What started the hatred against Jews?

Answer 1

No, dislike and hatred of the Jews goes back a very long time indeed. Some claim that the Jews have been hated since Antiquity. That claim, however, overlooks long periods of relative calm and suggests a continuity that may be misleading. However, the start of the First Crusade in 1096 was characterized by an explosion of anti-Jewish violence in the Rhineland and some other parts of Europe. Initially, this was condemned by senior members of the Catholic Church, but to no effect. When the crusaders reached the Holy Land, they slaughtered Jews there. Soon almost no crusade was complete without a massacre of Jews. 1144 saw the first recorded case of the anti-Jewish blood libel - that is, the accusation of Jews of murder for ritual religious purposes. From about 1180 onwards it became quite common for Jews to be accused whenever there was a particularly repulsive murder ... Pope Innocent IV asked a commission of lawyers to investigate some of these case in the 1240s and they roundly condemned the legal processes used - but to little effect. At the time of the Black Death, which was not understood at the time, the Jews were accused of poisoning wells and were slaughtered in some places. The Church encourage ambivalence ... On the one hand, Popes and some bishops condemned forced conversions, murder and the blood libel, but passed edicts requiring Jews to wear a distinctive badge on their outer clothing and, later also encouraged ghettoization by law. The Jews were demonized in European culture - both popular culture and high culture. In Eliazbethan times there were almost no Jews in England. (They had been thrown out in 1290 and were not admitted again till 1657). Nevertheless, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and even more, Marlowe's Jew of Malta appeal to popular stereotypes and anti-Jewish prejudice. In other words, the prejudices were effective among people who had never even seen a Jew and knew very little about them. Luther ranted and raved against the Jews, and in Rome the pope established one of the harshest ghettos ... The churches did little to counteract prejudice against the Jews, and especially in Roman Catholic regions, anti-Jewish prejudice was bolstered by the "odour of sanctity". In some parts of Europe, such as Romania and Germany, some nineteenth century nationalists believed that Jews "could not be Romanians" (or Germans, or Latvians, etc). In the later the nineteenth century, following emancipation, the Jews came to be regarded as liberals, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917 as Communist. Racist ideology (antisemitism) was added to earlier anti-Jewish prejudice. This period also saw the rise of fanciful antisemitic conspircacy theories. Demonization of Jews was complete before Hitler entered politics. In fact, without this prior demonization his antisemitism would have lacked appeal. It is noteworthy that the Japanese, with a very different cultural history, found the Nazis' hatred of the Jews utterly bewildering.

Answer 2

This question would be an in adequate question, because it was not the Germans who really disliked the Jews it was the NAZI party. Maybe some of the Germans did hate the Jews because Hitler tried to brain wash many of them because he believed that they had done horrible things such as lose WWI for the Germans. So Hitler baasically used them as a Scape goat for losing WWI.

Answer 3

One answer is that the Hellenizing Jews (2200 years ago) and the Herodian kings (2000 years ago) showed that the Jews could be persecuted in their own land. Not long after, the Romans continued the oppression, as groups of misguided Jews tried to overthrow the Roman domination of Judea and the Romans crushed these revolts (1900 years ago).

Answer 4

No. Anti-Semitism has existed in numerous iterations and forms for over 2000 years.