A Legacy of Hatred

...They railed against the Talmud-centered rabbinic tradition for being "quintessentially stupid, blasphemous, and heretical...

...The Barcelona exchange was something of an exception in this regard, though, because these affairs were usually more like show trials than open debates: The Christians determined the agenda, and threats of pogroms hung over the proceedings...

...Although Cohen sees some merit in these explanations, he feels they ignore a key element????the role of Christian theology...

...His extremely well-written monograph deals with the intellectual side of the issue, focusing particularly on the role of the Dominican and Franciscan friars in shaping a new Christian anti-Semitic ideology...

...Only from this period were Jews portrayed as real, active agents of Satan, charged with innumerable forms of hostility toward Christianity, Christendom, and individual Christians...

...For his part, Cohen points out that Pablo Christiani's polemic, pitting itself against the supposed evils of the rabbis, was an important milestone in the growth of the new anti-Jewish ideology...

...That observation raises questions about the roots of Christian anti-Semitism itself in the premodern era...

...Thus there could be no tolerating Jews and Judaism within Christendom...

...a gross deviation from the religion of the Old Testament...

...The wish to base anti-Semitism on grounds beyond the Jewish-Christian division," he maintained, has "remained in fact a mere declaration of intent...

...Moreover, the friars insisted that the Talmud?that "artifice of the devil," as the Dominican Raymond Martini called it?exhorted Jews to cheat and kill Christians...

...As he puts it: "In view ofthe great influence which religion wielded over the people of medieval Europe, it is difficult to believe that had the Church remained constantly committed to the Augustinian [teaching] of tolerating the Jews, the Jewish presence in Western Europe could have been virtually eliminated...

...To this day, students of religion are still arguing about who came out the better...

...To weaken the resistance to Christian missionary efforts, the friars also staged elaborate disputations with prominent Jewish scholars...

...The friars, he shows, brought about a revolution in Christian perceptions: "No one [before them] had accused medieval Jews of deliberately forsaking the literal biblical Judaism of their ancestors, and no one had maintained that it was illegitimate for Jews as Jews to preserve the Talmud and live according to its teachings...

...And by the mid-1500s, most of Western Europe contained no Jews at all...

...Given the Dominicans' and Franciscans' anathematization of rabbinic Judaism, it is hardly surprising that they made an energetic attempt to convert the Jews...

...Permanent expulsion of European Jewries began in 1290...

...Cohen concludes: "The intent of the friars was obvious: to eliminate the Jewish presence in Christendom...

...No anti-Semite, even if he himself was anti-Christian, ever forewent the use of those anti-Jewish arguments rooted in the denigration of Jews and Judaism in earlier Christian times...

...The rationale was provided by friars belonging to the Dominican and Franciscan orders (both groups came into being in the early 13th century), who "developed, refined, and sought to implement a new Christian ideology...

...Legitimate right to exist"????that is the crucial phrase...

...In the most famous such event, the Barcelona disputation of 1263, King James I of Aragon summoned the great Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (Nachmanides) to debate with the Jewish apostate, Friar Pablo Christiani, before the royal court...

...Reviewed by David Singer Editor, "American Jewish Year Book" In From Prejudice to Destruction, a major study published two years ago, the eminent Israeli historian Jacob Katz argued persuasively that modern anti-Semitism was a direct outgrowth of the traditional rejection of Judaism by Christianity...

...Prior to that, the Jews had enjoyed relative peace, security and communal autonomy as an of fi-cially tolerated minority within Christendom...

...In the older Augustinian view, unchallenged in Christian theological circles until the 13th century, Jewish survival was deemed valid and even necessary...

...that allotted the Jews no legitimate right to exist in European society...

...Cohen vigorously argues that the "latemedievalattackson...

...In seeking to account for this hostility, historians have emphasized the anti-Jewish animus stirred up by the Crusades of the 11 th and 12th centuries, the ire of a rising Christian middle class at Jewish commercial success, and the xenophobia engendered by incipient medieval nationalism...

...What followed, as Cohen notes, was a disaster: "From the 13th century onward, anti-Jewish violence increased throughout Europe...

...Cohen devotes a fascinating chapter to this aspect of the Dominican-Franciscan program...

...Such trends in the political and religious thought of the 13th century certainly made the climate ripe for the exclusion of the Jews, the infidels most deeply imbedded in the society, from Christendom...

...The disputations were held under official ecclesiastical and royal sponsorship with Jewish participation mandated...

...By the middle of the next century, it was almost inevitable that Jews were blamed for the Black Death and many of their communities in Germany were completely and permanently exterminated...

...There was pressure of every sort: The friars headed up the Inquisition, burned copies of the Talmud, forcibly entered synagogues and preached to the Jewish masses, and????when all else failed????incited mob violence...

...Nobody had indicted the constantly evolving legal tradition (halakhah), which regulated the conduct of every facet of Jewish life, for posing a heretical challenge to the authority of the Old Testament...

...Cohen presents a mass of evidence to back up his contention that the Dominicans and Franciscans undercut the Au-gustinian position by portraying rabbinic Judaism in a totally sinister light...

...In the final chapter of his fine study, Cohen expands upon his belief that an explanation for the premodern theological attack on Judaism is to be found in the "evolving self-consciousness of high medieval Christendom": "In a society which was committed to an ideal of organic unity, which demanded of all its members a functional contribution to the achievement of that unity, which defined both its ideal and its mode of organization in terms of the mystical body of Christ, which operated (at least in theory) as the centralized monarchy of theearthly vicar of Christ, and which gave rise to intense feelings of patriotism on its own behalf, no room existed for infidels...

...In contrast, the Dominicans and Franciscans regarded the Judaism of their day as "heresy and perversion...

...Scholars have long been aware that the 13th century was a turning point for medieval Jewry...

...Many historians have explored the topic, and the latest to join in the effort is Jeremy Cohen...

...The Jews, then, became the victims of far-reaching changes shaping the larger society, as has all too often been the case...

...Jewry did have their theological justification...

...Augustine wished to see the Jews preserved, Cohen observes, "for the sake of the Church, so that in adhering to the Old Testament they might witness the truth of and historical basis for Christological prophecy, and so that they might ultimately accept the implications of this prophecy by converting to Christianity at the end of days...