Why do I Hate Jews?

My first cousin was once attending a rock festival outside Prague. A local approached him and asked him, in all seriousness, “Can you explain to me why I hate Jews”?

There are many explanations, here is one:

“You G-d know, and you are my witness, that in all the evils they perpetrated against me, and in all the acts of vengeance they have wrought upon me, their sole intent was to annihilate and destroy me not because of my sins, but because of what I am." Arama (commentary on lamentations appended to Aqedat Yizaq, p. 17a).

This above statement underpins Benzion Netanyahu scholarly work the Marranos of Spain (3rd edition Cornell University Press, 1999). The Marranos of Spain were a community of Jewish converts to Christianity. The story of the Marranos, Netanyahu argues, is popularly misconstrued. Whereas most scholars, Jewish and Spanish, assert that the Inquisition was implemented by Spain to discover and destroy the crypto-Jewish movement, the truth is that the inquisition created the crypto-Jewish movement.

In other words, many of the Jews of Spain after decades of arbitrary riots, forced Christian sermons, and threats of communal death, caved in and converted. The official narrative is that they kept their Judaism in secret, and where thus a threat to Spain’s Old-Christian communities faith and made Spain a target for G-d’s wrath. Netanyahu argues that the forced-converts became estranged from the unconverted Jewish brothers and due to a variety of variables, desired assimilation. The new-chrisitnas like every Jewish community in history achieved great success and power, making the old-Christians jealous. The inquisition was a way to justify, in the guise of religious zeal, a deep seated animal urge –to destroy their successful competitors.

My question on both Arama and Netanyahu is why? If the Jews became Christian and assimilated then why are they seen as competitors any more then poor old-Christians and/or rich old-Christian see rich old-Christians?

Hold your horses this cannot be explained by Marxist conceptions of class warfare. Neither do I ignore the fact that the inquisition DID target rich old-Christians. The bottom line is that the inquisition was ONLY established AFTER the mass conversions of the Jews, and their subsequent success. If it was a reflection of class, why wait till the Jews convert?

What is behind this extreme hate? First they scream don’t be Jewish, convert! Ok we converted. Not enough now cease to exist!

The inquisition rationalized an irrational desire; it humanized the animal (the animal acts out of ingrained instinct, any rationality that is evident is used solely to further their instinctual desires).

Just as the jackal still hunts as it has since its creation so too does this same irrational instinct targeting the Jew exist today, as it did in 1391-1492 (first wave of forced conversions-the expulsion). It is everywhere and it can be identified specifically by its irrationality -by its source in the animal.

The UN obsession with Israel is irrational, and is justified either by the idealists who claims Israel is a greater violator of human rights then say Sudan or Saudi Arabia. Or by the pragmatists, who correctly claim that Israel is the only state that the UN can consistently muster a majority to condemn, thereby legitimizing the UN existence. Need I say more?!

Even more animal is the anti-Semitism emerging, once again, across the globe, rationalized by Israel’s perceived abuses- yet the scope and types of criticisms targeting Israel are in themselves irrational.

This does not mean that we should automatically reject the irrational. Nor does the question of why they hate have an answer.

Perhaps one needs to accept the irrational animal within, but subjugate the animal with the rational question. Maybe.
I do not have an answer but neither will I create an inquisition, or hate a country so as to create an artificial answer, because that answer is just as irrational, as the reason why they hate Jews.