November 30, 2023

"The Medieval Jew" - Norman Cantor


Norman Cantor was the author of numerous books including, "Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization"; "Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century"; "The Sacred Chain: A History of the Jews"; and, "In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made."

Wikipedia:

Norman Frank Cantor (November 19, 1929 – September 18, 2004) was a Canadian-American medievalist. Known for his accessible writing and engaging narrative style, Cantor's books were among the most widely read treatments of medieval history in English. He estimated that his textbook The Civilization of the Middle Ages, first published in 1963, had a million copies in circulation.

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to a Jewish family, Cantor received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Manitoba in 1951. He moved to the United States to obtain an M.A. degree (1953) from Princeton University, then spent a year as a Rhodes Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford. He returned to Princeton and received his Ph.D. in 1957 under the direction of eminent medievalist Joseph R. Strayer. He also began his teaching career at Princeton.

Video Title: "The Medieval Jew" - Norman Cantor. Source: IISHJvid. Date Published: January 14, 2015. Description:

Norman Cantor, Professor of History, Sociology and Comparative Literature at New York University, offers a rousing re-evaluation of the achievements of medieval Jewish civilization.

November 28, 2023

Look North

 

"Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie

The sea route to the Orient for which so many died

Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones

And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones." 

Stan Rogers - Northwest Passage.

 

Related:

 China And The Arctic.

The Changing Geopolitics of The Arctic.

"HMS Terror was a specialised warship and a newly developed bomb vessel constructed for the Royal Navy in 1813. She participated in several battles of the War of 1812, including the Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry (as mentioned in The Star-Spangled Banner: “And the Rockets’ red glare, the Bombs bursting in air”). She was converted into a polar exploration ship two decades later, and participated in George Back's Arctic expedition of 1836–1837, the successful Ross expedition to the Antarctic of 1839 to 1843, and Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to force the Northwest Passage in 1845, during which she was lost with all hands along with HMS Erebus." - Wikipedia.

"Nordic Orion started its voyage from the Port Metro Vancouver, Canada on 6 September 2013 carrying a cargo of 73,500 tons of coking coal. The ship completed its voyage through the passage on 27 September stopping at Nuuk, Greenland and reached its destination, the Port of Pori, Finland on 9 October 2013.

Northwest Passage shortened the distance between Vancouver and Pori by 1,000 nautical miles compared to the traditional route via the Panama Canal. Fuel savings were approximately $80,000. Nordic Orion was also able to load 15,000 tons more cargo than sailing through the Panama Canal due to its depth limits.

The journey has been described as an opening of a new era on the commercial use of Arctic." - Wikipedia.

An excerpt from, "The Polar War" By Peter Wollweber, Foreign Affairs Review, February 2019:

In 2016, a group of polar explorers made an astounding discovery in northern Canada. The long-lost HMS Terror, last seen almost 170 years previously when it headed the ill-fated expedition of Sir John Franklin to find the fabled Northwest Passage, was itself discovered as an almost perfectly-preserved shipwreck near King William Island. The legend of Franklin’s expedition is compelling enough even without the find. The latest in a long line of explorers attempting to navigate the theorised maritime trade route running through the frozen archipelago at the northern tip of Canada, Franklin set out with cutting-edge technology to find the Passage and form the latest chapter in a British tradition of polar exploration. The expedition’s subsequent disappearance was never fully corroborated beyond the tales of Inuit hunters, and in 1997, analysis of bone material indicated the last surviving crewmembers had probably resorted to cannibalism.

But as the wreck of Franklin’s flagship finally gives up its secrets, the long history of the Northwest Passage may be about to enter a new age. The culprit is, of all things, the ever-present danger of global warming. Evidence shows that receding ice across the poles is opening up previously impassable areas in northern Canada, meaning that the elusive Northwest Passage may shortly become what the British continuously sought in North America: an economically viable trade route to the Pacific. Of course, this route has long been in operation through the Panama Canal, but the Northwest Passage is a game-changer nonetheless; the world’s busiest shipping lane may now have to contend with a much larger brother.

Research conducted by NASA shows that the Arctic sea ice is gradually and consistently thinning. Combined with runoff from glaciers elsewhere in the world, which warm and desalinate the Arctic waters, the navigability of the region is gradually increasing. In 1969, an expedition by the SS Manhattan, a reinforced cargo vessel, determined that the passage was not economically viable, leading to the construction of the Alaska Pipeline. But in 2014, the MV Nunavik defied these predictions to make a cargo trip unescorted through the Passage, furthering predictions that much of the route may soon be ice-free all year round.

An excerpt from, "The Polar Trap: China, Russia, and American Power in the Arctic and Antarctica" By Dr Ryan Burke & Lt Col Jahara “Franky” Matisek, PhD, Air University, October 25, 2021:

As of 2021, the possibility of polar warfare with China and Russia remains low. However, the problem of tomorrow should be the debate of today, and tomorrow’s problem increasingly looks like competition and potential conflict over the polar regions rather than the false premise of preparing for a traditional war in Eastern Europe or the South China Sea. Thus, there needs to be an “American polar pivot” in policy and strategy (and military capability) to counter and/or deter malign actions by China and Russia in the Arctic and Antarctica.

Compared with Russian Arctic military posture and Chinese Antarctic orientation, America is militarily behind. With recent Russian military and Chinese economic expansion, the Arctic is now en vogue for international security scholars and practitioners. In 2019 President Donald Trump, following in Harry Truman’s footsteps, quipped of his interest in purchasing Greenland. While the media mocked the president’s comments, they dismissed historic precedent and strategic implications: Greenland has tremendous geopolitical and strategic value in shaping future polar dynamics in the twenty-first century and beyond. The Department of Defense claims the “immediate prospect of conflict in the Arctic is low,” but omits substantive discussion about Antarctica in its defense and security posture. The Polar regions are among the least understood strategic regions in the world, and the evidence supports that assertion.

The US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) is the geographic combatant command responsible for Antarctica. Despite this, its commander did not mention Antarctica once in his 41-page March 2021 testimony to the House Armed Services Committee.6 ADM Philip Davidson did, however, speak in detail about Russian activity in the Arctic as among one of the command’s concerns, even though the USINDOPACOM area of responsibility (AOR) does not extend into the Arctic Circle. The command’s northern boundary extends into the Bering Sea, thereby technically reaching the Arctic Region according to the US legal definition of the Arctic but hardly establishing itself as an Arctic-relevant command. The 11th Air Force operates in the Arctic but does so under the operational command of NORAD/NORTHCOM. The inconsistencies continue on the command’s website. As of this writing, the site’s “About” section proclaims that the USINDOPACOM AOR stretches “from Antarctica to the North Pole.” This is a patently false statement and is indicative of a broader issue: the US defense establishment needs a geostrategic polar education. The intrigue of polar conflict is generating discussion marked by passionate arguments either sounding the alarm or quieting the herd.

An excerpt from, "When the Ice Breaks on the Antarctic Treaties, a Polar War May Bring the Heat and a New, New World" By David Brown, Security Clearance Jobs, September 21, 2022:

In 1939, the Nazis flew planes over Antarctica, firing spears from the air emblazoned with swastikas, which punched into the ice, marking their territory. They also planted flags along the coast. Their goal was to establish New Swabia, a German territory on the ice, to be a source of whale oil and other resources. (The Nazis never likely built a secret bunker there, despite rumors to the contrary.)

They weren’t the only ones. The whole history of Antarctica is one of exploration, soft power, and on a deeper level, conquest. Beneath the ice in Eastern Antarctica is a continent roughly the size of Australia (itself roughly the size of the United States), with all the resources one could want. Which means when the system of Antarctic treaties lapses in 2048, depending on the state of the climate and the ice on top of all that land, a New New World might suddenly open up. Countries are going to want a piece of it.

November 27, 2023

The Jesuits In China


An excerpt from, "Confucius Meets Christ: The Jesuits in Imperial China" By Greg Pasciuto, The Collector, May 22, 2023:

Countless actors played a role in the Jesuits’ Chinese endeavors. Local converts, European missionaries, popes, and emperors all sought to exert their agency in a changing cultural landscape. Religious conflict arose not only between the Chinese Confucian and European Catholic traditions but also within the Catholic Church itself. The Jesuits’ foray into Chinese territory would ultimately mark the last major instance of religious dialogue between China and Europe until the nineteenth century.

Europeana - Jesuits in China:

In the 17th Century the Jesuit order had succeeded in gaining the favour of the Chinese emperor, starting a long tradition of cultural exchange between the West and China. Possessing knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, The Chinese entrusted Jesuits with important missions, among which was the establishment of a more precise calendar. The German Jesuit Adam Schall (1592-1666) was put in charge of the imperial observatory of Beijing, as was Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688), a Flemish missionary.

Jesuits created engines to calculate the movements of the stars and telescopes to observe them. They also used their knowledge of geography to create intricate maps.

To respond to the Chinese interest in western technology, Jesuit scholars wrote books concerning science, physics and mechanics, and translated works by important historic mathematicians such as Euclid and Pythagoras into Chinese.

Another important contribution of the Jesuits is to be situated in the field of the arts, including painting, architecture, gardening and music. They combined European artistic practices, such as oil painting and portrait art, with Chinese techniques such as ink painting on silk.

Wikipedia:

The Jesuits saw China as equally sophisticated and generally treated China as equals with Europeans in both theory and practice. This Jesuit perspective influenced Leibniz in his cosmopolitan view of China as an equal civilisation with whom scientific exchanges was desirable.

Just as Ricci spent his life in China, others of his followers did the same. This level of commitment was necessitated by logistical reasons: Travel from Europe to China took many months, sometimes years; and learning the country's language and culture was even more time-consuming. When a Jesuit from China did travel back to Europe, he typically did it as a representative ("procurator") of the China Mission, entrusted with the task of recruiting more Jesuit priests to come to China, ensuring continued support for the Mission from the Church's central authorities, and creating favorable publicity for the Mission and its policies by publishing both scholarly and popular literature about China and Jesuits. One time the Chongzhen Emperor was nearly converted to Christianity and broke his idols.

Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1 May 1591 – 15 August 1666) was a German Jesuit, astronomer and instrument-maker. He spent most of his life as a missionary in China (where he is remembered as "Tang Ruowang") and became an adviser to the Shunzhi Emperor of the Qing dynasty.

In 1992, Taiwan issued a commemorative stamp for the 400th anniversary of the birth of Schall von Bell, noting "with all his accomplishments his place in Chinese history is secure".

In 2013, Chinese CCTV published a documentary on Schall von Bell, as part of its series Biographies. At the very end of the film, the commentator noted that the Chongzhen calendar edited by Schall von Bell is still in use today. China International Communication Center's major biographical series of six Westerners in premodern China also featured Schall von Bell. He is also visible in Chinese soap operas, partly because he was close to Shunzhi Emperor and palace drama is the most popular genre on Chinese TV.

Video Title: The Jesuits in China: Models of Intercultural Dialogue. Source: Global Georgetown. Date Published: December 5, 2019. Description:

October 17, 2019 | Since the time of the missionary Matteo Ricci, S.J. (1552-1610), the Society of Jesus has actively engaged with Chinese culture and society. The Jesuits' historical appreciation of Chinese language, philosophy, and customs has informed a model of intercultural encounter with many variations and different levels of success over time. On October 17, 2019, under the auspices of the China Forum for Intercultural Dialogue, the Beijing Center organized a public seminar to explore the historical trajectory of Jesuit engagement in China and its relevance for today's world.

November 26, 2023

The Small Violinists, The Small Ayatollahs, And The Small Satan

 

The Middle East has been taken hostage by wolves masquerading as lambs, by killers masquerading as saints, by small men masquerading as giants.

The seizure of Israeli ships by Yemeni forces in the Red Sea is yet another clear sign that the United States and Israel are not the vaunted military powers they claim to be. 

Great powers are feared and respected. Israel and Washington are being mocked and toyed with on a daily basis. They have been found out as cowards time and time again.

Their greatest military assaults in this millennium have been against hospitals, weddings, and funerals, against terrorists in caves and tunnels, against innocent children with rocks in their hands.

What did they achieve in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan except mass death and destruction, leaving behind terrorist groups in power? 

What did their decades-long illegal war against Yemen get them except a wrathful people hell-bent on revenge? 

What did their acts of terror achieve in New York and Washington except pulling the wool over the eyes of children? 

The Middle East, their own countries, and the world would be more stable if they were true imperial powers, and a real empire.

But USrahell is a fake empire.

They build an empire based on public relations, on mass media, blackmail, and empty propaganda, not on values, religion, military victories, or even economic strength. 

What kind of power is that? What kind of empire is that? What is great about that?

Then you look at their sad foes, and aside from the Yemenis, what have they achieved with their empty tough talk? Nothing. 

The cowardly leaders of Iran would rather pick a fight with the SDF in Syria then take Israel head on. And their various militias are more interested in maintaining power than liberating Palestine. 

When their famous General was killed by Trump a few years ago, instead of declaring war on America the next morning, they bombed a few empty barracks in Iraq and took down a civilian plane. That's the level of their military competence. They have killed their own people by the thousands and only a handful of enemy soldiers. 

And Washington is hyping up this weak regime as the Big Bad in the Middle East? 

What the Middle East needs is a real Big Bad, in the form of a Chinese-Russian military and political alliance. 

The Bear and the Dragon have the military power and economic strength necessary to take over the region and establish peace by diktat. 

Unlike Washington, Moscow and Beijing don't have the problem of the Zionists breathing down their necks, and blackmailing them if they don't get their way. 

They're also not formal allies with Turkey, Saudi Arabia or any of the regional powers, so they're diplomatically able to coerce unwilling participants in a fair and just regional accord.

When you have a group like the Houthis running around and seizing ships for fun you know the region is for the taking. A true imperial power just needs to step up.

November 25, 2023

The Council of Nicaea, The Medieval Church, And The Origins of Antisemitism

 

The crimes of the past should not be emotionally utilized to justify the crimes of the present.



II.

An excerpt from, "Constantine and the Foundations of Anti-Semitism" The Messianic Prophecy Bible Project: 
The faith of the Jewish and Gentile followers of Yeshua was originally called “The Way.”  And for the first 300 years of “Christianity” the Gentile followers of Yeshua kept the Passover (there was no celebration of Easter or Christmas).

Some historians list “The Way” with the four other main Jewish sects of the time:  the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes and Zealots.

The Romans who saw the members of The Way enter the Temple also considered them to be Jewish, and that gave them certain protections to practice their Jewish faith as a legally recognized religion (as opposed to a cult or superstition that was not recognized by the government).

However, not long after the last apostle (John) died, around 99 AD, “Ignatius of Antioch (c.40–117 AD) told his followers, “It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus [Messiah Yeshua] and to Judaize [practice Jewish laws and customs]”  (“To the Magnesians,” VIII, 10).

One wonders how Yeshua who practiced the laws and customs in the Torah, was even allowed into this new religion called “Christianity.”

By the time the apologist and theologian Justin Martyr (c.100–165) arrived on the scene, the Greek and Roman Christians accused the Jewish people of Deicide — the killing of a Divine being, Yeshua.

Justin wrote:  The “tribulations were justly imposed upon you, for you have murdered the Just One”  (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho).

However, Yeshua said, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”  (John 10:18)

Justin was supposedly the first person to apply the term, “true Israel,” to the Church.  (Claudia Setzer, in “Jewish Responses to Early Christians”).

Many Greek-minded Gentile leaders emerged, such as Augustine and Chrysostom, who taught against keeping the Lord’s Biblical holy days described in Leviticus 23.

They disinherited the Jewish people from the Land of Israel by saying God has now given it to Christians;  and they continued to speak derogatorily about Yeshua’s brethren, the Jewish People.

Then Constantine stepped in and codified these sentiments into the laws of the land.

An excerpt from, "Amazing and Antisemitic: The Council of Nicaea was both" By Ron Cantor, October 26, 2022:

For any believer committed to the triune nature of God, Nicaea was definitely a positive event of great consequence; however, there were also overt anti-Jewish sentiments at the council that had far-reaching ramifications for Jewish people. And these attitudes were pushed by Emperor Constantine—the first Roman emperor to become a Christian. 

1. If you read the entire text of the Nicene Creed, there is no reference to this God being the God of Israel. Without God’s calling of Israel, there is no Nicaea. The stories begins with Abraham. In Matthew 15:31, when the people saw the lame walking and blind seeing, they “praised the God of Israel.” John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, exclaimed, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them” (Luke 1:68).

2. There is no mention of the Jewish ethnicity of the Messiah.

3. One of the purposes of the Nicaea Council was to change the date for the celebration of the resurrection from the Jewish calendar, that is, Passover (or the Sunday closest to Passover), to “Easter,” which “was to be on the Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring equinox.” In other words—it was to have no connection with the Jewish Passover. 

4. At the time, they were roughly 1,800 bishops in the Church. Approximately 120 of them were of Jewish heritage. Dr. Jen Rosner notes, “From all accounts that we have, these Jewish Yeshua-believing bishops were not present at the council of Nicaea, and moreover, they were not invited—which we can understand from Constantine’s posture towards the Jewish people.” Just over 300 bishops attended Nicaea, but, as far as we know, none with Jewish ethnicity. 

Constantine supported the separation of the date of Easter from the Jewish Passover (see also Quartodecimanism), stating in his letter after the First Council of Nicaea (which had already decided the matter):
"... it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul ... Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way."
According to Mark DelCogliano, “it was not the quartodeciman practice that Constantine sought to eliminate, but rather the so-called 'Protopaschite' practice which calculated the paschal full moon according to the Jewish lunar calendar and not the Julian solar calendar".

Theodoret's Ecclesiastical History records The Epistle of the Emperor Constantine, concerning the matters transacted at the Council, addressed to those Bishops who were not present:
"It was, in the first place, declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded. ... Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. ... Let us ... studiously avoiding all contact with that evil way. ... For how can they entertain right views on any point who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. ... lest your pure minds should appear to share in the customs of a people so utterly depraved. ... Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. ... no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews."
An excerpt from, "Jews and the Ecumenical Councils" By Solomon Grayzel, The Jewish Quarterly Review, 1967:
Somewhat more definite information is available about Jewish preparation for the IV Lateran, the twelfth Ecumenical Council, in I2I5. We learn that, under the leadership of Don Isaac Benveniste of Barcelona and the Nasi R. Levi of Narbonne, a meeting of communal delegates from northern Spain and southern France took place at St. Gilles just before the Council was scheduled to meet. These were among the most important Jewish communities of the day; these also were the districts to which Jewish refugees must have fled from the crusade against the Albigensians a few years before. The meeting was called to pick representatives to go to Rome for the purpose of obviating anti-Jewish decisions by the Council. Unfortunately there was no one in Rome with the influence that Yehiel had exerted a generation previously. Besides, the pope now was Innocent III, who could not be swayed from what he considered ecclessiastical imperatives. He knew better than any of his line how to make the Church supreme.

The Jews could do nothing to prevent the adoption by the Council of a number of regulations which the pope had prepared and which went far toward reducing their status in Christian society. Canons 67 to 70 dealt directly with the Jews; and the call for volunteers to the on-going crusade in the Holy Land also mentioned them. The four canons became part of Canon Law. The first dealt with the growing preoccupation of the Jews with moneylending. The statement pointed out that, the more successful the Church was in persuading Christians to abstain from the practice of usury, the more the Jews became addicted to the business. It expressed the fear that before long the Christians would be ruined, and the regulation was therefore made for the protection of the common man; the princes (who derived advantage from Jewish wealth) were urged to compel the Jews to abstain from immoderate usury. At the same time, Jews must be made to pay the tithe to the local churches for property formerly owned by Christians and now fallen into the hands of Jews. The princes were not too eager to respond to the urgings of this canon, so that the regulation on usury was enforced only when it was to their advantage. 

Canon 68 dealt with the question of keeping Jews and Christians apart. This was the notorious regulation establishing the Badge. It is startling that its reasoning appears to condone immorality by objecting only to immorality that may result from mixed religious company. There are places, it says, where the inability to distinguish between Jews and Christians leads to sinful mingling of the sexes, Christian men and women not being able to, tell whether their companions are Jews or Saracens and vice versa. Non-Christians must therefore be made to wear garments that will reveal their religious affiliation. Cruel as it sounds, it is typical of the mentality of Innocent III further to justify such a separation between Jews and Christians by a reference to the Mosaic obligation of fringes on the garments of Jewish males. He implies that these were meant to separate Jews from Gentiles, which of course was not the case at all. Coupled with this separation was the further complaint that at Easter time, and such other Christian festivities, Jews go about in holiday attire, thereby mocking the lamentations of the Christians. The frequent coincidence of Passover and Easter now led to results completely different from those which concerned the earlier Ecumenical Councils. 

Canon 69 re-asserted the prohibition against Jews holding public office. It added that whatever profits the Jewish official made from such employment must be confiscated for the use of the Christian poor. The reference is apparently to the employment of Jews in various parts of Europe as tax collectors and managers of monopolies like flour mills or mines. Canon 70 deals with converts from Judaism to Christianity, who must be compelled to stay within the Christian fold. The regulation takes on added significance from the forced conversions which must have accompanied the Albigensian crusade and the anti-Jewish activities of the crusaders on the way to the Holy Land. 

The call for enlistment in the crusading army which was appended to the Council's regulations was couched in terms of a ready formula. One of its paragraphs called upon the secular authorities to compel the remission by Jews of debts owed them by those who took the cross. In view of the numbers who thus escaped paying their debts, whether they really went on a crusade or not, this regulation was probably a
cause of considerable loss both to the Jewish creditor and to his prince. 

IV Lateran marked the high-point of Church authority over State; it also laid the foundations for the position the Jews were to occupy in Christian Europe for centuries to come. The implementation of the policy it set forth was taken up by the local and national councils. It is not surprising, therefore, that the following Ecumenical Councils had considerably less to say about the Jews.
The Fourth Council of the Lateran or Lateran IV was convoked by Pope Innocent III in April 1213 and opened at the Lateran Palace in Rome on 11 November 1215. Due to the great length of time between the council's convocation and its meeting, many bishops had the opportunity to attend this council, which is considered by the Catholic Church to be the twelfth ecumenical council. The council addressed a number of issues, including the sacraments, the role of the laity, the treatment of heretics, and the organization of the church.
Let me make a brief note here about the term antisemitism. It was a term that was coined only in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr, and I see it as slightly different from anti-Judaism.
Wilhelm Marr, a German journalist who was a Jew-hater, popularized the term in the late nineteenth century. He contended that Jews, including those who had converted to Christianity, were incapable of assimilating. Once a Jew, always a Jew. According to Marr, Jews were dangerous because their goal was “to harm Germanic identity” and to destroy “the Germanic.” Nothing could alter their foreign-ness, including changing their religion. Consequently, Marr rejected the term Judenhass, Jew-hatred, because even Jews who now considered themselves Christians were still objects of his hatred. Seeking a word that had a racial and “scientific” connotation rather than a religious one, he chose Antisemitismus (capitalized because all nouns are capitalized in German). For him and the legions of people who adopted this word, it meant one thing and one thing only: hating members of the Jewish “race.”
In other words, Marr didn’t want to merely hate Jews for their religion but for their existence. The Church Fathers did not believe that Jews were irredeemable. They wanted the Jews to convert and find peace with God. By definition, antisemitism is more connected to race than religion; it believes there’s something defective genetically with the Jew. Hence, Hitler was deeply worried that his grandfather might have been Jewish. If true, it was something irreparable. 

Hitler referred to it as “blood poisoning.” While Encyclopedia Britannica does say that antisemitism is about religion as well as race, it goes on to say that antisemitism “targeted Jews because of their supposed biological characteristics.” It would be unfair to accuse all the Church Fathers of being antisemitic, but most were very much anti-Jewish/Judaism.
Marr's speeches and articles showed first indications of antisemitism in 1848. He was influenced by the Burschenschaft movement of the early nineteenth century, which developed out of frustration among German students with the failure of the Congress of Vienna to create a unified state out of all the territories inhabited by the German people. The Burschenschaft rejected the participation of Jewish and other non-German minorities as members, "unless they prove that they are anxious to develop within themselves a Christian-German spirit" (a decision of the "Burschenschaft Congress of 1818"). While they were opposed to the participation of Jews in their movement, similarly to Heinrich von Treitschke later, they did allow the possibility of the Jewish (and other) minorities to participate in the German state if they were to abandon all signs of ethnic and religious distinctiveness and assimilate into the German Volk.

According to Moshe Zimmermann in Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism, a book written 100 years after the fact, toward the end of his life Marr came to renounce anti-semitism, arguing that social upheaval in Germany had been the result of the Industrial Revolution and conflict between political movements. He "openly requested the Jews' pardon for having erred in isolating the problem". In Testament of an Antisemite supposedly attributed to Marr but not published until Zimmerman's book, Marr explained the history of his thinking, asserting that he had originally been a "philo-Semite", having rejected "the miserable Romantic madness of Germanism". He complained that modern anti-Semitism was becoming merged with German mysticism and nationalism. Marr condemned "the beer drinking leaders, the gay 'Heil' shouters of modern anti-Semitism" and crude prejudice against Jewish writers and thinkers.