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OPINION
Fight Anti-Semitism With Mutual Respect
I
gnorance breeds fear, fear breeds
prejudice, prejudice breeds hatred,
hate breeds violence.
The history of antiSemitism is rooted in this
premise. We Jews have been
carrying the weight of this
foundation for over 2,000
years.
Bishop Apollinaris of
Hierapolis wrote a polemic
against the Jews in approximately 175
CE. The first anti-Jewish polemic in
Latin, Adversus Judaeos, dates from
about 200 CE and was written by
Tertullian.
Was the anti-Semitic view of the
fathers of the church rooted in racism?
Jesus was born, lived and died as a Jew.
Was it a persecution of a race? The
contra Iudaeos tradition is a dispute
with Judaism as a religion in the same
way the church fathers disputed pagans, Manicheans, Donatists and other
heretics.
That the early Christian antiJewish polemics did the intellectual
spadework for later persecution of the
Jews is undeniable, but at their heart
the first centuries of Jewish-Christian
relations were based on intellectual
and theological disputes among people
who sprang from the same religious
soil.
Nevertheless, the interpretation
of deicide sprouted as a convoluted
understanding of future occurrences.
Medieval blood libel accusations, the
Crusades, expulsions from England
and Sp