various proposals have been made as to the origin, including a literal interpretation of the “olive” skintones of some Jews, public interpretation of the green makeup used to give B&W film actors deathly-pale skin as signifying literally green skin (as with Frankenstein’s monster), and a link between Jews and poisoning
no one seems to have heard of this stereotype more than a few months ago. the most authoritative source anyone cites for its existence is a couple of sentences on a goyische pagan wordpress blog called The Twisted Rope in 2014. combined with the lack of clear origin and lack of other cultural impacts, this Jew feels that claims of a link between green skin and antisemitism are more inventing a new antisemitic stereotype than acknowledging an old one.
please reblog
there are aspects of the stereotypical witch figure that are genuinely antisemitic – green skin just isn’t one of them. large, hooked noses and curly black hair are both genuinely based off of stereotypes about the appearances of Jews. the idea of a “witch’s sabbath” is likely related to the Jewish sabbath. there are additional aspects of the witch-figure, like child murder and consorting with the devil, that are similar or identical to antisemitic stereotypes or libels, but “hellish blasphemy” is kind of just what medieval Christians accused people of. it’s not like blood magic was a Jew thing first.
But like, it’s not just likely that they thought of this, but it’s proven – claiming someone was a witch conveniently always fell onto jews in medieval times. Not Christian? Check. Has money you want because you forced them into a certain job? Check. Social outcasts? Check. It makes sense that they’d twist the fictional appereance of witches to fit the stereotypical appereance of a jew.
Also, OP, I’m Italian and all the witches and orchi in the traditional legends my grandmother told me when I was a child had green skin.
ok, first of all, there were definitely lots of non-Jewish people executed for witchcraft in medieval Europe. like, this isn’t up for debate, if you look up “people executed for witchcraft” you are going to get a lot of non-Jewish results. I’m sure plenty of Jews were accused and executed too, and if you were just being hyperbolic when you said “always” then nevermind, but this is a matter of historical record
anyway, I agree that the stereotypical image of a witch is based on Jewish stereotypes? I say it pretty clearly in the post. specifically, it’s based on stereotypes of hooked noses and curly black hair. it’s not based on the stereotype of Jews as green skinned, though, because that stereotype doesn’t exist. I also don’t dispute that witches, among other fantastical beings, are often portrayed with green skin. that’s definitely true, it just isn’t based off an antisemitic stereotype about Jews having green skin, because, again, that stereotype does not not exist.
yeah, I’ve been seeing a lot of misinformation going around, and I didn’t remotely want to get into this but I’d rather not let gentiles run this conversation while we’re all just waiting for things to blow over! Please do circulate this.
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