Thank you, Antisemites: We Were Grasshoppers in Our Own Eyes
Until You Convinced Us We Were Giants

Jews are the only people in the world who have been criticized for our successes. In the 3rd century BCE Jews in Alexandria enjoyed a significant economic presence. It was here that the Greek priest Manetho birthed anti-Jewish rhetoric, accusing us of unfair business practices and extended his calumnies by insisting that it was the Egyptian gods who expelled the Jews in order to maintain the racial purity of the population, thus rewriting the Exodus story.

This trinity of themes, resentment of Jewish success, insistence on racial purity, and rewriting our sacred Torah, would be repeated for the next 2500+ years throughout Europe and Arabia. In this three-session course Rabbi Kitty will present the Jewish communal response, how it framed life in the diaspora, and how it brought us to the current moment of anti-Jewish hatred.