Jew Killing By Christians Exaggerated Elukin

Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages, by Jonathan Elukin. 2007

An Eye-Opening and Long-Overdue Corrective to the Portrayal of Jews as Victims of Christian Hate and Persecution

By way of introduction, Jewish author Jonathan Elukin comments, (quote) Seeing medieval Europe as a persecuting society obscures the complexities of the Middle Ages and reduces the Jewish experience to a one-dimensional narrative of victimization. (unquote). (p. 4).

Elukin brings up Jewish historian Salo Baron, who presented an alternative to the customary lachrymose conception of Jewish history. [See: History and Jewish Historians: Essays and Addresses]. However, Elukin points out that historians have generally not moved beyond seeing Jewish history as only the story of persecution. (p. 5).

THE PROBLEM OF READING HISTORY BACKWARDS

The author identifies one of the causes of lachrymose Jewish thinking, (quote). The treatment of Jews in the medieval past thus ominously signals the fundamentally intolerant character of European states and Christian culture. Although a suggestive characterization, this interpretation reads back into medieval history the anachronistic power and efficacy of the twentieth-century totalitarian state. (unquote). (p. 4).

However, Elukin does not go far enough. [This “reading history backwards” is commonly done with the Shoah, reflecting the anti-Christian spirit of many Jews and the usually-leftist academics. In extreme, every Christian persecutor of Jews is treated as a Hitler-by-anticipation, and every episode of Christian persecution of Jews is reckoned a “practice Holocaust.” If nothing else, the Christian persecution of Jews is imagined to be accumulative in nature, with the however-secular Nazi movement merely adding the final straw to an age-old process. ]

JEWS AS THE “OTHER”: THE AUTHOR’S CRITIQUE

Elukin clarifies the exclusionary attitudes towards Jews, (quote) Making Jews the “Other” of medieval Europe, a group singled out for marginalization and persecution, creates arbitrary categories that do not reflect medieval realities…As Paul Freedman has recently observed, “The Middle Ages certainly created a panoply of mistrusted and persecuted enemies–Saracens, Jews, lepers, heretics, apocalyptic peoples. But the very heterogeneity and proliferation of such despised peoples calls into question how “the Other” is to be used as a theorizing tool.” Even if such distinctions shaped thinking about nonnormative groups, the very idea of an “Other”, as Freedman notes, suggests that “elite society is presented as unanimously and unquestioningly determined to push a variety of feared or despise peoples to the margins of the human.” This Manichean vision of medieval Europe ignores the complexities, paradoxes, and tensions within elite society. Moreover, it encourages a scholarly emphasis only on the persecution of Jews. (unquote). (pp. 5). [Isn’t that the whole idea–in Judeocentric circles of academia?]

The author continues, (quote) The variety and dynamism of medieval Christianity created a society in which the Jews were not alien interlopers facing a uniformly antagonistic Christian world. (unquote). (p. 6). Elukin presents numerous examples of the ways that Jews were integrated into medieval society.

Secular authorities generally protected the Jews. For instance, during the plagues, violence against Jews took place in those locations where the authority of the king was weak. (p. 108).

BEYOND THE DEICIDE MEME: THE JEWS IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Nowadays, the usual tendency is to reduce the Christian conception of the Jew to that of the Christ-killer, and even to blame this presumed deicide-fixation for the eventual Nazi Holocaust. In contrast, Elukin realizes that the Christian view of the Jew was not unilaterally condemnatory, and still less exterminatory-in-wish [much less exterminatory-in-action]. In commenting on the early Middle Ages, Elukin writes, (quote) Most echoed the Augustinian sensibility that the Jews would be saved at the end of time. (unquote). (p. 148).

As for Church policies, Elukin comments, (quote) Even popes who indulged in violent language against the PERFIDIA of the Jews reissued bulls protecting Jewish property, guaranteeing their rights to worship, and insisting on their freedom from forced conversion. (unquote). (p. 93). Furthermore, the author suggests that the repeated re-issuing of such bulls points to the influence that certain Jews had on the popes. (pp. 93-94).

In something that rarely is done, Elukin puts all the bitter Christian invective against Jews (e. g, deicide, blood libel, host desecration) in proper context. It was not uniquely hateful. In fact, it was standard practice at the time for emperors, popes, etc., to vilify each other with the most intemperate language. (p. 93). As for religious matters, Christians regularly used venomous polemics against heretics, and other Christians, that were as abusive as those to Jews, if not more so. (p. 92, 95). [One could also think of Martin Luther’s infamous ON THE JEWS AND THEIR LIES. Luther’s polemics against Catholics, and non-Lutheran Protestants, were no less vile than those against the Jews.] In addition, Elukin warned against automatically assuming that invective against Jews led to violence against Jews. (pp. 94-95).

Direct religious-based encounters, between Christians and Jews, were not necessarily hostile. For instance, Jews and Christians sometimes cooperated in the translation of Bibles. (e. g, p. 114).

PERSECUTION OF JEWS IN MUCH-NEEDED PERPECTIVE

Elukin writes, (quote) Jews were not singled out in medieval society as the preferred target of violence. Moreover, the level of violence against Jews–either oppressive laws, outright attacks, paranoid accusations, or expulsions–were essentially transitory and contingent events that did not fundamentally destroy the modus vivendi between most Christians and Jews of the time. The transient nature of the violence gave Jews a sense of fundamental stability and security. This discussion should help us rethink our reliance on the idea of the Middle Ages as a “persecuting society” in which continuous repression of Jews was a fundamental part of medieval culture. (unquote). (pp. 6-7).

VIOLENCE AGAINST JEWS–AN EXAGGERATION?

The author wisely points out that instances of persecution and expulsion of Jews are much more likely to survive in documentary accounts than the much more common instances of harmonious Jewish-Christian coexistence. (p. 89). [This is part of what I call the newsworthiness bias. Others have called it “The dog did not bark” situation.]

As for the First Crusade, Elukin accepts the general factuality of the Jewish accounts, but does not do so uncritically. He writes, (quote) The chronicles constitute a problematic collection of texts. There has been an ongoing scholarly debate about their historicity, with some scholars arguing that they represent later “midrashic” meditations on persecution and cannot be trusted as evidence of what really happened in 1096. (unquote). (p. 76).

[Elukin’s attitude is strikingly diametrically opposite to that of neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross, as in the context of the Jedwabne “revelation”. Gross seriously suggested that Jewish survivor testimonies automatically be accepted without question because, after all, they are “the voices of victims.” By the same reasoning, he would have us believe that Jewish accounts of Polish pogroms, and denunciations of fugitive Jews to the Nazis, are straightforwardly truthful, and that anyone who questions them is (what else?) an anti-Semite.]

Now let us consider the accusations of ritual murder directed at Jews. Shrines were built to commemorate the alleged victims of these deeds. The lack of popularity of the accusations against Jews is proved by the low level of donations that these shrines received. (pp. 97-98).

JEWS IN THE MEDIEVAL ECONOMY, VIOLENCE, AND THE EXPULSIONS

Jews played a leading role in the slave trade. (p. 35, 41, 50). Furthermore, the slave trade was central to the early medieval economy. (p. 149).

The economic privileges of the Jews alone made them attractive targets. Elukin comments, (quote) Other attacks against Jews at the end of the twelfth century, including the large-scale massacre at York, were the product of crusading fervor. Jewish wealth–acquired through the dubious practice of money-lending–was increasingly seen as a legitimate target for kings or pious crusaders as a way to fund crusading. (unquote). (p. 99).

The usurious practices of the Jews are well-known, and they, rather than religious issues, played a major role in the persecutions and expulsions of Jews. For instance, violence against Jews was triggered by the king enforcing the collection of debts owed to Jews. (p. 99). The author generalizes, (quote) In these cases Jews were victims because of their actions and their association with the crown, not simply because they were the targets of a constant religious animus. (unquote). (p. 100).

The expulsions of Jews, from many medieval communities, were situational in nature, usually temporary, and driven by attempted relief from Jewish usury, as well as religion. Elukin comments, (quote) As it became clear that Jews, despite the restrictions placed on them, would not convert, expulsion seemed a practical alternative, particularly when it would secure a money grant to the monarchy from beleaguered debtors. (unquote). (p. 117).

What about violence against Jews by peasants, and the like? At least some of the recurrent violent populist attacks on Jews, in medieval times, are known to be animated by the overall privileged position of Jews in society. Note that other advantaged or “parasitic” elements in society, such as Christian clergy, were sometimes also targeted. (p. 106).