Oy! Those Crafty Jews

Antisemitism is an ancient concept which has just now moved back above the fold. 

Mark C. Ross | March 30, 2026

Antisemitism is an ancient concept which has just now moved back above the fold. Back in ancient times, legend has it that Moses’s mother put him in a wicker basket so he could drift down the river and escape pharaoh’s wrath. Again, according to legend, God achieved overwhelming retribution against the Egyptians by imposing ten plagues upon them.

Yes, the Jewish Torah may be considered the beginning of linear history. As with Homer’s Iliad, it was chanted in the singsong style of pre-literate cultures. To this day, bar mitzvah candidates are offered the option of either reciting their Torah portion or chanting it. 

Judaism, however, is not just a religion, it is an ethnicity. The Jewish people are an ancient tribe that has maintained its integrity over millennia -- despite numerous encounters with hostile outsiders -- as with many other tribal cultures. The development of the Roman Empire allowed the Jewish people to disperse beyond their Levantine homeland. Eventually, Christianity developed as an offshoot of the Hebrew tribe -- and became especially popular among the modernizing former-heathens of the Roman world largely because of the elimination of a particularly problematic tribal custom: circumcision. 

Ultimately, Christianity was considered separate from Judaism and, according to some historians this resulted from the fire of Rome during Nero’s rule that was blamed on the Christians and not the Jews. Paul Johnson, in A History of the Jews, says that the primary contribution of the Jews to the modern world is the........

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