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A Judensau (German for "Jews' sow") [1] [2] [3] is a folk art [4] image of Jews in obscene contact with a large sow (female pig), which in Judaism is an unclean animal. These first appeared in the 13th century in Germany [1] and some other European countries, and remained popular for over 600 years. [5]
The Jewish prohibition against eating pork comes from Torah, in the Book of Leviticus Chapter 11, verses 2 through 8. [6] [7] The arrangement of Jews surrounding, suckling, and having intercourse with the animal (sometimes regarded as the devil [4] ), is a mockery of Judaism.
The image appears in the Middle Ages, mostly in carvings on church or cathedral walls, [1] often outside where it could be seen from the street (for example at Wittenberg and Regensburg), but also in other forms. The earliest appearance seems to be on the underside of a wooden choir-stall seat in Cologne Cathedral, dating to about 1210. The earliest example in stone dates to ca. 1230 and is located in the cloister of the cathedral at Brandenburg. In about 1470 the image appeared in woodcut form, and thereafter was often copied in popular prints, often with antisemitic commentary. A wall painting on the bridge tower of Frankfurt am Main, constructed between 1475 and 1507 near the gateway to the Jewish ghetto and demolished in 1801, was an especially notorious example and included a scene of the ritual murder of Simon of Trent. [8]
The city of Wittenberg contains a Judensau from 1305, on the façade of the Stadtkirche, the church where Martin Luther preached. It portrays a rabbi who looks under the sow's tail, and other Jews drinking from its teats. An inscription reads "Rabini Schem HaMphoras", Latin (in German orthography) for "Shem HaMephorash of the Rabbi", mocking the Tetragram to be a pig. The sculpture is one of the last remaining examples in Germany of medieval "Jew baiting". In 1988, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Kristallnacht , debate sprung up about the monument, which resulted in the addition of a sculpture recognizing that during the Holocaust six million Jews were murdered "under the sign of the cross". [9]
In Vom Schem Hamphoras (1543), Luther comments on the Judensau sculpture at Wittenberg, echoing the antisemitism of the image and locating the Talmud in the sow's bowels:
Here on our church in Wittenberg a sow is sculpted in stone. Young pigs and Jews lie suckling under her. Behind the sow a rabbi is bent over the sow, lifting up her right leg, holding her tail high and looking intensely under her tail and into her Talmud, as though he were reading something acute or extraordinary, which is certainly where they get their Shemhamphoras. [2]
In July 2016, Dr. Richard Harvey, a Messianic (Christian) theologian from the United Kingdom, initiated a petition on Change.org to have the Wittenberg Judensau removed. [10]
In 2018, Michael Düllmann, a member of Berlin's Jewish community, sued to have the sculpture removed as defamatory. In February 2020, the district court of Dessau and the Higher Regional Court in Naumburg had rejected the claim, though petitioner vowed to appeal to higher courts. The Lutheran church and some historians, such as Michael Wolffsohn, have also debated whether the sculpture should be removed for being antisemitic or whether doing so would whitewash the church's historical antisemitism. [11] The legal debate continued for some time. [12]
In June 2022, a German federal court of appeal sided with the lower courts, ruling that while the sculpture itself is disparaging to Jews if viewed in isolation, "the legal system does not demand its removal", suggesting that other means (such as a memorial plaque explaining the history of the sculpture) are better suited to address the issue. [13]
Some of these sculptures can be found at some churches today.
Some Christian Churches, Christian groups, and ordinary Christians express religious antisemitism toward the Jewish people and the associated religion of Judaism.
Antinomianism is any view which rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious or social norms, or is at least considered to do so. The term has both religious and secular meanings.
The history of antisemitism, defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group, goes back many centuries, with antisemitism being called "the longest hatred". Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:
Religious antisemitism is aversion to or discrimination against Jews as a whole based on religious doctrines of supersession, which expect or demand the disappearance of Judaism and the conversion of Jews to other faiths. This form of antisemitism has frequently served as the basis for false claims and religious antisemitic tropes against Judaism. Sometimes, it is called theological antisemitism.
The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages and High Middle Ages when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community. The community survived under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades. Accusations of well poisoning during the Black Death (1346–53) led to mass slaughter of German Jews, while others fled in large numbers to Poland. The Jewish communities of the cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms became the center of Jewish life during medieval times. "This was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews, resulting in increased trade and prosperity."
On the Jews and Their Lies is a 65,000-word anti-Judaic and antisemitic treatise written in 1543 by the German Reformation leader Martin Luther (1483–1546).
Pork is a food taboo among Jews, Muslims, and some Christian denominations. Swine were prohibited in ancient Syria and Phoenicia, and the pig and its flesh represented a taboo observed, Strabo noted, at Comana in Pontus. A lost poem of Hermesianax, reported centuries later by the traveller Pausanias, reported an etiological myth of Attis destroyed by a supernatural boar to account for the fact that "in consequence of these events the Galatians who inhabit Pessinous do not touch pork". In Abrahamic religions, eating pig flesh is clearly forbidden by Jewish (kashrut), Islamic (halal) and Adventist dietary laws.
Regensburg Cathedral, also known as St. Peter's Cathedral, is an example of important Gothic architecture within the German state of Bavaria. It is a landmark for the city of Regensburg, Germany, and the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Regensburg.
Matthew 7:6 is the sixth verse of the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. It refers to "casting pearls before swine".
Racial antisemitism is prejudice against Jews based on a belief or assertion that Jews constitute a distinct race that has inherent traits or characteristics that appear in some way abhorrent or inherently inferior or otherwise different from the traits or characteristics of the rest of a society. The abhorrence may find expression in the form of discrimination, stereotypes or caricatures. Racial antisemitism may present Jews, as a group, as a threat in some way to the values or safety of a society. Racial antisemitism can seem deeper-rooted than religious antisemitism, because for religious antisemites conversion of Jews remains an option and once converted the "Jew" is gone. In the context of racial antisemitism Jews cannot get rid of their Jewishness.
Martin Luther was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and Augustinian friar. Luther was the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, and his theological beliefs form the basis of Lutheranism. He is regarded as one of the most influential figures in Western and Christian history.
Antisemitism in the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages became increasingly prevalent in the Late Middle Ages. Early instances of pogroms against Jews are recorded in the context of the First Crusade. Expulsions of Jews from cities and instances of blood libel became increasingly common from the 13th to the 15th century. This trend only peaked after the end of the medieval period, and it only subsided with Jewish emancipation in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
Antisemitic tropes or antisemitic canards are "sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory towards Judaism as a religion or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since as early as the 2nd century, libels or allegations of Jewish guilt and cruelty emerged as a recurring motif along with antisemitic conspiracy theories.
St. Sebaldus Church is a medieval church in Nuremberg, Germany. Along with Frauenkirche and St. Lorenz, it is one of the most important churches of the city, and also one of the oldest. It is located at the Albrecht-Dürer-Platz, in front of the old city hall. It takes its name from Sebaldus, an 8th-century hermit and missionary and patron saint of Nuremberg. It has been a Lutheran parish church since the Reformation.
The Talmud Unmasked is a book published in 1892 by Justinas Bonaventure Pranaitis (1861–1917). The book is a collection of purported quotations from the Talmud and Zohar that are claimed to demonstrate that Judaism despises non-Jews and promotes the murder or injury of non-Jews in some instances. Pranaitis drew on the earlier works of Jakob Ecker and August Rohling.
Vom Schem Hamphoras, full title: Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi, was a book written by German Reformation leader Martin Luther in 1543, in which he equated Jews with the Devil and described them in vile language.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German professor of theology, priest and seminal leader of the Reformation. His positions on Judaism continue to be controversial. These changed dramatically from his early career, where he showed concern for the plight of European Jews, to his later years, when embittered by his failure to convert them to Christianity, he became outspokenly antisemitic in his statements and writings.
The Stadt- und Pfarrkirche St. Marien zu Wittenberg is the civic church of the German town of Lutherstadt Wittenberg. The reformers Martin Luther and Johannes Bugenhagen preached there and the building also saw the first celebration of the mass in German rather than Latin and the first ever distribution of the bread and wine to the congregation – it is thus considered the mother-church of the Protestant Reformation. In 1996, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List along with Castle Church of All Saints (Schlosskirche), the Lutherhaus, the Melanchthonhaus, and Martin Luther's birth house and death house in Eisleben, because of its religious significance and testimony to the lasting, global influence of Protestantism.
TheJudensau at the choir stalls of Cologne Cathedral is a medieval, antisemitic wood carving at the side of one of the seats in the choir of Cologne Cathedral. It was produced between 1308 and 1311. It shows a Jews' sow, a folk art image of Jews in obscene contact with a large female pig, which in Judaism is an unclean animal. It is one of the oldest representations of this theme. Directly beside is another antisemitic motif, which is generally interpreted as an illustration of the blood libel legend. This combination is only known from one other case, a painting from the 15th century at the Old Bridge in Frankfurt.
Hans Valkenauer was a German sculptor, working from Salzburg from about 1480 and specialising in funerary monuments in the late Gothic style.
Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These [are] the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that [are] on the earth. Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, [and] cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat. Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: [as] the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he [is] unclean unto you. And the coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he [is] unclean unto you. And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he [is] unclean unto you. And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he [is] unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they [are] unclean to you.
