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THE PROBLEM OF JEWISH An HIR series
A well rounded social scientific explanation for why
so many innocent Jews have been murdered throughout history, and continue to
be murdered today, requires an understanding of the forces that cause
non-Jews to kill, naturally, but also an understanding of those forces within
the Jewish community that make their self-defense less effective than it
could be. This series is concerned with the second set of questions. In Part 0, 1, 2, 3,
and 4 of
this series I examine the ways in which a good many Jewish leaders sabotage
Jewish self-defense. In this installment and the next I will address certain
disadvantages of ordinary Jews themselves when it comes to dealing with
anti-Jewish terrorist attacks. Given that there are many significant differences
between religious and secular Jews, it has seemed useful to me to examine
them separately, so in this piece I will consider certain negative consequences
of Jewish religious piety to an effective Jewish self-defense. In the next piece I
will consider how certain ideologies common among secular Jews also have
negative consequences to the same. It must be kept in mind, however, that
some of what I say here is applicable to secular Jews and vice-versa, to
different degrees. After all, the center of gravity of Jewish culture is the
Jewish religion, and therefore it affects many Jews who profess no allegiance
or interest in the Torah. Conversely, though secular Jews are more easily
influenced by the ideologies of the Gentile world, religious Jews are
surrounded by this world too, and especially through their exposure to
secular Jews, and therefore they are not entirely immune to some of the
forces that affect secular Jews more strongly. Naturally, social science needs to do more work on
this question, and I offer what follows as a preliminary exploration.
Considering the historical record, and also the contemporary situation, it
seems to me that the ways in which Jewish piety sabotages Jewish self-defense
can be grouped into the following four useful categories, not necessarily
exhaustive (click on each title for the full discussion): 1) Inflexible interpretations of the Law of Moses.
This includes a radical aversion to the shedding of blood, which leads many
Jews to the ethical error -- committed in tragic good faith -- that self-defense
is unlawful. It is not. 2) Innocence. The Jewish laws are designed to
produce an ethical civilization, and one side effect of growing up under the
influence of these laws is a stubborn commitment to the idea that humans are
basically good. This is innocence. It is an error, because humans are
not basically good; humans are pliable, and they respond to their
environments. The ancient Greco-Roman aristocracies, for example, were entire
societies of murderers (the men), because this is what their culture brought
them up to be (see point 3 on Messianism, for a description of Roman
society). It was not impossible for an individual to rebel against such a
culture but the point is that it was not easy, and those who didn’t rebel were
not basically good. One may certainly argue that such people were
victims of their social system, as was the case also with many Nazis, whose
minds were poisoned by propaganda, but that still does not make them
basically good. The stubborn belief of many Jews that humans are basically
good blinds them to the evil that always waits in ambush for them, and this
‘see no evil’ attitude is deadly. 3) Messianism. The Jewish concept of the Messiah
is a beautiful idea, but it can make some pious Jews complacent. It can make
them think that everything will be okay because surely the Messiah is coming this
time. He will come if we believe it passionately enough. Granted, he didn’t
come last time, or the time before that, or the time before…, and millions
upon millions of Jews died. Granted. But surely he is coming this
time. (Never mind that this is what many Jews said last time around.) Too
much certainty about the imminent coming of the Messiah can hurt Jewish
self-defense. 4) Fatalism. God is in control of history, so let
Him do what He will (He must have a Higher Reason for everything He does).
This results from a tendency to read the Hebrew Bible as literal history (God
is represented in the Bible as the author of historical outcomes). The same
tendency leads to the absurd interpretation that the attacks of foreigners
against the Jewish people are deserved punishments from God, which produces a
deadly defeatism that once again sabotages Jewish self-defense. Below I discuss each one of these categories. My
hope is that Jews can reflect about these cultural/psychological obstacles to
their self-defense before it is too late again. ________________________________________________________ 1) Inflexible interpretations of the
Law of Moses Summary: This includes a radical
aversion to the shedding of blood, which leads many Jews to the ethical error
-- committed in tragic good faith -- that self-defense is unlawful. It is
not. I will begin with an example from antiquity. The Jewish movement had flourished and grown
considerably under protection of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire, a benevolent
state founded by Cyrus the Great that had liberated a great many peoples from
oppression and that protected religious, economic, and civil freedoms over a
vast swathe of humankind. But Alexander of Macedon had destroyed all that,
and the largest of the successor states to his astonishing land grab, the
Seleucid Empire, now controlled what the Greco-Macedonians called Coele-Syria
(or ‘Syria and Phoenicia,’ or ‘Coele-Syria and Phoenicia,’ depending on the
text), after wresting this area from another successor state to Alexander’s
conquest: the Ptolemaic Empire. Coele-Syria had earlier been, roughly, the
Persian ‘Province Beyond the River’ (beyond the Euphrates, as seen from
Babylon), and it included the lands of Judah, Samaria, and environs. At this time the Seleucid king was one Antiochus
Epiphanes, who perceived a threat to his rule in the worker protections of
the Law of Moses, which were based on the story of a revolutionary movement:
a successful slave revolt against an oppressive Egyptian king (Exodus).
The Greco-Macedonian aristocracy was running a heavily militarized,
repressive, and slave-making state, so before the pro-worker ideology of
Judaism could spread any further (in those days it was a passionately
missionary religion, converting pagans at a feverish rate) Antioches Epiphanes
decided to erase Judaism from his domains. The First and Second
Books of Maccabees, which Christians will find included in their Bible as
canonical books, are ancient Hebrew texts that narrate this attack against
the Jews in Judah. Below I combine excerpts from the two books to give you a
taste for what these horrors were like. [Excerpts from
the Books of Maccabees begin here] …the king
[Antiochus Epiphanes] sent an Antiochan senator to compel the Jews to forsake
the laws of their ancestors and no longer to live by the laws of God; also to
pollute the temple in Jerusalem and to call it the temple of Olympian Zeus,
and to call the one in Gerizim [Samaria] the temple of
Zeus-the-Friend-of-Strangers, as did the people who lived in that place. Harsh and utterly
grievous was the onslaught of evil. For the temple was filled with debauchery
and reveling by the Gentiles, who dallied with prostitutes and had
intercourse with women within the sacred precincts, and besides brought in
things for sacrifice that were unfit. The altar was covered with abominable
offerings that were forbidden by the laws. People could neither keep the
Sabbath, nor observe the festivals of their ancestors, nor so much as confess
themselves to be Jews. -- 2 Maccabees (6.1-6) [Antiochus
Epiphanes] appointed inspectors over all the people and commanded the sons of
Judah to offer sacrifice [to pagan gods] town by town. Many of the people,
everyone who forsook the law, joined them, and they did evil in the land;
they drove Israel into hiding in every place of refuge they had. …The books
of the law that they found they tore to pieces and burned with fire. Anyone
found possessing the book of the covenant [the Torah, which includes Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy], or anyone who
adhered to the law, was condemned to death by decree of the king. They kept
using violence against Israel, against those who were found month after month
in the towns. -- 1 Maccabees (1.51-58) On the monthly
celebration of the king’s [Antiochus Epiphanes’] birthday, they [the Jews]
were taken, under bitter constraint, to partake of the sacrifices; and when a
festival of [the Greek hero-god] Dionysus was celebrated, they were compelled
to wear wreaths of ivy and to walk in the procession in honor of Dionysus. At
the suggestion of the people of Ptolemais a decree was issued to the
neighboring Greek cities that they should adopt the same policy toward the
Jews and make them partake of the sacrifices, and should kill those who did
not choose to change over to Greek customs. One could see, therefore, the
misery that had come upon them. -- 2 Maccabees (6.7-9) According to
the decree, they put to death the women who had their children circumcised,
and their families and those who circumcised them; and they hung the infants
from their mothers’ necks. -- 1 Maccabees (1.60-61) For example,
two women were brought in for having circumcised their children. They
publicly paraded them around the city, with their babies hanging at their
breasts, and then hurled them down headlong from the wall. Others who had
assembled in the caves nearby, in order to observe the seventh day [the
Sabbath] secretly, were betrayed by Philip and were all burned together,
because their piety kept them from defending themselves, in view of their regard
for that most holy day. -- 2 Maccabees (6.10-11) [Excerpts from
the Books of Maccabees end here] Despite the fact that Jews faithful to their
religion were being attacked with various forms of terrorism, they found it
difficult to fight back. As we see in the incident above, many interpreted
that fighting on the Sabbath would be to profane it, and thus did not fight
-- even to save their lives. These were very pious people, who found violence
extremely difficult, and their piety directly contributed to their deaths
and, moreover, gave courage to their enemies. It was not an isolated event. Here is another
incident along the same lines: “At that time
many who were seeking righteousness and justice went down to the wilderness
to live there, they, their sons, their wives, and their livestock, because
troubles pressed heavily upon them. And it was reported to the king’s
officers, and to the troops in Jerusalem the city of David, that those who
had rejected the king’s command [to abandon Judaism] had gone down to the
hiding places in the wilderness. Many pursued them, and overtook them; they
encamped opposite them and prepared for battle against them on the Sabbath
day. They said to them, ‘Enough of this! Come out and do what the king
commands, and you will live.’ But they said, ‘We will not come out, nor will
we do what the king commands and so profane the Sabbath day.’ Then the enemy
quickly attacked them. But they did not answer them or hurl a stone at them
or block up their hiding places, for they said, ‘Let us all die in our
innocence; heaven and earth testify for us that you are killing us unjustly.’
So they attacked them on the Sabbath, and they died, with their wives and
children and livestock, to the number of a thousand persons.” -- 1
Maccabees (2.29-38) Eventually, the priest Mathathias, and his sons,
including most famously Judah the Maccabee, led the miraculous Maccabean
Revolt and kicked out the Greco-Macedonians. This demonstrates that Jews can
be the world's best warriors, because the Greco-Macedonians had been, up to
this point, unbeatable the world over, and the Jews who defeated them were
mostly peasants whose most important weapon, for they were otherwise poorly
armed and badly trained in warfare, was their fervor to defend their way of
life from antisemitic terrorists. But this military miracle did not happen
before Mattathias insisted on a change of ideology, spurred by the above
massacre: “When
Mattathias and his friends learned of [the massacre], they mourned for them
deeply. And all said to their neighbors: ‘If we refuse to fight with the
Gentiles for our lives and for our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us
from the face of the earth.’ So they made this decision that day: ‘Let us
fight against anyone who comes to attack us on the Sabbath day; let us not
all die as our kindred died in their hiding places.’” -- 1 Maccabees
(2.39-41) What is worse for Judaism? For all the Jews to
disappear “from the face of the earth” or to make an exception when the enemy
attacks on the Sabbath? Naturally, the first is worse. Mattathias’ decision
was sensible. But it was not easy for the Jews to see this. I think Mattathias' argument applies today. If the
Jews are once again destroyed by the millions, this time in Israel, Torah
observance will once again suffer, because Torah observant Jews will be quite
numerous among the multitudes slaughtered. After all, it is in Israel that
Orthodox Judaism is flourishing the most. So the Jews should make it clear
that the murders of innocent Jews will not be tolerated. This would require
1) abolishing in its entirety the Oslo Process circus; 2) retaliating
decisively when external enemies attack the Jewish state to exterminate its
people; and 3) never returning territory won in such conflicts. The difficulties Jews encounter defending themselves
from murderous attacks are in large part due to the fact that the Torah
produces an ethical civilization, and those brought up as observant Jews
within this civilization find it very difficult to kill, under any
circumstances. Historian Anita Shapira has tried to shed light on the
question of whether the Jewish ethos -- its predominant patterns of
thought -- contributed to the fact that, for a long time, the Jews in British
Mandate ‘Palestine’ in the first half of the 20th c. did not effectively
defend themselves.[1]
The context is dramatic because the Jews were being attacked with spectacular
waves of terrorism that included torturing young children to death, and whose
chief organizer was Hajj Amin al Husseini,
who would later become, with Adolf Eichmann, the great architect of the Nazi
genocide, and after that the father of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas's
'Palestinian' movement.[2] There are, in my view, a great many problems with
Shapira's interpretations. Though she pays some attention to the fact that
the British were actively encouraging the Arab racist attacks, and sabotaging
Jewish self-defense, putting the Jews in a very difficult situation, she
downplays this considerably.[2a] She also
shies away, almost entirely, from confronting the manner in which the
mainstream Zionist leaders supported rather than confronted the British,
something that eventually made necessary the creation of a clandestine Jewish
army, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi, in order to inflict real costs on the Arab
terrorists.[2aa] (In addition,
Shapira defends in places the standard antisemitic representation of Jewish
immigration to British Mandate 'Palestine' as somehow objectionable, even
though she herself grants that the Jews were buying land from those
who had title, and allowing the landless Arab workers to continue working it,
for they felt an obligation to help them, as she herself documents.[2ab]) But having said all that, Shapira does present
considerable evidence to support her view that killing, even in self-defense,
does not come easily to those raised in Jewish civilization. This helps
explain why the mainstream Zionist leaders could get away with their support
for British policies, and why in the face of the greatest terrorist attack,
in 1936, most Jews acquiesced in a policy of 'self-restraint.' “In 1936, an
issue confronted the men of Palestine -- whether to shoot back or not shoot
back at the Arabs who, with British connivance, were raiding and terrorizing
the Jewish settlements. All the various parties, clans, and sects of the new
land voted for Havlagah -- 'self restraint' -- all except one group. This
group detached itself from the Haganah [the Jewish self-defense forces],
pledged to passivism, and called itself the Irgun Zvai Leumi.”[2b] As Anita Shapira documents, many Jews wanted to believe that the Arab terrorists who were killing their children could be won over, and some even wrote about their reluctance to retaliate after terrorist attacks lest their children grow up as anti-Arab racists! Such remarkable views must stem in part from the fact that, as Shapira herself points out, there are “three sins” that “rather than commit, a Jew preferred to be killed” -- these are “‘idol worship’...along with bloodshed and incest.”[2bb]
But what is especially difficult, it seems, is
shedding blood in hatred or anger, because on occasion Jews have
preferred to commit suicide, in fact, to shedding the enemy’s blood in
self-defense. A dramatic example took place during the anti-Jewish
exterminations of the Middle Ages, narrated by James Carroll in his history
of Western antisemitism: [Quote from
James Carroll begins here] The crusaders
were unleashed, storming through the city [of Mainz], looking for ‘the
circumcised.’ The Jews who had eluded crusaders, or bribed them during the
early phase of the Rhineland incursion, had been succeeded, especially in
Speyer and Worms, by Jews who were murdered in cold blood. By the time of
Mainz, crusader ferocity was at its peak, fueled by a cross-inspired
righteousness… More than one thousand men, women, and children huddled in the
courtyard of the archbishop’s palace [this man appears genuinely to have
tried to save their lives]. They knew very well what had happened elsewhere in
the preceding weeks, how bribes and flight had failed, finally, to protect
even children. In Mainz, Jews had time to reflect on what was coming, and
they knew that the only possible escape was through apostasy [idolatry, to
them]. Some few took that way out, but to most conversion to Christianity was
more unthinkable than ever… Solomon bar
Simson wrote: “The hand of
the Lord rested heavily on His people, and all the Gentiles assembled against
the Jews in the courtyard to exterminate them… When the people of the Sacred
Covenant saw that the Heavenly decree had been issued and that the enemy had
defeated them and were entering the courtyard, they all cried out together --
old and young, maidens and children, menservants and maids -- to their Father
in Heaven… ‘There is no questioning the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He
and blessed be His Name, Who has given us His Torah and has commanded us to
allow ourselves to be killed and slain in witness to the Oneness of His Holy
Name…’ “Then in a
great voice they all cried out as one: ‘We need tarry no longer, for the
enemy is already upon us. Let us hasten and offer ourselves as a sacrifice
before God. Anyone possessing a knife should examine it to see that it is not
defective, and let him then proceed to slaughter us in sanctification of the
Unique and Eternal One, then slaying himself -- either cutting his throat or
thrusting the knife into his stomach.’”[3] [Quote from
James Carroll ends here] From one point of view this looks like an impressive
ethical statement: the Jews would not shed the enemy’s blood. From a
different point of view, however, perhaps this is an ethical error (though
one committed in good faith, in an attempt to please a God that frowns on
violence -- something that cannot be said for the ethical error of the
antisemitic murderers). As the economists have taught us, a basic principle
of human behavior is that if people want to do something, and you lower their
costs of doing so, they will do it more. Not exactly rocket science,
as the economists themselves often point out with some impatience. It follows
that murderous antisemites will kill more Jews the lower the perceived risks
to their endeavor. Given this, the ethical thing to do, when under terrorist
attack from antisemites, is for the Jews not to lay down and die but to go
down fighting, taking as many of the antisemitic murderers that came to
get them, thus sending a message that one cannot simply kill Jews with
impunity, and so reducing in this way the probability of further murders of
innocent Jews. This was the ancient priest Mathathias’ argument. It was also the argument of those undernourished and
grossly mistreated Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, in World War II, who, having
learned the fate of the Jews who were being deported, decided to fight. “...all the
suffering Jews not yet slaughtered -- some thirty thousand weary men and
women -- hurled themselves against the might of an undefeated German army
numbering hundreds of thousands. For
twenty-seven days these last Jewish souls of Poland had stood with pistols
and clubs and broken bottles in their hands, against German tanks, cannon,
machine guns and the Luftwaffe. The Germans suffered many dead. ...the[se] few
extraordinary characters were thirty-three thousand Jews who stood off three
hundred fifty thousand Wehrmacht troops and thirty thousand SS troops --
their tanks and cannon -- for twenty-seven days in the Warsaw Ghetto. None of
the Jews surrendered.”[3a] Like their Maccabean ancestors, these brave Jews
fought with few weapons and zero military training, and they produced another
military miracle, demonstrating again that when they choose to fight the Jews
are the world's best warriors. When they choose to fight,
because often they choose not to, falling into what I believe is an ethical
error committed in good faith. One can see an echo of the ethical error I am
identifying here in Golda Meir’s famous statement to Anwar Sadat after Egypt
attacked the Israelis in an attempt to exterminate the Israeli Jews: “We can
forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us
kill yours.”[4] I don’t
believe the leader of any other country could have made a statement like
this. And the point, mind you, is not that Golda Meir believed what she said
but that her words resonated with many Jews, or she would not have said it.
The statements of politicians must always obey the laws of the political
grammar of the surrounding culture. Meir's statement resonates because it is
consistent with a Jewish aversion to killing that is very strong -- so
strong, in fact, that it is harder at least for some Jews to forgive having
been forced to kill antisemitic murderers in self-defense, than it is to
forgive the gratuitous murders of innocent Jews. This statement by Golda Meir's is invariably quoted
with admiration, but upon reflection it appears to be assigning a higher
value to the lives of the antisemitic murderers than it does to the lives of
innocent Jews. In the absract, forgiveness seems like a good thing. But this
is not the abstract. In my view, the taking of innocent life simply cannot be
forgiven, not if we want fewer innocents to be murdered. We must cherish
innocent life over and above the lives of gratuitous murderers. If we don’t,
we will contribute to the flourishing of gratuitous murderers. And that
cannot be ethical. I will make three final points. The first is that since Jews are directly under
attack from Muslim terrorists, who
grow up in a culture that teaches them to hate life as much as the Jews love
it, and to throw it away if it will kill some Jews,
the Jewish situtation is especially difficult.[4a]
But again, it is not ethical to allow terrorists to kill the innocent. If the
only way to prevent this is to defeat the terrorists militarily, then this is
the ethical thing to do. A second, and related point, is that the Jewish
aversion to killing, even in self-defense, contributes in some measure to the
ease with which Jews delude themselves into thinking that it is possible to
give territory to genocidal antisemites in exchange for peace -- the basis of
the so-called Oslo ‘Peace’ Process. The Jews are corralled into such
delusions in part because they would like to give anything other than a
military solution a try. This is a tremendous error. Genocidal antisemites
don’t want land; they wish to kill every Jew. If they will not leave the Jews
alone, they must be militarily defeated. The third point is that since the Israeli
leadership cooperates with the enemies of the Jews,
briging antisemitic genocidal terrorists into the Jewish state and giving
them land and people with which to launch their assault, then ordinary
Israeli patriots must fight their own leadership.[4b]
This is what the Jews of the Maccabean Revolt, led by the priest Mattathias
and his sons, had to do, for the Jewish leaders of that time were allying
with the terrorist Greco-Macedonian assault on Judaism. Mattathias and his
sons saved their faith and made it stronger, blessing humanity. It was not an
ethical error: it was the right thing to do. ________________________________________________________ 2) Innocence. Summary: The Jewish laws are designed to
produce an ethical civilization, and one side effect of growing up under the
influence of these laws is a stubborn commitment to the idea that humans are
basically good. This is innocence. It is an error, because humans are
not basically good; humans are pliable, and they respond to their
environments. The ancient Greco-Roman aristocracies, for example, were entire
societies of murderers (the men), because this is what their culture brought
them up to be (see point 3 on Messianism, for a description of Roman
society). It was not impossible for an individual to rebel against such a
culture but the point is that it was not easy, and those who didn’t rebel were
not basically good. One may certainly argue that such people were victims
of their social system, as was the case also with many Nazis, whose minds
were poisoned by propaganda, but that still does not make them basically
good. The stubborn belief of many Jews that humans are basically good blinds
them to the evil that always waits in ambush for them, and this ‘see no evil’
attitude is deadly. In the middle of the Holocaust, Anne Frank wrote in
her famous diary the following words, which dramatically encapsulate the
stubborn innocence of the Jews: “I still believe, in spite of everything,
that people are truly good at heart.”[5]
This was written in full knowledge of the fact that the Nazis were looking
for her, an adolescent girl, so that they could torture her to death for the
crime of being a Jew. This is evidence of a fierce desire to find goodness in
this world, and it is one of the reasons that Anne Frank is so appealing. But
though we may admire her purity of soul, Anne Frank was naturally mistaken on
this point: the Nazis were not “truly good at heart.” They were not good at
all. Simply, they were monsters. And they murdered Anne Frank in cold blood. Let us return to antiquity. The Seleucid King
Antiochus Epiphanes, another monster, had already visited all sorts of murder
and destruction upon the Jews in Judah, and had made it clear that he meant
to abolish Judaism. Then, as the First Book of Maccabees explains, “Two years
later the king [Antiochus Epiphanes] sent to the cities of Judah a chief
collector of tribute, and he came to Jerusalem with a large force.
Deceitfully he spoke peaceable words to them, and they believed him; but he
suddenly fell upon the city, dealt it a severe blow, and destroyed many
people of Israel. He plundered the city, burned it with fire, and tore down
its houses and surrounding walls. They took captive the women and children,
and seized the livestock.” -- 1 Maccabees (1.29-30) 2 Maccabees makes the
same claim:
The claim is remarkable: the Greco-Macedonians came
to Jerusalem with lots of soldiers to take away the Jewish wealth and
livestock, burn the city down, murder lots of Jews, and take the women and
children as slaves. These were the same soldiers who had already been
murdering tens of thousands of Jews (eighty thousand in just one three-day
attack according to 2 Maccabbees 5.11-14). And yet on this occasion
the leader of the Greco-Macedonian soldiers simply “spoke peaceable words to
them, and they believed him.” Is it really plausible that the ancient Jews were this
innocent? Yes, it is. In our own times we have seen a close parallel. The
PLO, a terrorist organization pledged in its constitution to exterminate the
Israeli Jews,[6]
had already been murdering Israeli Jews for many years. Then the PLO leader,
Yasser Arafat, "spoke peaceable words to them, and they believed
him." By promising peace, the PLO gained a territorial base inside the
Jewish state, and political power over most of the Arabs living there: the
power to indoctrinate these Arabs into the PLO's ecstatic genocidal ideology,
and the power to train them in how to kill. Immediately after the PLO was
brought in, terrorism against innocent Jews in the state of Israel quintupled.[7] Granted, there was a worldwide propaganda onslaught
to whitewash the PLO, which included giving Yasser Arafat the same Nobel
Peace Prize that had been given to Martin Luther King (1964) and Mother
Teresa (1979). Granted, Jewish leaders in the Diaspora, and Jewish leaders in
Israel, covered for Arafat and vouched for him. Granted, most of the Israeli
media covered for Arafat as well. All of this is true. But even granting
all that, it is still a reasonable hypothesis that a strong Jewish desire to
“believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,” made
an important contribution to Jewish gullibility that Yasser Arafat had
discovered his better self. And the above concessions in fact bring us back in
circles to the same point. If Jewish leaders were apologizing for Arafat, why
should ordinary Jews believe this? Jewish history is full of examples of
Jewish leaders betraying ordinary Jews, and it is not exactly difficult to
show that this has been happening in our time (see Part 1, 2,
and 3 of
this series). But imagining, let alone recognizing, that one’s own leaders
are allied with the enemy is practically impossible if one believes “that
people are truly good at heart,” because if one’s own leaders are “truly good
at heart” they couldn’t possibly ally with the enemy... The same goes for the propaganda. Before WWII, the
media said all sorts of ridiculously favorable things about Adolf Hitler and
all sorts of ridiculously unfavorable things about the Jews. But Jews for the
most part do not display the skepticism of the mainstream media that a
history of victimization by powerful antisemites would lead one to expect. The Jews are repeatedly destroyed by unscrupulous
enemies in part because they repeatedly refuse to see evil, clinging
stubbornly to an innocent representation of the world, one that the history
of the Jews has refuted many times over -- more so, perhaps, than has the
history of any other people. The inability of so many Jews to reason about
the structure of their situation and the nature of their enemies is simply
stunning. To make the Jews safe, I would prescribe a hearty dose of
suspicion. Innocence is deadly. This does not mean abandoning ethics, mind
you, just treating one of its unfortunate side effects. ________________________________________________________ 3) Messianism The Jewish concept of the Messiah is a
beautiful idea, but it can make some pious Jews complacent. It can make them
think that everything will be okay because surely the Messiah is coming this
time. He will come if we believe it passionately enough. Granted, he didn’t
come last time, or the time before that, or the time before…, and millions
upon millions of Jews died. Granted. But surely he is coming this
time. (Never mind that this is what many Jews said last time around.) Too
much certainty about the imminent coming of the Messiah can hurt Jewish
self-defense. In order to understand Jewish Messianism one must
first understand the Jewish concept of the Messiah. I will begin by
explaining what this concept was at the time when the claim was made (chiefly
by Gentiles, not Jews) for one Jesus of Nazareth. In order to do that, I must
first give you the context of Roman rule in the Mediterranean in the first
century of the current era (CE). This will take some time, because there has
been a lot of institutionalized disinformation about the ancient Romans, so
please bear with me. The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean with a
brutality and sadism that would not be seen again in the West until the Third
Reich of the German Nazis. In the Roman Empire the ‘citizens’ all had to do
military service lasting twenty-five years (and they could not marry
until they finished their service -- those who survived, that is).[8]
Soldiers enjoyed certain privileges and they swore personal fealty directly
to the emperor (as the Nazis soldiers also did with Adolf Hitler[9]),
and for this reason they constituted a mercenary force that the emperor could
use against all of the ‘citizen’ population.[10] As
happened also in the Third Reich, these soldiers were the slaves of a vast
internal security apparatus that spied on everybody and with complete
arbitrariness tortured and murdered anybody whose political loyalties became
in the least suspect.[11] The very well
paid special mercenary force that guaranteed the emperor’s power was the
Praetorian Guard, which stationed from 500 to 1000 soldiers -- dressed as
civilians -- in the Italian cities, fulfilling a function equivalent to that
of Adolf Hitler’s feared SS.[12] Because the emperor’s personality cult was literally
religious, any show of disrespect to the emperor, his offices, his name, or
even his effigy was considered sacrilege, and moreover an act of rebellion,
resulting quite often in the execution of the offender, all of which recalls
the personality cult of the Nazi fuhrer, who was in fact saluted with
an extended arm in a gesture that was copied from the ancient Romans. Everybody’s movements were closely controlled, for
the Roman Empire was a vast prison, and people could not freely abandon their
localities of origin (also true in Nazi Germany, where workers could not
switch their place of work without government permission).[13]
Strict controls were applied over anything that was published; many books
were burned and many authors tried, as happened also with the Nazis.[14]
Anybody accusing somebody else of political disloyalty -- delator --
could claim in reward a portion of the accused person’s property if the
latter was found guilty, and this incentive caused everybody to distrust
everybody else, for anyone could be a spy of the emperor, which is precisely
how things also stood under Adolf Hitler.[15]
Only a few of the accused actually demanded their day in court because if they
committed suicide, declaring themselves in this way guilty, they could
guarantee the safety of their family and inherit their property to them,
whereas anybody demanding trial exposed his family; in any case, very
probably they would lose the trial and would then be tortured to death or
exiled, for the emperor, much like Adolf Hitler, could generate in the courts
any result he desired.[16] Multitudes of
political enemies, nevertheless, were not murdered or exiled but enslaved in
work camps that in reality were death camps, as the Nazis also did.[17] The foregoing describes the situation for the
militarized and dominant ‘citizen’ minority of the Roman Empire -- a tiny
group of people. The situation of the oppressed classes was much worse. Below the ‘citizen’ caste was a great multitude of
serfs and artisans who in the official propaganda were technically ‘free’ but
who in reality lived in informal slavery.[18] To
imagine their conditions it is enough to point out that “…poverty drove the
indigent to sell their newborn to slave traffickers (who took children
scarcely out of the womb and still covered with blood…). Many adults sold
themselves [into slavery] in order not to die of hunger.”[19] Then there were the formal slaves, many of whom were
brought as prisoners of war. There was no end to these wars. “By the fourth
century [BCE], Rome had evolved a pattern of warfare that centered on campaigns
undertaken almost every year, a level of intensity that is unique among
ancient city-states. In the process, warfare came to be deeply entrenched in
Roman political and religious life, shaping the highest offices as well as
the lives and careers both of the community’s leaders and of its citizens.”[20] In other words, the Roman Empire, as the Nazi Third
Reich would also do, based its entire economy on external war, and would go
to battle every spring, like the farmer to the plow, to sack neighboring
cities and bring home great numbers of slaves to work the latifundia
(large agricultural estates, or plantations, of the Roman aristocracy) and
the mines, or else to work as servants in the Roman households. The practice
of the Romans was to murder all the adult men, so the slaves brought in war
were for the most part women and children. It is worth pausing to get a sense
for the thoroughly pathological nature of Roman warfare: ‘[The ancient
Greek historian] Polybius…says it was customary for the Roman troops to kill
all inhabitants of a city they subdued. Pillaging started afterwards, after a
signal had been given. He adds that he thinks the Romans did this to strike
terror… As a result one often sees in towns taken by the Romans not only dead
people, but ‘dogs cut in half, and the limbs cut off from other animals.’ …A
relatively minor skirmish between Macedonians and Romans in 200 BCE resulted
in forty fallen Macedonian cavalry. However, the extreme violence exerted by
the Roman arms caused panic among the Macedonians [previously the terror of
the world], who were not used to it. …The Romans…are on record as resorting
to mutilation of live victims, while the details of animal slaughter which
Polybius himself gives also suggest a form of social pathology. …Julius
Caesar himself is quite open in his description of the slaughter of the
Usipetes and Tencteri (BG 4.14f.): ‘the rest, a mass of children and women --
for the Germans had left home and crossed the Rhine with all their people --
began to flee in all directions. Caesar sent cavalry to pursue them.’ The
whole crowd of Germans, children and women presumably included, were then
pushed towards the junction of the Meuse and the Rhine where they were slain
or perished in the river.”[21] The slaves that were brought home from these
unbelievable slaughters did not have family life, and when the slave women
bore children (often sired by the master) these were the master’s property, who
was free to drown them, raise them as his own, or let them live as slaves,
for the master had universal rights over his slaves and could torture, rape,
and murder them at will.[22] And these
were truly great oceans of slaves: historians estimate that in Italy, in the
first century, as much as half the population of Italy may have been
formally enslaved.[23] “On
plantations they were often worked in irons, and at night they were housed in
underground prisons.”[24] Other slaves,
the gladiators, were forced to fight each other to death in the Roman
amphitheater, while the Roman public pretended it was at a cock fight. Also
for the delight of corrupt Roman mobs, some slaves were simply devoured --
alive -- by African beasts (I have nothing to compare this to). These slaves
at least died relatively quickly; the same cannot be said for those who were
sent to die in the ancient equivalent of the Nazi death camps, the mines, where
they were forced to work under torture until, exhausted, they keeled over and
died. Diodorus of Sicily, writing around the year 30 BCE, described it like
this in his Universal History (5.38.1-2): “Let me
continue discussing the mines. The slaves who are put to work in them produce
an unbelievable amount of wealth for their masters, but they themselves wear
out their bodies digging in the earth day and night, dying in droves because
of the exceptional hardships they endure. No break or rest is given to them
in their work, but driven on by the blows of their overseers to endure the
severity of their lot, they throw away their lives in a wretched way,
although some of them who can endure it, because of their bodily strength and
their strong spirit, manage to live a long time. Indeed they desire death
more than life, because of the magnitude of their hardships.”[25] That will do. Many gentiles like myself grow up hearing
in school that the ancient Romans were “great civilizers.” This is
propaganda. The ancient Roman Empire was a ‘civilization’ run by a sadistic
criminal class, much like the Third Reich (and the Third Reich considered
itself a reincarnation of ancient Rome). In the dark fog of this hell on earth created by the
Romans, the Jewish synagogues, where pagans were welcomed with open arms,
were lighthouses of hope for the oppressed Mediterranean workers. Many poor
pagans, and many slaves who worked as servants in the households of the
Romans and of the allied aristocracies, came on the Sabbath to hear the
frankly subversive message of the Jews (and even some rich people came, and
even Romans, seduced by the hope of an ethical future). The Jews considered themselves the descendants of
slaves who, after defeating an oppressive Egyptian king in revolution, had
established a law that says: “He who kidnaps a man -- whether he has sold him
or is still holding him -- shall be put to death” (Exodus 21.16). This
law allowed a Jew to be a ‘slave’ but not by force -- only voluntarily, to
pay his debts; and on the seventh year, according to the same law, the slave
had to be set free and given a little something with which to start his life
in freedom (Deuteronomy 15.12-15). In truth, these were employees -- and carefully
protected employees at that. In his six years of service the slave could not
be mistreated in any way, and any evidence of physical abuse would cause a
judge automatically to set him free: “When a man strikes the eye of a slave,
male or female, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his
eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let
him go free on account of his tooth” (Exodus 21.26-27). And the slave
could not be psychologically abused, either, or disrespected, for any slave
so mistreated could simply run away and take refuge in somebody else’s
household, and then he could not be returned for the law forbade it: “You
shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his
master. He shall live with you in any place he may choose among the
settlements in your midst, wherever he pleases; you must not ill-treat him” (Deuteronomy
23.16). Anybody killing his slave risked the death penalty (Exodus 21.20-21).
Naturally, the slaves got to rest on the Sabbath, like everybody else (Deuteronomy
5.12-14). On top of all this, the rabbinical laws later collected in the
Talmud specified all kinds of obligatory deferences to the slaves: when the
household sits (apparently all together) to eat, the slave must be served
first; if there is only one pillow between master and slave, it goes to the
slave; etc. This legal atmosphere was naturally conducive to more than
cordial relations between master and slave, and at the end of six years many
slaves undoubtedly chose to remain with their masters, so in order to prevent
the formation of a hereditary caste of slaves the laws of the Jubilee (Leviticus,
ch.25), required all slaves, whether they wanted to or not, to be set
free every 50 years. Not surprisingly, a great many pagans converted to Judaism and as a result the Jews became -- in the lower estimate of most historians -- something like 10% of the Roman Empire. But this statistic does not fully describe their political power, because there was an even greater population of so-called ‘God-fearers’ who hadn’t yet converted but attended synagogue and observed some of the Jewish laws, and who were allied with the Jews.[26] So the Jewish political movement had something like a quarter to a third of the Roman Empire: astonishing. Not surprisingly, for those who understand this context, the Roman aristocracy lived in terror of the Jews. In the early first century the powerful Roman senator Seneca expressed his fear as follows: “The customs of this accursed race [Jews] have gained such influence that they are now received throughout all the world. The vanquished have given laws to their victors!”[27]
The ancient Roman historian Dio Cassius expressed
himself thus: "I do not
know the origins of this name [Ioudaios = Jews] for them, but it also refers
to the other persons, even foreigners, who eagerly pursue their
customs. And this people is even among the Romans. Though often
curtailed, it increased to the greatest extent so as to win by force the
freedom of its religious belief."[27a] (my emphases) This is grudging Roman respect for the widespread
appeal, grass-roots power, and bravery of the Jews. To cap it all, the Jews were anxiously waiting for
‘the Messiah,’ a warrior/saint who would defeat the Romans by the sword in
revolution, making the Torah the law of state in the Mediterranean, and thus
ending oppression everywhere. Now the last point, I know from experience, is
especially surprising to many people. Not only because most people do not
study history but because the concept of ‘Messiah’ that is most commonly
known is that of the Christians, where the universe is conceived as a
great temple in which to offer a sacrifice in the manner of the ancient
pagans and Jews. In those days, one would kill a lamb, a goat, a dove, etc.,
spill the blood on the altar, and burn some of the victim so that the gods
(in the case of the Jews, God) could enjoy the aroma or otherwise draw
sustenance and pleasure (the priests would then eat the offered/cooked
animals). This was done, for instance, when it was a matter of asking for a
favor, giving thanks, or expiating a sin. The more dramatic the context (for
example, if a serious sin had been committed), the more expensive the offered
victim had to be.[28]
Following this model, in the Christian concept of ‘the Messiah,’ God sends to
the world His own son so that, in murdering him, men can offer the most
expensive victim for the forgiveness of all sins: “Lamb of God [a
reference to Jesus in his status of sacrificial victim], who takes away the
sins of the world, have mercy on us…”[29]
(In perpetuity, and in ritual fashion, believers would henceforth eat, in the
manner of priests, the offered victim: this is the sacrament of the
eucharist). Salvation, then, would be God’s business, and it would
suffice for men to recognize, by accepting Jesus as Savior, the painful favor
that the Father had bestowed in sacrificing His own son to Himself. The Jewish concept of ‘the Messiah’ was entirely
different, and this helps explain why very few Jews recognized the validity
of the Christian movement. The Jews were not looking to expiate the world's
sins but to liberate it from political oppression; they were looking for
someone to beat the Romans, not to get crucified by them. And in fact the
Messiah would be identified retroactively, following his revolutionary
victory. If he got crucified, by definition, he could not be the Messiah; you
had to win first, in order to demonstrate that you were ‘the One.’ Of
course, quite a few individual Jews convinced themselves that they were the
Messiah, and made the claim for themselves in advance of their victory,
hoping in this way to mobilize many Jews and...win. This produced one revolt
after another, and the Romans were having to put them down. The most
successful of all was the revolt led by Simon Bar Kochba in the second
century, which succeeded in re-establishing an independent Jewish state in
Judah for the space of three years, an achievement that led a great many
Jews, including the famous Rabbi Akiva, to hail him as ‘the Messiah.’ But he
wasn’t the Messiah, and the Romans defeated him in the last chapter of a
genocide against the Jews that may have been greater than Hitler’s, in
proportional terms, and that lasted, in all, a good 135 years. That’s how the Romans solved their ‘Jewish Problem’:
they gave it a Final Solution. (To learn more about this ancient genocide,
and its cataclysmic impact on World History, read The Crux of World History.) Where did the Jewish concept of the Messiah come from?
Well, the Messianic tradition is most closely identified with the Book of
Isaiah. In it, we find this passage: [Quote from
the Book of Isaiah begins here] Thus says the
Lord to His Messiah, to Cyrus -- whose right hand I have held -- to subdue
nations before him and loose the armor of kings, to open before him the
double doors, so that the gates will not be shut: [The Lord:] “I
will go before you and make the crooked places straight; I will break in
pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron. I will give you the
treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, so that you may
know that I, the Lord, Who call you by your name, am the God of Israel. For
Jacob My servant’s sake, and Israel My elect, I have even called you by your
name; I have named you, though you have not known Me. I am the Lord, and
there is no other; there is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you
have not known Me, that they may know from the rising of the sun to its
setting that there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other;
I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I,
the Lord, do all these things. Rain down, you heavens, from above, and let
the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, let them bring forth
salvation, and let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have
created it.” -- Isaiah (45.1-8; emphasis mine) [Quote from
the Book of Isaiah ends here] This is interesting because not only does the Book
of Isaiah, the source of the Messianic tradition, identify the Persian
King Cyrus the Great as the Lord’s Messiah, but it also turns out that Cyrus
fits the bill precisely. Cyrus was truly a rare phenomenon: a complete
megalomaniac who craved world power in order to do good. He fought
repressive rulers and liberated many different peoples, creating an enormous
empire where freedom of religion, the rule of law, civil and economic
liberties, and peace were zealously protected. He was a defender and
protector of ordinary people. He took more than one place without a fight
because the people would hand him their kings in fetters. The imagery above
is precisely that of a liberator: he would “make the crooked places straight”
and “break in pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron,” that is,
he would make honest what was dishonest and set people free. With God’s help,
he would “pour down righteousness” and “bring forth salvation,” which in this
context is political salvation, precisely what Cyrus achieved for great
multitudes of people. In particular, Cyrus allowed the Jewish ruling class
that had been forcibly exiled to Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar’s extermination
to return home to Judah; he subsidized the rebuilding of the Jerusalem
Temple; and he encouraged the growth of Judaism, a precedent followed by
later Persian kings, as recorded in the books of Ezra and Nehamiah.
As a result, Judaism grew at an astonishing rate within the Persian Empire.
(To learn more about the impact of Persian ideology on World History, read The Crux of World History). Cyrus was indeed the Messiah. Of course, Cyrus was not Jewish, but the Book of
Isaiah seems to be saying that this does not matter, for it has the Lord
saying: “I have even called you by your name; I have named you [the Messiah],
though you have not known Me [though you are not Jewish].” Can there be another Messiah? If we interpret the
concept of ‘the Messiah’ as the Messiah (‘the One’ -- as in the only
One), then naturally no: the Messiah has come and gone: it was Cyrus. If,
however, we interpret ‘the Messiah’ as referring to a category of person,
then in theory there may one day be another. But let’s be reasonable: this is
extremely unlikely. People like Cyrus don’t exactly grow on trees: we are
talking about a historical aberration, here. That said, there is no denying
that it would be nice to once again have someone as spectacularly successful
as Cyrus defending ordinary people, and this hope obviously lies at the root
of the Jewish Messianic tradition. Although the modern Jewish concept of the
Messiah may not be an exact copy of the Cyrus prototype, it does share in
common with it the idea that the Messiah will come to make the Jews safe, and
to bring political liberation and social justice for the entire world. The
most important significant new twist on the concept is that a great many Jews
now believe it is the ethical behavior of Jews that will cause God to send
the Messiah and save the world. Now, concerning the possibilities for Jewish
self-defense, I think the Messianic tradition is a double-edged sword. In the
first century, this tradition was arguably a good thing for the Jews, because
it inspired many individual Jews to try to be the Messiah, an ambition that
was probably necessary for a successful challenge to the Roman Empire.
Although nobody succeeded, the ancient Jews did come very close to bringing
down the Romans and liberating the Mediterranean, and it is possible to argue
that the Messianic fervor was in part responsible for this near success.
These days, however, the Messianic tradition probably has a negative effect
on Jewish self-defense because nobody much tries to be the Messiah (it is
definitely frowned upon). If the Jews all wait for the Messiah to
come, because the Messiah will rain down from heaven if they are all good
enough, then they will wait in vain. And if they are very confident that the
Messiah will come (and the creation of the state of Israel has made many Jews
quite confident, and this confidence grows as the situation becomes more
apocalyptic, in a maddening irony…), then they may become complacent. It
appears that many pious Jews have indeed become complacent, leaving
self-defense to the supposedly imminent Messiah. This greatly increases the
vulnerability of the Jewish people. If the Jewish people is to avert another genocide,
quite simply, it must defend itself rather than wait for a miracle
that has in fact not come to save the Jews in past genocides (of which there
have been plenty). Perhaps there will be a Messiah, but it is crucial to
understand this: if all the Jews choose to fight for their right to be
Jews, rather than wait for the Messiah, then it is more likely that a Messiah
will emerge. Simply waiting for the Messiah does not increase the
probability that he will manifest himself. Messianism is a kind of fatalism, but Jewish
fatalism takes other forms, so I have considered Messianism separately. Below
I take a broader approach to Jewish fatalism. ________________________________________________________ 4) Fatalism. Summary: God is in control of history,
so let Him do what He will (He must have a Higher Reason for everything He
does). This results from a tendency to read the Hebrew Bible as literal
history (God is represented in the Bible as the author of historical
outcomes). The same tendency leads to the absurd interpretation that the
attacks of foreigners against the Jewish people are deserved punishments from
God, which produces a deadly defeatism that once again sabotages Jewish
self-defense. Let’s go back to antiquity again. The author of the Second
Book of Maccabees was obviously very proud of the Maccabean Revolt against
the Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes, which he celebrated. This revolt
defeated the terrorist attack of the Greco-Macedonians, who had attempted
utterly to destroy Judaism. But despite all that, the author of 2
Maccabees nevertheless interprets the Greco-Macedonian attack as deserved
punishment. In a prefatory passage to the author's horrific description of
how Antiochus Epiphanes -- just to give himself sporting pleasure watching
their unbelievable suffering -- tortured to death every individual member of
a Jewish family that would not break Jewish law, the author explains that all
of this suffering is somehow divinely ordained: “Now I urge
those who read this book not to be depressed by such calamities, but to
recognize that these punishments were designed not to destroy but to
discipline our people. In fact, it is a sign of great kindness not to let the
impious alone for long, but to punish them immediately. For in the case of
the other nations the Lord waits patiently to punish them until they have
reached the full measure of their sins; but he does not deal in this way with
us, in order that he may not take vengeance on us afterward when our sins
have reached their height. Therefore He never withdraws His mercy from us.
Although He disciplines us with calamities, He does not forsake His own
people. Let what we have said serve as a reminder; we must go on briefly with
the story.” -- 2 Maccabees (6.12-17) I find it offensive to suggest that a mother and her
sons can possibly deserve to be scalped and then boiled alive, which is what
the author goes on to describe. And yet this is the interpretation: the Lord
was punishing his Chosen People, and his Chosen People ought to rejoice in
this, moreover. What accounts for this remarkable interpretation? It is orthodox, in fact. Consider an earlier Jewish book: the Book of
Jeremiah. Here is the prophet Jeremiah addressing a group of Jews that
have taken refuge in Egypt after the Chaldean King Nebuchadnezzar launches a
genocidal attack against Judah: “Thus says the
Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: You yourselves have seen all the disaster
that I have brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Look at them;
today they are a desolation, without an inhabitant in them, because of the
wickedness that they committed, provoking me to anger, in that they went to
make offerings and serve other gods that they had not known neither they, nor
you, nor your ancestors. Yet I persistently sent to you all my servants the
prophets, saying “I beg you not to do this abominable thing that I hate!” But
they did not listen or incline their ear, to turn from their wickedness and
make no offerings to other gods. So my wrath and my anger were poured out and
kindled in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and they
became a waste and desolation, as they still are today. And now thus says the
Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel; Why are you doing such great harm to
yourselves, to cut off man and woman, child and infant, from the midst of
Judah, leaving yourselves without a remnant?” -- Jeremiah (44.2-17) This goes on for a while. In fact, the entire Book
of Jeremiah is one long attack against the Jewish people for having
become idolatrous, which implies all the murder and oppression associated
with idolatrous societies. And Jeremiah is supposedly channeling God,
who takes responsibility for Nebuchadnezzar’s attack, calling it a divine
punishment for the iniquity of the Jews. Most of the prophets imprecate against the Jews
along these lines, and in fact the entire ‘History of Israel’ contained in
the Hebrew Bible (see the Books of Kings and the Books of
Chronicles) is like this, explaining that every devastating attack by
foreigners against the Israelites was an Act of God, punishing His Chosen
People for idolatry. Now, Orthodox Jews read these books as literal
history, and once this has been understood it is obvious how this prepares
them to accept the view that more recent attacks by foreigners against the
Jews have also been deserved punishments sent by God for having failed to be
sufficiently ethical. This is a tragedy so immense it is difficult to
characterize. Here is historian of Judaism Shaye Cohen explaining
how Jeremiah’s arguments have affected the Jewish people throughout the ages: "This
prophet [Jeremiah] had warned the inhabitants of Jerusalem that their
rebellion against the king of Babylonia was also a rebellion against God. The
prophet counseled surrender. Nebuchadnezzar was performing God’s will in his
assault on the holy city, and the Jews were foolish to believe that they
could flout God’s will. The Jews were condemned to failure because of their
sins; Nebuchadnezzar was merely God’s agent for their punishment (Jeremiah
25). …these ideas had an enormous impact on subsequent Jewish thought and
practice. …The prophesies of Jeremiah…provide the ideological context for the
political behavior of the Jews in antiquity (and, indeed, of medieval and
modern times as well)."[29a] I have in fact met Jews who defend the view that the
Holocaust -- the Holocaust!! -- was God’s punishment on the Jewish people.
But whatever one may think of the historical truth of the ancient books of
the prophets, it should be obvious that the victims of Hitler’s genocide were
innocent. None of them deserved what happened, and the argument is most
clearly made for the children: surely nobody can rationally defend that they
deserved to be tortured to death. And yet some Jews are attracted to the
argument that this was a divine punishment on the Jews because they read the
Hebrew Bible as literal history. They do not deny the evils of the Nazis, as
indeed they don’t deny the evils of Nebuchadnezzar, but in both cases some
Jews consider them to have been instruments of God shaping History.
Naturally, one important consequence of this outlook is to make Jewish
self-defense difficult: if the punishment is divinely ordained and deserved,
what resistance can rightfully be offered? This is absurd, and if reading the Hebrew Bible as
literal history produces such absurdities, we have an excellent reason to be
skeptical that this is how the Hebrew Bible ought to be read. But there are other reasons. As I have argued at
length in The Crux of World History (see
the Meta-Interlude), ‘Jeremiah’ never existed. Neither did the other
prophets. The archaeological evidence is perfectly conclusive that before the
Babylonian exile, the Israelites didn’t know the Torah and were polytheists.
In other words, they were polytheists precisely as ‘Jeremiah’ accuses, but
they were honest polytheists -- not renegades from the Torah, as
‘Jeremiah’ would have it -- because they didn’t know the Torah. So what happened? The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are made
up mostly of collated official documents from the Persian period (some of
them in the original Aramaic -- the bureaucratic language of the Persian
empire -- rather than in translation to Hebrew), plus fragments of the
memoirs of these two leading participants. As such they have a better claim
to being a bona-fide historical witness than anything else in the Hebrew
Bible. So it matters that these books narrate that when the Israelite ruling
class, after having been forcibly exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, was
liberated by the Persian King Cyrus the Great and allowed to return to Judah,
it ended up in serious political struggle with the Israelites who had
remained because these latter didn’t want to follow the Torah. Why?
Naturally, because they didn’t know the Torah, a revolutionary new
book that the exiles brought and that made its first appearance in history
coinciding with the advent of Cyrus (the Messiah, according to the Book of
Isaiah -- see question 3, above).
According to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah,
after some important struggles (which I argue lasted a whole 150 years!), Ezra
and Nehemiah succeeded in convincing the Israelites to follow the Torah, and
thus was born the Jewish movement: monotheism, brotherhood, peace, and social
justice. It appears that, in order to strengthen the stability of this
ethical movement some pre-existing Israelite texts were rewritten. This
naturally required collecting all copies of the historical books of the
Israelites so that the new version could not be challenged, and the Second
Book of Maccabees says that this was done: “Nehemiah…founded
a library and collected the books about the kings and prophets, and the
writings of David, and letters of kings about votive offerings.” -- 2
Maccabees (2.13) Ezra himself is credited by the tradition with
having done the work of rewriting the history of the Israelites: “A re-writing
of the history of the [southern Israelite] kingdom of Judah (and ignoring
that of [the northern kingdom] of Israel) designed to stress religious rather
than secular matters was included also [in the Hebrew Bible]. This makes up the
two parts of Chronicles, and, according to tradition, it was Ezra himself who
wrote it.”[30] Why rewrite the History of Israel? Because keeping
stable an assertive ethical movement that demands social justice is extremely
difficult. Repressive ruling elites (as happened in the case of Antiochus
Epiphanes, then with the Romans, then with the Catholic Church's Holy Roman
Empire, with the Protestant kings and electors, with the Zarist Empire, and
finally with the Nazis), will perceive the movement as a threat, naturally
because repressive ruling elites are against social justice. The long history
of genocidal attacks against the Jewish people is more than sufficient
demonstration of this point. Now, when a movement like this is the victim of a
terrorist attack, its members will be severely tempted to abandon their
ethics. If this happens, the movement is dead, even if the members survive.
How to preserve the ethical ideology of the movement in the face of terrorist
attacks? Tell the members that to abandon ethics is to bring upon oneself
the attacks of foreigners, and that only by becoming more ethical can peace
be found again. This way, foreign attacks will be interpreted as a
punishment from God from which only an increase in ethical behavior can
deliver them. The consequence of this psychological orientation is that
terrorist attacks will not weaken the ethics of the orthodox core of Judaism,
but strengthen it, and this is how the world's only movement for social
justice that is eternally stable was produced. Remarkable. What the rewritten 'History of Israel' tells the
Jews follows the model of the Torah itself, laid out with great clarity in
its last book, the Book of Deuteronomy. In this book, the Jews are told
that if ever they stray from their ethical path, the Lord will send
foreigners to bring terrorist destruction on them. The list of predicted
horrors is quite detailed and quite long, and moreover it will remind you
vividly of the Nazi onslaught (see Deuteronomy 28.15-69; it is
reproduced in the Meta-Interlude of The Crux of
World History). So, in my hypothesis, the ‘historical’
books of the Hebrew Bible were rewritten by Ezra and Nehemiah so it would
appear that the predictions of Deuteronomy had already come true in
the experience of the Israelites, thus raising the prestige of the Torah. The
brand new Torah that Ezra and Nehemiah were pushing the
Israelites to follow was sold as the supposedly ancestral Israelite religion,
and the Israelites themselves were represented in the new history as always
having had great difficulty following it, thus bringing upon themselves,
repeatedly, the Lord’s destruction. In this way, the founders of the Torah
movement sought to scare the Jews into remaining ethical, come what
may, for the benefit of humankind. They succeeded. Naturally, this all produced a sharp contradiction
in Jewish ideology, because the Jews simultaneously believe, based on the
story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, that God bestowed upon humans free
will, which is an idea entirely incompatible with the view that God is in
control of historical outcomes. But this has not been a special problem
because people are perfectly capable of holding, simultaneously, completely
contradictory ideas. All of this is explained in detail, with a careful
presentation of evidence, in the Meta-Interlude of The Crux of World History.
The point for us here is that for many Jews, reading their books as literal
history has made it quite difficult to take up arms in self-defense. It is
perhaps high time that we recognized the logically obvious: A good God will
not wantonly murder His Chosen people, and if He gives us free will He cannot
be determining historical outcomes. The historical and archaeological
evidence supports the view that reading the Hebrew Bible as literal history
is an error, and once this has been accepted the above major contradictions
will also disappear from Judaism, making it easier, moreover, for Jews to
defend themselves. This will not mean that they have to sacrifice their
ethics, because fighting in self-defense is not an ethical error. What is an
ethical error, in my view, is allowing the innocent to be murdered, thus
making things easier for the murderers, and causing more innocents to die in
like fashion. There is, finally, a Messianic fatalism subscribed
to by many religious Jews that says God will determine history in the
following way: send the Messiah in order to then establish a
legitimate Jewish state. In other words, the creation of the State of Israel
does not bring us closer to the coming of the Messiah, but the other way
around: a legitimate Jewish state can only be created after the
Messiah comes, and therefore, so long as he hasn't come, the present state of
Israel is illegitimate and offensive to God: a sin. Out of this general perspective
has emerged a tiny sect that, despite being tiny, is quite troublesome. You
may remember a group of Orthodox Jews in Israel that recently supported the
Holocaust denial conference organized by the Iranians: Neturei Karta. This
organization does all sorts of ridiculous things to assist the enemies of the
Jewish state.[28a] Naturally, Neturei Karta is quite extreme, and does
not represent a majority of Orthodox Jews. In fact, fierce Jewish patriots
are easier to find among the Haredim -- the religious Jews -- and the news
service run by religious Jews in Israel is the most patriotic: Israel National News.
Moreover, it is religious Jews who are defending the strategic territories
that Israel's secular government wants to give away to the terrorist enemies
of the Jews. But the problem with Neturei Karta is not that their views are
numerous but that they have tremendous propaganda value for the enemies of
Israel: the spectacle of so-called ‘ultra-Orthodox’ Jews, however few,
denouncing in public the state of Israel together with its terrorist enemies,
is very harmful to the efforts of Jewish patriots to recruit sympathetic
non-Jews to their cause, and it raises the prestige of antisemitic attacks
against Israel. In addition, it contributes to the negative prejudices many
secular Jews have about religious Jews, which in turn hurts Jewish unity and
therefore Jewish self-defense.
The larger point is this: without Messianic Jewish
fatalism as a tendency among Orthodox Jews, Neturei Karta would not have
emerged. And the more generalized Orthodox uneasiness with the Jewish state
so long as the Messiah has not arrived is not exactly conducive to a vigorous
defense of the Jewish state and its boundaries. |
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The next piece in
this series is:
________________________________________________________ Footnotes and Further Reading [1]
Shapira, A. 1992. Land and power: The Zionist resort to force 1881-1948.
New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. [2] "How did
the 'Palestinian movement' emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German
Nazis, and the US"; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT, An HIR
series, in four parts; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006;
by Francisco Gil-White. [2a] To learn about the British policy, consult:
[2aa] Supporters of the PLO have accused the Irgunists of
having been terrorists themselves but the historical documentation shows this
to be a slander. Consult:
[2ab] To read documentation on how the Zionist Jews acquired
their lands in the Middle East, visit:
[2b] Hecht, Ben. 1999
[1961]. Perfidy. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing
House. (p.24) [2bb] Shapira, A.
1992. Land and power: The Zionist resort to force 1881-1948. New York
& Oxford: Oxford University Press. (p.64) [3] Carroll, J.
2001. Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin. (pp.261-62) [3a] Hecht, Ben. 1999 [1961]. Perfidy. Jerusalem:
Gefen Publishing House. (pp.96, 164) [4] Golda Meir |
Wikiquote [4a] "The religion of peace?: What, exactly, is
'moderate Islam'?" from THE CULTURE OF ISLAM; Historical and
Investigative Research; 10 January 2007; by Francisco Gil-White. [4b] "What is the problem with the Israeli ruling
elite? Is it stupidity? Or is it something else?"; THE PROBLEM OF JEWISH
SELF-DEFENSE An HIR series, in four parts; Historical and Investigative
Research; 12 September 2006; by Francisco Gil-White. [5] Anne Frank |
Wikiquote [6] The 1968 PLO
Charter states the objectives of the PLO as follows. Article 9 says that
“armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.” That’s worth chewing
on for a second, because the PLO could have written the same thing like this:
“it is required that Palestine be liberated in the act of killing people.”
Killing which people? This is relatively obvious. Article 15 of the PLO
Charter states that it is “a national duty to repulse the Zionist imperialist
invasion from the great Arab homeland and to purge the Zionist presence from
Palestine,” and article 22 declares that “the liberation of Palestine will
liquidate the Zionist and imperialist presence.” In other words, the PLO,
which organization asserts that ‘Palestine’ may be ‘liberated’ only in the
act of killing people, explains that its goal is purging and liquidating --
that is to say, exterminating -- “Zionists.”
[7] Kenneth Levin
writes:
For greater ease of comparison, this means that
after Arafat’s PLO was brought inside Israel, the rate of terrorist murders
against Israelis by ‘Palestinians’ was equal to 72 people per year. By
contrast, before the PLO was brought in, the rate had been around 15 people
per year. The Oslo process therefore immediately quintupled the
‘Palestinian’ terrorism against the Israelis. [8] Boatwright,
M. T., D. J. Gargola, and R. J. A. Talbert. 2004. The Romans: From village
to empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (p.302). [9] Shirer, W. L.
1960. The rise and fall of the Third Reich: A history of Nazi Germany.
New York: Simon & Shuster. (p.230) [10] The Romans (p.304). [11] Sheldon, R.
M. 1987. Tinker, tailor, Caesar, spy: Espionage in ancient Rome.
Ph.D., University of Michigan. (p.163) [12] Campbell, B.
1994. The Roman army, 31 BC - AD: A sourcebook. London and New York:
Routledge. (p.38) [13] Tinker, tailor,
Caesar, spy (pp.161-62) [14] Tinker, tailor,
Caesar, spy (pp.162-63) [15] Tinker, tailor,
Caesar, spy (p.156). [16] Tinker, tailor,
Caesar, spy (pp.160-161) [17] Tinker, tailor,
Caesar, spy (p.162) [18] Esler, P. F.
2000. "The Mediterranean context of early Christianity," in The
early Christian world, vol. 1. Edited by P. F. Esler, pp. 3-25. London
and New York: Routledge. (pp.12-13) [19] Veyne, P.
1987. From pagan Rome to Byzantium. A history of private life.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (p.55). [20] The Romans (p.76). [21] Isaac, B.
2004. The invention of racism in classical antiquity. Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press. (pp. 216-17) [22] From pagan Rome
to Byzantium (pp.52, 59, 61) [23] Hopkins, K.
2004. "Conquerors and slaves: The impact of conquering an empire on the
political economy of Italy," in Roman imperialism: Readings and
sources. Edited by C. B. Champion, pp. 108-161. Bodmin, Cornwall:
Blackwell. (p.112) [24] Sheldon, R.
M. 1993. The Spartacus rebellion: A Roman intelligence failure? International
journal of intelligence and counterintelligence 6:69-84. [25] Quoted in
Hopkins (2004:154) [26] “Many gentiles,
both men and women, converted to Judaism during the last centuries bce and
the first two centuries ce. Even more numerous, however, were those gentiles
who accepted certain aspects of Judaism but did not convert to it. In
polytheistic fashion they added the God of Israel to their pantheon and did
not deny the pagan gods. Throughout the Roman empire various practices of
Judaism found favor with large segments of the populace. In Rome many
gentiles observed the Sabbath, the fasts, and the food laws; in Alexandria
many gentiles observed the Jewish holidays; in Asia Minor many gentiles
attended synagogue on the Sabbath… The phenomenon of [the so-called]
‘God-fearers’ implies… [that a]ncient Judaism was visible and open to
outsiders. Gentiles were able to enter synagogues and witness the Jewish
observances. Josephus insists that Judaism has no mysteries, no secrets that
it keeps hidden from curious observers (Against Apion 2.8, & 107).
This claim is not entirely true, but it is essentially correct.” SOURCE: Cohen, S. J. D. 1987. From the Maccabees
to the Mishnah. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. (pp.55-56) [27] Quoted in the
fourth century Roman author Augustine of Hippo’s City of God (6.11). [27a] Quoted in: Slingerland, D. 1997. Claudian policymaking
and the early imperial repression of Judaism at Rome. Atlanta, GA: Scholars
Press. (pp.62-63) [28] “When any of
you sin in that you have heard a public adjuration to testify and -- though
able to testify as one who has seen or learned of the matter -- you do not
speak up, you are subject to punishment... When you realize your guilt...you
shall confess the sin that you have committed. And you shall bring to the Lord
as your penalty for the sin that you have committed, a female from the flock,
a sheep or a goat, as a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement on
your behalf for your sin.” -- Leviticus (5.1-6) “He shall remove all its fat..., and the priest shall
turn it into smoke on the altar for a pleasing odor to the Lord. Thus the
priest shall make atonement on your behalf, and you shall be forgiven.” -- Leviticus
(4.31) “The priest who offers [the victim] as a sin
offering shall eat of it; it shall be eaten in a holy place, in the court of
the tent of meeting.” -- Leviticus (6.26) [28a] Consider the following behaviors of Neturei Karta, and
their justifications (this was 1994, when the so-called Oslo 'Peace' Process
was being jump-started). No matter when the Messiah comes and what he does,
it is quite impossible for me to imagine that he will approve of Neturei
Karta. Gaza Journal; Rabbi on the Messiah's
Team, and Now Arafat's, The New York Times, August 20, 1994, Saturday, Late
Edition - Final, Rabbi Moshe Hirsh, Section 1; Page 2; Column 1; Foreign Desk
, 950 words, By CHRIS HEDGES, Special to The New York Times , GAZA, Aug. 14 [FULL TEXT] Rabbi Moshe Hirsh, the only Jew in Yasir Arafat's
Palestinian government, believes he is charged with a divine mission in this
era of peace and reconciliation. [29] Said during
the Catholic Mass. [29a] Cohen, S. J. D. 1987. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. [30] Asimov, I.
1971. The land of Canaan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (p.151)
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