History major here, just want to add details to emphasize how damaging these stereotypes are, even to a modern audience. To do so, I need to quote the introduction to âThe Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrousâ by Asa Simon Mittman.
In his class, Mittman was teaching his students about the negative portrayals of Jewish people in medieval works, specifically âDemons, Saracens and Jewsâ which depicts them as literal monsters. Hooked noses, fangs, grimaces, the whole she-bang. He then recounts this anecdote.
âOne of my students raised her hand after this discussion, with a look of confusion and anger on her face. She said that she did not understand what I was âtrying to get at.â She said, with a quaver of emotion in her voice, that I was making too much out of nothing, since this is what Jews look like, more or less. And anyway, she continued, the Jews are Christ-killers. She then screamed out the text of John 19:15, saying âthe Jews shouted, âKill him! Kill him! Crucify him!â
She was quoting, interestingly, from the âGodâs Word Translation,â the most violent English translation i have been able to find, since most read âtake himâ or âaway with him,â where this one reads âkill him.â [âŚ] The resulting impression, conveyed by my student, was that the Jewish monster was real. The impact of these imagined monsters has all been too real, form the middle ages onward.
I was struck temporarily speechless, but as I soundlessly worked my jaw to formulate a reply, I saw in the eyes of all the other students a shocked recognition that, in essence, answers the question posed at the outset: all of this matters. All of this is relevant. I was trying to show how medieval images were designed to allow medievals to confuse one group of Jews from the first century with all Jews in their own day, and here, in twenty-first-century America, my students saw this same notion quite alive. â
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