October 5, 2024

1. Coincidence, Synchronicity

From the American writer Cleveland Coxe:

From Mind in Nature:
In the winter of 1870, a physician, in the City of New York... had been for a long time, perfecting a surgical instrument of complicated structure. Going downtown one day, and being attracted by some photographs in a store window, he turned aside to look at them. To his complete astonishment he saw his own instrument, part for part, pictured amongst these antiquities, dug out of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Cicero said, “Certain signs precede certain events” (Certis rebus certa signa praecurrunt).2 Sometimes coincidence has the character of prophecy. The American writer James Davie Butler quotes the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell: “Coming events cast their shadows before.” Butler also quotes the German poet Schiller:

    As the Sun,
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints his image
In the atmosphere, so often do the Spirits
Of Great Events stride on before the Events,
And in Today already walks Tomorrow.3

Butler also quotes Shakespeare:

Some will say that this is just literature, just literary devices, literary foreshadowings, but they could be the poet’s insight into how the world works, how time works, how the future exists already in the present. They became embedded in literary tradition because they were embedded in reality, in experience. Examples of foreshadowings are as common in history as in imaginative literature; for example, Napoleon foresaw defeat before Waterloo; Napoleon said, “Nothing ever happened to me which I did not foresee.”

The term “coincidence” implies mere chance, while the term “synchronicity” means more than chance, means that the world is profoundly connected. There’s something mysterious about synchronicity, something beyond what the human mind can grasp. Throughout history, people have doubtless ascribed synchronicity to God (the Puritans called synchronicity “special Providence”).

Now, however, some people are starting to ascribe to the world itself what had previously been ascribed to God; instead of saying “God is mysterious, God has mysterious powers,” people are saying “the universe is mysterious, there are mysterious powers in things themselves.” Quantum physics prepares us for synchronicity, since quantum physics teaches that there are mysterious powers in things themselves.

Mystery is troubling to people with a rational bent; Einstein was troubled by quantum physics. But mystery makes the world more interesting, more exciting; mystery troubles the head, but appeals to the heart; mystery can satisfy the religious needs of people who don’t believe in a traditional God. Mystery speaks to the whole person, though it troubles the rational mind.

Do anecdotes about synchronicity prove that synchronicity exists? Perhaps not, but life isn’t about proof, it’s about persuasion and probability. Anecdotes are useful, anecdotes might prepare us to see synchronicity in our own lives, and what we experience ourselves may convince us. Emerson spoke of, “The hints we have, the dreams, the coincidences, do make each man stare once or twice in a lifetime.” What Emerson calls staring can also be called astonishment, awe. Didn’t Aristotle say that philosophy begins with astonishment? Philosophy should go beyond rational thinking into the mysterious, the astonishing, the awesome.

The French Revolution and Communism believed that rational thinking could improve the world, could lift man into utopia. They believed that a world without mystery, a world with only matter, only visible and tangible things, would be a better world. They dismissed religion as nonsense, primitive superstition; they thought materialism was the truth.

But it didn’t work out; the world didn’t get better, it got worse. Some people felt that materialism was leading man astray, that man must overcome materialism. The French philosopher Charles Renouvier said, “The world is suffering from lack of faith in a transcendental truth,” i.e., a non-material truth, a spiritual truth.

Synchronicity and other occult phenomena are transcendental truths, spiritual truths. They have a religious character, but they don’t presuppose a traditional God — spirituality without monotheism. Synchronicity and other occult phenomena make the world richer, they lift man above shallow rationalism, above the flat, two-dimensional world of materialism. Words like “spirit” and “soul” come to life again. All sorts of possibilities arise, even the possibility of life after death. We’re overcoming materialism and rationalism, the world is becoming three-dimensional again, the world is acquiring a more hopeful aspect. New approaches to religion are now possible, as are new approaches to fiction, film, and art in general.

Links on Synchronicity
Synchronicity and Queen Elizabeth II
Synchronicity in Shakespeare
Synchronicity and Schopenhauer
Jung on synchronicity
Turtles and synchronicity
Books and synchronicity
Christian synchronicity
Synchronicity and physics
Synchronicity in D. H. Lawrence

2. Modern History

I saw a “docuseries” on Netflix called Turning Point: The Bomb And The Cold War. It’s a good survey of modern history, ColdWar history. It was released in 2024, so it includes the current war in Ukraine. It has nine episodes, each about one-hour long. It angered some conservatives, partly because it says that the U.S. meddled in foreign countries, supported dictators, overthrew elected leaders, etc. Granted, it has a liberal bias, but on the whole, I thought it was quite good; I don’t know of a better documentary on this subject.

Another docuseries on Netflix is called Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror. It’s shorter — five episodes instead of nine; it was released in 2021. It focuses on the Afghanistan War, and shows what a difficult task we had in Afghanistan, how determined the Taliban was to gain power, and how effective suicide-fighters can be. The Taliban seemed willing to kill everyone who wasn’t in their group, if that’s what it took to gain power. Should we have stepped back, let them have power, and let the fever of fanaticism burn itself out? Is the emptiness of such a group only apparent if no one resists them?

For years, we thought that if we spent another $10 billion, and committed another 10,000 troops, we could make progress in Afghanistan, but our efforts had little effect. The documentary says that we couldn’t control our own soldiers, we couldn’t prevent incidents of American soldiers mutilating Afghan corpses, urinating on Afghan corpses, etc. We couldn’t cooperate with Afghan soldiers (i.e., Afghan soldiers fighting against the Taliban) or with Afghan civilians, because we never knew if one of the Afghans was a Taliban-supporter and suicide-bomber. So we had to distance ourselves from all Afghans. Many Afghans felt that the Americans were worse than the Taliban.

The documentary doesn’t answer the question, Why was the Afghan Army unable to put up any resistance after the Americans left? The documentary says that the Afghans had fought well before the Americans left; they had some training, some experience, some equipment. Perhaps the Afghan Army took their cue from the Afghan government; when the government fled Kabul, the army lost hope. The documentary says that the Afghan government had always been completely corrupt.

What will happen when a group as fanatical as the Taliban possesses nuclear weapons? Is our best hope to fight with ideas, to try to change minds? Did fanatics like the Taliban arise because there was a philosophical vacuum?

3. Jewish History

I’d like to continue my summary of Jewish history. Here’s what I’ve discussed so far:

A. Social History

In medieval Europe, Jews usually lived in towns/cities, not in rural isolation. If you moved into a new district, it was hard to find work in the country; labor was done by serfs tied to the soil; “the free agricultural laborer was unknown in later classical times.” But it was possible to find work in the city, “whether as laborer, craftsman, or huckster. In Imperial Rome, Jews were to be found in almost every walk of life.”4

For Jews, it was easier to practice their religion in towns; “a quorum of ten adult males was desirable for prayer.” It was also desirable to have a teacher for one’s children. And finally, one was more secure in a town: an isolated farm could be attacked, but a community could put up some resistance.

In the country, the serf had obligations to the lord, the lord to the baron, the baron to the king. “This whole organization [was] based upon the idea of allegiance to a common faith and cemented by a series of religious oaths.” There was no place for the Jew in the feudal world. The Jew was usually prohibited from owning land, and prohibited from bearing arms. For all these reasons, “his attention was necessarily confined to the town.”

“The mainstay of the [Jewish] community [was] the merchant class.... The earliest [Jewish] communities of France, Germany, and central Europe lay along the great trade routes, being established presumably by merchants who pushed northward up the Rhone or westward up the Danube.... In legal documents of the ninth century, the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘merchant’ are sometimes used interchangeably.” (After Jews were expelled from Portugal in 1497, many settled in northern Europe, so the term “Portuguese” became synonymous with “Jew.”)

Jewish merchants traveled as far as India and China. A Jewish community was established at Kaifeng in central China around 900 AD.

The heyday of the Jewish merchant ended with the rise of Italian trading towns like Venice and Amalfi, followed by the First Crusade in 1100. These new Gentile merchants didn’t want Jewish competition; Venice banned Jewish merchants. Gentile merchants were often organized into Merchant Guilds. Guilds were partly social, partly religious, and they were closed to Jews. “So far as organized commerce was concerned, the Jew as such could find scant place.”

The Jewish craftsman, like the Jewish merchant, found it increasingly difficult to make a living. It was considered inappropriate for Christians to work for Jews, so the Jewish craftsman had difficulty hiring assistants. When crafts were monopolized by Craft Guilds, Jewish craftsmen faced another challenge, since they weren’t allowed in guilds. It seemed there was no place for Jews in the urban world or in the rural world. Where to go? What to do?

There was one essential function open to Jews: money-lending. This could be practiced on any scale, from the small pawn-broker who served the poor, to the big banker who served the king. Almost everyone needed a loan occasionally, and the Catholic Church prohibited Christians from loaning money at interest; “the Church took up an attitude of unqualified opposition to ‘usury,’ as it was called, whether the rate charged was great or small.” In fact, all three Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — say that you shouldn’t charge interest to members of your own faith. Roth says that “Rabbinical authorities... flatly forbade” charging interest to a fellow Jew.

And so the Jewish merchant evolved into the Jewish money-lender. “A merchant excluded from trade finds indeed the only outlet for his capital in this direction. (It is natural to have recourse to a merchant for help when no money-lender is available; and the Jew was presumably first introduced to his new profession by this means.)” Jews weren’t known as money-lenders in Roman times, or in the early Middle Ages; they became money-lenders around 1100 AD, i.e., at the time of the First Crusade.

As anti-Semitic violence increased with the First Crusade, it was safer not to be a merchant. Goods can be stolen, workshops can be burned, but gold can often be concealed, and loans can eventually be collected. So in troubled times, it’s safer to be a money-lender than to be a merchant — unless your debtor thinks he can clear his debt by killing you.

The Jewish money-lender benefited from his network of contacts, and from the trust that existed among Jews. He could write to a Jew in a foreign country, and ask him to pay a certain sum to a certain person. “He knew that his co-religionists were generally reliable, that they would carry out his requests, and that they would honor his signature.”

In medieval times, building projects and war both required the money-lender. “Aaron of Lincoln, the greatest Anglo-Jewish financier of the twelfth century, assisted in the construction of no less than nine of the Cistercian monasteries of England, as well as the Cathedrals of Lincoln and Peterborough and the great Abbey of St. Albans.”

The money-lender was also needed if you were a knight who wanted to buy your way out of military service. This kind of payment was called scutage. Roth says that scutage “undermined the feudal system and facilitated the establishment of national monarchies.” So the Jewish money-lender played an important role in the medieval economy. “The transition of Europe from a barter-economy to a money-economy during these centuries was certainly facilitated by [the Jewish money-lender].”

If you loan money to a landowner, could you be confident that you’d get your money back? One way to get your money back (plus interest) would be to require the debtor to give you his income, his rents, “the ferm of the shire.” So money-lending may have led to tax-collecting (rent-collecting).

We saw above that the Jewish merchant waxed and waned; he was eventually squeezed out by non-Jewish merchants. Likewise, the Jewish money-lender waxed and waned. Around 1300, non-Jewish bankers became active, using various ruses to skirt the laws against “usury.” Italian bankers were especially prominent, operating throughout Europe. Jews were left with small-scale lending and pawnbroking.

Interest rates were higher than they are today because of “the scarcity of coin and the general unruliness.” 20% was a low rate, 40% was common. In Italy and Spain, rates were lower than in northern Europe, perhaps because northern Europe was more disorderly, and had fewer bankers.

Since medieval Jews weren’t vassals of any lord or baron, they were often classified as “serfs of the king” (servi camerae regis, literally “servants of the royal chamber”). Since no one else looked out for the Jew, “it was necessary for him to look for protection to the king.” The king had complete control over the Jew, and taxed him in a variety of ways: Jewish births were sometimes taxed, Jewish deaths were taxed, even Jewish conversions (on the theory that “it was not equitable that he should be allowed to enjoy the profits which he had amassed in sin”). Above all, the Jewish money-lender’s income was taxed.

So heavy were the taxes that the king had a motive to keep the Jew in business; one might say that the king was the Jew’s business-partner. The Jew’s prosperity became the king’s prosperity, via heavy taxation. Occasionally a short-sighted ruler would try to curry favor with the public by canceling all debts to Jewish money-lenders, in return for a smaller payment to the royal treasury.

Thanks to the Jewish taxpayer, the king’s wealth and power grew. The king could defy the people and the nobility. So if the king acted in a heavy-handed way, the people and the nobility blamed the Jew. “Their hatred mounted up, until one day, upon a trivial pretext or none, they would throw themselves on the Jewish quarter, and yet another dark page would be added to the record of martyrdom.”

If they raided Jewish houses, they might have an opportunity to burn the contracts in which their debts to the Jew were spelled out. Jewish houses were often built of stone, to make them harder to break into, and harder to burn.5 Since Jewish money-lenders paid taxes to the king, the king didn’t want the records of Jewish money-lenders destroyed; in England, the king kept chests with duplicate copies of debts.6

Around 1200 AD, the Catholic Church mandated that Jews wear a badge — a yellow or crimson badge. Sometimes Jews were required to wear a hat of a particular shape, or a particular color. “This was ostensibly in order to prevent the heinous offence of unwitting sexual intercourse between adherents of the two faiths, considered as little better than incest and frequently punished by death.”

Sometimes Jewish houses were required to have a distinguishing mark or badge. Sometimes Jews were required to serve as executioners (since the executioner had an unpleasant task, a task that stigmatized him); the gallows was erected in the Jewish graveyard. Jews were “generally excluded from the public baths, or admitted to them only on the day reserved for prostitutes.” Sometimes Jews were forced to listen to “conversionist sermons,” i.e., sermons preached by Christians in Jewish synagogues. During their own synagogue services, Jews were required to speak in low voices, so as not to disturb passers-by.7

Sometimes a debate was held, in which Jews would defend the Talmud, while their adversaries argued that the Talmud was blasphemous, or that the Talmud prefigured Jesus. In these debates, the Talmud was often attacked by an apostate, i.e., a Jew who had turned against Judaism. If the debate ended by condemning the Talmud, it was followed by book-burning. “In France... all Hebrew literature [was] seized throughout the country on 3rd March 1240, while the Jews were at service in their synagogues.... On Friday, 17th June 1242, twenty-four cartloads of priceless Hebrew manuscripts were publicly burned in Paris. The disaster was mourned by the Jews hardly less bitterly than the physical martyrdom of their brethren.”


Woodcut, 1483
Dispute between Christian and Jewish scholars
Note the pointed hats of the Jewish scholars
Note also the confident pointing finger of the Christian scholar,
and the more defensive posture of the Jewish scholars

When we read about book-burning and badge-wearing, we realize that Nazi policies weren’t new and different, they were old practices.

Roth says that Jews were prominent in dyeing and silk-weaving, especially in Sicily and Greece. Jews often worked as goldsmiths and jewelers; this business was “desirable for a persecuted nomad who preferred to have his possessions in the most easily transferable form.” In Spain and Sicily, Jews weren’t excluded from crafts, and formed their own guilds; they didn’t experience the “economic degradation” of NorthernEuropean Jews.

One source of information about Jewish businesses is the writing of Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveler who lived around 1175. Roth calls Benjamin “the first medieval traveler who generally told the truth.” Wikipedia says that Benjamin “visited Europe, Asia, and Africa in the twelfth century. His vivid descriptions of western Asia preceded those of Marco Polo by a hundred years. With his broad education and vast knowledge of languages, Benjamin of Tudela is a major figure in medieval geography and Jewish history.”

Jewish synagogues were often built in the style of the surrounding society — German synagogues in “severe Gothic,” Spanish synagogues in “flowing arabesques,” and Polish synagogues were “pagoda-like wooden structures.” Likewise, Jewish music “reflected the folk-music of the various countries.”

In many respects, however, Jews maintained their own traditions. Roth writes,

The Jew’s home was in a very real sense his castle. It was not that he could keep intruders out if they desired to enter.... But he could keep extraneous influences at bay, and thus preserve, and even develop, his own way of life. Every trifling elaboration of tradition which had been evolved by his ancestors in Palestine or Mesopotamia was carefully preserved; every casual dictum of the Rabbis was regarded as a positive precept; every little custom, old or new, became sacrosanct, an integral part of religious life.

From the moment that he rose in the morning to the moment when he went to bed at night, each action was governed by prescriptive usage. His food, his manner of dress, his fashion of dressing his hair, were hardly less characteristic than his manner of worship.

The Sabbath became an oasis of repose in every week — a veritable “Princess,” who raised him, too, to princely status; her advent was greeted with song, and her departure solaced by fragrant spices. If he was excluded from the celebration of the Gentile carnival, he evolved his own counterpart in the Purim festivity, in commemoration of the deliverance of the Jews in the Persian Empire in the days of yore.

Contrition for hypothetical religious lapses, presumably responsible for his present vicissitudes, resulted in the elaboration of a series of minor fasts and the composition of innumerable penitential prayers. A patch of unlimed rubble, on the wall of every house, reminded him perennially of the loss of Jerusalem. And every Jew went in daily expectation of the advent of the Messiah-Redeemer, who was to break the yoke of exile from the neck of his people and lead them, erect and triumphant, back to their own land.

Polygamy was common in the early days of Judaism, but in Talmudic times (c. 200 AD) it was rare. By 1000 AD, polygamy was banned by NorthernEuropean rabbis. Among the Sephardim of the south, polygamy wasn’t banned, but it was almost unknown. Roth says that monogamy among Jews was stricter than among Gentiles: mistresses were rarer among Jews, and women were treated better (“a medieval Rabbi angrily stigmatizes wife-beating as a Gentile practice”).

Roth says that, among Jews, women were “excluded from public life.” He means, I suppose, that women weren’t allowed to become teachers, rabbis, or community-leaders. But their education was “not neglected,” and they often engaged in business, “thus leaving their husbands more leisure for study.” Roth says that “child betrothals were common,” because life was precarious, and parents feared that they would die before arranging their child’s future.

Jews often worked as doctors, perhaps because of their penchant for study. Even when they were banned from universities, even when the Catholic Church forbade Christians from being treated by Jewish doctors, Jews still practiced medicine; “the only calling in which [the Jew] is universally found, other than finance, is medicine.”

Jews were also active in scientific fields; they helped to develop the astronomical tables used by Columbus, the astrolabe used by Vasco da Gama, and the quadrant. A school of Jewish map-makers in Majorca was famous. “Many courts (especially in Spain) employed a Jewish astrologer.”

In the Middle Ages, many Gentiles were illiterate, but education was respected by Jews. Learned rabbis usually made a living outside school; their teaching was unpaid. “To instruct the people was regarded as a privilege; and for a long time it was considered shameful to accept any remuneration for so obvious and so meritorious a function.”

So, generation after generation, the wits of the Jew were sharpened by continuous exercise, from earliest youth, upon the acute Talmudic dialectic. But the Talmud meant much more to him than this. It brought him another world, vivid, calm, and peaceful, after the continuous humiliation of ordinary existence. It provided him with a second life, so different from the sordid round of every day.

After each successive outbreak was stilled, and the shouting of the mob had died down, he crept back to the ruins of his home, and put away his Jewish badge of shame, and set himself to pore again over the yellowed pages. He was transported back into the Babylonian schools of a thousand years before, and there his anguished soul found rest.8

B. Expulsion from England

We saw above that, as the Middle Ages progressed, the Jewish money-lender became less important, because Gentile money-lenders learned to skirt the usury-rules. In the late Middle Ages, Gentile families like Fugger and Medici built banking empires. Since Jews were becoming superfluous, kings began to think about expelling Jews from their realms.

Countries like Spain had been patchworks of small kingdoms, but in the late Middle Ages, they were becoming unified; the king could shape policy over a vast area; nation-states were emerging. So if the king decided to expel the Jews, it was a more significant decision than it would have been earlier.

In England, Jewish communities were weakened by a series of massacres that took place in 1189, at the accession of Richard I (Richard the Lion-hearted). The next king, John, known as “John Lackland,” made the weakened Jewish communities even weaker; “he began to squeeze money out of them by a series of expedients, from wholesale arrest down to the torture of wealthy individuals.”

The next king, Henry III, known as Henry of Winchester, was constantly short of money, hence he constantly taxed the Jews. In 1241, he convoked a “Jewish parliament,” and told Jewish community-leaders that they were personally responsible for collecting taxes from Jews. Finally, in 1254, the Jewish leader (Archpresbyter Elias), “in one of the most pathetic speeches recorded in English history, appealed on behalf of his co-religionists for permission to leave the realm, as they had no more left to give. Far from his plea being granted, orders were issued to the wardens of the Cinque Ports to prevent any Jew from embarking.” England was becoming a prison for Jews.

At the same time, various anti-Semitic measures were enacted. Jews were prohibited from eating meat during Lent, prohibited from entering a Church, and prohibited from settling “in any town in which a [Jewish] community was not already to be found.” In 1253, it was decreed that “no Jew remain in England unless he do the King service: and that from the hour of his birth every Jew, whether male or female, serve Us in some way.”

In 1255, an accusation of child-murder (Blood Libel) resulted in the death of eighteen Jews. In 1263, a civil war between the king (Henry III) and the barons led to massacres of Jews. Henry III’s son, Edward I, tried to stop Jewish money-lending, and open new businesses to Jews, but these policies failed.

Roth says that some Jews “attempted to eke a living out of their capital by ‘clipping’ the coinage. This was followed by a terrible revenge, the whole of the [Jewish] community... being thrown into prison, and nearly three hundred hanged (1278).”

Finally, in 1290, Edward I expelled Jews from England. England had been the last WesternEuropean country to admit Jews, and now it became the first to expel them. A few Jews converted to Christianity and remained in England, while some 16,000 left England. “For many centuries to come the re-establishment of a settled [Jewish] community [in England] was impossible.” Jews weren’t re-admitted to England until the time of Cromwell (mid-1600s).

C. Expulsion from France

Turning to France, Roth says that the ruling house of Capet had an anti-Jewish policy around 1200, but they only controlled a small area around Paris. Most French Jews lived securely until the French monarchy was able to extend its control throughout the country.

From 1180 to 1223, the king of France was Philip Augustus (Philip II) of the house of Capet. He was fifteen when he ascended the throne. Roth writes,

Prompted by a pious hermit of Vincennes, [Philip Augustus] issued orders for the Jews of his dominions to be arrested in their synagogues one Sabbath day, and an enormous sum of money extorted from them as ransom. In the next year, he declared all debts due to them null and void, with the exception of one-fifth payable to the royal treasury; and finally, in 1182, he banished them outright from his dominions, confiscating their houses and giving them only three months to dispose of their other property.

At this point, Philip Augustus didn’t control a large area, so the Jews he expelled could re-settle nearby. Later, when Philip Augustus returned from the Third Crusade to find an empty treasury, he realized his mistake, and invited the Jews back, with legal protection for their money-lending. Their status was similar to that of serfs, insofar as they were tied to the soil, they were “unable to move from one territory to another under the penalty of losing all their property.”

Louis IX (“Saint Louis”), grandson of Philip Augustus, continued the anti-Jewish policies of the house of Capet. Louis IX was a respected king who had a long reign (1226-1270). Like his grandfather Philip Augustus, Louis IX tried to curry favor with his subjects by canceling debts, or partially canceling debts: “Not only the interest on Jewish debts, but also a third part of the capital, was remitted. Finally, before setting out on his first Crusade in 1249, the king decreed the expulsion of the Jews from his realm, though the order does not appear to have been carried out.”

Louis IX’s grandson, Philip the Fair (Philip IV), reigned from 1285 to 1314. Philip the Fair pursued a harsh policy against Gentile bankers and against the Knights Templar, cracking down on them “merely for the sake of what could be extorted from them.” Likewise, he levied heavy taxes on the Jews, “wholesale imprisonment being resorted to periodically in order to prevent evasion.”

Finally, in 1306, Philip the Fair expelled the Jews from his vast realm; this was a real expulsion, this expulsion was carried out. “The king took over, not only the property of the Jews, but also their usurious claims in full.” So expulsion was highly profitable, at least in the short term. By 1306, the monarchy controlled much of what is now France, including two provinces in which Jewish scholarship had long flourished, Languedoc and Champagne. “This banishment spelled accordingly the end of the ancient and glorious traditions of French Jewry.”

Philip the Fair’s son and successor, Louis X, missed Jewish taxes, so he invited Jews to return to France, but he attached so many conditions to their return that few accepted his offer.

In 1320, a movement arose called the Shepherds’ Crusade, or Pastoureaux. The leaders spoke of driving Muslims out of Spain, but in the end, they contented themselves with attacking Jews. “A wave of massacres of almost unprecedented horror swept through the country, community after community being annihilated.... At Chinon, one hundred and sixty Jews were buried alive in a vast pit.” The massacres spread from France into Spain.

In 1394, Jews were expelled from France yet again, and they weren’t officially re-admitted for about two hundred years. A few remained in southern France, especially in the Papal domains near Avignon (medieval Popes were generally tolerant toward the Jews).

D. Massacres in Germany

While Jews were expelled from England in 1290, and France in 1306, Jews were never expelled from Germany; Jews lived in Germany without interruption from the year 1000, if not earlier. The reason for this is that “Germany” didn’t exist as a discrete nation, it was a multitude of separate realms, the Holy Roman Emperor had little power. “When the Jews were driven out of one district, there was generally another willing to receive them, in consideration of immediate monetary advantage.”

While there was no central authority to expel them from Germany altogether, there was also no central authority to protect them. There was a long series of massacres in Germany, dating back to the First Crusade around 1100. Sometimes a massacre of Jews began with an accusation of child murder (ritual murder, Blood Libel). Roth writes,

In 1298, in consequence of a charge of ritual murder at Rottingen, a whole series of exterminatory attacks... swept through Franconia, Bavaria, and Austria. At Wurzburg and Nuremberg the community was butchered almost to a man — in the latter case, notwithstanding the protection of the royal castle, in which they had been allowed to take refuge.... No less than 146 flourishing communities are said to have been wiped out.

A similar wave of massacres took place in 1336. The worst massacres occurred in 1348, when Jews were blamed for the plague (the “Black Death”) that was sweeping through Europe. Jews were accused of starting the plague by poisoning wells. Roth has a good word for the papacy; he says that the Pope, “true to the noblest traditions of the medieval Papacy... condemned the new libel and ordered the Jews to be protected,” but his efforts were unavailing.

“At Basel, the whole congregation was burned to death in a wooden shack hastily constructed on an island in the middle of the Rhine.... At Worms [the Jews] anticipated their fate by setting fire to their houses, where they perished in the flames.” After the 1348 massacres, it was many generations before German Jews regained “their previous prosperity or numbers.” After 1348, some Jewish refugees left Germany and moved East; Poland’s Jewish community was becoming more significant than Germany’s.


Burning of Jews at Trent in 1475
German woodcut, late 1400s

Meanwhile, in Austria, Jews were enjoying relative safety until the emergence of the Hussite movement in the early 1400s (Jan Huss started a proto-Protestant movement). The Pope dispatched crusading armies to crush the Hussite heresy, and these armies often began by attacking those arch-heretics, the Jews; “massacre once again succeeded massacre.” In 1420, the Jewish community of Vienna was exterminated. (The Hussites “defeated five consecutive papal crusades between 1420 and 1431.”9 Bohemia and Moravia remained mostly Hussite for the next 200 years.)

So the anti-Hussite movement was also an anti-Jewish movement. A friar named John of Capistrano was “almost the embodiment” of the anti-Hussite movement. Roth writes,

At Breslau, in 1453, an alleged desecration of the Host [i.e., injury to the consecrated wafer] led to a mock trial under the auspices of Capistrano himself. Forty-one martyrs were burned to death before his lodgings in the Salzring. All other Jews were stripped of their goods and banished, their children under seven years of age having previously been taken away to be brought up in the Christian faith. The example was faithfully followed in the rest of the province.... Thus the Papal emissary passed on, attended by a constant procession of outrages, burnings, and massacres, to Poland.

The result of all these banishments and massacres is that only “isolated handfuls [of Jews] continued to live here and there throughout [Germany]. No important Jewish settlements managed to maintain their existence unbroken excepting those of Worms and of Frankfurt — the mother towns of German Jewry.”

4. Politics

Kamala Harris’ father, Donald Harris, was from an affluent, upper-class Jamaican family, and he became a Stanford economics professor. His work for the Jamaican government seemed to have a positive impact on Jamaica.

Kamala Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from an upper-class family in India; like her husband, she was highly educated and highly successful. Donald and Shyamala separated after about five years of marriage. People from different backgrounds seem to be strongly attracted to each other initially, but have difficulty maintaining their relationship. For the last thirty years, Donald has been married to “a fellow Jamaican-American.”

Kamala Harris’ upper-class origins may have boosted her confidence. Furthermore, she was the eldest child in her family, and this also boosts confidence. As a result of these two factors, she had the confidence to step in front of a crowd, and run for office.

The phrase “run for office” comes from the custom, in early societies, of having a foot-race to determine the winning candidate. Physical fitness/strength/appearance mattered. If Harris and Trump had a foot-race, Harris would win; she’s younger and fitter. This may have helped her in her debate with Trump. Trump seems somewhat old and tired, especially when standing next to someone twenty years younger.

* * * * *

The Democrats supported the dockworkers’ strike, though dockworkers are well-paid, are often paid for staying home, and oppose automation. Democratic support for dockworkers injures the rest of society. Likewise, Democratic support for teachers’ unions, and other public-employee unions, helps a segment of society at the expense of society as a whole. This is the essence of the Democratic Party: help segments of society, buy the votes of segments, while hurting the whole. The segments that Democrats claim to help aren’t really helped; the only genuine well-being is that of the whole.

* * * * *

Democrats have launched a Double Coup:

  1. They’ve opened the border, and imported more than 10 million foreigners to impact future elections
  2. They’ve destroyed the secret ballot, replacing it with the mail-in ballot

The secret ballot has been the cornerstone of American democracy for more than 100 years; remove this cornerstone, and the whole edifice totters. As long as mail-in ballots are widely used, Republicans will have reason to question any close election that Democrats say they won.

While Democrats have been engaged in this Double Coup against American democracy, they’ve been pretending to be — wait for it — the defenders of democracy!

Both of these coups are somewhat effective, at least in the long-term. Will Republicans find a way to counter these coups? Launch a coup of their own? Take the high road and let Democrats dominate?

Democracy can’t function without a modicum of cooperation. When partisanship becomes so extreme that one party is importing voters from foreign countries, then the future of democracy is bleak.

Democrats are eager to put their men in charge of the armed forces, in case civil strife breaks out; the armed forces are becoming as politicized as the courts.10 A Democratic President like Biden would never nominate a conservative for Defense Secretary or JointChiefs Chairman, just as he wouldn’t nominate a conservative to the Supreme Court. Expect the struggle to control the armed forces to become more intense. Eventually it may not matter who sits on the Supreme Court; disputes will be settled by the clash of arms; as Cicero said, Silent leges inter arma (Laws are silent in the midst of arms).

* * * * *

With American democracy rapidly declining, it’s time to ask, What comes next? American democracy is like an old car: we want to drive it as long as we can, but eventually we’ll have no choice but to junk it and go in a different direction. We have little faith in non-democratic government, having seen it go haywire in many countries; indeed, we usually speak of the end of democracy as the end of the nation. But the nation may well survive the death of democracy. When the Roman Republic disintegrated, it was succeeded by the Roman Empire, a non-democratic government.

Gibbon reminds us that non-democratic government sometimes works. Gibbon said that the Roman Empire sometimes worked better than the Roman Republic: “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” This period is called the Five Good Emperors.

* * * * *

It’s difficult to predict the outcome of the election. Harris has a slight edge in the polls and in the prediction markets. Republicans are hoping that, as in previous elections, the polls are under-estimating Trump’s support, since Trump voters are more “shy,” more reluctant to talk to pollsters.

Republican-leaning pollsters like Trafalgar seem to count every Trump voter, no matter how shy. Such pollsters may err on the other side, they may underestimate the power of Democratic ballot-harvesting. Mail-in ballots enable Democrats to have a 100% turnout, or nearly 100%, in urban neighborhoods with high Democratic registration. Democrats pass out ballots in those neighborhoods, then collect those ballots, and perhaps assist with filling them out.

If it were a clean election — in-person voting, secret ballots, voter ID, citizenship check, monitors from both parties — I would put my money on Trump.

© L. James Hammond 2024
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Footnotes
1. Coxe wrote a column on coincidences for a Chicago magazine called Mind in Nature: A Popular Journal of Psychical, Medical and Scientific Information. The magazine can be found in book form at Google Books and elsewhere. back
2. De Divinatione, Book I, available online at Perseus back
3. This is from Schiller’s play The Death of Wallenstein, translated by Coleridge, Act V, scene iii

In an earlier issue, I mentioned Butler and John Muir (Butler was Muir’s teacher at the University of Wisconsin). back

4. Cecil Roth, A Short History of the Jewish People, 1948, online here, Ch. 19, p. 201. All quotations from this book, unless otherwise indicated. back
5. Roth 1948, Ch. 19, pp. 216-217 back
6. Roth 1948, Ch. 20, p. 222 back
7. Roth 1948, Ch. 19, p. 217 back
8. Cecil Roth, 1948, Ch. 19, p. 220 back
9. Wikipedia back
10. Wall Street Journal editorial. back