Cultural Expressions of Judaism
As was the case with Christianity, the issue for students of intercultural communica-
tion is clear: How is Judaism reflected in the manner in which Jews perceive the
world and interact with other people within that world? We now offer a few answers
to this question.Oppression and Persecution
One of the most enduring and horrific aspects of Jewish history—and one that con-
tinues to influence Jewish perceptions of non-Jews—has been the oppression, geno-
cide, and persecution Jews have suffered. As Van Doren points out,“The history of
Judaism and of the Jews is a long and complicated story, full of blood and tears.”^100
As far back as 1500 BCE, the pharaoh of Egypt made an effort to kill all Jewish males.
In 70 CE,“The Roman Army destroyed Jerusalem, killed over 1 million Jews, took
about 100,000 into slavery and captivity, and scattered many from Palestine to other
locations in the Roman Empire.”^101 More hatred and massive killings of Jews
occurred during the Spanish Inquisition beginning in 1478. In 1523, in an essay titled
Jews and Their Lies,Martin Luther added to the hostility toward Jews when insisting
that they convert to Christianity. Prager and Telushkin offer a summary of this long-
standing persecution of Jews:“Only the Jews have had their homeland destroyed
(twice), been dispersed wherever they have lived, survived the most systematic
attempt in history (aside from that of the Gypsies) to destroy an entire people, and
been expelled from nearly every nation among whom they have lived.”^102
While repression, genocide, and discrimination have punctuated Jewish history for
thousands of years, it was the Holocaust, the mass killing of six million Jews (1.5 mil-
lion of them children), and the destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities that empha-
sized to Jews that anti-Semitism follows them wherever they go. In just a few lines,
Matthews captures the horrors Jews experienced during this period.“In camps such
as Auschwitz, they were gassed, and their clothes, possessions, and even their body
parts were salvaged for the Nazi war effort. Bodies were burned in crematoriums.”^103
Even today, when reflecting on the Holocaust, Jews are still troubled by two aspects
of this hideous period in their history. First is the silence of the world leading up to the
Holocaust and the lack of response once outsiders knew what was taking place. For
example, while the Allies knew about the concentration camps, they did little to help
those Jews trying to leave Germany. Moreover, in spite of most of the Western World
knowing about the death camps, the international community failed to respond to the
German atrocities against the Jews.
Second, Jews perceive the Holocaust as a natural outgrowth of centuries of anti-
Semitism that still exists. They observe outbursts of this hostility in this century as
they listen to the words of Iran’s former president Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to
be“wiped off the map.”They read a series of reports about property desecration and
violence against Jews in fourteen different countries and how in the United States
there were 927 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the last few years.^104 These experi-
ences have created a world where many Jews have a difficult time trusting non-Jews.
Yet, in spite of these suspicions and hardships,
...Jews are still essentially the same stubborn, dedicated people, now, and forever maybe,
affirming the same three things. First, they are a people of the law as given in the holy126 CHAPTER 4•Worldview: Cultural Explanations of Life and Death
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