Introduction
Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an anti-Semite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics.
Unfortunately, the hurried recognition of Israel as a state has resulted in forty-five years of murderous confusion, and the destruction of what Zionist fellow travelers thought would be a pluralistic state - home to its native population of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as a future home to peaceful European and American Jewish immigrants, even the ones who affected to believe that the great realtor in the sky had given them, in perpetuity, the lands of Judea and Samaria.
Since many of the immigrants were good socialists in Europe, we assumed that they would not allow the new state to become a theocracy, and that the native Palestinians could live with them as equals. This was not meant to be. I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.
Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than two per cent has bought or intimidated seventy senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying support of the media.
In a sense, I rather admire the way that the Israel lobby has gone about its business of seeing that billions of dollars, year after year, go to make Israel a 'bulwark against communism'. Actually, neither the USSR nor communism was ever much of a presence in the region. What America did manage to do was to turn the once friendly Arab world against us. Meanwhile, the misinformation about what is going on in the Middle East has got even greater and the principal victim of these gaudy lies - the American taxpayer to one side - is American Jewry, as it is constantly bullied by such professional terrorists as Begin and Shamir.
Worse, with a few honorable exceptions, Jewish-American intellectuals abandoned liberalism for a series of demented alliances with the Christian (antisemitic) right and with the Pentagon-industrial complex. In 1985 one of them blithely wrote that when Jews arrived on the American scene they 'found liberal opinion and liberal politicians more congenial in their attitudes, more sensitive to Jewish concerns' but now it is in the Jewish interest to ally with the Protestant fundamentalists because, after all, "is there any point in Jews hanging on dogmatically, hypocritically, to their opinions of yesteryear?' At this point the American left split and those of us who criticized our onetime Jewish allies for misguided opportunism, were promptly rewarded with the ritual epithet 'anti-Semite' or 'self-hating Jew'.
Fortunately, the voice of reason is alive and well, and in Israel, of all places. From Jerusalem, Israel Shahak never ceases to analyze not only the dismal politics of Israel today but the Talmud itself, and the effect of the entire rabbinical tradition on a small state that the right-wing rabbinate means to turn into a theocracy for Jews only. I have been reading Shahak for years. He has a satirist's eye for the confusions to be found in any religion that tries to rationalize the irrational. He has a scholar's sharp eye for textual contradictions. He is a joy to read on the great Gentile-hating Dr Maimonides.
Needless to say, Israel's authorities deplore Shahak. But there is not much to be done with a retired professor of chemistry who was born in Warsaw in 1933 and spent his childhood in the concentration camp at Belsen. In 1945, he came to Israel; served in the Israeli military; did not become a Marxist in the years when it was fashionable. He was - and still is -a humanist who detests imperialism whether in the names of the God of Abraham or of George Bush. Equally, he opposes with great wit and learning the totalitarian strain in Judaism. Like a highly learned Thomas Paine, Shahank illustrates the prospect before us, as well as the long history behind us, and thus he continues to reason, year after year. Those who heed him will certainly be wiser and - dare I say? - better. He is the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets. (Gore Vidal)
A Closed Utopia?
THIS BOOK, although written in English and addressed to people living outside the State of Israel, is, in a way, a continuation of my political activities as an Israeli Jew. Those activities began in 1965-6 with a protest which caused a considerable scandal at the time: I had personally witnessed an ultra-religious Jew refuse to allow his phone to be used on the Sabbath in order to call an ambulance for a non-Jew who happened to have collapsed in his Jerusalem neighborhood. Instead of simply publishing the incident in the press, I asked for a meeting which is composed of rabbis nominated by the State of Israel.
I asked them whether such behavior was consistent with their interpretation of the Jewish religion. They answered that the Jew in question had behaved correctly, indeed piously, and backed their statement by referring me to a passage in an authoritative compendium of Talmudic laws, written in this century. I reported the incident to the main Hebrew daily, Ha'aretz, whose publication of the story caused a media scandal. The results of the scandal were, for me, rather negative. Neither the Israeli, nor the diaspora, rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake.
It became apparent to me, as drawing on Talmudic laws governing the relations between Jews and non-Jews, that neither Zionism, including its seemingly secular part, nor Israeli politics since the inception of the State of Israel, nor particularly the policies of the Jewish supporters of Israel in the diaspora, could be understood unless the deeper influence of those laws, and the world view which they both create and express is taken into account. The actual policies Israel pursued after the Six Day War, and in particular the apartheid character of the Israeli regime in the Occupied Territories and the attitude of the majority of Jews to the issue of the rights of the Palestinians, even in the abstract, have merely strengthened this conviction.
By making this statement I am not trying to ignore the political or strategic considerations which may have also influenced the rulers of Israel. I am merely saying that actual politics is an interaction between realistic considerations (whether valid or mistaken, moral or immoral in my view) and ideological influences. The latter tend to be more influential the less they are discussed and 'dragged into the light'. Any form of racism, discrimination and xenophobia becomes more potent and politically influential if it is taken for granted by the society which indulges in it.
This is especially so if its discussion is prohibited, either formally or by tacit agreement. When racism, discrimination and xenophobia is prevalent among Jews, and directed against non-Jews, being fueled by religious motivations, it is like its opposite case, that of antisemitism and its religious motivations.
Today, however, while the second is being discussed, the very existence of the first is generally ignored, more outside Israel than within it. Without a discussion of the prevalent Jewish attitudes to non-Jews, even the concept of Israel as 'a Jewish state', as Israel formally defines itself, cannot be understood. The widespread misconception that Israel, even without considering its regime in the Occupied Territories, is a true democracy arises from the refusal to confront the significance of the term 'a Jewish state' for non-Jews.
In my view, Israel as a Jewish state constitutes a danger not only to itself and its inhabitants, but to all Jews and to all other peoples and states in the Middle East and beyond. I also consider that other Middle Eastern states or entities which define themselves as 'Arab' or 'Muslim', like the Israeli self-definition as being 'Jewish', likewise constitute a danger. However, while this danger is widely discussed, the danger inherent in the Jewish character of the State of Israel is not. The principle of Israel as 'a Jewish state' was supremely important to Israeli politicians from the inception of the state and was inculcated into the Jewish population by all conceivable ways.
When, in the early 1980s, a tiny minority of Israeli Jews emerged which opposed this concept, a Constitutional Law (that is, a law overriding provisions of other laws, which cannot be revoked except by a special procedure) was passed in 1985 by an enormous majority of the Knesset. By this law no party whose program openly opposes the principle of 'a Jewish state' or proposes to change it by democratic means, is allowed to participate in the elections to the Knesset.
I myself strongly oppose this constitutional principle. The legal consequence for me is that I cannot belong, in the state of which I am a citizen, to a party having principles with which I would agree and which is allowed to participate in Knesset elections. Even this example shows that the State of Israel is not a democracy due to the application of a Jewish ideology directed against all non-Jews and those Jews who oppose this ideology. But the danger which this dominant ideology represents is not limited to domestic affairs. It also influences Israeli foreign policies. This danger will continue to grow, as long as two currently operating developments are being strengthened: the increase in the Jewish character of Israel and the increase in its power, particularly in nuclear power.
Another ominous factor is that Israeli influence in the USA political establishment is also increasing. Hence accurate information about Judaism, and especially about the treatment of non-Jews by Israel, is now not only important, but politically vital as well. Let me begin with the official Israeli definition of the term 'Jewish', illustrating the crucial difference between Israel as 'a Jewish state' and the majority of other states. By this official definition, Israel 'belongs' to persons who are defined by the Israeli authorities as 'Jewish', irrespective of where they live, and to them alone.
On the other hand, Israel doesn't officially 'belong' to its non-Jewish citizens, whose status is considered even officially as inferior. This means in practice that if members of a Peruvian tribe are converted to Judaism, and thus regarded as Jewish, they are entitled at once to become Israeli citizens and benefit from the approximately 70 per cent of the West Bank land (and the 92 per cent of the area of Israel proper), officially designated only for the benefit of Jews. All non-Jews ( not only all Palestinians) are prohibited from benefitting from those lands. (The prohibition applies even to Israeli Arabs who served in the Israeli army and reached a high rank.)
The case involving Peruvian converts to Judaism actually occurred a few years ago. The newly-created Jews were settled in the West Bank, near Nablus, on land from which non-Jews are officially excluded. All Israeli governments are taking enormous political risks, including the risk of war, so that such settlements, composed exclusively of persons who are defined as 'Jewish' (and not 'Israeli' as most of the media mendaciously claims) would be subject to only 'Jewish' authority.
I suspect that the Jews of the USA or of Britain would regard it as antisemitic if Christians would propose that the USA or the United Kingdom should become a 'Christian state', belonging only to citizens officially defined as 'Christians'. The consequence of such doctrine is that Jews converting to Christianity would become full citizens because of their conversion. It should be recalled that the benefits of conversions are well known to Jews from their own history. When the Christian and the Islamic states used to discriminate against all persons not belonging to the religion of the state, including the Jews, the discrimination against Jews was at once removed by their conversion.
But a non-Jew discriminated against by the State of Israel will cease to be so treated the moment he or she converts to Judaism. This simply shows that the same kind of exclusivity that is regarded by a majority of the diaspora Jews as antisemitic is regarded by the majority of all Jews as Jewish.
To oppose both antisemitism and Jewish chauvinism is widely regarded among Jews as a 'self-hatred', a concept which I regard as nonsensical. The meaning of the term 'Jewish' and its cognates, including 'Judaism', thus becomes in the context of Israeli politics as important as the meaning of 'Islamic', when officially used by Iran, or 'communist' when it was officially used by the USSR.
However, the meaning of the term 'Jewish' as it is popularly used is not clear, either in Hebrew or when translated into other languages, and so the term had to be defined officially. According to Israeli law a person is considered 'Jewish' if either their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother were Jewesses by religion; or if the person was converted to Judaism in a way satisfactory to the Israeli authorities, and on condition that the person has not converted from Judaism to another religion, in which case Israel ceases to regard them as 'Jewish'.
Of the three conditions, the first represents the Talmudic definition of 'who is a Jew', a definition followed by Jewish Orthodoxy. The Talmud and post-Talmudic rabbinic law also recognize the conversion of a non-Jew to Judaism (as well as the purchase of a non-Jewish slave by a Jew followed by a different kind of conversion) as a method of becoming Jewish, provided that the conversion is performed by authorized rabbis in a proper manner. This 'proper manner' entails for females, their inspection by three rabbis while naked in a 'bath of purification', a ritual which, although notorious to all readers of the Hebrew press, is not often mentioned by the English media in spite of its undoubted interest for certain readers.
I hope that this book will be the beginning of a process which will rectify this discrepancy. But there is another urgent necessity for an official definition of who is, and who is not 'Jewish'. The State of Israel officially discriminates in favor of Jews and against non-Jews in many domains of life, of which I regard three as being most important: residency rights, the right to work and the right to equality before the law.
Discrimination in residency is based on the fact that about 92 per cent of Israel's land is the property of the state and is administered by the Israel Land Authority according to regulations issued by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), and affiliate of the World Zionist Organization. In its regulations the JNF denies the right to reside, to open a business, and often to work, to anyone who is not Jewish, only because he is not Jewish.
At the same time, Jews are not prohibited from taking residence or opening businesses anywhere in Israel. If applied in another state against the Jews, such discriminatory practice would instantly and justifiably be labeled antisemitism and would no doubt spark massive public protests. When applied by Israel as a part of its 'Jewish ideology', they are usually studiously ignored or excused when rarely mentioned.
The denial of the right to work means that non-Jews are prohibited officially from working on land administered by the Israel Land Authority according to the JNF regulations. No doubt these regulations are not always, or even often, enforced but they do exist. From time to time Israel attempts enforcement campaigns by state authorities, as, for example, when the Agriculture Ministry acts against 'the pestilence of letting fruit orchards belonging to Jews and situated on National Land [i.e., land belonging to the State of Israel] be harvested by Arab laborers', even if the laborers in question are citizens of Israel. Israel also strictly prohibits Jews settled on 'National Land' to sub-rent even a part of their land to Arabs, even for a short time; and those who do so are punished, usually by heavy fines. There is no prohibitions on non-Jews renting their land to Jews.
This means, in my own case, that by virtue of being a Jew I have the right to lease an orchard for harvesting its produce from another Jew, but a non-Jew, whether a citizen of Israel or a resident alien, does not have this right. Non-Jewish citizens of Israel do not have the right to equality before the law.
This discrimination is expressed in many Israeli laws in which, presumably in order to avoid embarrassment, the terms 'Jewish' and 'non-Jewish' are usually not explicitly stated, as they are in the crucial Law of Return. According to that law only persons officially recognized as 'Jewish' have an automatic right of entry to Israel and of settling in it. They automatically receive an 'immigration certificate' which provides them on arrival with 'citizenship by virtue of having returned to the Jewish homeland', and with the right to many financial benefits, which vary somewhat according to the country from which they emigrated.
The Jews who emigrate from the states of the former USSR receive 'an absorption grant' of more than $20,000 per family. All Jews immigrating to Israel according this law immediately acquire the right to vote in elections and to be elected to the Knesset; even if they do not speak a word of Hebrew.
Other Israeli laws substitute the more obtuse expressions 'anyone who can immigrate in accordance with the Law of Return' and 'anyone who is not entitled to immigrate in accordance with the law of Return'. Depending on the law in question benefits are them granted to the first category and systematically denied to the second. The routine means for enforcing discrimination in everyday life is the ID card, which everyone is obliged to carry at all times. ID cards list the official 'nationality' of a person, which can be 'Jewish', 'Arab', 'Druze' and the like, with the significant exception of 'Israeli'.
Attempts to force the Interior Minister to allow Israelis wishing to be officially described as 'Israeli', or even as 'Israeli-Jew' in their ID cards have failed. Those who have attempted to do so have a letter from the Ministry of the Interior stating that 'it was decided not to recognize an Israeli nationality'. The letter does not specify who made this decision or when. There are so many laws and regulations in Israel which discriminate in favor of the persons defined in Israel as those 'who can immigrate in accordance with the Law of Return' that the subject demands separate treatment. We can look here at one example, seemingly trivial in comparison with residence restrictions, but nevertheless important since it reveals the real intentions of the Israeli legislator.
Israeli citizens who left the country for a time but who are defined as those who 'can immigrate in accordance with the Law of Return' are eligible on their return to generous customs benefits, to receive subsidy for their children's high school education, and to receive either a grant or a loan on easy terms for the purchase of an apartment, as well as other benefits. Citizens who cannot be so defined, in other words, the non-Jewish citizens of Israel, get none of these benefits. The obvious intention of such discriminatory measures is to decrease the number of non-Jewish citizens of Israel, in order to make Israel a more 'Jewish' state.
The Ideology of 'Redeemed' Land
Israel also propagates among its Jewish citizens an exclusivist ideology of the Redemption of Land. Its official aim of minimizing the number of non-Jews can be well perceived in this ideology , which is inculcated to Jewish schoolchildren in Israel. They are taught that it is applicable to the entire extent of either the State of Israel or, after 1967, to what is referred to as the Land of Israel.
According to this ideology, the land which has been 'redeemed' is the land which has passed from non-Jewish ownership to Jewish ownership. The ownership can be either private, or belong to either the JNF or the Jewish state. The land which belongs to non-Jews is, on the contrary, considered to be 'unredeemed'. Thus, if a Jew who committed the blackest crimes which can be imagined buys a piece of land from a virtuous non-Jew, the 'unredeemed' land becomes 'redeemed' by such a transaction.
However, if a virtuous non-Jew purchases land from the worst Jew, the formerly pure and 'redeemed' land becomes 'unredeemed' again. The logical conclusion of such an ideology is the expulsion, called 'transfer', of all non-Jews from the area of land which has to be 'redeemed'. Therefore the Utopia of the 'Jewish ideology' adopted by the State of Israel is a land which is wholly 'redeemed' and none of it is owned or worked by non-Jews. The leaders of the Zionist labor movement expressed this utterly repellent idea with the greatest clarity. Walter Laquer a devoted Zionist, tells in his History of Zionism:
1). How one of these spiritual fathers, A.D. Gordon, who died in 1919, 'objected to violence in principle and justified self defense only in extreme circumstances. But he and his friends wanted every tree and bush in the Jewish homeland to be planted by nobody else except Jewish pioneers'. This means that they wanted everybody else to just go away and leave the land to be 'redeemed' by Jews. Gordon's successors added more violence than he intended but the principle of 'redemption' and its consequences have remained.
In the same way, the kibbutz, widely hailed as an attempt to create a Utopia, was and is an exclusivist Utopia; even if it is composed of atheists, it does not accent Arab members on principle and demands that potential members from other nationalities be first converted to Judaism. No wonder the kibbutz boys can be regarded as the most militaristic segment of the Israeli Jewish society. It is this exclusivist ideology, rather than all the 'security needs' alleged by Israeli propaganda, which determines the takeovers of land in Israel in the 1950s and again in the mid-1960s and in the Occupied Territories after 1967.
This ideology also dictated official Israeli plans for 'the Judaizition of Galilee'. This curious term means encouraging Jews to settle in Galilee by giving them financial benefits. (I wonder what would be the reaction of US Jews if a plan for 'the Christianization of New York' or even only of Brooklyn, would be proposed in their country.) But the Redemption of the Land implies more than regional 'Judaizition'. In the entire area of Israel the JNF, vigorously backed by Israeli state agencies (especially by the secret police) is spending great sums of public money in order to 'redeem' any land which non-Jews are willing to sell, and to preempt any attempt by a Jew to sell his land to a non-Jew by paying him a higher price.
Israeli Expansionism
The main danger which Israel, as 'a Jewish state', poses to its own people, to other Jews and to its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars resulting from this aim. The more Israel becomes Jewish or, as one says in Hebrew, the more it 'returns to Judaism' (a process which has been under way in Israel at least since 1967), the more its actual politics are guided by Jewish ideological considerations and less by rational ones.
My use of the term 'rational' does not refer here to a moral evaluation of Israeli policies, or to the supposed defense or security needs of Israel - even less so to the supposed needs of 'Israeli survival'. I am referring here to Israeli imperial policies based on its presumed interests. However morally bad or politically crass such policies are, I regard the adoption of policies based on 'Jewish ideology', in all its different versions as being even worse. The ideological defense of Israeli policies are usually based on Jewish religious beliefs or, in the case of secular Jews, on the 'historical rights' of the Jews which derive from those beliefs and retain the dogmatic character of religious faith.
My own early political conversion from admirer of Ben-Gurion to his dedicated opponent began exactly with such an issue. In 1956 I eagerly swallowed all of Ben-Gurion's political and military reasons for Israel initiating the Suez War, until he (in spite of being an atheist, proud of his disregard of the commandments of Jewish religion) pronounced in the Knesset on the third day of that war, that the real reason for it is 'the restoration of the kingdom of David and Solomon' to its Biblical borders. At this point in his speech, almost every Knesset member spontaneously rose and sang the Israeli national anthem.
To my knowledge, no Zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion's idea that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of pragmatic considerations) on the restoration of the Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state. Indeed, close analysis of Israeli grand strategies and actual principles of foreign policy, as they are expressed in Hebrew, makes it clear that it is 'Jewish ideology', more than any other factor, which determines actual Israeli policies.
The disregard of Judaism as it really is and of 'Jewish ideology' makes those policies incomprehensible to foreign observers who usually know nothing about Judaism except crude apologetics. Let me give a more recent illustration of the essential difference which exists between Israeli imperial planning of the most inflated but secular type, and the principles of 'Jewish ideology'. The latter enjoins that land which was either ruled by any Jewish ruler in ancient times or was promised by God to the Jews, either in the Bible or - what is actually more important politically - according to a rabbinic interpretation of the Bible and the Talmud, should belong to Israel since it is a Jewish state. No doubt, many Jewish 'doves' are of the opinion that such conquest should be deferred to a time when Israel will be stronger than it is now, or that there would be, hopefully, a 'peaceful conquest', that is , that the Arab rulers or peoples would be 'persuaded' to cede the land in question in return for benefits which the Jewish state would then confer on them.
A number of discrepant versions of Biblical borders of the Land of Israel, which rabbinical authorities interpret as ideally belonging to the Jewish state, are in circulation. The most far-reaching among them include the following areas within these borders: in the south, all of Sinai and a part of northern Egypt up to the environs of Cairo; in the east, all of Jordan and a large chunk of Saudi Arabia, all of Kuwait and a part of Iraq south of the Euphrates; in the north, all of Lebanon and all of Syria together with a huge part of Turkey (up to lake Van); and in the west, Cyprus.
An enormous body of research and learned discussion based on these borders, embodied in atlases, books, articles and more popular forms of propaganda is being published in Israel, often with state subsidies, or other forms of support. Certainly the late Kahane and his followers, as will as influential bodies such as Gush Emunim, not only desire the conquest of those territories by Israel, but regard it as a divinely commanded act, sure to be successful since it will be aided by God.
In fact, important Jewish religious figures regard the Israeli refusal to undertake such a holy war, or even worse, the return of Sinai to Egypt, as a national sin which was justly punished by God. One of the more influential Gush Emunim rabbis, Dov Lior, the rabbi of Jewish settlements of Kiryat Arba and of Hebron, stated repeatedly that the Israeli failure to conquer Lebanon in 1982-5 was a well-merited divine punishment for its sin of 'giving a part of Land of Israel', namely Sinai, to Egypt.
Although I have chosen an admittedly extreme example of the Biblical borders of the Land of Israel which 'belong' to the 'Jewish state', those borders are quite popular in national-religious circles. There are less extreme versions of Biblical borders, sometimes also called 'historical borders'. It should however be emphasized that within Israel and the community of its diaspora Jewish supporters, the validity of the concept of either Biblical borders or historical borders as delineating the borders of land which belongs to Jews by right is not denied on grounds of principle, except by the tiny minority which opposes the concept of a Jewish state.
Otherwise, objections to the realization of such borders by a war are purely pragmatical. One can claim that Israel is now too weak to conquer all the land which 'belongs' to the Jews, or that the loss of Jewish lives (but not of Arab lives!) entailed in a war of conquest of such magnitude is more important than the conquest of the land, but in normative Judaism one cannot claim that 'the Land of Israel', in whatever borders, does not 'belong' to all the Jews. In May 1993, Ariel Sharon formally proposed in the Likud Convention that Israel should adopt the 'Biblical borders' concept as its official policy. There were rather few objections to this proposal, either in the Likud or outside it, and all were cased on pragmatic grounds.
No one even asked Sharon where exactly are the Biblical borders which he was urging that Israel should attain. Let us recall that among those who call themselves Leninists there was no doubt that history follows the principles laid out by Marx and Lenin. It is not only the belief itself, however dogmatic, but the refusal that it should ever be doubted, by thwarting open discussion, which creates a totalitarian cast of mind. Israeli-Jewish society and diaspora Jews who are leading 'Jewish lives' and organized in purely Jewish organizations, can be said therefore to have a strong streak of totalitarianism in their character.
However, an Israeli grand strategy, not based on the tenets of 'Jewish ideology', but based on purely strategic or imperial considerations had also developed since the inception of the state. An authoritative and lucid description of the principles governing such strategy was given by General (Reserves) Shlomo Gazit, a former Military Intelligence commander.-- According to Gazit, "Israel's main task has not changed at all [since the demise of the USSR] and it remains of crucial importance. The geographical location of Israel at the center of the Arab-Muslim Middle East predestines Israel to be a devoted guardian of stability in all the countries surrounding it. Its [role] is to protect the existing regimes: to prevent or halt the processes of radicalization, and to block the expansion of fundamentalist religious zealotry. For this purpose Israel will prevent changes occurring beyond Israel's borders [which it] will regard as intolerable, to the point of feeling compelled to use all its military power for the sake of their prevention or eradication."
In other words, Israel aims at imposing a hegemony on other Middle Eastern states. Needless to say, according to Gazit, Israel has a benevolent concern for the stability of the Arab regimes. In Gazit's view, by protecting Middle Eastern regimes, Israel performs a vital service for 'the industrially advanced states, all of which are keenly concerned with guaranteeing the stability in the Middle East'.
He argues that without Israel the existing regimes of the region would have collapsed long ago and that they remain in existence only because of Israeli threats. While this view may be hypocritical, one should recall in such contexts La Rochefoucault's maxim that 'hypocrisy is the tax which wickedness pays to virtue'. Redemption of the Land is an attempt to evade paying any such tax.
Needless to say, I also oppose root and branch the Israeli non-ideological policies as they are so lucidly and correctly explained by Gazit. At the same time, I recognize that the dangers of the policies of Ben-Gurion of Sharon, motivated by 'Jewish ideology', are much worse than merely imperial policies, however criminal. The results of policies of other ideologically motivated regimes point in the same direction. The existence of an important component of Israeli policy, which is based on 'Jewish ideology', makes its analysis politically imperative.
This ideology is, in turn based on the attitudes of historic Judaism to non-Jews, one of the main themes of this book. Those attitudes necessarily influence many Jews, consciously or unconsciously. Our task here is to discuss historic Judaism in real terms. The influence on 'Jewish ideology' on many Jews will be stronger the more it is hidden from public discussion. Such discussion will, it is hoped, lead people take the same attitude towards Jewish chauvinism and the contempt displayed by so many Jews towards non-Jews (which will be documented below) as that commonly taken towards antisemitism and all other forms of xenophobia, chauvinism and racism. It is justly assumed that only the full exposition, not only of antisemitism, but also of its historical roots, can be the basis of struggle against it.
Likewise I am assuming that only the full exposition of Jewish chauvinism and religious fanaticism can be the basis of struggle against those phenomena. This is especially true today when, contrary to the situation prevailing fifty or sixty years ago, the political influence of Jewish chauvinism and religious fanaticism is much greater than that of antisemitism. But there is also another important consideration. I strongly believe that antisemitism and Jewish chauvinism can only be fought simultaneously.
A Closed Utopia?
Until such attitudes are widely adopted, the actual danger of Israeli policies based on 'Jewish ideology' remains greater than the danger of policies based on purely strategic considerations. The difference between the two kinds of policies was well expressed by Hugh Trevor-Roper in his essay 'Sir Thomas More and Utopia'
2). In which he termed them Platonic and Machiavellian: "Machiavelli at least apologized for the methods which he thought necessary in politics. He regretted the necessity of force and fraud and did not call them by any other name. But Plato and More sanctified them, provided that they were used to sustain their own Utopian republics."
In a similar way true believers in that Utopia called the 'Jewish state', which will strive to achieve the 'Biblical borders', are more dangerous than the grand strategists of Gazit's type because their policies are being sanctified either by the use of religion or, worse, by the use of secularized religious principles which retain absolute validity. While Gazit at least sees a need to argue that the Israel dictate benefits the Arab regimes,
Ben-Gurion did not pretend that the re-establishment of the kingdom of David and Solomon will benefit anybody except the Jewish state. Using the concepts of Platonism to analyze Israeli policies based on 'Jewish ideology' should not seem strange. It was noticed by several scholars, of whom the most important was Moses Hadas, who claimed that the foundations of 'classical Judaism', that is, of Judaism as it was established by Talmudic sages, are based on Platonic influences and especially on the image of Sparta as it appears in Plato.
3). According to Hadas, a crucial feature of the Platonic political system, adopted by Judaism as early as the Maccabean period (142-63 BC), was 'that every phase of human conduct be subject to religious sanctions which are in fact to be manipulated by the ruler'. There can be no better definition of 'classical Judaism' and of the ways in which the rabbis manipulated it than this Platonic definition. In particular, Hadas claims that Judaism adopted what 'Plato himself summarized [as] the objectives of his program', in the following well-known passage: "The principle thing is that no one, man or woman, should ever be without an officer set over him, and that none should get the mental habit of taking any step, whether in earnest or in jest, on his individual responsibility. In peace as in war he must live always with his eyes on his superior officer... In a word, we must train the mind not to even consider acting as an individual or know how to do it." (Laws, 942ab)
If the word 'rabbi' is substituted for 'an officer' we will have a perfect image of classical Judaism. The latter is still deeply influencing Israeli-Jewish society and determining to a large extent the Israeli policies. It was the above quoted passage which was chosen by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies as describing the essence of 'a closed society'. Historical Judaism and its two successors, Jewish Orthodoxy and Zionism, are both sworn enemies of the concept of the open society as applied to Israel.
A Jewish state, whether based on its present Jewish ideology or, if it becomes even more Jewish in character than it is now, on the principles of Jewish Orthodoxy, cannot ever contain an open society. There are two choices which face Israeli-Jewish society. It can become a fully closed and warlike ghetto, a Jewish Sparta, supported by the labor of Arab helots, kept in existence by its influence on the US political establishment and by threats to use its nuclear power, or it can try to become an open society. The second choice is dependent on an honest examination of its Jewish past, on the admission that Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism exist, and on an honest examination of the attitudes of Judaism towards the non-Jews.
Prejudice and Prevarication
From: "Jewish History, Jewish Religion:
The Weight of Three Thousand Years
by Professor Israel Shahak
The First Difficulty in writing about this subject is that the term 'Jew' has been used during the last 150 years with two rather different meanings. To understand this, let us imagine ourselves in the year 1780. Then the universally accepted meaning of the term 'Jew' basically coincided with what the Jews themselves understood as constituting their own identity.
This identity was primarily religious, but the precepts of religion governed the details of daily behavior in all aspects of life, both social and private, among the Jews themselves as well as in their relation to non-Jews. It was then literally true that a Jew could not even drink a glass of water in the home of a non-Jew. And the same basic laws of behavior towards non-Jews were equally valid from Yemen to New York. Whatever the term by which the Jews of 1780 may be described - and I do not wish to enter into a metaphysical dispute about terms like, 'nation' and 'people' (The Jews themselves universally described themselves as a religious community or, to be precise, a religious nation. 'Our people is a people only because of the Torah (Religious Law)'-this saying by one of the highest authorities, Rabbi Sa'adia Hagga'on who lived in the 10th century, has become proverbial) it is clear that all Jewish communities at that time were separate from the non-Jewish societies in the midst of which they were living.
However, all this was changed by two parallel processes - beginning in Holland and England, continuing in revolutionary France and in countries which followed the example of the French Revolution, and then in the modern monarchies of the 19th century: the Jews gained a significant level of individual rights (in some cases full legal equality), and the legal power of the Jewish community over its members was destroyed. It should be noted that both developments were simultaneous, and that the latter is even more important, albeit less widely known, than the former.
Since the time of the late Roman Empire, Jewish communities had considerable legal powers over their members. Not only powers which arise through voluntary mobilization of social pressure (for example refusal to have any dealing whatsoever with an excommunicated Jew or even to bury his body), but a power of naked coercion: to flog, to imprison, to expel - all this could be inflicted quite legally on an individual Jew by the rabbinical courts for all kinds of offenses.
In many countries; Spain and Poland are notable examples, even capital punishment could be and was inflicted, sometimes using particularly cruel methods such as flogging to death. All this was not only permitted but positively encouraged by the state authorities in both Christian and Muslim countries, who besides their general interest in preserving 'law and order' had in some cases a more direct financial interest as well.
For example, in Spanish archives dating from the 13th and 14th centuries there are records of many detailed orders issued by those most devout Catholic Kings of Castile and Aragon, instructing their no less devout officials to co-operate with the rabbis in enforcing observance of the Sabbath by the Jews. Why? Because whenever a Jew was fined by a rabbinical court for violating the Sabbath, the rabbis had to hand nine tenths of the fine over to the king - a very profitable and effective arrangement. Similarly, one can quote from the responsa written shortly before 1832 by the famous Rabbi Moshe Sofer of Pressburg (now Bratislava), in what was then the autonomous Hungarian Kingdom in the Austrian Empire, and addressed to Vienna in Austria proper, where the Jews had already been granted some considerable individual rights. (The Jews themselves universally described themselves as a religious community or, to be precise, a religious nation. 'Our people is a people only because of the Torah (Religious Law)'-this saying by one of the highest authorities, Rabbi Sa'adia Hagga'on who lived in the 10th century, has become proverbial; By Emperor Joseph II in 1782)
He laments the fact that since the Jewish congregation in Vienna lost its powers to punish offenders, the Jews there have become lax in matters of religious observance, and adds: 'Here in Pressburg, when I am told that a Jewish shopkeeper dared to open his shop during the Lesser Holidays, I immediately send a policeman to imprison him.'
This was the most important social fact of Jewish existence before the advent of the modern state: observance of the religious laws of Judaism, as well as their inculcation through education, were enforced on Jews by physical coercion, from which one could only escape by conversion to the religion of the majority, amounting in the circumstances to a total social break and for that reason very impracticable, except during a religious crisis. (All this is usually omitted in vulgar Jewish historiography, in order to propagate the myth that the Jews kept their religion by miracle or by some peculiar mystic force)
However, once the modern state had come into existence, the Jewish community lost its powers to punish or intimidate the individual Jew. The bonds of one of the most closed of 'closed societies', one of the most totalitarian societies in the whole history of mankind were snapped. This act of liberation came mostly from outside; although there were some Jews who helped it from within, these were at first very few.
This form of liberation had very grave consequences for the future. Just as in the case of Germany (according to the masterly analysis of A.J.P. Taylor) it was easy to ally the cause of reaction with patriotism, because in actual fact individual rights and equality before the law were brought into Germany by the armies of the French Revolution and of Napoleon, and one could brand liberty as 'un-German', exactly so it turned out to be very easy among the Jews, particularly in Israel, to mount a very effective attack against all the notions and ideals of humanism and the rule of law (not to say democracy) as something 'un-Jewish' or 'anti-Jewish' - as indeed they are, in a historical sense - and as principles which may be used in the 'Jewish interest', but which have no validity against the 'Jewish interest', for example when Arabs invoke these same principles. This has also led - again just as in Germany and other nations of Mitteleuropa - to a deceitful, sentimental and ultra-romantic Jewish historiography, from which all inconvenient facts have been expunged.
So one will not find in Hannah Arendt's voluminous writings, whether on totalitarianism or on Jews, or on both, (For example, in her Origins of Totalitarianism, a considerable part of which is devoted to Jews) the smallest hint as to what Jewish society in Germany was really like in the 18th century: burning of books, persecution of writers, disputes about the magic powers of amulets, bans on the most elementary 'non-Jewish' education such as the teaching of correct German or indeed German written in the Latin alphabet. (Before the end of the 18th century, German Jews were allowed by their rabbis to write German in Hebrew letters only, on pain of being excommunicated, flogged, etc)
Nor can one find in the numerous English-language 'Jewish histories' the elementary facts about the attitude of Jewish mysticism (so fashionable at present in certain quarters) to non-Jews: that they are considered to be, literally, limbs of Satan, and that the few non-satanic individuals among them (that is, those who convert to Judaism) are in reality 'Jewish souls' who got lost when Satan violated the Holy Lady (Shekhinah or Matronit, one of the female components of the Godhead, sister and wife of the younger male God according to the cabbala) in her heavenly abode. The great authorities, such as Gershom Scholem, have lent their authority to a system of deceptions in all the 'sensitive' areas, the more popular ones being the most dishonest and misleading.
But the social consequence of this process of liberalization was that, for the first time since about AD 200, (When by a deal between the Roman Empire and the Jewish leaders (the dynasty of the Nesi 'im) all the Jews in the Empire were subjected to the fiscal and disciplinary authority of these leaders and their rabbinical courts, who for their part undertook to keep order among the Jews) a Jew could be free to do what he liked, within the bounds of his country's civil law, without having to pay for this freedom by converting to another religion.
The freedom to learn and read books in modern languages, the freedom to read and write books in Hebrew not approved by the rabbis (as any Hebrew or Yiddish book previously had to be), the freedom to eat non-kosher food, the freedom to ignore the numerous absurd taboos regulating sexual life, even the freedom to think - for 'forbidden thoughts' are among the most serious sins - all these were granted to the Jews of Europe (and subsequently of other countries) by modern or even absolutist European regimes, although the latter were at the same time antisemitic and oppressive.
Nicholas I of Russia was a notorious anti-Semite and issued many laws against the Jews of his state. But he also strengthened the forces of 'law and order' in Russia - not only the secret police but also the regular police and the gendarmerie - with the consequence that it became difficult to murder Jews on the order of their rabbis, whereas in pre-1795 Poland it had been quite easy. 'Official' Jewish history condemns him on both counts.
For example, in the late 1830s a 'Holy Rabbi' (Tzadik) in a small Jewish town in the Ukraine ordered the murder of a heretic by throwing him into the boiling water of the town baths, and contemporary Jewish sources note with astonishment and horror that bribery was 'no longer effective' and that not only the actual perpetrators but also the Holy Man were severely punished.
The Metternich regime of pre-1848 Austria was notoriously reactionary and quite unfriendly to Jews, but it did not allow people, even liberal Jewish rabbis, to be poisoned. During 1848, when the regime's power was temporarily weakened, the first thing the leaders of the Jewish community in the Galician city of Lemberg (now Lvov) did with their newly regained freedom was to poison the liberal rabbi of the city, whom the tiny non-Orthodox Jewish group in the city had imported from Germany. One of his greatest heresies, by the way, was the advocacy and actual performance of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, which had recently been invented.
We should renew our own commission "be not afraid of the Jews." That means be not afraid of the magistrates of the city, county, state or federal for they have no power against you but what is given them from above. We are pleading, like Paul, the cause of heaven and we need to do it boldly. We should not be afraid of their words, nor dismayed at their quirky looks and fraudulent judgments. At the right times we should speak, and not hold back.
We should let no opportunity slip by without speaking in defense of Christianity and in opposition to the Jews and their hideous Judaism. We should not speak shyly or with caution, but up front, plainly and fully and with courage. We need to speak out in the liberty of the Spirit that becomes an ambassador for Christ.
Paul did speak up and the "Jews" rose up against him, but the Lord went to court with him and threw out his accusers by the hand of a person in high position.
In this city that "Jews flocked to" you must remember that Corinth was a very profane and wicked city, full of impurity of all kinds and idols of all kinds. Yet in this great evil heap, with all its contempt for White Christian Israelites, i.e., the wheat, it sure seemed to human knowledge that the chaff would over come, but in this ore that seems to be all dross, there is gold. Even in Corinth, Christ had much people. So we need to unseat this "fear of the Jews syndrome" and expose their evil, wicked plot to destroy all Christianity. This needs to be done today, before time runs out. Have you come "to know fully" the truth about Judaism and Christianity?
In verses 12-17 of Acts, Chapter 18, we find another of Paul's many trying times with the Jews {worshipers of Judaism - Traditions of the Elders}. Paul is accused by member of this Jewish sect before the Roman Governor, Gallio. Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, that is he was the proconsul for this province of the Roman Empire. In modern words this Jewish sect filed a frivolous complaint in a Roman court against Paul and Gallio was to be the presiding judge.
Paul was rudely apprehended with violence and fury in broad day light. These Jews cared little for public peace and justice, so they made insurrection. To me this means that they used disturbance of the public peace and force, i.e., vi et armis, to apprehend Paul. They had little concern for his welfare or the safety of others. They, as they do today, already had pronounced Paul guilty in the media of their day. Just as they had at the trials of Christ. These enforcers hurried Paul off, probably in chains, to the judgment seat before Gallio. Paul was allowed no time, whatsoever, to prepare for his trial. Sounds like a familiar patriot scenario of arrest today, does it not?
Paul, much like Christ, is falsely accused before Gallio (v. 13). What was the formal charge? "This fellow persuades men to worship God contrary to the law." My what a crime! Paul must have been "anti-Semitic." These Jews could not charge him with persuading men not to worship God at all or to worship other Gods. (See Deuteronomy 13:2) So the only trumped up charge they could accuse him of breaking was "that he was attempting to persuade men to worship God in a way contrary to the law."
Now what in the world would you consider as being "contrary to the law." Does this sound a familiar alarm today? Sure it does! If you act "contrary" to the "law" of Title 26, your state motor vehicle "laws," or your property appraisal and collection "laws," see how fast you will be jerked up before some judgment seat and be made to pay for your "crimes."
The Romans allowed the Jews in all their provinces the observation of their own law. But, remember in verse 2, it is recorded, that Jews had been commanded to leave Rome. I wonder why? Did they have a Jewish problem in the society of that day?
But who would enforce Jewish law in such a city of idols and corruption? Should all persons therefore be prosecuted as criminals, who worship God in any other way than that prescribed by the tenets of Judaism? The big question before Gallio is, "Does Roman toleration include a power of imposition?" Could Roman law force Paul or anyone to stop practicing any activity contrary to what the "Jews" call their law?
You must remember that the Jewish religion hates Christ and all goyium, i.e., White People. This is why the Jews of Corinth were so uptight against Paul for he was preaching Salvation through the Blood of Christ. This tenet of Israelite Christianity is unacceptable then and today for the Jews of this Pharisaism, i.e., Judaism.
How the so-called (c)hristian of today can use the term Judeo-Christian is a gigantic mystery to many. When will the little "c" Christians come "to know fully" that these are two diametrically opposites. Just like black against white, not verses cold and light verses dark?
Paul was charged unjustly. Are White Israelite patriots ever charged unjustly, for violating some phantom law? Do they have ample opportunity to be tried in courts of certified common law venue where justice, fairness and real law prevails? Rarely, if ever, not since about 1861 have justice been had in such courts.
Paul had a different circumstance at this hearing than most patriots are usually afforded today. Gallio had a sweet nature and was sympathetic and apparently a stickler for the letter of the law. For Gallio reasoned that the Jews in their own law, had in it a promise of a Prophet whom God would raise up to them, and they should listen to him and/or hear him.
And Paul only persuaded people to believe in this Prophet, who was to come and to hear Him, which was all according "to the law." For this Prophet came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Paul's teaching contradicted Judaism, partially the idea of Christ being the Messiah.
At the first hearing or, perhaps, a better way to put it, is no hearing at all, for Gallio dismisses the cause and states that he will not take any cognizance of the issue, at all (v. 14-15). Paul was just about to make his defense which he apparently became so eloquently accustomed to doing. (See Acts 24-26) Paul was about to present evidence that would prove that he did not teach men to worship contrary to the law, when Gallio rules that he will not be troubled with this case and will not pass sentence upon it nor even allow himself the trouble of examining it.
He, Gallio, was very capable of doing the part of a judge in any matter properly placed before him to take cognizance of. He said to the Jews, that were the prosecutors, "If it were a matter of wrong, or wicked lewdness," if you could charge the prisoner with theft or fraud, with murder or plunder or any act of immorality.
We would be bound to hear you with your complaint or accusations. Just because these Jews were loud and noisy and rude petitioners of this court, there was no valid reason to give them a hearing in any obvious unjust case. If the petitioner's cause had been just then it would have been the duty of Gallio or any magistrate to cause justice to be done. That means redress the injured party to be afforded his right(s).
Then Gallio would pass comment and give the court's sentence upon the party causing the injury. If the complaint had merits even though not made with all the decorum of a judicial case, Gallio would have felt bound to hear the petitioner, no matter how rude and noisy they were in presenting it. But Gallio will not and did not allow these Jews a chance to make a complaint to him for something not within his jurisdiction (v. 15). Oh, if we had a few judges and magistrates today of the caliber to determine rightful venue and jurisdiction. This Jude would not allow the Jews to burden his patience by hearing it nor would he burden his conscience with passing judgment upon this matter. And when the Jews hollered and screamed more and more, he found them in contempt of "his" court and drove them from the seat of judgment (v. 16). Then he called the next cause. Bravo, Bravo!!!
This passage makes one think that Gallio conducted himself in a dignified and honorable mode. If only we had judges today who possessed this character. He did not want to, nor even pretend to judge spiritual things that he did not really understand. This judgment would be left to the Jews in matters regarding their religion of Judaism. Yet he would not allow, the Jews to make him {Gallio} their instrument or tool of malice and pretend to pass judgment against Paul {he was following the example Pilate showed when he washed his hands of the matter concerning Christ, and told the Jews to do what they would, but he would have nothing to do with killing Christ}. Gallio looked upon this matter as not within his venue and jurisdiction and he did not intend to meddle in this affair anymore than a dismissal.
Gallio seems to have understood the law better than he did religious and/or worship. Whether Christ was the Messiah and of God, was not the issue before his court and he felt no need to take "judicial notice" of the law of any God. Whether the Gospel teachings of Christ the Messiah was of divine origin or not as these were not questions of words and names (v. 15) as Gallio scornfully and profanely called them. These are valid concerns for Christianity and Judaism but not for a Roman Court, and he felt because of his ignorance of Judaism and Christianity, he did not want to inquire very far into them.
"In 1923, Trotsky, and Lunatcharsky presided over a meeting in Moscow organized by the propaganda section of the Communist party to judge God. Five thousand men of the Red Army were present. The Accused [Almighty God] was found guilty of various ignominious acts and having had the audacity to fail to appear, He [God] was condemned in default." (Ost Express, January 30, 1923. Cf. Berliner Taegeblatt May 1, 1923. See the details of the Bolshevist struggle against religion in The Assault of Heaven by A. Valentinoff (Boswell); The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins, p. 144‑145)
Then like today, a great contempt was placed upon the court by the Jews and/or Greeks. For they took Sosthenes and beat him in open contempt of Gallio's dismissal of the case against Paul. Look what happened, recently, in California and other places. If the Jews of Judaism can't have it their way against Christians, they will take it out in some other manner. They were enraged against not only Paul, but also against Gallio and his court of justice. They wanted to be their own prosecutors and if Gallio would not rule in their favor, they would become their own judges and executioners. Apparently the contempt showed what the Jews did, and it did not come before Gallio's court. Gallio cared for none of those things (v. 17) is a puzzling concept of a man who somehow tried to help Paul for whatever reason.
If we can presume that this means that this judge is calloused against the things that bad men do to good men, except when brought into his jurisdiction, we find a flaw in the character of this Roman judge. As a judge he should have protected Sosthenes as much as he did Paul. But the facts point out that he did not. This kind of indifference carries just-us attitudes that compliments tyranny. His do-nothing attitude is evidence of one of Isaiah's writings: "that truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey." (Isaiah 59:14-15) Sounds like modern day news reporting, doesn't it?
Our courts today appear to adhere to the concept that justice somehow means just-us and all outsiders (non-Jews) will fall in line under its power to be administered by our controlled and/or deceived judges. So ask yourself, is there a "Jew" word problem; or a society "Jew" problem? Can I come "to know fully" the difference between Jewish Judaism and real true Israelite Christianity:
The mixing of the two religions don't mix anymore than trying to mix oil and water. Those who are truly seeking truth have at one time or another had a man/woman sent from God to witness of the Identity Movement and usually they simply ignored it the first time. Then God in His wisdom would send another.
This time the messenger would be so convincing that the Truth Seeker would set out to prove him {or the material if it were a book or some other written information} wrong. To prove it a false concept. Then they found that the more they studied and learned they found that they have been lied to and deceived by a lot of so-called Christian folks. They came to believe that this was more out of ignorance on their part than deliberate, for they are deceived and content, most of them, to live therein.
But when the Lord reveals much more of His Word to them, they decide to re-educate themselves and find that the process is a never ending one. Because as they learn more, God will reveal more - making the Scriptures "seek and ye shall find" ever more true. They soon found that the Identity teachings were more on line than fundamental Christianity as taught in the churches, on TV and radio today.
It appears to them that the more they study, research and meditate, the more the world pulls at their time just to make ends meet. So they know how the world will pull at you as you attempt to learn the truth. The Jew today still works as they did in the hay-day of Corinth to keep True Israelite Christians so busy that they don't have time to stop and smell the roses and find real truth.
It will only be with the help of YHWH {Almighty God} that the financial prison most of us fined ourselves caged in, will open and free us, swinging open the doors of liberty. Such liberty produces the time and resources needed to wage successful campaigns against the onslaught of deceit, lies and deception in to days (c)hristian parishes or folds. Corinthians were famous for their cleverness, inventiveness and artistic sense. They prided themselves in the embellishment of their city and in the adornment of their heathen temples. But, not a single Corinthian ever distinguished himself in literature. Sound Jewish?
The Adamic Man, White People of Israelite, i.e., Hebrew stock, are the chosen seed of Israel's race. They need to come to know fully who they are, and what they are. Their heritage demands fulfillment here in this American land, the New Jerusalem as spoken of in the Scriptures. Jesus the Christ, the Salvation of Israel, did not come to the Jewish people. in fact He came against almost everything they stand for. He came to the White Israelites, Matthew 15:24 states: "I am not sent, but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." (James 1:1; John 10:14 & 27)
Under the heading of "A brief History of the Terms for Jew" in the 1980 Jewish Almanac is the following: "Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an Ancient Israelite a ‘ Jew ’ or to call a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew. " (1980 Jewish Almanac, p. 3)
The World Book omits any reference to the Jews, but under the word Semite it states:
"Semite...Semites are those who speak Semitic languages. In this sense the ancient Hebrews, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians were Semites. The Arabs and some Ethiopians are modern Semitic‑speaking people. Modern Jews are often called Semites, but this name properly applies only to those who use the Hebrew Language. The Jews were once a sub‑type of the Mediterranean race, but they have mixed with other peoples until the name ‘ Jew ’ has lost all racial meaning. " Who are the Jews and where is the proof of their existence today? The Jewish Encyclopedia, states: "Edom is in modern Jewry." ( The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1925 edition, Vol. 5, p. 41 )
There is only one nation in the world that can prove ancestral ties with Edom, and the Jews themselves claim that dubious distinction. To help answer this question further, we refer you to the excellent book (which should be required reading) entitled "Who is Esau-Edom?" (By Charles A. Weisman, copyright 1991, 2nd Edition: May 1992, paperback 128 pages, approx. $8.00. Order from Weisman Publications, %11751 W. Riverhills Dr. #107D, Burnsville, MN 55337) This little book cover the life, history, genealogy, prophecy, predestination and modern identity of Biblical Esau.
Another excellent booklet by Pastor Bob Hallstrom is entitled "Who Are the Pharisees, and the "Jew" Are they Israel?" (Order from: The Gospel of the Kingdom, % P.O. Box 9411, Boise, Idaho 83707, Phone (208) 375-3425) If you don't understand the information in these two books, you will be unable to properly understand the central focus of the Scripture. The Dake Annotated Reference Bible, while being a scholarly effort, it provides annotations and perspectives which suffer from the authors lack of an informed basis regarding the true identity of the "Jews," Pharisees, Hebrews, and Israel. In the last century Bram Stocker wrote the book Dracula and in his book he was describing the Jews from the very beginning of their drive to "occupy" our bodies and souls from the very beginning of the Luciferian infiltration of our society.
There are hundreds of books {most of which are Jewish Encyclopedias and history books} available for study, which prove that over 90% of the Jews of the world are not a Semitic people, but few people other than historians ever bother to read them. Following are just a few:
"Chazars: A people of Turkish origin whose life and history are interwoven with the very beginnings of the History of The Jews of Russia...driven on by the nomadic tribes of the steppes and by their own desire for plunder and revenge...In the second half of the sixth century the Chazars moved westward...The kingdom of the Chazars was firmly established in most of south Russia long before the foundation of the Russian monarchy by the Varangians...At this time the kingdom of the Chazars stood at the height of its power and was constantly at war...At the end of the eighth century...the chagan (king) of the Chazars and his grandees, together with a large number of his heathen people, embraced the Jewish Religion." (Benjamin Freeman, Facts Are Facts)
Russia and The Khazars : Having traced the Knighthood of the Teutonic Order from its origin to its dissolution as a military-religious brotherhood, and having noted the development of successor sovereignties down to the obliteration of Prussia in 1945, we must turn back more than a thousand years, to examine another thread; a scarlet one, in the tangled skein of European history.
In the later years of the dimly recorded first millennium of the Christian era, Slavic people of several kindred tribes occupied the land which became known later as the north central portion of European Russia. South of them between the Don and Volga rivers and north of the lofty Caucasus Mountains lived a people known to history as Khazars. (Ancient Russia, by George Vernadsky, Yale University Press, 1943, p. 214) These people had been driven westward from Central Asia and entered Europe by the corridor between the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea. They found a land occupied by primitive pastoral people of a score or more of tribes, a land which lay beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent under Trajan (ruled, 98-117 A.D.), and also beyond the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire (395-1453)
By slow stages the Khazars extended their territory eventually to the Sea of Azov and the adjacent littoral of the Black Sea. The Khazars were apparently a people of mixed stock with Mongol and Turkic affinities. Around the year 600, a Belligerent tribe of half-Mongolian people, similar to the modern Turks, conquered the territory of what is now Southern Russia. Before long the kingdom (khanate) of the Khazars, as this tribe was known, stretched from the Caspian to the Black Se. Its capital, Ityl, was at the mouth of the Volga River. (A History of the Jews, by Solomon Grayzel, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947)
In the eighth or ninth century of our era, a khakan (or chagan, roughly equivalent to tribal chief or primitive king) of the Khazars wanted a religion for his pagan people. Partly, perhaps, because of incipient tension between Christians and the adherents of the new Mohammedan faith (Mohammed died in 632), and partly because of fear of becoming subject to the power of the Byzantine Emperor or the Islamic Caliph, (Ancient Russia, by George Vernadsky, Yale University Press, 1943, p. 291) he adopted a form of the Jewish religion at a date generally placed at c. 741 A.D., but believed by Fernadsky to be as late as 865.
According to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, pp. 375-377) “ This chieftain, Christianity and Mohammedanism to expound their doctrines before him. This discussion convinced him that the Jewish faith was the most preferable, and he decided to embrace it. Thereupon he and about 4,000 Khazars were circumcised; it was only by degrees that the Jewish teachings gained a foothold among the population. ”
In his “ History of the Jews, ” (The Jewish Publication Society of America, Vol. III, 1894, pp. 140-141) Professor H. Graetz gives further details: a successor of Bulan, who bore the Hebrew name of Obadiah, was the first to make serious efforts to further the Jewish religion. He invited Jewish sages to settle in his dominions, rewarded them royally, founded synagogues and schools...caused instruction to be given to himself and his people in the Bible and the Talmud, and introduced a divine service modeled on the ancient communities.
AFTER OBADIAH CAME A LONG SERIES OF JEWISH CHAGANS, FOR ACCORDING TO A FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF THE STATE ONLY JEWISH RULERS WERE PERMITTED TO ASCEND THE THRONE. The significance of the term “ ancient communities ” cannot be here explained. For a suggestion of the “ incorrect exposition ” and the “ tasteless misrepresentations ” with which the Bible, i.e., the Old Testament, was presented through the Talmud, see below in this chapter, the extensive quotation from Professor Graetz.
Also in the Middle Ages, Viking warriors, according to Russian tradition by invitation, pushed from the Baltic area into the low hills west of Moscow. Archaeological discoveries show that at one time or another these Northmen penetrated almost all areas south of Lake Ladoga and West of the Kama and Lower Volga Rivers. Their earliest, and permanent, settlements were north and east of the West Dwina River, in the Vale Llmen are, and between the Upper Volga and Oka Rivers, at whose junction they soon held the famous trading post of Nizhni-Novgorod. (Ancient Russia, by George Vernadsky, Yale University Press, p. 267)
These immigrants from the North and West were principally “ the ‘ Russ, ’ a Varangian tribe in ancient annals considered as related to the Swedes, Angles and Northmen. ( ‘ Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XIX, pp. 375-377) From the local Slavic tribes, they organized (c. 862) a state, known subsequently from their name as Russia, which embraced the territory of the Upper Volga and Dnieper Rivers and reached down the latter river to the Black Sea, (An Introduction to Old Norse, by R.V. Gordon, Oxford University Press, 1927, map between pp. xxiv-xxv) and to the Crimea. Russ and Slav were of related stock and their languages, though quite different, had common Indo-Germanic origin. They accepted Christianity as their religion. “ Greek Orthodox missionaries, sent to Russ (i.e., ‘ Russia ’ ) in the 860'z baptized so many people that shortly after this a special bishop was sent to care for their needs. (A History of the Ukraine, by Michael Hrushevsky, Yale University Press, 1941, p. 65)
The “ Rus ” (or “ Russ ” ) were absorbed into the Slav population which they organized into statehood. The people of the new state devoted themselves energetically to consolidating their territory and extending its boundaries. From the Khazars, who had extended their power up the Dnieper Valley, they took Kiev, which “ was an important trading center even before becoming, in the 10th century the capital of a large recently Christianized state. ” (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 381) Many Varangians (Rus) had settled among the Slavs in this area (the Ukraine), and Christian Kiev became the seat of an enlightened Westward-looking Dynasty, whose members married into several European royal houses, including that of France.
The Slavs, especially those in the area now known as the Ukraine, were engaged in almost constant warfare with the Khazars and finally, by 1016 A.D., destroyed the Khazar government and took a large portion of Khazar territory. For the gradual shrinking of the Khazar territory and the development of Poland, Lithuania, the Grand Duke of Moscow, and the other Slavic states. (See the pertinent maps in the Historical Atlas, by William r. Shepherd, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1911) Some of the subjugated Khazars remained in the Slav.-held lands their khakans had long ruled, and others “ migrated to Kiev and other parts of Russia, (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 377) probably to a considerable extent because of the dislocations wrought by the Mongols under Genghis Khan (11162-1227), who founded in and beyond the old Khazar khanate the short-lived khanate of the Golden Horde.
The Judaized Khazars underwent further dispersion both northwest into Lithuania and Polish areas and also within Russia proper and the Ukraine. In 1240 in Kiev “ the Jewish community was uprooted, its surviving members finding refuge in towns further west. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 382) Along with the fleeing Russians, when the capital fell to the Mongol soldiers of Batu, the nephew of Genghis Khan.
A short time later many of these expelled Jews returned to Kiev. Migrating thus, as some local power impelled them, the Khazar Jews became widely distributed in Western Russia. Into the Khazar khanate they had been a few Jewish immigrants; rabbis, traders, refugees, but the people of the Klevan Russian state did not facilitate the entry of additional Jews into their territory. The rulers of the Grand Duchy of Moscow also sought to exclude Jews from areas under its control. “ From its earliest times the policy of the Russian Government was that of complete exclusion of the Jews from its territories. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 384) For instance, “ Ivan IV (reign 1533-1584) refused to allow Jewish merchants to travel in Russia. ” (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 384)
Relations between Slavs and the Judaized Khazars in their midst were never happy. The reasons were not racial; for the Slavs had absorbed many minorities, but were ideological. The rabbis sent for by Khakan Obadiah were educated in and were zealots for the Babylonian Talmud, which after long labors by many hands had been completed on December 2, 1499.
In the thousands of synagogues which were built in the Khazar khanate, the imported rabbis and their successors were in complete control of the political, social and religious thought of their people. So significant was the Babylonian Talmud as the principal cause of Khazar resistance to Russian efforts to end their political and religious separatism, and so significant also are the modern sequels, including those in the United States, that an extensive quotation on the subject from the “ History of the Jews, ” by Professor H. Graetz, (History of the Jews, by Professor H. Graetz, Vol. II, 1893. Pp. 631 ff) is here presented: The Talmud must not be regarded as an ordinary work, composed of twelve volumes; it possesses absolutely no similarity to any other literary production, but forms, without any figure of speech, a works of its own, which must be judged by its peculiar laws.
The Talmud contains much that is frivolous of which it treats with great gravity and seriousness; it further reflects the various superstitious practices and views of its Persian birthplace which presume the efficacy of demoniacal medicines, of magic, incantations, miraculous cures, and interpretations of dreams...It also contains isolated instances of uncharitable judgments and decrees against members of other nations and religions, and finally it favors an incorrect exposition of the scriptures, accepting, as it does, tasteless misrepresentations.
More than six centuries lie petrified in the Talmud...Small wonder then, that...the sublime and the common, the great and the small, the grave and the ridiculous, the altar and the ashes, the Jewish and the heathenish, be discovered side by side.
The Babylonian Talmud is especially distinguished form the Jerusalem or Palestine Talmud by the flights of thought, the penetration of mind, the flashes of genius, which rise and vanish again...It was for this reason that the Babylonian rather than the Jerusalem Talmud became the fundamental possession of the Jewish race (people, for the Jews are not a race but a people), its life breath, its very soul...nature and mankind, powers and events, were for the Jewish nation insignificant, non-essential, a mere phantom; the only true really was the Talmud.
Not merely educated by the Talmud but actually living the life of its Babylonian background, which they may have regarded with increased devotion because most of the Jews of Mesopotamia had embraced Islam, the rabbi-governed Khazars had no intention whatever of losing their identity by becoming Russianized or Christian. The intransigent attitude of the rabbis was increased by their realization that their power would be lost if their people accepted controls other than the Talmudic. These controls by rabbis were responsible not only for basic mores, but for such externals as the peculiarities of dress and hair. It has been frequently stated by writers on the subject that the “ ghetto ” was the work, not of Russians or other Slavs, but rabbis.
As time passed, it came about that these Khazar people of mixed non-Russian stock, who hated the Russians and lived under Babylonian Talmudic law, became known in the western world, from their place of residence and their legal-religious code, as Russian Jews.
In Russian lands after the fall of Kiev in 1240, there was a period of dissension and disunity. The struggle with the Mongols and other Asiatic khanates continued and from the Russians learned much about effective military organization. Also, as the Mongols had not overrun Northern and Western Russia, (Historical Atlas, by William R. Shepherd (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1911), Map 77) there was a background for the resistance and counter-offense which gradually eliminated the invaders. The capital of reorganized Russia was no longer Kiev, but Moscow (hence the terms Moscovy and Muscovite). In 1613 the Russian nobles (boyars), desired a more stable government than they had had, and elected as their Czar a boy named Michael Romanov, whose veins carried the blood of the Grand Dukes of Kiev and the Grand Dukes of Moscow. Under the Romanovs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was no change in attitude toward the Judaized Khazars, who scorned Russian civilization and stubbornly refused to enter the fold of Christianity. “ Peter the Great (reign 1682-1725) spoke of the Jews as ‘ rogues and cheats. ’” (Popular History of the Jews, by H. Graetz, New York, The Jordan Publishing Co., 1919, 12935, Vol. VI, by Max Raisin, p. 89) “ Elizabeth (reign 1741-1762) expressed her attitude in the sentence: ‘ From the enemies of Christ, I desire neither gain nor profit. ” (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 384)
Under the Romanov dynasty (1613-1917) many members of the Russian upper classes were educated in Germany, and the Russian nobility, already partly Scandinavian by blood, frequently married Germans or other Western Europeans. Likewise many of the Romanovs, themselves; in fact all of them who ruled in the later years of dynasty, married into Western families.
Prior to the nineteenth century the two occupants of the Russian throne best known in world history were Peter I, the Great, and Catherine II, the Great. The former; who in 1703 gave Russia its “ West window, ” St. Petersburg, later known as Petrograd and recently as Leningrad, chose as his consort and successor on the throne as Catherine I (reign 1725-1727), a captured Marienburg (Germany) servant girl whose mother and father were respectively a Lithuanian peasant woman and a Swedish Dragoon. Catherine II, the Great, was a German princess who was proclaimed reigning Empress of Russia after her husband, the ineffective Czar Peter III, “ subnormal in mind and physique, ” (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. V, p. 37) left St. Petersburg. During her thirty-four years as Empress, Catherine, by studying such works as Blackstone ’ s Commentaries, and by correspondence with such illustrious persons as Voltaire, F.M. Grimm Frederick the Great, Dederot, and Maria-Theresa of Austria, kept herself in contact with the West. (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XIX, p. 718 and passim) She chose for her son, weak like his father and later the “ madman ” Czar Paul I (reign 1796-1801), a German wife.
The nineteenth century Czars were Catherine the Great ’ s grandson, Alexander I (reign 1801-1825; German wife); his brother, Nicholas I (reign 1825-1855; German wife); his son, Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917; German wife) who was murdered with his family (1918) after the Jewish Communists seized power (1917) in Russia.
Thus many of the Romanovs, including Peter I and Catherine II, had far from admirable characters; a fact well advertised in American books on the subject, and though some of them including Nicholas II were not able rulers, a general purpose of the dynasty was to give their land certain of the advantages of Western Europe. In the West they characteristically sought alliances with one country or another, rather than ideological penetration. Like, their Slavic overlords, the Judaized Khazars of Russia had various relationships with Germany. Their numbers form time to time, as during the Crusades received accretions from the Jewish communities in Germany; principally into Poland and other areas not yet Russian; many of the ancestors of these people, however, had previously entered Germany form Slavic lands.
More interesting than these migrations was the importation from Germany of an idea conceived by a prominent Jew of solving century-old tension between native majority population and the Jews in their midst. In Germany, while Catherine the Great was Empress of Russia, a Jewish scholar and philosopher named Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) attracted wide and favorable attention among non-Jews and a certain following among Jews.
His conception of the barrier between Jew and non-Jew, as analyzed by Grayzel, (A History of the Jews, by Solomon Grayzel, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947, p. 543) was that the “ Jews had erected about themselves a mental ghetto to balance the physical ghetto around them. ” Mendelssohn ’ s objective was to lead the Jews “ out of this mental ghetto into the wide world of general culture; without, however, doing harm to their specifically Jewish culture, ” The movement received the name Haskalah, which may be rendered as “ enlightenment. ” Among other things, Mendelssohn wished Jews in Germany to learn the German language.
The Jews of Eastern Europe had from early days used corrupted versions of local vernaculars, written in the Hebrew alphabet (A History of the Jews, by Solomon Grayzel, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947, p. 456) just as the various vernaculars of Western Europe were written in the Latin alphabet, and to further his purpose Mendelssohn translated the Pentateuch; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, into standard German, using however, the accepted Hebrew alphabet. (A History of the Jews, by Solomon Grayzel, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947, p 543) Thus in one stroke he led his readers a step toward Westernization by the use of the German Language and by offering them, instead of the Babylonian Talmud, a portion of Scripture recognized by both Jew and Christian.
The Mendelssohn views were developed in Russia in the nineteenth century, notably by Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788-1860), the “ Russian Mendelssohn. ” Levinsohn was a scholar who, with Abraham Harkavy, deceived into a field of Jewish history little known in the West, namely the settlement of Jewish history little known in the West, namely the settlement of Jews in Russia and their vicissitudes furring the dark ages... Levinsohn was the first to express the opinion that the Russian Jews hailed not from Germany, as is commonly supposed, but from the banks of the Volga. This hypothesis, corroborated by tradition, Harkavy established as a fact. ” (The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, p. 17)
The reigns of the nineteenth century Czars showed a fluxuation of attitudes toward the Jewish “ state within a state. ” (The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, p. 43) In general, Nicholas I had been less lenient than Alexander I toward his intractable non-Christian minority, but he took an immediate interest in the movement endorsed by opportunity for possibly breaking down the separatism of the Judaized Khazars. He put in charge of the project of opening hundreds of Jewish schools a brilliant young Jew, Er. Max Lilenthal.
From its beginning however, the Haskalah movement had had bitter opposition among Jews in Germany; many of whom, including the famous Moses Hess, (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, Vol. VI. Pp. 371) became ardent Jewish nationalists, and in Russia the opposition was fanatical. “ The great mass of Russian Jewry was devoid of all secular learning, steeped in fanaticism, and given to superstitious practices (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, p. 112) and their leaders, for the most part, had no opinion of tolerating a project which would lessen or destroy their control.
These leaders believed correctly that the needed education was designed to lessen the authority of the Talmud which was the cause, as the Russians say it, “ of the fanaticism and corrupt morals of the Jews. ” The leaders of the Jews also saw that the new schools were a way “ to bring the Jews closer to the Russian people and the Greek Church. ” (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, p, 116) According to Raisi, “ the millions of Russian Jews were averse to having the government interfere with their inner and spiritual life ” by “ foisting upon them its educational measures. The soul of Russian Jewry sensed the danger lurking in the imperial scheme. ” (The Haskalah Movement on Russia, Vol. VI, p. 117) Lilenthal was in their eyes “ a traitor and informer, ” and in 1845, to recover a modicum of prestige with his people, he “ shook the dust of bloody Russia from his feet. ” (Graetz-Raisim, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, Vol. V, p. 117) Thus the Haskalah movement failed in Russia to break down the separatism of the Judaized Khazars.
When Nicholas I died, his son Alexander Ii (reign 1855-1881) decided to try a new way of winning the Khazar minority to willing citizenship in Russia. He granted his people, including the Khazars, so many liberties that he was called the “ Czar Liberator. ”
By irony, or nemesis, his “ liberal regime ” contributed substantially to the downfall of Christian Russia. Despite the ill-success of his Uncle Alexander ’ s “ measures to effect the ‘ betterment ’ of the ‘ obnoxious ’ Jewish element, (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 384) he ordered a wholesale relaxation of oppressive and restraining regulations (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, Vol. VI, p. 124) and the Jews were free to attend all schools and universities and to travel without restrictions. The new freedom led, however, to results the “ Liberator ” had not anticipated.
Educated, and free at last to organize nationally, the Judaized Khazars in Russia became not merely an indigestible mass in the body polite, the characteristic “ state within a state, ” but a formidable anti-government force. With non-Jews of nihilistic or other radical tendencies; the so-called Russian “ intelligentsia ” they sought in the first instance to further their aims by assassinations. (Modern European History, by Charles Downer Hazen, Holt, New York, p. 565) Alexander tried to abate the hostility of the “ terrorists ” by granting more and more concessions, but on the day the last concessions were announced “ a bomb was thrown at his carriage. The carriage was wrecked, and many of his escorts were injured. Alexander escaped as by a miracle, but a second bomb exploded near him as he was going to aid the injured. He was horribly mangled, and died within an hour. Thus perished the Czar Liberator. (Modern European History, p. 567)
Some of those involved in earlier attempts to assassinate Alexander II were of Jewish Khazar background. (See The Anarchists, by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, John Lane, London and New York 1911, p. 66) According to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, the “ assassination of Alexander II in which a Jewess had played a part ” revived a latent “ anti-Semitism. ” Resentful of precautions taken by the murdered Czar ’ s son and successor, Alexander III, and also possessing a new world plan, hordes of Jews, some of them highly educated in Russian universities, migrated to other European countries and to America. The emigration continued under Nicholas II. Many Jews remained in Russia, however, for “ in 1913 the Jewish population of Russia amounted to 6,946,000. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, p. 285)
Various elements of this restless aggressive minority nurtured the amazing quadruple aims of international Communism, the seizure of power in Russia, Zionism, and continued migration to America, with a fixed purpose to retain their nationalistic separatism. In many instances, the same individuals were participants I two or more phases of the four-fold objective.
Among the Jews who remained in Russia, which then included Lithuania, the Ukraine, (A History of the Ukraine, Michael Hrushevsky, Yale University Press, 1941) and much of Poland, were the founders of the Russian Bolshevik party. In 1897 was founded the bond, the union of Jewish workers in Poland and Lithuania...They engaged in revolutionary activity upon a large scale, and their energy made them the spearhead of the Party. (Article on “ Communism ” by Harold J. Laski, encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. III, pp. 824-827)
The name Bolsheviki means majority (from Russian Bolshe, the larger) and commemorates the fact that at the Brussels-London conference of the party in late 1902 and early 1903, the violent Marxist program of Lenin was adopted by a 25 to 23 vote, the less violent minority or “ Mensheviki ” Marxists fading finally from the picture after Stalin ’ s triumph in October, 1917. It has been also stated that the term Bolshevik refers to the “ larger ” or more violent program of the majority faction. After (1918) the Bolsheviki called their organization the Communist Party.
The Zionist Jews were another group that laid its plan in Russia as a part of the new re-orientation of Russian Jewry after the collapse of Haskalah and the assassination (1881) of Alexander II. “ On November 6, 1884, for the first time in history, a Jewish international assembly was held at Kattowitz, near the Russian frontier, where representatives from all classes and different countries met and decided to colonize Palestine... ” (The Haskalah Movement in Russia, p. 285)
For a suggestion of the solidarity of purpose between the Jewish Bund, which was the core of the Communist Party, and early Zionism. (Traetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, p. 662) Henceforth a heightened sense of race-consciousness takes the place formerly held by religion and is soon to develop into a concrete nationalism with Zion as its goal. ” (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, p. 168)
In Russia and abroad in the late nineteenth century, not only Bundists but other Khazar Jews had been attracted to the writings of Karl Marx (1818-1883), party, it seems, because he was Jewish in origin. “ On both paternal and material sides Karl Marx was descended from rabbinical families. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 289)
The Marxian program of drastic controls, so repugnant to the free western mind, was no obstacle to the acceptance of Marxism by many Khazar Jews, for the Babylonian Talmud under which they lived had taught them to accept authoritarian dictation on everything from their immorality to their trade practices. Since the Talmud contained more than 12,000 controls, the regimentation of Marxism was acceptable; provided the Khazar population, like the Talmudic rabbi, exercised the power of the dictatorship.
Under Nicholas II, there was no abatement of the regulations designed, after the murder of Alexander II. To curb the anti-government activities of Jews; consequently, the “ reaction to those excesses was Jewish support of the Bolsheviks...(Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 286) The way to such support was easy since the predecessor organization of Russian Communist was the Jewish “ Bund. ”
Thus Marxian Communism, modified for expediency, became an instrument for the violent seizure of power. The Communist Jews, together with revolutionaries of Russian stock, were sufficiently numerous to give the venture a promise of success, if attempted at the right time. After the rout of the less violent fraction in 1917, when Russia was staggering under defeat by Germany/ a year before Germany in turn staggered to defeat under the triple blows of Britain, France, and the Untied States. “ The great hour of freedom struck on the 15th of March, 1917, ” when ‘ Czar Nicholas ’ s train was stopped ” and he was told “ that his rule was at an end...Israel, in Russia, suddenly found itself lifted out of its oppression and degradation. ” (Graetz-Rasin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, p. 209)
At this moment Lenin appeared on the scene, after an absence of nine years. (Encyclopedia Brit., Vol. XIII, p. 912) The Germans, not realizing that he would be anything more than a trouble maker for their World War I enemy, Russia, passed him and his party (exact number disputed; about 200?)
In a sealed train from Switzerland to the Russian border. In Lenin ’ s sealed train,
“ Out of a list of 165 names published, 23 are Russian, 3 Georgian, 4 Armenian, 1 German, and 128 Jewish. (The Surrender of an Empire, Nesta H. Webster, Boswell Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd., 10 Essex St., London, W.C2, 1931, p. 77) At about the same time, Trotsky arrived from the United States, followed by over 300 Jews from the East End of New York and joined up with the Bolshevik Party. ” (The Surrender of an Empire, p. 73)
Thus under Lenin, whose birth-range was Ulianov and whose racial antecedents are certainly Jewish, and under Leon Trotsky, a Jew, whose birth name was Bronstein, a small number of highly trained Jews from abroad, along with Russian Judaized Khazan and non-Jewish captives to the Marxian ideology, were able to make themselves masters of Russia. “ Individual revolutionary leaders and Sverdlov; played a conspicuous part in the revolution of November, 1917, which enabled the Bolshevists to take possession of the state apparatus. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia Vol. IX, p. 668)
Here and there in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia other Jews w are named as co-founders of Russian Communism, but not Lenin and Stalin. Both of these, however, are said by some writers to be half-Jewish. Whatever the racial antecedents of their top man, the first Soviet commissariats were largely staffed with Jews. The Jewish position in the Communist movement was well understood in Russia. “ The White Armies which opposed the Bolsishvik government linked Jews and Bolsheviks as common enemies. ” (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 336)
Those interested in the ratio of Jews to others in the government in the early days of Communist rule in Russia should, if possible, see Les derniers jours des Romanof, (The Last Days of the Romanovs, by Robert Wilton) long the Russian correspondent of the London Times. A summary of its vital passages is included in the “ foreword to Third Edition ” of “ The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, by Rev. Denis Fahey, a well-known Irish professor of philosophy and Church history. Professor Fahey gives names and nationality of the members of the Council of Peoples Commissars, the Central Executive Committee, and the Extraordinary Commission, and in summary quotes from Wilton as follows: According to the data furnished by the Soviet Press, out of 556 important functionaries of the Bolshevik State...there were in 1918-1919, 17 Russian, 2 Ukrainians, 11 Armenians, 35 Letts, 15 Germans, 1 Hungarian, 10 Georgians, 3 Poles, 3 Finns, 1 Karaim, 457 Jews.
As the decades passed by; after the fateful year 1917, Judaized Khazars kept a firm hand on the helm of the government in the occupied land of Russia. In due time they built a bureaucracy to their hearts ’ desire. The government; controlled Communist press “ issued numerous and violent denunciations of anti-Semitic episodes, either violence or discriminations.
Also, “ in 1935 a court ruled that anti-Semitism in Russia was a penal offense. ” (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 386) Among top-flight leaders prominent in the middle of the twentieth century. Stalin, Kaganovich, Beria, Molotov, and Litvinoff all have Jewish blood, or are married to Jewesses. The latter circumstance should not be overlooked, because from Nero ’ s Poppaea (Encyclopedia, Italiana, Vol. XXVII, p. 932; also, The Works of Flavius Josephus, translated by William Whiston, David McKay, Philadelphia, pp. 8, 612, 616) to the Montreal chemist ’ s women friend in the Canadian atomic espionage trials (Report of the Royal Commission, Government Printing Office, Ottawa, Canada, 1946) The influence of a certain type of wife; or other closely associated woman, has been of utmost significance.
Nero and Poppaea may be allowed to sleep; if their crimes permit, but Section III, 11, entitled “ Raymond Boyer, Montreal, ” in the Report of the Acadian Royal Commission should be read in full by all who want facts on the subject of the corruption of scientists, and others working on government projects. In the Soviet embassy records, turned over to Canadian authorities by Ivor Gouzinko, was Col. Zabotin ’ s notebook which contained the following entries; (Report of the Royal Commission, Government Printing Office, Canada, 1946, pp. 375 and 397 respectively) Professor Frenchman, a noted chemist, about 40 years of age. Works in McGill University, Montreal. Was the best of the specialists on VV on the American Continent. Gives full information on explosives and chemical plants. Very rich. He is afraid to work. (Gave the formula of RDX, up to the present there was no evaluation from the boss)
Contact; I. Freda: Jewess; works as a co-worker in the International Bureau of Labor. A lady friend of the Professor. In view of the facts furnished above as to the racial composition of the early Communist bureaucracy, it is perhaps not surprising that a large proton of the important foreign efforts of the present government of Russia are entrusted to Jews.
This is especially notable in the list of current or recent exercises of Soviet power in the satellite lands of Eastern Europe. Anna Rabinsohn Pauker, Dictator of Rumania; Matyas Rakosi, Director of Hungary; Jacob Berman, Dictator of Poland; D.M. Manuilsky, Director of the Ukraine; and many other persons highly placed in the governments of the several Eastern European countries are all said to be members of this new Royal Race of Russia.
Of Eastern European origin are the leaders of late nineteenth century and twentieth century political Zionism which flowered from the already recorded beginnings at Kattowitz in 1884. Born at Budapest, Hungary, was Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), author (1896) of Der Judenstatt (The Jews ’ State), who presided over the “ Zionist Congress, ” which “ took place at Basel, Switzerland, on August 29-31, 1897. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 102)
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the head of political Zionism at that time of its recourse to violence, was born in Plonsk, Poland. Since these top leaders are Eastern Europeans, it is not surprising that most of the recent immigrants into Palestine are of Soviet and satellite origin and that their weapons have been largely from the soviet Union and from Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia.
As a number of writers have pointed out, political Zionism entered its violent phase after the discovery of the incredibly vast mineral wealth of Palestine. According to “ Zionists Misleading World With Untruths for Palestine Conquest, ” a full-page article inserted as an advertisement in the New York Herald Tribune (January 14, 1947), “ an independent Jewish state in Palestine was the only certain method by which Zionists could acquire complete control and outright ownership of the proven Five Trillion Dollar ($5,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo) chemical and mineral wealth of the Dead Sea. ”
The long documented article is signed by R.M. Schoendorf, “ Representative of Cooperating Americans of the Christian Faith; ” by Habib I. Katibah, “ Representative of Cooperating Americans of Arab Ancestry; ” and by Benjamin H. Freedman, “ Representative of Cooperating Americans of the Jewish Faith, ” and is convincing. Irrespective, however, of the value of the Dead Sea minerals, the oil flow of the dominance of the motive of self-aggrandizement in political Zionism has been affirmed and denied; but it is difficult for an observer to see any possible objective apart from mineral wealth or long range grand strategy, including aggression, in a proposal to make a nation out of an agriculturally poor, already overpopulated territory the size of Vermont.
The intention of aggression at the expense of Moslem peoples, particularly in the direction of Iraq and Iran, is suggested also by the fact that the Eastern European Jews, adherents to the Babylonian Talmud, had long turned their thoughts to the lands where their sages lived and where most of the native-Jewish population had embraced the Moslem faith. Any possible Zionist religious motive such as the hope of heaven, which fired the zeal of the Crusaders, is apparently ruled out by the nature of Judaism, as it is generally understood. “ The Jewish religion is a way of life and has no journulated creed, or articles of faith, the acceptance of which brings redemption or salvation to the believer... ” ( Opening words, p. 763, of the section on “ doctrines, ” in Religious Bodies: 1936, Vol. II, Part I, Denominations A to J, U.S. Department of Commerce, Jesse H. Jones, Secretary, Bureau of Census, Superintendent of documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.)
The secret or underground overseas efforts of Khazar-dominated Russia apparently been intrusted principally to Jews. This is especially true of atomic espionage. The Report of the Royal Commission of Canada, already referred to, shows that Sam Carr (Cohen), organizer for all Canada; Fred Rose (Rosenberg), organizer for French Canada, and member of the Canadian Parliament from a Montreal constituency; and Germina (or Hermina) Rabinowich, in charge of liaison with U.S. Communists, were all born in Russia or satellite lands.
In this connection, it is important to stress the fact that the possession of a Western name does not necessarily imply Western European stock. In fact, the maneuver of name-changing frequently disguises an individual ’ s stock or origin. Thus the birth-name of John Gates; editor of the Communist Daily Worker was Israel Regenstreif. Other name changers among the eleven Communists found guilty by a New York jury in October, 1949, included Gil Green, born Greenberg; Gus Hall, born Halberg; and Carl Winter, born Weissberg. (For details on these men and the others, see the article, “ The Trial of the Eleven Communists, ” by Sidney Shalett, Reader ’ s Digest, August, 1950, pp. 59-72)
Other examples of name-changing can be cited among political writers, army officers, and prominent officials in the executive agencies and departments in Washington. Parenthetically, the maneuver of acquiring a name easily acceptable to the majority was very widely practiced by the aliens prominent in the seizure of Russia for Communism, among the name-changers being Lenin (Ulianov), Trotsky (Bronstein), and Stalin(Dzygasgvuku), the principle founders of State Communism.
The United States Government refused Canada ’ s invitation in 1946 to cooperate in Canada ’ s investigation of atomic spies, but in 1950 when (despite “ red herring ” talk of the Chief Executive) our atomic spy suspects began to be apprehended, the first was Harry Gold, then Abraham Brothmn, and Miriam Moskowitz. Others were M. Sobell, David Greenglass, Julius Fosenberg, and Mr. Ethel Rosenberg (not to be confused with Mrs. Anna Rosenberg). Various sentences were given. The Rosenbergs received the death penalty. (See Atom Treason, by Frank Britton)
As of early May, 1952, however, the sentence had not been carried out and a significant portion of the Jewish press was campaigning to save the Rosenbergs. Referring to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Samuel B. Gach, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of the California Jewish Voice ( “ Largest Jewish Circulation in the West ” ) wrote as follows in his issue of April 25, 1952: “ We deplore the sentence against that two Jews and despise the cowardly Jewish judge who passed same... ”
In March, 1951, Dr. William Perl of the Columbia University _physics Department was arrested
“ on four counts of perjury in connection with the crumbling Soviet atomic spy ring ...Perl whose father was born in Russia...had his name changed from Utterperl (Mutterperl?) To perl ” in 1945. (Washington Times-Herald, March 15, 1951)
For further details on these persons and others, see “ Atomic Traitors, ” by Congressmen Fred Busbey of Illinois in the June, 1951, Number of National Republic.
Finally, the true head of Communism in America was found not to be the publicly announced head, but the Jew, Gerhardt Eisler, who, upon detection “ escaped ” from America on the Polish S.S. “ Batory, ” to a high position in the Soviet Government of East Germany. (Communist Activities Amon Aliens and National Groups, part III, Government printing Office, Washington, D.C., p. 236)
Very pertinent to the subject under consideration is a statement entitled “ Displaced Persons: Facts vs. Fiction, ” made in the Senate of the United States on January 6, 1950, by Senator Pat McCarran, Democrat of Nevada, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Senator McCarran said in part: “ Let it be remembered that the Attorney General of the United States recently testified that an analysis of 4,984 of the more militant members of the Communist Party in the United States showed that 91.4 percent of the total were of foreign stock or were married to persons of foreign stock. ”
With more than nine-tenths of our “ more militant ” Communists thus recruited from or allied to “ foreign stock ” and with that “ stock: totaling perhaps not more than 10,000,000 or one-fifteenth of our nation ’ s population, a little recourse to mathematics will suggest that the employment of an Eastern European or other person of recent alien extraction or connection is one hundred and fifty times more likely to yield a traitor than is the employment of a person of native stock! ”
An “ authoritative ” Jewish point of view toward Soviet Russia is explained in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia in the concluding paragraphs on Karl Marx. According to this source, Jews “ recognize the experience of the Soviet Union, borne of 6,000,000 Jews, as testimony of the Marxist position on the question of national and racial equality. ” The Encyclopedia comments further on the “ striking fact that the one country which professes official allegiance to Marxian teachings is the one where anti-Semitism has been outlawed and its resurgence rendered impossible by the removal of social and economic inequalities. ” (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, p. 390)
In “ The Jewish People Face the Post-War World, ” by Alexander Bittelman (Morning Freiheit Association, 1945, p. 19) the affection of a considerable body of American Jews for the Soviet Union is considerable body of American Jews for the Soviet Union is expressed dramatically: If not for the Red Army, there would be no Jews in Europe today, nor in Palestine, nor in Africa; and in the United States, the length of our existence would be counted in days...The Soviet Union Has Saved The Jewish People.
Therefore, let the American Jewish masses never forget our historic debt to the Savior of the Jewish people; the Soviet Union. Be it noted, however, that Mr. Bittelman admits indirectly that he is not speaking for all American Jews, particularly when he assails as “ reactionary ” the “ non-democratic forced in Jewish life...such as the Sulzbergers, Rosenwalds, and Lazsrons. ” (Morning Freiheit Association, p. 9) In addition to ideology, another factor in the devotion to their old homelands of so many of the newer American Jews of Eastern European source is kinship. According to The American Zionist Handbook, 68 to 70% of United States Jews have relations in Poland and the Soviet Union.
Quite in harmony with the Bittleman attitude toward the Soviet was the finding of the Canadian Royal Commission that Soviet Russia exploits fully the predilection of Jews toward Communism:
“ It is significant that a number of documents from the Russian Embassy specifically note ‘ Jew ’ or ‘ Jewess ’ in entries on their relevant Canadian agents or prospective agents, showing that the Russian Fifth Column leaders attached particular significance to this matter. ” (The Report of the Royal Commission, p. 82)
In view of the above-quoted statement of a writer for the great New York publication, the Universal Jewish encyclopedia, which is described on its title page as “ authorative, ” and in view of the findings of the Canadian Royal Commission, not to mention other facts and testimonies, it would seem that no one should be surprised that certain United States Jews of Eastern European origin or influence have transmitted atomic or other secrets to the Soviet Union.
Those who are caught, of course, must suffer the fate of spies, as would happen to American espionage agents abroad; but, in the opinion of the author, the really guilty parties in the Untied States are those Americans of native stock who, for their own evil purposes, placed the pro-Soviet individuals in positions where thy could steal or connive at the stealing of American secrets of atomic warfare. This guilt, which in view of the terrible likely results of atomic espionage is really blood-guilt, cannot be sidestepped and should not be overlooked by the American people.
The presence of so many high-placed spies in the United States prompts a brief reference to our national habit (a more accurate term than policy) in regard to immigration. In December, 2, 1832, President Monroe proclaimed, in the famous Doctrine which bears his name, that the American government would not allow continental European powers to “ extend their system ” in the Untied States.
At that time and until the last two decades of the nineteenth century, immigration brought us almost exclusively European people whose ideals were those of Western Christian civilization; these people became helpers in subduing and setting our vast frontier area; they wished to conform to rather than modify or supplant the body of traditions and ideals summed up in the word “ America. ”
After 1880, however, our immigration shifted sharply to include millions of persons from Southern and Eastern Europe. Almost all of these people were less sympathetic than predecessor immigrants to the government and the ideals of the Untied States and a very large portion of them were non-Christians who had no intention whatever of accepting the ideals of Western Christian civilization, but had purposes of their own. These purposes were accomplished not by direct military invasion, as President Monroe feared, but covertly by infiltration, propaganda, and electoral and financial pressure. The average American remained unaware and unperturbed.
Among those who early foresaw the problems to be created by our new immigrants was General Eisenhower ’ s immediate predecessor as President of Columbia University. In a small but extremely valuable book, “ The American As He Is, ” President Nicholas Murray Butler in 1908 called attention to “ the fact that Christianity in some one of its many forms is a dominant part of the American nature. ” Butler, then at the zenith of his intellectual power, expressed fear that our “ capacity to subdue and assimilate the alien elements brought...by immigration may soon be exhausted. ” He concluded accordingly that “ The dangers which confront America will come, if at all, from within. ”
Statistics afford ample reasons for President Butler ’ s fears. “ The new immigration was comprised preponderantly of three elements: the Italians, the Slavs, and the Jews. (The Report of the Royal Commission, p. 82) The Italians and the Slavs were less assimilable than immigrants from Northern and Western Europe, and tended to congregate instead of distributing themselves over the hole country as the earlier Northern European immigrants had usually done.
The assimilation of Italians and Slavs was helped, however, by their belonging to the same parent Indo-Germanic racial stock as the English-German-Irish majority, and above all by their being Christians; mostly Roman Catholics, and therefore finding numerous co-religionists not only among fully Americanized second and third generation Irish Catholics but among old stock Anglo-American Catholics descending from Colonial days. Quite a few persons of Italian and Slavic stock were or became Protestants, chiefly Baptist; among them being ex-Governor Charles Poletti of New York and ex-Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota. The new Italian and Slavic immigrants and their children soon began to marry among the old stock. In a protracted reading of an Italian language American newspaper, the author noted that approximately half of all recorded marriages of Italians were to person with non-Italian names.
Thus in one way or another the new Italian and Slavic immigrants began to merge into the general American pattern. This happened to some extent everywhere and was notable in areas where the newcomers were not congregated; as in certain urban and mining areas, but were dispersed among people of native stock. With eventual complete assimilation by no means impossible, there was no need of a national conference of Americans and Italians or of Americans and Slavs to further the interests of those minorities.
With the new Jewish immigrants, however, the developments were strikingly different; and quite in line with the fears of resident Butler. The handful of Jews, mostly Sephardic (Webster ’ s New International Dictionary, 1934, p. 2281) and German, already in this country (about 280,000 in 1877), were not numerous enough to contribute cultural guidance to the newcomers. (See Graetz-Raisin, Vol. VI, Chapter IV, an “ American Continent, ” A “ the Sephardic and German Periods, ” “ B ” “ The Russian Period. ” ) These newcomers arrived in vast hordes; especially from territory under the sovereignty of Russia, the total number of legally recorded immigrants from that country between 1881 and 1920 being 3,237,079, (The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, p. 817) most of them Jews. Many of those Jews are now referred to as Polish Jews because they came from that portion of Russia which had been the kingdom of Poland prior to the “ partitions ” of 1772-1795 (Modern History, by Carl I. Becker, Silver Burdett Company, New York, p. 138) and was the Republic of Poland between World War I and World War II. Accordingly New York City ’ s 2,500,00 or more Jews.
Thus by sheer weight of numbers, as well as by aggressiveness the newcomer Jews from Eastern Europe pushed into the background the more or less Westernized Jews, who had migrated or whose ancestors had migrated to America prior to 1880 and had become for the most part popular and successful merchants with no inordinate interest in politics. In striking contrast, the Eastern European Jew made himself “ a power to be reckoned with in the professions, the industries, and the political parties. (Graetz-Raisin, Vol. VI, p. 344)
The overwhelming of the older Americanized Jews is well portrayed in “ The Jewish Dilemma, ” by Elmer Berger. (The Devin Adair Company, New York, 1945) Of the early American Jews, Berger writes: “ Most of thee first 200,000 came from Germany.
They integrated themselves completely. (The Devin Adair Company, New York, 1945, p. 232) This integration was not difficult; for many persons of the Jewish religion Western Europe in the nineteenth century not only had no racial or ethnic connection with the Khazars, but were not separatists or Jewish nationalists. The old contentions of their ancestors with their Christian neighbors in Western Europe had been largely overlooked on both sides by the beginning of the nineteenth century, and nothing stood in the way of their full integration into national life. The American kinsmen of these Westernized Jews were similar in outlook.
Since the predominant new Jews consider themselves a superior people, (Race and Nationality as Factors in American Life, by Henry Pratt Fairchild, The Ronald Press Company, New York, 1947, p. 140) and a separate nationality, assimilation appears now to be out of the question. America now has virtually a nation within the nation, and an aggressive culture-conscious nation at that. The stream of Eastern Europeans was diminished in volume during World War I, but was at flood level again in 1920. (Race and Nationality as Factors in American Live, p. 140) At last the Congress became sufficiently alarmed to initiate action. The House Committee on immigration, in its report on the bill that later became the quota law of 1921, reported: There is a limit to our power of assimilation...the processes of assimilation and amalgamation are slow and difficult.
With the population of the broken parts of Europe headed this way in every-increasing numbers, why not pre-emptorily check the stream with this temporary measure, and in the meantime try the unique and novel experiment of enforcing all of the immigration laws on our statutes? Accordingly, the 67th Congress “ passed the first quota law, which was approved on May 19, 1921, limiting the number of any nationality entering the United States to 3 percent of the foreign-born of that nationality who lived here in 1910. Under the law, approximately 350,000 aliens were permitted to enter each year, mostly from Northern and Western Europe. (The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, p. 56)
The worry of the Congress over unassimilated aliens continued and the House Congress over unassimilable aliens continued and the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the 68th Congress reported that it was “ necessary to the successful future of our nation to preserve the basic strain of our population ” and continued (The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, p. 60) as follows: Since it is the axiom of political science that a government not imposed by external force is the visible expression of the ideals, standards, and social viewpoint of the people over which it rules, it is obvious that a change in the character or composition of the population must inevitably result in the evolution of a form of government consonant with the base upon which it rests. If, therefore, the principle of individual liberty, guarded by a constitutional government created on this continent nearly a century and a half ago, is to endure, the basic strain of our population must be maintained and our economic standards preserved.
The American people do not concede the right of any foreign group in the United States, or government abroad, to demand a participation in our possessing, tangible or intangible, or to dictate the character of our legislation.
The new law “ changed the quota basis form 1910 to 1890, reduced the quotas from 3 to 2 percent, provided for the establishment of permanent quotas on the basis of national origin, and placed the burden of proof on the alien with regard to his admissibility and the legality of his residence in the United Stated. ” It was passed by the Congress on May 15,and signed by President Calvin Coolidge on May 26, 1924. The new quota system was still more favorable relatively to the British Isles and Germany and other countries of Northern and Western Europe and excluded “ persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States. ” Unfortunately, within ten years, this salutary law was to be largely nullified misinterpretation of its intent and by continued scandalous maladministration, a principle worry of the Congress (as shown above) in 1921 and continuously since. (The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, p. 60)
By birth and by immigration either clandestine or in violation of the intent of the “ national origins ” law of 1924, the Jewish population of the U.S. increased rapidly. The following official Census Bureau statement is of interest:
“ In 1887 there were at least 277 congregations in the country and 230,000 Jews; in 1890, 533 congregations and probably 475,000 Jews; in 1906, 1700 congregations and about 1,775,000 Jews; in 1916, 1900 congregations and about 3,300,000 Jews; in 1936, 3,118 permanent congregations and 4,641,184 Jews residing in the cities, towns and villages in which the congregations were located. ” (Religious Bodies, p. 763)
On other religions, the latest government statistics are mostly for the year 1947, but for Jews the 1936 figure remains. (The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, p. 849) As to the total number of Jews in the Untied States the government has no exact figures, any precise figures beyond a vague “ over five million ” being impossible because of incomplete records and illegal immigration. The Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate, (The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, p. u8423) however, accepts the World Almanac figure of 15,713,638 Jews of religious affiliation in the world and summarizes thus: “ statistics indicate that over 50 of 15,713,638 Jews of religious affiliation in the world and summarizes thus: “ statistics indicate that over 50 percent of the World Jewish population is now residing in the Western Hemisphere, (The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, p. 21) i.e., at least 8,000,000.
Since some three-fourths of a million Jews live in other North and South American countries besides the United States may be placed at a minimum of about 7,250,000. Jews unaffiliated with organizations whose members are counted, illegal entrants, etc., may place the total number in the neighborhood of 10,000,000. This likely figure would justify the frequently heard statement that more than half the Jews of the world are in the United States. Parentage-wise this is the government summary (The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, p. 241) of Jewish population in the United States.
In 1937, Jews constituted less than 4 percent of the American people, but during the 7-year period following (1937-43), net Jewish immigration to the United States ranged between 25 and 77 percent of total net immigration to this country. For the 36-year period, 1908-43, net Jewish immigration constituted 14 percent of the total. The population of the Jewish population has increased twenty-one-fold during the same period.
The above government figures require elucidation. The figures include only those Jews connected with an organized Jewish congregation and, as a corollary, exclude the vast number of Jews, illegal entrants and others, who are not so connected, and hence not officially listed as Jews.
The stated increase of Jews by 2100 percent since 1877 is thus far too small because non-Congregational Jews are not counted. Moreover, since the increase of 300 percent in the total population includes known Jews, who increased at the rate of 2100 percent, the increase in population of non-Jews is far less than the 300 percent increase of the total population. This powerful and rapidly growing minority; closely knit and obsessed with its own objectives which are not those of Western Christian civilization, will be discussed along with other principal occupants of the stage of public affairs in America during the early 1950s. Details will come as a surprise to many, who are the unwitting victims of censorship. Valuable for its light on the global projects of political Zionism, with especial reference to Africa, is Douglas Reed ’ s “ Somewhere South of Suez. ” (Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1951)
After mentioning that the “ secret ban ” against publishing the truth on “ Zionist Nationalism, ” which he holds “ to be allied in its roots to Soviet Communism, ” has grown in his adult lifetime “ from nothing into something approaching a law of lese majesty at some absolute court of the dark past, ” Mr. Reed states further that “ the Zionist Nationalists are powerful enough to govern governments in the great countries of the remaining West! ” He concludes further that “ American Presidents and British Prime Ministers, and all their colleagues, ” bow to Zionism as if venerating a shrine.
In the last 150 years, the term 'Jew' has therefore acquired a dual meaning, to the great confusion of some well-meaning people, particularly in the English-speaking countries, who imagine that the Jews they meet socially are 'representative' of Jews 'in general'. In the countries of east Europe as well as in the Arab world, the Jews were liberated from the tyranny of their own religion and of their own communities by outside forces, too late and in circumstances too unfavorable for genuine internalized social change. In most cases, and particularly in Israel, the old concept of society, the same ideology - especially as directed towards non-Jews - and the same utterly false conception of history have been preserved.
This applies even to some of those Jews who joined 'progressive' or leftist movements. An examination of radical, socialist and communist parties can provide many examples of disguised Jewish chauvinists and racists, who joined these parties merely for reasons of 'Jewish interest' and are, in Israel, in favor of 'anti-Gentile' discrimination. One need only check how many Jewish 'socialists' have managed to write about the kibbutz without taking the trouble to mention that it is a racist institution from which non-Jewish citizens of Israel are rigorously excluded, to see that the phenomenon we are alluding to is by no means uncommon. (I write this, being a non-socialist myself. But I will honor and respect people with whose principles I disagree, if they make an honest effort to be true to their principles. In contrast, there is nothing so despicable as the dishonest use of universal principles, whether true or false, for the selfish ends of an individual or, even worse, of a group)
Avoiding labels based on ignorance or hypocrisy, we thus see that the word 'Jewry' and its cognates describe two different and even contrasting social groups, and because of current Israeli politics the continuum between the two is disappearing fast. On the one hand there is the traditional totalitarian meaning discussed above; on the other hand there are Jews by descent who have internalized the complex of ideas which Karl Popper has called 'the open society'. (There are also some, particularly in the USA, who have not internalized these ideas, but try to make a show of acceptance.)
It is important to note that all the supposedly 'Jewish characteristics' - by which I mean the traits which vulgar so-called intellectuals in the West attribute to 'the Jews' - are modern characteristics, quite unknown during most of Jewish history, and appeared only when the totalitarian Jewish community began to lose its power.
Take, for example, the famous Jewish sense of humor. Not only is humor very rare in Hebrew literature before the 19th century (and is only found during few periods, in countries where the Jewish upper class was relatively free from the rabbinical yoke, such as Italy between the 14th and 17th centuries or Muslim Spain) but humor and jokes are strictly forbidden by the Jewish religion - except, significantly, jokes against other religions. Satire against rabbis and leaders of the community was never internalized by Judaism, not even to a small extent, as it was in Latin Christianity. There were no Jewish comedies, just as there were no comedies in Sparta, and for a similar reason. (In fact, many aspects of orthodox Judaism were apparently derived from Sparta, through the baneful political influence of Plato. On this subject, see the excellent comments of Moses Hadas, Hellenistic Culture, Fusion and Diffusion, Columbia University Press, New York, 1959)
Or take the love of learning. Except for a purely religious learning, which was itself in a debased and degenerate state, the Jews of Europe (and to a somewhat lesser extent also of the Arab countries) were dominated, before about 1780, by a supreme contempt and hate for all learning (excluding the Talmud and Jewish mysticism).
Large parts of the Old Testament, all nonliturgical Hebrew poetry, most books on Jewish philosophy were not read and their very names were often anathematized. Study of all languages was strictly forbidden, as was the study of mathematics and science. Geography, (Including the geography of Palestine and indeed its very location. This is shown by the orientation of all synagogues in countries such as Poland and Russia: Jews are supposed to pray facing Jerusalem, and the European Jews, who had only a vague idea where Jerusalem was, always assumed it was due east, whereas for them it was in fact more nearly due south) history - even Jewish history - were completely unknown. The critical sense, which is supposedly so characteristic of Jews, was totally absent, and nothing was so forbidden, feared and therefore persecuted as the most modest innovation or the most innocent criticism.
It was a world sunk in the most abject superstition, fanaticism and ignorance, a world in which the preface to the first work on geography in Hebrew (published in 1803 in Russia) could complain that very many great rabbis were denying the existence of the American continent and saying that it is 'impossible'. Between that world and what is often taken in the West to 'characterize' Jews there is nothing in common except the mistaken name.
However, a great many present-day Jews are nostalgic for that world, their lost paradise, the comfortable closed society from which they were not so much liberated as expelled. A large part of the Zionist movement always wanted to restore it - and this part has gained the upper hand. Many of the motives behind Israeli politics, which so bewilder the poor confused western 'friends of Israel', are perfectly explicable once they are seen simply as reaction, reaction in the political sense which this word has had for the last two hundred years: a forced and in many respects innovative, and therefore illusory, return to the closed society of the Jewish past.
Historically it can be shown that a closed society is not interested in a description of itself, no doubt because any description is in part a form of critical analysis and so may encourage critical 'forbidden thoughts'. The more a society becomes open, the more it is interested in reflecting, at first descriptively and then critically, upon itself, its present working as well as its past.
But what happens when a faction of intellectuals desires to drag a society, which has already opened up to a considerable extent, back to its previous totalitarian, closed condition? Then the very means of the former progress - philosophy, the sciences, history and especially sociology - become the most effective instruments of the 'treason of the intellectuals'. They are perverted in order to serve as devices of deception, and in the process they degenerate.
Classical Judaism had little interest in describing or explaining itself to the members of its own community, whether educated (in Talmudic studies) or not. (The works of Hellenistic Jews, such as Philo of Alexandria, constitute an exception. They were written before classical Judaism achieved a position of exclusive hegemony. They were indeed subsequently suppressed among the Jews and survived only because Christian monks found them congenial)
It is significant that the writing of Jewish history, even in the driest annalistic style, ceased completely from the time of Josephus Flavius (end of first century) until the Renaissance, when it was revived for a short time in Italy and in other countries where the Jews were under strong Italian influence. (During the whole period from AD 100 to 1500 there were written two travel books and one history of Talmudic studies - a short, inaccurate and dreary book, written moreover by a despised philosopher (Abraham ben-David, Spain, c. 1170).
Characteristically, the rabbis feared Jewish even more than general history, and the first modern book on history published in Hebrew (in the 16th century) was entitled History of the Kings of France and of the Ottoman Kings. It was followed by some histories dealing only with the persecutions that Jews had been subjected to. The first book on Jewish history proper (Me'or 'Eynayi'n by 'Azarya de Rossi of Ferrara, Italy, 1574) (dealing with ancient times) was promptly banned and suppressed by the highest rabbinical authorities, and did not reappear before the 19th century.
The rabbinical authorities of east Europe furthermore decreed that all non-Talmudic studies are to be forbidden, even when nothing specific could be found in them which merits anathema, because they encroach on the time that should be employed either in studying the Talmud or in making money - which should be used to subsidize Talmudic scholars.
Only one loophole was left, namely the time that even a pious Jew must perforce spend in the privy. In that unclean place sacred studies are forbidden, and it was therefore permitted to read history there, provided it was written in Hebrew and was completely secular, which in effect meant that it must be exclusively devoted to non-Jewish subjects. (One can imagine that those few Jews of that time who - no doubt tempted by Satan - developed an interest in the history of the French kings were constantly complaining to their neighbors about the constipation they were suffering from ...)
As a consequence, two hundred years ago the vast majority of Jews were totally in the dark not only about the existence of America but also about Jewish history and Jewry's contemporary state; and they were quite content to remain so.
There was however one area in which they were not allowed to remain self-contented - the area of Christian attacks against those passages in the Talmud and the Talmudic literature which are specifically anti-Christian or more generally anti-Gentile. It is important to note that this challenge developed relatively late in the history of Christian-Jewish relations - only from the 13th century on. (Before that time, the Christian authorities attacked Judaism using either Biblical or general arguments, but seemed to be quite ignorant as to the contents of the Talmud.) The Christian campaign against the Talmud was apparently brought on by the conversion to Christianity of Jews who were well versed in the Talmud and who were in many cases attracted by the development of Christian philosophy, with its strong Aristotelian (and thus universal) character. (The best known cases were in Spain; for example (to use their adopted Christian names) Master Alfonso of Valladolid, converted in 1320, and Paul of Santa Marja, converted in 1390 and appointed bishop of Burgos in 1415. But many other cases can be cited from all over west Europe)
It must be admitted at the outset that the Talmud and the Talmudic literature - quite apart from the general anti-Gentile streak that runs through them, which will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5 - contain very offensive statements and precepts directed specifically against Christianity. For example, in addition to a series of scurrilous sexual allegations against Jesus, the Talmud states that his punishment in hell is to be immersed in boiling excrement - a statement not exactly calculated to endear the Talmud to devout Christians. Or one can quote the precept according to which Jews are instructed to burn, publicly if possible, any copy of the New Testament that comes into their hands. (This is not only still in force but actually practiced today; thus on 23 March 1980 hundreds of copies of the New Testament were publicly and ceremonially burnt in Jerusalem under the auspices of Yad Le'akhim, a Jewish religious organization subs subsidized by the Israeli Ministry of Religions.)
Anyway, a powerful attack, well based in many points, against Talmudic Judaism developed in Europe from the 13th century. We are not referring here to ignorant calumnies, such as the blood libel, propagated by benighted monks in small provincial cities, but to serious disputations held before the best European universities of the time and on the whole conducted as fairly as was possible under medieval circumstances. (Certainly the tone, and also the consequences, were very much better than in disputations in which Christians were accused of heresy - for example those in which Peter Abelard or the strict Franciscans were condemned)
What was the Jewish - or rather the rabbinical - response? The simplest one was the ancient weapon of bribery and string-pulling. In most European countries, during most of the time, anything could be fixed by a bribe. Nowhere was this maxim more true than in the Rome of the Renaissance popes. The Edigio Princeps of the complete Code of Talmudic Law, Maimonides' Mishneh Torah - replete not only with the most offensive precepts against all Gentiles but also with explicit attacks on Christianity and on Jesus (after whose name the author adds piously, 'May the name of the wicked perish') - was published unexpurgated in Rome in the year 1480 under Sixtus IV, politically a very active pope who had a constant and urgent need for money. (A few years earlier, the only older edition of The Golden Ass by Apulcius from which the violent attack on Christianity had not been removed was also published in Rome.) Alexander VI Borgin was also very liberal in this respect.
Even during that period, as well as before it, there were always countries in which for a time a wave of anti-Talmud persecution set in. But a more consistent and widespread onslaught came with the Reformation and Counter Reformation, which induced a higher standard of intellectual honesty as well as a better knowledge of Hebrew among Christian scholars. From the 16th century, all the Talmudic literature, including the Talmud itself, was subjected to Christian censorship in various countries. In Russia this went on until 1917. Some censors, such as in Holland, were more lax, while others were more severe; and the offensive passages were expunged or modified.
All modern studies on Judaism, particularly by Jews, have evolved from that conflict, and to this day they bear the unmistakable marks of their origin: deception, apologetics or hostile polemics, indifference or even active hostility to the pursuit of truth. Almost all the so-called Jewish studies in Judaism, from that time to this very day, are polemics against an external enemy rather than an internal debate.
It is important to note that this was initially the character of historiography in all known societies (except ancient Greece, whose early liberal historians were attacked by later sophists for their insufficient patriotism!). This was true of the early Catholic and Protestant historians, who polemicized against each other. Similarly, the earliest European national histories are imbued with the crudest nationalism and scorn for all other, neighboring nations.
But sooner or later there comes a time when an attempt is made to understand one's national or religious adversary and at the same time to criticize certain deep and important aspects of the history of one's own group; and both these developments go together. Only when historiography becomes - as Pieter Geyl put it so well - 'a debate without end' rather than a continuation of war by historiographic means, only then does a humane historiography, which strives for both accuracy and fairness, become possible; and it then turns into one of the most powerful instruments of humanism and self-education.
It is for this reason that modern totalitarian regimes rewrite history or punish historians. (The Stalinist and Chinese examples are sufficiently well known. However, it is worth mentioning that the persecution of honest historians in Germany began very early. In 1874, H. Ewald, a professor at Goettingen, was imprisoned for expressing 'incorrect' views on the conquests of Frederick II, a hundred years earlier. The situation in Israel is analogous: the worst attacks against me were provoked not by the violent terms I employ in my condemnations of Zionism and the oppression of Palestinians, but by an early article of mine about the role of Jews in the slave trade, in which the latest case quoted dated from 1870. That article was published before the 1967 war; nowadays its publication would be impossible)
When a whole society tries to return to totalitarianism, a totalitarian history is written, not because of compulsion from above but under pressure from below, which is much more effective. This is what happened in Jewish history, and this constitutes the first obstacle we have to surmount.
What were the detailed mechanisms (other than bribery) employed by Jewish communities, in cooperation with outside forces, in order to ward off the attack on the Talmud and other religious literature? Several methods can be distinguished, all of them having important political consequences reflected in current Israeli policies. Although it would be tedious to supply in each case the Beginistic or Labor-Zionist parallel, I am sure that readers who are somewhat familiar with the details of Middle East politics will themselves be able to notice the resemblance.
The first mechanism I shall discuss is that of sereptitious defiance, combined with outward compliance. As explained above, Talmudic passages directed against Christianity or against non-Jews (In the end a few other passages also had to be removed, such as those which seemed theologically absurd (for example, where God is said to pray to Himself or physically to carry out some of the practices enjoined on the individual Jew) or those which celebrated too freely the sexual escapades of ancient rabbis) had to go or to be modified - the pressure was too strong.
This is what was done: a few of the most offensive passages were bodily removed from all editions printed in Europe after the mid-16th century. In all other passages, the expressions 'Gentile', 'non-Jew', 'stranger' (goy, eino yehudi, , nokhri) - which appear in all early manuscripts and printings as well as in all editions published in Islamic countries - were replaced by terms such as 'idolater', 'heathen' or even 'Canaanite' or 'Samaritan', terms which could be explained away but which a Jewish reader could recognize as euphemisms for the old expressions.
As the attack mounted, so the defense became more elaborate, sometimes with lasting tragic results. During certain periods the Tsarist Russian censorship became stricter and, seeing the above mentioned euphemisms for what they were, forbade them too. Thereupon the rabbinical authorities substituted the terms 'Arab' or 'Muslim' (in Hebrew, Yishma'eli - which means both) or occasionally 'Egyptian', correctly calculating that the Tsarist authorities would not object to this kind of abuse. At the same time, lists of Talmudic Omissions were circulated in manuscript form, which explained all the new terms and pointed out all the omissions.
At times, a general disclaimer was printed before the title page of each volume of Talmudic literature, solemnly declaring, sometimes on oath, that all hostile expressions in that volume are intended only against the idolaters of antiquity, or even against the long-vanished Canaanites, rather than against 'the peoples in whose land we live'. After the British conquest of India, some rabbis hit on the subterfuge of claiming that any particularly outrageous derogatory expression used by them is only intended against the Indians. Occasionally the aborigines of Australia were also added as whipping-boys.
Needless to say, all this was a calculated lie from beginning to end; and following the establishment of the State of Israel, once the rabbis felt secure, all the offensive passages and expressions were restored without hesitation in all new editions. (Because of the enormous cost which a new edition involves, a considerable part of the Talmudic literature, including the Talmud itself, is still being reprinted from the old editions. For this reason, the above mentioned Talmudic Omissio, ts have now been published in Israel in a cheap printed edition, under the title Hesronot Shas.) So now one can read quite freely - and Jewish children are actually taught - passages such as that (Tractate Berakhot, p. 58b) which commands every Jew, whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead ('Your mother shall be sore confounded; she that bare you shall be ashamed...', Jeremiah, 50:12) if it is non-Jewish.
In the old editions the curse was omitted, or one of the euphemisms was substituted for 'Gentiles'. But in the new Israeli edition of Rabbi Adin Steinsalz (complete with Hebrew explanations and glosses to the Aramaic parts of the text, so that schoolchildren should be in no doubt as to what they are supposed to say) the unambiguous words 'Gentiles' and 'strangers' have been restored.
Under external pressure, the rabbis deceptively eliminated or modified certain passages - but not the actual practices which are prescribed in them. It is a fact which must be remembered, not least by Jews themselves, that for centuries our totalitarian society has employed barbaric and inhumane customs to poison the minds of its members, and it is still doing so. (These inhumane customs cannot be explained away as mere reaction to antisemitism or persecution of Jews: they are gratuitous barbarities directed against each and every human being. A pious Jew arriving for the first time in Australia, say, and chancing to pass near an Aboriginal graveyard, must - as an act of worship of 'God' - curse the mothers of the dead buried there.) Without facing this real social fact, we all become parties to the deception and accomplices to the process of poisoning the present and future generations, with all the consequences of this process.
Modern scholars of Judaism have not only continued the deception, but have actually improved upon the old rabbinical methods, both in impudence and in mendacity. I omit here the various histories of antisemitism, as unworthy of serious consideration, and shall give just three particular examples and one general example of the more modern 'scholarly' deceptions.
In 1962, a part of the Maimonidean Code referred to above, the so-called Book of Knowledge, which contains the most basic rules of Jewish faith and practice, was published in Jerusalem in a bilingual edition, with the English translation facing the Hebrew text. (Published by Boys Town, Jerusalem, and edited by Moses Hyamson, one of the most reputable scholars of Judaism in Britain)
The latter has been restored to its original purity, and the command to exterminate Jewish infidels appears in it in full: 'It is a duty to exterminate them with one's own hands.' In the English translation this is somewhat softened to: 'It is a duty to take active measures to destroy them.' But then the Hebrew text goes on to specify the prime examples of 'infidels' who must be exterminated: 'Such as Jesus of Nazareth and his pupils, and Tzadoq and Baitos (The supposed founders of the Sadducean sect) and their pupils, may the name of the wicked rot'. Not one 'word of this appears in the English text on the facing page (78a). And, even more significant, in spite of the wide circulation of this book among scholars in the English-speaking countries, not one of them has, as far as I know, protested against this glaring deception.
The second example comes from the USA, again from an English translation of a book by Maimonides. Apart from his work on the codification of the Talmud, he was also a philosopher and his Guide to the Perplexed is justly considered to be the greatest work of Jewish religious philosophy and is widely read and used even today. Unfortunately, in addition to his attitude towards non-Jews generally and Christians in particular, Maimonides was also an anti-Black racist. Towards the end of the Guide, in a crucial chapter (book III, chapter 51) he discusses how various sections of humanity can attain the supreme religious value, the true worship of God. Among those who are incapable of even approaching this are:
"Some of the Turks [i.e., the Mongol race] and the nomads in the North, and the Blacks and the nomads in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates. And their nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey, because they have the image and the resemblance of a man more than a monkey does."
Now, what does one do with such a passage in a most important and necessary work of Judaism? Face the truth and its consequences? God forbid! Admit (as so many Christian scholars, for example, have done in similar circumstances) that a very important Jewish authority held also rabid anti-Black views, and by this admission make an attempt at self-education in real humanity?
Perish the thought. I can almost imagine Jewish scholars in the USA consulting among themselves, 'What is to be done?' - for the book had to be translated, due to the decline in the knowledge of Hebrew among American Jews. Whether by consultation or by individual inspiration, a happy solution' was found: in the popular American translation of the Guide by one Friedlander, first published as far back as 1925 and since then reprinted in many editions, including several in paperback, the Hebrew word Kushi,,:, which means Blacks, was simply transliterated and appears as 'Kushites', a word which means nothing to those who have no knowledge of Hebrew, or to whom an obliging rabbi will not give an oral explanation. (I am happy to say that in a recent new translation (Chicago University Press) the word 'Blacks' does appear, but the heavy and very expensive volume is unlikely, as yet, to get into the 'wrong' hands. Similarly, in early 19th century England, radical books (such as Godwin's) were allowed to appear, provided they were issued in a very expensive edition)
During all these years, not a word has been said to point out the initial deception or the social facts underlying its continuation - and this throughout the excitement of Martin Luther King's campaigns, which were supported by so many rabbis, not to mention other Jewish figures, some of whom must have been aware of the anti-Black racist attitude which forms part of their Jewish heritage. (An additional fact can be mentioned in this connection. It was perfectly possible, and apparently respectable, for a Jewish scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis (who formerly taught in London and is now teaching in the USA) to publish an article in Encounter, in which he points out many passages in Islamic literature which in his view are anti-Black, but none of which even approaches the passage quoted above. It would be quite impossible for anyone now, or in the last thirty years, to discuss in any reputable American publication the above passage or the many other offensive anti-Black Talmudic passages. But without a criticism of all sides the attack on Islam alone reduces to mere slander)
Surely one is driven to the hypothesis that quite a few of Martin Luther King's rabbinical supporters were either anti-Black racists who supported him for tactical reasons of 'Jewish interest' (wishing to win Black support for American Jewry and for Israel's policies) or were accomplished hypocrites, to the point of schizophrenia, capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of rabid racism to a proclaimed attachment to an anti-racist struggle; and back, and back again.
The third example comes from a work which has far less serious scholarly intent - but is all the more popular for that: The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten. This light-hearted work - first published in the USA in 1968, and reprinted in many editions, including several times as a Penguin paperback - is a kind of glossary of Yiddish words often used by Jews or even non-Jews in English-speaking countries.
For each entry, in addition to a detailed definition and more or less amusing anecdotes illustrating its use, there is also an etymology stating (quite accurately, on the whole) the language from which the word came into Yiddish and its meaning in that language. The entry Shaygets - whose main meaning is 'a Gentile boy or young man - is an exception: there the etymology cryptically states 'Hebrew Origin', without giving the form or meaning of the original Hebrew word.
However, under the entry Shiksa - the feminine form of Shaygets - the author does give the original Hebrew word, sheqetz (or, in his transliteration, sheques) and defines its Hebrew meaning as 'blemish'. This is a bare-faced lie, as every speaker of Hebrew knows. The Megiddo Modern Hebrew-English Dictionary, published in Israel, correctly defines shegetz as follows: 'unclean animal; loathsome creature, abomination (colloquial - pronounced shaygets) wretch, unruly youngster; Gentile youngster'.
My final, more general example is, if possible, even more shocking than the others. It concerns the attitude of the Hassidic movement towards non-Jews. Hassidism - a continuation (and debasement!) of Jewish mysticism - is still a living movement, with hundreds of thousands of active adherents who are fanatically devoted to their 'holy rabbis', some of whom have acquired a very considerable political influence in Israel, among the leaders of most parties and even more so in the higher echelons of the army.
What, then, are the views of this movement concerning non-Jews? As an example, let us take the famous Hatanya, fundamental book of the Habbad movement, one of the most important branches of Hassidism. According to this book, all non-Jews are totally satanic creatures 'in whom there is absolutely nothing good'. Even a non-Jewish embryo is qualitatively different from a Jewish one. The very existence of a non-Jew is essential', whereas all of creation was created solely for the sake of the Jews.
This book is circulated in countless editions, and its ideas are further propagated in the numerous 'discourses' of the present hereditary Fuhrer of Habbad, the so-called Lubavitcher rabbi, M.M. Schneurssohn, who leads this powerful world-wide organization from his New York headquarters. In Israel these ideas are widely disseminated among the public at large, in the schools and in the army. (According to the testimony of Shulamit Aloni, Member of the Knesset, this Habbad propaganda was particularly stepped up before Israel's invasion of Lebanon in March 1978, in order to induce military doctors and nurses to withhold medical help from 'Gentile wounded'.
This Nazi-like advice did not refer specifically to Arabs or Palestinians, but simply to 'Gentiles', goyim.) A former Israeli President, Shazar, was an ardent adherent of Habbad, and many top Israeli and American politicians - headed by Prime Minister Begin - publicly courted and supported it. This, in spite of the considerable unpopularity of the Lubavitcher rabbi - in Israel he is widely criticized because he refuses to come to the Holy Land even for a visit and keeps himself in New York for obscure messianic reasons, while in New York his anti-Black attitude is notorious.
The fact that, despite these pragmatic difficulties, Habbad can be publicly supported by so many top political figures owes much to the thoroughly disingenuous and misleading treatment by almost all scholars who have written about the Hassidic movement and its Habbad branch. This applies particularly to all who have written or are writing about it in English. They suppress the glaring evidence of the old Hassidic texts as well as the latter-day political implications that follow from them, which stare in the face of even a casual reader of the Israeli Hebrew press, in whose pages the Lubavitcher rabbi and other Hassidic leaders constantly publish the most rabid bloodthirsty statements and exhortations against all Arabs.
A chief deceiver in this case, and a good example of the power of the deception, was Martin Buber. His numerous works eulogizing the whole Hassidic movement (including Habbad) never so much as hint at the real doctrines of Hassidism concerning non-Jews. The crime of deception is all the greater in view of the fact that Buber's eulogies of Hassidism were first published in German during the period of the rise of German nationalism and the accession of Nazism to power.
But while ostensibly opposing Nazism, Buber glorified a movement holding and actually teaching doctrines about non-Jews not unlike the Nazi doctrines about Jews. One could of course argue that the Hassidic Jews of seventy or fifty years ago were the victims, and a 'white lie' favoring a victim is excusable. But the consequences of deception are incalculable. Buber's works were translated into Hebrew, were made a powerful element of the Hebrew education in Israel, have greatly increased the power of the blood-thirsty Hassidic leaders, and have thus been an important factor in the rise of Israeli chauvinism and hate of all non-Jews. If we think about the many human beings who died of their wounds because Israeli army nurses, incited by Hassidic propaganda, refused to tend them, then a heavy onus for their blood lies on the head of Martin Buber.
I must mention here that in his adulation of Hassidism Buber far surpassed other Jewish scholars, particularly those writing in Hebrew (or, formerly, in Yiddish) or even in European languages but purely for a Jewish audience. In questions of internal Jewish interest, there had once been a great deal of justified criticism of the Hassidic movement. Their mysogynism (much more extreme than that common to all Jewish Orthodoxy), their indulgence in alcohol, their fanatical cult of their hereditary 'holy rabbis' who extorted money from them, the numerous superstitions peculiar to them - these and many other negative traits were critically commented upon. But Buber's sentimental and deceitful romantization has won the day, especially in the USA and Israel, because it was in tune with the totalitarian admiration of anything 'genuinely Jewish' and because certain 'left' Jewish circles in which Buber had a particularly great influence have adopted this position.
Nor was Buber alone in his attitude, although in my opinion he was by far the worst in the evil he propagated and the influence he has left behind him. There was the very influential sociologist and biblical scholar, Yehezkiel Kaufman, an advocate of genocide on the model of the Book of Joshua, the idealist philosopher Hugo Shmuel Bergman, who as far back as 1914-15 advocated the expulsion of all Palestinians to Iraq, and many others. All were outwardly 'dovish', but employed formulas which could be manipulated in the most extreme anti-Arab sense, all had tendencies to that religious mysticism which encourages the propagation of deceptions, and all seemed to be gentle persons who, even when advocating expulsion, racism and genocide, seemed incapable of hurting a fly - and just for this reason the effect of their deceptions was the greater.
It is against the glorification of inhumanity, proclaimed not only by the rabbis but by those who are supposed to be the greatest and certainly the most influential scholars of Judaism, that we have to struggle; and it is against those modern successors of the false prophets and dishonest priests that we have to repeat even in the face of an almost unanimous opinion within Israel and among the majority of Jews in countries such as the USA Lucretius' warning against surrendering one's judgement to the declamations of religious leaders: Tantuii: religio potuit suadere malorum - 'To such heights of evil are men driven by religion.' Religion is not always (as Marx said) the opium of the people, but it can often be so, and when it is used in this sense by prevaricating and misrepresenting its true nature, the scholars and intellectuals who perform this task take on the character of opium smugglers.
But we can derive from this analysis another, more general conclusion about the most effective and horrific means of compulsion to do evil, to cheat and to deceive and, while keeping one's hands quite clean of violence, to corrupt whole peoples and drive them to oppression and murder. (For there can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish religious fanaticism.) Most people seem to assume that the worst totalitarianism employs physical coercion, and would refer to the imagery of Orwell's 1984 for a model illustrating such a regime. But it seems to me that this common view is greatly mistaken, and that the intuition of Isaac Asimov, in whose science fiction the worst oppression is always internalized, is the more true to the dangers of human nature. Unlike Stalin's tame scholars, the rabbis - and even more so the scholars attacked here, and with them the whole mob of equally silent middlebrows such as writers, journalists, public figures, who lie and deceive more than them - are not facing the danger of death or concentration camp, but only social pressure; they lie out of patriotism because they believe that it is their duty to lie for what they conceive to be the Jewish interest. They are patriotic liars, and it is the same patriotism which reduces them to silence when confronted with the discrimination and oppression of the Palestinians.
In the present case we are also faced with another group loyalty, but one which comes from outside the group, and which is sometimes even more mischievous. Very many non- Jews (including Christian clergy and religious laymen, as well as some Marxists from all Marxist groups) hold the curious opinion that one way to 'atone' for the persecution of Jews is not to speak out against evil perpetrated by Jews but to participate in 'white lies' about them. The crude accusation of 'antisemitism' (or, in the case of Jews, 'self-hate') against anybody who protests at the discrimination of Palestinians or who points out any fact about the Jewish religion or the Jewish past which conflicts with the 'approved version' comes with greater hostility and force from non-Jewish 'friends of the Jews' than from Jews. It is the existence and great influence of this group in all western countries, and particularly in the USA (as well as the other English-speaking countries) which has allowed the rabbis and scholars of Judaism to propagate their lies not only without opposition but with considerable help.
In fact, many professed 'anti-Stalinists' have merely substituted another idol for their worship, and tend to support Jewish racism and fanaticism with even greater ardor and dishonesty than were found among the most devoted Stalinists in the past. Although this phenomenon of blind and Stalinistic support for any evil, so long as it is 'Jewish', is particularly strong from 1945, when the truth about the extermination of European Jewry became known, it is a mistake to suppose that it began only then.
On the contrary, it dates very far back, particularly in social-democratic circles. One of Marx's early friends, Moses Hess, widely known and respected as one of the first socialists in Germany, subsequently revealed himself as an extreme Jewish racist, whose views about the 'pure Jewish race' published in 1858 were not unlike comparable bilge about the 'pure Aryan race'. But the German socialists, who struggled against German racism, remained silent about their Jewish racism.
In 1944, during the actual struggle against Hitler, the British Labor Party approved a plan for the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine, which was similar to Hitler's early plans (up to about 1941) for the Jews. This plan was approved under the pressure of Jewish members of the party's leadership, many of whom have displayed a stronger 'kith and kin' attitude to every Israeli policy than the Conservative 'kith and kin' supporters of Ian Smith ever did. But Stalinistic taboos on the left are stronger in Britain than on the right, and there is virtually no discussion even when the Labor Party supports Begin's government.
In the USA a similar situation prevails, and again the American liberals are the worst. This is not the place to explore all the political consequences of this situation, but we must face reality: in our struggle against the racism and fanaticism of the Jewish religion, our greatest enemies will be not only the Jewish racists (and users of racism) but also those non-Jews who in other areas are known - falsely in my opinion - as 'progressives'.
This is devoted to a more detailed description of the theologic-legal structure of classical Judaism.(As in Chapter 2, I use the term 'classical Judaism' to refer to rabbinical Judaism in the period from about AD 800 up to the end of the 18th century. This period broadly coincides with the Jewish Middle Ages, since for most Jewish communities medieval conditions persisted much longer than for the west European nations, namely up to the period of the French Revolution. Thus what I call 'classical Judaism' can be regarded as medieval Judaism)
However, before embarking on that description it is necessary to dispel at least some of the many misconceptions disseminated in almost all foreign-language (that is, non-Hebrew) accounts of Judaism, especially by those who propagate such currently fashionable phrases as 'the Judeo-Christian tradition' or 'the common values of the monotheistic religions'.
Because of considerations of space I shall only deal in detail with the most important of these popular delusions: that the Jewish religion is, and always was, monotheistic. Now, as many biblical scholars know, and as a careful reading of the Old Testament easily reveals, this historical view is quite wrong. In many, if not most, books of the Old Testament the existence and power of 'other gods' are clearly acknowledged, but Yahweh (Jehovah), who is the most powerful god, (Exodus, 15:11) is also very jealous of his rivals and forbids his people to worship them.(Exodus, 20:3-6) It is only very late in the Bible, in some of the later prophets, that the existence of all gods other than Yahweh is denied. (Jeremiah, 10; the same theme is echoed still later by the Second Isaiah, see Isaiah, 44)
What concerns us, however, is not biblical but classical Judaism; and it is quite clear, though much less widely realized, that the latter, during its last few hundred years, was for the most part far from pure monotheism. The same can be said about the real doctrines dominant in present-day Orthodox Judaism, which is a direct continuation of classical Judaism. The decay of monotheism came about through the spread of Jewish mysticism (the cabbala) which developed in the 12th and 13th centuries, and by the late 16th century had won an almost complete victory in virtually all the centers of Judaism. The Jewish Enlightenment, which arose out of the crisis of classical Judaism, had to fight against this mysticism and its influence more than against anything else, but in latter-:lay Jewish Orthodoxy, especially among the rabbis, the influence of the cabbala has remained predominant. (The cabbala is of course an esoteric doctrine, and its detailed study was confined to scholars. In Europe, especially after about 1750, extreme measures were taken to keep it secret and forbid its study except by mature scholars and under strict supervision. The uneducated Jewish masses of eastern Europe had no real knowledge of cabalistic doctrine; but the cabbala percolated to them in the form of superstition and magic practices) For example, the Gush Emunim movement is inspired to a great extent by cabalistic ideas.
Knowledge and understanding of these ideas is therefore important for two reasons. First, without it one cannot under- stand the true beliefs of Judaism at the end of its classical period. Secondly, these ideas play an important contemporary political role, inasmuch as they form part of the explicit system of beliefs of many religious politicians, including most leaders of Gush Emunim, and have an indirect influence on many Zionist leaders of all parties, including the Zionist left.
According to the cabbala, the universe is ruled not by one god but by several deities, of various characters and influences, emanated by a dim, distant First Cause. Omitting many details, one can summarize the system as follows. From the First Cause, first a male god called 'Wisdom' or 'Father' and then a female goddess called 'Knowledge' or 'Mother' were emanated or born.
From the marriage of these two, a pair of younger gods were born: Son, also called by many other names such as 'Small Face' or 'The Holy Blessed One'; and Daughter, also called 'Lady' (or 'Matronit', a word derived from Latin), 'Shekhinah', 'Queen', and so on. These two younger gods should be united, but their union is prevented by the machinations of Satan, who in this system is a very important and independent personage.
The Creation was undertaken by the First Cause in order to allow them to unite, but because of the Fall they became more disunited than ever, and indeed Satan has managed to come very close to the divine Daughter and even to rape her (either seemingly or in fact - opinions differ on this).
The creation of the Jewish people was undertaken in order to mend the break caused by Adam and Eve, and under Mount Sinai this was for a moment achieved: the male god Son, incarnated in Moses, was united with the goddess Shekhinah. Unfortunately, the sin of the Golden Calf again caused disunity in the godhead; but the repentance of the Jewish people has mended matters to some extent. Similarly, each incident of biblical Jewish history is believed to be associated with the union or disunion of the divine pair.
The Jewish conquest of Palestine from the Canaanites and the building of the first and second Temple are particularly propitious for their. union, while the destruction of the Temples and exile of the Jews from the Holy Land are merely external signs not only of the divine disunion but also of a real 'whoring after strange gods': Daughter falls closely into the power of Satan, while Son takes various female satanic personages to his bed, instead of his proper wife.
The duty of pious Jews is to restore through their prayers and religious acts the perfect divine unity, in the form of sexual union, between the male and female deities. (Many contemporary Jewish mystics believe that the same end may be accomplished more quickly by war against the Arabs, by the expulsion of the Palestinians, or even by establishing many Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
The growing movement for building the Third Temple is also based on such ideas) Thus before most ritual acts, which every devout Jew has to perform many times each day, the following cabalistic formula is recited: 'For the sake of the [sexual] congress 7 of the Holy Blessed One and his Shekhinah...' The Jewish morning prayers are also arranged so as to promote this sexual union, if only temporarily. Successive parts of the prayer mystically correspond to successive stages of the union: at one point the goddess approaches with her hand- maidens, at another the god puts his arm around her neck and fondles her breast, and finally the sexual act is supposed to take place.
Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the cabbalists, are designed to deceive various angels (imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence) or to propitiate Satan. At a certain point in the morning prayer, some verses in Aramaic (rather than the more usual Hebrew) are pronounced. (The so-called Qedusbab Sblisbit (Third Holiness), inserted in the prayer Uva Letzion towards the end of the morning service. Numbers, 29. 9-10 The power of Satan, and his connection with non-Jews, is illustrated by a widespread custom, established under cabalistic influence in many Jewish communities from the 17th century.
A Jewish woman returning from her monthly ritual bath of purification (after which sexual intercourse with her husband is mandatory) must beware of meeting one of the four satanic creatures: Gentile, pig, dog or donkey. If she does meet any one of them she must take another bath. The custom was advocated (among others) by Shn'et Musar, a book on Jewish moral conduct first published in 1712, which was one of the most popular books among Jews in both eastern Europe and Islamic countries until early this century, and is still widely read in some Orthodox circles)
This is supposed to be a means for tricking the angels who operate the gates through which prayers enter heaven and who have the power to block the prayers of the pious. The angels only understand Hebrew and are baffled by the Aramaic verses; being somewhat dull-witted (presumably they are far less clever than the cabbalists) they open the gates, and at this moment all the prayers, including those in Hebrew, get through. Or take another example: both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing.
On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God, by promoting the divine union of Son and Daughter; but on the other he is worshiping Satan, who likes Jewish prayers and ritual acts so much that when he is offered a few of them it keeps him busy for a while and he forgets to pester the divine Daughter.
Indeed, the cabbalists believe that some of the sacrifices burnt in the Temple were intended for Satan. For example, the seventy bullocks sacrificed during the seven days of the feast of Tabernacles (The power of Satan, and his connection with non-Jews, is illustrated by a widespread custom, established under cabalistic influence in many Jewish communities from the 17th century) were supposedly offered to Satan in his capacity as ruler of all the Gentiles, must beware of meeting one of the four satanic creatures: Gentile, pig, dog or donkey. If she does meet any one of them she must take another bath.
The custom was advocated (among others) by Shn'et Musar, a book on Jewish moral conduct first published in 1712, which was one of the most popular books among Jews in both eastern Europe and Islamic countries until early this century, and is still widely read in some Orthodox circles) in order to keep him too busy to interfere on the eighth day, when sacrifice is made to God. Many other examples of the same kind can be given.
Several points should be made concerning this system and its importance for the proper understanding of Judaism, both in its classical period and in its present political involvement in Zionist practice.
First, whatever can be said about this cabalistic system, it cannot be regarded as monotheistic, unless one is also prepared to regard Hinduism, the late Greco-Roman religion, or even the religion of ancient Egypt, as 'monotheistic'.
Secondly, the real nature of classical Judaism is illustrated by the ease with which this system was adopted. Faith and beliefs (except nationalistic beliefs) play an extremely small part in classical Judaism. What is of prime importance is the ritual act, rather than the significance which that act is supposed to have or the belief attached to it.
Therefore in times when a minority of religious Jews refused to accept the cabbala (as is the case today), one could see some few Jews performing a given religious ritual believing it to be an act of worship of God, while others do exactly the same thing with the intention of propitiating Satan - but so long as the act is the same they would pray together and remain members of the same congregation, however much they might dislike each other. But if instead of the intention attached to the ritual washing of hands anyone would dare to introduce an innovation in the manner of washing, (This is prescribed in minute detail.
For example, the ritual hand washing must not be done under a tap; each hand must be washed singly, in water from a mug (of prescribed minimal size) held in the other hand. If one's hands are really dirty, it is quite impossible to clean them in this way, but such pragmatic considerations are obviously irrelevant. Classical Judaism prescribes a great number of such detailed rituals, to which the cabbala attaches deep significance. There are, for example, many precise rules concerning behavior in a lavatory. A Jew relieving nature in an open space must not do so in a North-South direction, because North is associated with Satan) a real schism would certainly ensue.
The same can be said about all sacred formulas of Judaism. Provided the working is left intact, the meaning is at best a secondary matter. For example, perhaps the most sacred Jewish formula, 'Hear 0 Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one', recited several times each day by every pious Jew, can at the present time mean two contrary things.
It can mean that the Lord is indeed 'one'; but it can also mean that a certain stage in the union of the male and female deities has been reached or is being promoted by the proper recitation of this formula. However, when Jews of a Reformed congregation recite this formula in any language other than Hebrew, all Orthodox rabbis, whether they believe in unity or in the divine sexual union, are very angry indeed.
Finally, all this is of considerable importance in Israel (and in other Jewish centers) even at present. The enormous significance attached to mere formulas (such as the 'Law of Jerusalem'); the ideas and motivations of Gush Emunim; the urgency behind the hate for non-Jews presently living in Palestine; the fatalistic attitude towards all peace attempts by Arab states - all these and many other traits of Zionist politics, which puzzle so many well-meaning people who have a false notion about classical Judaism, become more intelligible against this religious and mystical background.
I must warn, however, against falling into the other extreme and trying to explain all Zionist politics in terms of this background. Obviously, the latter's influences vary in extent. Ben-Gurion was adept at manipulating them in a controlled way for specific ends. Under Begin the past exerts a much greater influence upon the present. But what one should never do is to ignore the past and its influences, because only by knowing it can one transcend its blind power.
It will be seen from the foregoing example that what most supposedly well-informed people think they know about Judaism may be very misleading, unless they can read Hebrew. All the details mentioned above can be found in the original texts or, in some cases, in modern books written in Hebrew for a rather specialized readership. In English one would look for them in vain, even where the omission of such socially important facts distorts the whole picture.
There is yet another misconception about Judaism which is particularly common among Christians, or people heavily influenced by Christian tradition and culture. This is the misleading idea that Judaism is a 'biblical religion'; that the Old Testament has in Judaism the same central place and legal authority which the Bible has for Protestant or even Catholic Christianity.
Again, this is connected with the question of interpretation. We have seen that in matters of belief there is great latitude. Exactly the opposite holds with respect to the legal interpretation of sacred texts. Here the interpretation is rigidly fixed - but by the Talmud rather than by the Bible itself. ('Interpretation' is my own expression. The classical (and present-day Orthodox) view is that the Talmudic meaning, even where it is contrary to the literal sense, was always the operational one) Many, perhaps most, biblical verses prescribing religious acts and obligations are 'understood' by classical Judaism, and by present-:lay Orthodoxy, in a sense which is quite distinct from, or even contrary to, their literal meaning as understood by Christian or other readers of the Old Testament, who only see the plain text. The same division exists at present in Israel between those educated in Jewish religious schools and those educated in 'secular' Hebrew schools, where on the whole the plain meaning of the Old Testament is taught.
This important point can only be understood through examples. It will be noted that the changes in meaning do not all go in the same direction from the point of view of ethics, as the term is understood now. Apologetics of Judaism claim that the interpretation of the Bible, originated by the Pharisees and fixed in the Talmud, is always more liberal than the literal sense. But some of the examples below show that this is far from being the case.
(1) Let us start with the Decalogue itself. The Eighth Commandment, Thou shalt not steal' (Exodus, 20:15), is taken to be a prohibition against 'stealing' (that is, kidnaping) a Jewish person. The reason is that according to the Talmud all acts forbidden by the Decalogue are capital offenses. Stealing property is not a capital offense (while kidnaping of Gentiles by Jews is allowed by Talmudic law) - hence the interpretation. A virtually identical sentence - 'Ye shall not steal' (Leviticus, 19:11) - is however allowed to have its literal meaning.
(2) The famous verse 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth' etc. (Exodus, 21:24) is taken to mean 'eye-money for eye', that is payment of a fine rather than physical retribution.
(3) Here is a notorious case of turning the literal meaning into its exact opposite. The biblical text plainly warns against following the bandwagon in an unjust cause: thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment' (Exodus, 23:2). The last words of this sentence - 'Decline after many to wrest judgment' - are torn out of their context and interpreted as an injunction to follow the majority
(4) The verse 'Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk' (Exodus, 23:19) is interpreted as a ban on mixing any kind of meat with any milk or milk product. Since the same verse is repeated in two other places in the Pentateuch, the mere repetition is taken to be a treble ban, forbidding a Jew (i) to eat such a mixture, (ii) to cook it for any purpose and (iii) to enjoy or benefit from it in any way. ('Interpretation' is my own expression. The classical (and present-day Orthodox) view is that the talmudic meaning, even where it is contrary to the literal sense, was always the operational one)