Hacker News Reader

Comment by VaxportsForever | Hacker News Reader

You didn't answer the question of what made them undesirable.

Edit: The HNers quoting Wikipedia can sit this one out. You already demonstrated you don't have an answer to this question.

View on HN

Beginning with Lutheranism, it was their unwillingness to convert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism

Prior to Lutheranism it was their unwillingness to convert, see Spanish Inquisition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

If you're seeking some negative stereotype that's true about them, you'll be disappointed to find out that the main one was their unwillingness to convert.

Religion was -at that time- just defining social norms, like the government defines them today (the church got kicked out at some point then, because science proofed them wrong with many things). If everyone lives by "rules A" (and are convinced those are the right rules, e.g. "don't lend money"), then just living by a different/opposing set of rules is asking for trouble.

They were forced in certain professions, such as banking, by making anything else unavailable to them. A very unlikeable profession for your average Joe, as having to interact with a banker is often bad news for people. They were also forced to keep to themselves in specific parts of the city -- combine that with looking different (mostly in hair and clothing), religious customs other than what the majority population was used to, difficult dialects bordering on being a different language altogether. The perfect scapegoat storm, so to speak, whenever there are fits of xenophobia.

Interestingly, banking and other professions associated with Jews, excluded Jews until relatively recently.

> The term originated in the Ivy League colleges and originally reflected a stereotype of old-line firms populated by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). The term historically had antisemitic connotations, as many of the New York firms known as "white shoe" were considered off-limits to Jews until the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-shoe_firm

Apologies, it was late and English is not my native language so I used the term "banking" when I shouldn't have. What I wanted to refer to is this:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_antisemitism#Restrict...>

in the medieval ages the church forbade certain types of lending, thats why in Crusader Kings 2 you can borrow money from the Jews, and then expel them so you dont have to pay them back (which actually gives you a negative economic bonus for a time)

It's like any other anti-competitive cartel.

The tradition of anti-Semitism probably began for a combination of religious reasons (Jews were for a very long time the main or only religious outgroup in much of Europe, and have traditionally been blamed for killing Jesus), and pure racism.

> Antisemitism has been explained in terms of racism, xenophobia, projected guilt, displaced aggression, and the search for a scapegoat.[243] Some explanations assign partial blame to the perception of Jewish people as unsociable. Such a perception may have arisen by many Jews having strictly kept to their own communities, with their own practices and laws.[244]

> It has also been suggested that parts of antisemitism arose from a perception of Jewish people as greedy (as often used in stereotypes of Jews), and this perception has probably evolved in Europe during Medieval times where a large portion of money lending was operated by Jews.[245] Factors contributing to this situation included that Jews were restricted from other professions,[245] while the Christian Church declared for their followers that money lending constituted immoral "usury".[246]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#Causes

Following the expulsion of Jews from Israel by the Roman's, Jews spent ~2000 years as smaller communities in Europe, never quite integrating. It seems a sad tendency of human nature to distrust and blame visible minorities for our problems. We have similar problems today, with different minorities, mostly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com