- While 16th-century Europe was bursting
with innovation, life for the Jews had remained unstable,
marked with violence
perpetrated by a corrupt Catholic Church.
Inspired by an era of innovation and disgusted
by the malfeasance of the church, a monk named Martin Luther
sparked one of the largest revolutions
in the history of Christianity
and permanently altered the course of Judaism.
[energetic music]
In the early 16th century, after a string
of popes embroiled themselves in scandal,
the Catholic Church was overrun with corruption.
Even though officially the Church took on a vow of poverty,
the Church tyrannically acquired money
to finance its numerous projects.
Perhaps the worst of these schemes was the sale
of indulgences, a policy which allowed money to be exchanged
for forgiveness from sin and access to heaven.
Disillusionment with the Catholic Church
reached an all-time high
when Martin Luther decided that reformation was necessary.
After spending the first part of his life as a monk
and devoting himself to fasting and long hours in prayer,
pilgrimage and confession, Luther reached the conclusion
that the Catholic Church had lost its way.
In 1517, at the age of 34,
he gathered his proposed reformations into a document
titled the "95 Theses" and nailed it
to the front doors of the cathedral in Wittenberg.
His core principle was that the Bible itself,
rather than the priests or pope's interpretation of it,
was the single highest authority.
Instead of confessing to a priest, he believes
that every Christian could communicate with God directly.
As fame of the "95 Theses" spread,
Luther's growing reputation allowed him
to preach about his other scholarly
and philosophical disagreements with the Church,
the Catholic Church's exploitation of indulgences,
a Christian's relationship with God and their priest,
and the complex connection between faith and reason.
The Catholic Church, in turn, retaliated
by trying him for heresy in 1521.
Rather than silencing him, however,
this act simply propelled his fame and success.
He returned to Wittenberg
and began practicing Protestantism, a new movement
aimed at both returning Christianity to its biblical roots
and modernizing it to match the progressive era
of the Renaissance.
At first, the Jews had high hopes
for the Protestant movement.
Life in 16th-century Europe had been a gamble
for them at best, marked with sporadic waves of violence
that could be triggered by anything
from the outbreak of plague
to the whims of local politicians.
Since returning the Church to its biblical roots
was at the core of the Protestant movement,
this new movement created great potential
for common ground with the Jews.
Luther believes that Christians
should build deep relationships with Jews
in order to accurately convey Jesus' love.
He also understood the Jews reluctance to convert
to Catholicism since it was riddled with corruption
and misinterpretation of the Bible.
"If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads
"govern and teach the Christian faith,
"I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian."
But unfortunately, this new alliance didn't last,
and Luther's positive attitude
to the Jews drastically changed.
Just like the Catholics, Luther wanted
to have one all-embracing Christian Church
and believes that his return to a pure biblical Christianity
would inspire the Jews to convert to his new faith.
Following a similar path to Mohammad
almost 1,000 years earlier, his conversion mission failed,
and Martin Luther's antisemitism revealed itself.
By 1543, Martin Luther published
"On the Jews and their lies",
a 60,000-word antisemitic treatise.
He advocated for setting synagogues on fire,
confiscating Jewish prayer books, forbidding rabbis
from preaching and smashing Jews' homes.
As Protestantism swept through Western Europe,
bringing antisemitism with it, many Jews were confronted
with the violent plundering, destruction and murder
of pogroms that had become all too familiar to them.
Many fled to Eastern Europe,
to the areas that Protestantism hadn't reached.
Jews in Germany, France and the Netherlands,
where Protestantism was most verdant, suffered the most.
The biggest tragedy of the Protestants' antagonism
towards the Jews is that the two groups
initially had so much in common.
Many Protestant sects saw the law and values
of ancient Jewish society as a basis
for the creation of a model modern society.
In 1775, for example, the Protestant president of Harvard
echoed this sentiment:
"The Jewish government, according
"to the original constitution
"which was divinely established, if considered merely
"in a civil view, was a perfect republic."
Luther's legacy of antisemitism would live on far after him,
manifesting most grotesquely
as some of the core literature and teachings of Naziism.
His work was often quoted by Hitler
and corrupt religious figures.
In 1938, for example, a bishop in the Evangelical Church
distributed a pamphlet called
"Martin Luther and the Jews: Away With Them".
The pamphlet claimed that the Nazis were acting
as true Christians, precisely as Luther would have wanted.
Although the 16th-century Jews would rebuild
after the initial spread of Protestantism,
Western Europe would never again
be an epicenter for the Jews.
Instead, Eastern Europe, Poland, Lithuania,
the Ukraine, and Russia, subsequently emerged
as the heart of European Jewish life
and would see a flourishing unmatched
since the time of the Second Temple.
[dramatic music]
- Up next, less than 100 years later,
the most horrific massacre since the Second Temple
shatters the center of Jewish life.
[dramatic music]