Separation and Its Discontents : Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism by Kevin B. MacDonald

Author:Kevin B. MacDonald [MacDonald, Kevin B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
Publisher: http://inclibuql666c5c4.onion
Published: 2004-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

Jewish Strategies For Combating Anti-Semitism

Phenotypic Resemblance: Crypsis

We decree that Jews who have become Christians in appearance only, but secretly keep the Sabbath and observe other Jewish customs, shall not be permitted to join in communion or prayer or even to enter the church, but let them openly be Hebrews according to their religion. Their children shall not be baptized nor shall they purchase or possess a slave. (Canon 8 of the Council of Nicaea II [A.D. 787]; in Gilchrist 1969, 157)

And what will it profit our lord and king to pour holy water on the Jews, calling them by our names, Pedro or Pablo, while they keep their faith like Akiba or Tarfon?…Know, Sire, that Judaism is one of the incurable diseases. (Comments of a fictional Spanish-Jewish refugee after being forcibly baptized in Portugal in 1497, from Solomon Ibn Verga Sefer Shevet Yehudah, in Yerushalmi 1991, 32)

The data summarized in PTSDA (Ch. 4) indicate that there has been a powerful trend for Jews in traditional societies to maximize phenotypic differences between themselves and host populations, by a variety of segregative practices. Nevertheless, there are many instances in which Jews themselves have minimized these differences.

A particularly interesting example is crypsis. When threatened by severe sanctions, Jews have “converted” to other religions, practicing Judaism in secret and ultimately becoming overtly Jewish again when the threat had passed. Crypsis is “as old as the Jew himself” (Prinz 1973, 1). Indeed, there is a long tradition within Judaism that highly prizes the tradition of crypto-Judaism. In his preface to the 1932 edition of his work History of the Marranos, Sir Cecil Roth (1974, xxiii–xxiv) wrote of the “incredible romance” of the history of the Marranos, “the submerged life which blossomed out at intervals into such exotic flowers; the unique devotion which could transmit the ancestral ideals unsullied, from generation to generation, despite the Inquisition and its horrors.”

Indeed, there is some indication that the ideological basis of crypto-Judaism can be found in standard interpretations of the Book of Esther, in which Esther marries King Ahasuerus but secretly retains her Jewish identity and ultimately saves her people.[150] The phrase, “Esther had not made known her people nor her kindred” (Est. 2:10) was especially valued by the crypto-Jews during the period of the Inquisition (Beinart 1971b, 472). The tradition of crypto-Judaism also sometimes appears as part of contemporary Jewish education, as described by Freedland (1978): Jewish schoolchildren reenact the experience of practicing Jewish rituals in secret (admitted to this exercise only after providing a password), saying prayers under their breath.

The first instance given by Roth (1974) occurred during the 5th-century B.C. Zoroastrian persecution in Persia, and the phenomenon occurred as recently as World War II (Begley 1991). Jewish crypsis occurred under Byzantine rule (Avi-Yonah 1984, 254–255) and in medieval Germany, England, and France (Chazan 1987, 101; Roth 1978, 83; Baron 1973, 111). Crypto-Jews have existed for centuries in several areas of the Muslim world (e.g., the Daggatun of the Sahara, the Donmeh of Salonica, and the Jedidim of Persia).

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