among the Hebrews, and would provide the name for the Hebrew religion, Judaism. Historically, Jews, believers in the religion of Judaism, considered themselves descended from the House of Jacob and called themselves the Children of Israel.
The early Hebrews were semi-nomads who spent considerable time in Egypt. Though originally a land of opportunity and prosperity, Egypt became a place of oppression and mistreatment, particularly after Pharoah Rameses II (r. 1301/1298ā1234/1232 B.C.E.) enslaved the Hebrews. Over time, the Hebrew population became so large that, to reduce it, Rameses II ordered the murder of every Jewish male child. Mosesās mother set him adrift in a reed basket to save him. Rameses IIās daughter found him and adopted him. Later, when Moses learned about his roots and the mistreatment of his people, he fled into the desert; there, God told him that he had been chosen to lead his people out of bondage. Soon, Moses demanded that Rameses IIās son, Pharoah Merneptah (r. 1232ā1224 B.C.E.), emancipate the Hebrews. After several plagues had swept through his kingdom, Merneptah agreed. What followed was the Exodus, one of the most seminal events in Jewish history.
The Exodus transformed the Hebrew people through a new covenant inscribed by YHWH on the Tablets of the Covenant (Ten Commandments). Later housed in the Ark of the Covenant, the Ten Commandments, revered by both Christians and Jews, are the cornerstone of Jewish belief and practice. Moses emerged from this dramatic exodus as the creative center of the Jewish national concept and the central figure in the Hebrewsā historic faithāJudaism. Jewish ethical monotheism, anchored by the Law of Moses, emerged during Mosesās time; Jewish scholars later recorded the Law of Moses in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanach), or, to Christians, the Old Testament. At its core were 613 commandments, which the brilliant Jewish scholar Maimonides (1135ā1204) divided into 248 positive and 365 negative commandments. At the heart of this faith system was the link between ritual and worship on the one hand and ethics on the other within the Hebrew, and later, Jewish traditions. The basic Jewish statement of faith, the Shāma, is in Deuteronomy 6:4: āHear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.ā2
The uniqueness of Hebrew or Jewish monotheism did little to give this small group of people easy access to their promised homeland or bestow nationhood upon them. An independent Jewish state evolved under the kingships of Saul (r. 1025ā1005 B.C.E.), David (r. 1005ā966 B.C.E.), and Solomon (r. c. 966ā926/925 B.C.E.), driven in part by the need for a centralized military command vis-Ć -vis outside threats to Jewish political and territorial autonomy. David captured Jerusalem from the Philistines; his son, Solomon, fulfilled Davidās dream of building a Temple to house the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the Ten Commandments. He also completed Davidās construction of Jerusalem. Because they represented Jewsā special relationship with their God, the Temple and Jerusalem have been important symbols to Jews throughout history.
During this time many of the great Hebrew prophets emerged and served as intermediaries between God and His people. As the Hebrew people struggled to develop a state, the prophets reminded them of the importance of God in their lives and society. The largest section of the Hebrew bible, the Tanakh, is the Neviāim, which contains twenty-one books of the Prophets, beginning with Joshua and ending with Malachi. The prophets counseled the Jewish people on the importance of obeying Godās commandments and warned them of impending doom if they did not.
Two separate Jewish states emerged after Solomonās death: the Kingdom of Israel in the north, its capital in Samaria; and the Kingdom of Judah (Judea) in the south, Jerusalem being its political and spiritual center. This division weakened the ability of the Jews to resist new outside threats. Amos and Jeremiah, two of the eraās great prophets, warned the Jews of the implications of their drift away from their spiritual and historic traditions. In 722 B.C.E., the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel; a century and a half later, the Chaldeans (neo-Babylonians) under Nebuchadnezzar (r. 605ā562 B.C.E.) destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 B.C.E. Afterwards, he forced the Jews into a Babylonian Captivity that would forever change Jewish history.
The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem. Photo courtesy of David M. Crowe.
Exile and New Traditions of Faith
A less remarkable people would have declined, and possibly disappeared, after the loss of their precious Temple and capital. Though traumatized by this tragedy, the Jews adapted to their circumstances while remaining stubbornly faithful to their religion and culture.
Since the Chaldeans did not enslave those Jews brought to Babylon, many Jews adapted to their new surroundings and found new roles in Chaldean society. More important, the Babylonian Captivity forced Jews to reevaluate their faith: they were determined to preserve their laws and traditions, which took on new importance not only for the priestly caste but also for the average believer. Though the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great (r. 559ā530 B.C.E.), who conquered Palestine in 539 B.C.E., allowed Jews to return to their homeland and ordered the construction of a new, Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, many Jews continued to live elsewhere in the Middle East. During this period, Jewish scholars completed the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, in much the form as we know it today. They carefully recorded and divided these select Jewish writings into three major divisions: the Torah, or the Books of Moses; the Neviāim, or the major and minor prophetic texts; and the Kethuvim, or Sacred Writings or wisdom books that included works such as the Psalms and Proverbs. The name Tanakh comes from the initial letters of these three scriptural divisions. Between 400 and 200 B.C.E., the Torah and the Neviāim acquired canon or divine status, but the Kethuvim would not be fully recognized as part of the Jewish scriptural tradition until the end of the first century of the Common or Christian Era (C.E., or Christian A.D. [Anno Domini, āin the year of our Lordā]). Some of these books would later be included in the Christian Old Testament. This process transformed Judaism, which now became rich in historical, literary, and religious traditions unique to the ancient Mediterranean world.
Ancient Israel.
The Jews, Hellenism, and the Maccabean (Hasmonean) Rebellion
The Jewish diaspora that had begun with the Babylonian Captivity forced the Jews to deal with a much broader complexity of rulers and peoples than they had heretofore encountered. This process intensified after the Macedonian-Greek Alexander the Great (r. 336ā323 B.C.E.) conquered Palestine. Now the Jews had to deal with Hellenistic Greek history, culture, and religious traditions so powerful that they dramatically transformed not only the Jews and Judaism but also Western civilization.
Judaism on the eve of the campaigns of Alexander the Great was a vibrant cultural-religious force in Judea, Samaria, and beyond. The large, steady wave of Greek settlers that moved into Palestine in the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. deeply troubled some Jews. One group, the Essenes, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, tried to recapture their Mosaic past in isolated desert communities. However, a far greater number of Jews embraced many linguistic and cultural aspects of Hellenism. Wealthier Jews also saw in Hellenism a way to greater status, acceptance, and influence. A small group of Hellenizing Jews even tried to rid contemporary Judaism of many traditional practices: They wanted to blend the ethical monotheistic essence of Judaism with a universal Greek civilization.
The growing influence of Hellenistic culture was felt most harshly after the Seleucid (the postāAlexander the Great successor state in Persia, Syria, and Asia Minor) conquest of Palestine in the late third century B.C.E. In 167 B.C.E., the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175ā163 B.C.E.) replaced the Law of Moses with Seleucid Greek law and transformed the Temple into a place of worship for Greek and Hebrew gods. In response, Judas the Maccabee led a Jewish guerilla war that successfully drove the Selucids out of Jerusalem and, in December 164 B.C.E., restored the Second Temple. Hanukkah (āDedicationā), the eight-day Jewish holiday, celebrates the Maccabean victory and the restoration of Jewish control over the Second Temple. During the next twenty years, the Maccabean, or Hasmonite, Jewish dynasty acquired virtual independence from Seleucid control by allying with Rome. According to Menahem Stern, the significance of the Maccabean Revolt was that āJudaism had never been in such danger of complete extinctionā as it had under Antiochus IV.3 The Maccabean Revolt was a rebellion of Jewish survival.
Qumran. Photo courtesy of David M. Crowe.
Hasmonean Israel and Rome
For the next seventy-nine years, Hasmonean Israel, wedged as it was between a declining Seleucid state and the growing Roman Empire, dramatically expanded its frontiers. The revolutionary spiritual zeal and rigid adherence to Mosaic Law that had neutralized the Seleucid rulers remained a driving force in the new kingdom. The principal advocates and defenders of this return to the traditions of the Mosaic codes were the Sadducees, a religious-political sect who were close allies of the Hasmonean rulers and the Jewish stateās upper classes. Their main political and religious opponents, the Pharisees,...