Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Anti-Semitism Part II Ghettos and Causes Separating Jewish Homes From Christians

Nadene Goldfoot                                                
The 1st Crusade was called for by Pope Urban in 1095.  It actually took place from 1096-1099.
Though Jews were the ones Christians were concerned with, Muslims, called Saracens, were caught under the same laws because Jews and Muslims looked the same to the Crusaders.
 

The 2nd  Crusade took place from 1147 to 1149.  "In 1130, when Muslim forces began gaining ground in their own holy war (or jihad) against the Christians, whom they called “Franks, they saw the need for this Crusade.  ” In 1144, the Seljuk General Zangi, governor of Mosul, captured Edessa, leading to the loss of the northernmost Crusader state.  On their way to Judah, called Palestine at this point, they killed Jews throughout Europe.  When there they also killed Jews along with Muslims since they couldn't tell the difference.  They then called Muslims as Saracens.  The novel, THE SOURCE by James Mitchener gives a good outline of this happening.   
The Early Christian Church legislation goes back to the 3rd and 4th Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215  held in Rome which forbade Jews and Christians to live together in close contact.  "It was their 3rd Lateran or 11th Ecumenical Council in 1179 that was held by Pope Alexander III .  "It was concerned with relations between Jews and Christians. It prohibits Jews and Saracens from having Christian servants, while any Christian who serves them is to be excommunicated. In all lawsuits the testimony of Christians is to be accepted against Jews, just as Jews make use of Jewish witnesses against Christians; anyone who prefers Jewish to Christian witnesses is to be anathematized, "since Jews ought to be subject to Christians, and treated kindly by them only out of humane considerations." A Jew who converts to Christianity is not to be deprived of any of his possessions, "for converts ought to be financially better off than they were before they accepted the Faith." The secular powers are commanded, under pain of excommunication, to ensure that this provision is put into effect. The ban on usury issued by the same Council does not specifically mention Jewish moneylenders. Alexander III, moreover, issued the Bull Sicut Judaeis, protecting Jews from forcible baptism and other molestation."    
                                     
 The  4th Lateran or 12th Ecumenical Council that was held in 1215 by Pope Innocent III, 36 years later.  " with Canon 67 that states that Jews must be prevented from exacting immoderate usury from Christians, and also that Jews must pay tithes on property formerly owned by Christians. Canon 68 complains that in many places Christians, Jews, and Saracens are outwardly indistinguishable, so that occasionally, "by mistake, Christians mix with Jewish or Saracen women" and vice versa. Non-Christians must therefore be compelled to dress differently from Christians (see also Jewish *badge ). It is alleged there that this is also laid down in the Mosaic law.   Jews are not to appear in public at Easter, or on days of Christian lamentation, because they are in the habit of dressing up and railing at Christians on such occasions, nor may they blaspheme against the name of Jesus in any other way. The next canon prohibits Jews from holding public office, and the last insists that converts to Christianity must desist from Jewish observances. An appendix is concerned with the proposed crusade. It lays down in passing that Jews must be compelled to remit interest on debts owed to them by those who take the cross. That all the topics mentioned here reappear in subsequent legislation is a measure of the comparative inefficacy of the Council's decisions."  
                                                                    

The 3rd Crusade included the sacking of Constantinople in 1204.
In a popular movement known as the Children's Crusade in 1212, a motley crew including children, adolescents, women, the elderly and the poor marched all the way from the Rhineland to Italy behind a young man named Nicholas, who said he had received divine instruction to march toward the Holy Land.
                                                                                       
Shepherd's Crusade was part of the 7th one in 1251.  

 By 1291, the Egyptian Mamluks drove the Crusaders out of Palestine and Syria. Crusades continued from 1208 to 1229; from 1211 to 1225; and the 6th Crusade was in 1229, the 7th was in 1239, and the 8th was in 1249.  There were crusades in 1268.   

Spain picked this up with having the Jews live at least from the 13th century in juderias  (under laws including time when gates locked, punishment) provided with walls and gates, they said, for their protection.
All this laid the foundation for the 1492 Spanish Inquisition that carried over to all the European countries.

The Friars in Italy from the 15th century began to press for the effective segregation of the Jews, and so in 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered that Jews in the Papal States should be forced to live in separate quarters.  This was immediately carried out in Rome and became the rule throughout Italy during  the next generation.
                                                                       
The term, "Ghetto" had already been established in Venice in 1517 , and now WAS UNIVERSALLY APPLIED.  . Ghettos for Jews was called Judengasse and was also in Germany, Prague where Judenstadt was well known, and in some Polish cities.  This meant that Jews had their own walled in gated and locked neighborhood where only Jews lived.  It was like living in a small town inside a big city.  They did have their own autonomy and could have their own religious freedoms within this wall as well as a good intellectual life., but it had its problems, too, like being overcrowded since they were not allowed any expansion with growth, and were subject to many fires without an outside fire department. It meant they were not free to travel, something Jews had been doing as traders even in Marco Polo's days.  Alaskans would speak of such treatment as "forced cabin fever!"

Another even more horrible drawback for Jews was that often it was accompanied with forced baptism, the wearing of the Jewish badge and  conversionist sermons, occupational restrictions, etc.  It was as if the Christians wanting the conversions had a captured audience that couldn't escape the ordeal.  They had no freedom of choice in listening.

The Ghetto system was finally abolished in Italy during the French Revolutionary Period from 1789 to 1799, then reintroduced in the 19th century again and finally came to an end when Rome united with the kingdom of Italy in 1870.  The same steps are also similar in other countries

New Jewish settlements that took place in Western Europe differed from Eastern Europe in that from the 16th century onward, the Ghetto system was not introduced.

With Muslims, the original Muslim law had no provisions restricting non-Muslim areas of residence.  It came later in the 18th century when Jews were required to move from the vicinity of mosque neighborhoods and were also restricted in the size of their homes.  Then there was an economic decline, and these small Jewish quarters became slums.

In Persia (today's Iran) , the more eastern Muslim land, Shi'ite fanaticism started from the very beginning  of time Jews came to live there and they enforced distinct Jewish quarters that had to be closed at night and on Sabbaths.  These laws for dhimmi Jews were extended also to Yemen and Morocco where the ghettos were called, Qa'at al-Yahud, or Masbattah or Mellah.

Nazis in Eastern Europe from 1939 to 1942 set up ghettos that were not intended to be permanent Jewish quarters but were part of their plan of liquidation aiming to concentrate, isolate and break the spirit of these Jews before they were murdered.   Jews from Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia and other places were transferred to the Warsaw Ghetto and the Lublin Ghetto.  Ghettos were also built in Lodz, Minsk, Vilna, Cracow, Bialystok, Lvov, Riga and Sosnowiec.

Warsaw's Ghetto held 445,000 and there were 200,000 in Lodz.  They were overcrowded immediately and were steadily restricted in space.  All were fenced in and one could not escape, and if caught, were killed.  The Gestapo and SS were the police who took care of this.  The Nazis steadily starved everyone.  There was no relief organizations sending packages.

While Jews were being held in there, they organized and continued with their own culture's activities, kept school work going for the children and helped each other. The Nazis started annihilation of the Jews from the Ghettos in 1941.   In 1943 the Jews  had a Ghetto revolt when it was liquidated in 1943.  Other Ghettos were ended by 1944.

168,000 Jews were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto in the uprising.  "Two months later, some 265,000 Jews had been deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp, while more than 20,000 others were sent to a forced-labor camp or killed during the deportation process.  They had started with 400,000 Jews being confined and trapped  in 1 square mile of Warsaw.  It had been "sealed off by brick walls, barbed wire and armed guards, and anyone caught leaving was shot on sight."
Acts like these presented has helped to develop anti-Semitic behavior in people through the years.  After 2,000 years, Jews have realized the very important need of having their own state in which to enjoy freedom of enjoying their religion and of life.  

Resource:  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11919.html
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum11.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/crusades
http://www.history.com/topics/crusades
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0801484855  Benzion Netanyahu - 1998 - ‎Biography & Autobiography 
It is clear, above all, that under Pedro's rule there was no relief from the severe restrictions concerning the right of Jews to be outside the Judarias
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/warsaw-ghetto-uprising
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

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