Category: Holocaust Related Issues

For the Love of Life

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

 

 

Nothing wakens Jews up like a little bit of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semites have a unique way of reminding us why we are special as a people.

Whenever I speak to my Bar/Bat Mitzvah students, I like to tell them that, “If we stood for nothing, the rest of the world wouldn’t care what we say or do. But the fact is that the Jew stands for something great; we believe in Tikkun Olam—bettering the world around us.”

Consider the Noble Prize, which has been given out  since 1901 for achievements in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. In 1969, they added Economics as one of the new fields of endeavor. To date there have been over 850 individuals of various nationalities who have received awards for their unique contributions. At least 20% of the recipients have been Jews, who represent .02% of the world population. Overall, Jews have won a total of 41% of the all the Noble Prizes in  economics, 28% of medicine, 26% of Physics, 19% of Chemistry, 13% of Literature and 9% of all peace awards.

Mind you, these are only secular achievements. In terms of spiritual achievements, Jews are and have been conscience of the world. Our values are very different from the rest of the world.

The latest war with Gaza Jihadism shows the disparity between the culture of death that is championed by Gaza Palestinians and their Muslim allies, e.g., Syria, Iran, ISIS, and others, versus the culture that champions life—Israel.

If Israel wanted to completely destroy Gaza, it would not take very long. Israel goes out of its way to warn the Palestinian citizens to get out while they can. Injured Palestinians routinely receive health care free of charge at Hadassah Hospital and other Israeli medical facilities.

Amazingly, Israel continues to provide gas and electric to the people who are shooting bombs at them. Did the British provide the Nazis with gas and electricity during WWII?

You know the answer.

Israel goes out of its way to avoid as much collateral damage as possible because Jewish ethics teach us to respect and cherish life—even the lives of our enemies. Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount:

  • ·         You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow. [1]

What does this passage teach us? An Orthodox rabbi and Dead Sea Scroll scholar named Dr. Pinchas Lapide once explained to me that this passage teaches us how to de-hostilize an enemy.

It does not mean we have to be victims to gratuitous violence, but it does mean that we need to hold on to our collective sense of humanity. The Palestinians leadership uses billions of dollars to create shelters for their weapons and not their people. Israel spends billions of dollars to create shelters for their people.

One of my favorite Jewish philosophers and teachers, Eric Fromm, writes about two opposite impulses that are struggling for supremacy in the world. He refers to them as necrophilia vs biophilia.

He explains that necrophilia, or the “love of the dead” is an ideation that is attracted to everything that is dead, e.g., corpses, decay, filth, dirt. The goal of necrophilia as political and religious phenomena is to transform everything that is living into death. This is exactly what Jihadism is all about. It is a death-force that aims to destroy life as we know it for the glorification of Allah, who behaves more like the bloodthirsty deity of the Bible known as Molech.

Jihadists love saying, “We love death more than you love life”

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAOzy2zwyxo

The worse part of necrophilia is that the people this philosophy affects makes them totally indifferent to life and even attracted to death.

This would explain why being a martyr for Islam is so important. In the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians have museums celebrating the sacrifice of his human bombs; museums decorated with Israeli body parts across the wall.

Sounds like a museum made for Freddie Kruger.

Israel in contrast believes in what Fromm calls, “Biophilia” is the love of life, the attraction to everything that lives and grows. Preserving life and preventing death is one form of biophilia. Biophilous tendencies can be much more varied and tend to integrate and unite, to fuse with different and opposite. Biophilia is life that changes, grows, and develops to the changing circumstances of the environment. Fromm believed that for biophilia to emerge, there has to be certain circumstances to enhance its growth, e.g., the absence of injustice, the love of creativity, the presence of freedom, and the spirit to innovate.

In spiritual terms, biophilia encourages people to search for self-awareness, aspirations, and moral growth. Israel continues to develop technologies that improve the fabric of life while the Palestinian culture of death, which worships a god who loves shihads (martyrs) has produced a moral decadence that threatens the peace of humanity.

Let me add that any society is capable of embracing necrophilia. Last week, when some Israeli teenagers burned the body of a poor gay Palestinian boy, these individuals became Molech worshiper who demands the sacrifice of children to sate its savage appetite.

The time has come for the Palestinians and Israelis to work together and embrace a new paradigm of life that brings prosperity to all of its people.


[1] Matthew 5:38–42.

A National Disgrace: The Fort Hood Jihadist Attack — Five Years Later

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

The LORD then said: “What have you done! Listen: your brother’s blood cries out to me from the soil!”  Genesis 4:10 

 “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:16)

“ When a man makes a vow to the Lord or binds himself under oath to a pledge, he shall not violate his word, but must fulfill exactly the promise he has uttered” (Numbers 30:2-3)

Political correctness says, “It is forbidden to mention Islam and terrorism in the same sentence.” Terms like “jihadist” and “terrorist” and “War against Terror” have banned from the current administration’s lexicon. On November 5th, 2009,  Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 others, while shouting to the top of his lungs, “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”) in Arabic. Was this a terrorist attack? Not according to President Obama, this was a case of “workplace violence,” despite the fact that Hasan had numerous correspondences with the American  Al Qaeda  terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki.

In one of those emails that took place between December 2008 and 2009, Hasan wrote al-Awlaki, “I can’t wait to join you” in the afterlife. Hasan also asked al-Awlaki when jihad is appropriate, and whether it is permissible if innocents are killed in a suicide attack.[65] In the months before the shooting, Hasan increased his contacts with al-Awlaki to discuss how to transfer funds abroad without coming to the attention of law authorities.”[63]

Although the news is somewhat dated, the families of the Fort Hood victims have yet to receive a special financial assistance, despite the Obama administration’s promise to take care of the families of the fallen and the wounded.

A lawsuit was eventually filed at the United States Court on November 5th, 2011. The lawsuit claims that government has done everything it can to protect the shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, and their own interests while marginalizing the victims. The suit is seeking $750 million in damages.

One of the Fort Hood victims who survived wanted to meet with President Obama face to face, and the White House denied his request.[1]

Where is our outrage? This is not a Republican or Democratic issue–it is an issue about justice and compassion for the victims. To be silent in this case, is to be complicit.

The Republican Party missed a real opportunity to make the Fort Hood Massacre center stage during the last Presidential election.

Have we as Americans become so apathetic that we do not recognize the dangers we are facing with a resurging Al-Qaeda movement that has declared a new country in the land that we swore to protect—Iraq?


[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/white-house-denies-09-fort-hood-victim-meeting/story?id=23288867

 

Jihadist Islam: The New Nazism of Our Time

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

 

Never underestimate the power and religious fervor of Jihadist Islam, the new and improved version of Nazism of our time.

In his 2012 speech shortly after the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, the President mentioned some thirty-two times that “al Qaeda was on the path to defeat,” “decimated.” Such rhetoric makes Neville Chamberlain look like General Patton in comparison. Cheney is not one of my favorite politicians, but I must give him credit for saying the obvious,  “Rarely has a U.S. President been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” writes Cheney. “Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is ‘ending’ the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — as though wishing made it so.” In other words, the Obama Middle East policy has no clothes.

Ditto.

Dear Mr. President,

I hate to tell you this,  although Osama bin Laden is dead, Al Qaeda is very much alive. In fact, thanks to our rapid departure from Iraq, this terrorist organization controls more territory than at any time of its history. Their lands extend from the ancient city of Allepo, Syria to Fallujah in central Iraq. That’s over 400 miles of territory. In fact, the ISIS and Al-Qaeda even produces yearly reports for their Arab investors. Their leadership has threatened to reconquer Spain, and let’s not forget, Rome! By all accounts,  Al Qaeda has swept to power with the aim of imposing a strict Islamist ideology on Syrians across the large swathes of Syria’s rebel-held north. Al-Qaeda now has re-instituted a Caliphate, an idea that has been endorsed by certain Muslim Brotherhood leaders working in the White House as advisers to the President.

Arab heads are rolling by the thousands, while Christians are crucified in their areas of control.

Is the world a safer place, Mr. Obama?

I don’t think so.

In light of this, I would strongly recommend that you and your administration do not even think of criticizing Israel from doing what she must do to ensure her survival. Israel’s survival is at stake, but so is the rest of the Western world.

Europe is next.

 

A Personal Note to Prof. Walter Davis and the Presbyterian Church

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
  • “Today, we’re coming after the Saturday people; after we finish, we will come after the Sunday people”

My personal history with the Presbyterian Church goes back to the early 1990s, when they accepted me as a student for their doctoral program. In the three years I attended the SFTS (San Francisco Theological Seminary) in San Anselmo, CA., I considered it one of the most important learning experiences of my life. I had some outstanding scholars who served as my professors. Yet, one of the things I discerned early on in my studies, some of the professors seemed a bit more anti-Zionist than I had expected. They weren’t overly anti-Zionist, and they were mild by today’s standard.

The relationship between the Presbyterian Church and the Jewish community was reasonably cordial. In 1987, the PCUSA formally rejected  Replacement Theology:

  • We believe and testify that this theory of supersessionism or replacement is harmful and in need of reconsideration….We affirm that both the church and the Jewish people are elected by God for witness to the world…  We affirm the continuity of God’s promise of land along with the obligations of that promise to the people Israel.

While I attended the SFTS, I became very friendly with the Walter Davis who was one of the seminary’s top administrators; he was also a Vietnam veteran. We became very good friends for the time I was there. On one occasion,

Walter Davis was one of the Seminary’s most important leaders while I was there. Walt, (who fought in Vietnam) and I became pretty good friends. I remember him taking me aside after I finished attending a lecture given by Lewis Rambo (he is no relation to Sylvester Stallone ). During one 1995 summer session, Walt said to me, “Michael, I really must apologize for the Presbyterian Church’s failure to come to the Jewish people’s aid during the Holocaust.”

Surprised, I thought about his remarks and said to him, “Walt, if you really want your Church to atone for their apathy during the Holocaust, there is something important your Church can do.” He asked, “What can we do?”  I replied, “Be a friend of the State of Israel—have your Church do everything in its power to make a difference in ensuring Israel’s health and stability. Your Church’s work would go a long way in making up what the Church failed to achieve in the dark days of the Holocaust.” Walt promised me that he would see to it that the Church would become a good friend of Israel.”

As the nineties quickly passed, the PCUSA became more and more critical of Israel and its occupation of the West Bank. The PCUSA began articulating some of the worse attitudes that the Vatican II Council tried so hard to expunge from the Catholic Church.

In a recently released document, “Zionism Unsettled,” the PCUSA has gone far from being opposed to a few West Bank settlements; now, it has declared that the ideology of Zionism is really a “Jewish supremacist ideology” that represents “a supremacist misinterpretation of God’s word.”  Zionist leaders are guilty of planning and implementing “ethnic cleansing” just as the Nazis did with the Jews of Europe, “They slaughtered untold numbers of Palestinian men, women, and children. . . ”

Did you know that many Palestinian churches have carefully edited the Book of Psalms, deleting the words “Israel” and “Zion” every time they appear.[1]  Well, I suppose we can look at the bright side and say, at least they didn’t replace “Israel” and “Zion” with “Palestine” and “Hamas.”

And the PCUSA  looks the other way. . .

Christian Palestinian pastors fondly speak about the Exodus as a story about the Palestinians. Observe how Jesus is no longer a Jew; he is a Palestinian—in fact, he is the “first Palestinian revolutionary” according to Rev. Mitri Reheb, a Lutheran pastor from Bethlehem. American tourists were surprised when they went to Manger Square in Bethlehem over one Christmas to see a banner, “Greetings to the birthplace of the Jesus, the first Palestinian revolutionary.”

How strange. Daniel Pipes writes:

  • The transfer of power of Bethlehem from Israel to the Palestinian Authority just before Christmas 1995 inspired a spate of articles[1] on Bethlehem’s diminishing Christian presence. They noted that a place not long ago 80 percent Christian is now but one-third Christian. For the first time in nearly two millennia, the most identifiably Christian town on earth has lost its Christian majority. The same changes have taken place in two other famously Christian towns, Nazareth and Jerusalem. In Nazareth, Christians went from 60 percent of the population in 1946 to 40 percent in 1983. Jerusalem Christians in 1922 slightly outnumbered Muslims (15,000 versus 13,000): today, they number under 2 percent of the city’s population.[2]

Surprisingly, the PCUSA doesn’t seem to be bothered by this social reality. Instead of condemning the anti-Christian and anti-Semitic Muslims, they enable them through their apathy and stupidity.

At their symposiums on the Christian Palestinians, they have often invited the Palestinian cleric, Father Naim Ateek, whose influence in contemporary Protestantism is immense as a keynote speaker. Ateek’s condemnations of Israel include imagery linking Israel and the Jews to the charge of deicide, which has fueled anti-Jewish bloodshed for nearly two millennia.

Writing in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Adam Gregerman observed that theologians like Ateek “perpetuate some of the most unsavory and vicious images of the Jews as malevolent, antisocial, hostile to non-Jews.” For example, Ateek wrote about “modern-day Herods” in Israel, referring to the king who the New Testament says slaughtered the babies of Bethlehem in an attempt to murder the newborn Jesus.

One last note.

It is ironic that the former Grand Wizard of the KKK, David Duke expresses outrage at the PCUSA for appropriating his description of Zionism as a “Jewish Supremacist Ideology.”  Thank you David Duke, I think you and the PCUSA have a lot in common. By the way, the Iranian news media agencies agree with Duke as well.

One would think that the PCUSA would condemn the suicide bombers and the cult of death that provides hagiographical images of their “martyrs” replete with Israeli body parts. One would think that they would condemn the Islamic theology of necrophilia that inspires young men to kill hundreds in order to have their seventy virgins in Paradise. Worst still, they do not even condemn the Jihadist bloodshed of Christians in the Middle East, who are being slaughtered by the thousands by the ISIS movement in Iraq and Syria.

The moral leadership of the PCUSA is morally bankrupt. Someday, these theologians, academics, and stuffy-shirt thinkers will be remembered for being the moral cowards they really are.  I also believe that the twenty million Presbyterians do not all feel the same as their leadership.

To Presbyterians everywhere, I will conclude with this short remark:

When the Iranian state media and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke salute your anti-Zionist attitude about Israel, you must be doing something wrong.

 


[1] Elizabeth Smith Gamble, Lexington Theological Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 1, 1992 pp. 80—90.

 

[2] http://www.danielpipes.org/1050/disappearing-christians-in-the-middle-east.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth: A Tale of Three Anti-Semites — Part 2

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Erasmus, the great Catholic humanist scholar said, “If it is Christian to hate Jews, then we are all good Christians”[1] Martin Luther and a host of medieval and modern Protestant scholars would agree.

Just ask Martin Niemoeller.

But wait a minute . . . wasn’t he the person who famously said:

  • First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because  I was not a Jew. Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

Impressed by Bonhoeffer, Niemöller added his own rhetorical flourish to Bonhoeffer’s words:

  • The Church of Christ has never lost sight of the thought that the ‘Chosen People’ who nailed the redeemer of the world to the cross must bear the curse for its action through a long history of suffering.  The final return of the people of Israel can only take place through the conversion of Israel to Christ. . . .The gospel lesson for the day throws light upon the dark and sinister history of this people that can neither live nor die because it is under a curse which forbids it to do either.  Until the end of its days, the Jewish people must go its way under the burden which Jesus’ decree has laid upon it.

Like Karl Barth (as we will soon see), Niemöller did not shy away from making pejorative remarks about the Jewish converts he had in his church. Such baptized Christians, persecuted as Jews by the Nazis, due to their or their forefathers’ Jewish descent. In one sermon in 1935, he remarked, “What is the reason for [their] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!”[2]

In defense of Niemöller, he wasn’t an irredeemable anti-Semite. After the war, he later expressed regret about his own anti-Semitism in an interview he had with a West German television station he said: “Dear Friend, I stand in front of you, but we cannot get together, for there is guilt between us. I have sinned and my people has sinned against thy people and against thyself . . . . Thus, whenever I chance to meet a Jew known to me before, then, as a Christian, I cannot but tell him . . .”[3] Perhaps his guilty conscience reminded him that someday he would have to answer before the Judge of the World and answer for his dastardly remarks about the Jews, God’s Chosen People, whom he so deeply scorned.

Last and certainly not least, we will now examine the words of the famous Protestant theologian Karl Barth, who has often been described as “the greatest Christian theologian since Thomas Aquinas,” an epithet I would personally and strongly take issue with.

Karl Barth was also famous for his criticism of the Nazi regime. However, he too also subscribed to the idea that the Jew is a nothing more than a “Christ killer,” worthy of temporal and eternal torment for his audacious rejection of the Savior. Barth’s invective language about the synagogue is reminiscent of Martin Luther’s position. The Protestant scholar Chris Boesel carefully annotates the following Barthian references from his Church Dogmatics, Vol. 2.,  For him, he considers “The Synagogue” represents a “sectarian self-assertion”  by which the Jews attempt to “secure, defend, and preserve its existence against God.”  Barth calls this a  “perverse choice.” The Synagogue now witnesses “over against the witness of the Church,” rather than in unity with it. It is now a “typical expression   . . .  of man’s limitation and pain, of his transiency and the death to which is subject.” Synagogue Judaism is “the personification  of a half-venerable, half-gruesome relic, of a miraculously preserved antique, of human whimsicality. It must live among the nations the pattern of a historical life which has absolutely no future.” The Synagogue is “joyless,” persisting in a “cheerless chronology.” It is a “Synagogue of death,” constituting a “wretched testimony.”[4]

In the 1930s, he too charged the Jews with the death of Jesus – something they undertook not “in foolish over-haste” or misunderstanding, but, he asserted, as a “deliberate” act. Then, in 1942, from his base in Switzerland, in his theological work “Church Dogmatics,” Barth castigated Judaism as a “synagogue of death,” a “tragic, pitiable figure with covered eyes,” a religion characterized by “conceited lying,” and the “enemy of God.” If the church needed the Jews, he felt, it was only as a negative symbol, for they are a mirror of man’s rebellion against God, against which Christians must continually struggle.

Amazingly still, Barth—even after the Holocaust—still couldn’t get over his theological animus toward Judaism and Jews. In a letter he wrote to a close friend named,  Dr. Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt in 1967, Barth made a confession that is utterly amazing—especially in light of the Holocaust that took place over twenty years earlier. He writes:

  • I am decidedly not a philosemite, in that in personal encounters with living Jews (even Jewish Christians) I have always, so long as I can remember, had to suppress a totally irrational aversion, naturally suppressing it at once on the basis of all my presuppositions, and concealing it totally in my statements, yet still having to suppress and conceal it. Pfui! is all that I can say to this in some sense allergic reaction of mine. But this is how it was and is. A good thing that this reprehensible instinct is totally alien to my sons and other better people than myself (including you). But it could have had a retrogressive effect on my doctrine of Israel.[5]

Barth’s animus toward the Jewish people is evident within the Presbyterian Church. Walter Brueggemann and a host of lesser thinkers and teachers have become decidedly anti-Zionist and consider Israel an outlaw state. Brueggemann in particular shares a Barthian characteristic that is striking. Barth and Brueggemann love speaking about Israel, “Biblical Israel” in the abstract—but never with reference to the Jew who follows the Torah that Biblical Israel embodies. One gets the impression that Brueggemann finds Judaism, Israel, and the modern Jew to be an annoyance. Jewish Israel is a concept he and other Protestants refuse to accept because of their theology of supersessionism.

What else could one expect from the house that Luther, Erasmus,  Bonhoeffer, Niemöller, Barth, and Brueggemann built?

The fruits of the Protestant churches today and their hatred of Israel are bitter and worthy of oblivion.

If you read the famous “Parable about the Last Judgment” in Matthew 25:31-46, you will see that Jesus left a message in a bottle for the future theologians of the 20-21st century to reflect whenever they think about the Jewish people—Jesus’s own flesh and blood family:

  • “. . . for when I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did so to me.”

Next time Protestant theologians think about the Jewish people and everything we have gone through because of hateful theological supersessionism, they would be wise to remember this parable from their master and teacher.  Jesus’ humanity makes him a wonderful model for people to emulate themselves after—wouldn’t it be nice if his followers took his words more seriously? “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Mark 10:9)

If Barthian theologians have an issue with the Divine election of Israel, I think they ought to take it up with God Himself, and stop slandering God’s people at every opportunity.


[1] Charles Patterson, Anti-Semitism (New York: Walker and Company, 1982), 16.

 

[2]  Martin Niemöller, First Commandment, (London: Lutheran Church Publishing, 1937), pp. 243–250.

 

[3] Martin Niemöller Of Guilt and Hope (NY: Philosophical Library, 1947), 18.

[4] Chris Boesel , Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference: Christian Faith, Imperialistic Discourse, and Abraham (Eugene, OR:  Wipf & Stock Publishers 2008), 107.

[5] Karl Barth, Jürgen Fangmeier and Hinrich Stoevesandt (ed.) Geoffrey W. Bromiy (transl. and ed.)  Karl Barth, Letters 1961-1968. (Edinburgh, T.&T. Clark, 1981) No. 260, pp. 261-263.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth: A Tale of Three Anti-Semites

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

 

Jesus once said:

 

  • ·                   “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them” (Mt 7:15–20).

 

  • ·                   What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

 

  • §   NT James 2:14-17

 

Both of these statements contain a fundamental truth: faith by itself has little value unless it can mold and shape a person into an ethical human being. Although the Catholic Church has made a concerted effort to confront and challenge the church to respect Judaism and strive to cultivate better interfaith relations, the Protestant Church has demonstrated repeatedly that they still have a long way to go. 

In some ways, the hatred of the Jew is ancient centers on the concept of “chosenness,” or “divine election,” which gave rise to the doctrine of supersessionism, a.k.a., “replacement theology.” Since the days of the Early Church Fathers, the Jew has been branded by many of the most famous Christian thinkers  as, “Christ killers” worthy of any earthly retribution for failing to accept Jesus and the Church’s authority as the one sole means of heavenly reward. 

  • Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus called Messiah?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!”  But he said, “Why? What evil has he done?” They only shouted the louder, “Let him be crucified!” When Pilate saw that he was not succeeding at all, but that a riot was breaking out instead, he took water and washed his hands in the sight of the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. Look to it yourselves.” And the whole people said in reply, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” Then he released Barabbas to them, but after he had Jesus scourged, he handed him over to be crucified. (Mt. 27:22-26).

Mel Gibson especially loved this passage, which he highlights in his film, “The Passion of the Christ.”

Whenever one reads the anti-Israel emanating from many of the Protestant Churches today, one gets the distinct impression that we, as Jews, have been down this road before many times. Naturally, our Protestant churches love to distinguish between the Zionism and Judaism; however, in the years leading up to the Holocaust and the subsequent years that followed the Holocaust, leading Christian theologians made a distinction between the “symbolic” Jew and the “real Jews.” These thinkers had no trouble with the notion of a Jew as an abstraction, but dealing with “real” Jews proved to be irritable and unpleasant. 

When we think about some of the great people who defied Nazism during the Holocaust era, the names Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth are synonymous with courage. Most Jews consider these men to be among the other great righteous Gentiles who stood up for human dignity. 

Yet, we would be deluding ourselves if we think that each of these men “liked” or “respected” the Jewish people.

True, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became famous for saying on the night of Kristallnacht, “If the synagogues are set on fire today, it will be the churches that will be burned tomorrow.” Yet, who could imagine that the same man would say to one of his colleagues, “that the Nazis were merely giving what was owed to the Jews. After all, “they nailed the Redeemer of the world to the cross,” they had been forced to bear an eternal curse through a long history of suffering, one that would end only “in the conversion of Israel to Christ.”[1]

Here is one more example of Bonhoeffer’s animus against the Jews:

  • The Church of Christ has never lost sight of the thought that the “chosen people” who nailed the redeemer of the world to the cross must bear the curse for its action through a long history of suffering…. But the history of the suffering of this people, loved and punished by God, stands under the sign of the final homecoming of Israel [the Jews] to its God. And this homecoming happens in the conversion of Israel to Christ…. The conversion of Israel, that is to be the end of the people’s period of suffering. From here the Christian Church sees the history of the people of Israel with trembling as God’s own, free, fearful way with his people, because God is not yet finished with it. Each new attempt to solve “the Jewish question” comes to naught . . .[2]

Shades of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!

Before I came across this passage, I never realized that Bonhoeffer suffered from religious schizophrenia when it came to the Jews. Bonhoeffer did not regard the Jew as a brother in faith, worthy of ecumenical respect.  He felt no sympathy for the racial anti-Jewish laws passed by the Nazis throughout the lands they conquered, after all, the German government was just carrying out classical Christian doctrines that were in place since the days of the 3rd century, where the Early Church Fathers promoted nothing but hostility toward the Jew. Short of actually killing the Jew, everything was considered permitted—even hard labor. After all, the Jews must suffer for their crimes against the Savior!

Many years ago, my synagogue sponsored a short film on the life of Bonhoeffer and the producer of the film was there as part of the panel. I was curious why Bonhoeffer was never included among the righteous Gentiles in the Va’ad Ashem in Jerusalem, but given his smug theological attitude concerning the Jews—it is not hard to figure out why.

(Part 2 to follow)


[1] Anders Gerdmar Roots of Theological Anti-Semitism: German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from Herder and Semler to Kittel. (Boston: Brill, 2008), p. 396. 

[2] Matthew D. Hockenos, A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), 21.

 

The Castration Complex and the Halachic Mind

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

At one of my classes, some student asked a pretty interesting question: In Orthodox Judaism, can a woman perform brit milah (ritual circumcision)?

A Talmudic Discussion

There is a controversy in the Talmud  regarding this very issue between Daru bar Papa who cites in the name of Rav, and Rabbi Yochanan, who differs with Rav. Here is the substance of the argument. Daru b. Papa held that only someone who is obligated to observe the precept of circumcision can act as mohel (the one who performs the circumcision) for others, whereas R. Yochanan felt that a woman can act as a mohelet as indicated in the story of Tziporah (see Exod. 4:24‑26 for details). [1]

In practical terms, R. Yosef Caro, the Halacha follows R. Yochanan and a woman may act as mohelet [2] but Maimonides adds one stipulation: this only applies in the event that a male Mohel is not available, however, she is certainly permitted to do so as a religious duty.[3] However, Rema cites authorities who differ on this matter, and discourages a woman from doing acting in this capacity. In fact, the same passage in the halacha states there is no legal obligation on the part of the mother to even circumcise her child, for the duty falls upon the father.

To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single Haredi or Hasidic scholar living today who would literally endorse such a scandalous halachic position. Were such an opinion like this considered halachically normative, many young Jewish men would choose never to get circumcised.

By the way, some rabbinic commentaries assert that Tziporah merely started the act of circumcision on her son, but it was really Moses who completed it.

Adding a Psychological Perspective

From a psychological perspective, the reluctance to utilize a female mohelet may have something to do with Freud’s theory of the “castration complex.” Freud theorized that castration anxiety is based on a deep‑seated fear or anxiety in boys and men said to originate during the genital stage of sexual development; Freud asserts that a boy, when seeing a girl’s genitalia, falsely presumes that the girl had her penis removed probably as punishment for some misbehavior. The young boy then becomes anxious lest the same happen to him.[4]

It is worth noting that in some cultures, notably 19th century Europe, it was not unheard of for parents to threaten their children with castration, or to otherwise threaten their genitals, a phenomenon Freud documents several times.

Freud’s Castration Complex in Patriarchal Religious Societies

Freud’s controversial theory may also help clarify why some Halachic authorities are reluctant to go along with a female mohelet. Freud’s controversial theory may even help explain why male dominated societies like the Muslim and Haredi fundamentalists fear women’s liberation.

The fear that the patriarchal conceptions of masculinity being broken, may explain in part why there exists such an animus directed toward women in these closed societies. Basically, male dominated cultures are fearful of appearing “impotent,” and will do almost anything to promote the image of strength and virility–the trademark of mullahs and Haredi Gedolim (“Giants” ) alike (obviously, another example of Freudian wish-fulfillment, or the Nietzschean “will to power”).

The unraveling of the patriarchal order frightens men, perhaps on a very primordial level. Some scholars suggest that the ascendancy of the patriarchal religions of antiquity was because of their unconscious fear of the goddess religions. Whether this theory is correct or not, remains to be seen. However, it does fit a Freudian castration theory quite well. Continue reading “The Castration Complex and the Halachic Mind” →

When Numbers Become Obscene

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

In the beginning of Exodus 30:12-13, God commands Moses not conduct a head count of the Israelites before they go into battle against future adversaries:

“When you take a census of the Israelites who are to be registered, each one, as he is enrolled, shall give the LORD a forfeit for his life, so that no plague may come upon them for being registered. Everyone who enters the registered group must pay a half-shekel, according to the standard of the sanctuary shekel, twenty gerahs to the shekel. This payment of a half-shekel is a contribution to the LORD . . . ”

Interesting passage, isn’t it? Why not conduct an actual head count? The biblical writer may also  indirectly be alluding to a census that King David carried out toward the end of his reign, which produced disastrous consequences (2 Sam 24ff.).

The answer to this question has a lot to do with the ancient’s fascination with numbers and the process of counting. Here’s the background information: Numbers play a very important part in our everyday lives. Life constantly demands that we measure and count. Numbers have always played a role in all civilizations from mathematics to astrology. Numbers also play an important symbolic role in much of the Bible, e.g.,  one, two, three, four, five, seven, twelve, forty, fifty, seventy, hundred and thousand. This is not the place to examine the significance of each of these numbers, but they often have symbolic and rhetorical significance.

The famous anthropologist Sr. James Frazer notes that certain African tribes were afraid to count children for fear that the evil spirits might hear. They also believed that cattle should not be counted because it might impede the increase of the herd. [1]  In Denmark, there was a tradition not to count hatched chickens lest some be lost. In German cultures it is believed that the more you count your money, the more likely you will decrease it. [2] Continue reading “When Numbers Become Obscene” →

When “Peace at any cost” becomes a prelude to mayhem

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Aaron’s construction of the Golden Calf has always perplexed me. It seems as though Aaron gets away with a free pass, while everyone else who actually worships the calf is punished. Surely tradition teaches וְלִפְנֵי עִוֵּר לֹא תִתֵּן מִכְשֹׁל “do not place a stumbling block in front of a blind person” (Lev. 19:14). What greater stumbling block could one put, than to cause another to worship idols? Yet, Aaron gets off with hardly a reprimand. Asked in another way: How could Aaron of all people cave him to popular demand? Where was his courage? Surely, as a leader and a prophet of his people, how could he build the Golden Calf?[1]

The question is hardly original. Many of our greatest commentators led by Nachmanides and Ibn Ezra, raised the same question.

These scholars claim that the calf was never intended to be an idol, but a mouthpiece, a pedestal for God to dwell–perhaps not unlike the cherubim of the Tabernacle itself. However, it was God who commanded the cherubim, not man. In the case of the Golden Calf, it is man and not God who commanded that its construction be carried out  (Judah HaLevi).

But what about Moses, the man who took them out of Egypt? Our ancestors felt convinced that Moses had died on Mt. Sinai. In psychological terms, the Israelites experienced what is called “separation anxiety.” According to psychologist John Bowlby, separation anxiety is a key and a common ingredient in psychological distress. In clinical terms, separation anxiety occurs when the  sense of care, foreboding, restlessness, or uneasiness observed in infants are removed from their primary caregiver–especially the mother. Any of us who have ever parented young children, see this quite often whenever a mother goes away even for a short time. Young children’s perception of time is radically different from adults or adolescents. From this perspective, the Israelites were like young infantile children (Maimonides makes a similar point in his Guide)

Having said that, one still feels the need to ponder: “What was Aaron thinking?” He knew it was only a matter of time before Moses would return to the camp with the tablets of the Ten Commandments.  Surely Aaron knew that Moses would return, but as Rashi notes, Aaron was really stalling for time. For this reason, Aaron asks people to give up their gold to make the calf. Never did Aaron think or believe that the people would be only too willing to give up their precious gold; he expected to haggle with the folks, and buy enough time for Moses to come and save the day. Continue reading “When “Peace at any cost” becomes a prelude to mayhem” →

“Purim Torah” or Purim Synchronicity?

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Purim Torah is a remarkable genre of Jewish literature. It is rabbinic satire at its best that centers around the festivities of Purim. Those individuals writing Purim Torah display remarkable wit in weaving Talmudic logic in fabricating conclusions that border the absurd and sublime.

Earlier this week, I received a delightful section of a fabricated Talmud–replete with all the Aramaic expressions one would expect to find in a Talmudic debate. The selection contains a discussion involving President Obama, Al Gore, and the debate about global warming.  Even the commentaries of Rashi and Tosfot that explained the make-believe text looked pretty authentic. The name of the tractate is Mesechect Obama Metzia (a pun on Bava Metzia).

Here is another example of “Purim Torah” that almost sounds like a Rod Serling story from the Twilight Zone.

The story is well-known. Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews of the Persian Empire ended in disaster for Haman and his family. Queen Esther and Ahashverus have a conversation (Esther 9:12-14).

And the king said to Esther the queen: The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the capital, and the ten sons of Haman…Now whatever your petition, it shall be granted; whatever your request further, it shall be done.

Then said Esther: If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews that are in Shushan to do tomorrow also as this day, and let Haman’s ten sons be hanged upon the gallows.

One might ask: Esther’s request seems somewhat strange. The ten sons of Haman had already been killed, why bother to hang them? The simple approach suggests she made this request so that everyone would know the consequences that would befall them, should anyone attempt to harm the Jews.

Rabbinic commentaries have a different spin. Commenting on the word “tomorrow,” in Esther’s request, the Sages comment:

“There is a tomorrow that is now, and a tomorrow which is later.” (Tanchuma Bo 13 and Rashi on Exodus 13:14).

From this interpretation, 20th century rabbis extrapolate that Esther was asking that the hanging of Haman’s ten sons not remain an isolated episode in history… But wait! What other “tomorrow” could Esther have been alluding to? Inquiring minds want to know!

And now you are going to hear–the rest of the story …

Rabbi Moshe Katz writes about one of the most remarkable “Torah Codes” of all time. In general, I have never subscribed to the belief in a hidden computerized message that is embedded within a biblical text. This particular interpretation is too striking  to ignore. If nothing else, it is an incredible synchronicity. He writes: Continue reading ““Purim Torah” or Purim Synchronicity?” →