This is a topic which has had so much written about it that you could fill an entire city library with books entirely dedicated to this topic. Marx took a shot at it. As did Sartre. There were, of course, also plenty of good books written on this topic, but rather than list them all, I want to suggest a few simple common sense points and then go to what I consider an authoritative explanation of this thing we call “antisemitism” and which, of course, has nothing to do with Semites.
So first, let’s dump this silly term and replace it by a simple and straightforward one: judeophobia. Just like any other phobia (say, for example, russophobia) the phobia of X is the 1) fear and/or hatred of X. Some people hate Jews, others fear them (think of the “fear of the Jews” in the Scripture), some do both. So judeophobia seems both logical and uncontroversial to me.
Second, it is a truism to say that everything in the universe has a cause. That includes phobias. Including russophobia and judeophobia. For example, I would be the first person to admit that there are objective characteristics of the Russian people which makes other people fear and hate them. Like the fact that all western attempts at conquering Russia have failed. Or that the Russians have always, and still are, rejecting the Papacy. Just these two factors will create plenty of russophobia in the West, for sure.
So, the next thing we can ask ourselves is what is it in Jews which causes judeophobia. Alas, before I look into this, I need to clarify a number of assumptions I make.
The first one is that Jews are not a race or ethnicity. To prove that, I defer to Shlomo Sand’s book “The Invention of the Jewish People”. As I explained elsewhere, Jews are a tribe: A group one can chose to join (Elizabeth Taylor) or leave (Gilad Atzmon). In other words, I see “Jewishness” as a culture, or ideology, or education or any other number of things, but not something rooted in biology. However, I also fully agree with Atzmon when he says that Jews are not a race, but that Jewish culture/politics/ideology is racist (more about that later).
Next, there is also what is commonly known as “Judaism”. That, by the way, is also a misnomer, at least if by “Judaism” you refer the faith of the Old Testament, the faith of the Ancient Israel, the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our forefathers”. Modern “Judaism” which was created well after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70AD. Modern “Judaism” ought be to called “Pharisaic Talmudism” and its true creators are Shimon bar Yochia, Maimonides (aka “Rambam” in the video below), Joseph Karo and Isaac Luria. The reason why this religion ought to be referred to as Pharisaic Talmudism is modern Judaism is the continuation of the sect of the Pharisees (the only Jewish sect which survived the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple – all modern forms of “Judaism” trace their roots to the Pharisees) and that it’s main source of authority is the Talmud, a collection of writings based on the ideas of the sect of the Pharisees and complied from the beginning of the 2nd century. To separate them from non-religious Jews, some authors have offered the term “Judaic” to describe a person adhering to this faith. Seems reasonable to me.
Here is the key thing, while many modern Jews are non-religious and really members of a self-described Jewish tribe, there is no such thing in history as a “Jewish culture” distinct from Pharisaic Talmudism. Remember that national categories are recent creations from the 18th and 19th centuries. For most of history people defined them in reference to 1) their place of residence or birth 2) their religious affiliation and 3) the identity of the ruler they were subjects of. In contrast, nationality and ethnicity are largely modern concepts. The only thing common to a Jew from the Middle-East, Central Europe and North Africa would be teachings of Pharisaic Talmudism. It is only logical therefore to look at this unique common characteristic to try to identify the causes of the hatred and fear Jews have inspired pretty much everywhere they have ever resided.
I will use two official Jewish sources to ascertain the causes of antisemitism, first the Simon Wiesenthal Multi-Media Learning Center’s website and a lecture by Rabbi David Bar Hayim.
Here is what the Simon Wiesenthal Center writes on the page “Why The Jews? The Patterns of Persecution”
Jewish communities existed continuously in Europe for over 2,000 years. Many of these communities were older than the countries in which they existed. Nevertheless, as the countries of Europe developed, Jews were rarely given complete citizenship status. At best they were tolerated as guests. Their social and religious distinctiveness made them persistent targets for persecution; and such persecution, in turn, intensified the cohesiveness of Jewish communities.
The emergence of Christianity as the dominant religion in Europe intensified the persecution of Jews. Since both the religious and political life of Europe became organized around the Christian faith, Jews were seen as outcasts, the deniers and “killers” of Christ. For millions of European Christians, for over 1600 years, the hatred and persecution of Jews was religiously sanctioned. Antisemitism intensified during the l9th and 20th century industrialization of Europe as Jews participated more directly in European economic and social life.
By 1933, the patterns of economic, social, and personal persecution of European Jews were well established. Nazi racial antisemitism and propaganda amplified and manipulated these patterns, ultimately adding one deadly tenet–that all Jews must be eliminated.
This is the garden variety cop-out: they were older, but never given citizenship, they were tolerated as guests, their social and religious distinctiveness made them targets for persecution, then the Christians accused them of killing Christ, antisemitism was religiously sanctioned, then came the Nazis and added their racist propaganda. But it has a grain of truth buried deep inside the rest of the platitudes: “social and religious distinctiveness”. What are we talking about here exactly?
This sounds interesting so let’s immediately delve into it!
The following is a lecture by Rabbi David Bar-Hayim whose biography, and gently smiling face, you can find on Wikipedia. For our purposes, just the first paragraph will be enough. It says that Bar-Hayim is an “Israeli Orthodox rabbi who heads the Shilo Institute (Machon Shilo), a Jerusalem-based rabbinical court and institute of Jewish education dedicated to the Torah of Israel”. Not a lightweight by any means, and a man with established credentials. Now let’s listen to what he has to say.
I strongly encourage you to take the time to carefully listen to his entire lecture (1h47m) to not only convince yourself that my chosen excerpts are not partial or taken out of context, but also to get an emotional “feel” for the man who not only is an articulate speaker who is clearly used to teaching, but who also conveys a coherent picture of a man who gave these topics a great deal of thought and who has to courage to call things by their names rather than to “remain silent” like so many of his “politically correct” colleges.
So here is this lecture:
also, and just in case this lecture would “mysteriously” disappear from YouTube following the publication of my article, I decided to re-upload it here:
Next, here are key statements from the beginning of this lecture posted along their time-stamp so you can check for their authenticity:
- 09:20 The Torah teaches that the life of a Jew is more precious than the life of a non-Jew.
- 10:00 God (HaShem) prefers Jews to non-Jews and gives them a special status.
- 11:00 The notion that Jews and non-Jews are equally precious to God contradicts the spirit of the Torah from beginning to end.
- 16:40 According to Shimon bar Yochia (aka Rashbi) “the best of non-Jews should be killed in warfare” because just as Jews cannot know if a snake approaching you is venomous or not, Jews cannot know which non-Jew is a danger to then.
- 25:16 Jews must assume that it is likely that any non-Jew they meet does not live by the Noahide Laws.
Here an explanation is needed about the so-called “Noahide Laws”. According to Wikipedia (as use it as the hyper-politically-correct source) the Noahide Laws are a “are a set of imperatives which, according to the Talmud, were given by God as a binding set of laws for the “children of Noah” – that is, all of humanity”. Here are these laws as listed by Maimonides himself:
- Prohibition of Idolatry
- Prohibition of Blasphemy
- Prohibition of Homicide
- Prohibition of Sexual Immorality
- Prohibition of Theft
- Prohibition of Limb of a Living Creature
- Imperative of Legal System
Sounds “kinda not modern”, but hey, that is no “worse” than the 10 Commandants, right? Wrong! Wrong for two crucial reasons. First, the penalty for breaking any one of these laws, at least according to Rabbi David Bar-Hayim, is death (listen to the lecture for yourself!). Second, this list uses a euphemism when is speaks of “idolatry”. What is mean here is not some pagan blood ceremony to sacrifice babies to some god of thunder, but “Avodah Zarah”. How do I know that? Listen to the lecture again, the Rabbi is very clear about it. And what exactly is “Avodah Zarah”? It is “foreign worship” or, to put it simply, the religions of the aliens, the others, the nations, the goyim. This exactly the accusation made by Pharisaic Judaics against Christianity: making “That Man” (the typical Talmudic reference to Christ) into an idol. True, during the Middle-Ages overt references to Christianity were obfuscated and even today to the question whether Avodah Zarah is applicable to Christianity the official answer is wonderfully hypoctitical: Christianity is a “special type of avodah zarah is forbidden to Jews but permissible to gentiles, so that a non-Jew who engages in Christian worship commits no sin”. First, this is an explicit modern Jewish admission that those Jews who convert to Christianity are committing a crime deserving the death penalty. But, more importantly, this is clearly a cop-out as this “special type of avodah zarah” has no basis in traditional Pharisaic Talmudic teachings. So this might come as a shock to many, but according to Pharisaic Talmudists, all Christians deserve to be killed for the sin of idolatry. Feel the love…
Now here is the sad part, in the US these rabidly anti-Christians laws have been proclaimed as the “bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization” by both President Reagan and Congress. And to think that these guys fancy themselves as “Christians”…
I am sure that there are those who are absolutely convinced that was I wrote above is a gross misrepresentation of fact, that there is no way “Judaism” would really teach any such horrors. Think again, and listen to the Rabbi himself:
- 25:33 Those who do not keep the Seven Noahide Laws are all therefore guilty of a capital offense
- 25:49 “Avoda Zara”, i.e. idolary meaning Christianity was the most common offense.
Of course, for those who know anything about Pharisaic Talmudism none of the above will come as any surprise. After all, did the Rabbi not also clearly state that:
- 16:40 According to Shimon bar Yochia (aka Rashbi) “the best of non-Jews should be killed in warfare” because just as Jews cannot know if a snake approaching you is venomous or not, Jews cannot know which non-Jew is a danger to then.
Non-Jews are explicitly compared to snakes! He also says something similar later in the lecture:
- 26:15 since you cannot bring a perishing non-Jew to court to establish his guilt, you take a neutral position by neither helping him nor killing him.
You got that? Since, like with snakes, it is impossible to tell a dangerous non-Jews apart from a safe one, you cannot just kill him. For that you need a ruling by a rabbinical court. But saving him is no option either, because he most likely deserves the death penalty (say, for being a Christian). So you do nothing when you see a non-Jew in danger or even perishing. Interestingly enough, the Rabbi is also asked if that kind of non-assistance to a person in danger could not negatively impact the reputation of Jews and he immediately replies:
- 1:22:00 if not saving a non-Jew makes Jews look bad, then the Jew ought to lie about his motives
So it is okay to let a non-Jew die and, if challenged, just lie about it!
The key concept here is simple: Jews are more important to God and, therefore, to themselves than non-Jews. This is why
- 1:00:30 there is no requirement to return a lost object to a non-Jew
- 1:17:40 Jews can brake the sabbath to save a Jew but not a non-Jew because Jews do not consider all lives to be equal
I will stop the examples here. The Rabbi clearly says that the humanistic notion that all humans are equal is contrary to the entire spirit of the Torah. If after that you don’t get it….
What about the so-called Golden Rule about “do unto others”?
What about these:
- You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD (Leviticus 19:18 )
- What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn. (Shabbath folio:31a, Babylonian Talmud)
Did you notice the key caveats “your kindsfolk” and “your fellow”. Pharisaic Talmudism interprets these passages are referring only to fellow Jews and not to the semi-bestial goyim! It is laughable to a Rabbi when he hears a non-Jew saying that all humans were created in the image and likeness of God. Pharisaic Talmudism explicitly contradicts that (and the Kabbalah even more so!). Still don’t agree? Which part of “ the humanistic notion that all humans are equal is contrary to the entire spirit of the Torah” don’t you get?!
The simple truth is that Pharisaic Talmudism (aka modern “Judaism”) is the only religion which teaches a God-revealed racism.
This is hardly a new discovery of mine. Just read Michael Hoffman’s superb magnum opus Judaism Discovered (available on Amazon and on his on his website). In fact, there have been thousands of books already written on this topic, and many are available online for download in various file formats. What makes the video by Rabbi David Bar-Hayim so interesting is that it is 1) official 2) recent 3) that he really confirms it all. But for those who, like myself and, I am sure, many readers here, have known about it for decades, this was absolutely nothing new.
A couple of crucial caveats here: there are many Jews out there (most, I would say) who are totally unaware of all this. Even “Conservative” and “Reform” synagogues don’t preach that too overtly (though sometimes even they do). This kind of religious racism is mostly taught in Orthodox Yeshivas and, of course, in various Harediinstitutions in Israel. For these ignorant Jews any such explanations of the causes of antisemitism in world history are not only offensive (blaming the victim) but also completely unfair (“my family never said any such things!”). Second, while this kind of, frankly, demonic teachings have only been taught in religious circles, they nevertheless also have had a deep impact upon the outlook of many (but not all!) secular Jews many of whom might never have been told that all Christians deserve to be executed, but who still will have a profound and almost knee-jerk repulsion towards Christianity. The distance between Rabbi David Bar-Hayim and Sarah Silverman and her famous quote “I hope that Jews did kill Christ, I’d do it again in a second” is very, very short.
Finally, for all the (alas many) bone-headed racists out there, none of that Pharisaic ideology is transmissible by genes so please don’t give me that “all Jews” nonsense. Some Jews do espouse these views, others don’t. Remember, Jews are not a race or ethnicity, they are a tribe. A Jew who completely rejects all this religiously-sanctioned racism about goyims does not somehow still mysteriously still carry in himself some “Talmudic bacillum” which can flare up and turn him overnight into a hate-filled racist.
[Sidebar: For whatever it is worth, in my life I have seen more kindness and compassion from (secular) Jews than from my fellow Orthodox Christians. Very often in my life I have had secular Jews being like the good Good Samaritan from the Gospel (Luke 10:25-37):
And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.
Notice two things: first, Christ frontally debunks the racist interpretation of the words “thy neighbor” and, second, He also clearly commands us how we should treat all of our neighbors.]
So now we have it: the root causes of antisemitism are not to be found in some weird cause-less aberration common to every single nation on earth, but in the teachings of Pharisaic Talmudism. What is exceptionally pernicious is that by what could be referred to as cultural-osmosis non-religious Jews find themselves raised in a secular culture that still holds these kinds of beliefs, minus their external religious trappings.
Furthermore, there are many non-Jews who, when seeing both religious secular Jews equally hostile to their religion and traditions, come to the conclusion that “all Jews” are bad. Throw in enough politicians (on both sides) to bring a flame to this toxic mix and you end up with an inevitable explosion. Hence all the persecutions.
Judeophobia has its roots in the demonic teachings of the sect of the Pharisees whose religiously-sanctioned racism has, unfortunately, permeated the worldview of many secular Jews. As long as Orthodox rabbis will stick to their demented self-worship (this is real idolatry, by the way!), “antisemitism” will continue to “mysteriously” rear its ugly head.
