Hildegarde

So, I’ve been thinking about this.

I think it’s really hard to credit just how singular the reaction to Judaism and Jews has been throughout history. 

Yes, of course we resent middlemen and we want to scapegoat ‘the other,” but no other ethnic or religious group has been the subject of repeated calls to wipe them off the planet, to kill every last one of them. 

The Hindu and Muslim populations of East and South Asia want to run the Chinese out of town, they don’t want to slaughter them wholesale and then invade their home country and slaughter them wholesale there. 

Calls for worldwide and absolute extermination of the Jews go back to Persia, before there was a Christianity of any kind.  The Roman Empire was unusual, relative to any of the civilizations that came before it or after it who had contact with Judaism, in not calling for such extermination.

I don’t think this can be explained by the usual analyses–there is something honestly different going on here. 

And, like I said, I don’t know what.