The light against reason

Samson Blinded ^ | June 22 2008 | Obadiah Shoher

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In recent years, anti-Semites around the world stepped up their attempts at banning Jewish religious books. A number of criminal complaints has been filed alleging racist incitement, notably in Russia. Rabbis seem to recognize that side of our books, as during the Knesset debate on anti-racism law designed to ban the Kach Party, religious parties insisted that theological writings be excluded from the definition of racism. That, by the way, didn’t help Kahane who presented Israeli Supreme Court with abundant evidence that all his sayings are within the halacha; the court banned his party no matter what.

No doubt, Jewish books from the Torah to Kitzur Shulhan Aruch are exclusivist. Not exactly racist, as Jews are not race. Not exclusivist in the sense that racism is exclusive: “I’m perpetually white, you’re perpetually black, and therefore I’m perpetually better than you’re” – as anyone can convert to Judaism and become as Jewish as Ruth, the grandmother of King David.

Jews do not despise other nations. Even the enemy nations, we hate rather than despise them. I respect Germans but firmly believe that the best use of Israel’s nukes would be illuminating their towns. Not that I hope for such a development. One can argue that they were merely a tool for punishing the assimilating Jews, and from the divine point of view don’t deserve punishment. But Pharaoh was punished with ten plagues for oppressing Egyptian Jews who were also assimilated. Whatever the case, God has his time of vengeance, and we have ours.

Judaism, however, despises foreign religions. Whatever the progressive rabbis told you, that absolutely includes Christianity. In the modern times, Kitzur Shulhan Aruch equates cross-worshiping with idolatry, and in the Disputation of Barcelona Ramban ridiculed his baptized opponent, “[it seems most strange that] the Creator of Heaven and Earth resorted to the womb of a certain Jewish lady, grew there for nine months and was born as an infant… and that afterwards… he came to life and returned to his original place. The mind of a Jew, or any other person, simply cannot tolerate these assertions.” Here is a subtle issue: we despise ideas, not their bearers, whether people or nations. That restraint is not due to the fact that all humans were created in God’s image: murderers, and rapists, and communists also were created in his image, and we despise them mightily for what they have done to that image. Rather, we recognize – as did Ramban in the disputation – that their beliefs are imbued from childhood rather than acquired through logical fallacy, and they may always revert to what we consider truth. Therefore I had never had a problem with the Christian mass, which liberal Jews decry, which expresses the hope of Jews’ converting one day to that faith. I’m a true liberal: I despise beliefs but allow people to hold them without contemplating violence against my people.

So, do we have a right to despise, to offend, to speak derisively? Most Jews adopted non-confrontational attitude: I’m not worse that you, but I’m no better, we’re all similar. Well, we’re not. Apples and oranges are different, people like ones and not the others. Why should we speak mildly of the offensive views? Read early Christian writers, such as John Chrysostom, for vituperative attacks on Judaism; John had friends among rabbis. Read Rambam’s derision of Islam, though he served a Muslim ruler.

The law of the Torah is straightforward: Jews are “the people that dwell alone.” We refuse to intermingle. I know, that’s insulting. But there is a whole lot of difference between refusing association with a particular group, such as blacks, and with everyone. We refuse to intermingle not out of hatred for any particular group, but because we want to be alone. It is unrealistic to hate everyone, as the strength of the feeling would dissipate, but it is possible to distance oneself from all other peoples. Our distancing is entirely neutral; it is not provoked by hatred. That is sort of the attitude which leads you to close the doors of your house even when you don’t fear theft: you have a right to privacy, to practicing your peculiar way of life.

That’s the point. Jews who lead Jewish life have the right and obligation to distance themselves from gentiles. In fact, gentiles rarely hate such Jews. There are many examples from Soviet labor camps where cutthroat inmates respected jailed religious Jews; Dostoevsky had similar experience in tsarist penal servitude camp. The problem appears when Jews assimilate: the Inquisition was launched to investigate Jewish converts in Spain, and Nazism, too, appeared in the country with the most assimilated Jewry. Assimilated Jews lose a religion-based reason to be different from gentiles. Their refusal to intermingle is an unjustified affront, indeed racism as their Jewishness is a bloodline rather than religion. But by inertia, even assimilated Jews cling to other Jews and remain somewhat wary of gentiles, which considerably insults the latter as such Jews shy from them for no reason. When the Diaspora organizations of assimilated Jews publish books like Shulhan Aruch or their leaders speak of Jewish chosen-ness, that is of course offensive to gentiles. In the cognitive framework of normal people, religious Jews with hair locks can speak of being chosen, but Jewish pundits who are no different from any gentile the next door have lost such right.

The Torah enjoins us to reproach the neighbors whom we consider wicked. Foreign worship by Jews is the ultimate wickedness, which we must reproach. There is no comparable obligation toward other peoples; we shouldn’t pour into the streets of Christian countries to announce our reservations about immaculate conception. But we should make such views known to other Jews so that they don’t become messianic. So we’re right to criticize foreign religions harshly and derisively in the books intended for Jews. It’s a contentious adult thing: if you fear being offended, don’t open our books.

Realistically speaking, Jewish books never call to violence against gentiles; our actions in the messianic era remain speculative. The criminal incitement statute is, therefore, inapplicable.

In Russia, there is a crime of seeding nationalist discord, which indeed we do. Our aim is for Jews to remain different, and if this is discord, so be it. I believe, however, that discord is something stronger than mere absence of accord, intermingling. Jewish “absence of accord” is non-confrontational, and indeed it would be ridiculous to imagine Jews confrontational in the Diaspora countries.

Jewish leaders step in where anti-Semites fail. We should expect self-censorship, removing of the offending phrases from Jewish religious books, as was indeed the case with the Soncino Talmud. In the true spirit of interfaith dialogue, our books will be made non-offensive to atheists and Christians and assimilated intermarried Jews. But the only way to be truly non-offensive is to become similar. And so they debase Judaism into heresy.

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Its an interesting idea in our multicultural age. Jews want to be different and remain different! That is the difference as Meir Kahane was fond of saying, between the views of the liberal pagans and Jews. It hurts the former that the Jews will not assimilate and become like every one else around them. If the Jews did that, anti-Semitism would have disappeared a long time ago. The refusal of Jews to give up their right to be distinctive is what annoys the rest of the world. There's no such thing as universal human brotherhood, if by that you mean every one has the same views about God and life. A cursory reading of history tells us how misleading that is. No, dear liberal - mankind is assuredly not all the same and far from equal in morality or culture.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus