By Ron Nutter, Ph D
I wear a necklace made of silver created by a craftswoman in Carmel, IN. In my years of teaching philosophy and religion I would on occasion make a rhetorical point about Judaism and Christianity by holding up one side of the necklace, displaying the Christian Cross, and saying, “One cannot possibly understand the full meaning of this without a deep and abiding understanding of this,” whereupon I would flip my necklace and show the Star of David on the other side.
Over the years that little demonstration had greater and greater effect as I developed a course on the Shoah in which the first half of the semester was spent exploring Jewish traditions and beliefs with a guest rabbi, the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the early Church, and the anti-Jewish legislation of early Church councils and secular governments. Over time Jews were restricted in where they could live, how they might make a living, banned from owning land, ordered not to converse with Christians, prohibited from appearing in public during Christian holidays, denied education in the professions, forced to wear distinctive clothing so everyone would know them to be a Jew, and more.
All of this was long, long before Adolf Hitler came on the scene. In fact, with the exception of organized bureaucratic and technology-based extermination, there is hardly anything in the Nuremburg Laws against the Jews that was not passed in an earlier time by a Church council or a Church-influenced state government.
The course would come to the nineteenth century and discuss the progressive and scientific theories of race and eugenics, which were popular at the time. Up to then, the problem with Jews from a Christian perspective was “bad thinking” and “spiritual blindness and stubbornness” which leads to their ongoing rejection of Jesus Christ. Theories of race introduce the notion that it’s not bad thinking, but bad blood. Thus the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the past is transformed into anti-Semitism.
There is a logic – a tragic one – to hatred of Jews. The early Church essentially said, “You shall not live among us as Jews.” Thus the attempts to convert Jews to Christianity, sometimes forcibly. In the medieval period that was transformed to “You shall not live among us.” This was the period of either forced expulsions or the ghettoization of Jews. This was followed logically by the next step: “You shall not live.” Which brings us to Hitler’s attempt to exterminate Jews in the Shoah.
The second half of the course reviewed the rise of Hitler and the mechanics of the Shoah. Most students had some idea, having heard in general terms about the Holocaust, but nearly all were completely dumbfounded to learn of the anti-Jewish activity of the early Church and of the anti-Semitic views which came to influence many Western states and eventually dominate the politics of Nazi Germany.
I am now retired from teaching. I still wear that necklace, and have since the day I was married on August 21, 1982. Curiously, it is only now I am beginning to feel the weight of my necklace. Seeing the emotions unleashed recently during the conflict in Gaza I am fearful of what I once thought could never happen: Anti-Semitism again stalks the land looking for Jewish blood. What I have spent my life trying to expose so that it might never happen again seems to be back, often with a quite sinister and maniacal passion.
It is at this time of increasing anti-Semitic activity that I am compelled to write so that others might be aware of the long tradition of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic rhetoric and activity. This is needed so that all will realize that the current rise in anti-Semitism is not exclusively caused by Gaza or the Palestinian question or by Israel. Rather, it is simply an extension of what has gone on for 2,000 years.
It was a happier time when I first had the necklace made. I was a student at a Christian seminary at the time. Among classes I had taken was one co-taught by Clark Williamson, a Christian theologian, and Jonathan Stein, a Jewish rabbi. Spending a semester in intensive study of the Jewish religion was eye-opening and led to a great respect for the roots of Jewish beliefs and traditions. That course was followed by another taught by Williamson in which the history of anti-Jewish thought within the Church was exposed. More than eye-opening, it was a shameful legacy that Christians must bear, though I dare say most have no idea of the injustice and violence heaped on Jews through the centuries. It is for good reason that this anti-Jewish sentiment is known as The Longest Hate.
What I have come to learn in subsequent years is that anti-Jewish rhetoric is repeated, and expanded, by nearly all of the Church Fathers. Melito of Sardis, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine, Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyprian of Carthage, and Novatian of Rome all expressed contempt of Jews and Judaism. And this is only a partial listing of those engaged in the Adversus Judaeus preaching of the early Church.
One voice of anti-Jewish rhetoric needs to be highlighted. In 1543 a truly malevolent attack on Jews was written by Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation. The title of the pamphlet was On The Jews and Their Lies. In it, using the most risible insults imaginable, Luther lays out what he believes should be done with the Jews. It was a seven-fold plan, including
1) the destruction of synagogues and Jewish schools,
2) that Jewish homes should be razed and destroyed and the Jews forced to live in a communal barn-like structure or barracks,
3) that all prayer books and Talmudic writings should be taken from them,
4) that rabbis should henceforth be forbidden to teach on pain of death,
5) that safe conduct for Jews on the highways of the land should be ended and they should be forced to remain indoors,
6) that usury should be ended for Jews as it is for Christians and that Jewish wealth through money-lending be confiscated, and
7) a recommendation that tools be placed into the hands of Jews and that they be forced to work.
When you look at that list, it kind of looks like a Nazi concentration camp, doesn’t it? Not an extermination camp, but the typical work camp. In fact, one of the defendants at the Nuremburg war crimes trial, Julius Streicher, editor of the notoriously anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, defended himself at trial by claiming he merely advocated and did what Martin Luther recommended be done.
Luther ended on a flourish, pleading:
[T]hat our rulers. . . . must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, . . . I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated.
I have to say there is always fallout when one exposes for public view a man who is seen as a paragon of faith and virtue. Teaching my course there was a young woman who was a devout Lutheran. Learning what Luther had to say about Jews in class one day she was literally reduced to tears. There is no joy to be taken in seeing another’s ideals tarnished. I could only hope that in the wisdom of her years she is able to separate what theological wisdom Luther had to offer from his contemptuous disdain of Jews.
Simultaneous to the ravaging of Jews verbally and theologically there was anti-Jewish legislation passed by Church councils and synods as well as secular governments. To name just one, in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council it was proclaimed that all Jews in all provinces must wear distinctive clothing so that all who see them in public will know them to be Jews. This comes as a shock to those who think Hitler started that policy with his ordering Jews to wear the Star of David in public. Their rights being restricted or outright denied from state to state, region to region, Jews found themselves stateless, with few ways of making a living. The church and the state appeared to be working in concert to make the lives of Jews more and more impossible.
Some felt a justification was needed to attack the Jews, and indeed justifications were found in certain popular charges against Jews. One was the “ritual murder” charge, sometimes known as “blood libel.” The charge is that Jews would kidnap a young Christian boy and drain his blood for the making of matzos for holiday meals. The charge was first made in Norwich, England, in 1144. By the end of that century the charge was being made everywhere Jews lived among Christians. The charge has been made in the twentieth century in Germany, Russia, and even in New York State. Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer is based on the famous 1913 trial in Kiev,
Russia, of Mendel Beiliss. He was accused of killing a young boy, and a witness for the prosecution, a Catholic priest, explained the murder in terms of the “blood libel” ritual.
Unfortunately, as chronicled by The Middle East Media Research Institute, the ritual murder charge is still with us as Islamic Imams and Muslim media incessantly claim Arab children are kidnapped and their blood drained for the making of matzos. The Associated Press recently reported a variation of the ritual murder charge when it passed along the charge that Israel’s IDF soldiers were taking body parts from Palestinians killed in the recent Gaza fighting. The AP quickly removed the story, but no doubt it is still preserved in Muslim media archives.
Another popular charge against Jews was “desecration of the Host.” Interestingly, this charge never arises until after the Church establishes its teaching of Transubstantiation, which proffers that during the Eucharist the actual body and blood of Christ are present in the bread and wine. The desecration of the Host charge essentially says Jews would steal into Catholic churches and steal the consecrated Host and then stab it repeatedly, thus killing Christ again.
A third popular charge was that Jews were “poisoning the wells” of Christians. This is associated with the Black Plague of 1347-49. No one at the time understood the epidemiology of the disease, but they did see that Christians were being affected and Jews were not. Thus it was concluded that the Jews must be doing it. There is, however, a simple explanation for why Jews were not affected: they took baths. Personal hygiene among Christians was negligible to non-existent at the time. It is for good reason writers of this period would make much of a young woman with “sweet breath” because it was quite rare.
A critical turn in attitudes toward Jews takes place with the coming of theories of race in the nineteenth century. Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was an early nineteenth-century French aristocrat who became known for advocating white supremacy and developing a racialist theory of the “Aryan Master Race” in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. He developed the term “Semite” to refer to Arabs and Jews in the Middle East who represented to him the bottom of the racial ladder. He set the stage for what came to be known as the “Nordic Theory.”
The Nordic Theory, prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Western Europe and the United States, was a major influence on Nazi ideology. The theory claims that Nordic peoples constitute a “master race” because of their “innate racial capacity for leadership.” The chief representative of the Nordic Theory in America was Madison Grant, who lived from 1865-1937. He was a eugenicist who employed the Nordic Theory in an effort to restrict entry into the U.S. of Mediterranean peoples. He declared the mixing of the races to be “race suicide.” Unless eugenics was practiced, he claimed, the Nordic race in the U.S. will be supplanted by the “inferior” races.
Grant was very influential among government policy makers and even in popular culture. The character of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby is a clear and outspoken advocate of the racialist positions of Grant. Tom is reading a book titled The Rise of the Colored Empires “by this man Goddard.” This is a combination of Grant’s very popular Passing of the Great Race, written in 1916 and reprinted many times thereafter, and another book written by a close colleague, Lothrup Stoddard, titled The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. Grant wrote the introduction to that book.
“Everybody ought to read it,” the character of Tom Buchanan explains in The Great Gatsby, “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
The Passing of the Great Race, Grant’s very popular book, detailed the “racial history” of the world and affirms the Nordic Theory. It was the first non-German book ordered to be reprinted by the Nazis when they took power in Germany. Adolf Hitler later wrote to Grant personally to say, “The book is my Bible.”
It would be worthwhile to print a little of Grant’s ideas in his own words:
[Eugenics] is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.
This kind of thinking came to a head in the Supreme Court decision Buck v Bell in 1927. The issue before the court was whether a state had the right to compel sterilizations of those considered unfit “for the health and protection of the state.” The decision was seen as an endorsement of “negative eugenics” in that it allows the state to eliminate from the gene pool those deemed defective or otherwise unsuitable. Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the majority decision, including the classic line of eugenics: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” He couched his decision as a health policy issue, declaring sterilizations were like immunizations against possible contagion.
The Nazis already had a contempt for the Jews. With eugenicist theory and putting it on the basis of health policy, the Nazis began their T4 program of killing the institutionalized feeble-minded and other “life unworthy of life” by gassing them inside compartments of trucks. Eventually, the problem of the Jews was presented by the Nazis as a massive health issue. This is why Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, would produce films comparing Jews to rats. One exterminates rats for health reasons, the argument would go, and so too should the Jews be exterminated.
One more figure in the development of race theory should be mentioned: Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In 1899 he wrote his most important work, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. The book grouped all European peoples — Celts, Germans, Slavs, Greeks, Latins, et al. — into the “Aryan” race, with the Nordic and Germanic people at the helm. According to Chamberlain, the Germanic people are the heirs of the empires of Greece and Rome. When Germanic tribes sacked and ended the Roman Empire it was already in decline because it was controlled by Jews and other non-Europeans. Thus, according to Chamberlain, the Germanic peoples “saved” western civilization from Semitic domination. The concept of an “Aryan” race was an ideal of a racial elite. Chamberlain’s works had a marked effect upon German nationalist movements, such as the NSDAP (i.e. the Nazis). Hitler was a student of his works, and praised him as “The Prophet of the Third Reich.”
During this modern period the Jew was being rhetorically ravaged on every level. If one was a defender of the capitalist economic system the enemy of all was the Jewish communist or socialist feeding the fire of revolution. If one was a member of the oppressed working class the enemy of all was the Jewish banker or capitalist oppressing the people. No matter where one stood on the political spectrum, the Jew was the universal enemy. There was no escape for Jews.
Even in popular culture Jews could not escape public contempt. Henry Adams, a Harvard historian and grandson and great-grandson of Presidents, was a leading intellectual in America. His Mont Saint Michel and Chartres as well as The Education of Henry Adams, while brilliant and insightful in many ways, also contain dyspeptic anti-Semitic references throughout. Adams felt marginalized in a world of growing industrialization, and preferred a medieval “universe” inspired by the Virgin to a “multiverse” symbolized by the Dynamo. He became particularly virulent toward Jews after the Panic of 1893, seeing the economic calamity as a result of the manipulations of Jewish bankers.
Adams wrote a very popular novel, Democracy, in which one of the main characters was named Hartbeest Schneidekoupon. He is described as familiar with “the mysteries of currency and protection, to both which subjects he was devoted.” He is described as rich, with “a reputation of turning rapid intellectual somersaults.” He is also said to be “descended from all the Kings of Israel, and … prouder than Solomon in his glory.”
Schneidekoupon’s goal is to befriend over dinner Senator Ratcliffe, expected to become the new Secretary of the Treasury, in order “to keep him straight on the currency and the tariff.” He complains when the Senator at first refuses to attend the dinner that Senators are “all like that. They never think of anyone but themselves.” The irony fairly drips from the page.
Adams then introduces what is described as “a much higher type of character” than Schneidekoupon in a Nathan Gore. Gore is then described by Adams as “abominably selfish, colossally egoistic, and not a little vain.” But, in Adams’s view, he is nonetheless “a much higher type of character” than Schneidekoupon.
Adams presents Schneidekoupon as capitalistic, materialistic, self-centered and carnal, whose “rapid intellectual somersaults” suggest a lack of steadfastness when it comes to inner spiritual or ethical principles. The not so subtle message is the anti-Semitic image that these are the intrinsic traits that indicate the nature and character of the Jew. The overall effect is to present the Jew as something less than human.
Here is an interesting little item: Can you figure out what the following list of words have in common – “usurer, extortioner, cunning, heretic, lickpenny, harpy, schemer, crafty, shifty.” They are synonyms for the word Jew listed in Roget’s Thesaurus at the turn of the twentieth century.
So why do I bring up this laundry-list of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic activity? Because they each, in their own way, played a role in the greatest crime ever perpetrated on humanity, the Shoah. So why did I teach the course? Because I believed – still do – that exposing the truth will prevent it from ever happening again.
There are those, though, who claim the Shoah never happened. And they, unfortunately, are being heard more and more in our irrational age. I am reminded of Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer,
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
There are anti-Semitic voices currently in the land – not just in the Middle East but in Europe and the U.S. – demanding the blood of Jews. This may be as a result of a misguided support of “the oppressed” against their “oppressors” mixed with a belief in moral equivalency, or it may be the curdling voice of contempt spawned by generation after generation of hatred. Regardless, it is an anti-Semitic appeal to the bestial in the human heart.
Academia plays a role with its attempts to isolate Israel and its Jews though support of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. George Orwell, in a 1944 letter to John Middleton Murry, wrote that the test for intellectual honesty is a willingness to criticize one’s own position. It is that lack of intellectual honesty that is bothersome with academics pushing the BDS movement. Of course, they will say they are not anti-Jewish, but anti-Zionist. Well, to quote Shirley Temple in the film Fort Apache, “Pishtosh!”
The hypocrisy can be seen in the recent move by the Presbyterian Church USA to divest from companies doing business with Israel. Leading up to the vote by its General Assembly a program was put together titled Zionism Unsettled by a group called the Israel Palestine Mission Network. This “study guide” was written in consultation with various academics and Palestinian groups. Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, well known spokesmen for the Palestinian cause, are presented as authoritative voices in this document with no attempt to take a critical view of their positions. In fact, despite heavy criticism of Israel there is no criticism of the Palestinians. There isn’t even any condemnation of the terrorist acts against Jews. None. Thus for those Presbyterians who put this study together, as well as those who supported it, they have failed Orwell’s test for intellectual honesty.
Their unwillingness to criticize Palestinian views was replicated in the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. No criticism of Hamas could be heard from those academics of the BDS movement despite the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians with thousands of rockets and mortars. Indeed, all the criticism was directed only toward the Israelis.
This uncritical acceptance of the views and actions of Hamas while rejecting as genocidal the actions of Israel is documented in an August 31, 2014, American Thinker article by Cinnamon Stillwell. After noting various Hamas supporters among the professoriate, mostly in Middle East Studies departments, she writes that “such cheerleading for Palestinian terrorism and willful disregard of historical facts discredits the individuals who advance it and the academic culture of Middle East studies that rewards it. It is politicized rather than objective, propagandistic rather than principled. American interests at home and abroad are ill-served by these apologists for terrorists.” But what is truth, when anti-Semites are motivated and justified by centuries of hatred?
Speaking of Said, he is perhaps best known for his book Orientalism, in which he criticizes and condemns Westerners for unthinkingly adopting a “discourse” about the Middle East established by “experts” and reified in the scholarly tomes of Western libraries. According to Said, such discourse has marginalized the peoples of the Middle East, including the Palestinians, making them less than human in the eyes of Westerners. There may be something to that argument. All I would say is that there is a 2,000-year-old anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic “discourse” that has marginalized Jews through the centuries and made them something less than human. The current anti-Israel voices, whether knowingly or not, are drawing from that discourse of prejudice and hatred in their condemnation of Jews. They simply echo what has been with us from generation to generation.
I firmly believe the situation is better now than it was before World War II. Many have come to recognize how Jews have been victimized through the ages and have worked to make amends. But then I was brought up short one day by Yale professor and one-time diplomat Charles Hill. Reading about his experience in Asia during China’s Cultural Revolution it was demonstrated that whatever cultural strides are made can be undone in a generation.
That is my concern today. A new outbreak of anti-Semitism, having no knowledge of anti-Jewish thought and action through the centuries, and having no desire to know, is propagating a renewal of anti-Semitic discourse that will propel us to ever more tragic consequences if we are not mindful. One sees the evidence all around us, with reports world-wide of rising attacks on Jews and Synagogues in Europe and even in the U.S. The Guardian on August 7, 2014, published a lengthy article on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe that is making Jews in Europe fearful of a re-play of their Nazi experience. On August 20 of this year the New York Times published a column by Deborah Lipstadt noting the acts against Jews in Europe.
The war in Gaza no doubt acts as a spark. But it also occasions a renewed use of long-time canards used against Jews, as when a Hamas spokesman again raised the specter of “ritual murder.” Even an established hoax like the pamphlet The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a forgery put out by Russian agents to support the Czar against what were perceived as Jewish revolutionaries, is a staple of booksellers in the Islamic world. In that work one “learns” how the economic and political systems of the world are manipulated by secret Jewish cabals.
So I am concerned, and I feel the weight of my necklace around my neck. I know there are places in the world where wearing my necklace could cost me my life. Is that overwrought? I recall an interview of the novelist Mary Doria Russell in which she spoke of her conversion to Judaism. In it she remarked that her conversion was such that it could get her killed. I thought that was overwrought at the time. Now I am not so sure. Because I feel the weight of my necklace.
Ben Stein in a recent American Spectator article sums it up about as well as anyone. He comments how much we’ve learned this past summer: “We learned this summer that when terrorists kill Jews, that’s legitimate anger and frustration. When Jews defend themselves, that’s genocide. We learned that Europe, which Henry Ford called ‘that slaughterhouse of nations’ or something similar, is still chock a block with anti-Semites who are wildly happy to join hands with the emerging Muslim majority in Europe to torture the Jews. We learned that the elite media, especially the New York Times, will turn on Israel and the Jews and seek to curry favor with the enemies of Jews and of America in any way they can.”
God only knows what will come. I comfort myself by saying I am old and will soon depart this world, but then I think about my son. What kind of world will he have to negotiate and still maintain his integrity and a willingness to speak out against those who would do violence against Jews? I have tried to speak out in the classes I have taught, and can only hope my students are able to take what they learned and with integrity speak out on their own against those who would do violence against Jews. And I write because I want to continue to educate and do whatever I can to prevent unjust violence against Jews. I still believe that knowledge can be a balm to hatred.
We appear to be in a kind of limbo now that a ceasefire in Gaza has taken. Reports are that the West Bank and the Golan Heights are restive, contemplating open hostilities against Israel after seeing the Gaza fighting as inconclusive. Should such fighting break out, no doubt Israel will again be subject to worldwide condemnation as it yet again fights for its very life.
Israel will be subject to the new tropes of anti-Semitism extending 2,000 years of lies and hatred of Jews. It will be claimed that Jews are the “new Nazis” and that Gaza or the West Bank is the “new Auschwitz” and that Palestinians are the “new victims.” When that happens I shall again stand with Jews and Israel against the 2,000-year-old forces of darkness and hate, all the while feeling the weight of my necklace. It is what I must do.
bernard ross Said:
Not in a public forum, and not to a somone who is not an observant Jew.
yes, I am saying that
every parent at some stage tells their child to ‘just do it’, but the fervent hope of the parent is that one day the child will understand the reasons for both, why it needs to be done, and why they were told to ‘just do it’
bernard ross Said:
Since the Christians do accept Torah as the foundation of their practice, and neither Jesus nor anyone else in their texts is quoted enjoying ham, there is a logical argument that the Torah prohibition is true for them also.
yamit82 Said:
Given the original Christians were Hellenized Jews, and so was Peter, the laws of kashrut definitely applied to them. Given none of Peter’s contemporaries is quoted in saying “Oh, wasn’t that bit of ham for lunch great!” It seems reasonable to say that none ate pork despite it being available from the friendly Greek butcher. Of course Anatolian Greeks interpreting Jewish visions in Greek come out with a Greek ‘flavour’.
bernard ross Said:
Given the name of an individual is his ‘essence’, the names of some should not be heard clearly, or written for that matter
yamit82 Said:
Which term?
dweller Said:
You are the one playing girly games … Fegele!!! The terms Twinkie and Twink as a self expressed defining term is right on the money Barbie, AH!!!!
You are very free in calling everyone your pet derogatory names Fegele!!! Tell us did your mommy pimp you out???
Your obvious multiplicity of psychoses would make Sybil blush, so it must have it’s roots with your mommy and daddy.
Father a junkie and mother a whoring pimp, is that the genesis of your problems Fegele? You became the school queer?
That’s the reason you so enjoyed being in prison??? They must have loved you right back didn’t they Fegie???? I do mean back (pun intended) 😉
You said that if it’s true it’s no smear? Your truth our truth? You said you stand by all your pseudo analysis of everyone you smeared in your sick attempts to analyze everyone you had a conversation with on this site especially the women commenters. Yet you can’t prove a single instance.
Consequently anything I or anyone here who use your SOP MO and something similar to you is as justified and as correct.
Mar55 thinks you were a pothead in the 60’s and 70’s and it effected your brain. As good an explanation as any; fact remains besides being a Fegele you are mentally ill. You even bragged about how many shrinks you defeated. True or not, not only I think you (Nuts, Wacko) by your own admission you admitted to being thought so by others long before you appeared here on Israpundit….
It must relate to your wacko pot head or junkie parents.
Can you prove this ascertain????
Your stupid unscientific attempt at homo exegeses suggesting some Biblical connection is even a stretch for you. Deviants are not created in the shadow or likeness of anything but other deviant freaks like yourself.
Maybe you were the lone survivor of Heaven’s Gate cult if so a pity. 🙂 Just speculation but with you it fits.
Attack the source is your last refuge. In other words any source not in agreement with you is unacceptable???
You don’t like the source provide your own. Critique what you don’t agree with in the source provided but you discount blindly without ever reading or saying what you disagree with. This is SOP with you and your MO when you can’t defend yourself pan the messenger or the conduit of that message.
One shot kills all. You did that with Paul Jesus, RR and now Fags. You can’t support any of your ideas in fact because they are never supportable. Only your sick compulsion to play shrink. I await your imminent response fegie!!!
dweller Said:
LOL, psychobabble
this is the real narrative:
yamit82 Said:
OCD…… 😛 😛 😛
@ bernard ross:
“Runs”? You mean the way YOU run to do that?
” Since then I have pointed out that lie a number of times.”
And each time you’ve tried, I’ve shown how you were projecting
— as you are now.
Made several comments there, not just one. You had the same opportunity as I. And lots more time available to you. Sounds like sour grapes.
I repeat: Your problem is ENVY.
@ yamit82:
“Petulant”??? — You just don’t appreciate seeing my sharp (tho ever-so-pretty) TEETH these days.
But they always show whenever I smile — which is quite a lot, of late.
What I like is watching your pitiful efforts at spanking.
@ bernard ross:
No error. HB’s a grown woman who still plays girlie games, so my use of the term was right on the money.
I’ve used both the basic term AND its shortened form to address HB in the past. Just as I’ve used the term, a—hole, to address YOU (who are also an integral part of the clique/posse to which Felix alluded).
And I shall continue to address you thus as long as you continue to indulge yourself in smears on this blog, a—hole.
Told you before: a homosexual is a man ‘created’ b’tzelem eisha, in the image of a woman (irrespective of which role he plays in a given homo liaison). So it hardly comes as surprise that they would use for themselves terms typically applied to women. The term was applied to women before the fags picked up on it.
It’s instructive, though, that you chose to go to Wikipedia for a link. Anybody with an axe to grind can contribute to that site, and it’s long been known that homosexuals make a regular practice of injecting their claims into it as if they were fact.
I forgot to mention, last but not least, that we observe Hanukkah, for real, for HaShem. Just for the record.
@ronnutter
Sorry, I meant James Carroll and his utterly ridiculous (in my opinion) book ‘Constantine’s Sword’. He writes the entire book (I used to own it but I threw it in my air-tight stove a few winters ago) only to basically contradict himself at the very end. I would quote him for you, but, like I said, I don’t have possession of the book anymore. I wasn’t insulting you but merely reiterating my statement in another post where I commended you for writing you article but that such nice things will never right the wrong Christianity has perpetrated upon the Jewish people. That Christianity has progressed from burning serfs at the stake or overtly demonizing Jews is great (not so Islam), but you cannot re-write your New Testament, can you? You even use the term “Law” as if the Torah is obsolesced by your religion. I was at a JDL Chanukah party the other night and a Christian journalist from Sun News spoke of Christians being more sensitive to their Jewish friends and in the next sentence used the term “Old Testament.” For the Jew (and the Noachide) there is no “Old Testament.” But you have your Christian “New Testament.” So how to side track that mountain?
@Bear Klein
That is so weird! Just last night I was thinking of mentioning this subject to you, why my Facebook page is down. I took it down. It took too much of my time away from reading and writing and thinking. And I got so furious (imagine that!) at so many f***head anti-Zionists saying such stupid things on there. Some nights I couldn’t even sleep. I just thought: enough already. I have my generator fixed so I plan to spend more time at my cabin in the bush reading the Psalms and trying to call down fire on Iran and Saudi Arabia. F*** it. LOL I will get in touch with you from my wife’s page.
@honeybee
Thanks, dearie. We’re Noachides, wife and kids included. But we put up a tree and exchange gifts but that’s as far as it goes. It’s too difficult otherwise (we tried) when you have 37,000 nieces and nephews and their children asking why we don’t “celebrate Christmas.” Even like this, with putting up a tree and exchanging gifts, it’s difficult for our kids when people outside our family wish them Merry Christmas as they have to bite their tongue and keep their rejection of J and acknowledgement of HaShem secret. When my kids were young we told them nothing (I wanted it that way) about Christianity and my oldest daughter came home from school one day and asked me, “Dad, did HaShem have a son?” Otherwise my kids only know HaShem and the Jewish people. That’s all they know. They know nothing about Christianity other than the basic beliefs of that religion. And my kids are still sometimes picked on at school by antisemites. My youngest son (who is a boxer since he was 9) was called a “Jew boy” not too long ago. He punched the kid out who called him this (as his best friend, a Cohen watched his back). The antisemite kid never ratted him out as he was older and in a senior class: he was embarrassed that a kid so young punched him out in front of all the kids on the playground.
And I have nothing against Christians, really, (not like I used to be) but only when they missionize Jews or pretend to be Jews when they’re not. That really bothers me.
@ M Devolin:
Your facebook page was removed?
@ bernard ross:
He is aware to the time limits and is very calculating even compulsively so.
@ bernard ross:
It’s not finished since we have chit chat. Once it returns I will respond to him there and with the gloves off.
@ bernard ross:
He is aware to the time limits and is very calculating even compulsively so.
M Devolin Said:
Merry Cowboy Christmas Goy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! G-d Bless !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3YgqVeHRBE
mrg3105 Said:
please elborate and give the bases for these assertions.
ronnutter Said:
are you saying the Law need not be followed simply on the basis of it being the Law?
mrg3105 Said:
please give your basis for this assertion
mrg3105 Said:
please clarify, I cannot see the connection between your spelling and Purim
Ted, chit chat expired
@ yamit82:
on a side note, you remember how our friend says he never runs to make the last post? Since then I have pointed out that lie a number of times. He just did it again on the “yellow star” forum. 😛
M Devolin Said:
I Like that. I will use it in the future even without your permission!!! 🙂
ronnutter Said:
It appears to me that anti zionism and anti Israelism are different. the land of Israel is central to the Jewish people, therefore, I beleive that anti zionism by definition is anti semitism as it is against Jews for advocating their collective culture. Anti Israelism is against the state of Israel but I have found most of the charges to be either double standards, and therefore anti semitism, or untrue. It is clear to me that there is an intentional organized bias to many of the libels.
Quite astounding are the BDS churches who have access to info and the Jewish side of the story but still propagate their lies and libels. I wonder if it is a coincidence that Christians heads are chopped off by the honor killers who are hired by those churches to kill the Jews. Obviously I have reduced the word funded to its de facto meaning of “hired” here.
“What is binding upon Gentiles are the laws given to Noah.”
Exactly. I have nothing to do with Noachides who meddle in Jewish halachah, especially those who “eat kosher” and observe (in whatever measure) the Jewish Shabbath. These Noachides can always find a defense of such observance, but I always say (and this I live by), “Better a real Gentile than a fake Jew.” Not one of these “observant” Noachides ever show up for JDL events, which says a lot to me about their observance.
mrg3105, why are you giving Yamit such a hard time? He’s an Israeli Jew. He’s living in THE LAND. There are much more deserving targets here for your arrows. You are making a breach where there shouldn’t be one. Just sayin’. My respect, mrg3105.
LOLOLOL!! Thanks for the story, Yamit. My kids just asked me what I was laughing out loud at. LOLOL
“Recruiting may have been a strong word but early-on there were no restrictions on ethnicity because Nazis weren’t even a ‘party’ in the proper sense of the word yet, so they took in anyone who wanted to join.”
Thank you, mrg3105. Yes, that I have read. But you wrote, basically, Nazi recruitment of Jews, which left me rather dumbfounded. Again, thank you for clearing that up for me.
@ mrg3105:
Where are you getting this Malakey from???
The Laws of Kashrut are for the most part given no explanation as to reasons. Any reasonable explanation is as good as the next. You must go deep into oral law to find some clues.
Among many Christian sects, the restrictions were interpreted to be lifted by Peter’s vision of “a sheet with animals”
For a Jew it does not matter if the commandment is understood as to reasons. It is a negative commandment. That’s enough.
mrg3105 Said:
Rediculous the Laws of Kashrut were only meant for Jews.
Did the Apostles eat Turkey, ‘Colgate’ tooth paste, ‘Levis’ rye bread????
What is binding upon Gentiles are the laws given to Noah.
We don’t know if there were any real apostles as we don’t know if there was a real JC. If they were real characters we still don’t know what they observed and what they ate. Luke is even thought to be a gentile even in christian tradition and how Ironic, they claim he was a doctor. 😛
@ mrg3105:
Why so reticent? It’s your term so you should explain why and how you use it to readers…. Being cryptic may have a place if it serves a purpose but here I so no purpose.
Hitler banned the observance of the holiday of Purim, and several times Nazi attacks were planed to coincide with Purim. In January 1944 the dictator gave a speech, declaring that if the Nazis were defeated, Jews could celebrate a “second Purim.”
We don’t officially but it’s not a bad idea. Better than Holocaust museums and courses on tolerance and brotherly love. Sisterly love is something else
@ M Devolin:
Great scene. I can identify with….
I lived for awhile in Holon a city adjacent to TelAviv….
I was having problems with a neighbor the reasons I will omit here but one day I was walking my dog beneath the apt complex built on pillars so I was under the building at the time when my neighbor and his very big brother showed on on motorcycles all in black with helmets and tried to run my dog down. My dog a German Shepperd weighed at least 100 lbs and they were afraid of him. I blew it!!! I actually lifted my neighbor off his bike And threw him against the metal spiked fence around our building. Luckily he missed the spikes but not because I wanted him to miss. His brother hit me from behind and I turned and tackled him. Couldn’t hit him in the face due to his wearing helmet but I found other vulnerable spots as good. Before we could continue the police came and arrested all of us. Took my dog up to my apt and went with the police. Spent the night in jail released on bail next day. But I didn’t have money to get home because they had all my personal stuff including money and even the keys to my apt. The prison was in the middle of nowhere so I hitched and someone I knew picked me up and drove me home. I had to jump a neighbors balcony to get into my apt and my poor dog. Next day I went to the police station to pick up my stuff they were holding and brought one of my employees also a friend with me he was 6’3 and at least 260-270 lbs and looked mean even though he wasn’t. while waiting to be let into the police compound the two brothers were coming out of the compound and walked up to my car looked at my friend and said “Who are you and what do you do? He replied with one word “ASS” In Israel at that time there was a Business that made cold cuts called “ASS”.
They understood the connection backed off and left. 🙂
And by the way, it is NOT Ok for Christians to eat pork either. There is NO evidence that any of the apostles consumed ham. Its the ultimate Christian joke that they celebrate Christ, the Jew with eating food he would never have touched with a pole.
ronnutter Said:
The rabbi told you what he was taught. Not a lot of rabbis spend time thinking about why God created an animal just so He can tell His chosen people not to eat it.
The reason rabbis do NOT offer the correct explanation is because of the very subject of this discussion – Christian persecution. I’m sure if the Pope found out the real reason for this, he would issue a fatwa for a new Holocaust. Or is that encyclical.
ronnutter Said:
Not a typing mistake. See Purim
@ mrg3105:
You wrote in comment #6 on the third page of comments, “If your ‘orthodox’ rabbi spoke about Jewish beliefs, he wasn’t telling the truth. It is against the core principles of Torah to ‘believe’.” That was my characterization of what he did in class, not his. You might be interested that when a student asked why Jews do not eat pork he simply said, “Because it is the law. It is in the Torah. It is the law, so I don’t do it.”
@ bernard ross:
You wrote in post #42 of the second page of comments, “If you apply my test you will see that many of those claiming to be anti zionists ARE in fact anti semites.” I fully agree. You may have noticed in my essay when I referred to those who claim to be anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic my response was with a quote from the Shirley Temple character in the film FORT APACHE: “Pishtosh.” That is a more socially acceptable way of saying “bullshit.” I am currently working on a book with the working title ANTI-ZIONISM OR ANTI-SEMITISM? It will seek to expose what one writer calls “bistro anti-Semitism” which seeks to cloak its anti-Semitic views with the more acceptable, in some circles, “anti-Zionist.”
@ mrg3105:
Several times now I’ve seen Hitler written as “Hitrel.” Is that so you don’t actually use his name but everyone will still know who you are talking about? Or simply a repeated typo?
@ M Devolin:
I don’t understand the John Irving comment. Please explain.
M Devolin Said:
Try searching online. There was an article based on research from the 90s about early NAZI Party recruitment. Hitrel came later, as long as some other ‘personalities’ that put an end to accepting Jews. Recruiting may have been a strong word but early-on there were no restrictions on ethnicity because Nazis weren’t even a ‘party’ in the proper sense of the word yet, so they took in anyone who wanted to join.
I’m really enjoying the amazing discussion between our Jewish bloggers here. Wow. I feel SO goy!!! This is what makes Israpundit such an outstanding and captivating blog.
yamit82 Said:
They wanted someone like Avraham, the first halakhic king of Am Yisrael. For this reason midrash notes that he and Yitzhaq were also called Israel.
If you think this, you are a Christian.
Firstly, there is no ‘Judaism’.
Secondly, the purpose of Am Yisrael is not to blindly and forever to ‘keep commandments’. The tikun olam is to perfect the Humanity to the standard acceptable by its Maker.
Not at all. It was intended all along, for that is what the story of Moshe is all about. ‘Redemption’ is not quite what people think it is.
For people like you maybe who just love galut. This statement in fact says, “Jews are fine as they are”, and ‘as they are’ for a very long time has been on the cusp of destruction, so lets finish the job. You seem to be the Jewish Nazi.
Well, I keep wondering what Christians will do if ‘Jesus’ returns and says, “Guess what everyone, the Jews were right!”
Given there is no such thing as ‘Jewish mysticism’, and that rationalists are simply deculturalised Jews brainwashed to think like Greeks, I wonder where that puts you?
You mean sperm?
But there is no stipulation for a genetic succession in Torah law. The fact that Shlomo succeeded David simply illustrates David’s decision-making process. He probably found it more comfortable to transmit the ‘code’ for Malkhut to Shlomo because Shlomo was close, or simply because Shlomo was able to receive it. Finding the right person even in the current society permeated with IT and social media is still a very difficult task. It would have been near-impossible in David’s time despite his nevua. Just how difficult is evident in Shlomo’s failure to do the same.
ronnutter Said:
If your ‘orthodox’ rabbi spoke about Jewish beliefs, he wasn’t telling the truth. It is against the core principles of Torah to ‘believe’. Everything requires an argument and evidence.
Yamit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgEEn75JEuY
“In fact we know that initially the plan was to recruit Jews to the Nazi cause, but this mostly failed.”
Can you give a reference? I’d like to read about this as I’ve never heard this before. I’ve read a lot about the Nazis (Saul Friedlander, Martin Gilbert, Nora Levin, Daniel Goldhagen, Christopher Browning, etc.) boycotting and discriminating against Jewish businesses, but never have I heard about Hitler intending to recruit Jews to the Nazi cause. I remember reading that as far back as Hitler in the German Worker’s Party already spouting his anti-Jewish hatred. But I’ve never heard about him wishing to recruit Jews into the Nazi cause. I would really like to read about this. I’m not being sarcastic. Just when you think you have tried to read everything you could find on this subject, you come across something you’ve never even imagined possible before.
@ bernard ross:
Do you as I noticed that dweller is becoming with each comment more petulant. Guess he likes being spanked. 😛
dweller Said to Honeybee:
There appears to be an error in your addressing of Honeybee, did you forget your glasses, or perhaps you were thinking about something else?
you’re welcome 🙂
This appears to be the slang term you were referring to when you said you used it in the 1970’s. I am glad I was able to find it for you and to be of assistance in that regard. However, I cant understand WHY you would address it to Honeybee? Is it a Freudian slip, a projection, a gender identification issue? Please inform, inquiring minds want to know.
mrg3105 Said:
Yes against his and G-d’s wishes.
Judaism is about commandments nothing more.
The Messiah came into Jewish thought and belief quite late.
You can remove the concept of Messiah from Jewish thought and expectations and it would not affect Judaism an iota.
Judaism can stand alone without messiah Christianity can’t.
I think it belongs in Jewish mysticism and I belong to the rationalist school. I take G-d at his word and if you want to go there the messiah if there is one in fact will need to come from the seed and house of Solomon. That certainly cuts the imposter yeshu out of the picture most emphatically.
dweller Said:
He came across it the same way you did:
bernard ross Said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlV3oQ3pLA0
ronnutter Said:
Actually I beleive that this test instead indicates how a sophisticated anti semite has found a new label and rationalization for his old comfortable habit. In todays world the modern educated anti semite likes to think of himself as civilized and rational and would not be so foolish as to refer to those Jews, its too obvious. Anti semites tend to be liars and are likely to lie and cover up their anti semitism in public. I submit that the real reason we see increased anti semitism is because anti semites have found a fig leaf to cover their pathology in anti zionism and anti israelism. The cyclical need for jew hatred is focused on Israel. Israel does none of the things it is accused of. Educated people are enthusiastically parroting lies and libel with gay aplomb because it has returned to fashion in a new garb. This is indicated because it is accompanied by double standards, inclination to believe the worst of the Jews, out right lies by the ignorant parroters and the dishonest.