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{{for2|socialist ("red") Jews|[[Jewish socialism]]|[[Jewish Bolshevism]]}}
{{For|the fish called the red jew|Jewfish (disambiguation)}}

{{no footnotes|date=June 2016}}
The '''Red Jews''' were a legendary [[Jew]]ish nation that appear in vernacular sources in [[Germany]] during the [[medieval]] era, from the 5th to the 15th century. According to these texts, the Red Jews were an [[Epoch (reference date)|epoch]]al threat to [[Christendom]], and would invade Europe during the [[Christian eschatology|tribulations]] leading to the end of the world.

[[Andrew Gow]] studied the original [[German language]] texts and concluded that the legend of the Red Jews was a conflation of three separate traditions: the [[Bible|Biblical]] [[prophet]]ic references to [[Gog and Magog]], the [[Ten Lost Tribes]] of Israel, and an episode from the ''[[Alexander Romance]]'', in which [[Alexander the Great]] encloses a race of heathens [[Gates of Alexander|behind a great wall]] in Caucasus. These traditions had some overlap already; Gog and Magog are among the nations trapped behind the wall in the ''Alexander Romance'', and the only ones named in the version of the story appearing in [[Qur'an]] [[Sura]] [[al-Kahf]] (The Cave) 18:89, while ''[[John Mandeville|The Travels of Sir John Mandeville]]'' explicitly associates the confined nations with the Ten Lost Tribes.

Many pamphlets circulated interpreting such events as the rise of [[Ottoman Empire|Turkish]] power in the context of the legendary Red Jews. [[Philipp Melanchthon]], for example, claimed that the [[Ottoman Turks]] and [[Muslims]] were the ''Red Jews''.

Kevin Alan Brook, among others, speculated, but could not conclusively prove, that the legend of the Red Jews was actually based on misremembered accounts of the [[Khazars]]. Indeed, in ''[[Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam]]'', [[Christian of Stavelot]] refers to the Khazars as [[Huns|Hunnic]] descendants of Gog and Magog, as well as having been "enclosed" by Alexander, but having since escaped, demonstrating that the Khazars were indeed conflated with two of the three elements making up the legend of the Red Jews. Other medieval sources consider various connections with the Lost Tribes, and they are described in [[Arabic]] sources as having red hair, a trait associated with the [[Devil]] in medieval Germany and possibly the source of the term "Red Jews".

==See also==
* [[Anti-Turkism]]
* [[Antisemitism]]
* [[Brutakhi]]
* [[History of the Jews in Germany]]
* [[Jewish Bolshevism]]
* [[Khazars]]
* [[Prester John]]
* [[The Wandering Jew]]
* [[Jewish Cossacks]]

==References==
*Anderson, Andrew Runni. ''Alexander's Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations''. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1932.
*Brook, Kevin Alan. ''The Jews of Khazaria.'' 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006.
*Christian of Stavelot. ''Exposito in Matthaeum Evangelistam''.
*Gow, Andrew C. ''The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200-1600''. Brill, 1994.
*Rabb, Theodore "Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of E.H. Harbison, Princeton University Press, 1969

{{Khazaria}}

[[Category:Khazars]]
[[Category:Medieval legends]]
[[Category:Mythological peoples]]
[[Category:Medieval Jews]]
[[Category:Jewish German history]]
[[Category:Jewish Turkish history]]
[[Category:Antisemitism]]
[[Category:Anti-Turkism]]
[[Category:European folklore]]
[[Category:Christian folklore]]

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Red Jews - Revision history

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184.64.168.78 at 21:51, 23 March 2017