Why do Some People Hate Jews? 

Publicizing this historical background to anti-Semitism is so necessary right now. The similarity between anti-Semitism during the 14th-century plague and the increase in anti-Semitic incidents during COVID-19 reminds us that the forms and forces of anti-Semitism are not new, just disturbingly adaptable.

Your "weakness" of looking back; is a strength we can all benefit from. You are a gifted teacher and a blessing. Thank you!

Thank you for your well presented study of this painful subject. I'm praying regularly for safety of Jewish people all over the world, as well as the tearing down of senseless anti-semitism.

Sir, as a Christian, Im so grateful for your adding clarity to these issues.

Dr. Abramson, your continued efforts in educating people about all things Jewish are a blessing indeed. I'm not a Jew, but I enjoy your knowledge, wit and enlightenment tremendously.

Thank you for your carefully considered and compassionate thoughts on this topic, Dr. Abramson.

It hurts that a video like this even needs to be made.

I have watched your RU-vid lectures for quite some time. Thank you for your analysis. So sad that is necessary.! I am a Christian and find you to always be fair-minded and truly honest . I so appreciate all of your hard work..!

Thank you so much for this wonderful video, dear Professor. I have forwarded it to my adult friends who need to see it just as much as children and young people. Your comment about post modernism really struck a chord with me, as it has totally invaded academia and the media here in Australia. I am not Jewish, but I have always felt such empathy for Israel and the Jewish people and I would like you to know that there are so many others all over the world who feel the same way - it’s just that the biased media does not allow our voices to be heard. I also honestly believe that behind all the fancy sounding slogans about “human rights for Palestine” etc etc there is simply a basic hatred of the Jewish people for all the reasons mentioned in your video and it is being disguised under platitudes and false information. I send nothing but love and support to Israel and the Jewish people 💙🇮🇱🇦🇺💙

You are such a powerful speaker and fantastic teacher. Thank you creating this video covering a topic few would touch. Thanks for sharing of yourself and your experiences.

Prayers for you the holy land and all Jewish people! Amen!

Non Jewish atheist here... appreciate all your work educating the public on Jewish history and contemporary issues facing Jewish people. An invaluable contribution to the debate.

Dr Abramson - I am a 76 year old Protestant who is reading the entire Bible for the first time and marvel at the Jewish history of God’s Chosen. Thank you for all your beautifully expressed presentations needed at such a time as this. Shalom.

You are so right that antisemitism "doesn't have to make sense." I well remember the hate-filled look on the face of the boy who cornered me on the school yard and called me a "Dirty Commie Nazi Jewish Witch." I was so surprised that i laughed out loud and tried to explain that this was a contradiction in terms. I barely got three words out before he punched me in the face. Later, my mother said, "Well, at least he didn't call you an "International Jewish Commie Banker." Turned out that she had been called that in her younger years. Funny now, and kinda sad, to think of us bonding over the illogic of our tormentors, but that was our way of coping.

Hello everyone--if you're in the premiere, apologies because the settings seem to be incorrect and the live chat function isn't active.

Blessings to you and your family. Thank you for your continued scholarship and efforts. שבוע טוב

Your most important piece to date. One way that hatred is nourished over the years and applies to many different groups, is using stereotypes as a misguided attempt at humor.

Though not a Jew myself, I was a child among some and knew some over the years. They value learning and they work hard. I imagine that what you're describing is not hatred, but envy by people who are unwilling to undertake learning or work. If I don't achieve, I can either learn what successful people do and adopt those behaviors or blame someone else. Which is easier and which excuses my failure?

Another great video and talk, Dr Abramson, thank you once again. Truly we are living in troubling times and I feel tremendously sorry for my Jewish brothers and sisters around the world who are being harassed, abused, threatened, assaulted and attacked. For those fortunate enough to be living in the USA, I'd recommend keeping a gun (with the proper training of course), as well as providing self defense training for women and children. Further, I'd strongly recommend that vulnerable individuals do not go out alone, particularly if they are visibly Jewish. This is especially important for elders, women, children and the disabled. It's a sad state of affairs that things have come to this, even in Western countries. As a non-Jew, I pray that you, your family, students, colleagues and loved ones are all healthy, happy and safe. PS I had hoped that this talk would cover antisemitism around the world, and not just in the West. For instance, I'm curious to know to what extent it existed in the Islamic world, China and India. However I realise that this is perhaps too much to ask for one video so perhaps you might consider it as a topic for a future video. Stay safe Dr Abramson 🙏🏽

So much of what you say Rabbi makes sense. Since October 7 I've been trying to understand this conflict. Listening to Jewish/Semitic history on RU-vid has been enlightening. What I am beginning to understand now is only the very tip of the iceberg. Thank you so much Rabbi and God bless

Thank you dr. Abramson. Especially for your last words. Like the Talmud says; words that emanate from the heart, enter the heart. Shabbat shalom

Thank you so much for your eloquent and clear lecture and heartfelt final words. Reflection and looking back is never a weakness - it's how we learn, hopefully, so that the bad of history does not repeat. One thing that I am learning from recent times is that extremism in any group hinders and destroys peace. So many innocent lives are affected, both Israelis and Palestinians. I am so glad this non-Jew has run into your wonderful videos. I look forward to watching more.

I'm so sorry to hear about your student. I really hope she is okay. Thank you so much for making this video. I have directly and indirectly experienced antisemitism throughout my life but it's worse it when it comes from "friends" and colleagues. They are ordinarily anti-racist but have a blind spot when it comes to antisemitism.

Thank you for your time explaining all this. I’m learning buckets full of Jewish history from you.

Thank you, sir, for your rational and scholarly view of this painful issue. You displayed restraint and objectivity, yet I found myself shaking as I watched. I live in the north woods of the Midwest. I may be one of the only Jews in this sparsely populated area. I recently had a doctor, born in Saudi Arabia ask me why “everyone hates the Jews.” I calmly gave her a little history lesson but afterwards found myself feeling uncomfortable and uncertain about how to react. Was this a stab at my Jewishness or is it possible it was asked in innocence? She didn’t ask “why do some people hate the Jews.” It was “everyone.”

Dr. Abramson, I think this is your most important lecture to date and one that will, hopefully, cause us to pause for thought in a span of history that takes me back to the dark days of June 1967, when I came of age as a secular Zionist, a state of being that has never waivered, though this does not preclude my criticism of the government, nor my wish for there to be peace among all the peoples of the Holy Land and beyond.

Mr Abramson, thank you very much: clear to the point. Whoever you teach, is blessed. Stay safe.

Bravo, Doctor Abrahamson. Thank you for all you do.

Superb presentation. Concise and sharply defined.with heart.

This was very informative and will help me explain this to my Gen Z offspring. I also learned a good deal that will help me in debates with my peers, many of whom seem to have no concept of the history of this conflict prior to 2005/6. The blockade is all they can talk about. They don't even seem to remember the suicide bombing era.

My best friend here in Tzfat has much in common with you. Also brought up in rural Canada. Her and her mother did tshuva and came to Israel and the father and brother stayed in Canada. She does huge amounts of chessed.

When "Fiddler on the Roof" was released, the nuns at my RCC school took us on a field trip to see it in a theater.

May you receive many blessings for sharing about hard times. I know it can't be easy. Shalom Peace 🙏

Would love to hear you do an in depth, focused analysis on the more recent peace negotiations. Why did they break down? What were the true reasons beyond the quick news blips on popular media? Keep up the good work!

Thank you for sharing this, Dr. Abramson. Your videos are always helpful. We're doing our best to move our Christian traditions past the infection of supersessionism, starting at home. To fully understand the current period, I'm looking for any material I can find more recent than Benny Morris to balance out the Pappe narrative of cynical colonial predators. Will continue watching almost everything you post!

I am sorry for your student and hope that she is recovering well. Thank you for your calm and collected reaction to this tsunami of unspeakable horror. May your efforts help to heal the world, thank you Sir.

I am commissioning a star of David from my friend who's Israeli American. At first I was wary of wearing one, but I'll be damned if I'm not proud of my Jewishness. Thank you for talking about this important topic.

Hi, I was thinking a lot about the roots of Jew heatred in Europe in modern era and one reason for it that many people forget about, is the IQ disparity and arrogance of being smarter/better/right associated with it. One of the main reasons for hate in general is the feeling of being inferior to the other group or person (Palestinians now or European peasentry in early modern era) which is being intensified by the arrogance of the person/group that is factually smarter. Jews in Europe were considered smarter than the general population (hence the idea of Jews secretly ruling the world) so I believe with emancipation of peasentry and rise of comunnism and socialism the hate for the smarter one really took off especially that it had a face, a Jewish face.

I love your Bar Mitzvah picture, so cute! You have your mother's beautiful hair. I love your videos and was not expecting this picture. I request you release more Bar Mitzvah pictures!

Thank you so much for this, very much a necessary exploration of what is, again, sadly, a thriving phenomenon. I don’t know ( but can easily imagine ) what happened to my father to make him, now, retreat in horror and vehement rejection of his Jewish descent. My own experiences range from sitting, tearily, at the dinner table ( or ‘tea time’, as we call it in Australia ) of a very dear friend, as his mother smiled with a frankly very nasty cynicism, commenting on the “ nice little Jewish boy sitting there, with his Victorian manners “. What I’d done wrong, I hadn’t a clue. These sorts of things I ended up simply not telling my mother, who was prone to getting extremely upset at accounts of any schoolyard, street, or other locales in which anti-Semitism reared up. Here in Japan, ironically, the upset & insult springs up from a default response to one’s Jewishness ( sometimes from complete strangers, often drunk ) by showering you with ‘compliments’ of ‘your people’s wealth and intelligence’. Any protests at the inaccuracy and stereotyping associated with these sorts of descriptions is simply ignored, or met with incredulity. Tragically, quite open hostility, always present, emanating from South Asians of a Salafi, or at least simply pious Muslim identity, has now escalated, and I can easily imagine what happened to that poor young woman. She has all of my sympathies.

Thank you for your balanced and wise analysis.

Thank you for these videos in clarifying Jewish history; very well done

I’m a non Jew who have always studied Judaism since aged 15 and enjoy learning from your videos, thanks for your wisdom x

I’m a first time listener of the Dr. Abrams on historical lectures, and am very glad I found his channel on internet expanses. I am a very curious person and like to understand everything from true facts. Learning about peoples sins of discrimination, abuse, perceived superiority, etc. over the ages of history of our existence I feel very sad and disappointed in humanity, even though I remember & recognize humanity’s great achievements. Right now, I am not overly confident that the world-wide situation will soon improve. Sadly it seems, everything is pointing out in the opposite direction of people’s selfishness, aggression, hate and wars. Sometimes I think that we don’t deserve God’s blessings b/c we failed Him, and the afterlife feels better and safer than today’s reality 😢. However, the glimmer of hope still glows deep in my soul that wisdom & good will would prevail! So, I feel and want to conclude with the words: from the river to the sea I pray Israel is always free!!! 🇮🇱🕊️🕊️🕊️

Many thanks for this fascinating talk. As a secular atheist, ex-Catholic, I do not concur with any religion of course, but have nothing but respect for the Jewish tradition - especially their tradition of study and thinking generally. Who else can compare? Their refusal to bow-down to the various local enforced religions they have endured is wonderful and joyous - if only more people had done this in the past. It seems to me that certain people do have a need to hate somebody, anybody, and spit out their hate. Like a snake venting their poison. I happen to have a friend who seems to loathe numerous political or public figures for no apparent reason. Even quite harmless actors or comedians. Constantly shouting about them, on-line of course. (Oddly, he’s actually very pro-Israel at the moment. Go figure :-) These goys -what can you do?

Thank you sir for a very thoughtful and enlightening analysis.

Thank you for the education Shalom!😊

Thank you Dr. Abramson.

I am very appreciative of your videos. Your dispassionate tone is essential and yet I imagine is not always easy to keep… Always looking for current sources like Abba Eben was. Thank you so much.

As a Christian, it is horrifying to know what has been done to Jews in the name of Christ. Bad theology doesn’t fully explain the atrocities related to the false charges blood libel and host desecration. I know there is are multitudes of attempts by Christians of different persuasions to think through what the Biblical relationship is between the Church and Israel. Most of them mix the two together or see the church as successionist or completionist, or today espouse replacement theology. Your statement on the Mother-Daughter relationship is one way of describing this. These ideas play into the mindset that the Jews somehow lost their special relationship to GOD and therefore have no claim to the unconditional promises he made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This has given many Christians a freedom to side with people who expressly desire to do the Jews serious harm. I sometimes wonder if they are aware that there would be no Church without the Jews, or if they ever really read Romans.

Thank you for your openess, your truthfulness about your personal experiences. Very eye opening as well. Its good for everyone to hear these stories and hopefully learn through these stories. Again thank you so much for everything you do, your beautiful intelligent teachings and wisdom 🙏🙏🙏 I absolutely love love love your teachings ✅ you have such a beautiful talent, extremely intelligent but have a loving heart and i just want to say blessings to you and thank you so much for all of your hard work!! 🙏🙏❤️✅✅🌸🙏🙏🙏

Let there be light, Professor Abramson. Shalom, from Lisbon.

Thank you for making this video. It was very insightful.

Thankyou for the video. My young daughters and myself have experienced antisemitic verbal hate. We live in a rural area and the nearest Jewish Community is hours away. I had to move my children to a different school in a different area. We had witnesses but the police urged me to drop the case. I suddenly felt like a total outcast. I am a secular Jew and live in a country I wasn't born in. As you point out xenophobia has a lot to do with it. I have not moved away as I love my home and I don't care that most of the people ignore me. My daughters have found different friends. What bothers me the most that the horrific verbal hate was done by Christians who pray in church every Sunday. Just so two faced. The blood libel is still alive and kicking.

Thank you and may God bless you and you family and people Dr Abramson.

Two things; First, i really thought Borat was a fictional character and, secondly, shouting out the awesome death metal kings "Deicide" was a nice touch and you've earned my eternal respect and subscription as a result...

Your jewish history class at touro influenced me a lot. I've been a consumer of your youtube videos since taking your class.

Thank you, Dr. Abramson, for this insightful analysis.

I know how painful it must have been to say this at this moment. Thank you. Am yisrael chai.

I can’t understand why there’s so much hatred for the Jewish people. We’re all human being! I have nothing but admired the Israelites ever since. As a catholic I respect their culture and beliefs. They’re hard working people and able to improve their lives from nothing in a short period of time.

Excellent explanation thankyou. I'm a rather lapsed catholic educated in the UK 60s and 70s..l did not experience any dislike of the Jewish faith. My mum would talk to us about the holocaust and such awful behaviours of the nazi regime as she was 18yrs old when WW2 started. May it all cease and we all continue to live together in peace x

Thank you for this. I have learned much from you in this video.

You're a wealth of information! Thank you very much!

Great teaching Proffesor. Very enlightening. We in some parts of Africa especially Christians were in total darkness about the Jews history. Especially their link to Christianity. Recently I was shocked to hear that the Torah is just the same as our Old Testament in the bible. We also do have a small community of Jews in Namibia (a former German colony) in Southern Africa. I appreciate your videos and pls stay safe.

Well said! Good work! Thanks so much .. Blessings and Shalom from a Baal Tshuva in Chicago 👍🙂May you go from strength to strength!

Wrote a blog post about this topic, & it being wrapped up in contradictions was the big thing I noted when writing about it.

Great presentation and explanation.

Love and blessings to you always Sir!

I enjoyed that. I’m sorry for what you went through as a child.

Thank you for this great teaching about Jews.

What a fantastic video. So well and clearly explained while keeping (mostly) apolitical. Thank you very much and yes we could all do with shalom right now. One comment / question. You focus a lot on the Christian/ western history and evolution of anti-Semitism, but not on the east / Moslem story. I wonder to what extent looking at this from the perspective of the Islamic world might help understand the anti-Semitism we are seeing today (which must surel have its roots in that world at least as much as the Christian world given that the Israel / Palestine conflict is more Jewish / Moslem than Jewish / Christian)? Could it be that new-wave antisem is some merger of the two?

Thank you. Wonderful presentation. As relative now as 500 years ago.

Once hate (fear) takes root - it becomes reality. The important question always is; what germinates the seed - as it must surely be something collective, traumatic and generational

well put. ❤❤👏👏

00:52 In it for less than a minute and already thinking and want to express that no matter where I am going to learn in this video that hatred of Jews "comes from" which I cannot fathom and want to understand (in order to hope in hate's eradication) ~ any present hatred of Jews (other than let us for obvious reasons exclude Palestinians) is a 'learned hatred'. We are not born with hate. We become indoctrinated into whatever belief our parents, culture or whomever raised us held ~ their biases and prejudices. This goes for all hatred of 'an other entire race or culture." godspeed.

Blood libel is still alive and well in Finland. I was pushing my grandson in a carriage on the market square in Turku at Passover time, when a young man suddenly attacked us shouting out blood libel accusations. At least 200 people stood by and watched while I tried to protect the baby. A Kurdish woman from one corner and an Indian man from the opposite corner rushed to pull him off us, or I suppose the Finns would have allowed him to kill us. The police simply turned their backs. Oh, and by the way, I am not even Jewish.

Shalom! I love your channel. I don't know if this is the correct video to post this message, but it's your most recent as of today. Forgive me if you have already done a video on this. I wonder if you could make video about Jewish attempts to resettle in Israel (Palestine) prior to the 20th Century. What happened to Jews who tried to move back after Diaspora? Was there ever an attempt made by the local Muslim population to acknowledge a sort of "Right of Return"? I believe you touched briefly on some of this during the Crusades. All the best from Vancouver BC!

I have stopped & started this video alot. Evil=sin. Im a Christian & have prayed, Israel do as Joshua did. Fight as King David. I will continue to pray Psalm 91 over Israel 🇮🇱 and for all Jews ✡️. I an old but I pray that Christian's will show up Nov 14,2023 in DC to show our support for Israel and the Jewish people. Thank you so much for your teaching.

Thanks for you clear and concise presentation.

Well done l❤it! New view of art& history Praying x peace ✌️ From a Latinoamérica thank you!!!!

I am grateful for your educational videos.

Thank you for all you do. Your work is so important.

I am not a Jew, I'm an apatheist, but I have an inquiring mind and I appreciate your videos Dr Abramson. Why some people hate others because of accidents of birth, belief or something else is a mystery to me, so thank you for supplying some clues about anti-Semitism.

Children don't come into this world with hatred it's something they learn from whatever culture there raised in

What happened to your student happened to me in England as a boy from the ages of 8 to 10, suddenly from nowhere I was punched or beaten for the only reason of being a "wog". Insults and hate gaze for being a wog were also a daily routine in my life in England until we moved back to Venezuela in October 1971. So I know what it feels to be hated, insulted, kicked, beaten, and spit for no reason but for being a foreigner and it not only happened in the streets, my neighborhood or in the cities and towns but in school by lots of teachers and staff. And I have to emphasize it occurred daily.

42 I found the history video informative, thank you.

Even though we can't be certain of who's the real devil in the historical ages, but from what I've learnt from this video, I must say, I'm not surprised at all considering my knowledge of Human Psychology both as individuals and as Society, Racial population or Religious Population.

Thanks!

Thank you for your manner of presentation and useful information 42

Most of the reasons for Jewish hate and resentment, that I’ve seen across many platforms online, fall into these categories: •Jewish supremacy •Cultural segregation by choice •Individual greed and group greed •Exploitation of non Jewish people, throughout the world This is not my view, just an observation of the views of those who have expressed negativity towards the community. I’ve also come an across a lot of Jewish people saying that the negativity has a lot to do with what has happened in centuries past. However, it seems to have a lot more to do with what is happening with the Jewish generation alive today, rather than what has happened hundreds of years ago

Perhaps the haters see something negative in things like Deuteronomy 15:6 and ברוך אתה ה' א-להינו מלך העולם, שלא עשאני גוי I think all people are equal and any supremacist ideology is ridiculous.

As a born Christian practicing Noahide, I believe there is a level of guilt by many today. When Jewish people carry themselves with a loyalty to G-d, follow the Mitvahs and represent more of what Jesus himself espousedt than what todays Christians do, it is more self guilt than hate. I wouldn't say there is envy but a grudging respect to the dedication of others. There is also a heavy dose of ignorance, this is true of all religions really. Ignorance breeds irrational contempt.

I learned when I was eighteen that I was yiddish I had no idea what that was. My grandmother told me when I questioned my relatives. I Invoked A lot of anger I still to this day. Don't know truly. My family Is hiding something but all the old ones are dead now.

The world should be ashamed of itself for not being able to eradicate antisemitism. But it says a lot about mankind that we are able to mutate it to survive in different contexts and even have it penetrate what should be centres of enlightened learning,

20:30 I learned the other day that Ashkenazi Jews have a gene that when only one is present makes them resistant to TB - in the same way that sickle cell anemia when only one gene is present makes the carriers immune to malaria. I learned about it watching an old class at Stanford by Prof. Robert Sapolsky.

Thank you teacher I’m the better for listening - -

Feel really bad on behalf of your student, I hope she is okey :). i think people have tendencies toward this kind of bigotry all over the world, everywhere, but when things flare up they get emotional about it in a different way, and that can become dangerous of course. I think it is very important that we do what we can to combat that in all its forms. there are ignorant people everywhere, just think of how many people believe covid was a hoax, or that the moon landings never happened, bizarre ideas about Jews are no different, and they are mostly harmless when people are not put in this tension, like we see today, but when everything gets heated I think the less informed and emotionally mature people especially turn very easily to violence or to visceral forms of hate, rather than just engaging in silly beliefs. of course having strange racist ideas about Jews or any other group isn't good in any way, but when everything is going just fine i think mostly quite sick people turn to violence, with exceptions like neo-nazis and so on, but personally i think they are basically mentally ill in a different way than we usually diagnose. it could be something as simple as some ignorant person who have been exposed to ideas like that there are a lot of rich influential Jews, or whatever else, and now that Israel is bombing gaza, and Jews are in the news a lot they suddenly feel called to action in a different way, which is tragic. I don't think there is an easy fix, but I am still confident that in at least most western countries and hopeful most countries in general we can completely or mostly negate it, by clamping down in it, and educating people, there isn't the same necessity of unfamiliarity any more, any educated person can easily find out that Jews are just people, no different from anyone else, and if social media was only delivering good and accurate information i don't think that would be too difficult, the major problem is that people are sometimes very sketchy when it comes to how they process information, and are not emotionally mature as a general rule, i doubt that we will see wide spread hate, but fringes might get a lot more dangerous, and that in itself is not acceptable, we have to do what we can. Really like your content, its easy to digest, informative, and it seem like you really enjoy making it, which is a great resource in it self, makes it easy to consume, and inviting :) i hope more people find it, not only children, but i think this sort of thing is great for people who really don't know a lot about Jewish history.

Thank you

Thank you for your presentations and interesting videos. God bless you. 42

Very interesting, informative and well put together. I was thinking about the two rules of antisemitism and it struck me how accurate you were in your description and how I have seen examples of this in Sweden where I live. In short, the "reasoning" among right wing extremists goes as follow: Jews are to be blamed for the many immigrants from muslim countries coming here. When confronted with the fact that we have seen an increase in antisemitism mainly coming from that particular group of immigrants (sad but true, that is the case) The answer is something like: "That's all a part of their (Jewish) plan". What that plan would be is never mentioned. Right wing extremists can also find common ground with Hamas supporters in their antisemitism allthough right wingers hate Islam and muslims as well. I always wondered how that circular reasoning worked. You explained it perfectly. Thank you. Still confused about the world today but a little bit wiser.🙏