Jews: Why the animosity towards them?

[Husar]

What we learned in school was that they became rich due to the money lending and banking business and the christians weren't allowed to do that as it was considered sinful. Of course that made them rich heathens and many people were also jealous and jealousy can make people quite cruel...

[Nobunaga]

this is a hard question

[Fragony]

Usurperstuff was then but there is also such a thing as now. And back then there was also more to it, massacres of jews in the plague-days for example.

[DukeofSerbia]

Economy
Majority of Jews were bankers [loans with abnormal interests] and traders not producers. It was forbidden to both Christians and Muslims to loan money with interests.

Religion
Jews were blamed for death of Jesus Christ.
Because of Talmud.

And
They refuses to be part of community/society were they lived.

[TinCow]

Jews were targeted for the same reason any other group is targeted: they were a minority. Minorities make easy victims for group angst in times of stress. The unique aspect of the Jews was that they were a minority in every place they lived. Most minorities, whether religions, racial, ethic, or otherwise, had a homeland where they were the majority and would thus not face discrimination. That was not true for the Jews until the 20th Century. They were minorities everywhere, so they were vulnerable to persecution everywhere.

[rotorgun]

Your question got me thinking, and so I looked it up on this site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism

It's a pretty scholarly article with many additional links provided. I had no idea that Antisemitism went back so far.

[Meneldil]

And
They refuses to be part of community/society were they lived.

That's simply not true anymore after the French Revolution, at least in France and western Europe.

Many great french thinkers/politicians in the late 19th/early 20th were jews. Most of them were also strong nationalists. Yet France was back then one of the most antisemitic country.

[Ramses II CP]

Any small, self selected group that holds itself apart in some substantial way from the majority of society is discriminated against and subject to animosity. This is the nature of humanity. Judaism is an especially well known example of this behavior because the Jewish meme is particularly successful at holding onto it's constinuency, while the members have, often as a tool of oppression, been repeatedly scattered across the face of the world to form small enclaves.

If you think about some of the recent tragedies in Africa, this is such a strong pattern that in cases where differences are extremely minor the populace deliberately exaggerates them to allow the discrimination behavior to occur.

[KrooK]

Jews were not liked because they;
1) were slaver traders for muslims (in the dark age).
2) had powerful banking system into whole Europe (actually they were not alone - Italians were good rivals) but their cooperation was best
3) were hiring villages from nobles and became supervisors for peasants - then forced peasants to pay horrible taxes
4) cooperated with communists into XX century - many Jews were happily joining and supporting communism system.


In Poland most important were reason 3 and 4. Because of reason 3 many jews were being killed by ukrainian peasants during Chmielnicki uprising.
Into XX century they were not liked, because many Jews joined communist parties and fought against Poland into war with Russia at 1920 year.
Some Jews support Poland into that war, but most of them became neutral or supported Russia.