Honors Thesis Colloquium

Anti-Semitism and Themes of Disease and Discrimination

The research that I shall be focusing on this year will deal with anti-Semitic attacks in the German principalities during the Black Death and the underlying themes of disease and discrimination. I became interested in the correlation between disease and discrimination while studying Nazi conceptions of Jews as disease/parasite within a larger social body. Meanwhile, other important texts on anti-Semitism, such as Joshua Trachtenber’s The Devil and the Jews and Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan Van Pelt’s Holocaust: A History draw correlations between medieval and modern modes and patterns of anti-Semitism and argue that they are still pertinent today.
In his article “Christian anti-Semitism,” Marcel Simon explains that a major shift from ancient to medieval anti-Semitism was that Jews began to be regarded as a contagious sickness within a larger social body. Although Europeans had reacted to the mid-14th century bubonic plague in various ways (some had adopted a stringent asceticism while others took to drinking, partying, and other debaucheries), many had reacted by scapegoating and enacting violence toward Jewish Ashkenazi inhabitants. As one French cleric explains, “Some said that this pestilence was caused by infection of the air and waters, since there was no famine nor lack of food supplies…[and that]…”the Jews were suddenly and violently charged with infecting wells and water and corrupting air.”
In his article, Simon concludes that, “When the Jewish sickness is regarded in this light, as a contagious thing, anti-Semitism takes on the character of therapy.” It thus appears most plausible that during times of actual disease, especially on such a momentous scale as the Black Death, in which the public was trying to rid both society and their individual bodies of contamination, pre-conceptions of Jews as disease within a larger social body would make Jewish attacks a logical response to disease. In my thesis I claim that Christian attacks on Jewish inhabitants were not only retributive, but a method of curing society. I believe that my research will better help us understand why certain anti-Semitic groups have found rationale in their discrimination, and may also be a way of exploring more current forms of discrimination and decide if they fit the “body-disease” model.
In order to understand the relationship between 14th century medieval society and the Jews as conceived by medieval Christians, I will examine medieval plays, poems, sermons and dialogues written by Christians. I am particularly interested in the work of the non-nobility, since these people had been most prominent in Jewish attacks. Besides researching important secondary works on anti-Semitism from renowned scholars such as David Berger, Rosemary Reuther, and Joshua Trachtenberg, I am also interested in examining scientific, psychological, and religious articles/works which discuss the subject of bodily reactions to disease. This non-traditional research will hopefully strengthen my thesis and shape it accordingly.