Schwab: From Unpacked, this is Jewish History Nerds, the podcast where we nerd out on awesome stories in Jewish history. I’m Jonathan Schwab.
Yael: And I’m Yael Steiner and for sadly the last time in season four, I get to learn something from Schwab today. This is just.
Schwab: Yes, yeah, not our last episode, right? We have one more led by you, but it is my last. Yes, yeah.
Yael: One more episode this season. This is the penultimate, given our word lists for the season, I’ll just throw that out there. This is the penultimate episode of season four. And I’m excited to hear what you’ve got.
Schwab: Yeah, this is a very interesting story. I’m not sure that I would use the word excited for myself. think I’m kind of sad that this is the episode that I’m getting to end this season on because I think it’s just a very upsetting topic.
Yael:I’m getting an apprehensive vibe from you.
Schwab: I’m apprehensive about this because what I’m struggling with and maybe will come to it in the conversation is just like what I think we’ve managed to end on a positive note in many of the episodes and realize like a long history of these symbols, there’s like a modern history that often involves like reclaiming them. And that I don’t think that happens here. I, yeah, so I’ll say the two like.
Yael: Okay.
Schwab: Content warnings at the top is one this story does not have I think a happy ending in any way, and a very important part of this story that we’re going to definitely get a lot into is this is a pretty obscene So if I I think that my kids are the only kids who listen to the show, but this is not gonna be the most kid-friendly episode.
Yael: When you say obscene, do you mean that the imagery we’re going to be talking about is obscene? Do you mean that we’re going to be using obscene words? All of the above?
Schwab: So what we’re talking about today is the Judensau, which is, I assume, not something you’re familiar with.
Yael: No. Never heard of it.
Schwab: Never heard of it. Yeah, which neither did I before started researching this episode. But it is it’s not one object.I think we can describe it as like a motif of things like many things made in this style in Germany in case you didn’t. it’s German for Jew pig. Now is like.
Yael: Okay?
Schwab: the English word sow, a female pig. And yeah, so and it is a female pig specifically. And the motif, which we’ll talk about changes somewhat over time and is used in a lot of different ways, is that of a pig and Jews in very obscene contact with the pig. And this is the part where I’m just like, OK, I feel like I have to spell it out rather than like leave it unsaid, obscene contact. In some cases, the Jews are suckling.
Yael: Okay.
Schwab: Like they’re drinking the milk from the teats of the pig. ⁓ But in some cases, they’re riding the pig, which I guess is not as bad as the other. But ⁓ also definitely seems like there’s fornication, like possibly some sort of, yeah.
Yael: Okay, so bad, any kind of contact between human and pig here is not positive.
Schwab: Yes. Yes, and right, not positive and very deliberately so. Like these are made to show that, like we’ll get to, Jews are really gross and pigs are really gross and Jews are doing gross things with pigs. Like it’s not just like Jews keep pigs and that’s what makes them gross, but Jews are doing just extremely gross things with these pigs.
Yael: I mean, obviously we talk about pigs just from a pure…Like they live in styes, they play in the mud, they are considered to be very dirty.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yeah, right, Pigs are just gross. When someone, I don’t know, eats in a disgusting manner, you might say, they’re pigging out, right? Like we have this association. It’s a pigsty, yes, yeah. And that’s not new. That is a long association that pigs, I don’t know, love to roll around in filth. That there’s a strong association, yeah.
Yael: Or, you know, this, this apartment is a pigsty, hypothetically. ⁓ Right.
And I have no idea if that’s like biological, if there are pigs who grow up in different atmospheres and who don’t do that, but is it that Jews are physically dirty and therefore we associate them with pigs? Or is it that the pig as something that is off limits to Jews from a kashrut standpoint?
Schwab: Why? Yeah.
Yael: Even though there are a lot of things that aren’t kosher for whatever reason in the vernacular of anti-Semitism, and not even anti-Semitism, just any conversation about Jews, like pork, pig, ham, bacon is the first thing that people go to when they think of traif, things that Jews cannot partake of.
Schwab: Right.
Schwab: like high level thing that they know Jews don’t eat pig. And that is, it’s a very interesting sort of strange aspect to this of like, why show Jews in contact with pigs when that’s like the one thing they cannot have that everybody knows. And yeah.
Yael: Right .
Well, is that, I mean, to me, that could be the motivation.
Schwab: So yes, that’s a and that is one of the theories.. So let’s get a little into like, what’s the history. These symbols are so old and have changed a little bit over time. And we don’t have a record of like,. was it that the pig was like a deliberate poke, you know, to Jews like, here’s this thing we know you can’t have. And we’re showing you this way or.
Yael: Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Schwab: Were whoever were making this like weren’t even aware of or didn’t even intend any connection to that. So The oldest, we’re mostly going to talk about sculpted things, reliefs, parts of buildings because those are the ones that have survived, but these existed in a variety of forms in Germany and were popular for several hundred years at least. The earliest ones that we can date go back to the early 1200s.
Yael: So this is beyond just a propaganda poster or a political cartoon. This is, we have actually sculpted the denigration of Jews into our architectural structures.
Schwab: Yes, and not just architectural structures, but specifically, in the vast majority of cases, churches.
Yael: Okay,..
Schwab: They’re specifically attached to churches. Again, those are the ones that have that have predominantly survived. It’s very possible that they were included in lots of other places, but the churches are the ones where they’ve been preserved. So the earliest ones that we have
Yael: Okay.
Got it. And how far back are we talking?
Schwab: which are somewhat understand, like they’re not in the best condition, but as far back as the 1200s. So there’s a church in Brandenburg that we can date this specific design on one of its columns or something to 1230. So like 800 years old and still there, which we’ll get to at the end, the still there element of all of this. That’s a very old one.
And like I said, they changed a little bit over time. like that one there, Brandenburg, it shows a sow. The sow is wearing a hat that is clearly distinguishing it. It’s a Jewish hat. So like the pig itself is Jewish, I guess it’s meant to show in some way. And then there are Jewish characters, which is to say, like there are humans that are also wearing very clearly recognizable Jewish clothes or a Jewish symbol. like we know these are Jewsand they are looking at and reaching towards the hindquarters of the pig, which is something that will come up a lot in a bunch of these examples.
Yael: Okay. What I find really, I mean, obviously, aside from upsetting what I find fascinating is the obscenity aspect in a church, because it’s one thing to hate someone, and it’s another thing to, at least in my mind, defile your holy spaces with obscenity, even if it is obscenity that is meant to target your enemy, let’s say. Like, I still wouldn’t want… obscenity in my holy space, regardless of who it was attacking.
Schwab: it’s a great point. I did read a little bit about this. The predominant scholar that we’re going to talk about a lot today is a I believe that his expertise actually is in art history. But Isaiah Schachar, who wrote the book on this, there have been a bunch of other articles, but there’s only one full length book treating this topic, The Judensaud . He wrote it in 1974 and it was based on a lot of extremely extensive and careful research that he did going around Germany, cataloging these things, describing them in his book in incredible detail, and also putting them in the context of the time of both what art looked like in churches, in these communities, what was the relationship between Christians and Jews in that area of Germany at the time. And side note that this is really mostly a German thing.
There’s some spread to other German speaking lands, you know in in areas of France or Switzerland But we find them all over the place in Germany And one of the points in his book he says like to your to your point like yes, this might seem incredibly strange to us to have these sorts of very grotesque images inside a church, but it would not have been at the time because grotesque imagery was, was part of the design sometimes of inside of churches to be deliberately evocative, right? Like it’s supposed to, I don’t know, like shock you or make you think about something in some way. But it does seem very strange to us because a sacred space you would think would not have something so profane in it. Yeah. I also think that’s, yeah, that’s like us as Jews.
Not being used to graven images in our houses of worship. Like if you’re used to going to a church that has a very ⁓ gory representation of Jesus on the cross, like that would be for a number of reasons, that would be very shocking to see in a synagogue. But like one of them being like we don’t usually see like very, very grotesque or even just like very real representations of human things in synagogues.
Yael: Right. Right, and very evocative, gory portrayals of Jesus in art is commonplace in certainly pre-modern Christianity.
Schwab:
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yael: So I guess it’s a totally different way of thinking about your sacred space. And I guess I’m coming to it from a very Jewish lens and I shouldn’t be in this case, but I think I guess that’s a good lesson for how we think about things.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm, right. even but but yes, but but to your point, yes, like even even if you are used to ⁓ representations of human things in your sacred space, this still seems like, okay, yeah, it’s like pretty gross. like you’re supposed to be looking at and thinking, wow, that’s really gross. And then, you know, next thought. Yeah, Jews are pretty gross. Like it’s not it’s not showing people you would identify with.
Yael: Do we know why? I mean, obviously we have the oldest ones that we’ve found and we don’t know that they’re the oldest, they’re just the oldest preserved. Like, do we know where this, why this started?
Schwab: So great question. Where it started from, why it started. Two theories which probably, I don’t know, are connected in some way. But one of them is that there is something called, I’m going to butcher this pronunciation for sure, but Schandbilden, which is some sort of a public condemnation, public representation of something that is its own form of punishment, like some types of offenses, certain types of of thievery maybe or prostitution or other sorts of things, instead of or in addition to a fine or lashes or whatever other punishment you would get, there would be, I don’t know, a pamphlet or something put out or, you know, or like a picture showing, you know, you being embarrassed in some way. And there’s an older history there to those, and a pig being part of it. So when the community is trying to show, this person did something particularly egregious, they might be shown riding on a pig. And then at some point, they’re riding on a pig backwards, which either already had an association with the devil or comes to be associated with the devil.But publicly condemning and vilifying people, there is a connection there with like,
Yael: Interesting. Right.
Schwab: Showing them on a pig. perhaps the Christians wanted to embarrass them or the local court run by Christians in Germany wanted to embarrass them, showed them in association with this pig. And then it came to just be like, this is just a Jewish thing disconnected from whatever it is that they were.
Yael: Right. Well, certainly that’s not speculative. Like, even if they wanted to say, like, the Jews did something, well, the Jews killed Jesus. So that makes sense.
Schwab: Right. It’s not Jews did something wrong. Here’s why you should hate them. It’s like we already know we hate Jews, but like let’s let’s show you how detestable they are.
Yael: So it’s not like we need an excuse to show them as criminals.
It’s interesting, like what you’re saying now about the pig and its imagery reminds me in a contemporary way of a rat. In particular, if anyone walks around the streets of New York or has grown up in a big city, when a construction site is found to be using non-union labor, some of the unions that maybe would be working on that site
Yael: Hire a big inflatable rat and they blow it up and there is someone from the union whose job it is to stand with it all day. And that is a demonstration to the general public that the person who owns or is doing construction on this building is using non-union labor and the people who work there are quote unquote rats. Tthat rat is the animal that we use to indict people.
Schwab: Yes. That’s such a great modern parallel to, how we have. just imagine a giant inflatable rat and imagine on on that giant inflatable rat if there was a big kipah on its head. And like, that’s the effect that you’re having here of just like, Jew disgusting animal.
Yael: Right, right, got it, understood.
but even more grotesque and obscene and, you know, not, not with far more reaching.
Schwab: The other theory about the origin, and again, probably both of these are true or connected in some way, is that there are, there’s a long history in churches of this allegorical cycle of different representations of vices and virtues and different animals standing in for them. And there is a very old ⁓ style of contrast between ecclesia, which is the church, and synagoga, which is the Jews, like showing that the Christians are chosen, that the Jews were originally God’s people, but now they’ve been vanquished or left aside. And there are different animals sometimes that represent those. Sometimes the church is a dragon or a knight on a horse. And there’s some history there of like, perhaps the pig was the animal chosen for this in some way, or the pig was an animal that in the cycle of different vices was chosen to represent gluttony or just a general disgustingness and like that that also led into this motif possibly in some way.
But the important thing I think to bring out with either of these origin theories either that it came from you know these like public demonstrations or public condemnation of of a crime or this like general history of you know like a polemic between Christians and Jews is that the
The Judensaud kind of loses that original purpose and loses its place in all of those things and just becomes just a blanket representation of how gross Jews are. And it’s not put in like a pantheon of different things representing crimes, different things representing virtue. It’s just separate from all of that. It’s just a standalone, Jews are gross thing.
Yael: It doesn’t need to be placed in the context of the church and its, you know, legion of sins.
Schwab: It doesn’t need to, and also it seems like it becomes disconnected from. it’s not even about the Jewish law isn’t true or is corrupt. It’s just ⁓ a pure symbol of hatred of Jews that no longer even is connected to any sort of justification.
Yael: Got it. Or theology, it sounds like. You could be a completely lapsed Christian and still be engaging in this.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Right. It’s not about of religious practice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Let’s yeah, let’s take a quick break here and then we’ll come back and talk more about some of the specific examples ⁓ that we can still see today.
Yael: I don’t want to say that I’m looking forward to hearing specific examples, but I am curious to hear them. I very much understand your apprehension at the beginning of this episode. I do think it is important for us to learn about these things.
Schwab: Yeah, yeah, so we’re gonna talk about a couple very famous examples, s ⁓ that again, most troublingly, you can still see today.And this is where I think, like I said at the beginning, it’s hard to see the happy ending.
These are still there. You can go and see this and like it’s still totally visible. And what does that mean? So let’s talk about them. And then I think we can we can get to that conversation. So I mentioned the Brandenburg one dated to 1230, which is still there. The cathedral in Cologne, which is I mean, that’s a very serious, very major cathedral. I think it’s it’s the most visited landmark.
Schwab: in Germany. an incredibly important Catholic cathedral. It’s huge. It was built over the process of hundreds of years. It’s massive. ⁓ You can go, if this is the thing you want to spend your time on, can go read the Wikipedia article on the Cologne Cathedral. It is, I will say, aside from this part, it’s a gorgeous building. Very, very, very old, very well preserved. Clearly a lot of thought and work went into it.
in the inside of the building on one of the choir stalls is one of these Judensau representations, know, showing a sow, showing the Jews. ⁓ It’s pretty close to, and there’s a connection made to what seems to us like a representation of a boy being martyred. It’s probably a derivation of the story of Good Verner, which is like a blood libel from around that time and that place of like this boy who was found killed and the Christians accused the Jews of doing it. ⁓ So there’s like a connection there between the Judensau and this murder of this boy. But Shachar details like it’s both like we were talking about before, it’s very grotesque in its representation and very grotesque also in the boy murder part and that’s like clearly a choice rather than emphasize the saintliness, you know, of this martyred boy, like the focus seems very much to be on like the the craven horrific violence of the murderers.
Yael: This might be completely delusional on my part and maybe way, way, way too much to ask or even imagine. But in these places, in something like the cathedral in Cologne, which you’ve now told me is a major tourist attraction in Germany, is there literature or a plaque or a pamphlet that says, hey, by the way, this is bad?
Schwab: So we’ll get there. I I don’t know offhand if there’s a plaque at the one in Cologne, but that does lead us very nicely into the next example that I want to talk about, which is the church in Wittenberg, Germany, which is maybe familiar to you because it does become famous. The church is built in the 1300s. The Judensau was carved in 1343. But the Wittenberg, the church in Wittenberg becomes very famous a couple of hundred years later because something very prominent was affixed to its door.
Yael: Mm-hmm. is that where Luther affixed his 30 plus 65, his 95 theses? Okay, I got almost all the way there. I just didn’t remember how many thoughts he had.
Schwab: 95.
Yeah. You knew it. You got it. Yeah. Yeah. And and I will sayand again, I feel like this has come up many times. Great topic for our for our imaginary sister podcast Christian history nerds. But apparently that story may not be unembellished. Like that might not be totally true and much more legendary that he actually likes.
Yael: Amazing.
Schwab: Pinned the list of theses to the door. But Luther definitely was preaching in Wittenberg in the mid-1500s. But 200 years, yeah.
I’m not going to lie, I’m a little impressed with myself that
Yeah, great job. yeah. 1343, the church in Wittenberg.
Yael: And in the Widenberg church, the Judensau out there, which it’s a very large pig and a bunch of Jews under it suckling from its teats. And then one of them lifting up the tail of the pig and looking very intently at the hind quarter, like looking into the hind quarters of the pig. We don’t need to go there exactly of like what we’re talking about, but he’s looking inside. ⁓
And this one is on the outside of the church. It’s meant to motivate. like those like the inflatable rats you were talking about, like you put them on the street to get people’s attention. This is on the outside of the church. This very prominent pig, carved there with Jews. And again, they’re very clearly identifiable as Jews because of their dress, because I don’t remember if it’s in this one, but in a number of them they’re wearing a Jewish badge, like I was saying, inflatable rat with like a kippah on its head, the kippah could not be under, or if it had kippah and side curls, let’s say, like you know that means Jew, like the Jews are very clearly demarcated as Jews.
Yael:
But just to take this back to earlier in the season, not necessarily with a Star of David.
Schwab: Not with the Star of David. The Star of David is not used to indicate that there are Jews because it would not be the way that you would distinguish Jews at that time. Maybe nowadays, but not then.
Yael: Right. Interesting. And maybe that’s helpful to us in that modern people who go to these churches don’t even necessarily know.
Schwab: Right, you walk by it, you probably don’t know what it is at all. Although there’s a plaque explaining it, like to your question from before, like, yes. So.
Yael: in Wittenberg. Okay. And is that plaque at all sympathetic, remorseful?
Schwab: The plaque is like from the 1960s and says like, is a horrible anti-Semitic representation. like, reminder, if you’re in Germany, in case you forgot this, that six million Jews were killed. And this is very interesting choice of language. Six million Jews were killed under the sign of the cross. Meaning like, it ties the Holocaust to, I think, history of anti-Semitism specifically coming from the church.
Yael: Okay. interesting.
fascinating.
Schwab: So Wittenberg, so it’s originally there in the 1340s. Luther only comes around 200 years later. Luther would be, I think, an interesting topic for a whole episode for us because he’s at the beginning of his career. He starts out sympathetic, maybe even somewhat positive to Jews, But he becomes virulently anti semitic as as he becomes more prominent and popular and he specifically among his books. He has a book called The Jews and their lies.Yeah, right. Lovely. ⁓ And he writes about the
Yael: fantastic.
Schwab: The Judensau in Wittenberg, which is fascinating also, like he takes that and like unpacks it as like, wow, this is a really important symbol. There’s a lot we can learn from this. Jews didn’t make it, my man. Like this isn’t like telling some deep truth in some way.
Yael: Right, but I guess if you are someone who has grown up with this imagery, you assume that it has an element of truth to it. You assume it came from somewhere. Yes, yeah. Oh, and as you say that this is going back to before we mentioned the Brandenburg, I forgot to mention that the Brandenburg, you didn’t say, which is earlier that was made in 1230. that is hard to reconcile with the fact that we have records that show Jews only really settled in Brandenburg about 100 years later. So like.This was made as a representation of Jews in a place wh ere there weren’t even any Jews. Like, it’s not about here what the Jews here are doing. It’s about like, yeah, just well known how awful Jews are even in a place where they don’t have any.
Yael: I don’t know if I take comfort in that in some way. It’s obviously horrible. It’s horrible to be.
Schwab: Which is, as we’ve asked many times, which is better? For people to hate Jews because of things that they think they did? Or they’ve actually done? Or just hate Jews baselessly?
Yael: Is it worse to be like the avatar for all evil in the world unfoundedly? ⁓ Or is it worse for there to actually be Jews in the town who have done things or have been accused of doing things that are actually horrible? And that’s why the symbolism emerges.
Schwab: Right. think that point is like really clear of like our have all Jews always in the history of the world been like completely guilt free? No, definitely not. But like on the but like, does it come anywhere close to justifying the like level of like hate that is represented here by this? Clearly not. Like there’s like it doesn’t make any sense at all that people could come to be so hated. Like that is obviously
Yael: But no one is.
Schwab: No longer connected in any way to any people’s actions. It’s just like this baseless disgust.
Yael: And this imagery of a pig, it endures. It doesn’t evolve into any other animal. It doesn’t change depending on where you’re living. It’s just…
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Interesting.
Is there an inflected feeling? There’s one paper that’s sort of a follow up to Shahar, and it talks about the Judensau specifically in the regions of Bohemia. But yeah, it endures. We’ll come back to talking about ⁓ Wittenberg, I guess, and Luther in a moment. But it endures.
They’re pretty popular from the 13th century all the way through the 17th century and then seem to just decline in popularity. Like there aren’t as many new ones being made from the 17th century on, although it does seem to pop up every once in a while, or at least like it is lasting ⁓ in public mind in some way of just like, people still know what a Judensau is.
Schwab: There’s a different, I think it just says it, but it’s like, saujuden or something, which is just the same words in different order. ⁓ That does come up, that the Nazis use, that comes up in the time of the Holocaust, but we don’t see them, I don’t know, using a lot of the exact same type of symbolism, but perhaps derivations of it.
,But going back for a little bit to Wittenberg and Luther, so he writes about this Judensau and has like a whole interpretation for it and his interpretation of what’s going on in the part of the scene specifically that shows a Jew lifting up the tail of the pig and looking into its rear end intently is that Luther says that’s they’re looking, you know, for the Talmud and for their like Jewish secrets there and for the shame ha’miforash like the the the hidden name right like the like some sort of like very unutterable name of God that Jews have. And he
Yael:The one that you’re just supposed to scan your eyes over.But after Luther writes this title…
Yael: Mm-hmm.
Schwab: is added to this image. And again, still there today on the church in Wittenberg is the Judensau, and below it, says Rabini, shem hameforash in German, which probably means like rabbi and the search for this name of God or something.
Yael: there is like a demonic implication to it or a nefarious implication?
Schwab: Yeah, it’s definitely nefarious and awful. like, we don’t know exactly what it is that he meant, but it’s not good. He meant it pretty hatefully. The fact that it was added was like clearly hateful. know, like here’s this 200 year old sculpture in case you didn’t already realize that it’s, you know, Jews and a pig and whatever. Let’s spell it out now, you know, in some way based on the teachings of Luther. And this is all still there.
Yael: right.
Mm-hmm.
Schwab: And that’s like the part I want to, I guess, get to as like the third act. Like there’s like the history. Where did this come from? What are some examples of it? like, this is there. It’s 2025. You can go visit the Cologne Cathedral and see a Judensau carved on the choir stall. You can go visit the church in Wittenberg, which is incredibly important historical place.
And you can see the Judensau and yeah, there’s a little plaque on the floor near it that says this is part of a history of antisemitism.And there’s a couple dozen other examples, including one at a church in Kalbi, I think it’s called. It’s a small town 80 miles away from Berlin that also has one, like a Judensauu carved as one of its gargoyles outside the church.
And it was badly damaged because it’s hundreds of years old and in the 90s there was a lot of acid rain and stuff and like this sculpture was in bad shape so they took a bunch of the sculptures down to restore them and The church themselves like the parish of this church were like, yeah, don’t put that one back up.
Yael: wow, that is not where I thought you were going.
Schwab: Okay, well and then they were compelled by the court and by law that they do not have permission to do like this is a historical artifact and they cannot choose
Schwab: to leave it off, must legally be put back up. It’s part of this historic church. So they put it back up, but just put a covering over it. If there’s somebody out there who, I don’t know, tell me the other side of this argument of why these things need to still be up there in churches. Not put in a museum, not part of here’s the history and this is important to know, but this has to be on the outside of your church. To me it seems like, no, it does not need to be, and it should not be.
Yael: This is not at all a direct parallel and there are so, so many differences and I want to state this from the outset, but, you know, there are those who would argue that it is important that it stay up to understand history and the way in which Jews were portrayed and treated and maybe we need to learn from that. And that’s the same argument that a lot of people make with respect to the statues of Confederate generals in the south of the United States in terms of removing them, how do we all at once not honor them, but educate people that they were honored in this place and they were considered prominent people in this place and that is part of the history of this place. Like to take them down and never mention them is to strip away from certain places in the south an important history that needs to be learned of the people here did revere this figure. I I hear what you’re saying. Yeah. In doing this research, I try to see things from multiple perspectives
This isn’t I’m saying take down a his like a statue of Martin Luther because his track record with anti-semitism is horrific like this there’s no redeeming quality here. This isn’t you know, a complex historical figure. This is just a pure symbol of hate, hat’s always been a symbol of hate that like and that’s and I’m not saying wipe them out completely like put them in a museum. But like why is it on a church?
Yael: Right.
Schwab: Reconcile like okay. Yeah, like we’re like this is like still here as part of the church
Yael: Right, and like we’re gonna have this here with our manger, which is, you know, celebrating an important foundational aspect of our religion. And this is just gonna be alongside it because it’s also an important foundational aspect of our religion.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. And this is,
yeah, yeah. And this is, I don’t know, maybe this is like over-representing, overthinking or extending like an American way of looking at things so like, I don’t know, episodes of TV shows that are like no longer stream if you’re following the the whole like Nathan Fielder now there’s a there’s a whole thing with it which actually involves interestingly the Holocaust in Germany. But there are even episodes of TV shows made more recently like 30 Rock. There’s an episode that’s like not even 15 years old right that like showed blackface and we recognize now like yeah that was just just like not a sensitive know portrayal of something and it’s not.
Yael: 30 Rock live, the live episodes. Yeah.
And it was also showing blackface to chastise blackface.
Schwab: to make fun of it, yeah, you know, right? But it’s not like available, I don’t know, you can see some Disney movies, but there’ll be a disclaimer like, hey, these representations were from their time, whatever. Like those things are taken down or given context, and a lot of these are still just there on churches, which is, to me, so mind-boggling that you can just walk up to the cologne Cathedral and see this you can walk up to the church in Wittenberg and again yet There’s like a small plaque, but like just take it off the wall. Just take it down
Yael: Do we know why these things started to go out of vogue in the 17th century?
Schwab: I don’t know exactly. They were replaced by other forms of antisemitism also. Like, let’s not pretend like the German antisemitism ended in the 17th century. and like maybe it’s just it was no longer in fashion to have such grotesque art like Art becomes much more constrained.
Yael: Right. Like we just didn’t want to see it because it was visceral and ugly. Right.
Schwab: Yeah Or make new ones again make make new ones because like a lot of them are still you know left there here is to the Wittenberg point in addition to the to the Colby story There is a guy in Wittenberg you can google this you can find a number of articles who is like mounting a one-man political campaign to have this taken down. It’s gone through several levels of German courts and he so far, I think, has not won his case. if ever I was gonna advocate for something political, something that listeners can do beyond just listen to this episode and become more educated, I don’t know, start a letter writing campaign or, I haven’t done this, but do one of these petitions that people can sign of just like, take this Judensau on the church in Wittenberg down and put it in a museum. I’m not even saying take it down and throw it out. Take it down and put it in a museum and put it in a proper context and like, yes, let it be a part of history, but let it be a part of history, not let it be a part of like a church that is still presently a church.
Yael: take these down.
Right.
I’m very now hesitant to look at these symbols after we wrap up because I do from an intellectual perspective want to see what they look like, but I’m also very hesitant to experience what it feels like to see them and to know that they are still out there.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I will say, to allay some of your hesitations. A lot of them, like I said, have been badly weathered or have not survived so well, the six to 800 years of history. So they often do need a caption explaining to you what it is they’re looking at because it would not be immediately clear.
Yael:
Got it. So I think it’s interesting to me that this, you know, even though they may have gone out of fashion in terms of being in these public places, like we definitely do see Jew as pig, you know, persist as antisemitic imagery. The most recent thing that I’ve thought of is, think it was last year, the musician Roger Waters, had some sort of pig hanging in one of his concerts with an image of Anne Frank on it, or it said the words Anne Frank on it. A But he’s obviously still using it. I’m sure there are plenty, like certainly Jew pig is not gone as an anti-Semitic epithet.
Schwab: And it’s like, which has a number of elements. And I think this is, I don’t know, like, like we said at the beginning, we’re close to the end here of this season on objects and symbols. And I think it’s given me a newfound appreciation for how much visual culture, like, shapes how we think about things. You know, like, we don’t often…
Schwab: We think about things in representations and symbols. We don’t often, I don’t know, think of something and then think about a paragraph of text explaining it, but like we have quick visual images for them. And like if your visual image of a Jew is a Jew pig, there’s so much that becomes part of that. Like the endurance of these symbols is problematic in that way too, of just like, what does that mean that for hundreds of years, little Christian kids who would come to church every Sunday, would just constantly be seeing this image of the association between Jew and pig, which tells you that they’re not human, they’re disgusting, they do disgusting things, especially if you don’t actually know any Jews.
Yael: And we see the obviously very painful, very horrific end result of that centuries long dehumanization.
Schwab: Yeah, yeah. So like I said, there’s no happy note to end on here. There’s no resolution yet. Like it would be, would be nice if, if that, if we move towards one but just like a deeply, deeply troubling history that, that does, I don’t know, shine a light on a lot of things.
Yael: Right, and I think, you know, it is in a lot of ways good that we covered a symbol like this because, for better or worse, we don’t make our own material history. Like we’ve covered a lot of things that were made by Jews, made for Jews, were made to symbolize Jews, like the Star of David or the Menorah or, you know, the paintings in the Dura Europa synagogue that are supposed to be the things that we remember when we think about Jews. But at the end of the day, we are not the only ones who make our mark on the world. What other people think of us is just as out there as what we think of ourselves. And so for better or worse, this is a Jewish symbol.
Yael: Jewish History Nerds is a production of Unpacked, an open-door media brand. Subscribe wherever you’re listening to this podcast and follow Unpacked on all the regular social media channels. Just search for at Unpacked Media.
Schwab: And if you’re enjoying nerding out with us, please share this and other episodes with your friends and family. And most of all, be in touch with us by writing to us at nerds@unpacked.media. That’s nerds@unpacked.media.
Yael: Jewish History Nerds is produced by Jenny Falcon and Rivki Stern. Dr. Henry Abramson is our education lead. It’s edited by Rob Pera. I’m Yael Steiner.
Schwab: And I’m Jonathan Schwab. Thanks for listening.