From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Greek Anti Semitism in the Ottoman Empire.
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 15:57:43 GMT


In article <4625.3248.uupcb@factory.com> michael.polymenakos@factory.com (Michael Polymenakos) writes:

>Another news clipping from BYTEWEEK:
>  ANKARA, TURKEY 8/4/92. Reported by Ella McCoos.
>  While the official reaction is to deny the reports about the existence

Here is another one.

Source: Stanford J. Shaw (Professor of Turkish History, University of 
        California Los Angeles),  'Christian Anti Semitism in the Ottoman 
        Empire,' Belleten, C. LIV, 68 (1991).

 page 1077:

 <<These Crusaders left in their wake new 'blood libel' and 'desecration
 of host' passions which in turn led to later attacks on the surviving
 Jewish communities wherever there was even the slightest rumor which
 provided a pretext and rallying cry. The spread of the Black Death
 throughout Western Europe, particularly between 1348 and 1350, provided
 a new pretext to blame Jews for catastrophe, in this case with the story
 that they poisoned water supplies to cause the plague and wipe out
 Christianity, with the hope that by persecuting them its spread would be
 checked [8]. Many Jews who survived were ultimately allowed to resettle
 in their old homes, but invariably in worse terms than before [9]. The
 Black Death and the resulting pogroms not only caused deaths and
 destruction of homes and shops of thousands of Jews, thus, but also
 intensified the popular Christian stereotypes of the Jews, many of which
 have remained the basis for anti-semitism in modern times.

 There often were massacres, as for example in Frankfurt in 1241, Munich
 in 1285-6 [10] and Amleder in 1336 [11]. Expulsions had been carried out
 in earlier centuries, but they always had been limited both in time and
 area. But now as royal authority extended more widely in each kingdom,
 so also did the expulsions become more permanent and extensive. Now there
 were sudden and violent deportations, sometimes for very long periods of
 time. They began in England, strangely enough the last country of Western
 Christandom to admit Jews, starting with the decree of Edward I issued
 on 18 July 1290, which was enforced for almost four centuries, until
 1650 [12]. In France, Louis IX (1226-1270) enforced the decrees of the
 Fourth Lateran Council with great severity, decreeing the expulsion of all
 Jews from his kingdom as he left for the first Crusade in 1249. Philip the
 Fair (1285-1314) ordered all French Jews to be arrested (July 1306),
 following this up with a decree condemning them to expulsion and
 confiscation of their property, though this later was revoked by his
 successor. Charles IV expelled the Jews again in 1322, and it was only
 due to a financial crisis in 1359 that they were admitted again. In 1380
 and 1382 there were riots against the Jews in Paris, and starting in 1394
 they were expelled again, this time not to return for centuries, in some
 areas not until the start of the French Revolution four centuries later[13].
 Jews were excluded from Russia from the fifteenth century until 1772,
 when masses of Jews were included as a result of the Russian annexation
 of Poland and Lithuania. They were banned from Hungary after 1376 [14],
 from Naples in 1510-1511, and from almost anywhere in Germany in the
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though in some cases because of its
 lack of unity these deportations were temporary and local at best, with
 Jews simply going from one locality to another, and then ultimately
 returning to their original homes as time passed and the deportation
 decrees were annulled or forgotten by political and religious leaders
 who saw their own incomes falling in the absence of their Jewish advisors.

 Thing were no better in Byzantium. Byzantine Jews were nominally free to
 follow their own faith, but just as the Romans had reduced Jews to no more
 than subject status, so also Byzantines excluded Jews from rights of full
 citizenship. The motives of Romans were mainly political; but Byzantines
 were moved also by religious reasons as well. From their absolute
 conviction, taught by the Greek Orthodox Church, that the Jews were
 condemned by God for rejecting his Word and for the Unforgivable Crime
 of killing Jesus Christ, it was logical to conclude that the Jews ought to
 be punished by God's new chosen people, the Christians, by being subjected
 to various restrictions.>>

[8] 'France', EJ VII, 16. 'Germany', EJ VI, 468.
[9] J. Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews (1961), 97-108. P. Ziegler,
    Black Death (1969). 'Black Death', EJ IV, 1063-1068.
[10] 'Germany', EJ VI, 467. The Jewish Encyclopedia: New Edition III
     (New York, 1925), 266. Zunz, Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters, 33.
     Mom.Germ. XI. 210, 872, XVII, 415. A. M. Hebermann, ed., Sefer
     Gezerot Ashkenaz ve-Zarefat (1946), 199. 'Blood-libel', EJ (Jerusalem,
     1972) IV, 1122. Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, 282.
[11] 'Germany', EJ VI, 468.
[12] 'England', EJ VI, 751-752.
[13] S.A. Rozanes, History of the Jews in Turkey (in Hebrew) (2nd edition,
     Sofia, 1930-38), 11, 128; Barisa Krekic, Dubrovnik in the Fourteenth
     and Fifteenth Centuries (Norman, Oklahoma, 1972), 30. 'France',
     EJ VII, 17.
[14] EJ [Encyclopaedia Judaica] VI, 469.

Serdar Argic

                     'This war quickly developed into one of extermination. 
                      We closed the roads and mountain passes that might 
                      serve as ways of escape for the Tartars [Turks] and 
                      then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                       (Ohanus Appressian)