Red Jews

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The Red Jews (Rote Juden) are a legendary Jewish nation that appears in medieval German sources from the 13th to the 15th century. In these texts, they are described as a major threat to Christendom, expected to invade Europe during the end-times.

A counter-story emerged in Yiddish folklore by the 15th century or later, portraying the red Jews as lost tribes who would protect Yiddish Jews from Christian violence. The earliest references to this counter-story are in German writings by Christian converts starting around 1508.

In later Yiddish literature, the Red Jews remained a popular theme and took many forms, including versions in the 19th and 20th centuries that cast them as a heroic diaspora in Zionist thought.

Scholar Andrew Gow argues that the legend blends three traditions: the biblical Gog and Magog, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and a tale from the Alexander Romance about Alexander the Great surrounding a race of heathens behind a great wall in the Caucasus. These traditions overlap: Gog and Magog appear behind the wall in the Alexander Romance; the Quran (Surah al-Kahf, 18:89) mentions Gog and Magog in some versions; and the 14th-century Travels of Sir John Mandeville links the confined nations to the Ten Lost Tribes.

Some pamphlets used the Red Jews to discuss rising Turkish power. Figures like Martin Bucer and Philipp Melanchthon claimed that Muslims were the Red Jews.