The persecution of Jews is a major aspect of the history of antisemitism and Jewish history, and as a result, it has prompted shifting waves of refugees and the formation of diaspora communities around the world. The earliest major event occurred in 597 BCE, when the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Judah and then persecuted and exiled many of its Jewish subjects. Antisemitism has been widespread across many regions of the world and it has also been practiced by many different peoples, governments, and adherents of different religions.
Jews have been commonly used as scapegoats for tragedies and disasters such as the Black Death, the decline of the Russian Empire, and the ideology of Nazism, which led to the Holocaust, the mass murder of six million Jews during World War II.
Ancient history Neo-Babylonian Empire
The Babylonian captivity or the Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat in the Jewish–Babylonian war and the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The event is described in the Hebrew Bible, and its historicity is supported by archaeological and non-biblical evidence.
After the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, which resulted in tribute being paid by the Judean king Jehoiakim. In the fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign, Jehoiakim refused to pay further tribute. This led to another siege of the city in Nebuchadnezzar II's seventh year that culminated in the death of Jehoiakim and the exile to Babylonia of his successor Jeconiah, his court and many others.
Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and others were exiled in Nebuchadnezzar II's 18th year. A later deportation occurred in Nebuchadnezzar II's 23rd year. The dates, numbers of deportations, and numbers of deportees given in the biblical accounts vary. These deportations are dated to 597 BC for the first, with others dated at 587/586 BC, and 582/581 BC respectively.
Seleucid Empire
When Judea fell under the authority of the Seleucid Empire, the process of Hellenization was enforced by law. This effectively meant requiring pagan religious practice. In 167 BC Jewish sacrifice was forbidden, sabbaths and feasts were banned and circumcision was outlawed. Altars to Greek gods were set up and animals prohibited to Jews were sacrificed on them. The Olympian Zeus was placed on the altar of the Temple. Possession of Jewish scriptures was made a capital offense.
Roman Empire
The Jewish Encyclopaedia refers to the antisemitic persecution of Jews and the paganization of Jerusalem during the reign of Emperor Hadrian (117–138 AD):
Medieval period Europe
In the Middle Ages, antisemitism in Europe was religious. Many Christians, including members of the clergy, held the Jewish people collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus. As stated in the Boston College Guide to Passion Plays, "Over the course of time, Christians began to accept … that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for killing Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews present at Jesus Christ's death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time, have committed the sin of deicide, or 'god-killing'. For 1900 years of Christian-Jewish history, the charge of deicide has led to hatred, violence against and murder of Jews in Europe and America."
During the High Middle Ages in Europe, there was full-scale persecution of Jews in many places, with blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. The persecution reached its first peak during the Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096), flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed, a prime example being the Rhineland massacres.
In the Second Crusade (1147), Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions. All English Jews were banished in 1290. 100,000 Jews were expelled from France in 1396. In 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.
As the Black Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews were taken as scapegoats. Rumors spread that they caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by violence in the Black Death persecutions. Although Pope Clement VI tried to protect them by papal bull on July 6, 1348 – with another following later in 1348 – several months afterwards, 900 Jews were burnt alive in Strasbourg, where the plague hadn't yet affected the city.See Stéphane Barry and Norbert Gualde, La plus grande épidémie de Histoire ("The greatest epidemics in history"), in L'Histoire magazine, n°310, June 2006, p.47
One study finds that persecutions and expulsions of Jews increased with negative economic shocks and climatic variations in Europe during the period from 1100 to 1600. The authors of the study argue that this stems from people blaming Jews for misfortunes and weak rulers going after Jewish wealth in times of fiscal crisis. The authors propose several explanations for why Jewish persecutions significantly declined after 1600: there were simply fewer Jewish communities to persecute by the 17th century; improved agricultural productivity, or, better-integrated markets may have reduced vulnerability to temperature shocks; the rise of stronger states may have led to more robust protection for religious and ethnic minorities; there were fewer negative temperature shocks. the impact of the Reformation and the Enlightenment may have reduced anti-semitic attitudes.
Muslim world
According to Mark R. Cohen, during the rise of Islam, the first encounters between Muslims and Jews resulted in friendship when the people of Medina gave Muhammad refuge, among them were Jewish tribes of Medina. Conflict arose when Muhammad expelled certain Jewish tribes after they refused to swear their allegiance to him and aided Meccan pagans. He adds that this encounter was an exception rather than a rule.Cohen, Mark R. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 163.
Of the three Jewish tribes of Medina, the Banu Nadir and the Banu Qaynuqa were expelled in the course of Muhammad's rule after suspicion arose in the Muslim leadership that the Jews were planning the assassination of Muhammad. On the other hand, the Banu Qurayza tribe was exterminated by Muhammad in the aftermath of the Battle of the Trench. The tribe was accused of colluding with Meccan enemies during the Meccan siege of Medina and subsequently besieged. When they surrendered, all grown men were executed and women and children were enslaved.Kister, "The Massacre of the Banu Quraiza", p. 95 ff.Rodinson, Muhammad: Prophet of Islam, p. 213. Muhammad is recorded as saying that he would expel all Jews and Christians from Arabia, although this was not carried out until the reign of Umar.Giorgio Levi Della Vida and Michael Bonner, Encyclopaedia of Islam, and Madelung, The Succession to Prophet Muhammad, p. 74
When Amr ibn al-As conquered Tripoli in 643, he forced the Jewish and Christian Berbers to give their wives and children as slaves to the Arab army as part of their jizya.
Traditionally, Jews living in Islamic states were subjected to the status of dhimmi, therefore they were allowed to practice their religion and administer their internal affairs, but were subjects to certain conditions.Lewis (1984), pp.10,20 They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to Muslims. Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims.Lewis (1984), pp. 9, 27 Contrary to popular belief, the Qur'an did not order Muslims to force Jews to wear distinctive clothing. Obadiah the Proselyte reported in 1100 AD that the Caliph had created this rule himself.Scheiber, A. (1954) "The Origins of Obadiah, the Norman Proselyte" Journal of Jewish Studies London: Oxford University Press. v. 5. p. 37
Resentment toward Jews perceived as having attained too lofty a position in Islamic society also fueled antisemitism and massacres. In Andalusian Spain, ibn Hazm and Abu Ishaq focused their anti-Jewish writings on this allegation. This was also the chief motivation behind the 1066 Granada massacre, when "[m]ore than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day", and in Fez in 1033, when 6,000 Jews were killed.Morris, Benny (2001) Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist–Arab Conflict, 1881–2001. New York:Vintage Books. pp. 10–11. There were further massacres in Fez in 1276 and 1465.Gerber (1986), p. 84
In 1354, Muslim mobs in Egypt "ran amok ... attacking Christians and Jews in the streets, and throwing them into bonfires if they refused to pronounce the shadādatayn."
The Almohads wreaked enormous destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastation, massacre, captivity, and forced conversion was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham ibn Daud and the poet Abraham ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim "inquisitors" took children from their families and placed them in the care of Muslim educators.
Maimonides, who had to flee from Almohad-controlled Iberia with his family, said "God has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us. Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they. We bear the inhumane burden of their humiliation, lies and absurdities, being as the prophet said, 'like a deaf man who does not hear or a dumb man who does not open his mouth' ... Our sages disciplined us to bear Ishmael's lies and absurdities, listening in silence, and we have trained ourselves, old and young, to endure their humiliation, as Isaiah said, 'I have given my back to the smiters, and my cheek to the beard pullers.
Early modern period The Jews suffered during the Ottoman conquests and policies of colonization and population transfers (the surgun system). This resulted in the disappearance of several Jewish communities, including Salonica, and their replacement by Jewish refugees from Spain. Joseph R. Hacker observes:
Hacker concludes that the friendly policies of Mehmed and the good reception by Bayezid II of Spanish Jews likely caused 16th century Jewish writers to overlook both the destruction Byzantine Jews suffered during the Ottoman conquests and the later outbursts of oppression under Bayezid II and Selim I.
Sultan Murad IV wished to be seen as the exemplar of right religion, and believed it was politically and legally required to treat second-class non-Muslims with the appropriate contempt and humble them. In 1631, he issued a decree re-enforcing the dress restrictions for non-Muslims:
When a fire devastated much of Constantinople in 1660, the Ottomans blamed the Jews and expelled them from the city. Inscribed in the royal mosque in Constantinople was a reference to Prophets Muhammad's expulsion of the Jews from Medina; the mosque's endowment deed has a reference to "the Jews who are the enemy of Islam."
In the Zaydi imamate of Yemen, Jews were singled out for discrimination in the 17th century, which culminated in the general expulsion of all Jews from places in Yemen to the arid coastal plain of Tihamah, and which became known as the Mawza Exile.Qafiḥ, Yossef (1989) Ketavim (Collected Papers), c.2, Jerusalem, Israel. pp.714-ff. (Hebrew)
Late modern period Muslim world