It was the most devastating pandemic in the history of mankind, responsible for the death of about 75 million people worldwide (25 million in Europe alone) in just a few years. To be sure, Jewish people also died during the “Black Death “, but generally in lesser numbers. The regulated kosher laws that religious Jews were bound to follow, forced them to maintain a stricter diet and hygiene, and thus resulted in less death in the Jewish communities. While the reduced number of Jewish casualties could partially be attributed to Jewish customs and kosher laws, it didn’t stop the masses from slaughtering and destroying over 200 Jewish communities, accusing them of poisoning the wells of Europe.
As the last quarter of the 19thcentury was approaching, Jews were about to experience another major shift in anti-Semitism. Racial anti-Semitism was about to emerge on the scene. From ancient theological anti-Semitism to modern ethnic and cultural anti-Semitism, the hatred of the Jews was soon to pick-up more momentum. In 1894 France, at a time when Jewish people thought that their emancipation had prevailed, Captain Alfred Dreyfus (an Alsacian Jew) was accused of treason against the French Government. The French Revolution of 1789, and Napoléon, had brought a hope of equality and integration into French society for French Jews, but anti-Semitism, as a temporarily inactive volcano of hatred, had just spewed its lava again. As the Dreyfus trial went on, mobs of angry Frenchmen were shouting “Death to the Jews” on the streets of Paris.
(to be continued)