The term pariah derives from a name applied in the past to the lowest caste in Hindu society, the “untouchables” now called Dalits; its connotations are: not accepted, not respected, outcast.  It is not clear when the term was first applied to the Jews; in 1895, Theodor Herzl suggested that Baron Hirsch address the congress of Jewish leaders he was about to convene thus:

You are pariahs! You must forever tremble at the thought that you are about to be deprived of your rights and stripped of your possessions. You will be insulted when you walk in the street. … You are not admitted to any honorable calling, and if you deal in money you are made the special focus of contempt…. The situation will not change for the better, but rather for the worse…. There is only way out: into the Promised Land. (p. 37)

 Later, in 1916, German sociologist Max Weber (in his book Ancient Judaism) depicted the Jews as a “pariah people” because when they lost their land, they developed an elaborate system of law and belief that kept them segregated from other peoples, suffering willingly, pending their future redemption.  Hence, they were, essentially, outcasts by choice.  The last sentence of Weber’s book:

All of this makes the Jewish community remain in its self-chosen situation as a pariah people as long and as far as the unbroken spirit of the Jewish Law, and that is to say, the spirit of the Pharisees, and the rabbis of late antiquity, continues and continues to live........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)