Talmudic Doctrine: All Opposition to Judaism is Representative of the Blind, Irrational Hatred that Esau had for Jacob “Halacha hi beyoduah she’Eisav soneh l’Yaakov”
This is one of the most contentious of all truths about Judaism and the one most hotly contested by its partisans. All manner of lawyer’s rhetoric and sly word play is employed to convince gentiles that they are not suspect in Judaism. Stories pour forth from the American media about rabbis counseling, educating, sharing and reaching out to non-Judaics. Elie Wiesel lectures in New York on “Talmudic tolerance.” These lies are laughable to those who were raised inside Orthodox Judaism. We document the practice of Judaism, not the public relations rhetoric it generates for dissemination by a friendly media intended for consumption by naive or mentally incapacitated gentiles. If we look at the precepts by which Talmudic youth are raised, trained, formed and educated we discover the reality of Judaism, aside from the hypocritical and fantastic image of benevolence that is projected on its behalf by the media moguls.
This is what Talmudic children are taught from earliest childhood: all pretended friendship with gentiles is temporary. The gentile can never be your friend. The gentile is another Esau come to kill the Jews. He is incapable of loving us. War with him is unavoidable and eternal. The first step in the war is our segregation. We must keep separate (levado).
This bigoted image of gentiles which Talmudic youth imbibe from Orthodox Judaism’s religious elders, begins and ends with Esau and Jacob (“Eisav and Yaakov”). In the eyes of the rabbis, the gentile is eternally Esau. The Judaic, meanwhile, as long as he remains loyal to Klal Yisroel (the Judaic people) is Jacob. Religious Orthodox Judaic children are repeatedly told from early youth: “Halacha hi beyoduah she’Eisav soneh l’Yaakov” (“It is a given law: it is known that Esau hates Jacob”).
The essence of this teaching is as follows: “It is an irrevocable force built into the natural order that the Jewish people are hated throughout the ages. The nations of the world and the forces of evil will be forever locked in battle with us, determined to destroy us and what we stand for.” 549
An “ irrevocable force built into the natural order...forever locked in battle with us.” Does this strike the reader as an attitude that is amenable to ecumenical relations, dialogue or diplomacy? Talmudists are taught that nonJudaics by their very biological and spiritual nature are irrevocably “Jew”haters. “...the essence of anti-Goyism is passed to Jewish children with their mother’s milk, and then nurtured, fed and watered carefully into a full-blown phobia throughout their lives...Their attitudes are then perfectly formed. They know whom to hate...They want their children to hate the Goyim...They want to deny the humanity that links all people...Anti-Goyism is a foundation of the Orthodox and Hasidic philosophy and way of life.” 550The Talmudist smiles, shakes hands, offers conviviality and seemingly friendly words —and this includes alleged support for hot button conservative family values issues wherein they “join” Christians in giving the appearance of condemning homosexuality and abortion — all of this is a calculated ploy to win time and gain a definitive edge over gentiles, until the power of the synagogue and the Sanhedrin are total. If the synagogue and the Sanhedrin should establish supremacy over the West, and they are well on their way to doing so, the pseudo-humanitarian and pseudo-conservative camouflage will vanish, and all gentiles save the masonic variety will have the status of Palestinians: to be killed, tortured or imprisoned at will, without fear of prosecution, meaningful protest or even much notice being taken of their liquidation. Nothing can ameliorate the ultimate status of gentiles in halacha. Their status can be temporarily ameliorated for the sake of gaining opportunistic advantage, but beneath that expedient, the gentile is always viewed as another Esau, forever locked in battle with the Holy People of Judaism.
The objection may be raised that this teaching that Judaics are always and invariably hated by gentiles is limited only to the most retrograde bearded rabbi in some back alley shul in Mea Shearim. Au contraire, this rabbinic concept is full-blown within the West’s political, cultural and social avant-garde, as reflected in the repartee of the most “progressive” and “elite intellectuals” in the West:
“The most discussed political book in France this autumn is Ce grand cadavre à la renverse 551 (literally, ‘this big corpse lying on its back’), by Bernard-Henri Lévy ...He is only one of the most sophisticated proponents of the present-day widespread conservative Jewish rejection of any attempt to explain historical events by material or political causes. This rejection of analysis is central to the religious attitude toward the Holocaust, or Shoah (that is, the Nazi massacre of the Jews understood in religious terms). For the defenders of this contemporary religion, it is wrong to seek material explanations for events that must remain ‘incomprehensible’ in their magnitude...Any explanation other than eternal and recurrent hatred of the Jews may even be denounced as anti-Semitism....This is consistent with the position that there can be no explanations for anti-Semitism other than the eternal nature of anti-Semitism itself. Above all, there can be no causes for which Jews themselves, in this case the State of Israel, might be in some way responsible.” 552Bernard-Henri Lévy is promoting these notions of hardly in the minority when it comes to recurrent and eternal, irrational hatred of blameless Judaics. The “given law” of Halacha hi beyoduah she’Eisav soneh l’Yaakov is threaded throughout our news media and U.S. government policy. It undergirds the neocon Right and the Zionist left. It is the staple fiction of the western intelligentsia as well as the mainstream churches.
Judaic youth are taught about peace and peace-makers as follows: “Holding up the banner of Torah (Talmud) in a degenerate world is not easy. We are in the minority and always forced to be on the defensive. Sometimes Esau...advises us to make peace with our enemies who seek our destruction. He tells us to make compromises...He tells us to sacrifice our principles and bend the rules...We have to be prepared to do battle with him and his ilk. That means being prepared to be lonely, unpopular and unloved. Chazal teach that it is only when Jacob is “levado” (segregated) that he survives. It is only when we stay apart from the Esaus of this world that we can survive and prosper...How can it be that the people in power have learned nothing about Palestinian mentality...Why does it always seem to be as if the Jews and the Israelis get treated so unfairly? Why is it that facts that are so obvious for us to see are ignored by the people in power? Those of us who learn the parsha553 every week have no questions, only answers. We know we are in golus.554 We know Eisav soneh l’Yaakov.” 555It is the teaching of the Orthodox rabbis that the Palestinian mentality is that of Esau. Talk of a “Talmudic mentality” is met with the strongest disapprobation of course, but it is deemed necessary and appropriate to speak negatively of a Palestinian “mentality.” Westerners are accustomed to this hate speech from the Talmudists and tolerate it because they believe that the colonized Palestinians have wronged their colonizers. However, all gentiles have the same status in halacha as the Palestinians. The Palestinians are viewed as possessed of a gentile mentality. Esau is the spiritual father of both, according to the deepest teachings of Chazal. The rabbinic doctrine teaches that gentiles never have good will or true friendship toward Judaics. There are many modern exponents of this institutionalized paranoia, perhaps the most prominent and influential was Rabbi Eliezer Shach (1898-2001) whom the Israeli newspaper Haaretz termed, “the ultimate authority in the ultra-Orthodox world in Israel for the past quarter of a century...” 556Rabbi Shach epitomized the traditional rabbinic doctrine that when a non-Judaic comes in friendship to a Judaic, the non-Judaic has the voice of Jacob but the hands of Esau. The rabbinic lesson imparted under Orthodox Judaism to all Judaics, from youth onward: you can never trust a gentile.
“The voice is the voice of Yaakov but the hands are the hands of Eisav”
—Statement by Rabbi Eliezer Shach on gentiles seeking peace with Judaics
“Eretz Yisroel,” in Michtavim uMaamarim (1987), volume one, (“letters”)
The status of the gentile in the Oral Law of Judaism as bequeathed to the Tanna’im, and committed to writing and institutionalized in the formative Tannaitic period, are among the most hateful and homicidal in all of the sacred rabbinic halakha. Much of the extreme contempt for gentiles which Judaism imparts emanates from these foundational texts. In Jerusalem in 1975, Prof. Y. Cohen of Ben-Gurion University published a remarkable study, The Status of the Gentile in Jewish Law of the Tannaite Era:
The following is a translation of portions of Cohen’s dissertation: According to early Talmudic laws, all gentiles were automatically suspected of practicing the following abominations:
• Bloodshed and murder • Mishkav behema (sexual relations with animals) • Incest • Homosexuality • Theft.
Gentiles were regarded as uncircumcised, dirty and impure. The words “gentile” and “robber” were considered inseparable. Gentiles were prone to violence that leads to murder and random and gratuitous violence for its own sake. The Halakha contains various rulings which teach caution against the bloodlust of gentiles. It was forbidden to employ a gentile as a surgeon, midwife or nurse. Having one’s hair cut by gentiles was also regarded as a life-threatening danger. The general rule was that a gentile is likely to kill a Judaic whenever circumstances would allow him to commit the crime without getting caught. The image of the gentile as a violent creature who endangers the lives and property of Judaics prevails in early rabbinic law. The gentile is regarded as a thoroughly corrupt being sexually. All gentiles are lustful and animalistic and commit adultery at the first opportunity. Incest is also a common occurrence among gentiles, as is homosexuality and mishkav behema. Gentile men and women alike are consumed by sexual passion at all times. The Tannaitic rabbis stress the absolute degeneracy of the gentiles and warn against their evil influence. As a principle, it is taught that gentiles are the product of incest. The gentile is suspected of homosexuality as well, and it is against the rabbinic law to allow a gentile to teach a Judaic child. In all sexual matters gentiles are filthy and their behavior is the lowest form of depravity. The fundamental legal status of a gentile in Judaism is that of a sub-human and this was taught by the revered rabbi of the Tannaitic period, Shimon ben Yohai, as follows: “Thou art called a human being but a gentile is not called a human being.” 557 This was interpreted as excluding the gentiles from the category of mankind. A gentile could mitigate his status by serving the Judaics as a ger toshav in the sense of an “inhabitant convert.” But even these “best of all the gentiles” could be enslaved and should be killed.
The Talmud specifically defines all who are not Jews as non-human animals, and specifically dehumanizes gentiles as not being descendants of Adam. Here are some of the Talmud Bavli passages which relate to this topic.
BT Kerithoth 6b: Uses of Oil of Anointing. “Our Rabbis have taught: He who pours the oil of anointing over cattle or vessels is not guilty; if over gentiles (goyim) or the dead, he is not guilty. The law relating to cattle and vessels is right, for it is written: ‘Upon the flesh of man (Adam), shall it not be poured” (Exodus 30:32); and cattle and vessels are not man (Adam). The goyim are not regarded as human by the rabbis. Various authorities have debated whether Judaism imparts to non-Jews a partly human status, i.e. the goyim are not regarded as fully human by the rabbis. Others authorities uphold the proposition that Judaism teaches that non-Jews do not possess the core attributes of the human person. Without doubt Judaism assigns to the goyim the status of sub-human; the degree of this sub-humanity, absolute or qualified, is open to dispute. There are many lines of inquiry to pursue in approaching this subject, in declarative statements and indirectly through the strictures of halakha. Rabbinic law states that ritual impurity is contracted from contact with a human corpse. “The Gemara relates that Rabbah bar Avuha once met Elijah the prophet standing in a non-Jewish cemetery.” Elijah’s presence in a cemetery creates a dilemma because of the ritual purity laws of Judaism which regard contact with a human corpse as defilement.558 The Talmud asks Elijah, “Why then do you render yourself ritually impure by standing in a cemetery? Elijah answered, ‘Have you not studied the order of the Talmud known as Purities? If you had studied that material carefully you would know the answer to your question. For it was taught: Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai states, ‘The graves of non-Jews do not convey ritual impurity, for it is said, ‘And you My flock, the flock of My pasture, you are men, but non-Jews are not called men.” (BT Bava Metzia 114b).
“Only ‘you’ the members of the Jewish people, are called men, but nonJews are not called men.”
Babylonian Talmud: Bava Metzia 114b
BT Bava Metzia 114b (translation)
“Also with regard to the dead, (it is plausible) that he is exempt, since after death one is called corpse and not a man (Adam). But why is one exempt in the case of gentiles (goyim); are they not in the category of man (Adam)? No, it is written: ‘And ye my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are man’ (Adam); (Ezekiel 34:31): Ye are called man (Adam) but gentiles (goyim) are not called man (Adam).” In the preceding passage, the rabbis are discussing the portion of the Mosaic law which forbids applying the holy oil to men. The Talmud states that it is not a sin to apply the holy oil to Gentiles, because Gentiles are not human beings (i.e. are not of Adam). Another example from tractate Yebamoth 61a: “It was taught: And so did R. Simeon ben Yohai state (61a) that the graves of gentiles (goyim) do not impart levitical uncleanness by an ohel (standing or bending over a grave), for it is said, ‘And ye my sheep the sheep of my pasture, are men (Adam), [Ezekiel 34:31]; you are called men (Adam) but the idolaters are not called men (Adam).” The Old Testament Mosaic law states that touching a human corpse or the grave of a human imparts uncleanness to those who touch it. But the Talmud teaches that if a Jew touches the grave of a gentile, the Jew is not rendered unclean, since gentiles are not human (not of Adam).
BT Baba Mezia 114b: “A Jewish priest was standing in a graveyard. When asked why he was standing there in apparent violation of the Mosaic law, he replied that it was permissible, since the law only prohibits Jews from coming into contact with the graves of humans (Adamites), and he was standing in a gentile graveyard. For it has been taught by Rabbi Simon ben Yohai: ‘The graves of gentiles (goyim) do not defile. For it is written, ‘And ye my flock, the flock of my pastures, are men (Adam)’ (Ezekiel 34:31); only ye are designated men (Adam).” Ezekiel 34:31 is the alleged Biblical proof text repeatedly cited in the preceding three Talmud passages. But Ezekiel 34:31 does not in fact support the Talmudic notion that only Israelites are human. What these rabbinical, anti-gentile racists and ideologues have done in asserting the preceding racist doctrines about gentiles is distort an Old Testament passage in order to justify their bigotry. In BT Berakoth 58a the Talmud uses Ezekiel 23:20 as proof of the sub-human status of gentiles. It also teaches that anyone (even a Judaic male) who reveals this Talmudic teaching about non-Jews deserves death, since revealing it makes gentiles wrathful and causes the repression of Judaism. The rabbis’ citation of the Bible quote from Ezekiel as a “proof-text” is specious, since the quote does not prove that gentiles are animals. The quote from Ezekiel only says that some Egyptians had large genital organs and copious emissions. This does not in any way prove or even connote that the Egyptians being referred to in the Bible were considered animals. Once again, the Talmud has falsified the Bible by means of distorted interpretation.
Other Talmud passages which expound on Ezekiel 23:20 in this racist fashion are: BT Arakin 19b, Berakoth 25b, Niddah 45a, Shabbath 150a, Yebamoth 98a. Moreover, the original text of BT Sanhedrin 37a applies God’s approval only to the saving of Judaic lives (cf. the Hesronot Ha-shas, Cracow, 1894).
“It was considered disgraceful to be hospitable to gentiles and to lodge at their homes. In ‘Eretz Israel’ (the God-given ‘land of Israel’), the rabbis forbade the selling of lands or houses to the gentiles, and Judaics are ordered to buy the lands and houses of gentiles.” It is a capital crime to give any part of “Eretz Israel” to a non-Judaic, i.e. to Palestinians. In the summer of 2004, Avigdor Neventzal, Chief Rabbi of the Old City in Jerusalem stated: “It should be known that anyone who wants to give away Israeli land is like a rodef, and certainly land should not be given to non-Jews. Anyone ceding parts of the Land of Israel to gentiles is, from a halakhic point of view, subject to din rodef.” This term, “subject to din rodef denotes “classified as a pursuer.” Apologists explain the killing of a rodef in terms of an understandable, common sense survival ethic: “someone comes to kill you, you kill him first.” 559 What apologists don’t tell you is that rodef is defined broadly —a tipster who identifies a Judaic child molester to the police, an unborn baby “pursuing” its mother, or an Israeli Prime Minister who signs the Oslo accords. In a tyranny, a word is anything the tyrants say it is, and in Orthodox Judaism a rodef is defined so loosely it encompasses whomever the rabbinate wants bumped off.
One can say that the entire nation of Palestinians have been classified en masse as din rodef. Several prominent Israeli rabbis, including Rabbi Haim Druckman, declared on Sept. 7, 2004 that “killing enemy civilians during war is normal.” So what problem do the rabbis have with Hitler? Simply stated, his sin was based on the fact that, mistakenly thinking he was head of the Master Race, Hitler killed human beings; whereas Israelis, who know for certain they are the Master Race, merely snuff-out sub-humans.
“A group of fourteen prominent rabbis, led by Druckman, who are considered authorities by the religious-Zionist public, asked the Israeli army not to flinch from killing Palestinian civilians in the context of the ongoing military campaign against armed groups resisting the occupation. Druckman, 71, is one of the most prominent and veteran leaders of the religious Zionist movement, has been a public figure for over 50 years, since serving as a revered leader in the Bnei Avika youth movement in the early 1950s. In a letter to the Israeli defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, published on Sept. 7, 2004, the rabbis said killing enemy civilians is ‘normal’ during time of war and that the Israeli occupation army should never hesitate to kill non-Jewish civilians in order to save Jewish lives. The rabbis quoted a Talmudic edict, from the ancient ‘sage,’ Rabbi Akiva, as stating: ‘Our lives come first.’ The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Sept. 9) warned that Israeli ‘...soldiers, and even officers, will see this call as a kind of halakhic-ethical commandment that ought to be obeyed...”
One part of the letter scolded Christian critics of Israeli policies against the Palestinians: “The Christian preaching of ‘turning the other cheek’ doesn’t concern us, and we will not be impressed by those who prefer the lives of our enemies to our lives,’ Rabbi Druckman declared. This is a concise and well-explained manifesto. The rabbis who issued it represent a dominant segment of Israeli Orthodox Judaics identified with settlers in the West Bank, including Druckman, a former Israeli Knesset member who heads the government’s conversion administration; Rabbi Yuval Cherlow of the hesder yeshiva, one of the leaders of the liberal wing, which, according to Haaretz, ‘is open to universal culture and discourse.’ Other signers include Eliezer Melamed, rosh yeshiva of an occupied West Bank Talmud college; Yehoshua Shapira of the ‘spiritual-Hasidic’ faction; Rabbi Youval Sharlo, the director of another Talmud school in Petah Tikva, which combines Talmudic studies with service in the Israeli army, and Zefania Drori of Kiryat Shmona, one of the rabbis with the most profound influence on Israeli young people. “The common denominator among most of the signers of the manifesto,” notes Haaretz, “actually lies in their charisma and influence on broad sectors of national religious youth. Among the admirers of Cherlow and Shapira...are hardalim (ultra-Orthodox nationalists), habkukim (disciples of Rabbi Kook and fans of ...Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, including Shapira himself), newly repentant Bratslavers, datlashim (formerly religious), settlers and the urban bourgeoisie.”
On May 19, 2004, Dov Lior, an influential rabbi in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arbaa near Hebron, issued an edict enthusiastically supporting the killing of Palestinian civilians in Rafah in southern Gaza, saying, “...it is very clear in light of the Torah that Jewish lives are more important than nonJewish lives.” The New York Times took no notice of the rabbis’ joint statement of Sept. 7. By Sept. 10, Haaretz had quickly rehabilitated Druckman, respectfully reporting in a lengthy article on his views as head of the Israeli government’s conversion administration, without once mentioning Druckman's call for the murder of Palestinian civilians (cf. article by Yair Sheleg, Sept. 10, 2004). In the Talmudic imagination, the Palestinian people are coming collectively to kill the Judaics, so the Palestinian people must be killed preventively. First strike. Din rodef. All very legal and ethical.
“The rabbis forbid buying property during Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles, and on the Sabbath. But to save lands and houses from gentiles, real estate negotiations were allowed even on these holy days.
“It is forbidden to buy food from gentiles, especially food which was cooked by a gentile or had been touched by him or her, such as wine, oil, bread or fish.”
Psak halacha, issued in New York, 11 Shevat 5765 (Jan. 21, 2005)
“Certain industrial products were not allowed to be sold to the goyim because of the fear that a goy would sell them back to Judaics who would not realize that these products were defective and unfit for use. The desire to cheat the gentile is strong. The Tannatic rabbinic tradition allows for robbery of a gentile. This also applies to the exploitation of the gentile’s mistakes and losses and his exploitation as an employee.” The prohibition on defrauding a worker of his wages by “delaying” payment of a laborer does not apply to the gentile.
“Since it was forbidden for a Judaic to lend money to another Judaic at interest, certain lender-borrower exploitation was permitted between Judaics and gentiles.”
Actually Talmudists have a loophole for charging interest on loans even to their fellow Talmudists. Such loans violate Old Testament law, so the rabbonim call the loans by another name — heter iska — a way of arranging a loan to look like a “business deal that is not a loan,” under the Talmudic Halachos of Ribis (laws on interest). Under the provision of the heter iska, the loan at interest is called an “investment.”
A more efficient loophole is created by incorporating. In dealing with a Judaic corporation rather than a Judaic individual, no pretense of heter iska is necessary. The poskim have ruled that, “A loan must have an individual who is responsible to pay for it. When a corporation borrows, no individual is responsible to pay for the loan. Therefore, a loan to a corporation does not incur the prohibition of ribis, provided that no individual personally guarantees the loan.” 560 It seems that the lawyers have managed to trick God again! In Judaism this is known as eis la’asos leHashem heifeiru Torasecha (a bending of the rules of the Torah in order to protect it.)
The Halachos of Manslaughter: “Lifting and Lowering”“In the formative period of rabbinic law, murderous hatred for the gentile was strong and very little value was attached to his life. But this desire was regulated along with rulings regarding three classifications of Jews who were to be killed: 1. converts to Christianity, 2. spies and 3. Heretics and Karaites. These groups (gentiles and allegedly traitorous Judaics) were divided and governed by two categories, designated by a play on words: lo maalin ve-lo moridin was the first category, and moridin ve-lo maalin the second. This translates as follows: ‘The gentiles and the shepherds of small cattle are not to be lifted or lowered” (lo maalin ve-lo moridin), but the heretics, the informers and the apostates are to be lowered and not lifted (moridin ve-lo maalin)” 561 The meaning is as follows: if a gentile is dying and in need of help, he is not to be assisted or brought medical aid (“lifted”). In a gentile dominant society, for fear of retribution, a gentile’s death should not be caused directly, but rather indirectly. But in the case of Judaics who are converts to Christianity, served as spies or informants, or are Karaites or heretics, they should be killed outright (“lowered and not lifted”). “The whole subject is extensively discussed in the responsa of R. Moshe Sofer — better known as ‘Hatam Sofer’ — the famous rabbi of Pressburg (Bratislava) who died in 1832. His conclusions are of more than historical interest, since in 1966 one of his responsa was publicly endorsed by the rabbi who at that time was Chief Rabbi of Israel, as ‘a basic institution of the Halakhah.’ The particular question asked of Hatam Sofer concerned the situation in Turkey, where it was decreed during one of the wars, that in each township or village there should be midwives on call, ready to hire themselves out to any woman in labor. Some of these midwives were Jewish; should they hire themselves out to help gentile women on weekdays and on the sabbath? In his Responsum, Hatam Sofer first concludes, after careful investigation, that the gentiles concerned — that is, Ottoman Christians and Muslims — are not only idolators...but are likened by him to the Amalekites, so that the Talmudic ruling ‘it is forbidden to multiply the seed of Amalek’ applies to them.” 562 This reference to the ban on “multiplying the seed of Amalek” —with Amalek constituting any non-Judaic ethnic group the rabbis arbitrarily deem to be their enemy— is a rabbinic mandate for genocide, since to stop the reproduction of any people is by definition an act intended to wipe out their genes, i.e. genocide: “The word genocide is a hybrid consisting of the Greek, genes, meaning race, nation or tribe; and the Latin cide meaning killing.”
Judaism Discovered
Michael Hoffman
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