| 1. The most likely explanation is the prohibition of ursury maintained by Christian religions for most of their history, and still maintained by Muslim faith. As a result, the Jewish people became money lenders and bankers. There are other explanations, to do with the way the Jewish culture preserves itself despite being in other nations, but these are a little less convincing. I think the religious (and institutional) ban on ursury is the most likely causal factor.
2. Nobody deserves persecution -- or to be the target of genocide. Being Jewish doesn't change ones most basic human rights to life and autonomy.
3. Yes (although there are exceptions, messianic Jews or Jews for Christ).
4. Because they do not believe the person of Jesus embodied their prophecies of a messiah. The prophecies contained a lot of fairly specific things that the Messiah would do -- Jesus did some, but not all of them. It was also a partially political decision, much the same way as the later reformation both changed the Catholic Church and estanlished the protestant churches, Christ both changes Judeism and established Christian Churches. |