Dear Foxy,

A bit of an age old question isn't it and no real easy answers.

Being forbidden by many Christian countries from working in certain industries often they were left with money lending as a means of making a living.

The various pogroms were often incited by indebt nobility to erase those debts.

The Catholic Church's antithesis to Jews was obviously partly based on their apparent 'unbeliever' status, not yielding to the Christian Lord.

It is obvious from Hitler's Mien Kampf that he was radicalised by a Christian socialism mayor who pushed anti-Semitic ideas on an impressionable young man.

But there are other quite local instances of manufactured or circumstantial hatred such as that in Poland where Jewish landlords serving Russian masters were particularly resented for oppressive rents on the peasant class.

There was also the question of closed guilds and the divisions they elicited.

"Despite the violent opposition of the Christian guilds, the number of Jewish artisans increased considerably and they organized themselves in guilds during the 16th to 18th centuries after the pattern of the Christian guilds, and in order to protect themselves from them. In Prague, there were Jewish guilds of butchers, tailors, furriers, embroiderers, shoemakers, goldsmiths, hairdressers, and pharmacists. In several towns of Poland and Lithuania, such as Brody, krakow, Lublin, Lvov, Lissa (Leszno), and Vilna, there were numerous Jewish guilds, with up to ten in one community."
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/guilds-jewish-virtual-library

indyvidual,

For your information Eli Wiesel was a Romanian born
Jewish American writer. A professor, Political activist.
A Nobel Laureate and a Holocaust survivor (Auschwitz and
Buchenwald). He wrote over 57 books.

I have never heard the German term of weasel referred to
this highly respected man.

It does you no credit.

Dear Steele,

Thank you for your input into this discussion.
I'm certainly learning a great deal from all the various
responses. There's much that I didn't know. It is an
interesting journey of discovery. And it is forcing me to
re-examine my own assumptions as well. Especially what we
were taught in school.

Foxy,
To survive like he did he would have had to be as cunning as one. Horrific experiences indeed.
I knew many old men who were in war prisons & after the wars worked & worked & worked & never had the chance to do anything else let alone study to become Academics.
The Jewish excelled in looking after their own hence their successes despite the odds.

The rising levels of antisemitism have been driven by the left.

This is because they are viewed as successful, white, and associated with Israel which oppresses Palestinians who are undemocratic, murderous misogynistic homophobes, but because they are nonwhite, and Muslims deserve our love and protection.

SM,

A bit of what can I say, stereotyping on your part. If you are born a Palestinian you're automatically an "undemocratic, murderous misogynistic homophobes," then to add a bit of sarcasm you say; "but because they are nonwhite, and Muslims deserve our love and protection"

Some might see that as racially motivated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine%27s_Sword

"Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History (2001) is a book by James Carroll, a former priest, which documents the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the long European history of religious antisemitism as a precursor to racial antisemitism. The primary source of anti-Jewish violence is the perennial obsession with converting the Jews to Christianity; an event which some theologians believed would usher in the Second Coming."