A Comparative Analysis of the Alexandrian Pogrom and the Crusades of the Jews
Religion is a superficial construct used to sequester and segregate communities of disparate religious identities. This stems from the belief that difference procures a need for alienating those of ambivalent religious identities and to suppose them as the “other.” This disposition constructs troubling interpretations of religions and, furthermore, is framed as a rationalization to commit treacherous acts of violence against communities whose religious identities differ from those of the perpetrators. Such accounts of violence against the “other” are prevalent within Jewish history. The narratives of these happenings by Philo of Alexandria in In Flaccus and by Solomon …show more content…
Samson does not explicitly state the thoughts of the crusaders have of the Jews, but he describes that they consider the Jews to be responsible for killing Jesus Christ (Marcus and Saperstein 75). The tone of the opinions the Christian crusaders held of the Jews can be deduced from Samson’s portrayal of their merciless nature: the crusaders undoubtedly viewed the Jews as religious aliens and, thus, found it fair to slaughter them by the thousands. Likewise, Philo’s tale bears similar aspects as to how the Egyptians viewed the Jews: they also regarded Jews as the other, but, discordantly, used their suffering as a form of exploitative entertainment. The fact that Flaccus ordered for Jews to be scourged with weapons and methods fit for inferiors, detailing of those who were crucified to be continued to hang and violent acts continued to occur despite being the emperor’s birthday, and the incident of women who were forced to eat pork corroborates the belief that the Egyptians of Alexandria despised the Jewish population (van der Horst 67, 69, 71). They treated them with little respect as equals and more so with a degrading animosity Philo designates as fit for, “…the lowest status and guilty of the greatest crimes,” (van der Horst 69). Both sources express the apathy held by the perpetrators of the violence exercised on the