Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its partners assume any responsibility for them. Please contact us in case of abuse. In case of abuse, Current conspiracy theories, as preposterous as they may sound, claim that Jews “are at it again.” In fact, a study published last May showed that one in five English people believed that COVID is a Jewish conspiracy. The charges that Jews are once again busy spreading “deadly germs” to their unsuspecting Christian neighbors have historically marked an inauspicious sign of the times. Jews have always functioned as the metaphoric “canary in the coal mine.” History bears out that aphorism — when the political or social climate turns against the Jews, it is usually an indicator of a wider unhealthy condition. Although presently the coronavirus has done much to spark the canards about Jews as maleficent and power-hungry, for hundreds of years these notions have been propagated. To Christian European society, Jews were “the other.” Mainstream Christians believed that Jews acted as a unified and united group. Spreading plagues or poisoning wells was just a means. The “end” would be when Jews brought down their Christian neighbors and ascended to their proper place at the top rung of the social, political and economic hierarchy.