Christopher Probst’s “Martain Luther and ‘The Jews’ a Reappraisal” part 3
Fifteen years after Luther wrote That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew, he composed this open letter to his “good friend” Count Wolf Schlick. The member of a prominent Moravian family, Count Schlick reported that many Christians in Bohemia and Moravia were developing “Sabbatarian tendencies.”[41] Just what these inclinations were is not perfectly clear, but they no doubt involved the observance of the Jewish Sabbath. What is important for our purposes is that Luther blamed them primarily on Jews, and this is where he directed most of his attacks.[42] Luther’s arguments against Jews in this treatise contain elements that are found in his other tracts about them. They have not kept covenant, they have sinned, rejected the Messiah; they are in exile and - most tellingly – they do not reside in “the land” and no longer possess the temple.[43] While there are “reasonable” and “obdurate” Jews, as a whole they “are given to babbling and lying.”[44] This rather mild slander is one indication of the gradual increase in harshness of tone towards the Jews to which I have previously referred. The argumentation is very similar to the earlier tract, but the tenor has become decidedly less sympathetic.
On the Jews and their Lies (1543)
The immediate occasion for the controversial tract was a May 1542 request from his friend Count Schlick to refute a Jewish apologetic pamphlet, which the Count enclosed together with his request.[45] While at the end of Against the Sabbatarians Luther hinted that he might write such a treatise as this[46], he begins here by saying, “I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them.”[47] It is difficult to say to what degree the contents of the aforementioned Jewish apologetic pamphlet influenced Luther to change his mind. The treatise is rather lengthy (approximately one-hundred-thirty-five pages in the original text). Thus, it will be useful to briefly outline it.[48] It falls into four major parts. In the first section, Luther describes and decries the “false boasts” of the Jews. In the second part, Luther presents debate on the exegesis of significant and relevant biblical passages. In the third section, Luther repeats the supposed Jewish blasphemies against Jesus and Mary. In the fourth and most infamous part of the treatise, Luther makes recommendations to church and state authorities for actions against the Jewish people. My first observation about the tract is its scathing tone. This is most readily seen in Luther’s deprecating, sometimes crude language[49] and in his scornful sarcasm. Luther in places calls “the Jews” “a defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut”, a “whoring and murderous people”[50], and “bloodthirsty bloodhounds and murders of all Christendom.”[51] While the Gentiles give them everything they have, including “land and people”, still they “curse, spit on, and malign” the Goyim.[52] While Luther is aware of the objection that Jews of biblical times and Jews of his day are to be distinguished from each other[53], he frequently applies Scripture’s condemnation of the Jews of biblical times to Jews who are his contemporaries. Indeed, he often intermingles Scriptural deprecation with typical late medieval pejoratives. In one illustrative example, he says that they are “stiff-necked, disobedient, prophet-murderers, arrogant, usurers, and filled with every vice, as the whole of Scripture and their present conduct bear out.” In fact, Luther’s “incorrigible” Jewish contemporaries are more “conceited” than “David and other pious Jews” of biblical times.[54] Further, he argues “that their present exile must be due to a more heinous sin than idolatry, the murder of the prophets, etc. – namely, the crucifixion of the Messiah.”[55]Second, we observe the myriad of accusations that he levels at them. They are guilty of stealing and of usury. Three Jews with whom he had met “called Christ a tola, that is, a hanged highwayman.” Their Talmud says that it is no sin for a Jew to kill a Gentile.[56] They curse Christians in their synagogues.[57] They practice witchcraft, “conjuring signs, figures, and the tetragrammaton of the name, that is, with idolatry, envy, and conceit.”[58] They defame Christ and Mary in various manners, calling Jesus a “sorcerer and a tool of the devil”, denigrating his name through Cabbalistic numerology, even calling him a “whore’s son.” [59] A “malicious rabbi” has supposedly called Mary a “dung heap.” They have been “accused” of poisoning wells, kidnapping and piercing children, “hacking them in pieces”, and using the blood of Christian children (i.e. in ritual fashion) to “cool their wrath”.[60] Luther strongly implies that these “accusations” may be true, despite Jewish denials:“Whether it is true or not, I do know that they do not lack the complete, full, and ready will to do such things either secretly or openly where possible. This you can assuredly expect from them, and you must govern yourself accordingly.”[61]Nearly all of these accusations were common in medieval antisemitic rhetoric.[62]One final observation about the tract is its most widely known aspect, its anti-Jewish social programme. Luther makes seven severe recommendations concerning “the Jews.” Their synagogues and schools should be burned to the ground, their houses should be “razed and destroyed”; their “prayer books and Talmudic writings” should be confiscated; their rabbis should be “forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb”; they should be denied safe-conduct on the highways; usury should be prohibited to them and their gold, silver, and cash should be taken from them; finally, they should be subjected to harsh labor.[63] To the ears of post-Holocaust readers, these words are deeply troublesome and chilling.
[41] Bertram’s Introduction to Luther, “Against the Sabbatarians: Letter to a Good Friend”, LW 47: 59. [42] Ibid., 59-61. [43] “Against the Sabbatarians”, LW 47: 65-70, 80, 96-97.[44] Ibid., 78.[45] Bertram’s Introduction to Luther, “On the Jews”, LW 47: 133. In a footnote, Bertram also notes that the pamphlet is no longer extant.[46] Luther, LW 47: 97 – 98.[47] Ibid., 137.[48] What follows is a summary of Bertram’s outline, Introduction to “On the Jews”, LW 47: 133-135.[49] For a helpful view of Luther’s use of scatological language, see Heiko Oberman, “Teufelsdreck: Eschatology and Scatology in the ‘Old’ Luther”, Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (198
: 435-450.[50] LW 47 : 166, 167. Luther’s use of the image of “whore” and “slut” for the Jews is in fact a Jewish, Old Testament prophetic pejorative for the Israelites in times of waywardness. See, e.g., the book of Hosea. It is also perhaps an ironic jab at them, since they supposedly call the Virgin Mary the same.[51] Martin Luther, “Von den Juden und ihren Lügen” (“On the Jews and their Lies”) in D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 53. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1919-1920) 520. [52] LW 47: 255. [53] Ibid., 166-167.[54] Ibid., 167.[55] Ibid., 226. Emphasis mine.[56] LW 47: 226.[57] Ibid., 228. The cursing of Christians is probably a reference to the “twelfth benediction of the ‘Amidah’ prayer against the Christians” used during the early years of Christianity. For discussion of the plight of Judaism in sixteenth century Europe, see Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson, “The Reformation in Contemporary Jewish Eyes”, Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 4 (1971): 239, 260-270.[58] Ibid., 242. While medieval Jews did spread “scurrilous stories” about Christians, the kind of tales that Luther and Margaritha attribute to them are highly dubious. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism, 282.[59] Ibid., 256-260. “The Jews” are even purported to believe that Mary conceived Jesus during her “menstrual uncleanness”, implying that Jesus is thus insane or a demon. [60] Ibid., 261, 217.[61] Ibid., 217.[62] See, e.g., Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder, 131-136.[63] LW 47 : 268-272.
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