Summary Of Anti Semites By Bernard Lewis

The definition of anti-Semitism in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “hatred of Jewish people” . In the article “Anti-Semites”, Bernard Lewis discusses anti-Semitism and how Jewish hatred was originally defined by religious terms, but eventually evolved a racial issue. Anti-Semitism became a force during the medieval period in Europe and has continued for centuries. When someone thinks about Jewish hatred, I believe that the Holocaust would be the first thing on their mind. The Holocaust was the extermination of Jews based on their religion and their ethnicity. About six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, about two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe before the war . But the hatred of the Jews and the events that led up to Holocaust go back centuries.
Many believed that Jews who converted were not sincere; they still considered themselves a Jew, but pretended to be a Christian to the rest of the world. Purity of blood was an important concept in countries like Spain. Those with no Jewish or Muslim ancestors were called Old Christians, and they were considered to have pure blood. Descendants of Jews or Muslims were thought to have tainted blood, no matter how sincere they were in their conversion to Christianity . This idea of purity of blood was so important that during the Spanish Inquisition, Spain set out to destroy any last remains of Judaism and Islam. In medieval Christian Europe, the idea of purity of blood was not considered to be a racial issue, just a social one that was concerned with aristocratic superiority. But with the new encounter with African blacks and Native Americans, a racial hostility began to form towards the Jews . The slave trade did bring a new form of racism towards the blacks, but it was not until later that that form of racism was applied towards the Jews