There's a thread from someone I follow on twitter talking about how tumblr (being itself) is outraged and calling green face paint anti-Semitic, when it was more a way to depict paleness in black and white media. There are a few comments saying that the idea about witches being an anti-Semitic depiction is also wrong.
I was taught in high school that it was a form of anti-Semitic imagery (oddly enough in English class while talking about Shakespeare) and that things like the broom came from Jews being more "cleanly" during things like the black plague and not getting as sick. I haven't been able to find anything about it in the FAQ list here, nor when I poked around the internet.
How did that imagery actually come about? Is it based in antisemitism or other forms of prejudice?
Hello there,
According to Robin Briggs in Witches & Neighbours, some of the features given to the witch do come from an antisemitism "feeling" in Europe at the time. To put some context into it, you have to remember that from the beggining of the witch hunts, the Catholic church was trying to impose its power on more and more people. Therefore, other religious and spiritual practices were seen as contrary to the admitted belief. Jews and protestants were also tracked down during the witch hunts in Europe (see Mona Chollet, La sorcière). Once the hatred for other spiritual groups was admitted, it then became easier to place some of their believed physical traits to the witch. The big pointy nose is then, for many scholars as Briggs, an anti-semitic feature.
As from the broom, it is supposedly coming from the alleged sexual needs of the witch. There were then supposed to put hallucinogenic herbs on it to then masturbate (Again, see Chollet), the use of such an everyday object was meant to make people believe that they became so evil that they couldn't control their sexual desires.
The witch then became an idea on which people could place their hatred and fears.