Jews And The Witch Craze – Non-Fiction

Just to follow up on that previous re-blog without derailing it: a lot of the really weird relationships and discourse that exist out there in the neo-pagan, Satanist, and atheist communities are in fact echoes of the weird relationship that Christianity has with Judaism.

Christianity has a weird, tumultuous relationship with Judaism because they must simultaneously validate the Tanakh and the Jews who created it or else their own religion is devoid of context and built on a house of cards. But! If they validate Judaism, then they have to grapple with the fact that the Jews did not accept their interpretation of the Tanakh, that we still, against all odds, exist, and that because we still exist, we are still around to point out the ways in which the New Testament does not fit with the Tanakh and that the Tanakh does not inherently or naturally point to Jesus. And that’s to say nothing of the bloody history of Christianity towards Judaism.

Our continued existence is a sore point and a weakness in the Christian narrative that has been a constant source of irritation, frustration, and violence since the dawn of Christianity. And, at the same time, there is a certain fascination with Judaism related to things that have been appropriated by Christians or understood as particularly useful in spreading supercessionist ideas. So what you wind up with is a toxic mix of antisemitism and philosemitism (effectively fetishization and orientalism) that drives too many Christians to “love” us by attacking our beliefs and way of life, and stealing whatever they think will be most helpful in their mission (especially as it pertains to Jews) in order to try and convert us.**

Many people who have also been hurt from inside of Christianity or by the broader Christian culture they live in seek to deconstruct those ideas by creating an inverse of Christianity in one way or another. Those who turn to Satanism typically do this by worshipping the opposite force of the Christian god. Those who turn to neo-paganism typically do this by embracing an unambiguously polytheistic religion and/or by turning to the cultural-historical enemies of Christianity. Those who turn to atheism typically do this by rejecting “God,” “Faith,” and “Organized religion” (as these concepts are understood by Christian norms.)

And honestly? That’s fine. If it helps, if it brings you meaning and joy, knock yourselves out. I have no problem with people turning to these beliefs for reasons of healing as well as simply being drawn to them. And for what it’s worth, I did a similar thing by turning to Judaism. Obviously, I had many other reasons for becoming a Jew as well, and I assume that’s true for the aforementioned folks, too. Judaism healed a lot of Christianity-shaped wounds for me, and if your paganism, Satanism, and/or atheism help you in the same way as well as bringing you meaning, I sincerely wish you the best.

However, the problem is that many times, unless you turn to Judaism and learn our side of the story, it’s very difficult to deconstruct the antisemitism of your past entanglement with Christianity. Christian antisemitism has permeated Western society so thoroughly for so long that it is real *work* to identify and unlearn it. Those converting to Judaism have the benefit of the Jewish community and extensive educational resources to help. Other folks do not.

Here’s the problem: if you simply invert Christian ideas, you are still treating Christianity as the baseline reality from which your other assumptions and beliefs flow. If you just choose the opposite at every chance, you divorce yourself from Christianity, but not its prejudices.

Now you might fairly ask, “Hey Avital, if we are making the opposite choice at every turn, wouldn’t that invert the antisemitism to being at least neutral if not positive towards Judaism?” And that would be perfectly logical! But unfortunately deeply and (for us) dangerously incorrect.

The reason is that (1) antisemitism has never been rational but reactionary instead, (2) philosemitism is also bad, and (3) it is structured in a way that it’s pretty much always “heads I win, tails you lose.” Have you ever noticed that according to antisemites, Jews are both ultra-white and also dirty foreign Middle Eastern invaders? That we are supposedly very powerful and run the world, but are also weak and degenerate? That both the Right and the Left have extensive antisemitism problems?

There’s a reason — it’s because antisemitism is designed to other us no matter what. So oftentimes I see folks inverting Christian philosemitism to being “those awful fundamentalist Old Testamenters” or inverting Christian antisemitism to valorizing Judaism, but only to the extent that they can meme-ify our religion down to fighting God and/or being un-pious godless liberals.

But like other groups, we are a diverse and complicated group with a very long history and a lot of trauma to boot.

If you’re trying to unpack your Christian conditioning, please also unpack your antisemitism and philosemitism. If not for our sake and for it being the right thing to do, at least do it for yourselves, because unless you deconstruct that as well, you will still be operating within a really ugly aspect of a Christian mindset.

(**Please note that this isn’t literally all Christians everywhere, but it is a lot of Christians in most places and throughout most of history. There are absolutely Christians who are good allies to Jews, but they are much smaller in number and are swimming upstream in their relationship to both Jews and Christianity.)

COMMENT FROM JESSICAPRICE (VIA TUMBLR)

And that’s before we even get into the very, very ugly antisemitic background of the pagan/Wiccan use of the term “Sabbat” and all that.

RESPONSE FROM UNBIDDEN-YIDDEN (VIA TUMBLER)

Oh yeah, this is not to say that these groups haven’t developed/can’t have their own unique versions of antisemitism apart from Christianity. That said, while I disagree with the usage of “Sabbat,” it’s just another [incorrect] transliteration of like “Sabbath” is. I would say this is actually a great example of what I was talking about regarding the inversion of Christianity leading to the preservation of Christian antisemitism even in the inverse. Because Christians appropriated the concept of Shabbat and made their own Sabbath as a day of worship (rather than rest), neo-pagan witches and Wiccans who use “Sabbat” as a “Black Sabbath” or whatever are preserving that appropriation and simply convert it into a form that is intended to reject the Christian Sabbath, not realizing that they are also spitting on the sanctity of Shabbat (or they do, but here I was talking about the well-intentioned people, not avowed antisemites.)

Now, are there Sabbat practices that are uniquely pagan in their appropriation of Judaism (usually kabbalah) and/or just plain antisemitic? Very probably. I’m less familiar with any of that because for the time period I was pagan I was very solitary about it.

COMMENT FROM JESSICAPRICE (VIA TUMBLR)

It’s actually worse than that.

The Jewish Shabbat was antithetical to Christianity and was therefore demonized. It was a well-known thought that “[c]ontrary to the day when Christians meet to pray- Sunday morning- the devil and his legions prefer the night between Friday and Saturday. ” (1). It was claimed in multiple texts that while Christians took the body of Christ on their Sabbath, on Shabbat, Jews ate the bodies of Christian infants.

The modern witches Sabbats, as celebrated by Wiccans, use the name inspired by the “Hexensabbat” mentioned during the period. Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca, chose instead to use this as a reference to the celebration of the Celtic Wheel of the Year (4) as opposed to any other meeting. He did so by simply removing the “Hexen” and keeping only the sabat.

From: https://jewitches.com/blogs/blog/jews-and-the-witchcraze

So, the be clear: the reason modern pagans call them “Sabbats” and not “Shabbats” or “Sabbaths” is because they derived the name from an explicitly antisemitic usage claiming Jewish Shabbat practices are devil worship.