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.
mrg3105 Said:
You seem to be a purist advocating for superficial correct form but when it comes to ideas and thought you seem to be all over the spectrum and as far from traditional Jewish thought as some of our christian participants.
You favor form over content and context.
M Devolin Said:
He’s DEAD!!!! 😛
M Devolin Said:
Christians cannot keep Shabbat.
Shabbat is kept by Am Yisrael in the context of being prepared to start building the bet haMikdash on moment’s notice. Shabbat is the abstention of all the work required to do so. Since for Christianity that ‘temple’ as I understand it is unnecessary, what work are they abstaining from?
@ mrg3105:
What do you understand it means to be a Jew??
mrg3105 Said:
Would you prefer to carry on a conversation in Hebrew??? I would.
M Devolin Said:
Good point since such a completeness is unattainable.
So lets say you could do with more education of some of the things that are not so well represented in popular online sources.
But before going there, let me ask you what you understand by being a Noachide means?
@ dweller:
24 hrs.
@ mrg3105:
It works this way in Judaism, Every opinion and argument you make relating to what we call here Judaism must be supported by authentic Jewish sources and authority. If you don’t or can’t it remains only your opinion which you are entitled, but you lose the option of saying they are Jewish ideas traditions and practice as they are your own invention and not to be confused with Jewish or Judaism in their and your beliefs or practice.
We can call your opinions and pontifications ‘mrgisms’ 😉
@ mrg3105:
Like
mrg3105 Said:
Good one!
mrg3105 Said:
Art???? Echhhh!!
Creation and the univese as we see and know it was and is nothing more than the laws of nature in practice.
E=Mc2 explains the basic process. Big Bang was a mighty burst of energy (light beams). All of us are a part of the original light beams
Did the Laws of nature precede creation?? Apparently!!! Some Jews think so did the Torah precede creation. Certainly many of the laws and principles of the Torah exited and were observed, The patriarchs, Noah as well as Job.
“…they don’t understand the Jewish concept.”
Because they refuse to respect/acknowledge the Jewish concept; because they refuse to respect/acknowledge the Jews as G-D’s “light unto the nations.” Simple as that.
I’m reminded of the story of the Kenites in the Tanach, how they didn’t try to integrate into Israel but kept to themselves as a tribe, and all the time an ally of Israel. An example for gentiles to follow. I was saddened to read that the Babylonians wiped them out. “No man knows what a day may bring forth.”
mrg3105 Said:
😛 😛 😛 😛
“…2000 years before Adam”
Trotskyism was as useless then as it is now.
@ M Devolin:
Teshuvah Said:
Just becuse they set aside Sat as a day off does not equate that a Jewish Sabbath and theirs are not only the same but not even any similarity. They could have picked any day of the week because they don’t understand the Jewish concept.
I really hate it when christians try to graft themselves by force into our Jewish tree. The results are usually an abomination.
And thank you for your post, Yamit. I appreciate it, all joking aside.
“Question is what kind of humanoids were they????”
Trotskyites.
@ M Devolin:
The Torah has no basic problem with science and will bow to scientific truth if proven. You can see it almost daily in medicine.
Jews welcome the Big Bang Theory as support for the existence of a creator. “In the beginning of…” Has been shown to be correct. Doesn’t prove there is a G-d but the first part of the sentence is correct there was a beginning.
Some questions. We exist but did we have to exist?
You can see where I am going…
We have uncovered human settlements in Israel and the ME dated to at least 2000 years before Adam. Question is what kind of humanoids were they????
“I was speaking to your middleweight self as in knowing who you are going to fight before you step into the ring.”
Yes, I get what you are saying, mrg3105. That works in the ring, but I refuse to debate Christians simply because I refuse to debate Christians. As I said in another post, I have a huge Christian family, so better I keep my opinions to myself, otherwise, us being Irish-Canadian and all, and some of my nephews being at one time trained fighters (one of them actually sparred with Mayorga), there could be some serious consequences to my opinions.
And why would one debate Muslims when their religion deems me, because of my refusal of their god and their “prophet,” worthy of death? What’s to debate?
“…conservative Christians who have the same Sabbath/Shabbat as the Jews.”
Not the same at all. The Christian can never be “the same” as the Jew, the appellation a simple proof of this fact. You didn’t learn this from 72 hours of lectures?
“Seventh Day Adventists are conservative Christians who have the same Sabbath/Shabbat as the Jews. They don’t do Christmas or Easter either.”
Whuppeeshit. Big deal. I’m not clapping. Repudiate Christianity and become a Noachide. Then I’ll clap my hands. Otherwise you’re no different than pagans sacrificing their children to idols. Total waste of time. You religious quacks (not “normal” Christians) will never get it. You cling to your idols instead of showing the Jews the respect they deserve. You talk friendship with Jews while simultaneously, and with your consent, your religion obsolesces Jews, Judaism and the divine mission of Israel in the world. And you do so shamelessly, as when you boast of SDA observing the Sabbath and not observing E–ter and Christmas. This just makes me want to hurl.
“Torah has no problem with evolution, although there is a somewhat of a problem in the process as suggested by Science because Creation was Art :-)”
Well said! I’ve never heard it put that way before. Awesome. What a neat concept.
Dweller, it matters not what the gender, whether male or female or in between on the misty flats. Irrelevant to me, really.
And why do you turn on me? I’ve purposely left you alone for ages now, believe it or not, out of respect. I have nothing against you. Study the archives: I’ve made not one disparaging statement about you in a long, long time. I want to stay the course. “A fool’s mouth enters into contention.”
dweller Said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgP0aUKlmNw
“I think your education on all things ‘Jewish’ is incomplete”
No kidding. Let me know when yours is complete.
@ dweller:
Honestly NO!! Fegele!
You are certified as a classic psycho with OCD and paranoia.
There is more but probably derivatives from these 2 classics.
Fegele, it don’t connotate what you claim.
Quotation Marks: When to Use Double or Single Quotation Marks
There is no reason to take you word a single word in your own defense. We only have your word for what you claim and you are a certified fruitcake and a compulsive fabricator!! … 😛 You are a crybaby a whiner, sissy, wimp and a Fegele wuss.
You lose again fegele !
@ mrg3105:
Jehovah’s Witnesses are NOT Seventh Day Adventists. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in Yeshua at all. Seventh Day Adventists are conservative Christians who have the same Sabbath/Shabbat as the Jews. They don’t do Christmas or Easter either.
The Catholic Church considers Seventh Day Adventists as the ONLY denomination that is Protestant because they hold to Shabbat. All other denominations have at their highest levels submitted themselves to the Pope who says he is God. I am not SDA or any denomination.
dweller Said:
No, I think Teshuvah needs to take care of his BP.
quote “We’re surrounded. That simplifies the problem!”
Teshuvah Said:
I thought it referred to some organisation (where I am now) they go by ‘Jehova’s witnesses’ I think.
Seven of God’s days, not ours. Read Aryeh Kaplan
Torah has no problem with evolution, although there is a somewhat of a problem in the process as suggested by Science because Creation was Art 🙂
bernard ross Said:
Whom did I insult, and how?
Consider them a sample of a new hypothesis 🙂
When I see Yamit produce ‘pilpul’ I’ll engage in Talmud Torah
So far its been ‘give me a verse’, Christian style. Not a few ‘orthodox’ rabbis do it also, so he is in good company.
This is a discussion, not an online class. Nor is there a ‘court case’, nor are you its judge, even if you are on by profession.
At this time I choose not to offer the arguments and the evidence here.
I’m sorry if you have a problem with this.
Qote
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee (Tom Cruise): I think I’m entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can’t handle the truth!
mrg3105 Said:
Galut is on the inside. Someone can live in Israel, be ‘orthodox’ and have no hope of leaving galut without changing.
what is the relevance of this to your ludicrous assertion. You are the one in the galut pointing your finger at others who have taken action to make aliyah. You have no hope of leaving the galut because your mentality is still in the galut…. first look to yourself before you insult others. It is a waste of time to spout your soapbox opinions in cryptic manner here unless you can provide reasoned argument. Your argument regarding christians and pork was logically fallacious and the rest of your assertions had no arguments, plus you degenerate into ad hominem rather than give support for your assertions.
If you are going to pontificate give some evidence and logic. your “logic” is faulty, it is speculation not reasoned thought or argument.
@ Teshuvah:
Right, but there were no heavenly bodies till the Fourth Day [Gen 1:14-19].
So, absent a sun for the earth to revolve about, and absent an axis for the earth to rotate on (in the presence of the sun)
— how long were those FIRST THREE DAYS?
It’s not a trick question.
I don’t know the answer, and I don’t think anybody else does either.
@ Teshuvah:
I think maybe he thinks you’re a guy.
Nice to hear from you again though.
Stick around this time. No need to go running off.
Between the two of us, we’ve got ’em surrounded.
@ mrg3105:
I said he was a SDA. What did you think that meant?
God is the Creator. You know…Gen 1:1…7 days.
bernard ross Said:
In a ‘Jewish’ forum, I would expect quotes from ‘Jewish’ sources, even if in English. Unfortunately many like machon-mamre use Latin names.
I don’t think its petty. I think its culturally assertive.
M Devolin Said:
I can only add to this that Veith is tragically wrong. This is evident from his very first lecture, and the numbers game he plays.
And, worst of all, Jesus was never anointed 🙂
There is no Christian on this planet that actually understands what this means because I don’t know if even any ‘Jew’ understands.
But you should have said he is Seventh Adventist. He doesn’t accept evolution! What does he think God did for 18 billion years?
bernard ross Said:
Torah is the foundation. What they built over it is another issue.
Since no one said they did, the logical conclusion is that it wasn’t done because they were, even if non-observant, but ‘Jews’ none-the-less. There must have been vestiges of cultural consciousness left. Its exclusion by omission.
Read again. ‘none quoted’ means no one to quote. A quote would be evidence since it would be in someone’s name, who then could be cited as a witness. No witnesses, no act.
M Devolin Said:
M Devolin, I think your education on all things ‘Jewish’ is incomplete. However, I’m happy to hear how I slandered anyone.
M Devolin Said:
I was speaking to your middleweight self as in knowing who you are going to fight before you step into the ring.
‘Debate’ is like going ten rounds? I’m not getting paid for this, so I may as well end it as soon as possible 🙂
@ M Devolin:
I am now remembering why I stopped coming to Israpundit.
ronnutter Said:
No, he is not. Most universities are liberal and leftist and despise Creationists. He actually puts up on the screen direct quotes in context from Catholics and Freemasons showing what they believe. He doesn’t try to convince. Rather shows evidence for an audience to decide. I put a link to the Timeline of Catholic atrocities. There is no equal timeline for Protestants. There are all shades of Jews from secular to Orthodox. Likewise there are all shades of Christians…none of whom are Catholic.
My mother was a Lutheran but would have been shocked and headed for the door out if she had known about Martin Luther’s antisemitism. Knowledge has increased but she didn’t have Google as a research tool. She was a born and bred Protestant and pro-Israel at heart as are many other Protestants. She always sided with the Bible against teachers and pastors who taught anything against it.
On reviewing false prophets I haven’t decided who was worse, Luther or Mel Gibson for his Catholic movie The Passion. Hitler timed the Reichstag fire to coincide with Luther’s death date. Certainly Luther set Europe up to be antisemitic. Rabbis had instructed him on the proper Sabbath and he refused to hear.
I do! God judges each man “according to his works” and says we can tell who is false by theirs. Ultimately He makes final judgment. Those who don’t obey Him hate him. They are called Antinomians. [Greek: a-nomos; against the law]. Those who love Him keep His commandments.
We are not practicing Christmas. Doing so breaks both the first and second Commandments. It is like telling your husband you are having a birthday party for him on your ex-lover’s birthday.
Yes, I can. The Catholic Church has persecuted Christians as well for centuries. That is also shameful and YOU are ignoring that. I don’t kill anyone and don’t support anyone who does. I also don’t want to be murdered by violent people or groups. So I don’t have a “legacy of guilt” and am not going to buy into your agenda to foist that off on me.
yamit82 Said:
You did quote from the Xtian version, because all quotes cite Latin names of the sforim.
You know what its called when one society claims another society’s cultural property?
Being halakhicly impure is not same as being a hereditary Kohen
In terms of that, Moshiakh would have to sort out real Kohanim from those that lost the claim. I know one who’s mother is Irish. I think of him as a friend.
And how was I disrespectful to M Devolin?
I too have a mind, so don’t need to paraphrase anyone. If I did, I would say so.
What Jewish principles were you citing? You cited some verses.
“M Devolin is insulted because he is lacking in understanding the context.”
Again, someone flattering themselves. I understand exactly what you’re saying. You are simply exculpating yourself from your derogatory remarks about my Jewish friends (to use the argument that Cohens are not actually Jewish, well, you’d fit right in with the Taliban). You’re so “religious” that you’ve become obtuse and pronoid AND arrogant. Everybody’s stupid but you, right? You could have been such an interesting and positive blogger, but no, you had to use your powers for evil instead of good!
@ mrg3105:
I have gone through your posts and replied with specific questions which I expect you to address rather than continue to make unwarranted and unsupported assertions and insults. I am waiting for your replies to my specific questions and rebuttals. Hopefully you are not just blowing hot air and are capable of supporting your posts. Similarly, Yamit posted a number of citations supporting his positions and you have not dealt with those either.
@ yamit82:
Not a refuge of any sort. (Didn’t need one.) What I said about the source is true. Yet I did not attack the source so much as the vicious, slimy creep who took recourse in using it
— and who had clearly done so purely for the purpose of smearing me w/ what he found there. Not the first time he’s stooped that low either (nor the second). And if he does it again, there’s lots MORE of my backhand still available to teach him manners.
And even then, the reference to his source was a parting shot, offered only AFTER I’d addressed the substance of the matter; it wasn’t a substitute for argument on the merits.
Wiki is unreliable. The only persons who DO rely on it are those who are either
A. confident that its authors are in the same camp (wrt a given topic) as they; OR
B. too lazy to do a real search, so they click on the first item in the list (which is usually Wiki).
Horse plop. You have YET to show me a single post of mine on ANY of those matters that has been wrong. I’ve challenged you dozens of times to produce one such post of mine and show me its ‘errors’ of fact or logic. But you never, EVER do. That can’t be pure coincidence.
mrg3105 Said:
surely you are not using that excuse for the long list of unsupported declarations and opinions you posted? If you intend to insult people and make declarations in a pontificating manner surely you should be expected to live up to your own standard.
mrg3105 Said:
you have provided no arguments and no evidence for almost ALL of your declarations and assertions. Why should anyone take anything you said as anything more than your unsupported opinion?
mrg3105 Said:
What I make of it are facts: that you hurl unsupported insults and declarations of fact, pointing fingers at others while making lame excuses for not giving the evidence and arguments you boast about.
mrg3105 Said:
then why do you keep giving your messages, better to say nothing. We are used to discussing with reasoned and logical arguments, evidence, citations, etc. what is the purpose to come here and pontificate as if you are dispensing wisdom and when asked to support your assertions you hid behind cryptic phrases. That doesn’t wash here. It is strange that you made not one quote to support the many declarations you made.
mrg3105 Said:
what is the relevance of this to your ludicrous assertion. You are the one in the galut pointing your finger at others who have taken action to make aliyah. You have no hope of leaving the galut because your mentality is still in the galut…. first look to yourself before you insult others. It is a waste of time to spout your soapbox opinions in cryptic manner here unless you can provide reasoned argument. Your argument regarding christians and pork was logically fallacious and the rest of your assertions had no arguments, plus you degenerate into ad hominem rather than give support for your assertions.
If you are going to pontificate give some evidence and logic. your “logic” is faulty, it is speculation not reasoned thought or argument.
@ bernard ross:
You don’t give a bloody damn about Ted’s concerns; nobody’s fooled.
It is certainly obvious, from the blockquotes included in the post you referenced (some of those blockquotes coming from quite voluminous posts of their own), that all of my responses were to bloviations — some of them from none other than yourself, hypocrite — which were expressly directed to me on THIS page.
Perhaps instead of focusing your petition on my responses, you should make your solicitations to the pertinent parties to take their BEEFS to chit chat, and I’ll be happy to reply to them there.
“I know what it is like to be hated, long before I met M. Devolin.”
You flatter yourself. I don’t even know you, how could I hate you? I just think you’re noetically unsound and an unctuous ass.
“…it’s because I dropped acid back then.”
This reminded me of a joke I heard yesterday. I grew up in the 60s and the 70s, so it struck me quite funny:
Do you know why teenagers who dropped acid never gained weight? Because the dragons were guarding the refrigerator.
LOLOLOL Man, I’m still laughing at that one. And I’m laughing right now remembering the Cheech and Chong movies. I’m so bad! LOLOLOL
@ yamit82:
Anybody who’s insecure within himself has a consequent need to view as EVIL or WACKO somebody whose presence reminds him of that fact. But this, of itself, constitutes no index, one way or the other, as to whether that somebody actually is EVIL or WACKO.
Who I am is not dependent on what others choose to believe about me. Who I am is who I, in fact, AM.
Why? Do you honestly not see the sense of it?
“Biblical connection”??? — what in blazes are you talking about?
Is THAT what’s tweakin’ your tuchas, Bunkie? — the fact that I used the word, created ? You really & truly believed that I used the word literally?
— as if I were saying that Adonoi actually, literally, CREATED fegelachten? Vey iz mir. . . .
You seem not to have noticed that in using the word, created, I’d carefully placed it in quotation marks — I’d even gone out of my way to employ single quotes — to indicate that I was speaking figuratively in USING the term created.
Still didn’t matter though. The whole thing went right past you. (Serves me right for giving you credit for having an ounce of sense.)
@ mrg3105:
Thank you. You are very kind. I am trying to lower by b.p., raise the general level of my heath and stay out of fights. The current three are 1) Christmas is Baalmas, 2) the Homosexual Agenda driving straights into the closet, and 3) a gov’t that wants to spray diluted human sewage in our faces, literally. I know what it is like to be hated, long before I met M. Devolin.