Sunday, December 27, 2015

Jews and Christianity

Part I

"There is no doubt that the...Jews aided the Persians with all the men they could muster, and that the help they gave was considerable. Once Jerusalem was in Persian hands a terrible massacre of Christians took place, and the Jews are accused of having taken the lead in this massacre." (A History of Palestine from 135 A.D. to Modern Times, James Parkes, p. 81; The Iron Curtain Over America, John Beaty, p. 194).




"Christianity, therefore is unhistoric and unmoral." (A Program for the Jews and Humanity, Harry Waton, p. 121).




"The Jews were now free to indulge in their most fervent fantasies of mass murder of helpless victims. Christians were dragged from their beds, tortured and killed. Some were actually sliced to pieces, bit by bit, while others were branded with hot irons, their eyes poked out to induce unbearable pain. Others were placed in boxes with only their heads, hands and legs sticking out. Then hungry rats were placed in the boxes to gnaw upon their bodies. Some were nailed to the ceiling by their fingers or by their feet, and left hanging until they died of exhaustion. Others were chained to the floor and left hanging until they died of exhaustion. Others were chained to the floor and hot lead poured into their mouths. Many were tied to horses and dragged through the streets of the city, while Jewish mobs attacked them with rocks and kicked them to death. Christian mothers were taken to the public square and their babies snatched from their arms. A red Jewish terrorist would take the baby, hold it by the feet, head downward and demand that the Christian mother deny Christ. If she would not, he would toss the baby into the air, and another member of the mob would rush forward and catch it on the tip of his bayonet.

Pregnant Christian women were chained to trees and their babies cut out of their bodies. There were many places of public execution in Russia during the days of the revolution, one of which was described by the American Rohrbach Commission: 'The whole cement floor of the execution hall of the Jewish Cheka of Kiev was flooded with blood; it formed a level of several inches. It was a horrible mixture of blood, brains and pieces of skull. All the walls were bespattered with blood. Pieces of brains and of scalps were sticking to them. A gutter of 25 centimeters wide by 25 centimeters deep and about 10 meters long was along its length full to the top with blood.

Some bodies were disemboweled, others had limbs chopped off, some were literally hacked to pieces. Some had their eyes put out, the head, face and neck and trunk were covered with deep wounds. Further on, we found a corpse with a wedge driven into its chest. Some had no tongues. In a corner we discovered a quantity of dismembered arms and legs belonging to no bodies that we could locate.'" (Defender Magazine, October 1933).

"The time will come when all Christians will become mature, they will all embrace Judaism, and they will all justify themselves by deeds. Then the Christians will become Jews." (A Program for the Jews and Humanity, Harry Waton, p. 174).




"With deep insight into history Jesus foresaw what would happen to the Christians, that they would waste the treasure with harlots, but in due time the Christians will come back to Jehovah, and Jehovah will be glad to receive them." (A Program for the Jews and Humanity, Harry Waton, p 176).




"A rabbi cannot teach you your Christian duty to the Jewish people."

"Jewish Rabbis Should Not Teach Christians; in the ecumenical mania that grips the churches, Judeophiles especially are scurrying about trying to outdo one another in inviting Jewish speakers to their pulpits. It's almost a fetish. While darkly contemplating this prima facie evidence of blissful ignorance, a refreshing breath of oxygen floated across this writer's desk. It came from an unexpected, therefore a more greatly appreciated, source. The headline of the newsletter asked this question: 'Should your Church Invite the Rabbi? In the center of the front page the box below appeared:

The newsletter was from Jews for Jesus. The article was written by Moishe Rosen, founder of Jews for Jesus. Although the organization is operated by 'Jewish Christians' some of whom are probably Zionists, Mr. Rosen did a good job in advising churches that they should not invite rabbis to teach them. In response to a woman whose church had invited a rabbi, he stated: '...I will first say that I am very pleased that your church cares about the Jewish people. I'm impressed that your minister has become friends with the local rabbi. As always, I appreciate any kindness to the Jewish people because I know how very much Jews need demonstrations of Christian kindness. Nevertheless, in all honesty, I'm chagrined that the rabbi was invited to speak at the church. He is a teacher who wants you to learn why he doesn't believe in Jesus. He will tell you: 'If you really respect the Jewish people, you must not proselytize or presume that we Jews need your religion.' How could I be pleased about the church receiving that message?"




"Christianity does not concern itself about the material world its sole concern is immortality; it does not concern itself about conduct, its sole concern is faith." (A Program for the Jews and Humanity, Harry Waton, p. 118).




"I am gong to show that real religious persecution is uniquely Jewish...In the time of Justinian, in the sixth century, the Jews massacred Christians in Caesarea and destroyed their churches. When Stephanus, the governor attempted to defend the Christians, the Jews fell on him and slew him. In 608 A.D., the Jews of Antioch fell upon their Christians neighbors and killed them with fire and sword...About 614 A.D., the Persians advanced upon Palestine and the Jews, after joining their standard, massacred the Christians and destroyed their churches. Ninety thousand Christians perished in Jerusalem alone." (The International Jew, Henry Ford (1922), pp. 171, 173; Who is Esau-Edom? Charles A. Weisman, p.100)




"This regenerated and true Christianity must identify itself with Marxism and Communism." (A Program for the Jews and Humanity, Harry Waton, p. 124).




"Between the Christians and the Communists there is a life and death struggle because the Christians regard their idea of co-operation as being right, true and good, while the idea of co-operation of the Communists the Christians regard as wrong, false and evil." (A Program for the Jews and Humanity, Harry Waton, p. 136).




"I shall use such influence as I have in emphasizing the basic truths common to all denominations, in lowering denominational barriers and in promoting effective cooperation among Christians of whatever creed." (John D. Rockefeller, The Messenger of the Covenant, December 1935 issue; And Men Wept, by Catherine Palfrey Baldwin, p. 46).




On Mon, 23 Dec 1996, Elazar wrote: "For my Jewish brethren searching for a Biblical basis for sanctioning homosexuality, I provide you with words from Rabbis Marc Angel, Hillel Goldberg and Pinchas Stopler in their joint article published in the Winter, 1992-93 edition of Jewish Action Magazine;" Well, here's another viewpoint: Bible Review, December 1993, p. 11 DOES THE BIBLE PROHIBIT HOMOSEXUALITY? by Rabbi Jacob Milgrom: "The Biblical prohibition is addressed only to Israel. It is incorrect to apply it on a universal scale.

This past Yom Kippur, September 25, 1993, my synagogue invited me to explain the afternoon scriptural reading, the list of forbidden sexual liaisons in Leviticus 18. I chose to focus on what is today one of the most frequently quoted passages in the entire Bible, "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22).

What I said may be both good news and bad news to my Christian friends, depending on their position on gay and lesbian rights. This Biblical prohibition is addressed only to the Jews. Non-Jews are affected only if they reside in the Holy Land, but not elsewhere (see the closing exhortation in Leviticus 18, verses 24-30). Thus, it is incorrect to apply this prohibition on a universal scale.

But I spoke to my fellow Jews, who are required to observe this prohibition. What is the rationale for this prohibition? In a previous column, I noted that the Bible's impurity rules are part of a symbol system representing the forces of life and death. Israel is required to avoid these impurities and adhere to the laws commanded by God, who promotes the forces of life. Thus in the same chapter we read, "You shall heed my statutes and my rules, by doing them one shall live" (Leviticus 18:5). A man who discharges semen, whether intentionally or otherwise, is declared impure and must purify himself by bathing (a sort of re-baptism) before he is permitted to enter the Temple or touch sacred (sacrificial) food (Leviticus 15:16-18). Why? Because semen stands for life, and the loss of semen symbolizes the loss of life.

Note also that in the entire list of forbidden sexual unions, THERE IS NO PROHIBITION AGAINST LESBIANISM. Can it be that lesbianism did not exist in ancient times or that Scripture was unaware of its existence? Lesbians existed and flourished, as attested in an old (pre-Israelite)

Babylonian text and in the work of the lesbian poet Sappho (born c. 612 B.C.E., during the time of the First Temple), who came from the island of Lesbos (hence lesbianism). But there is a fundamental difference between the homosexual acts of men and women. IN LESBIANISM THERE IS NO SPILLING OF SEED. Thus life is not symbolically lost, and therefore lesbianism is not prohibited in the Bible.

My argument ostensibly can be countered by a more comprehensive biblical injunction. The very first commandment, given to Adam and repeated to Noah, is "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Genesis 1:28 and Genesis 9:1,7). The descendants of Noah--the entire human race--are duty-bound to fulfill this commandment. But the truth is that we have not only filled the earth, we have over-filled it. This does not mean, however, that the commandment should be thought of as no longer in force--especially among Jews, who have lost a third of their members in our lifetime. I recall an incident during a premarital interview from the early years of my rabbinate. The starry-eyed bride declared her noble intention to have twelve children to compensate for the tragic loss of six million killed in the Holocaust. I gasped, "Must you do it all by yourself?"

I have since come to regret my flippant reply. This couple regarded their forthcoming marriage as a sacrament not just between themselves, but with the >Jewish people. The problem has worsened for American Jews. Because intermarriage is rife and the Jewish birth rate is low, American Jewry, once at zero population growth, has dipped into the minus column. Were it not for a steady stream of converts, the extinction of American Jewry would be even more imminent. For us the divine command, "Be fruitful and multiply" is truly in force.

To Jewish homosexuals I offer an unoriginal solution. As compensation for your loss of seed, adopt children. Although adoption was practiced in the ancient world (as attested in Babylonian law), there is no Biblical procedure or institution of adoption. As a result the institution of adoption is absent from rabbinic jurisprudence. Yet there are isolated cases of a kind of pseudo-adoption in the Bible. For example, Abraham, long childless, complains to God that Eliezer of Damascus, his steward, will inherit him (Genesis 15:2). And barren Rachel beseeches her husband Jacob, "Here is my maid Bilhah--go into her that she may bear on my knees and that through her I too may have children" (Genesis 30:3). Adoption is certainly a possibility today.

Lesbian couples have an additional advantage. Not only do they not violate biblical law, but through artificial insemination each can become the natural mother of her children.

Thus from the Bible we can infer the following: Lesbians, presumably half of the world's homosexual population, are not mentioned. More than ninety-nine percent of the gays, namely non-Jews, are not addressed. This leaves the small number of male Jewish gays subject to this >prohibition. If they are biologically or psychologically incapable of procreation, adoption provides a solution. I hope the Eternal, in love and compassion, will then reckon their spilled seed as producing fruit. Jacob Milgrom." (Bible Review, a publication of the Biblical Archeology Society 3000 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20008, 202 387 8888




"The doctrines which the Jews had been spreading throughout the land for years could not but have helped to undermine the Church's power." (Rabbi Lewis Browne, Stranger than Fiction, p. 222).




"Protestantism includes every type of religious thought and organization from 'high church' Anglicanism to high-principled Quakerism, from ecstatic Methodism to relentlessly intellectual Unitarism. Only slowly, and with many pangs is even Protestantism shaking off the religion about Christ." (Rabbi Lewis Browne, This Believing World, p. 300).




"Christianity has always looked on sex as in some way indecent and sinful; and for that reason Christians cannot possibly associate a truly religious nature 'with an unsuppressed libido. But that is more than a prejudice.'" (Rabbi Lewish Browne, This Believing World, p. 326).




"One of the finest things ever done by the mob was the Crucifixion of Christ. Intellectually it was a splendid gesture. But trust the mob to bungle the job. If I'd had charge of executing Christ, I'd have handled it differently. You see, what I'd have done was had him shipped to Rome and fed him to the lions. They could never have made a savior out of mincement!" (Rabbi Ben Hecht)




The Rabbis of Judaism understand this just as do the leaders in the Christian movement. Rabbi Moshe Maggal of the National Jewish Information Service said in 1961 when the term Judeo-Christian was relatively new, "There is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian religion. We consider the two religions so different that one excludes the other." (National Jewish Information Service).




"It is useless to insist upon the differences which proceed from this opposition between the two different views in the respective attitudes of the pious Jew and the pious Christian regarding the acquisition of wealth. While the pious Christian, who had been guilty of usury, was tormented on his death-bed by the tortures of repentance and was ready to give up all that he owned, for the possessions unjustly acquired were scorching his soul, the pious Jews, at the end of his days looked with affection upon his coffers and chests filled to the top with the accumulated sequins taken during his long life from poor Christians and even from poor Moslems; a sight which could cause his impious heart to rejoice, for every penny of interest enclosed therein was like a sacrifice offered to his God." (Wierner Sombart, Les Juifs et la vie economique, p. 286; The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins, p. 164)




"Our adversaries, numerous and formidable, will say, and will have the right to say, that our Principe CrÇateur is identical with the Principe GÇnÇrateur of the Indians and Egyptians, and may fitly be symbolized as it was symbolized anciently, by the linage...To accept this in lieu of a personal God is to abandon Christianity and worship of Jehovah and return to wallow in the styles of Paganism." (Albert Pike, Supreme Council of the 33rd degree, New York, August 15, 1876).




"The Jew...is not content merely to destroy Christianity, but he preaches the gospel of Judaism; he not only assails the Catholic or the Protestant faith, but he incites to the unbelief, and then imposes on those whose faith he has undermined his own conception of the world, of morality and of life. He is engaged in his historic mission, the annihilation of the religion of Christ." (Benard Lazare, Antisemitism: It's History and Causes, Translated by Britons Publishing Co., London (1967), p. 158).




"The Christians are always singing about the blood. Let us give them enough of it! Let us cut their throats and drag them over the altar! And let them drown in their own blood! I dream of the day when the last priest is strangled on the guts of the last preacher." (Jewish Chairman of the American Communist Party, Gus Hall).




"Wars are the Jews harvest, for with them we wipe out the Christians and get control of their gold. We have already killed 100-million of them, and the end is not yet." (Chief Rabbi in France, in 1859, Rabbi Reichorn).




"Israel won the war [WW I]; we made it; we thrived on it; we profited from it. It was our supreme revenge on Christianity." (The Jewish Ambassador from Austria to London, Count Mensdorf, 1918).



"We shall drive the Christians into war by exploiting their national vanity and stupidity. They will then massacre each other, thus giving room for our own people." (Rabbi Reichorn, in Le Contemporain, July 1st, 1880)




"Dear beloved brethren in Moses: We have received your letter in which you tell us of the anxieties and misfortunes which you are enduring. We are pierced by as great pain to hear it as yourselves. The advice of the Grand Satraps and Rabbis is the following: As for what you say that the King of France obliges you to become Christians: do it; since you cannot do otherwise...As for what you say about the command to despoil you of your goods make your sons merchants, that little by little they may despoil the Christians of theirs. As for what you say about their attempts on your lives; make your sons doctors and apothecaries, that they may take away Christian lives. As for what you say of their destroying your synagogues; make your sons canons and clerics in order that they may destroy their churches. As for the many other vexations you complain of: arrange that you sons become advocates and lawyers, and see that they always mix themselves up with the affairs of State, in order that by putting Christians under your yoke you may dominate the world and be avenged on them. Do not swerve from this order that we give you, because you will find by experience that, humiliated as you are, you will reach the actuality of power." (Constantinople Elders of Jewry).




"The confusion of the average Christian comes from the action of the clergy. Confusion creates doubt! Doubt brings loss of confidence! Loss of confidence brings loss of interest! There need be no confusion in the minds of Christians concerning the fundamentals of the faith. It would not exist of the clergy were not 'aiding and abetting' their worst enemies [Jews]. Many clergymen are their [Jews] allies, without realizing it, while other have become deliberate 'male prostitutes' to their cause.

When Christians see their leaders in retreat which can only bring defeat they are confused and afraid. To stop this surrender, the clergy must make an about face immediately and take a stand against the invisible and intangible ideological war which is subversively being waged against the Christian faith." (Facts Are Facts, Dr. Benjamin Freedman who was born a Jew and died a Christian).




"The strongest supporters of Judaism cannot deny that Judaism is anti-Christian." (Jewish World, March 15, 1924)




"I am devoting my lecture in this seminar to a discussion of the possibility that we are now entering a Jewish century, a time when the spirit of the community, the non-ideological blend of the emotional and rational and the resistance to categories and forms will emerge through the forces of anti-nationalism to provide us with a new kind of society. I call this process the Judaization of Christianity because Christianity will be the vehicle through which this society becomes Jewish." (Rabbi Martin Siegel, New York Magazine, p. 32, January 18, 1972)




The Rabbis of Judaism understand this just as do the leaders in the Christian movement. Rabbi Moshe Maggal of the National Jewish Information Service said in 1961 when the term Judeo-Christian was relatively new, "There is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian religion. We consider the two religions so different that one excludes the other." (National Jewish Information Service, 6412 W. Olympic Blvd. L.A. CA).




"The current expression 'Judeo-Christian' is an error which has altered the course of universal history by the confusion it has sown in men's mind, if by it one is meant to understand the Jewish origin of Christianity; for by abolishing the fundamental distinctions between Jewish and Christian messianism, it seeks to bring together two ideas that are radically in opposition. By laying the accent exclusively on the 'Christian' idea to the detriment of the 'Judean' it conjures away monotheistic messianism - a valuable discipline at all levels of thought, and reduces it to a purely confessional messianism, preoccupied like Christian messianism with the salvation of the individual soul. If the term 'Judeo-Christian' does point to a common origin, there is no doubt that it is a most dangerous idea.

It is based on a 'contrdictio in adjecto' which has set the path of history on the wrong track. It links in one breath two ideas which are completely irreconcilable, it seeks to demonstrate that there is no difference between day and night or hot and cold or Black and White, and thus introduces a fatal element of confusion to a basis on which some, nevertheless, are endeavoring to construct a civilization. Christianity offers to the world a limited messianism which it wishes to impose as the only valid one...Even Spinoza, who was further than any other thinker from the historic messianism of Israel, wrote: 'As for what certain churches say, that God assumed human nature, I must confess that this seems to me as absurd as saying that a circle assumed the shape of a square...'

The dogmatic exclusiveness professed by Christianity must finally end...It is the obstinate Christian claim to be the sole heir to Israel which propagates-anti-Semitism. This scandal must terminate sooner or later; the sooner it goes, the sooner the world will be rid of the issue of lies in which anti-Semitism shrouds itself." (Joshua Jehouda, l'Antisemitisme Miroir du Monde, pp. 135-136; Judaism and the Vatican, Vicomte Leon de Poncins, pp. 30-31).




"A Jew remains a Jew even though he changes his religion; a Christian which would adopt the Jewish religion would not become a Jew, because the quality of a Jew is not in the religion but in the race. A Free thinker and Atheist always remains a Jew." (Jewish World, London December 14, 1922)




"A Jew remains a Jew even though he changes his religion; a Christian which would adopt the Jewish religion would not become a Jew, because the quality of a Jew is not in the religion but in the race. A Free thinker and Atheist always remains a Jew." (Jewish World, London December 14, 1922)




"The inward thought of Moscow (the Jews) indeed appears to be that for twenty centuries while humanity has been following Christ, it has been on the wrong word. It is now high time to correct this error of direction by creating a new moral code, a new civilization, founded on quite different principles (Talmudic Principles). And it appears that it is this idea which the communist leaders wished to symbolize when a few months ago they proposed to erect in Moscow a Statue to Judas Iscariot, to Judas, this great honest misunderstood man, who hanged himself, not at all, as it is usually and foolishly believed, because of remorse for having sold his master, but because of despair, poor man, at the thought that humanity would pay for by innumerable misfortunes the wrong path which it was about to follow." (J. and J. Tharaud, Causerie sur Israel, p. 38; The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins, pp. 143-144)

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