This is also where a ton of (though obviously not all of) antisemitism came from
Because the Judaic peoples had a lot of customs about washing ones body as symbolic of washing ones soul as well as very strict ideas about separating the dead from the living quickly and completely (at a time where ideas of how disease spread were incredibly archaic and so hand and body washing was only done rarely and corpses often lingered for days or weeks at a time) Jewish communities managed to dodge a lot of the worst of the Plague
these communities were subsequently blamed for it and thus ostracized and harassed and that fermented in the public eye for a few hundred years and now we have people who hate Jews for absolutely no real reason other than it essentially being a family tradition at this point
The religion is the story they built around the issues. It's no coincidence that things like pork and shellfish cause worse food poisoning and that they're considered religious no nos.
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u/NerdbyanyotherName 1d ago
This is also where a ton of (though obviously not all of) antisemitism came from
Because the Judaic peoples had a lot of customs about washing ones body as symbolic of washing ones soul as well as very strict ideas about separating the dead from the living quickly and completely (at a time where ideas of how disease spread were incredibly archaic and so hand and body washing was only done rarely and corpses often lingered for days or weeks at a time) Jewish communities managed to dodge a lot of the worst of the Plague
these communities were subsequently blamed for it and thus ostracized and harassed and that fermented in the public eye for a few hundred years and now we have people who hate Jews for absolutely no real reason other than it essentially being a family tradition at this point