Trudy Gold
The Image of the Jews in France

Trudy Gold - The Image of the Jews in France

- Well, good evening everyone from Gruesome Great London, and tonight I’m going to be talking about a very, very important topic, the image of the Jew, and specifically The Image of The Jew in France. Those of you who listened to William’s lecture and it’s important that you realise that William and I, and also Patrick and David, we try and run our areas of expertise so they dovetail with each other. And of course, yesterday we began lectures on the French Revolution. And on Monday, William will be talking about, of course, Napoleon. What I’m going to be talking about today is the changing image of the Jew in France. And to begin that, I’m really going to tell you a tale. Last night I watched a television programme made by David Baddiel called “Jews Don’t Count.” It was a Channel 4 production for those of you who live in England and it was basically bemoaning the fact that other minority groups do not see the Jew as a victim group and society certainly doesn’t see the Jew as a victim group. And Baddiel interviewed people in America, some intellectuals, some historians, some personalities the same in England. And it was rather a sad tale and he also talked about Israel and the image of Israel, which really drew to my mind that very important statement by the late great Jonathan Sacks, which I’ve said to you many times before. First they hated our religion, then they hated our race, and then they hated our nation. Let me say from the outset and then I really am going to be dealing with today’s subject. But it’s so important, this subject, and it’s so with us today that I really want to hammer this home to you. I personally believe that anti-Semitism is such a pernicious disease, it is impossible to eradicate.

And I would also suggest to you that the stereotype, and this comes up very, very strongly in last night’s presentation, and practically in every anti-Semitic trope you ever read, be it on the net or whether you see it in films or whatever, it’s the Jews are rich and powerful. Now, that is such a benighted idea because I would suggest to you in having interviewed the great Anita Lasker-Wallfisch last week when she talked to us about Kristallnacht. If you want to know about powerlessness, talk about the Nazis, talk about the Jews. If there was real power, would it have happened? And the other thing to remember that the Nazis, nevertheless, despite this horror that they were perpetrating, they actually decided to find the headquarters of the Elders of Zion and they actually found them in New York. So, the point I’m making is due hatred is totally irrational. It’s a form of prejudice like any other prejudice, but I think the roots are very different and the point is it doesn’t go away. And the other point about it, and I’m going to stress and I’m really going to stress this, is that other victim groups do not count us as one of them. On the contrary, they tend today to see us as perpetrators. So today, Jew hatred, let’s just call it Jew hatred. Antisemitism is a racial term. If you don’t mind, I’m going to call it Jew hatred. So Jew hatred today is on the increase, certainly all over the western world and in the world of Islam, which itself should tell you something, I’m going to say in the old world of monotheism. And of course it’s exacerbated by social, political, and economic chaos.

What I want to tackle today, A, and I’ve discussed this with you before, is where it actually comes from. And B, how it so penetrates a culture that it’s almost impossible to eradicate. And for me, the most painful side of this is that so many Jews at the time of the French Revolution and today fell so much in love with western civilization that they almost abase themselves before it. Love us. Please love us, please love us. And that’s my preamble and I’m going to end this preamble with a quote by George Bernard Shaw. He said this, he wrote this actually in an article, it was in the Churchman on the 15th of November, 1938, a week after Kristallnacht. And this is what he said. “Antisemitism will be no more when Jews cease to be Jews and Christians cease to be Christians.” Because the problem, the real problem with Jew hatred is it’s part of Christian theology and that is the dilemma. How do we actually get rid of it? Now of course you can turn around to me and say, but the French revolution was a secular revolution, and hasn’t society become more secularised? And I would answer you and say yes, but the cultural institutions are so strong that in fact, when someone is not, doesn’t tend towards anti Judaism, I think they are more the exception than the general rule.

Having said that, I’m not totally paranoid and I do not believe the majority of people go round thinking about Jews at all. But the problem is when they do, this is the kind of world that you’re talking about. And to actually bring it up to date in a more solemn way, something that I find absolutely horrific, the fact that Jewish schools are guarded as the schools of no other people are in this country and personally I find that disgusting. So, how did it all begin? Well, you know how it all began. Yes, there was always separatism in Judaism. Separatism that did say it’s difficult for a Jew to eat with strangers. It’s difficult for a Jew to drink with strangers. And certainly you can’t pray with strangers because Judaism, this ethical monotheism in pagan times was separatist. But all scholars believe it is Christianity that brings it deeply into the body of a religion, which on many levels is a religion of love, and that’s what we’re dealing with. Because remember also the two religions that see the Hebrew Bible as their foundation document, Judaism, Islam and Christianity turned so violently against the Jews. So particularly Christianity, even in the dealing with the Hebrew Bible, which Christianity calls the Old Testament, Israel’s angle said of the Old Testament, it’s probably the first anti-Jewish document in history because only in the Hebrew Bible do the Jews actually show the world or their misfortune and also, all their misbehaviour. What is the prophets about?

But the people that continually needs to be saved from themselves, and this is a document that is inherited by Christianity, not only inherited but taken over. For example, the suffering servant passages in Isaiah, which the Christians claim as a forerunner of Jesus, prophesying Jesus, well, the Jews say this is the story of our suffering. So, even calling it the Old Testament, and of course in the gospels, and let me reiterate, the first gospel is written 40 years after the death of Yeshua of Nazareth, the last gospel over a hundred years, the ones that are canonised, and the negative image of the Jew continues. And of course the terrible accusation of deicide. Now, this is what I believe is the root of the notion of power. If the Jews commit deicide it is the greatest crime in history. It is the killing of a God. And if you kill a God, you are capable of anything and it gives you diabolic power. And I really think this is the real beginnings of the basis. And not only that, that the Jew continues to exist even after the advent of Christianity and the divine love of Jesus, and also later on with Islam and the coming of Muhammad. And yet the Jews still exist. And of course, both the Christianity in particular is a proselytising religion. Islam not so much so because it regards both Judaism and Christianity.

They’re the people of the book. They don’t have to be converted as do have the pagans, but on the other hand, they must live downgraded lives. So, this negative stereotype and it really in the Christian world, it’s there in all the church councils. I have books and books of quotations that would make your hair curl. I’m sure many of you would’ve read some of them. Let me just give you one quote from St. John’s gospel. “And Jesus said to the Jews, ‘You are of your father, the devil.’” Jesus by the time you get to St. John’s gospel has been completely ridden of his Jewish past. He has become, if you like, he is the son of God. He has been completely de-Judaised and church father after church father speaking about the Jews in the most appalling manner. And it really, really comes to a head with the crusades, the first crusade, of course, in 1095 when the pope to usurp supremacy from the princes caused the princes of Europe to go on crusade. And if you think about it, it leaves to the most terrible massacres of Jews in France in the Rhineland as the crusaders made their march to Jerusalem. In fact, in the end there were eight crusades and it’s really about the power of the Catholic church and the power of the Catholic church is so important in this story. And in France, don’t forget that the pope called, they called France the first flower of the Catholic church.

And to illustrate my point, and of course we have looked at some of the kings and their attitudes, I’ve chosen Philip II of France, Philip Augustus. Now, he was the first French king to actually style himself king of France. Now, the monk Rigord, and I’m going to quote from record in a minute. He is the main chronicler of Philip II. He called him Augustus. He’s got an incredibly good press in French history. He extends the crowned lands. He is the firstborn son of the elderly, Louis IX and his third wife. And after decades of conflict with the Plantagenets, he succeeds in putting to an end that Angevin empire, of course the empire of England. So, he’s a very important powerful French monarch and he does make France into a prosperous power. He manages, he’s a very strong ruler. He checks the power of the nobility. He builds a huge wall around Paris. He reorganises the French government. And he brings a certain amount of financial security to France. In 1180, how does he help with the finances of France? He ordered the Jews to be strapped of all their valuables. You’ve got to remember the hold of Christianity is so strong in Europe that everybody is a Christian except maybe a few visiting travellers. Everybody within the body politic is Christian and everybody would have gone to church. If you wanted to join a guild, it was a Christian guild.

The Jew is excluded because of his religion. A Jew cannot be a stonemason, a Jew cannot be a blacksmith. If you think of every walk of life within French feudal society, there’s nowhere for the Jews to fit in except as money lenders, as usurers, and as merchants. And as merchants they’re very useful to the state because they are international. And that reinforces the notion of the Jew and money, which is still a stereotype that’s with us today. So, he straps the Jews of all their valuables and he basically says, unless you convert to Christianity, you’ll be taxed even further. Now it appears that the majority of them didn’t. So finally in 1192, he expelled all the Jews. He had all their houses demolished. They lived in a section of Paris which would be known to most of you, Pletzl. I remember Pletzl before it modernised. I used to go there when I was much younger to drink onion soup in Pletzl. And of course it’s a very charming part of Paris and that was the Jewish quarter until they were expelled. Ironically, it was only a short-term profit. It culminated in 99 Jews be being burnt to death.

But in 1198 he allowed them back because again, he was struck for cash. And this is what his chronicler said about the Jews. If we could see the second slide, he’s talking about, Philip Augustus in his view, so, it’s important that you understand how deep this idea was in the king as well. “The Jews who dwelt in Paris went every year on Easter Day, or during the sacred week of our Lord’s Passion, Passover Easter, secretly to underground vaults and killed a Christian as a sort of sacrifice in contempt of the Christian religion. They were inspired by the devil and many of them have been seized and burnt. Their elders have made a long sojourn in Paris. They grew so rich that they claimed as their own almost half the city and had Christians in their houses as servants who were Judaised.” Now what do we make about of this? It is a common thread. Ever since 1144 when it first appeared in England, the notion of the blood libel at Easter when gentle Jesus is murdered. Now it’s important that you think about church. You need to think about what the landscape was like in the towns and villages of the Holy Roman empire of France, of England. Mainly wooden houses, sometimes in the countryside mud huts. And what would be the big building? Well, later on it’s going to be castles but towering over everything. And if you really want an image of this, go to Chartres, go to Chartres and close your eyes and imagine what it must have been like when they were just wooden houses in that incredible cathedral. This is the power of Christianity.

And the evil Jew and remember, you went to church, a lot of people couldn’t read. So they’re told the story of how gentle Jesus who is God is murdered by the wicked Jews. So, inspired by the devil. So the blood libel, it’s about as bad as you can get and a lot of scholars have studied the history of blood libel. It was first used one pagan group against another. We know that tragically child sacrifice was used by pagans to fertilise the soil. You know the the greatest gift you can give and anyone who knows anything about Judaism, blood is taboo. And yet it sticks. It sticks right into the 21st century. So, this notion that Jews of rich, of course they didn’t own half the city. Jews, some, a few Jewish merchants had visible prosperity. But this is an interesting accusation and the greatest fear of Christianity. They have Christians in their houses as servants who were Judaised. There is something sensible in Judaism perhaps, that certain people who are coming in contact with the Jews are actually converted. Can we turn to the next slide, please? Now here we come to a completely different figure. In fact, one of the first figures of the humanist, the early, the almost beginnings, it’s too early to say renaissance, but Peter Abelard was a humanist, a fascinating man, and I’m sure you’ve all heard of him because of Abelard and Heloise. He was the eldest son of a minor French noble. He had a brilliant mind and he became an academic, one of the most important thinkers of his era.

Of course, he’s most known for his tragic love affair and also his philosophical exchange with his brilliant student, Heloise. He was a great defender of women’s education. He was really at the cutting edge of thought. Because Heloise had a terrible uncle who felt that her relationship with Abelard was completely sinful, he sent her away from her uncle to a convent in Britain. And the relationship, as the uncle believed, the relationship was completely dirty, completely forbidden. And in fact, he sent a group of men to castrate Abelard. Heloise later gave, she gave birth to her son but they both took monastic orders after this event. She publicly defended him when Pope Innocent II condemned him and called him a heretic. He was a man who believed in pushing the boundaries of knowledge. He believed that a woman who commits sex out of love is not immoral. They were not in orders when they first had their love affair. And he said that love transcends that. And also he does develop the concept of limbo. Those who die in original sin without being are not assigned yet to hell.

And also he had ideas on atonement. He wrote “A History of My Calamities.” We know a lot about him. He was a thoughtful individual. He’s within the Catholic church of course proclaimed by some a heretic and he had terrible quarrels with all sorts of clerics around him who were far more stringent. But he wanted to stretch his mind. And don’t forget all the universities which are going to come up in the next few years in Paris and in Oxford are, the university colleges, are going to be, they are clergy. But nevertheless, some of them are beginning to push the boundaries of knowledge, and also think about books. That wonderful statement that my professor once said to me, that if you lived at Oxford or at the University of Paris all your life, you might have been able to say that I have the sum total of all the knowledge available to me, which meant I’ve read all the books that you have. Fascinating, because the whole notion of what books did the church permit and what books didn’t the church permit, which is a fascinating story. Anyway, he had a different view of the Jews. Can we, he wrote a dialogue in 1140, a dialogue in which a Jew challenges Christian society.

He actually took the extreme outsider and gave him a voice. And this is from “The Divine Tragedy” in 1142 years before he died. In fact, after his death, his body was given to the care of Heloise and later the two were buried side by side. They were finally laid to rest in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in 1817. Those of you who travelled to Paris a lot, that, it was their two tomb together that really led to the popularity of that particular cemetery, believe it or not, as a tourist spot. But let’s turn to something simple and look at, seriously simple, and look at “The Divine Tragedy.” “No people has ever suffered.” These are the words of a Jew as written by Abelard. “No people has ever suffered so much for God as we have. There can be no sin not to have consumed by, not to have been consumed by the fire of our afflictions. Are we not alone among all the scattered nations, harassed by such discrediting expulsions that we pay an intolerable ransom for our miserable lives? Is not the contempt and hatred of us so deep that any wrong done to us is accounted as just retribution.” And frankly, I have absolutely no quarrel with that statement of Peter Abelard, a man so beyond his time accused of heresy. And can we go on now, please? Can we go on to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Bernard. Venerated, abbot, mystic, a co-founder of the Knights Templars, which should tell you a lot.

He was charismatic. He was very active in forming the second crusade, a huge critic of Abelard, and basically the scourge of anyone who didn’t have what he considered to be the right views. He was actually canonised just 21 years after his death. And in 1830, Pope Pius VIII actually he… Pius VIII, you’ve got to remember in the 19th century, popes were fighting a battle against liberalism and later on against socialism. And they go to those members of the church who are the most rigid, Pius VIII, Pius IX, later on Pius XII. And he declares him a doctor of the church. And that is the title given to saints who have been, contributed to Catholic doctrine and to Catholic theology. And this is what Bernard of Clairvaux had to say about the Jews. He wrote a lot about the Jews. Can we go on please, Judy? He doesn’t want them murdered. “Jews must not be persecuted, slaughtered, or even driven out. Slay them not let my people forget.” That is actually a quote from the gospels.

“They represent the Lord’s passion and for this they are dispersed that they pay the just penalty for so great a crime.” Here you have in black and white the reasoning behind Jew hatred. They are guilty. “They undergo a hard captivity under Christian princes.” And yet this is what he wants because there is a doctrine in Christianity that the Messiah, Jesus, cannot come again until all the Jews are converted. Be very wary of Christian fundamentalist groups who are in love with the Jews. That’s just my opinion. “Yet they shall be converted. If the Jews be trampled down, how shall the promised conversion prophet them in the end?” Don’t do it too hard. Don’t murder them. If you murder them, they just burn in hell. We have to convert them first because Christian theology, Catholic theology believes that if you are not converted, for example, one of the reasons behind the missionary movement was that a pagan woman who is bearing a child, that child is damned unless that child is in fact converted. So, I’ve chosen for you what I think to be the most important theological French figures of this particular era, but obviously I had to make choices. So, can we go on please? This is Peter the abbot of Cluny. Again, very, very important theological figure. 1092 to 1156.

He was actually given to a monastery at birth. He took his vows at 17 and already at 20. Again, he was incredibly clever. He’s appointed the head of a monastery in Vezelay. He was a very important figure in the church. Ironically, he defended Abelard and offered him sanctuary at Cluny and tried to work for a reconciliation between him and Bernard of Clairvaux. Please see all this against the backdrop to the creation of the Templar orders, to guard the root of pilgrim’s to the land of Israel. The main purpose of course of the crusades, to seize Jesus’ birthplace and the place where he died back from the heretics. And in fact, it’s because of Peter the abbot of Cluny, that he is, that Abelard is granted a posthumous absolution. This is at the request of Heloise. Now, he was fascinated by Islam, brilliant scholar. He collected many, many writings and he actually spent time in Spain with Islamic scholars. And he published the first Latin translation of the Quran, which became the standard text used by clerics and preachers of the crusades because of course they need to convert the Muslims. He produced, his book was called “A Refutation of the Sect of Heresy of the Saracens.”

He actually portrays Islam as a Christian heresy. And in fact, at his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI, this was in 2017 I think, used him as an example of compassion and understanding. Look, this is inside out history because this is a man who wants to convert the Saracens, the Muslims. He thinks they are a heresy of Christianity. But he writes the Adversus Judaeorum and let’s see what he has to say about the Jews. He’s the first Christian cleric to mention the Talmud and of course later on this is going to lead to those terrible burnings of the Talmud. “Clearly your eyes are blind, your ears are deaf, your hearts are stoned. Why should you not be called the wild animal, why not the beast? You and the synagogue of Satan. Approach you, O Jews. You I say to this day, deny the son of God, how long will you wretches fail to see the truth?” To him Jesus is God. That is lightness. The Jews are in darkness. He mocks the Jews for their dream of return, which is based on, of course on Ezekiel 37.

When he mocks them, “I will take the children of Israel from the midst of the nations whether they are gone and will bring them back to their own land .” He makes mockery of it because he says, “You broke the covenant. There is no covenant with the Jews anymore because you killed the son of God.” And of course, this is very much the kind of terminology that was taken on board by the Jewish convert, Petrus Alphonsi, who later entered in dialogue with Rabbi Yehiel of Paris, which I referred to in another presentation. This is the kind of language. I know it’s very painful but I think if we’re going to try and understand, there’s no other way of doing it. Knowledge remember, I think knowledge is so, so important. And so, what I’ve done is I’ve given you samples of Christian clerics. Now as you know, the bulk of Jews were expelled from France. They certainly were expelled from Paris. They were expelled from many of the regions of France. And on the eve of the French Revolution and I’m going to be talking about this on Thursday, there are only 40,000 Jews living in France. Some of 10,000 of them around the Bordeaux region, more about them on Thursday. 30,000 of them known as Germans whose in Alsace and the land had been taken by Louis XIV in 1648. So, they are going to come into France. But jumping on a period when there are no Jews in France, where Jews are moving east, where they’ve been expelled from England, or the expulsions from France, expulsions from the German lands, many of them coming back and of course gradually coming back particularly after 1648. Because why?

Look, the majority of them, and I think this will apply, many of you online who are born Jewish, many of you will come from Eastern Europe because as you all know, beginning in the 1200s, Jews begin moving to the kingdom of Poland, which is combined later on with the kingdom of Lithuania. It becomes a very important kingdom, it takes on the Ukraine and it becomes home to the bulk of Ashkenazi Jewry. And for a long period, they lived in relative stability but it begins to fall apart in the 1640s when the Ukrainian Cossacks go on the rampage against the Polish crown and murder over 100,000 Jews in the Ukraine. So, Jews beginning to creep back in and the Jews, that’s the Jews of Alsace, and the Jews of Bordeaux in the Maine were the descendants of conversos, Portuguese conversos who had fled to Bordeaux to escape the Inquisition, and by this time had some letters patent from the royal, from the French monarchs, and were very useful to the French crown. They were wine merchants, they were traders. So that’s the community. But a lot is happening in the meantime and what is happening in France. The same thing that’s happening in Germany, in the German lands and in England and of course this is the ideas of the Enlightenment.

We talk so much about the European Enlightenment, don’t we? And I remember talking about it when I discussed it with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch last week. The Enlightenment, that movement in philosophy, in literature, in arts, in every aspect of the arts. And of course tied in with the scientific revolution, the scientific revolution is very, very important. What part does God play in scientific revolution? It also, philosophers looking at the horror of the wars of religion, philosophers looking at the inhumanity of religious groups one to another, we’ve seen the birth, remember, of Christian heresies like Lutherism, which has become incredibly important in the German lands, the Huguenots of France, the Calvinist Huguenots. Ironically, tragically, the Lutherans adopted violent anti-Judaism. But nevertheless, there’s been breaks in the Catholic church heresy, which they tried so hard to suppress. You’d experienced the Renaissance, the rebirth of the learning of Greece and Rome, horror at the wars of religion of the 17th century. In England, a parliament that beheaded a king.

The growth of the middle class is the growth of trade. And out of all these factors, economic, sceptical, scientific, the birth of the Enlightenment. That wonderful movement that really did believe, and I know the German word for it is , that if everyone is educated to a certain level, they will believe in reason. It’s also called the Age of Reason. It’s an age of exploring. It’s an age, if you like, of trying to break fanaticism. And these philosophers, they’re going to increase knowledge. Many of them in France are going to become involved in the incredible project of the encyclopaedias because knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, reason and knowledge. Tragically, the world of the 20th and 21st century does seem to show us that even though the Enlightenment is something to be so desired, it is not innate. And my view, if it means anything, is that that’s what we ought to be working on. Let’s go back to a time where we could have reason, we could examine differences between people. We would at least recognise the humanity and validity of the other. And that was really what the Enlightenment is about. And what it meant was that for the first time thinkers are going to also discuss the Jews. And the first one I’m going to turn to is really a very early figure of the Enlightenment, a Frenchman called Blaise Pascal. Can we see his picture please? His dates are 1623 to 1662. Now, he starts off as a scientist, a mathematician. He’s a child prodigy, actually educated by his father. He is a Catholic but he’s a very, very important mathematician. He’s an inventor. He actually, age 19, created a mechanical calculator.

This is about the explosion of knowledge. What an exciting time. But you must see also that the Catholic church is seeing this as frightening. He was also, believe it or not, he was a defender of Christianity, but a Christianity that was far more tolerant. He was also a very funny satirical writer. In fact, Paul VI, who was the pope who continued the Second Vatican Council, he was, you might recall that in 1963, the Second Lateran Council actually excuse the Jews for the crime of deicide for all generations. For today, beg your pardon, today’s generations, the American cardinals wanted to be for all generations but the conservative cardinals still blame the Jews of the time. But Paul VI who was the pope who continued the work of John XXIII, this is his quote. He quotes from Pascal. “True humanism points the way forward and acknowledges the task to which one is called, the task which offers us the real meaning of human life.” To quote Pascal, “Man infinitely surpasses man.” What he’s saying is it’s within us there can be a touch of greatness. So, can we read his quote, please? This is very, very positive.

“This family or people is the most ancient within human knowledge, which should inspire a veneration for it. Since if God has from all-time revealed himself to men, it is to these we must term for knowledge. This people is not imminent solely by their antiquity but by their duration. In spite of the endeavours of many kings, who have a hundred times tried to destroy them. The law by which this people’s government is the most ancient in the world, the most perfect, and the only one which has always been observed.” Now, I think that is actually very, very interesting. And also he’s saying, look, the Jews have something. They have a law. And the other point about the Enlightenment, and this is something that William was talking to you about, at first, it’s about reforming people, reforming theology, reforming religious practise, also reforming academic teaching, making teaching more open, and also reforming law to making laws more tolerant so that people would tolerate each other. Tolerance is not a good word, I’ll talk about that later. Less tied to tradition and also open to science. Don’t forget that Galileo was brought up before the Inquisition. The Catholic church found all these ideas troubling. Later on of course, the Enlightenment is going to develop political overtones as of course William illustrated when he started talking about the French Revolution. Is it right that the royal personage should have total power? Royal in absolutism.

Does he rule by divine right? Should we not think about government that is less concerned with dynastic glory and religious uniformity, and more concerned with society as a whole? You’ve got the rise of the middle class, the third estate. The majority of people are still poor living dreadful lives, but the rise of the middle classes, you cannot create a mercantile economy without them. And it’s not, the Jews are not at the centre of this and I think it’s very important to reiterate. The Jews are very much an adjunct. There are the point about the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. It’s absolutely critical to Jewish history but it’s really an afterthought for the French. So, take that in mind and let us go on, please. Can we now look at Voltaire. Voltaire, of course, one of the great figures of the Enlightenment. One of the most important figures of the Enlightenment. His philosophical dictionary. He was violently anti-Catholic. He was a deist. He was born to a lawyer. His father wanted him to be a lawyer. His mother came from the lowest rank of nobility in Paris. Although his father wanted him to study law, he becomes a writer. He’s a philosopher. He’s brilliant. He’s a poet, he’s a polemicist, he’s a historian. And he really wants to root out all the corruption in the regime. He hates the abuse of power. He hates the abuse of religious power, of royal power. And he said this, this is one of his most famous quotes, “Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.”

He wants people to be thoughtful. He had quite a lot to say about the Jews and unfortunately much of it is negative. However, many of those who adore Voltaire they excuse him and say his digging at Judaism is just about his digging at Catholicism. I don’t quite take that but let’s have a look. He swings. Let’s have a look at some of his writings on the Jews. This is where he’s being positive but first of all, I’m going to read some of the negative. This is his one of the articles in his philosophical dictionary which deals with the Jews. “In short, we find them only an ignorant, barbarous people who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.” Now, Peter Gay who is such a great supporter of Voltaire in many ways, he said, he said Voltaire, he basically said, he says, “Voltaire really strikes at the Jews to strike at Christianity. Was he anti-biblical? Was he anti-Jewish?”

He did have a Jewish friend, by the way, called Daniel de Fonseca, who was a Sephardi. He said, he’s the only philosopher amongst the Jews of his time. Let’s have a look at some of his quotations that you have. Can you go back, please, please, Judy? “Let the fanatics, the superstitious, the persecutor become men. What was the Jews crime? None other than being born.” This is the sermon of Rabbi Akiva. “Let the Christian stop persecuting and exterminating the Jews, who as men are their brothers and who as Jews are their fathers. let each man serve God in the religion in which he is born.” Perfectly reasonable. Now, let’s have a look at some of the negativity. “They are all of them born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Germans are born with blonde hair. I would not be in the least surprised if these people would not someday become deadly to the human race.” That is pretty terrible. And of course, tragically prophetic if you think what in the end the Nazis decided that they were. The Jews were not murdered because they were subhuman in Nazi eyes. They were the bacillus capable of destroying. And of course, the Nazi in a core were pagan but they take many of these ideas. This is in A Christian Against the Jews. If we must talk of Jewry, we will just state that they were a wretched Arabic tribe without art or science, hidden in a small, hilly, and ignorant land.“ He never, he did condemn persecution and he never advocated attack.

Now what happens, the anti-Jewish passages in his philosophical dictionary were criticised by a brilliant Sephardi Jew called Isaac de Pinto, who I’m going to talk about on Thursday. Voltaire took on the criticism and wrote to him and said that he had convinced Voltaire that they are highly intelligent and cultivated people amongst the Jews, also quoting his friend Daniel de Fonseca. He promised to remove the objectionable passages, but he never did so. Now, this character, Daniel de Fonseca, I think I’ll mention him to you because he’s one of those characters who Jewish history throws up who are so fascinating. His dates are 1762 to, 1672 to 1740. He was born in Portugal. His father had been burnt by the Inquisition, a converso. His parents fled to Amsterdam. The children were left behind in Portugal. He and his brothers were baptised and were pushed into the Catholic priesthood. He managed to escape to Bordeaux where there was a lot of conversos. He studied medicine, he moves to Paris, and then he goes to Istanbul, where to the Turkish empire, where he becomes a brilliant doctor, very important doctor, and he is employed by the Ottoman aristocrats. He marries a Jewish woman. He has himself out as a Jew and he is really a great favourite at the court. And in fact, his fame spreads, he becomes one of the most famous doctors of the period.

He cured King Charles XII of Sweden after he sustained terrible injuries. He was a physician to the French Embassy in Istanbul, I should say Constantinople, I apologise. He advised French diplomats on Ottoman customs and then he moved to Romania. He became not just the physician, but the advisor to the Prince of Wallachia. And he secured all sorts of civil liberties for the Jews. He then became physician to the Sultan Ahmed III. And after the, after Ahmed was deposed, he moves to Paris and becomes a very close friend of Voltaire. What an incredible character. So it’s not just horror stories and Jewish martyrology. Now, can we move on, Judy? Actually, I don’t want to hurry. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to start Voltaire, I’m going to start Rousseau next week when I begin my talk on the French Revolution because this is so important that I really think that we shouldn’t rush it. So Judy, if you don’t mind, could we put that at the beginning of the talk for Thursday, and I’m going to look at questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Thank you. Andrea. We were always hearing about the Napoleon opening the ghettos, were they ghetto in France?

A: Not per se at this period and certainly, and I’ll be talking about that hopefully on Thursday, if not the following Tuesday.

He breaks down the ghetto wars whenever he conquers. No, I didn’t say, I said the great Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. She’s very much with us, bless her.

Michelle, saw Baddiel’s programme, which raised all sorts of points, not helped by the concept of Jewish race. Yeah, look. Look, I’m going to speak personally, I didn’t like the programme at all. If we’re going to address the issue properly of Jew hatred, we’ve got to look at the causation and unfortunately they should spend less time discussing Israel and far more time discussing where Jew hatred comes from, in my view.

This is from Marilyn Baal. How are you, Marilyn? Lovely to hear from you. Negative stereotype. When I was in first floor, I came home crying because a classmate told me, "You killed the baby Jesus.” But it’s not just a 30-year-old man we’re also guilty of infanticide according to the teaching in 1942 England. Yes. It’s so deep. You see, you’ve got to remember, think about Christianity, think about Christmas time. When I was at school, they used to make a crib of baby Jesus. The birth of Jesus, the way Jesus is depicted in so many of the churches, the baby Jesus. So yes, Marilyn, you’re right. You see, that’s not applying the, it’s not applying the ideas of the Enlightenment at all.

Karen, remember that Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” is about sacrificing a virgin in a pre-Christian society. Yes, look, it’s a terrible practise but it was used in some pagan groups. We must be very careful because I remember once I was asked to give a series of lectures to a group of actors. And I happened to mention paganism and sacrifice and one of the actors said, “I’m a pagan and believe me, we’re much more moral than most religious people.” I refer to this to indicate the Middle Ages, Christians would’ve seen Jews as similar to pagans. No, I don’t think that’s what it’s about to talks, Karen. No, I think it’s much nastier than that actually. They didn’t see Jews as similar to pagans. They saw Jews as capable of killing God. If you can kill God, you can sacrifice children, you can get up to any right whatsoever. So let’s be careful. This is the unique feature of Judaism. It is the diabolization of the Jew. The Jew is the devil. Now, obviously the majority of Christians do not believe that but it’s in the ether. And that’s why people are prepared to think that all Jews are rich and all Jews are powerful.

No, Michelle, I didn’t say. You mentioned Philip Augustus invited the Jews back in the 1290s. No, he didn’t. It was actually later than that. They were expelled from England in 1290. We don’t know what happened to them. Those that survived, some of them would’ve gone to France but then they’re expelled later and they kept on being expelled. They were expelled by Philip IV in 1306. In 1306, remember? So, most those who survived would eventually, I would presume, make their way to Eastern Europe.

Q: Carol, how do you explain the behaviour of the leaders and rabbis of Jewish sects and cults in Israel? What has gone so terribly wrong?

A: That is not my subject, Carol. What I would say is people are people are people. And there are things within the Jewish community that I’m sure many people find reprehensible but this isn’t what I’m talking about. And one of the issues we can look at, I think I will say this though, for 2,000 years we were powerless. We now have power in a state and have we ever been tested before? So, but I think when you’re looking at Israel, you should also balance all the sides of Israel because one of the things that really does make me very angry is it’s more a programme pushed on the head of the Jewish state than any other nation in the world if you look at the resolutions passed by the United Nations. And frankly, do I believe that Israel has the worst human rights record than any country in the world by 2/3? No, I do not. And that is why I think, and that doesn’t mean that there aren’t bad things happening. There are two different arguments. I’m talking about anti-Judaism and Jew hatred and of course the other point to make is, and I’m, yeah, I will say this, I think the Shoah left such a dark and deep mark on the Jews, and I think we still live with many ramifications. That’s as far as I want to go on that.

Q: Do I think Shakespeare used that quote from Abelard when he wrote “Shylock,” “Has not a Jew.”

A: Shelly, that’s very, very perceptive of you. I think that Shakespeare himself is a figure of the Enlightenment, no question of that. And his speech is an Enlightenment speech. But don’t forget when Berbid strode on stage wearing a red beard as Shylock, the audience would’ve booed. That’s the genius of Shakespeare though.

Rose says, “You are so right about the evangelists who love Jews. Not really, they want us to be Christian.” Many of, Rose is saying it’s dangerous.

Ruth, that’s why they support Israel. There must be the ingathering before Jesus returns. All Christians will be raptured up and those who do not convert will be left behind. Israel uses the support of the evangelicals and they use each other. Israel truly is right to say we should be wary of the evangelical support. That’s my personal opinion, Ruth. But I do remember, I think it was Golda Meir who said, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Look, that is the world of realpolitik. I would love, of course. Look, I’m a historian. I’d love to live in the world of the Enlightenment. That’s not always the real world, is it? For Peter Robert, if Jesus is God there, then where does Father come in? Oh, this is the Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. It’s a development within Christian theology.

And this is from Susan. Zakir Naik, an Islamic preacher was invited to Qatar during this World Cup game to preach conversion to Islam. Yeah. Judaism is no longer a proselytising religion. Uri says you do evangelists and Jews a seriously disservice by taring more the same conversion. But the major US evangelical philo-Semitical Zionist explicitly disavow this motivation relying instead on Balaam’s prophecy on the Jews that those that curse you are cursed and those that bless you are blessed.

Uri, we should have a debate on this. I think it’s an important debate. I will speak to Wendy about having this debate. It’s a very important argument. That’s not my experience of evangelical Christianity but as a creature of the Enlightenment, I think it should be debated.

Oh yes, Michelle is talking about Roger of Sicily, who’s promoting his kingdom as intellectually open, Muslim, scientists, Greeks, merchants. Yeah, you see, there always are enlightened people. Yeah. You see, that’s the point, isn’t it? There are those whose heads have to be in a closed circle and those who can turn their faces to the light and reason and ideas. And there’ve always in history been people like that and also people who are the absolute opposite. And the majority of people tragically just allow things to happen.

Rod, Christianity seems to have a huge inferiority complex. It needs the Jews as its scapegoat. No, I wouldn’t say that. I think we’re going to have to have this debate. Tragically, Rod, the man who was I think the greatest scholars on this. I was checked who the great scholars are today but I was very close to Hein McAfee who was fascinating on all of this. Yes.

Was it Ogden Nash? I thought it was Mark Twain who wrote a poem, “How odd of God to choose the Jews, but not so odd as those who choose a Jewish God and scorn the Jews.”

Barbara says it wasn’t odd the Jews chose God. I ask, how can the people who gave the world the 10 Commandments be compared with the devil? Because what happens is the Jews because they didn’t accept Jesus as Messiah, the Son of God, ‘cause remember mashiach in Judaism is very different. They lost the covenant. There is a new con for covenant. Christianity has superseded Judaism.

Q: James Levy, do I subscribe to Baddiel’s view that Jews like him have no responsibility for the actions of the state of Israel and should not express any views?

A: That’s a very, very complicated question. David Baddiel said he had no feelings about Israel whatsoever. I can only talk about myself. I feel that I have an attachment to that land at the end of the Eastern Mediterranean. I feel that my destiny is tied up with the destiny of the Jewish state. Can I express an opinion of the state of Israel? Of course I can. Can I express an opinion on the British government in the country in which I live? Of course I can. But I find it fascinating that Jews are expected to pronounce on Israel when very few Brits are expected to pronounce on Britain. And that I find absolutely fascinating because you also have this other argument, James, that in many ways it’s what Howard Jacobson said, “They can’t forgive us the Holocaust.” In many ways, we have to be more moral than them. Our state should be the morally most righteous in the world. And therefore, when it slips from that in inverted commas, that’s why I think the Palestinian lobby is the most potent in the world today. Now that doesn’t mean, I don’t think there’s a case to answer by the way, but I think what is fascinating, it is the one cause that unites every group from the Muslim fundamentalists through to the ultra left secularists, through all sorts of human rights groups, whereas other causes of human rights don’t. So, it’s a very complicated story. I thought that before we get into the French Revolution, I needed to give this class. Why? Because so many Jews are going to feel so grateful to France and they are going to do so brilliantly for France that they can’t believe when it begins to turn against them. They give everything to France. They fall in love with France. That’s why I had to give this particularly painful presentation today. I’m sure that destruction of the temple predates to Christianity.

Q: Was that not antisemitism?

A: Harry, I would argue that that was the Romans conquering Judea. That was the Romans saying enough. Look, the Romans were quite interesting over religion. Remember, they were polytheistic. They took on the Greek gods. The Greeks were the same. Remember why the Hasmoneans revolted? Because they put a false god in the temple. The Jews are essentially monotheistic. Look, basically when the Greeks or the Romans conquered an area, they added the god of the area to the pantheon. But that could never happen with the Jews because the Jew is essentially monotheistic and separatist. There was anti-Judaism in this period. Was it anti? But I think it was far more. The Jews had revolted against the right of Rome, so must be quashed. Look, in the end it was murdered Jews, sure. And it’s also at that time, you see you have the two great strands in Jewish thought, ben Zakkai and Bar Kokhba. Ben Zakkai we will study. Study leads to love of God. Study will keep us safe. The development of the Talmud. And then of course Bar Kokhba with his flaming sword in his hand. The oath of allegiance at Masada, of the paras. Think about it. I don’t know the answers.

I think I have a few questions. Yes, Voltaire had a very lively friendship and correspondence with Catherine The Great.

Q: Judith, do you think the church should be in the forefront in fighting anti-Semitism, not the Jews? As Sacks said, “The victim cannot cure the crime.” Sadly, it’s a hard sell getting Christians to fight anti-Jewish hatred. I know, I’m trying.

A: Yes, I know you are Judith and you are doing wonderful work. But I used to be involved a long time ago, and as you well know, I’ve become much too cynical to get involved in that kind of work. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe you should go on trying, and that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of awfully good people who are religious Christians as well. But I mean, if you think about the Methodists, they have become so violently anti-Israel that I have a real problem with that. The Methodists who were low church, who were such advocates of human rights. It’s complicated story.

Q: Was there a downside to the Enlightenment?

A: Nothing negative came out of it. Monty. The downside of the Enlightenment is human nature wasn’t up to it. The human nature it presuppose that knowledge would lead to reason and we would learn to be more reasonable. You know, Moses Mendelssohn, the Jew in Germany who saw himself as a figure of the Enlightenment, when he was asked why didn’t he convert, he had the audacity, or may I say chutzpah to say, “If I met a Solon, would I convert him?” He said, “There are many paths to the truth and I’m a Jew, so I follow the Jewish path.” That’s the Enlightenment. There are many paths to the truth. Should I convert a Christian? Of course I shouldn’t. Should I convert anybody? Of course I shouldn’t. That’s not my belief. But unfortunately, the Enlightenment… The late great Robert Wistrich, the last conversation I ever had with him, I took him to the airport before he went to Israel. He died a couple of months later and we had a big round as we often did about ideas. And he said, “Trudy, the Enlightenment is a blip. I’ll see you in Israel.” I don’t want to believe that there won’t be another Enlightenment. I know many, many people who are enlightened.

One of the death nails for me of the Enlightenment was the high level of education of the majority of perpetrators during the Holocaust. That’s where I have a real problem, because I used to believe so much in education that education per se does not make you enlightened. And what makes us enlightened? I bow to psychologists, sociologists. Anita said something extraordinary to me the other day. She was talking about her father who of course was deported, an incredible man of the Enlightenment. He said, “Keep as much as possible in your head because nobody can ever take it away from you.” I still believe passionately in knowledge, but I know it doesn’t lead to goodness per se. And that’s where we have an issue and that’s where I think we haven’t yet really got out of the caves. Relationship with Huguenots, with Jews. I’m not as bad as the Lutherans, I’ll be doing more on that later on.

Oh, this is from Peter Bries. Hi, Peter. When I was a chemistry student in Geneva, I lived at 40 Grand-Rue, the home of Rousseau. Oh, how wonderful, Peter. Oh, that’s lovely. Thank you, Ingrid.

Norman, not really a question. I recall at uni a nice girl, wishing I think to be kind and on person. She didn’t mind Jews owning half the world’s money and she thought she was broad-minded, not ignorant and very supportive.

Elise, thank you for using Jew hatred. Anti-Semitism is too polite and too comforting leading to inaction. Whilst the Holocaust is within living memory, one should not forget the massacre of Jews in Arab countries long before Zionism. Yes, yes, Dr. Leki. And in fact, Lyn Julius is one of our lecturers and will be talk, she’s already talked about the Jews of the Arab world, and she’ll be talking again quite soon about this particular subject. Yes, of course. It’s a very, very important deep subject. Over a million Jews had to flee the Arab world. There were terrible pogroms, particularly the one in Baghdad. Yes, of course. Honey, maybe Judaism doesn’t proselytise, but Israel goes to other countries trying to get their citizen to come to Israel. Yes, Zionism. Zionism is going to emerge in the 19th century. Zionism which I think today at core, many Zionists still believe that Jews are, shouldn’t live in the diaspora, sure. The only people outside of Israel who are approached and encouraged to exercise their birthright and make a on fellow Jews, that’s hardly proselytising. People are different.

Aha. I’m going to throw something at you now, I’ve done it before. Would you please define Jew for me by next week or actually by Thursday. I want definitions of Jew. Does a Jew, the state of Israel gives me the automatic right to return because I am a Jew? But what about those Jews who are quite happy living in England? Come on. What is a Jew? Is it religion? Is it a peoplehood? Is it a nationality as the Israelis think?

Norman. Oh, Norm, it was Ogden Nash. And Norman says, “By the way, David Baddiel went out of his way to ignore religion. I think his view is that for him it is incomprehensible.” What is a Methodist? It’s a form of low church. And Trump, DeSantis, all educated. Yes, certainly. Many people we don’t approve of today have got education. Thank you, Rod.

Oh, this is from Wilma. I think it better be the last thing. Thank you so much or thank you. My father’s family in the 1400s were chased from Flemish and Belgian area by the Huguenots because they were not Catholic. Because they were not Catholic. Oh, I see. My father’s family were chased from the Flemish and Belgium area because they were not Catholic. Hundreds of families spread, 600 families spread to Scotland. And of course Scotland became Calvinists, didn’t it, Wilma? Yeah. Hitler defined us. We must never allow ourselves to be defined by that monster, Melvin. He defined us as a race and a race is so spurious. I plea now for the sociologist.

Anyway, I better stop there. Thank you all very much and we will continue on Thursday, bye.