Throughout history, tragedies have been interpreted in different ways. Whether it was the wrath of the gods, or of course, the old scapegoat the Jews. Many natural disasters in history have been blamed on the Jews. During the medieval period, this was most notable during the Black Death. In 1346, a mysterious illness swept across Europe. This disease was responsible for the deaths of one-third of the population of Europe. Naturally, a disaster on this scale was seen by the people of the time as unnatural, and the science of the time was not advanced enough to recognize the actual cause of the illness. Instead, other explanations were invented. God's divine wrath being number one, but the Jews were also fairly high on the list.
During this time period, rumors were spread that Jews were deliberately poisoning wells in an attempt to spread the plague. This lead to the destruction of many Jewish settlements throughout Europe. Of course, the Jews were not immune to the plague, and many died of the disease. However, this did not help to slow down the rapid spread of the rumors that the Jews were responsible for the plagues continuation.
In many cases, Jews were arrested for crimes for which they were obviously innocent. These poor souls were in many cases tortured until they gave a false confession, and then they were of course executed for their “Crimes”.
One might hope that after close to seven-hundred years that the modern world would have moved passed mindlessly blaming Jews for natural disasters. Sadly this does not seem to be the case as shown in 2014 when a Turkish newspaper blamed the Jews for the collapse of a mine that killed 300 people. This is shocking to say the least that even after such a long amount of time that there are still those attempting to blame the Jews for natural disasters. It seems that as a species we still have a long way to grow when it comes to tolerance.
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