Yisrael Medad is deputy editor of the forthcoming critical English-language edition of the writings of the revisionist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and is Research Fellow at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. In this essay, he examines Jabotinsky’s 1906 pamphlet ‘The Bund and Zionism’ as a window on the historic battle between Zionists and Bundists for the soul of the Jewish people. Medad also stresses the contemporary relevance of the pamphlet at a time when there are signs of a neo-Bundist revival in the West. As ever, the editors welcome responses from our readers.
By Yisrael Medad
In the last two decades of the 19thcentury, there arose in the Russian Empire two political, social and cultural movements among the Jewish population that would compete for the leadership of Jewish masses for decades to come. They battled in homes, splitting apart families, and they argued in the streets and the synagogues. They confronted each other in elections for the governmental institutions of the non-Jewish countries in which they resided. They organised internally and propagandised externally, and they composed songs, wrote novels, published newspapers, demonstrated, and at times even battled each other.
One won out and accomplished almost all its goals. It did establish what it set out to do, to reconstitute the Jewish national home, but was late and lost almost all those it had thought to save. The other, although winning for most of the time, garnering the major membership support, died out, taking with it so many Jewish souls and bodies in a fruitless and senseless attempt to be at home in the Diaspora.
One was the Zionist movement and the other the Bund, the secular Jewishsocialist party in the Russian Empire until the Bolshevik Revolution (and afterwards, mainly in Poland).As the academic Joseph Nedava noted, ‘ever since their clash in the Jewish arena in Russia’ Zionism and the Bund became the bitterest antagonists in a struggle for the soul of the Jewish masses.
As Deputy-Editor of the forthcoming volumes of Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky’s selected writings in a critical edition, I have translated and annotated a booklet he published in 1906, ‘Bund i Sionizm’ [The Bund and Zionism]. While both movements made their official appearance in 1897 —the Bund in Vilna in October and the World Zionist Organisation two months earlier in August in Basle —both had roots in earlier publications and actions. Jabotinsky mounted a fundamental intellectual challenge to the Bund, engaging its spokespersons across Russia and beyond.
The celebrated Bund leader Raphael Abramovich relates in his 1944 memoirs, In Tsvay Revolutsyes [In Two Revolutions], ‘In one of my speaking appearances, I think, in Karlsruhe or Stuttgart, I had a remarkable opponent: a young man with a rounded head, a noticeably protruding chin, and a big expressive “actor’s” mouth. None of my Bundist friends knew who he was: they just knew that he was a Zionist who was reputedly a good speaker. But when that young Zionist began to speak — and he commenced with a wonderful quote from the prophet Amos — the whole crowd turned to him, for they sensed in him an unusual oratorical power. And the first one to admire him was I myself, the lecturer, whom he opposed (…) only later was I informed that the young Zionist was Vladimir Jabotinsky. A year and a half later [1905] I encountered him in a series of debates in St. Petersburg’.
In his pamphlet, Jabotinsky deals with the Bund for the most part from the aspect of its answer to the ‘national’ question: do Jews belong in the Diaspora or should they return to Eretz-Yisrael and how to best accomplish that goal in the reality of the conditions in the Russian Empire? Unwilling to fully admit that the Bund and Zionism derive their inspiration from a common source, (even if, paradoxically, he suggests just that in the pamphlet), Jabotinsky seeks to determine the nature of the relationship between the two movements. In doing so, he seeks to remove the halo of the Bund’s so-called proletarian origin, writing:
The proletariat has never marched, nor is it now able, and for a considerable time to come will still not be able to march, in the forefront of the development of ideas in human society. In order to absorb new ideas, let alone create them, a certain cultural standard is required; this is not to be found among the toiling masses who engage in physical work and are unable to devote much of their time to their enlightenment . . . the proletarian is the last one to join Socialism. This casts no aspersion on him; on the contrary, it is a perfectly natural thing for an oppressed and obscurantist class.
Jabotinsky then points out the similarity between the Russian social democrat Yuli Martov’s ‘Turning-Point’ speech on May Day 1895 and Dr. Leon Pinsker’s historic pamphlet, Auto-Emancipation, published in 1882, which established the basis for the first stage of Zionism. For Jabotinsky, the ‘Bund manifesto . . . is an imitation of the first declaration of Zionism — a pale imitation at that, and which came about fifteen years too late’. Jabotinsky viewed the Bund as a late-comer, born at a time when the basic slogans of Zionism had begun to penetrate not only the religious public and students, such as the Bilu, but also into the ranks of the workers’ movement.
But for all Jabotinsky’s arguments, the Bund, nevertheless, benefited from a natural mass of people who were primed for enlistment into their cause. Russian economic policies had brought about a concentration of Jews in the urban areas where they became a proletariat that was restless, intellectual, visionary and primed for action. They were the masses that would go on strike, demonstrate and, most importantly, organise in a disciplined fashion. To further assure that dedicated mobilisation, the Bund rejected any possibility of Jewish nationalism. As the outstanding Bund ideologue, Vladimir Medem-Grinberg, phrased it in 1903 after attending the Zionist Congress in Basle, quoted by Nedava: ‘One thing is clear to us: political Zionism is bankrupt . . . the liquidation of Zionism has begun.’
The self-defence actions of the Bund during 1903-1905 when pogroms again broke out earned Jabotinsky’s respect. In his pamphlet, he praises the heroism of the Bundists. However, the armed actions undertaken by the Bund against pogromists – as much as they were intended to protect Jews – were equally part of their anti-Tsarist revolutionary activity. Yet they were caught in a bind. The more they attacked the Russian peasantry who were the bulk of the violent rioters, the more those peasants saw them as enemies of the regime. The Bundists, who were first and foremost anti-regimists and seeking to stay in an improved Diaspora reality, did not want the Jewish population to be a focus of attention, for this would distract the non-Jews from their socialist messaging. Even while combatting violent anti-Semitism, the Bund was acting in league with the nascent Communist organisation that drove the pogromists to attack. And as these self-defence efforts were perceived by the Gentile population as ‘ethnic’ – that is, specifically Jewish rather than an all-Russian social and political programme – the Bundists were once again separated from the rest of the Russian population, whose far superior numbers provided the only numerical chance of revolutionary success.
The more the Bundists sought to be integrated within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) – all the while still requesting special favours such as being the sole representative of the toiling Jewish masses and the acknowledging Yiddish – the more they met resistance from its leadership, Jews and gentiles. At the RSDLP’s second party congress in 1903, the Bund lost its autonomous position due to opposition led by Vladimir Lenin. Jabotinsky fastened on this development in his pamphlet.
I found it exciting to read Jabotinsky corresponding with Lenin’s texts in real time. Amazingly, he had obviously reviewed not only Iskraand other publications but was able to quote verbatim from the minutes of the various congresses Russian socialists had conducted, material that was outlawed by the Tsarist regime. In fact, he had spent seven weeks in an Odessa jail for possessing socialist literature in the spring of 1902 and in November 1904 was briefly detained for interrogation after participating in a social democrat banquet. On 4 April 1905 he was arrested for a third time while in Vilna when a joint meeting of Bundists and Zionists, presumably a debate, was broken up by the secret police and copies of Iskraand the Bundist Leytze Nayis[Latest News] were found ripped up on the floor. In fact, Jabotinsky was under special police surveillance until after the outbreak of the First World War. As pointed out by Matityahu Mintz, during these years Jabotinsky, like other Zionists such as Menachem Ussishkin and Shmarya Levin, was active both in Zionist and non-revolutionary socialist parties. But it was the Bund’s return into the Bolshevikfold that brought him to confront what he viewed as the Bund’s threat to the true direction of the Jewish masses: Zionism and Eretz-Yisrael.
According to Brian Horowitz, Bund i Sionizm should be viewed against the background of the election campaign to the First Duma and Jabotinsky’s desire ‘to link the Bund and Zionism’ and his belief that ‘sympathy for the Bund validated voting for the Zionists’. Horowitz acknowledges that Jabotinsky cast ‘doubt on the Bund’s commitment to national interests,’ but he suggests that because of Jabotinsky’s respect for the Bundists’ willingness to engage in armed self-defence, he sought to downplay these ideological divisions by suggesting in the pamphlet that the Bund was a latecomer to a programme already foreshadowed by the writings of earlier Zionists such as Leon Pinsker.
I read Jabotinsky as being much more critical. He used the words of the delegates of the Second Congress to hold the Bund’s leaders up to ridicule. They seek the comradeship of fellow socialists, he points out, but then they find themselves under an onslaught of criticism for insisting on a separate Jewish identity and therefore, a separate organisational identity. Both were rejected by Lenin and others at the Congress, many of them, such as Trotsky, Jews themselves. In addition, he pointed out the weakness of the Bundists, dictated to by Lenin, as well as their shallow ideological development, observing that Zionism’s analysis of the state of the Jews preceeded them by a decade.
The Neo-Bundist Revival
Today’s neo-Bundist revival among some Jewish youth can be examined through the lens provided by Jabotinsky’s writings. Anyone who has read his 1935 novel, The Five, will know his wonderful portrayal of the slide of many Jews, especially the children of the upper-middle class, into the world of socialism. As Jacqueline Rose has noted in her 2006 essay, ‘The Zionist Imagination’, which she asked me to review for historical factual errors prior to publication (and I thank her for that), Jabotinsky ‘came to loathe the Russian Revolution for tearing the Jews away from other, nationalist ideals’. And yet, it is the character of Marko, the young Jewish man, barely out of his teens, who stumbles from one ideology to another, from one humanist cause to another, seeking only to help, save and champion causes of false promise until, literally, running off into the darkness, who gets lost, his body never to be found.
For Marko and his type, Jabotinsky wrote at the novel’s end, ‘everything’s a miracle, every speck of dust,’ and ‘all his life he could listen to hear if someone might be calling him – it didn’t matter who … if someone called to him, that was good enough: he had to go’. And as Marko went, so today go many others.
I find Marko, with his idealistic but out-of-touch approach to life, in many of the enthusiasts of IfNotNow, Jewdas and Na’amod, all Diasporic-focused, antagonistic to the idea of Zionism and, most importantly, fault Israel to the extent of expressing very public support to Israel’s enemies.
Another of the novel’s characters becomes a turncoat and acts as an agent for the revolutionaries in France, keeping tabs on revolutionary exiles. ‘Lika’ distances herself from her family, her Jewishness and even from her commitment to underground anti-regime activity. She develops a cruel and harsh personality. It would be the ‘Likas’ of the Bund in the Warsaw Ghetto, and other locations, who would sabotage any possibility of a united-front resistance effort to include all the Jewish movements by disqualifying members of Betar and other Revisionist Zionist groups.
‘Bund i Sionizm’ is a window allowing us to observe Jabotinsky engaging, in real time, during a period of revolution, pogroms and intellectual competition, for the soul of the Jewish masses. His knowledge of the issues, the ideas, the literature and the dramatis personae, as well as his ability to counter the arguments made against Zionism while deconstructing the ideological positions of Zionism’s rivals, is no less than breathtaking looking back over 110 years ago.
Postscript: ‘Everything is calm on Shipka’
A few words on one linguistic pearl found while translating. The phrase ‘shalom al yisrael’ had been employed, which seemed odd. The original Russian, I discovered, was quite different: ‘Everything is calm on Shipka.’ Jabotinsky employed the idiom to take his distance from those who seek to hide a deplorable or dangerous state of affairs. It originated in the official reports of Lt. Gen. Feodor Radetsky who commanded the Russian troops invading Turkey through the Bulgarian Mountains, and caught up at Shipka Pass, in December 1877. Despite his sentries freezing to death on duty, men blown off the mountain by strong winds and one-third of the soldiers ill, Radetsky’s dispatches assured his commanders that ‘everything is calm at Shipka’. Calm, Jabotinsky was saying, was not a condition that the Jews could enjoy in 1906, or in the later decades. And no one should pretend otherwise.
@ Edgar G.: I am deeply honored by your praise, Edgar. As to “what it is worth,” it is worth a lot to me.
I am not the tzadik that perhaps I made myself out in my last post. Over the years I have said many thoughtless and unfair things to other people that hurt their feelings. I have done some dishonest things as well, While I have tried to help other people from time to time, and still do–but only wehn I can do so without inconveniencing myself too much.
I don’t eat kosher food, because the nearest kosher market that I know about is 40 miles away, and in any case I am still poorly educated in Torah and don’t fully understand the laws of kashrut.
Although it is true that I ‘commute” to shut on Saturdays, I am usually late, because I usually oversleep on Saturday morning, or I suffer from indegistionate from overindulging in food on Friday night. Usually, I do arrive on time to help with saying kaddish.
Enough with confessions. I am also moved that Felix was moved by what I wrote, in spite of all our disagreements.
How very true.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
In my estimation-for what its worth YOU are an example of a Mensch, especially considering your family background and upbringing.
You are a friend, just as is Felix. Honesty, sincerity (and loyalty) mean much.
There seem to be more than a few good people of both sexes on this site..And the wide variety of discussions make most interesting reading…better than any novel., far more cerebral.
@ Felix Quigley:
Felix…you make lot of sense…..right to the point…as usual.
There are no historical contemporary historical writings that confirm the existence of Jesus at the time it is claimed he lived. The historian of the time Josephus never mentioned Jesus. If he was so important why did Josephus not mention him.
There is also no archeological proof of his actual existence.
Around 400 years after he supposedly lived the “Apostles” first wrote about him.
The statues of pagan Roman gods in their churches look very similar to how Jesus is depicted. Is it possible or likely that the Roman’s spun off on popular messianic beliefs of Judaism to try and control the masses via a new religion Christianity?
I do not know the answers to my questions because I was not alive 1700 to 2000 years ago. Neither was anyone else who is alive today and there is no way to believe in the Christian Jesus story or tale except by pure religious faith as there is no proof. This is not meant to offend Christians but is just a non-religious objective comment.
I would like to point out something here which you may already know. So I apologise in advance.
There is no doubt that there WAS a James…..but which James. It is the Greek for “Jacob”, of whom there must have been thousands of that name. (there could even have been hundreds of “James the brother of Jesus” (Joshua).. Interpolation, or plain forgery, was VERY prevalent amongst Christian writers. The Josephan identification of James (the brother of him called the Christ etc.) would be a natural place for an interpolator to insert it.. I don’t say it happened, but as the earliest extent Josephus copy of Antiquities is about the 10th-11th cent. the various translations and editions passed through thousands of hands , all eager to boost Christianity-by whatever means.
All the same, according to one of Paul’s letters (of the 13 Letters only 5 have been pronounced authentic, the rest forgeries or strong indications of such) Paul says he was called to Jerusalem and taken to James, the acknowledged leader of their group.
So there WAS a particular James, (and they were all Jews)..
(There were dozens, perhaps hundreds of small break-away groups each with slightly differing interpretations of the Torah message. The country was in barely controlled chaos-rife with active rebels from the hills, generations of them-hard for any normal life to go on.There was also more than one High Priest named “Jesus”, when the Greek style was prevalent, a remnant of the Syrian Greek rule in pre-Maccabean times)
My opinion is that of many sceptics….that the “identifiction” by mentioning that James was the brother of the Christ-so called, is a later addition.
About the famous Testimonium, I believe that it is a complete forgery. It could never have been written by a Jew, a member of a priestly House,… and it was inserted into a place where it badly disrupts the natural flow of the text, which otherwise flows smoothly together.. “The Wars of the Jews”. written 20 years earlier, much closer to those times, never mentions any of them at all.
Origen, particularly, a major Church Historian, also much closer to those times, quotes copiously from Josephus all through his writings, and was, in his way, an expert on Josephus, never mentions the “Testimonium”..If ANY mention of Jesus at all had been there then how could he not have mentioned it…and frequently. As I said earlier, the first to mention it was Eusebius..AFTER the Council of Nicea in 325, and who was a well known forger of “pious fiction:., Christians were in the ascendant, and Jews were being pushed further down into the Pit.
This is moving. I am moved by all of this. But as an atheist I have to continue on my struggle. This is for reasons that you are aware of. The roots of Antisemitism CAN be defeated in Europe but only on the basis of knowledge.
This is part of an article I am struck by:
“First Jewish Revolt
66-70 CE
WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
LAST UPDATED: Jun 6, 2019 See Article History
First Jewish Revolt, (AD 66–70), Jewish rebellion against Roman rule in Judaea. The First Jewish Revolt was the result of a long series of clashes in which small groups of Jews offered sporadic resistance to the Romans, who in turn responded with severe countermeasures. In the fall of AD 66 the Jews combined in revolt, expelled the Romans from Jerusalem, and overwhelmed in the pass of Beth-Horon a Roman punitive force under Gallus, the imperial legate in Syria. A revolutionary government was then set up and extended its influence throughout the whole country. Vespasian was dispatched by the Roman emperor Nero to crush the rebellion. He was joined by Titus, and together the Roman armies entered Galilee, where the historian Josephus headed the Jewish forces. Josephus’ army was confronted by that of Vespasian and fled. After the fall of the fortress of Jatapata, Josephus gave himself up, and the Roman forces swept the country. On the 9th of the month of Av (August 29) in AD 70, Jerusalem fell; the Temple was burned, and the Jewish state collapsed, although the fortress of Masada was not conquered by the Roman general Flavius Silva until April 73… (from Encyclopdia Britannica)
Whatever was going on here will likely remain a mystery. The Roman besiegers, just like the British in Ireland, would have been past masters in the recruitment of the agent provocateur. In any case what Josephus has written simply cannot be trusted in the slightest.
The major problem now is that all of the history of these events is now a political issue. If we are to defeat the likes of BDS on the left, and left antisemitism, and posit that reality of the left inside of the other reality that the capitalist system itself can offer nothing good, we have to have a good working knowledge of the FACTS of history.
It seems to me anyway that this method of lies against the Jewish people in these early centuries created myths which have proved very dangerous for the Jewish people, that is for sure and obvious, but also for vast masses of humanity as well. To put it bluntly Hitler murdered 6 million but another large number, scores of millions, lost their lives also in that carnage.
No matter what some Facebook Jewish groups i know think the issue of such as BDS is not JUST an issue of the Jews, but for humanity. That for me is the key point in all of this.
@ Edgar G.: Thank you for your words of praise and encouragement Edgar. I need them, because I don’t have many friends, and there are very few Jewish people who live in the small town where I now reside (about 40 miles from the one where I grew up, and even less Jewish).
I also find your life story deeply moving, and I admire the great courage that you and your wife and all your relatives have shown.
I have also have read some of Professor Mansour’s writings about the Essenes.
I have three yahrzeits that I obseve yearly–for both of my parents, and my older brother, who tragically passed away suddenly at the age of 61 fifteen years ago, only six weeks after we lost our mother. Even though she was 90 when she passed, Tom was grief-stricken, and that might have hastened his sudden and unexpected death.
However, it is my custom to recite kaddish every week, since there is almost always at least one person in our Chabad congregation (about 25 miles from my home. I have to drive there, but our rabbi permits me to do so). that has to say kaddish for a relatives, so I say it along with them in solidarity. Even when this is not the case, every week I read of the passing of at least one Jew whom I admire and was much admired by his or her fellow Jews, so I say kaddish in honor of him or her.
Again best wishes, Adam.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
The denouement of your life’s story Adam, is indeed very touching, and has affected me deeply. It has made you the understanding gentleman that you are. It was meant to be that you would find your way back into Judaism that way, making it all the more meaningful for you. A HUGE thing is…that you made your mother happy…in a Jewish
milieu.
I recall when my dear mother passed I was 40. my very much older sister said that we’d been very lucky to have had both parents until this age, that everyone she knew had long ago lost one parent. By coincidence, I have Yahrzeit for my Dear Father Olov HaSholom next Friday night…46 years gone. and its just as if it were yesterday. I have 6 Yahrzeits between Jan, Feb. April and 3 in June… all in the first half of the year. Only my dear sister and I are left of a family of 6 children.
Heartbreaking.
Quite a coincidence that you’ve read Mansoor’a books, soyou know exactly who i was talking about.. I didn’t come across that one you mentioned, about the Arab-Israeli Wars. Books on Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew, both primers and deep study. He was very much into the Essenes, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, also. By way of being a multi-linguist scholar, he spoke Arabic like a native, I believe Aramaic and versions of the ancient languages of that surrounding area. A genuine Semitic Scholar of the higher order.also Spanish, and I think Portuguese, and published in these language.
@ Edgar G.: Edgar, I have read several articles and large parts of a history of the Arab-Israel conflict by Professoe Menachem Mansour. I was deeply impressed by his work, and it has influenced my thinking on several matters, including some of the matters we have been discussing. But it never would have guessed he was your Cheider teacher.
No, I had not realized you were a scholar of such varied learning, and was acquainted with the New Testament.
My own comments about my parents, I realize now, were patronizing and one-sided. My father was a concert pianist, a professor of music (taught harmony and composition, music history, piano), a conductor, and above all a composer of classical music when there were very few in the United States. He was extremly learned about the history of classical music and the lives of the great classical composers.
Although he said he wasn’t religious, his most important work, which he completed only a few weeks before his death from cancer, was a choral concerto musical setting of a Hebrew prayer, in (modern) Hebrew, known as the Ba’al manuchah prayer to the “Watchman of Israel.” Can’t remember the author’s name–he was an early settler of the Galil.
My mother did return to the Judaism of her childhood in her later years. She began to light Sabbath candles and recite the prayer welcoming the Sabbath again. We made a point of attending a communal seder every year.
In her last four years she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, I would take her to the communal seders at her nursing home. She would enjoy herself enormously. I would light an electric menorah for her every year in December, and she would ask me to tell her the story of Hanukkah, which I guess she couldn’t remember. She would listen with rapt attention and a look of awe and wonder, the way she must have done as a child, while gazing at me with her deep blue eyes.
“The Jews Crucified Jesus” is what we have been told through books and film.
Repeated by the Churches year on year at particular festivals.
A baying Jewish mob was responsible is what is repeated.
Pontius Pilate we are told was a weak vacillating type. Judea was then the cockpit of nation struggle against Rome. This wily imperialist power would NEVER have sent such a weakling to govern their most dangerous province at that time. 100% no chance.
This narrative against Jews has originated inside of this horrible struggle.
The power of uncontested narrative reminds me also of the narrative against the Serbs in the 1990s but which is kept being reinforced every year. It is this reinforcement which is very important. They have lies to hide, so they repeat the lies again and again.
There is another aspect to this. The above means that Christian Churches operate on a weak foundation and we see that in that they have bowed the knee in the fact of the worst outrages we have seen for a long time in this world at the hands of ISIS!
@ Edgar G.:
Never boring. Rather fascinating. I picked up on the point where the sages argued over meaning of a word. As if trying to pin the word into reality. It was an attempt at science.
Ted has written usefully on this. The importance of law and tradition for Jews. The importance of these practices in relation to a hot climate and also a reliance on the laws to hold the nation or nation becoming together.
The opposite of this is obviously pliability.
So religion as in the case of Bush and the 2003 War on Saddam being used to argue whatever was in vogue. Or whatever was opportunistic.
Vital issue which touches every day on the present.
example one…
1900 there were 100,000 Iberian Lynx STILL in total area they roamed for ever almost long before man anyway
1982 there were 92 left
1900 to 1980 give or take for 60 full years there was Francoism ideology in place
and number two…many Irish young men idealistic went to the Missions such as Nigeria…but in recent slaughters of Christians Irish Church says not a word
SOMETHING NOT RIGHT
What is left out by many today is that James a real historical figure was murdered in lead-up to 67 to 70 GREAT REVOLT OF THE JEWS against Roman Power.
His memory erased (see Robert Eisenman).
Revolt erased.
Was this the origin of the Christian Church?
(saying this I am very aware that in our world of woe people really do materially need a faith…I am very tolerant)
Adam …much of my “view of reality” was garnered from the works of excellent, renowned historians and teachers with some of whom I later corresponded, for discussions. My chaidar teacher, I found out in later years, was Menachem Mansoor, who founded the Chair of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at Wisconsin Uni. and was a permanent fixture there until he passed away. He was a prolific writer, and his translations, discoveries and Dead Sea Scrolls work were world renowned. . By coincidence he came to Dublin for a few years… attending Trinity College just as you were and took Gold Medals and several degrees as well. He taught chaidar at our Talmud Torah to stay alive..I suppose. You should look him up.
I met him again in Dublin when I was about 18, We were all at a Community dance and someone beside me said, “do you mind if I dance with your girl friend”. I looked around… then I looked down and there was my friend Menachem. As a kid, he was a man…I looked up at him. But now he was only reaching my shoulder. And I was NOT tall. He must have been barely 5′ -if that much..
I always try to confirm via other means when I’m very interested in something, and in this matter I did confirm, to my complete satisfaction. Obviously, not being a Torah Scholar and not being a fluent BIBLICAL Hebrew student (biblical and modern Hebrew often have very different meanings and phrasing) I can be argued with and disputed. No matter…no harm.
My upbringing was traditionally Jewish. I myself was not so much , but my dear mother was a deep believer, without it however interfering with daily living. She actually used to visit The Poor Hospitals, where many poor people lay ill and alone, and consoled them, and gave them money etc. and help after they got well again, sometimes even staying with us for a week or so until they found a footing.. That was MY mother. My Father was a lifelong shool goer, and for the last 35-40 years of his life was the president . actually he kept the shool going as long as there could be found a minyan, His religiosity was a product of the shtetl, which he left aged 8, to go to Ireland, and although observant , did not, like my mother, allow it to interfere too much with daily matters. He was a businessman who always closed early on Friday and closed on Shabat. We were a close Community of about 3500 people .There were 8-9 shools from two large ones, to a couple which were only single rooms . Ours was in between, but was the oldest shool in the country, established in about 1876.
Whilst my upbringing may have fashioned my behaviour, , being a very precocious child and having taught myself to read at age 2 1/2, as an adult, I made my own mind up about my beliefs.(AFTER I went to Canada) although respecting my parents’ wishes …..(as long as I was within the family……we never actually discussed religion, we took it for granted) even after I had emigrated to Canada…Any temptation (and there was very much) that might have got me into trouble, was stopped, even though very attracting, because I could always hear my dear mother’s voice saying…”My (X orY etc) would never do such a thing”….She could contemplate it about the children of others, but HER children were special. So that was, briefly my home upbringing. And…its still with me so many years later.
Adam…I have several copies of The New Testament” and have gone over and into it several times. After the first time I read it I thought “how could anyone believe such obviously mythical fairy tales…my exact words. and considering that world-wide religions were formed from that book, I understated my disbelief.
{{In fact, years later, when I met my future wife who was then of the Plymouth Brethren, and she talked about religion (with a view to converting me,a huge goal they had) I said those very same words. She began to think, went secretly to several different brands of Christianity, and discussed with the pastors, then spoke to n Orthodox Rabbi in Vancouver, converted to Reform, them Conservative, and finally Orthodox through the Satmarers in Washington State. its an interesting story but Im written out…almost. This was all going on whilst I had long before stopped seeing her, and, until she phoned one day and asked me to please drive her down to Seattle.}}
You must have missed the post where I mentioned I had a very full and complete Geneva Bible; the frontispiece dated 1615 by the Kings Printer. It contains the complete New Testament also, with the Apocrypha, the Psalms set to (archaic) music, 2 Thesurus-es, full index.cross index, …and quite a bit more. I explained how different sections for the bibles in those days were collected, and bound together by bookbinders, so that people chose the parts they wanted in their bibles. So my bible contains parts printed as far back as 1576. I also have a Standard Revised, an English Bible, a copy of Wycliffe’s Bible, also the New Revised Standard Version etc. I really can’t remember which I have..as I haven’t seen them for many years, they being in storage with all my books. But I have about 6-7 different copies and versions. The Revised Standard mentions in the Preface, that the translators and compilers found over 4000 errors in the King James Book. James of course only gave permission for his name to go on it; he had nothing to do with it, In fact he imprisoned and executed those he caught. Bibles had to be smuggled into the country, most of them printed in Geneva . Calvin was there also Beza.
The Geneva Bible was also called the “Breeches Bible” being that instead of Adam and Eve being naked, it says that “they made for themselves breeches”, supposedly out of fig leaves.
The James Bible was mostly from the Geneva Bible,,which itself used very much of Myles Coverdale’s translations. It was the Bible of the Puritans, the Mayflower , Shakespeare, and etc. A very famous book. I’d better stop before I get boring, which I already may be.
@ Edgar G.: Hi, Edgar! Obviously, our very different upbringings deeply influence our different views of reality. I never went to cheder. Instead, I went to apublic school in a small town. My parents were Jewish and frequently mentioned the fact. But they never joined a synagogue, and they never had me bar-mitzvahed.
The samall town I grew up in had almost no other Jews besides my parents when I grew up, although the town has grown since then, and a fairly sizable Jewish community now exists there. A shul was not formed in my home town until I was thirty five or so. When it was, I , my mother and father all joined. But it was a Deconstructionist shut . Eventually, I quarreled with the rabbi and quit, because of its extreme liberalism. When he preached a sermon on Yom Kippur approving of homosexuality, I quit.
All of friends growing up were Christians, since as far as I can remember there were only two other Jewish students in my elementary school class, and only two in my high school class. For some reason I was never close to them. I only began to learn something about my own religion when I went to college and joined a Hillel.
My parents did frequently said they were proud of being Jews, and they told me I should be too. But the only aspect of the Jewish experience that seemed to interest them was antisemitism. Whenever some other kids beat me up or bullied me, they told me they were antisemites. Whenever someone was mean to them , and they didn’t know why, they concluded they were antisemites. All I really knew about my Jewish origins was that it might make some people dislike me, and that it would be inappropriate for me to go to a church. For some reason, none of this bothered me very much.
My mother did tell me thathat her parents were very devout Jews, especially her father, and she was very proud of this. I knew my grandmother a little bit, and knew she believed in God and was an observant Jew, but we only visited her occasionally, and I never discussed religion with her. My grandfather, of whose devoutness my mother was so proud, died before I was born.
My father told me his father, who grew up in Istambul of all places, was a confirmed atheist. I never knew my paternal grandmother, because my mother couldn’t stand her, and would never let us visit her. My grandparents all lived in New York City, which was some distance from the small upstate town where I grew up.
When I asked my parents what they believed in, they said they were atheists. However, they evinced so little interest in religion that I think it was just a rationale for their complete lack of interest in religion, and their never having joined either a shul or a church.
Having confessed to all this, I still stand by my view that a) Jesus really did exist, and was a Torah observant Jew. b) Paul of Tarsus invented Christianity, which had very little if anything to do with what Jesus or his original disciples (or followers) believed. In his letters, he constantly argues with these original disciples and deprecates their views. He claims that their view of what Jesus believed was all wrong, even though they knew him intimately, and Paul admits he never met him. But he insists that he and only he knew what Jesus really believed, because he (Paul) had received direct revelations from God.
You might want to read the New Testament some time. You might find it interesting. All my best, Adam.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
According to tradition, the process began almost concurrently with the handing down to Moses of the Torah.
The Elders believed, even at that very early date, that G-D had not created the world and humanity for no purpose, therefore they pored over each word of the Torah, each phrase, and each letter even, to try to ascertain the REAL meaning of G-D’s intentions. This continually was in progress, and much later, became known as “The Oral Torah”.
It got a huge push when Jerusalem was captured, and the important Judah-ites were taken away to Babylon. Over time, great schools with major reputations were allowed by the Babylonians and successors to function. Around the same time it was also going on in Jerusalem, but not as comprehensively. This resulted in the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmuds.
There were centuries long deliberations between large numbers of “schools”..(meaning followers and students of famous Sages), might spend hundred years before a definite meaning of a word or phrase would become generally accepted in the Jewish world..And all these, pro and con, were included in the Oral Torah. ,
The original debates and commentaries were called the Mishna, (Mishna Torah) and the discussions on THAT were called The Gemara. Both together make up “The Talmud”. And of course there are massive amounts of offshoot discussions attached to virtually every clause, often “in the name of Reb. X,Y, Z,..” .etc.
They had never been written down, but committed to memory, (almost unbelievable scholarship) but eventually meanings of words/phrases etc changed, some meanings were lost during civil upheavals,(often resulting in the deaths of key figures, now lost to memory,) and wars causing occupation and subservience, So it began to be written down towards the end of minus 3rd. Century. It was not finally completed until the end of the 5th ccentury or beginning of the 6th., the work lasting bout 7-800 years, although the worst historical times for the people happened during that period.
Im sure you know ll this Adam but some others may find it of interest..
The script of the Gemara is written very differently, and hard to read. I had a very tough time with it in chaidar as boy and it was like learning to read all over again Remotely only, like the Masoretic Text… . If you open a Talmud volume you will see on each page the matching Gemara accompanying text, in the outside columns.
I know we have some Talmud scholars on this site, and although it’s presumptuous of me to write the above, perhaps they can correct and elaborate on my effort, which even if sometimes in error, was enjoyable to write, almost in reminiscence of happy days gone by..
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
I know all that stuff, and had a large collection of documentation about Christian beginnings for a book, which I never wrote, other more important events intervening.
I cant say I’m surprised at your position. But, the documents you quote, are all based on previous redactions of redactions, which were mainly the “feelings” of the authors.
In the main documents attesting to Christian beginnings, the demographic descriptions are almost ALL wrong and were not written by Jews, plus, their composition dates, and locations are too hazy for any expert to be definite,except in a general sense.. Even the Josephus story bout John the Baptiser is very much t odds with the Christian story. John was a well known figure as far back as the year 6, whilst a Jesus was completely unknown all through that period, until we hear about him in the Gospels, the first being written around the year 80 or later, followed by the next 2 which were copies of the 1st, and so, were called “The Synoptic Gospels”..
The John Epistle was in a completely different style, and may have been written after the Bar Kocheba War, as …the records say that all “Bishops” up to that War were Jews (G-D Fearers) and from then on, were not Jews. And it’s known from ostraka, that a sect existed who would not help Bar Kocheba in the war, and were instructed to be”put in chains..(the assumption being that they were early forerunners of Christianity). None of the 4 Gospel writers was a Jew, and none was written in Palestine, the nearest was possibly in Alexandria, and again, possibly Rome.
Another point should be made. Much of the Early Church writings were to attempt to prove the authenticity of the Gospels, in other words, the existence of Jesus -their god. (this is impossible) ..The prominent Church Historian Eusebius, was KNOWN by his contemporaries and after, as “the Great Interpolater”…(meaning “the great pious forger… a similar situation to that existing in Islam..(.”to lie for the furtherance of Islam”)..
Tertullian, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Origen, and many more Church Fathers, writers and historians lived before and overlapped (and succeeded) Eusebius, and many were familiar with the Josephus’ works, and ALL passed over what later became known as the “Testimonium Flavianus”… Why…. because it was “discovered” only by Eusebius who was the first major “Historian”. He wrote his Church History AFTER the Council of Nicea…..which is very telling, and needed to put Christianity in the best light possible, because by then it had become a political movement.
Some of the later Historians and writers refute it as being a forgery.
There is much more ….but no point in going into it You feel what you feel. and there is nothing sillier than 2 Jews arguing over the origins (and authenticity) of Christianity…Fortunately for Truth, I am not concerned about offending our Christian “friends” (of whom I exclude Felix). Those authorities you quote or mention are vastly outnumbered and outweighed by the opponents of the miraculous origins of Christianity, and existence of a Jesus. They clearly show it’s progression from the Egyptian stories of their gods.
Also with a massive Christian world population, who had spread civilisation through conversions and slaughter, there undoubtedly must be a political tint to today’s expert opinions… (The Baltic region was not finally christian-ised until about the 15th century.
Their chiefs were wont to boast about the numbers of white robes they had collected from the different missionaries, who “baptised” them over and over)
That’s all they are…Opinions.
You are only repeating the Christian story about Jesus …from The Jesus Seminar or some such.
My comment on G-d Fearers show the ONLY natural way that Christianity proliferated so quickly and supposedly “miraculously”.
@ Felix Quigley:
The G-d Lovers became visible before the Roman Wars, attracted by the devoutness of the Jews, the invisible G-D, the story of the Torah from the beginning, the ethics laid down by Torah dictums, The 10 Commandments, the consideration for the poor, the sick, the widows the orphans, the respect for the elderly, also the miraculous escapes and victories attributed by Jews to their G-D… and much more.
You know yourself Felix. that infanticide, leaving the old, sick and useless on mountainsides for wild animal food, and …by Jewish standards, completely barbarian and cruel practices by Pagans were rife. Also because of the aforementioned, they realised that the statues of their gods they prayed to, were just pieces pf stone with no godliness about them.
Jews were discovered or noticed, by the Greeks around minus the 5th or 6th Century. I have read that they described them as a “Race of Philosophers”…. which was as far as their then understanding of them went.
To return to my original point and its relevance to the current situation in Israel. While Christianity emphasized faith in Jesus and “confessing with the lips, ‘Jesus is Lord’ ” (Paul), not observance of rules and regulations as the means of salvation, Judaism became more and more obsessed with observance of rules and regulations, most of them not in the “written Torah” (the hummash or Pentateuch, the :Five Books of Moses.”) The rules and regulations constantly became more numerous, complex and severe. There are some indications from the Talmud and other ancient texts that this process had already had its beginnings in the first century B.C. E. if not earlier. But this process has continued with interruption for the past two thousand years. As a result, the religion that Orthodox, and especially “Ultra-Orthodox” Jews brought with them to the Land of Israel is radically differenet from the Judaism of King David and King Soloman’s time, or even Ezra and Nechemiah’s time, although of course contemporary Orthodox Jews, and especially the haredim, are unaware of this. The religion that developed over the past two thousand years aimed mainly at insulating Jews from the pressures to convert to Christianity or Islam by absorbing Jews in unique ritual observances, constant study of religious texts, and constant repetition of prayers by rote to reinforce their Jewish faith. Even in the diaspora, this approach often backfired, since many Jews who found they could not do all this converted to the easier to practice dominant faiths. But this approach is completely inappropriate to the challenges of the Jews who have returned to the Land of Israel, which are indeed similar to those faced by David and Soloman. Hence the tragic secular-religious divide, and the divide between the national-religious (faithful in spirit at any rate to original Judaism) and the haredim, who still think they are living in Russia, Poland or Morocco.
@ Edgar G.: Edgar, what you say here is very true. Our knowledge of these times are very fragmentary and incomplete. We have only a few texts other than the New Testament that shed any light on the origins of Christianity. I don’t feel much like insulting our Christian friends that sometimes post on this site, so I choose my words carefully. But I think that many of the New Testament narratives are biased and distorted, and some are not true. However some, serious scholars with an open mind have subjected these texts to a careful analysis, and have reached at least a rough consensus about what the actual facts are that we can identify and extract from some of these narratives.
There are also a few other surviving books, such as the writings of Philo and Josephus, the fragmentary Dead Sea Scrolls, and even an oddball Latin document known as the “Clementine Recognitions” (I can’t describe it in post like this) that shed some light on the beliefs of the Jews of Eretz Israel around the time that Jesus of Nazareth lived and Christianity had its earliest beginnings.
The conclusions of this group of scholars are more or less the following:;
Jesus was an observant Jew who observed the laws of the Torah and taught his followers to do the same. He placed his own “spin” and emphasis in his reading of the Torah. But that was not unusual in the first century C.E., when there were many different interpretations of the Torah among the Jews of the Land of Israel, and not just those of the perushim (called “Pharisees” in the New Testament from the Greek spelling of the word), which became the normative Judaism after the destruction of the Temple, and is presented in the Talmud.
Jesus thought or at least hoped he he was the “Messiah.” but by that word he meant the rightful King of Judah and Israel, not God or a god. He did not believe he was god. He did think he had the right genealogy, going back to King David, that gave him the “credentials” to make this claim (though Joseph, not the “Hol Spirit” as in two of the gospels).
He was a Jewish nationalist whose main goal was to throw the Romans out of Eretz Israel. He hoped he could accomplish this by intense prayer alone. But he didn’t rule out the possibility of an armed insurrection if necessary.
Most scholars who are not Christian funamentalists beliee that it was Paul of Tarsus, not Jesus, who invented the religion we now call Christianity. Although he made Jesus the object ow worship and the icon of the new faith, his belief system was radically different from that of Jesus. In a post of this type I can’t go in to the very varied interpretations of Paul’s life and message. But htere is much controversy about what his actual life was like, and some scholars believe that his own account of it in his letters is not accurate.
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar
“The most logical explanation is that around minus 100, Goyim got a great desire to depart from meaningless Paganism, and they became very interested in the ethics and humanity of the Torah and Jewish traditions. They swarmed into the Synagogues. Although they did not convert, they practiced the Jewish rituals.”
This was also a time of rebellion against the Roman Empire. so was there a connection between revolt against the Roman repression and Judaism. What was in Judaism if that is so that appealed?
David we emailed a long time ago and I liked your historical work. But this is not the same world. The world is fast changing. There can come onto Israel, and all of us wherever we are, a completely changed situation. Consider the speed of events from the Wall Street Crash in 1929 to the ascent to power of Hitler in 1933 and I am saying this because it is necessary to think out of the box. In short we need a party of a very special kind that can do that, and not an individual either, because you know the old saying…here today gone tomorrow. Already today we have warnings to Trump not to make a war on Iran. (Carlson)
Jabotinsky did not understand at all the role of the working class and this is shown in this paragraph:
Lenin and Trotsky who wrote reams on this were sure that the proletariat or working class did not have any culture. Jabotinsky did not understand this. This fact changes everything about Jabotinsky!
There is too much here for me to take on board. But I do question this part:
I have questions to ask about this but cannot answer without going to the original debate, what each person said in debate…WHICH THE WRITER DOES NOT DO
I am sick of people slipping in THEIr interpretations of history
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Adam….we REALLY don’t know how Christianity began. It is lost in the bowels of the most disturbed period ii Jewish history, until the Holocaust. It was roughly the 400 years from about the beginning of the Maccabiim to about 100 years after the Bar Kocheba War. The most logical explanation is that around minus 100, Goyim got a great desire to depart from meaningless Paganism, and they became very interested in the ethics and humanity of the Torah and Jewish traditions. They swarmed into the Synagogues. Although they did not convert, they practiced the Jewish rituals. The Sages and Rabonim thought much about these people, and came to the conclusion that, although not Jews, they were no longer Pagans. They were referred to as “G-D Fearers”.. or “G-D lovers”. and were obliged only to practice the laws from the time of Noach. They were the first Noachides. Some mystic, generally accepted as being Paul (of Tarsus) whose own supposed origin is shrouded in nystery, lies, and full of impossibilities, preached amongst them and persuaded them that their practices were sufficient for them to be regarded as Jews, ….the NEW Israel. And that was ..just about…that….!!
All the rest of the accretions came later and were from the minds of all sorts of lunatics, intermixed with deep thinkers who wrote down their thoughts and convictions. Today we have only a multi-times translation and redactions many times over throughout the first 600 years or more. .
That’s the best I can do……!!!
@ Frank Adam: It is interesting that even two thousand years ago, the New Testament quotes Jesus as making a speech in which he accuses the rabbinate of the late Second Temple period of being too obseessed with the minutiae of Torah observance, and insufficiently concerned with “the weightier matters of the law,” which he describes as ethical values like “justice” and “mercy” and “faith.” Christianity began as a revolt by a Jewish splinter against the concern with the details of ritual observances and taboos.Christianity thrived and developed into a large religion by making it easy to convert to it and by not making too many demands on its followers, other than a “professional” priesthood. Islam adopted this approach as well, and developed a vast following as a result. The Jewish mainstream orthodoxy never made this adaptation to achieve growth and a large number of adherents. The result was that in each generation, tens of thousands of Jews drop away from Jewish observance. Most end up converting to Christianity or Communism or Buddhism or some other religion that makes more limited ritualistic demands on them. Or their children or grandchildren adopt these “alternative” faiths.
One reason for the 20th century desertion in droves to the Bund or to be – not only – “Germans of Mosaic Persuasion,” was that the Chatam Sopher and the rest of the orthodox rabbinante – Hazon Ish, Moshe Feinstein and the like, might have written volumes on the minutiae of halacha and pietistic practice but did not or could not grasp and rule on the Enlightenment development and consquences of the doctrine of popular sovereignty that offered all who lived in a sovereignty citizenship and equality as distinct from being mere subjects and still among the Haredim regard the Israeli government as just another Tsar and try to have nothing to do with it even as in the Diaspora as well as Jerusalem, there are cases in New York and North London of “orthodox” trying to take government for suckers when it comes to grants and school curriculum rules. As long as the orthodox rabbinate sets the tone with an exceedingly narrow education and refusal to broaden culture beyond the comprehension of Talmudic texts it will lose; on one hand not being able to argue as distinct from bargain with government and society, on the other hand not being able to hold on to a large swathe of the Jewish constituency to whom their version of being Jewish is too narrow, niggling and an obligation but not an enthusiasm.
Extremely brilliant and informative analysis from Yisrael Medad . One correction: th epogromists during the 1903-1906 period were not peasants, but unemployed urban laborers. Many of them had drinking problems that prevented them from working on a regular basis, and some of them were “toughs” and enforcers for criminal gangs. The police in many areas helped to organize the pogroms, and there were often plain-clothes policemen in the pogromist mobs who directed unemployed laborers and day-laborers to the “right” targets. The pogroms were organized by an organization called the Union of the Russian people. Its leaders were not peasants but leading churchman of the Russian Orthodox church, members of the nobility, high-ranking officer of the Okhrana or political police, and the tsar himself. The tsar accepted membership in URP, received its leaders in public, and accepted a membership badge from them, which he wore on his uniform. Funding for the organization came from wealthy private citizens, the Church, and the Okhrana.
The unemployed or underemployed day-laborers did not join the pogroms spontaneously, but were paid by the URP and its local agents. They badly needed money, since most of them were unable to work full-time, either to support their families or to support their drinking habits, or both. Most of them would have beat up anyone, burned down any houses, and wreaked general havoc against anyone, Jew or Gentile, if paid. Some of them had previous “experience” at doing this sort of thing for local gangsters.
Few peasants seem to have participated in the pogroms during this period, since they were mainly an urban phenomenon in Ukraine and Byelorussia. Many Ukrainian and Byelorussianpeasantss (not so many “Great Russian” or Polish ones) did participate in the the pogroms of 1918-21 during the Russian civil war. These later pogroms took a much larger toll of Jewish lives. But they were less well-known to the public in the West. Like the earlier pogroms, however, they were organized mainly by members of the privileged , educated classes, not peasants.