Israel Shahak's book "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3,000 Years"
The Heretic
Israel Shahak's book "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3,000
Years" is all the more important for being a document by a a knowledgeable
Jew -- a Jewish "insider" -- about the beliefs and behavior of his fellow
Jews. Born in Warsaw in 1933, Shahak spent a portion of his childhood in the
concentration camp in Belsen, from which he immigrated to Palestine in 1945.
He grew up in Israel, served in the Israeli military, and became a chemistry
professor. Like all Israelis, he became fluent in Hebrew. He also became
acclimated to the peculiar moral atmosphere of Israeli society: a
combination of overweening arrogance and deceit, a mixture of pugnacious
self-righteousness and duplicity.
Unlike his fellow Israelis, however, Professor Shahak is deeply troubled by
this peculiar atmosphere. Whereas the Jews around him take it for granted
that the goyim on whom they depend for economic, military, and diplomatic
support are too stupid ever to figure out what the Jews think about them and
say about them behind their backs and plan to do to them when they can, and
too sheeplike ever to take effective action if they do figure it out, he
worries. He remembers that the Romans figured it out, and they consequently
sacked Jerusalem and ended their cult in Palestine. He remembers that the
Germans figured it out, and that's why he became an involuntary tenant in a
concentration camp. He's worried that if his fellow Jews continue behaving
as they always have, they will get themselves into some really serious
trouble -- again.
In particular, Professor Shahak is concerned about the behavior of those of
his people who adhere to "Judaism". He is not one of these himself, and so
he is able to look with some degree of objectivity at the mixture of
superstition, Jewish chauvinism, and hatred of non-Jews which makes up the
Jewish religion and its sacred writings. He deplores traditional Jewish
teachings, not only because of the danger that some new Martin Luther will
come along and spill the beans to the Gentiles, but because of the
spiritually debilitating effect these teachings have had on the Jews
themselves. Of the world of medieval Jewry in Europe, the world of the
ghetto and the shtetl which modern Jewish writers refer to in euphoric tones
as a world of quaint tradition and piety, Shahak says: "It was a world sunk
in the most abject superstition, fanaticism, and ignorance ..."
He cites a number of specific instances of the ways in which Jewish
religious authorities have kept their flocks under control. In general, the
rabbis have taught their fellow Jews that their Gentile neighbors are
spiritually and morally unclean; that they are subhuman, on a level with the
beasts of the field; and that they hate Jews and must be hated in return.
Jews are taught that the Christian religion is a religion fit only for
animals, and that its founder, Jesus, was the son of a prostitute and is
presently immersed in a pit of boiling excrement in hell.
Among the Hassidim (Hebrew for "pious ones") all of these teachings are kept
current. Shahak points out that a central thesis of the Hassidic doctrine is
that only Jews are human beings, and that the universe was created for them
alone. Non-Jews were created only to be used by Jews. Although this teaching
about the subhumanity of Gentiles is most open and explicit among the
bearded, sidelocked, black-hatted Orthodox Jews that one sees in Jewish
strongholds such as New York City, it comes from the core of Jewish
tradition and is accepted to a greater or lesser degree by all pious Jews.
It is, for example, a specific tenet of the Jewish Defense League and is
cited in the membership handbook for that group.
Especially frustrating to Professor Shahak is the clever deception which his
fellow Jews use to conceal the true nature of Judaism from their Gentile
neighbors. Regarding the veil of false piety which conceals from Gentile
eyes the malevolent doctrine of the Hassidim, he writes: "A chief deceiver
in this case, and a good example of the power of 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." Buber (1878-1965) promoted Hassidism in Germany during the rise
of the National Socialists -- in fact, until 1938, when he left for
Palestine -- and Shahak considers Buber's efforts, despite their
deceptiveness, at least partly responsible for the National Socialist
reaction to the Jews.
Another example of Jewish deception given by Professor Shahak concerns the
etymology of the Yiddish word for a Gentile girl, shiksa. He cites the
popular English-language book "The Joys of Yiddish" (New York, 1968), by Leo
Rosten, which tells its readers that shiksa comes from the Hebrew word
sheqetz, meaning "blemish". Writes Shahak, "This is a barefaced lie, as
every speaker of Hebrew knows. The Megiddo Modern Hebrew-English Dictionary,
published in Israel, correctly defines sheqetz as follows: 'unclean animal;
loathsome creature, abomination...' "
Professor Shahak writes with passion. He evidently feels that liberating
Jews everywhere from the shackles of their misanthropic superstitions and
freeing Israeli state policy in particular from the stifling influence of
Judaism is a matter of some urgency. He focuses our attention especially on
the inherent hatefulness of Judaism with citations from a number of Jewish
religious writings.
In a chapter titled "The Laws against Non-Jews," he writes:
"...[T]he Halakhah, that is the legal system of classical Judaism -- as
practiced by practically all Jews from the 9th century to the end of the
18th and as maintained to this very day in the form of Orthodox Judaism --
is based primarily on the Babylonian Talmud. However, because of the
unwieldy complexity of the legal disputations recorded in the Talmud, more
manageable codifications of talmudic law became necessary ... The most
authoritative code, widely used to date as a handbook, is the Shulhan
'Arukh..."
He then cites the teaching of this code regarding homicide:
"According to the Jewish religion, the murder of a Jew is a capital
offense and one of the three most heinous sins (the other two being idolatry
and adultery). Jewish religious courts and secular authorities are commanded
to punish, even beyond the limits of the ordinary administration of justice,
anyone guilty of murdering a Jew ... When the victim is a Gentile, the
position is quite different. A Jew who murders a Gentile is guilty only of a
sin against the laws of Heaven, not punishable by a court. To cause
indirectly the death of a Gentile is no sin at all.
"Thus, one of the two most important commentators on the Shulhan 'Arukh
explains that when it comes to a Gentile, "one must not lift one's hand to
harm him, but one may harm him indirectly, for instance by removing a ladder
after he had fallen into a crevice ... there is no prohibition here, because
it was not done directly." ...
"A Gentile murderer who happens to be under Jewish jurisdiction must be
executed whether the victim was Jewish or not. However, if the victim was
Gentile and the murderer converts to Judaism, he is not punished."
Then Shahak gives us a rabbi's answer to an Israeli soldier who has asked
whether or not it is proper to kill Arab women and children. In his answer
the rabbi quotes from the Talmud: "The best of the Gentiles -- kill him; the
best of snakes -- dash out its brains."
Perhaps even more offensive are the Jewish beliefs on sexual matters. Shahak
writes:
"Sexual intercourse between a married Jewish woman and any man other than
her husband is a capital offense for both parties, and one of the three most
heinous sins. The status of Gentile women is very different. The Halakhah
presumes all Gentiles to be utterly promiscuous and the verse "whose flesh
is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue [of semen] is like the issue of
horses" is applied to them... Therefore, the concept of adultery does not
apply to intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman; rather the
Talmud equates such intercourse to the sin of bestiality...
"According to the Talmudic Encyclopedia: "He who has carnal knowledge of
the wife of a Gentile is not liable to the death penalty, for it is written:
'thy fellow's wife' rather than the alien's wife ... and although a married
Gentile woman is forbidden to the Gentiles, in any case a Jew is exempted."
"This does not imply that sexual intercourse between a Jewish man and a
Gentile woman is permitted -- quite the contrary. But the main punishment is
inflicted on the Gentile woman; she must be executed, even if she was raped
by the Jew: "If a Jew has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she be a
child of three or an adult, whether married or unmarried, and even if he is
a minor aged only nine years and one day -- because he had willful coitus
with her she must be killed, as is the case with a beast, because through
her a Jew got into trouble.""
The Talmud's overriding concern with matters of money and property mirror
that of the Jews, and Professor Shahak offers a number of hair-splitting
examples of Jewish beliefs on the subject and the way in which distinctions
are made between the property of Jews and Gentiles, and between Jewish
dealings with another Jew and with a Gentile. Two of these examples will
suffice here:
"If a Jew finds property whose probable owner is Jewish, the finder is
strictly enjoined to make a positive effort to return his find by
advertising it publicly. In contrast, the Talmud and all the early
rabbinical authorities not only allow a Jewish finder to appropriate an
article lost by a Gentile, but actually forbid him or her to return it...
"It is forbidden to defraud a Jew by selling or buying at an unreasonable
price. However, "Fraud does not apply to Gentiles, for it is written: 'Do
not defraud each man his brother'...""
Shahak points out that "the Halakhah interprets all such idioms [as 'each
man his brother' or 'neighbor'] as referring exclusively to one's fellow
Jew."
How have the Jews managed to keep teachings of this sort concealed from the
Gentiles among whom they live? The truth of the matter is that they have not
always been able to do so. Luther was not the only Christian scholar who
learned Hebrew, peered into the Talmud, and was horrified by what he saw.
Sometimes the Jews were able to bribe the Christian authorities to overlook
such things, but throughout the later Middle Ages there were prohibitions
and burnings of talmudic literature by outraged popes and bishops. The Jews
developed a clever system of double bookkeeping to circumvent such
"persecution". They modified or deleted the offending passages from new
editions of the Talmud, and they made up a separate compendium -- Talmudic
Omissions, or in Hebrew Hesronot Shas -- which circulated surreptitiously
among the rabbis. In Israel today, feeling cocky enough to dispense with
most such deceptions, the Jews are putting the passages which formerly had
been omitted or modified back into the latest editions of the Talmud or the
Shulhan 'Arukh in their original form. They are still careful with
translations into Gentile tongues, however. Professor Shahak gives an
example:
"In 1962 a part of the Maimonidean Code ... 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. 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 Tzadoqand Baitos [the 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."
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