I had never heard about these hats before this thread. Do you have any links where I can read more about their negative connotation?
How something is regarded today is relevant.
And who is doing the regarding is just as relevant. The hat in question may be historical and thus it might be fitting for a historical procession like the one in the article. Clearly, costumes like this shouldn't be used if they are intended to create offense to any group. At the same time, it would also be wrong to impugn malevolence where there is none. My understanding is that the meaning of antisemitism is an intention or a deliberate act, not an interpretation or a reaction. Since I have no idea what the people in this procession were thinking, I would rather attempt to give them the benefit of the doubt before condemning them. I may well be naive, but I think this it is just a silly looking hat from the middle ages without any symbolism or deliberate negative stigma.
Consider the swastika. I saw it on a soap tin at an antique shop and learned it used to be a symbol for purity. It really doesn't matter what it used to be. Today, the swastika is an unmistakable symbol of evil.
I can only imagine how offensive anything having to do with genocide can be to the surviving members of the targeted group, but the shape of the swastika can be found in many cultures and in historical mosaics around the world. Although I would never advocating using that template for any new construction or product, I also wouldn't necessarily advocate destroying century old artwork or buildings simply because they happen to have been created with something that later became a political symbol. The communists may have killed as many or more Jews than the nihilists of Germany, but I've never heard of any boycott against buying "Red Star" yeast. In the same way, I don't want to see the label of the evil of antisemitism cheapened by false accusations against what might instead be an innocent misunderstanding.
The Judenhut (German for "Jewish hat"; Latin: pileus cornutus) was a yellow cone-shaped pointed hat that was required for adult male Jews to wear while outside a ghetto in Medieval Europe in order to distinguish them from others. In 807 Harun al-Rashid ordered all Jews living as dhimmi under Muslim rule to wear yellow, pointed hats and yellow belts. With frequent variations (yellow veil, wearing a wooden golden calf around the neck) these orders remained in force well into the 19th century, when Mahmud II issued them anew (and for a last time) in 1837. In Europe, the Fourth Council of the Lateran of 1215 ruled that Jews must bear this stigma. This decision was upheld by the Council of Vienne. Pope Paul IV determined in 1555 that it must be a yellow, peaked hat. A Judenhut could also be used as a stigma for usurers and magicians, not necessarily Jews. As an outcome of the Jewish Emancipation its use was discontinued. Another medieval stigma was the yellow badge, reintroduced later by the Nazis. Parts of this article are translated from de:Judenhut of 13 July 2005
I agree that people shouldn't fly off the handle at everything and throw around the term "anti-semitism" without serious contemplation. Since the passion plays have a history in certain parts of rallying townsfolk to attack Jews, some people tend to be a little wary of it. Frankly, I find the costumes the Jews are wearing in the pictures idiotic and without any historical foundation except with regard to forced stigmas, but that is just my opinion.
This is from Christianity Today:
"The menace of Jewry" With the bubonic plague once again sweeping across Europe in 1633, the town leaders of Oberammergau, a Bavarian village, gathered together to beseech God for a miracle. If the Lord would spare little Oberammergau, they promised to thank him by performing a play every 10 years to commemorate Jesus' crucifixion. After this vow, not one Oberammergau villager died of the plague. The town first performed the play in 1634. More than 350 years later, Oberammergau still remembers its promise. In 2000, nearly half of the town's 5,000 residents participated in the fortieth Oberammergau Passion Play, which drew nearly a half million tourists from around the world. Yet in the late 1970s, Oberammergau began to draw the ADL's ire. Sensitized by the Holocaust, Jews, especially in Germany, turned a more skeptical eye on Passion plays. Oberammergau, in particular, had been a source of tangible pain. Adolf Hitler had visited the 1934 performance, giving it his eager blessing. "It is vital that the Passion play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the time of the Romans," Hitler had said. "There one sees Pontius Pilate, a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry." To make matters worse, the Dachau concentration camp had performed its horrific duty not far from Oberammergau. While Hitler's brand of murderous anti-Semitism owed far more to scientific determinism than Christianity, he preyed on a history of faith-based persecution. When convenient, Hitler and his Nazi henchmen dredged up the anti-Semitic writings of an elderly Martin Luther to justify their hatred for Jews. Hitler employed Oberammergau in a similar fashion. He remembered that during and immediately following the Middle Ages, enraged Passion play spectators sometimes invaded the ghettos to exact revenge on Jews for killing Jesus. He hoped Christians would react similarly after viewing the Oberammergau Passion Play. This and other Nazi overtures to the racism simmering barely below the surface of German religious culture produced mixed results, with some churchmen eagerly advocating Nazism and others opposing Hitler on Christian grounds. Yet as Pope John Paul II acknowledged in 1997, many sincere Christians looked the other way during the Holocaust because in their estimation the Jews were getting what they deserved for rejecting Christ. "The erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people and their presumed guilt circulated for too long" and "contributed to a lulling of many consciences at the time of World War II, so that, while there were 'Christians' who did everything to save those who were persecuted, even to the point of risking their own lives, the spiritual resistance of many was not what humanity expected of Christ's disciples," the Pope told a group meeting to discuss "The Roots of Anti-Judaism in the Christian Milieu."