Antisemitic Tropes: Greed and Control
“People in the Middle Ages weren’t stupid,” my church history professor would say.
He’d show us clips from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which peasant characters are shown collecting piles of mud, pawing through straw, stabbing the ground with sticks, and otherwise engaging in tasks of indiscernible purpose.
“That’s how we tend to think of people in the past,” my professor would say. “We think we know better than them. But they were just as smart as we are.”
Despite my professor’s warning, I still catch myself with the mindset that modern people know better. It’s why I’m still surprised every time I hear an antisemitic trope from the Middle Ages expressed as fact today.
One of the most prevalent of these tropes is the belief that Jewish people are inherently greedy and use their wealth to maintain control over the world. Where do these centuries-old ideas originate?
The Greed Trope
The trope of Jewish greed emerged during a politically, theologically, and legally complex period in the Middle Ages, when church leaders were raising an outcry against Christian usury (corrupt moneylending practices). During the push to outlaw Christian moneylending practices, Jewish people were still permitted to lend money at interest.[1] As might be expected, influential figures came to resent money owed by Christians to Jewish lenders and accused them of stealing Christian wealth.[2]
Around the same time, the political notion arose that Jewish Europeans should be under the fiscal control of European rulers. Jewish moneylending was seen as a subversion of this order. By the early 12th century, “the overriding presumption was that Jews, as enemies of Christ, his church, and the church’s Christians, [would] use usury to injure the Church, its crusaders, and Christendom.”[3]
During the 13th century, “secular rulers’ policies on Jews came to be shaped by the theological category of the Jew ‘who has nothing except what he acquired from usury.’”[4] To make a long tragedy short, this impression led to the eventual expulsion of Jewish communities from many parts of Europe. Rulers “criminalized Jews by coupling the traditional emphasis on Jewish servitude as a punishment for killing Christ[5] with claims of usury extracted in defiance of royal decrees.”[6]
What began as a theological debate about Christians and among Christians ultimately birthed the antisemitic trope of Jewish greed. Today, “The assumption of an association between Jews and money remains a dangerous trope, a stereotype disconnected from economic realities.”[7] It has continually emerged in Christian and secular literature and thought through the centuries and into the present day. It has shaped the English language, burdening it with offensive expressions like “rich as a Jew.”
The Control Trope
Closely tied with the trope of Jewish greed is the belief that Jewish people use their wealth behind the scenes to influence or control world events. This belief was breathed as early as the 4th century by Ambrose, the bishop of Mediolanum. Ambrose’s letter had “an ominously modern ring in accusing Jews of insinuating themselves in the highest councils where they disturb[ed] the ears of judges and other public figures.”[8]
This trope has lurked in the shadows since Ambrose’s time, but in recent history has taken deep root in American culture. To understand this, we need to go back to 1864, when Maurice Joly, a French political satirist, published The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu – which made no mention of Jewish people.
In the 1890’s, a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion[9] emerged in Russia, featuring elements plagiarized from Joly’s satire but bringing fictitious Jewish leaders to the center stage. The Protocols, “the most widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times…falsely purports to be the record of secret meetings of Jewish leaders who were plotting to take over the world.”[10]
Despite repeated exposure by various journalists and reporters[11] as a plagiarized work, the Protocols was published in Germany, Poland, France, England, and the United States in the early 1920s.
Henry Ford is responsible for the Protocol’s widespread distribution in the US in his popular publication, the Dearborn Independent. Although he later apologized for publishing these “gross forgeries,”[12] the lie had already taken root in American culture. Today, many who have never even heard of the Protocols firmly believe in the existence of a Jewish conspiracy controlling the world.
And it’s not just the US; despite being repeatedly debunked, the Protocols has continued to emerge in various nations including India, Iran, Egypt, Japan, Mexico, Syria, and Pakistan.[13]
Conclusion
Hatred and fear are among Satan’s favorite tools for opposing God and attacking those whom God loves. We are just as susceptible as our Medieval forebears to uncritically accept accusations grounded on prejudice rather than truth.
The truth is that a lust for wealth and power is a human trait. We can all lay claim to this legacy of the fall. Attributing a people group with a propensity toward a particular sin obscures the reality that we are all affected by sin.
To embrace an antisemitic trope is to embrace a lie. And we as believers are called to walk in the light of truth.
“See that no one deceives you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), as you try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.”
Written by Miriam, Life in Messiah Communications Assistant
Once you start paying attention, you may be surprised by how often these two antisemitic tropes crop up in pop culture and casual conversation. How would the Lord have you respond?
For more on antisemitic tropes, check out this blog: The Deicide Charge.
Want to take a next step? Here are some ideas: How to Fight Antisemitism.
Endnotes:
[1] https://www.jta.org/jewniverse/2012/how-the-church-turned-jews-into-moneylenders.
[2] Mell, J. (2022). Jews and Money: The Medieval Origins of a Modern Stereotype. In S. Katz (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism (Cambridge Companions to Religion, pp. 213-231). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Mell J., p. 225.
[4] Mell J., p. 226.
[5] Click here to read about the deicide charge, another antisemitic trope.
[6] Mell J., p. 229.
[7] Mell, J., p. 213.
[8] See “Christian Persecution of Jews over the Centuries” by Gerard S. Sloyan. https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20070119-persecution.pdf.
[9] Also published as The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion.
[10] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/gallery/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-photographs.
[11] Including Lucien Wolf (The Jewish Bogey and the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion), Phillip Graves (in a series in the London Times), Herman Bernstein (The History of a Lie: The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion), Benjamin Segel (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Critically Illuminated).
[12] See Holocaust Encyclopedia: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-key-dates.
[13] See https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-key-dates and https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/gallery/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-photograph