According to the reading, why does Martin Luther not like Jews?

Transcribed Image Text:to be such with their deeds. Thus they have been accused? of poisoning water and wells, of true or not, I do know that they do not lack the complete, full, and ready will to do such things either secretly or openly where possible. This kidnapping children, of piercing them through you can assuredly expect from them, and you must govern yourself accordingly. with an awl, of hacking them in pieces, and in that way secretly cooling their wrath with the blood of Christians, for all of which they have often been condemned to death by fire.. . Furthermore, we do not know to the present day which devil brought them into our country. We surely did not bring them from Jerusalem. ... For they are a heavy burden, a plague, a pestilence, a sheer misfortune for our country. Proof for this is found in the fact that they have often been expelled forcibly from a country. ... What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing, and blasphemy... .I shall give you my sincere advice: First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in (T}heir own vile external life... abounds with witchcraft, conjuring signs, fig- ures, ... idolatry, envy, and conceit. Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of cloth- ing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as archthieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security. . But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath....The example of the Jews demonstrates clearly how easily the devil can mislead people, after they once have digressed from the proper understanding of scripture, into such blindness and darkness that it can be readily grasped and perceived simply by natural reason, yes, even by irrational beasts. And yet they who daily teach and hear God's word do not recog- nize this darkness but regard it as the crue light. O Lord God, have mercy on us! It serves them tight that, rejecting the truth of God, they have to believe instead such abominable, stupid, inane lies, and that instead of the beautiful face of the divine word, they have to look into the devil's black, dark, lying behind, and worship his stench. . (The Jews wish to] lay their hands on the land, the goods, and the government of the whole world. And now a storm breaks over us with curses, defamation, and derision that cannot be expressed with words. They wish that sword and war, distress and every misfor- tune may overtake us accursed Goyim. They vent their curses on us openly every Saturday in their synagogues and daily in their homes. They teach, urge, and train their children from in- fancy to remain the bitter, virulent, and wrath- ful enemies of the Christians. honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them the fact that they are not masters in our coun- try, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God. They have been bloodthirsty blood- hounds and murderers of all Christendom for more than fourteen hundred years in their intentions, and would undoubtedly prefer The clement of caution in Luther's phrascology here perhaps indicates some awareness on his part of the unsupported char Acter of such accusations. In 1510, for example, thirty-eight Jews had been executed in Berlin on a charge of desecration of the host. In 1539, however, in the context of a debare on policy coward the Jews at the ausCImbly of Procesrant estates at Frankfurt, Philip Melanchthon presented convincing evi- dence that thcy had been innocent.
Transcribed Image Text:Luther and the Jews Initially, Luther hoped to attract Jews to his vision of reformed Christianity. In That Jesus Was Born a Jew (1523), the young Luther expressed sympathy for Jewish sufferings and denounced persecution as a barrier to conversion. He de- clared, "I hope that if one deals in a kindly way with the Jews and instructs them carefully from the Holy scripture, many of them will become genuine Christians.... We (Christians) are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord." When the Jews did not abandon their faith, however, Luther launched a diatribe against them. Martin Luther ON THE JEW'S AND THEIR LIES In On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), Martin Luther accepted ar face value hate- ful medieval myths about the Jews: that they engaged in sorcery and magic, poisoned the wells of Christians, desecrated the Eucharistic host, and ritually murdered Christian children. In the concluding section, excerpted here, Luther advises civil and clerical authorities to treat the Jews harshly. The authorities did not heed Luther's proposals to raze synagogues and homes-although some anti- Jewish measures were introduced-and for several centuries Lutheran theo- logians paid little mind to Luther's anti-Judaism. In the late nineteenth century, German nationalists revived Luther's treatise, and the Nazis gleefully circulated his words as an authoritative endorsement of their anti-Semitic ideology." (D]ear Christian, be on your guard against wherever you see a genuine Jew, you may with a the Jews, who, as you discover here, are con- signed by the wrath of God ro the devil, who has not only robbed them of a proper understanding of scripture, but also of ordinary human reason, shame, and sense, and only works mischief with bitter, venomous, and vehement foe than a real Holy scriptures through them Therefore they Jew who carnestly seeks to be a Jew..There- cannor be trusted and believed in any other fore the history books often accuse them of con- matter either, even though a cruthful word taminating wells, of kidnaping and piercing may drop from their lips occasionally For any- one who dares to juggle the awesome word of God so frivolously and shamefully have a good spiric dwelling in him. Therefore, good conscience cross yourself and bluntly say There goes a devil incarnate" (D]ear Christian, be advised and do nor doubt that next to the devil, you have no more children, as for example at Trent, Weissensee, etc. They, of course, deny this. Whether it is cannot Hn 1994 the Church Council of the Evargelical Lutheran Church in Amierica ackno awicdcedwj

Question

According to the reading, why does Martin Luther not like Jews?

Accepted Answer

Martin Luther was a theologian and founder of Lutheran Christianity. His ideas challenged the…