Nadene Goldfoot
Civil Rights are privileges and duties attached to the full membership of a state.
In ancient Israel, such rights were limited to those known to belong by blood to a given tribe; they consisted of rights to ownership of land and to the protection of the Torah as in the case of enslavement, which did not apply to non-Jews. Twelve tribes were from the sons of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham. They were: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin. The date of an ancient Israel goes back at least to 1271 BCE. That's 3,292 years ago. Moses (1391 BCE-1271 BCE) gave the Israelites not only 10 commandments but 613 total of laws pertaining to the civil rights of all. People and their cultures change drastically by a 25 year period, so one can imagine the change and learning for the ancient Israelites to today.
They also involved participation in the cult and the discharge of religious duties. In due course, the principle of blood was replaced by that of faith, insofar as proselytes also received such rights.
According to the biblical account, the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great was "God's anointed", having freed the Jews from Babylonian rule. After the conquest of Babylonia by the Persian Achaemenid Empire Cyrus granted all the Jews citizenship and by decree allowed the Jews to return to Israel (around 537 BCE).
By the late 2nd century BCE the author of I Maccabees could claim that Jews had found their way not only to Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Iranian plateau, but to the cities and principalities of Asia Minor, to the islands of the Aegean, to Greece itself, to Crete, Cyprus, and Cyrene.
In the Greek and Roman world, civil rights were bound up with membership of a city; individual Jews became citizens of Greek cities or obtained Roman citizenship, but Jews as such never held bloc rights in these bodies until the Edict of Caracalla, also called the "Constitution of Antoninus, or Antonine Constitution, by Caracalla declaring that all free men in the Roman Empire were to be given full Roman citizenship in 212 CE which gave citizenship to all free members of the Empire except those recently conquered. People who had become subject to Rome through surrender in war were called the dediticii people, who were not citizens. Wars and a change in the status of the land one was living in meant a possible loss of all civil rights.
Roman citizens generally could vote and had rights and responsibilities under a "well administered system of criminal and civil law.” Men of both the upper and lower classes could be citizens. Women were citizens but couldn’t vote or hold office and had few rights. Slaves were not allowed to be citizens. During the Roman Republic government officials were elected by Roman citizens. During the Roman Empire many local government officials were elected by Roman citizens but not the Emperor and high level officials. There were different kinds of citizens, each with their own collection of rights and responsibilities.
On the other hand, outside Judea, Jewish communities enjoyed, from the first, internal religious and juridical AUTONOMY. With the triumph of Christianity in the 3rd and 4th centuries, Jews began to be excluded from full citizenship; and had lost any civil rights.
During the Middle Ages, the prevailing status of Jews in Europe was that of royal dependents rather than free citizens, and their exclusion from the feudal pattern made their protection depend on being the direct property of a powerful person, or on their acquiring a charter from a sovereign or a city. In other words, they had no civil rights.
Nevertheless, in some areas, Jews were regarded as citizens without active political rights, and Johannes Reuchlin (1455=1522), reformed Anglican, in 1514 was acquitted of heresy charges, argued that the Jews were citizens of the Holy Roman Empire. Evidently the case of the Empire wanting to burn and destroy all Jewish books had come up and he was a defender of the Jews and their rights. The Middle Ages must have been very dark ones for Jews if their books were in danger. Reuchlin was a German Hebraist. At the suggestion of Pico della Mirandola, he intensively studied Hebrew so as to penetrate the secrets of the Kabbalah. The works which he published in consequence are landmarks in the history of Hebrew study in Christian Europe.
In 1509, as a result of PFEFFERKORN'S (b: 1469) slanders, (Johannes Pfefferkorn was a German Catholic theologian and writer who converted from Judaism. Pfefferkorn actively preached against the Jews and attempted to destroy copies of the Talmud, and engaged in a long running pamphleteering battle with humanist Johann Reuchlin.) Hebrew literature, especially the Talmud, was condemned to destruction by the emperor Maximilian. Reuchlin wrote strenuously in its defense. A long polemic ensued in the course of which Reuchlin was bitterly assailed by the Dominicans under Jacob van Hoogstraaten of Cologne, Germany. Reuchlin's intellectual triumph was unmistakable, although ultimately in 1520,
Pope Leo X (Pope Leo X was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 March 1513 to his death in 1521. Born into the prominent political and banking Medici family of Florence, Italy, Giovanni was the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of the Florentine Republic, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1489.) gave a formal verdict against him. These polemics, in which the German reactionaries as a group were ranged against Reuchlin and the humanists,, proved to be the first skirmishes preceding the Reformation in Germany.
The Reformation describes the great religious movement of the 16th century that divided western Christianity into the Catholic and Protestant camps. Among the preliminary skirmishes which preceded the Reformation in Germany was the great dispute between Reuchlin and the "obscurantists" resulting from the Dominican onslaught on Hebrew literature. Most of the early Reformers attached great importance to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and many of them studied Hebrew in order to understand it fully. For this reason, their opponents often accused them of Judaizing, and Catholics suspected the Jews of actively fomenting the Reform movements. This was wholly unjustified, although some Jews regarded the schism in the Church as fulfilment of prophecy and as a prelude to messianic days.
Tovia Singer, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, remarking about Luther's attitude toward Jews, put it thusly: "Among all the Church Fathers and Reformers, there was no mouth more vile, no tongue that uttered more vulgar curses against the Children of Israel than this founder of the Reformation."
"Luther wrote negatively about the Jews throughout his career. Though Luther rarely encountered Jews during his life, his attitudes reflected a theological and cultural tradition which saw Jews as a rejected people guilty of the murder of Christ, and he lived in a locality which had expelled Jews some ninety years earlier. He considered the Jews blasphemers and liars because they rejected the divinity of Jesus. In 1523, Luther advised kindness toward the Jews in That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew and also aimed to convert them to Christianity. When his efforts at conversion failed, he grew increasingly bitter toward them." That's when he turned against all Jews.
Martin Luther, though hoping at first that the Jews would be won over to Reformed Christianity, subsequently vented his disappointment by adopting a ferociously anti-Jewish attitude, and none of the Reformers was in any degree pro-Jewish. Nevertheless, the suspicious of the Catholic Church against the Jews as fomenters of Reform were in part responsible for the stern measures adopted against them by the popes in the Counter-Reformation. The Reformation otherwise had no immediate effect on the position of the Jews, many Protestant areas of Europe excluding them while Catholic regions continued to tolerate them. It was only with the subsequent development of a mercantilistic outlook in Puritan England and Holland that a more tolerant attitude began to be manifest in the Protestant world.
"Luther argues that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but "the devil's people", and refers to them with violent language. Citing Deuteronomy 13, wherein Moses commands the killing of idolaters and the burning of their cities and property as an offering to God, Luther calls for a "scharfe Barmherzigkeit" ("sharp mercy") against the Jews "to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames." Luther advocates setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, and smashing up their homes, so that these "envenomed worms" would be forced into labour or expelled "for all time". In Robert Michael's view, Luther's words "We are at fault in not slaying them" amounted to a sanction for murder. "God's anger with them is so intense," Luther concludes, "that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!" His teachings were pure anti-Semitism.
On 18 April 1521, Luther appeared as ordered before the Diet of Worms. This was a general assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire that took place in Worms, a town on the Rhine. Worms was also the home of many rabbis. There are Ashkenazi Jews finding their roots coming from Worms or the nearby towns.
The acquisition of Civil Rights by European and American Jews began in the late 18th century. simultaneously with the rise of responsible government and the conception of equality of all before the law. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that everyone in the United States has the right to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all. Perhaps this proclamation is what attracted so many Jews in the world to the USA. Our country's founders "created the First Amendment -- to guarantee the separation of church and state.
However, Luther's teachings are still showing up and anti-Semitism is rampant throughout the world today, and several large protestant churches hold onto his beliefs, not even recognizing it as being anti-Semitic as in the Jews are no longer the chosen, and that they have taken over that position. It's the attitude behind this that's anti-Semitic. Jews are put down, less than a citizen of their country. Their church members have risen above in their idea of a pecking order. We had a hard enough time as it was when thought to be the chosen, let alone now falling from that position in their eyes. Tevia, I know you asked G-d why "He" couldn't have chosen someone else, but remember, it was a position full of responsibilities; not that we were loved the most by G-d. "He" could depend on us, we, the stiff necked people, in staying the line, in our belief.
This fundamental freedom is a major reason why the U.S. has managed to avoid a lot of the religious conflicts that have torn so many other nations apart. England's state religion in the days of Henry VIII was that of Episcopal Protestantism, actually a branch off of the Catholic religion. The UK's official religion is Christianity, and churches of all denominations can be found throughout the UK, such as Catholic, Protestant, Baptist and Methodist. The main other religions are Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism.
Germany: 1930's Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany comprised several laws that segregated the Jews from German society and restricted Jewish people's political, legal and civil rights. Major legislative initiatives included a series of restrictive laws passed in 1933, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and a final wave of legislation preceding Germany's entry into World War II.
How they got away with it: "The Enabling Act of 1933 established the power of the Nazi-led government to pass law by decree, bypassing the approval of parliament. It was passed on March 24, 1933, and effectively nullified the Weimar Constitution." Notice, they messed with their ccnstitution.
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were created in response to Hitler's demands for broadened citizenship laws that could "underpin the more specifically racial-biological anti-Jewish legislation". They were made to reflect the party principles that had been outlined in the points Hitler had written in the National Socialist Program in 1920.
One was: The Nazi Party had always promised that, if they came to power, only racially pure Germans would be allowed to hold German citizenship. The Reich Citizenship Law made this a reality. This law defined a citizen as a person who is “of German or related blood.” This meant that Jews, defined as a separate race, could not be full citizens of Germany. They had no political rights.
"The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor was a law against what the Nazis viewed as race-mixing or “race defilement” (“Rassenschande”). It banned future intermarriages and sexual relations between Jews and people “of German or related blood.” The Nazis believed that such relationships were dangerous because they led to “mixed race” children. According to the Nazis, these children and their descendants undermined the purity of the German race.
Another was: According to the Nuremberg Laws, a person with three or four Jewish grandparents was a Jew. A grandparent was considered Jewish if they belonged to the Jewish religious community. Thus, the Nazis defined Jews by their religion (Judaism), and not by the supposed racial traits that Nazism attributed to Jews.
According to the Nuremberg Laws, a person with three or four Jewish grandparents was a Jew. A grandparent was considered Jewish if they belonged to the Jewish religious community. Thus, the Nazis defined Jews by their religion (Judaism), and not by the supposed racial traits that Nazism attributed to Jews.
The laws also categorized some people in Germany as “Mischlinge” (“mixed-race persons”). According to law, Mischlinge were neither German nor Jewish. These were people who had one or two Jewish grandparents.
The Nazi regime required individuals to prove their grandparents’ racial identities. To do so, people used religious records. These included baptism records, Jewish community records, and gravestones.
Riots : Kristallnacht, "THE NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS" on November 9th and 10th, 1938 showed that Jews had no civil rights whatsoever. Not only Jewish shops, but almost all the synagogues in Germany were destroyed. There were wholesale arrests of Jews, and the imposition of a confiscatory levy, ended the life of Jews in Germany. Emigration was limited. My uncle, Werner Oster, may have been one of the last to get out in May of 1939. WWII started in September 1939. The population of Jews in Germany in 1938 was 540, 000. By September 1939, it was cut in half to 270,000. By 1942, no Jews remained. They were all shipped out to centers where they were killed.
In September 1952, a REPARATIONS AGREEMENT was signed with West Germany. They paid $822 million to the Jewish people for what the Nazis had done. East Germany refused. In 1965, diplomatic relations were established between Israel and West Germany.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Pfefferkorn
Price, David H. "‘Whether to Confiscate, Burn and Destroy All Jewish Books’: Johannes Reuchlin and the Jewish Book Controversy." Censorship Moments: Reading Texts in the History of Censorship and Freedom of Expression. Ed. Geoff Kemp. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 47–54. Textual Moments in the History of Political Thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne
https://www.aclu.org/other/your-right-religious-freedom#:~:text=The%20First%20Amendment%20to%20the,or%20no%20religion%20at%20all.
https://study-uk.britishcouncil.org/moving-uk/student-life/religion#:~:text=The%20UK's%20official%20religion%20is,%2C%20Sikhism%2C%20Judaism%20and%20Buddhism.
https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub408/entry-6348.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-race-laws
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