I am no expert in Jewish history, nor am I even an amateur. In fact, prior to this class, my knowledge of Jews, their history, and their culture could be said to be a little more than zero. Thus, this week’s reading proved to be a challenge.

<!--StartFragment-->

            After seeking help from my dad, and a little investigating of my own online, I can only make this general argument: It seems that throughout history, the Jewish population has always been treated as scapegoats, forever taking the blame for the difficulties endured by another country, and/or ethnicity.

            In the midst of my research, I came across an article online in which the author called the Jews, “the people who have no country.”[1] In a twisted sense, this is true; after losing Israel, the Jews have fled all over the world, building communities in various countries. In the late 1800s, the Jewish immigrated to the U.S. escaping anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire that erupted into pogroms. No different, the Jews fled Germany after the Nazis ordered the mass killing of the Jewish race. In this week’s reading, Stefano Luconi in “Fascist Antisemitism and Jewish-Italian Relations in the United States” argues that the seeds of anti-Semitism were already planted in the minds of the Italian Americans long before Mussolini adopted Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies.

            In “From Ellis Island to JFK,” Nancy Foner argued that though the Russian Jews and Italians were both new immigrants to the U.S. in the late 1880s, the Jews were able to climb up the social ladder. They were able to improve their social standing through education and hard work. On the other hand, Foner argues that the Italian immigrants seemed to be stuck at the bottom. Even Jacob Riis in his book, How the Other Half Lives agree that, “The Italians comes in at the bottom, and in the generation that came over the sea he stays there.” Perhaps it’s because of lack of education, lack of motivation, and that Italians are lazy as Wayne W. Parish reports to Mr. Hopkins—that Italians were more “interested in getting relief checks…and don’t want to work.”

            Whatever the reason, the main point is that the Italians, when questioned as to why they were stuck at the bottom immediately points to the Jews for the cause of their situation. As Luconi points out, “Italian Americans usually retorted that Jews monopolized the ranking positions in the unions to the detriment of the other ethnic minorities. (155). There’s no self-questioning, no blaming the racism and discrimination by White Americans. Instead, fault falls on the Jews.

            Similarly, in the rise of Hitler in Germany, the Jews were the blame for the economic crisis crippling the Aryan race. In the Russian Empire, many have said that the anti-Semitic violence towards Jews started after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, but real evidence for that is null. In fact, many historians agree that, “the Jewish problem in tsarist Russia was inseparable from the general weakness of the empire. In a psychological sense, furthermore, the image of the Jew in Russian society and culture betrayed Russia’s distorted self-image under the pressure of the need for rapid change.”[2]

            What’s the reason for all this anti-Jewish sentiment? My guess is that Jews are always the scapegoat because they are intruders; the runaways from a country they could no longer claim as their own. It’s easy to point the fingers at an outsider; in fact, this gives cause for nationalism, a boost of morale for the nation or ethnicity. Furthermore, I’d venture and guess it was also because Jews were good at making a living in their newly selected homes; they were hardworking, propelled by education, and thus were fairly well-off in many of their new countries. When economics or politics took a turn for the worse, it is logical for the natives to blame the immigrants—heading businesses, and making profits—as the source of all their miseries.

  http://www.out-post.net/pics/scapegoat.gif

<!--EndFragment-->