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| A Contrary Answer to the "Jewish Question" |
by Alfred Lehmberg
Entirely for want of trying, the Jew is well nigh impossible for the garden-variety Gentile (non-Jew) to understand. Full stop!
This must be taken as a "given," verily! We garden-variety gentiles are of a suggested arbitrary and decidedly shallow-thinking "majority," in the round! We are persons assiduously schooled in furious social ignorances and fallacious social prejudices, only, via the corrupted media toxicities found in wing-nut print and on mal-biased video... These foul media initiatives have been produced by a canted cadre of well-monied gentile psychopaths for years! Such has been so, and decidedly, for many generations! This requires no citation.
For the preceding reason, the Jew may be too easily mistrusted and reviled by this conjectured "uninformed, misinformed and irrational" collection of Gentiles... Jews too reflexively mistrusted and too conveniently reviled... by the rest of us... and based on this well-inculcated, egregious, and very highly calculated misunderstanding! We can cut to this paper's chase, right there! Read on.
Don't waste time thinking this writer officious or pompous—lookin' down a pedantic nose at academic inferiors. Far from it! He is one of you! Only, he has cultivated an interested and decently educated appreciation of our humanity on its "Bell curve," even as he is fully aware of how close to that "mean of stupid" he must be, himself! Remains, this writer will be swingin' for the rafters in this necessary exploration... relentlessly. Be forewarned.
Remaining, too? The average dude or dudette is pretty stupid, even if innocent, and easy to take advantage of or manipulate! Why, one has only to give these people permission to be their worst and most irresponsible... so deplorable (!) selves. ...We'll allow briefly that Hillary had it spot on and that this is borne out, subsequently, observing the behavior displayed, to date, by the persons she'd very accurately criticized! Also allowed is that the media's "informational deck" is sullenly stacked by corporate interests on issues of less than constructive balance and a paucity of journalistic integrity sacrificed to the reptilian pecuniary. We can put a pin in that.
To continue before we digress too far, but more difficult for this, remember, belated Gentile to understand and appreciate is the unbroken thread of existence that Jews have enjoyed, if only institutionally, since at least 2000 BC! This was around the time one Abraham was called out of Chaldean Ur to the land of Canaan, it is alleged, to a home "his God said" he could provide for him. The intimated scope of "God" and "Time" is intimidating and unsettlingly envy-provoking, it is offered, to all but the most detached observer.
This writer would make that aspiration... be that detached. That's the alien's view. No dog in the hunt! Data followed and not driven! Let's go!
Again, consider this breathtaking span of hoary time! ...And in that time, over several millennia, one finds, Jews had cultivated "the long view." To what end?
In the fullness of recorded time this unbroken thread of Jewish consciousness witnesses great civilizations of the past as they are born—watches them as they mature and decline—and is then on hand to record the final passing of many of them, in the fairest of historic honesties. Their moving finger wrote alongside what these had written, but for a longer time and more accurately!
A result? Jews were on hand to ameliorate, somewhat, the fiery and apocalyptic death of recorded knowledge at the hands of craven barbarians which was stored at the library in Alexandria but razed by them, an example! A historical rescue!
The aforementioned scope that all this suggests is unsettling to an average American non-Jew—that more micro-scoped person who traces a short lineage back through a few lackluster and unconnected, so unremarkable, generations to indifferent countries, at least, but loses even that thread, at best (!), after only a few hundred years. This writer has had this lackluster, unconnected, and indifferent experience with his own genealogy. He knows of which he speaks.
...More than merely unsettling, this tremendous scope could provoke a "reflex" of "juvenile pique," acted out upon... and even encourage the inevitably jealous envy... even hatred, so black it's purple, from those unable (and unwilling) to share in it? The reader knows!
When some people (at least 3 in a hundred) want what someone else has (known or not, even if one can't articulate it!) as it pertains to a successful society and its quality of life... and these are denied? Why, that has even forced violently childish behaviors from those who might conduct themselves with informed and enlightened maturity... of a sort, otherwise! ...But, stop!
Who are they, then, we aforementioned "disconnected and tradition-less" non-jews might ask! Who are these Jews—a creed surviving virtually unchanged for many millennia? Have they had value, worth, and a singular ability to make key contributions to the other societies of the world? Is humankind elevated by an institutional Jewery... or degraded as has been (baselessly!) alleged... over and over again, as a "question"? Let's ask those questions.
There is little—if any—doubt that this question has been asked in abundance... and that's a large part of the problem, isn't it? Why is it ever NOT asked as has been just outlined... Indeed, who are they, these Jews, really?
Let's follow the data, apply some logic, and see if we can't move toward a sensible conclusion based on some rules of evidence... Has anyone ever, really, asked the above question? ...And given that there are ~many~ who think they can answer this "question," and negatively (forget fallaciously, inevitably, upon its examination!), is there any justification for their centuries-long persecution as a people?
- [[A sidebar digression: Appallingly Goy (non-Jewish), the product of infrequent Methodists and lapsed Catholics, this writer had internalized over the years (and with little to no contact!) a "stealth anti-Semitism," the worst kind actually. Too briefly ...that Jewish treatment, it was "reasoned," though certainly regrettable, was a product of their "dismissive attitude" about Jesus... [heavy sigh] ...And so largely brought their persecutions upon themselves by being so... what...? Socially Obstinate? Culturally standoffish? Too obnoxiously non-proselytizing? Too good? It's "observed" (jealously?) that the Jewish cultural product is so good they won't even try to sell it to you? They eschew proselytization! Why would that be unless they wanted to keep something good to themselves... like their persecutors would?]]
In an effort to exorcise unsupported demons regarding some more "solid" justifications for this writer's own low-grade anti-Semitism, then, he struck off down that rocky path! If this writer was going to be a bigot, he wanted to be able to, intelligently, support his bigotry! The reader might notice the contradiction in terms. By its nature, bigotry defies intelligent support.
Case in point: Here's an ancient and crudely bigoted joke regarding a Jewish farmer who once had the task of moving cow manure (...fertilizer, purchased from the non-Jewish "joke-teller." presumably...) to his own fields for use. Well, after the Jew had moved every hand-picked and tiny scrap of what he'd purchased—and to the predictably false-bottomed and psychopathic mirth of the joke teller—the Jew furiously sucks the manure from his fingers and then spits into his garden (...presumably to gain the utility of every last little poopy bit?). What a typical Jewish thing to do, one might think through hearty, though largely uninformed, toxic, and corrosive laughter. How like a Jew to be that stingy...
...ah... hearty mirth... eh, what? Jolly good time! ...Pause to wipe laughter's tears.
...But wait! One might consider this "joke" from a different perspective, altogether! One might then begin to understand that the kind of individual to suck manure from his fingers—actually the very last highly non-kosher thing a Jew would do*—might be the kind of person to WORK his plot with more attention to detail and efficacious pride! That person might remove more plow-breaking stones from his land to increase what was tillable. That person might go out by torchlight and hand-pick the hoards of insects from his crops that will eat a major share of his Goy neighbor's effort. That man might be more careful of his irrigation; he is sure to be working longer hours; and he might, obsessively, be thinking of ways to work even MORE efficiently... and profitably! There's the rub!
"Better'n you" is tough to take, for most, even where there's no lack of humility of the one "better"! Perhaps? ...Because of that "no lack of humility"!
Verily, a man who is willing to (metaphorically!) suck the manure from his fingers for that little bit of an extra "edge" is an easy man to envy, and (for the worst of us) an easier man to hate. Say this is not so!
Revealed! Hateful if unsupported persecution of Jews may be the covetous result of base jealousy—clearly explained in a forthcoming sidebar—while Jewish contribution to civilization may otherwise be KEY, in spite of (...and perhaps BECAUSE of?!) that hatred, to a successful Western world in the 21st century!
Flatly, this contribution precipitates because Jews, in the aggregate, had the better ideas FIRST, or AT MINIMUM insured the best ideas of others were made a matter of durable record! No one else was ~doing~ this, really, at the time, and at the time that it had counted for Western civilization as a whole! Islam, later on, would be well on the way to owning the WHOLE Fakakta planet! What stopped Islam, really?
...What follows is a ~minute~ slice of illustration and example regarding the contribution of an ethical institution of moral people, exemplified by enduring bequests to total humanity, bound by lasting and transferring truths (undeniably!), and made by JEWS... in the fields of HISTORY, LAW, MEDICINE, MATH/SCIENCE, and OF COURSE... Religion.
Accept the proceeding for the sake of argument if nothing else... There are receipts, and academia must agree.
See? Judaism seems, in its observation, to be only ever a change agent for humanity's elevation and a constructive social initiative... one ever working against humanity's societal degradation and regression! This is what the writer observes, right from the beginning of his research... and keen for real evidence of its antithesis!
Moving on, it may then be argued that Jewish institutional cognition and its clear aspiration to a comparative solution regarding humanity's deconstructive cognitive dissonance... as regards our uber-violent cultural models of the past, its own to start (Atherton J S 2003), may actually DEFINE social success as it is enjoyed in the 21st Century... Read that again!
Yes! 1st worldwide and impacting positively on the 2nd and 3rd worlds! Planetary! There's an irony to choke a MAGA's basilisk, eh?
Bold claims! How might THAT work?
To start at humanity's taproot, Jewish contributions to the record of HISTORY may have positively increased the constructive self-awareness of individual human beings for the first time, ever. This is because Jews understood early the value of real truth, consistency, ethics, and dependable integrity! Truth, despite falling heavens! If they could fall? Maybe, they should fall! That raises neck hair, eh?
This idea penetrates society right down to the individual! Persons begin to have personalities? Individuality has its birth?
These were new thoughts contrary to the times! Man was in collaboration with God, was the Jewish conceit, not his fungible vassal as was popularly thought (and supporting the "strong man" inventing same!)... and in contention! Respect was a two-edged sword for god and humankind, alike!
That seems an unvarnished history and a point of illegitimate contention for we Gentiles! Jews would look their God in the eye and expect dialogue. That's just cheeky and outraging to "God's" bowers and scrapers... right?
Indeed, the Jews, very precociously, painstakingly, and importantly... recorded in their history a system of observed ethics for the aforementioned conceit: the Halachah. When to do what, how, and why to... whom.
This seminal initiative governed all aspects of a "justice,," an "ethics,," and some "manners" that were seldom, if ever, so solidly treated or dealt with by adjacent, less successful, societal ideologies, at the time, it's offered. That's the primary history.
Jews made something work, work better, and against all odds! What's up with that, and what did we (goy-dom!) get out of it? Wait and see!
Observe that this "record of integrity's creed" shares the same efficacious ethical roots embraced in many thousands of years of this new Jewish (Human!) cognitional approach's... possibilities and potentials (Haynes LN)! It pervades everything that is Judaism.
Progressive "good things" were allowed to happen, even encouraged. Meaningful change begins to become a thing?
Verily, this new idea of "integrity" allows them to define history as it should be defined: an accurate retelling of past events more as they ~actually~ happened, again, though heaven falls! Learning from the truth of same! Mistakes can go unrepeated, a boon!
It will be eschewed by Jews, the previous chaos, a preferred and complementary fiction of some strong man's tyranny more popular in the past even if still largely practiced today in the early 21st century. ...Jews cultivated a kind of earlier AlienView, an awareness of, on all this as it's described... if this writer may be so bold.
...And sure, they put their somewhat flawed and self-serving spin on it, surprise surprise—like every other religion of men creating Gods in their own image to do their bidding—but compared to EVERYONE else around? They were a sun source of historic integrity! They'd made THAT their religion! To illustrate this integrity:
It may be stated categorically that noarcheological discovery has ever controverteda [Jewish history] reference. Scores ofarcheological findings have been made whichconfirm in clear outline or in exact detailhistorical statements in the [old testiment bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation ofbiblical descriptions has often led to amazingdiscoveries (qtd in Wouk 294).
This kind of integrity is nurtured in an institutional memory that no other earthly (Western!) institution, government, or religion had ever had comparatively—and does not yet, even now, this writer reminds—a memory spanning a looming five thousand years of unbroken cultural consciousness! That's nowhere else in the West, forgetting our indigenous for a moment...
...Still, one may not find the same kinds of institutional memory in ANY comparable Western religion—or certainly in either son Christianity or grandson Islam, ironic betrayers of their father Judaism...
It becomes obvious that Judaism is itself first a body of historical integrity. Indeed, the first five books of the old testament bible were written primarily as a history. It was only after 444 BCE that the Pentateuch (as the former is called) came to have the religious significance that it has today (Haynes LN), and, as the reader might come to see, the origins of ancient history may have more Jewish precedence than is presently accepted!
Aristobulus, a Jewish philosopher writing in Alexandria about 100 BCE, wrote that the wisdom of the Jews predated Greek philosophy and was in fact "its source and model" (Grant 274). Ouch!
This is no idle and irresponsible boast, good reader! This is a supportable statement of pious scholarship from Jewish institutional memory (...as self-serving as that must only appear to be; it remains to have precedence!), and it is scholarship not remotely discounted or invalidated! Yes, and at all levels and indices, too! That is not pushed in the reader's face even where it must be thrust center stage!
Another key contribution made to history by the Jews is the history coming to a Western civilization from the Eastern one. Psychotic hostilities between Christian and Islamic factions complicated the transference of collected knowledge bodies. These factual histories could have been lost to Western civilization for much longer but for the singularly proportioned Jewish transmission it received from the Jews (Speilvogel 356) .
In fact, some educators argue that the Jews are ~mainly~ responsible for the transmission of ANY wisdom or knowledge, at all, to a metaphoric CAVE-dwelling Western civilization of the time! This is common knowledge requiring no citation presuming self-honesty and a good high school education.
These pearls of wisdom were, of course, in the very useful fields of Medicine, Aristotelian philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics. (Haynes PI). Humankind, but assuredly Western civilization, would indeed find itself in difficult straits without the history, the societal memory, or the cognitive foundation regained in this manner and certainly has the Jew to rightfully thank.
[Consider, it could be argued that Jews provided Christendom with all the intellectual weapons it would find necessary to use, at all, stopping Islam in the future and pushing it back out of Spain conclusively... for an injection of real irony and remembering our now strangling basilisk!]
To briefly summarize: early on, the Jews were in possession of information that very few had. They did not hoard, and they did not covet. Behavior such as that would not be consistent with their demonstrated and very non-usurous ethics. Jews eschewed empty rituals and lived in fact, in the aggregate, for ethical behavior (Haynes PI). Moreover, they were the middlemen separating two hostile factions...
It is no great stretch to imagine that this situation incurred the wrath of all sides against the persecuted (and innocently reasonable!) Jew in the center. Further, it could be said—then as now—that a reason for their persecution is similar to the reasons a bookish child is beaten up in a school playground. Remember, please, the aforementioned sidebar for the POINT of this paper... it's coming.
Why are Jews persecuted? Flatly... because their more shining example may shame the persecutor? That's the observation.
Moving on, Jewish contribution to the concept of LAW has been responsible for moving an evolving jurisprudence closer to real justice and AWAY from the (too convenient) arbitrary of a bloodily tyrannous past.
In parallel, respect for the law is the ~essence~ of ancient Jewish integrity. Still more, the name "Jew" means "People of the Law" to the ancient contemporaries of the Jews (Haynes LN). This ethical notoriety encourages a real and lasting precedent for an obvious Jewish contribution to the currently applied and foundational concept of the LAW as it is now generally known!
In this obvious and seminal contribution, the Jews actualize one of the noblest elevations for humanity as can be conceived! Verily! They provide a template for a new kind of law, conceptually, that causes a ripple of positive effects to cascade down through time to the present day! This ripple very possibly elevates Humankind from the primitive brute of the past to the rational thinker of the future! Simply stated, it is a new way of legal thinking called Mosaic Law.
Mosaic Law is a concept remembered in that unbroken thread of consciousness for thousands of years, remember, of seeing man's ~Law~ as a body far superior to mere ~man~. Cut and print! That's our aggregate salvation in a nutshell!
No longer, FINALLY, is it necessary for any righteous individual to be subject to the vague and arbitrary pronouncements of some hyper-arbitrate and privileged "other." There is now the potential, at least, for all to be EQUAL before the law (Wouk 39)(Grant 60). The Jews lived it and passed it on to us!
Equality before the law! What a concept! See! This holds "fat" feet to fire like we'd always held the "skinny" one! Previously, fat feet skated on privilege and a callous arbitrary. Mosaic Law would provide for a new umbrella of total fairness across the board and to this day... fat feet held to account will be fairer.
Moreover, this shall be the best idea of all because it is the qualifying equity fertilizing then burgeoning academic ground, everywhere! It makes other ideas more possible!!! This may lead to the greatest blessing to man as can be found anywhere on the planet: the potential freedom to think creatively, and to (responsibly!) profit from it!
Later on, when groups of men make this stick to the maximum that they can, humankind will comparably take off in the humanities and technologies like soaring birds... compared to what was going on in the Bronze Age! This new kind of freedom—this potential for modern luxury—this, our early 21th Century technological wonderland and economic colossus... may be a gift of the Jews!!!
At all levels, this body of Jewish law positively insinuates, permeates, and saturates much of Western law, presently, in a protective self-checking soak. In other words, Old Jewish Law touches everyday human problems in real-world ways.
To illustrate, Jacob Rabinowitz (a professor of law at Hebrew University) offers persuasive documentation concerning the rules governing home mortgage, general release, and trial by jury as examples. What follows is a rough brief of what these mean to the individual today:
When one mortgages a home in the early 20th Century, and has that transaction made safe—the ghost of an old Jewish man, as ethical, fair, and serious as can be expected, identifies and arranges the details of that sale (Finkelstein 16).
When a "release" is signed, one can be made safe from many of the legal entanglements that the unscrupulous person can inflict on the common person. That same old Jewish man is there, verifying the authenticity of the document (Finkelstein 9).
When one can throw her fate to a jury of men and women and not have to depend on the fickle, prejudiced, and likely criminal arbitrary whims of a ruling dictator or indifferent arbitrator, that person can thank the Jews for their original ideas and ancient institutional memory (Finkelstein 20) thus providing real respect to the individual, consistently.
As a result, the common man in this century has a potential quality of life that can be achieved in no other way. Surely, a debt of gratitude to aggregate Jewry is due, apparently, one more time.
OWED DEBTS ASIDE, IT IS THE VERY SOUL OF IRONY THAT JEWS HAVE SO OFTEN BEEN DENIED THE DUE PROCESS OF THE LAW THEY VERY LIKELY PROVIDED TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION... It is a reminder of the sidebar for this paper's point once again: the bookish child is beaten up, and the homework (...and lunch money?) that she would freely have contributed in necessity is immorally taken from her. Can the Jew fare any more positively in the next category of Medicine? |
Arturo Castiglioni, a Yale medical history professor, suggests that Jewish contribution to medicine may have relieved the suffering of humankind more than the contribution of any other sectarian institution. A real irony there... and our basilisk is now dryly heaving.
The Jews, he explains, as the great ethical middlemen of the Mediterranean, had the great factual gifts of Science and Medicine pass directly through their competent hands. The reverence for those gifts, the knowledge promised, instilled the Jew with a desire to catalog that knowledge, build upon it, and consequently become some of the most respected and sought-after teacher/physicians of ancient times.
This was, of course, before the jealously facilitated persecutions would hamstring that marvelous thrust, and make any contribution (save survival) impossible for them (Finkelstein 185). However, the seed was sown; and as Harry A. Savitz, M.D. reports, by 1974 AD, 30% of all the prestigious Nobel Prizes given in medicine and biology were awarded for ideas of Jewish doctors (Finkelstein 211). This is in spite of (and perhaps because of) the Jewish people's lack of access to colleges and universities for so many of the darker periods in their long history.
Regardless, this is an ASTOUNDING imbalance between the size of the population and the size of the contribution made! Acknowledgments must be tendered!
Savitz continues that other medical contributions of original ideas abound! Arthur Kornberg won the Nobel prize in Genetic Research in 1959, then heads a team that virtually explains the operation of the virus! This new idea leads to the miraculous strides humanity has taken in the area of genetic research today! If AIDS is ever cured, it will likely be a Jew who published for peer review on the disease culture's slide!
On a note that strikes some as very personal as it does for this writer, especially those who have parents or relatives deformed by polio; it was a Jew, Jonas Salk, who defeated that terrible virus and fired up new ideas for the cures of other viral diseases.
Abraham Wakesman, the man who wiped out Tuberculosis by inventing the first antibiotic effective against it, was a Jew.
The work of a Jewish biochemist by the name of Ernst Boris Chain was key in the discovery of Penicillin (Finkelstein 211).
Finally, it remains to be said that Jewish scholarship in medicine is second to none, provides original ideas elevating all men and women, and will certainly share that information unquestionably and fairly with non-Jews! Salk wanted to give his vaccine away!
Selfless scholarship notwithstanding, proper perspective demands that all remember to take into account that Jews are not "superior intellects" when compared to the remaining balance of humankind—for all of their scholarship, and all of their contribution! They would be the first to admit it!
What IS superior about them; however, is a "capacity for hard work" demanded by their cultural system! This was documented as early as 50 BCE (Grant 226), and must surely have been in evidence before then. This might compel the rest of humankind to kick sand in the face of Jewry—to lash out in impotent, humiliated, and childish rage at the Jewish system, that system's greater sense, spirit, and heart! A certain kind of child violently resents being made to look bad and is compelled to DISPLAY anger for his pointless and destructive immaturity—that sidebar to the point, remember.
True, Jews are no "better" than the rest of humanity, there is of course no biological superiority, but they still accomplish more of value because they work harder. They'll work no less hard in the next category of Math and Science.
Jewish contributions to these fields have perhaps increased the knowledge of humankind more than can currently even be appreciated—a result of us not being as smart, in the aggregate, as we think we are! Moreover, the preceding contributions iterated in this paper pale to insignificance when compared with the contributions of Jews to Science and Mathematics in the 20th century!
Consider briefly that only two men, both Jews, have stood humankind on a figurative ear with their astonishing intellectual contributions. Those two men are, of course, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein.
Freud advanced ideas addressing the very real possibility of influences from an unconscious past that seriously impact the decisions of the conscious present. Armed with the knowledge of this possibility and potentiality, the decisions of this present are more intelligently made. It is written in more places than one that "Freud's lasting impact on the modern world [. . .] cannot be denied" (Wolf 1).
In contrast, if Freud compelled humanity to look inside SELF for new and compelling answers (and more appropriate questions), Einstein compelled humanity to look inside the very fabric of reality -extant- for answers... as far-reaching as can not yet even be imagined! For better or worse the secrets of the atom were his gifts, and the legacy he left will (perhaps!) not be easily eclipsed.
The contribution of ideas such as these transcends normal understanding, and thrusts branches of active progression into equally progressive skies. Ironically, Jews show the rest of us how wonderful (and unjustly tragic, sometimes) it is to have hard work pay off!
...But there were other (earlier) contributions (no less interesting) that perhaps led directly to the fantastic gifts of Freud and Einstein. For instance, Maimonides, a Jewish physician/philosopher much revered as a truly original thinker, wrote a skillful document called "Guide for the Perplexed." His newer idea suggested ways that science and religion might be efficaciously linked (Eban 107). Astonishingly, this is what St. Thomas Aquinas and his "Summa Theologica" was, LATER, all about! Maimonides; however, predated the ~PLAGIARIZING?~ Aquinas by many decades.
The utility of this wonderful concept, invented by Maimonides, then, shows that the use of science to search for an understanding of God [TRUTH, the way the Jews saw it!], is GOOD for a progressive and rational humankind! The Jews and their fresh ideas may have hurried us along on this path to the bravely progressive and the immanently rational... that could be an abundant future!
~
IT IS STRANGE THEN, AS ONE (LATER) REFLECTS ON THE APPROACHING "SIDEBAR," THAT THE BULK OF AN UNCARING HUMANKIND KEEPS TRYING, FERVENTLY, TO KNOCK THE JEWISH PASSENGER RIGHT OFF THIS EVOLVING VEHICLE OF CIVILIZATION!
THE AFOREMENTIONED BELL CURVE, REVEALED? DUNNING KRUGER IN ACTION? THE PETER PRINCIPLE IN EVIDENCE?
~
Research indicates, moreover, that the Jew is perhaps a major designer, builder, and maintainer of that very same vehicle. It does not seem smart for the vast bulk of humankind to do that—not smart on a multitude of levels. We'll leave that there.
The final category discussed certainly sheds no more light... ONLY more goy societal psychosis: the Jewish contribution to Religion.
Verily, the Sun source of Christianity and Islam... is Judaism. That may be Judaism's only criticism the writer tongue-in-cheeks...
It has been said that if Judaism is the father, then Christianity is the son, and Islam is the grandson (Haynes LN). It is a continuing wonder that vocal and more violent elements of Christianity and Islam can turn so thoroughly and viciously on their father Judaism. Islam publishes in leading news magazines that it is the destiny of Islam to "kill the Jew, torture the Jew, and wipe Israel from the surface of the world (US NEWS & World Report)." Based on what, exactly, one has to wonder.
Christianity, accepting the weight of all hyperbole, has long been responsible for some of the most heinous and brutal persecutions... causing one mainstream scholar to remark, "The persecutions and the new [false] image of the hated Jew stimulated a tradition of anti-Semitism that proved to be one of Christian Europe's most insidious contributions to the Western heritage" (Speilvogel 356). Verily, Christians only allowed a Jewish community where that community would inevitably prosper... but to be mown down for the fruit the Jews would inevitably yield when that "mowing" became convenient! This was a regular occurrence.
This is a preposterous persecution when one realizes that if Judaism had not been around to provide the very idea of monotheistic shoulders on which the other two religions STAND, Islam and Christianity would have no meaning, validity, OR history at all! Verily, Judaism provided the taproot idea for the two most popular religions today, and is of course reviled for its trouble.
...No "good deed" shall go unpunished, we've read! Do as would be done? Right.
Further validity for Judaism as a contributor to positive religious behaviors can be demonstrated out of common knowledge. The Crusades are a holy war of abomination, and Christianity has always been violently factionalized. In parallel, the Jihad (...almost a sixth pillar of the Islamic faith!) is a Muslim holy war of transcendent social abomination (believe or die!)... Islam has always been violently factionalized (Haynes PI).
What holy wars have the Jews involved themselves with within the last two millennia, and when have they ever been violently factionalized to a remotely similar degree illustrated by a plethora of Christian "faiths" at war with themselves, always, and illustrated by the Sunni vs Shia debacle in Islam? The "Jeopardy music" plays.
Could it be that obvious that the maturity of Judaism precludes that kind of behavior produced ONLY by Christians and Muslims? It is THIS kind of maturity that Jewry displays to the world... though, it would seem that most are blind to same. Judaism, comparatively, is an idea of calm, reflection, scholarship, and real maturity cooperating as a collection of ethically thinking and rational human beings. That's the aspiration. Consider, then, the other kids on that playground...
This concept of mature adulthood, of course, has real applications on many levels. Where, in Judaism, are the rabid pronouncements that are found in Islam? Where are the blatant anti-fraternal institutional doctrines and teachings as are found in Christianity? Lastly, what can these acts BE but the acts of rebellious children against their rational and doting parent! Our basilisk expires, unregretted.
"Et tu" Christianity? There is much evidence to suggest that Judaism was a key in the spread of, if not the NURTURING of Christianity (Haynes LN). This is forgetting for a moment that the crucifixion of Christ (as engineered by them?) is REQUIRED for the soul of Christianity to have any meaning and validity at all. Christ had to "die" or there could be no "resurrection"!
When the destruction of their nation occurred in 70 AD at the hands of the obliviously decadent Romans, and the Jews were scattered across the Roman Empire like dust before the wind in the great Diaspora, they took the idea of Christianity with them as they were blown around. They spoke first to the gatherings of Jews as they found them. Jews were the very WHEELS of Christianity! Again, it is no leap of faith that this was a thunderous contribution to the idea, spread, and eventual success of a then-upstart Christian creed!
To conclude, the positive contributions of the Jews to humanity have fruitfully interspersed the fields of history, law, medicine, math/science, and religion with tremendously useful ideas and cultural inventions/innovations! In many cases, Jews have been the key to an improvement in these and other particular social disciplines. They have done this as a result of character, the gainful use of their "God's" gifts, withering hard work, and attention to scholarship that matters! They were organized, objective, constructive, comprehensive, flexible, acceptable, specific, and thoughtful... at the start when others were not. Non-Jews had much to admire, and would it be that that admiration was aggregate humanity's cultural go-to... but it's not.
They have accomplished all their accomplishments in spite of slanderous, horrific, unethical, barbarous, and inhuman treatment at the hands of a sizable minority, if not a majority, of their fellow human beings, that belated gentile highlighted at the start of this writer's goyish jeremiad. And who are these human beings, really?
They are a room full of unsupervised children—the sidebar for this paper's point!
These mewling kids are the kinds of children who will find the differently minded one among them, and torment her mercilessly. Some of these children are bigger, smarter, and more ethical than some of the other children; but all are corrupt, selfish, and juvenile; except (perhaps!) for one. This writer interjects at this point that it is a wonder sometimes how human beings will tolerate behavior from their nations that they would NEVER tolerate from their own children, but that seems to be our inexplicable and regrettable way.
To further illustrate, the child named "Iraq" sees something he likes that is in the possession of the little rich (but weaker) child named "Kuwait." "Iraq" reaches out, pokes Kuwait in the eye, and takes "Kuwait's" possession. Some of the bigger children stand around and pontificate about their reasons for stepping in (or not!), but the biggest child selfishly needs something that Kuwait has, and that need is its terrible excuse.
In the scuffle that follows, the oldest and wisest child watches as "Iraq" flails its "knife" around (said to be dipped, perhaps, in poisons!); and is even stabbed by it a few times—but can do nothing! Some of the other "children" might come in on Iraq's side, and turn a scuffle into a brawl.
The wise child shows restraint; the wise child shows maturity. The wise child is trying to look to the responsible long view while the rest are caught up with the sociopathic short term. Remains, Jews took injury in that conflict and responded in no retaliative way! Ask any other society to do that.
The Jew seems closest to the wise child, demonstrating in word, thought, and deed that the adult in this room full of mewling children would appear to be Jewish. The rest of the children are as so many rebellious, unenlightened, frightened, and frightening (sometimes cognitively RETARDED!) teenagers... psychotics even!
The brush is broad folks, but a lot of that paint sticks... and poof goes THIS citizen's anti-Semitism. With the basilisk (which it was), it shall not be missed.
Closing, don't worry about a Jewish "conspiracy," THAT old chestnut. If there HAS to be any conspiracy (and there is!), it won't be one of Jewish manufacture. No.
We should BE that lucky.
When the writer started this paper in 1993 or thereabouts, he was researching his own anti-Semitism... wanted support for it. One can categorize anti-Nazism, can do it easily, handily, readily, and substantively... fulsomely, scientifically, and undeniably. He wanted to answer why people feel the way they do about this so-called "Jewish Question," the same way.
Going where the data led had led to different thoughts, instead. He'd have to stand by supported convictions and eschew all the rest. He shall not apologize for a word.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cognitive dissonance. (2008, September 1). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:32, September 1, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&oldid=235545707Wolf, Ernest S. "Sigmund Freud." Grollier Electronic Encyclopedia, 1992 ed.
Note — If you think my references lean in favor of the Jews, find controverting references that counter my assertions competently. "Good" luck to you.
