What had the Jews done that justifies and explains their mass murder during the Crusades?
For historical sources written in proximity to the above events see:
The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook, 315-1791
books.google.co.il/books?id=PCalmtflYtEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=iw&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
None of it can be morally justified, CP. That’s not to say I’m sure Catholics of the era didn’t offer their reasons. But not all reasoning is the best of reasoning. Adolf Hitler gave his reasons and the KKK had their own reasons.
I take a slightly different view of European Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish history in terms of their antagonistic relationships. In particular I find it a story of white people fighting and butchering other white people.
Some might find that odd but I don’t. The Spanish (many of whom ironically have Jewish blood running their veins) for all their historical blood purity racism couldn’t tell the phenotypic difference between Jews and Spaniards, thus they would often inspect for circumcision. The Nazi’s ran into this problem as well irrespective of their stereotypes of how a “Jew” is supposed to look.
Then is further suggested among the Spaniards when you find out that
converso Jews primarily ran the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade throughout the Spanish Americas. And this is given further evidence by the Inquisition records in Americas detailing the Amerindians and black slaves pelting the converso Jews with fruit as they are being walked to their death. Pelting them because their state in life was in large part to do with the converso Jews who worked in - if not administered - the system that enslaved and exploited them. So, this provides some evidence that converso Jews were assimilated into the Catholic Spanish system of racial castes and the converso Jews where therefore integrated into the “whites.”
The Ethiopian Orthodox have been discriminatory and antagonistic towards the Ethiopian Jews too. The Ethiopian Jews of course… being early and ancient converts to Judaism. What happened to the ancient Hebrew Jews I’m not exactly sure but I’m sure their bloodlines remain throughout some of the Arab Jewish families and European Jewish family. But the Jews have been historically a wandering people often persecuted by others in one way or another.
While it may be possible - if some old documents are to be believed - that some Spanish Jews worked with the North African Moors to help insure the Moors successful invasion of the Spanish kingdoms, that still would not be justifiable reasons for massacring Jews.
To put it simply: Some Catholics were just
evil people. Just like some Protestants. Overall, I think the Jews have a much better historical record and historical culture of dealing with other peoples that are the “other” or not them. Unlike Catholics. European Catholics haven’t even liked Catholics that were a different race than them. They’ve enslaved (blacks) or exploited (mestizos) their own Catholics.
Jewish culture and tradition contain some VERY healthy and productive values: valuing education highly…
Valuing Western higher education and rationalism is a rather recent thing in the history of Judaism. This really began during the Jewish Reformation that ironically began in Germany (as it’s Christian counterpart did). The Jewish Reformation was largely a liberal movement whereas the Christian Reformation was largely a conservative movement.
Orthodoxy Christianity which might be said to be the Catholicism or Orthodox Christianity of the Jewish world… focused much more on mysteries and oral traditions and took the Torah or Old Testament literally. It does today. I was surprised when a social worker I was meeting with that was an Orthodox Jew stated they believe the earth is only something like 6,000 years old and that they take Genesis literally.
During and after the Jewish Reformation the liberal Jews began dressing like Western Christians (Catholics and Protestants) and enthusiastically embraced rationalism and its fruits of science borne forth among Catholics and Protestants (rationalism more enthusiastically embraced among Protestants than Catholics with its emphasis on sacramentalism and sacred rites). To this very day liberal Jews have distinguished themselves par excellently and disproportionately in the intellectual, academic, and scientific world.
But before the Jewish Reformation the Jews did not usually embrace rationalism and its systems of education to the degree Catholics and Protestants did, and the Orthodox Jews distinguished themselves outwardly in dress (to this day at times - I grew up in an area of Milwaukee not far from an Orthodox Jewish area of town, you would frequently see them walking once or so a week dressed in black with particular styles of black hats, and long curls down the sides of their faces).
It might surprise some but for a long time the liberal Jews of Western Europe often despised the once largely Orthodox Jews of Eastern Europe. They regarded those Jews of Eastern Europe as backwards and ignorant buffoons that epitomized everything of Jewish stereotype.
It should probably come as no surprise that most the Jews that came from Western Europe and Germany during the 1920’s and 1930’s arrived in the United States as members of the middle-class. Those that came from Eastern Europe arrived in the United States as members of the poor. The former became productive and respected members of academia and the latter became prize fighters and often the right-hand men of Italian and Sicilian-American hoodlums, sharing their ghetto neighborhoods.
