To counter antisemitism, we must acknowledge its roots in history

No sooner had the White House released the first U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism than one of the far right’s most strident advocates attacked it. 

When President Biden declared the U.S. government would take more than 100 “bold and unprecedented actions to fight hate and antisemitism,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) tweeted, “When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives. Their tactics are straight out of the USSR’s playbook.” 

If the response to previous civil rights measures provides any indication, the rest of the anti-woke mob will soon be piling on the new policy statement.  

Boebert’s comment is not only indicative of the rising tide of antisemitism in the country but a reminder of its deep historical roots. 

Antisemitism began as a religious prejudice grounded in confusion surrounding a Christian scripture.  

According to the Gospel of Matthew, when Pontius Pilate sentenced Jesus Christ to be crucified, he declared, “I am innocent of this man’s blood.” The Jewish crowd he was addressing declared, “His blood be upon us and upon our children!” 

Many Biblical scholars challenge the historical accuracy of this passage, seeing it as an effort to shift blame from the Roman governor who executed Jesus as a political subversive to the Jewish religious authorities. Himself a Jew, the author of Matthew would hardly have invoked an eternal curse on his own people. 

Nonetheless, the passage became the basis for the persecution of Jews in medieval Europe, which often intensified during Holy Week when Christians recalled the crucifixion of Jesus. 

For example, on Easter Sunday 1389, a mob rampaged through the Jewish quarter of Prague, murdering an estimated 900 Jews because of a rumor that some of them had desecrated a communion host. 

During the 18th century Enlightenment, persecution in Western Europe lessened as countries repealed discriminatory laws against Jews. However, conditions in Eastern Europe remained dire. 

The advent of “scientific racism” in the mid-19th century turned anti-Judaism into antisemitism. Jews went from being practitioners of a despised religion to members of an alien race.  

Until the beginning of the 20th century, Jews in the United States experienced discrimination but nothing like the intense persecution they endured in Eastern Europe.  

The Establishment Clause of the Constitution may have given them some protection, but with so few Jews living in the United States, Christian Americans probably did not perceive them as a threat. As of 1840, the Jewish population numbered only 15,000. 

That situation changed dramatically during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Between 1880 and 1924, 2 million Jews immigrated to the United States, most of them from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. 

An antisemitic backlash rapidly ensured. Many universities and colleges refused to admit Jews, and restrictive covenants kept them from buying homes in white, “Christian” neighborhoods. Many businesses refused to hire Jews, and private clubs denied them membership. 

Discrimination sometimes escalated to violence. The Ku Klux Klan added Jews to its list of hated minorities. In 1913, a Georgia mob lynched Leo Frank, the Jewish manager of an Atlanta factory, on the false charge of murdering a young girl who worked at the plant. 

A wave of xenophobia of which antisemitism formed a part swept the United States after WWI, leading to the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act with its quota system favoring Northern and Western Europeans.  

While the act deprived Southern and Eastern Europeans of the opportunity for a better life, it denied many Jews a chance at life itself. 

Contrary to popular belief, those trying to flee Nazi persecution had less trouble leaving Germany than they did entering other countries, including the United States. 

 From 1933 to 1938, the Roosevelt administration admitted approximately 30,000 German Jews, using just 30 percent of visas allocated for Germany. Perhaps 70,000 more could have been saved just by issuing unused visas. 

Amending the law in light of the growing refugee crisis would have saved even more, but 82 percent of Americans surveyed in 1938 opposed admitting a greater number of Jewish Refugees.  

While legal forms of discrimination such as restrictive covenants ended after World War II, prejudice continued. Prestigious law firms refused to hire Jews and many country clubs denied them membership. 

Antisemitism may have lessened in the ensuing decades, but it never disappeared. It has returned with a vengeance in the 21st century as part of a revived white supremacy movement.  

The August 2017 Unite the Right Rally featured a tiki torch parade reminiscent of the Third Reich, during which marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” 

Asked to comment on confrontations between the racists and counterdemonstrators, then President Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides.” 

Inflammatory rhetoric invariable leads to violent action, especially when people in power refuse to condemn it. In its recent report, the Anti-Defamation League documented a 36 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in 2022. 

Fortunately, none of the incidents involved loss of life. But as the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre reminds us, the threat of murder remains ever-present. 

The historic affinity between antisemitism and other forms of bigotry manifest at Charlottesville led United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shaheed, to describe antisemitism as the “canary in the coal mine of global hatred.”  

Bigots are equal-opportunity haters. Racists are usually antisemitic, and antisemites are almost always racist, Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQ and usually misogynistic.  

Just as the canary reminded coal miners to act before toxic fumes suffocated them, antisemitism reminds us to respond to hatred in any form whenever and wherever it appears lest its poison destroy us. 

Contrary to what the critics will surely say, the Biden administration’s strategy does not privilege one group but serves society as a whole, reminding Americans that an attack on any of us is an attack on all of us. 

Contemporary Christians bear no responsibility for the sins of our ancestors but we must acknowledge the awful legacy of how our churches treated Jews over the centuries. That realization should put Christians at the forefront of those implementing the new strategy. 

Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and the author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat.”