WHEN VICTIMS RULE

A Critique of Jewish Pre-eminence in America

Truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it.
[from the Talmud: quoted in Polano, p. 92]

 
Picture Added By Gnostic Liberation Front

(30 chapters, not including subdivisions)

   The origin of this volume rests simply in a question posed about the state of Israel: "How can such an anti-democratic, ethnocentric, racist, and morally bankrupt socio-political system (Zionism) be so grossly misrepresented as a noble endeavor throughout modern America?" Originally conceived as a traditional book, and a scholarly one, it was soon clear that no publisher would ever be willing to produce so frank an investigation about it's subject matter. Above and beyond all other people, Jews, in western society, have been popularly configured to be beyond the pale of public criticism. And this censorship is zealously, militantly, enforced.

     The title of this book is When Victims Rule. A Critique of Jewish Pre-eminence in America. This refers to the popular notion that the Jewish people are historical victims, and victims only (never oppressors, never exploiters), always persecuted, and always scapegoats for irrational prejudice. People of Jewish heritage are irrefutably pre-eminent, and often dominant, in many crucial areas of American popular culture. The second part of the title refers to the paradoxical fact that Jews in America are quite the opposite of victims: this project explores the enormous Jewish representation in positions of power and influence in American (and western) society, which serves towards codifying Jewish and Zionist legend as fact. This investigation, analyzing traditional religious -- and secular Zionist --Jewish identities, illustrates why this should be of serious concern to all Americans, including Jews. Continued denial of the facts of history by the Jewish community serves no one's best interest -- in the LONG term, least of all their own. The facts of history cannot be denied, and dissimulated, forever. (Note: Israel Shahak, Israel Shamir, Alfred Lilienthal, John Sack, Norman Finkelstein, and a few others of Jewish heritage are among the scholarly inspirations for this project. These men's courageously honest works are trailblazers away from institutionalized Jewish hypocrisy. If they represented the norm in the Jewish community, there would be no reason to write this book).
 

     Thanks to the Internet, this volume is presently conceived to be dynamic in nature. It is not, like a traditional book object, a static, frozen resource for information. Hopefully, this site will develop into a reasoned dialogue center with a variety of studious readers and casual visitors, including Jewish respondents. All are welcome. Challenges to any facts cited in the book are invited, and if evidence is provided that some assertion herein is wrong (factually, or even morally, to the author's understanding and satisfaction) such citations and statements will be re-evaluated. Hopefully, this will not be an avalanche of nitpicking from Jewish propagandists interested in the creation of what Theodore Herzl, the "father" of Israel, called "noise" -- distractive static to drown out meaningful sounds. The best comments from readers -- supportive and non-supportive -- may be linked to this volume's base text. This web site also solicits from anyone in the world further information about the subject of this book, for addition, provided it is in some way verifiable.

     
      This book is an ongoing enterprise. It is intended to be a large, ever growing, ever changing resource center. Over time this site will become more technically sophisticated -- a search system will be installed, the photo gallery's images improved, etc. At present, it is massive -- in traditional book terms over 2,000 pages long (not including the bibliography), featuring about 10,000 citations from nearly 4,000 magazines, scholarly journals, and newspapers (as well as a few web sites). This has taken a number of years to accomplish.
 

     All text online here may be copied freely. Please cite this site as the source of information. It is intended as an educational source to counter the avalanche of bias and distortion championed in the name of Israel and Jewish mythos. In recent decades, post-Holocaust, this avalanche is not abetting, but growing. Skeptical readers of this work are encouraged to go to the original sources of citations and excerpts by other (mostly Jewish) authors quoted here. Read, read, read. Expand horizons, don't limit them.

       Readers may go to any chapter of this book in any order they please. But this work is of course conceived sequentially. And to understand the full context for each chapter, and the full dimension of any given fact, the entire volume is a mosaic that interrelates and informs each respective part. Many readers will probably look first, perhaps, to the chapters about Jewish/Zionist influence in government and the mass media. To fully understand why it is important (and rational, and non-prejudicial) to note who is Jewish in these fields, the reader must comprehend the nature of traditional Jewish collective identity, the overwhelming Jewish allegiance to the ideology of Zionism and the state of Israel, and parallel Jewish power in other fields -- subjects explored in other chapters.

      The Crosswinds Collective is an embryonic idea: a group of moral, ethical people gathered to create a clearinghouse for facts about this subject matter. Among these facts is organized Jewry's relentless defamation of Ukrainians, African-Americans, Poles, Iranians, Russians, Arabs, the Swiss, Christians, Muslims, and whoever else has been their neighbor in history. Jewish identity in fact categorically defines ALL non-Jews as, in varying degrees, "anti-Semites," whether one responds with a curse for being cheated by a Jewish merchant in 16th century Poland, throws a stone at an Israeli tank, or merely goes to church on Sunday. The militantly enforced declaration of categorical Jewish innocence throughout history is preposterous. Yet Jewish identity continues to demand both material and moral concessions from EVERYONE, for alleged crimes against Jewry since the creation of Jewish identity.

    
      This site seeks public dialogue, and public forum, from a critical perspective, about the subject of Jews in America (and throughout the world). To those who read this volume, the reason for this critical attitude ("Why did you write this book?") will be clear. Injustices perpetrated by the powerful, whoever they are, must always be challenged. The continued assault upon, and critical deconstruction of, the WASP power establishment towards a more balanced power equity by multi-culturalist advocates is a long tradition in this country. But what about a power elite that is very much part of the "white" establishment, albeit immune from criticism (one which paradoxically demands victimhood status even from its collective base in the heart of the Western world's power centers), and in fact predominates in so many fields? By what moral premise are these powerful people screened from public analysis? Why the double standard? No one has any problem with assailing the WASP establishment as a COLLECTIVE entity, irregardless of any individual WASP's class or political belief. Why is it forbidden to criticize Jewry in the same manner when it is they that have been so profoundly instrumental in shaping the social, economic, cultural and political fabric of America?

This site asserts that no particular people are entitled to special treatment above all others, no people are "unique" in the garden of humanity, no people in history have a corner on tragedy, no group of people are inherently leaders of all the rest, and that social systems should be morally riveted towards remedying human suffering in its most universalistic sense, with justice, and respect, for all. These are the cornerstones for the creation of this volume. That criticism of the Jewish community is somehow publicly configured to evidence the OPPOSITE of these tenets is a foundation of this investigation.

 

1. Introduction [25 Kilobytes][about 10 paper pages]

2. The Causes of Hostility Toward Jews: A Historical Overview [419 kilobytes] [about 102 paper pages] The religious origins of Jewish identity; the Torah (Old Testament); the Chosen People concept; the Code of Jewish Law; Jewish self-conception as a "nation apart"; brief overview of Israelite Old Testament violence; the Talmud; Jewish apostates and medieval Christian investigation of the Talmud; traditional Jewish racism, elitism, ethnocentrism, tribalism, and exclusionism; modern Jewish apologetics for traditional beliefs; the importance of Maimonides; the Jacob-Esau tradition; Reform Judaism and the modern euphemism of Jewish "particularism" (versus pan-human universalism); traditional Jewish messianic chauvinism in left-wing secular political movements; and more.

3. Jews and Christianity [31 Kilobytes] [about 6 paper pages] Brief history of Christian-Jewish relations; a contextual view of anti-Jewish religious persecution; Jewish-inspired atrocities against Christians in the early years of the Christ movement; traditional Jewish defamation of Christianity.

4. Usury [110 Kilobytes] [about 21 paper pages] Domination of Jewish money lending for interest in the Middle Ages; Christian condemnation of usury; Jewish prohibitions of usury within intra-Jewish dealing; Jews popularly known as economic exploiters; uprisings against Jewish money lenders; Jewish double standards of morality; Jewish organized crime in the Middle Ages and later; Jewish "fencing" operations; medieval Christian investigations into Jewish double standards of morality, and identity.

 

Page II

5. Yicchus (Status) [109 Kilobytes] [about 18 paper pages] Traditional Jewish concerns with social status; money and status; Jewish folklore about money; Reform Judaism's changing of synagogue decorum; auctioning rights to read prayers in the synagogue; widespread Jewish celebration of ostentation; Jewish ostentation as a contribution to anti-Semitism; the opulent Jewish enclaves of Beverly Hills, CA and Palm Beach, FL

6. Jewish Money and Economic Influence: the Historical Context [362 Kilobytes] [about 79 paper pages] The works by Max Weber and Werner Sombart about Jewish influence in the development of capitalism; the relationship between Jewish religious belief, ethics, and capitalism; the international folklore tradition that Jews are misers, cheats, deceivers, and frauds; Jewish international networking; the rise of the opulent Court Jews; centuries-old Jewish domination as war profiteers; the Rothschilds and the rise of other Jewish banking firms; medieval Jewish dominance of Spain by Jews who pretended to be Christians; Jewish economic and cultural pre-eminence in pre-World War II Germany, Austria, France, Italy, England, and Eastern Europe (including Poland, Hungary, Russia, and other countries); Jews as economic elites in South Africa, South America, Central America, Hong Kong, and Iran; Benjamin Disraeli, the Jews, and western imperialism; Jewish pre-eminence in the leadership of Soviet communism, including Jewish pre-eminence in the Soviet terrorist secret police

7. A Closer Look at the Jews in Polish and Eastern European History [139 Kilobytes] [about 27 paper pages] Impoverishment and degradation of (non-Jewish) peasants throughout Eastern European history; Jews as a special caste in the feudal system; relative affluence of Jews in comparison to other peoples; the historical sufferings of the Poles; Jewish privilege in the Middle Ages; Jewish roles as tax collectors, monopolizers of the alcohol trade, and land lessees from nobles; Jewish exploitation of the peasants; peasant and Cossack revolts against feudal and Jewish oppression ("pogroms"); Jewish ethnocentrism in Russia; Riots/pogroms against Jews; the tens of millions of people killed in decades leading up to, and after, the Russian communist revolution; anti-Jewish violence contextualized within widespread social upheaval; Jewish economic pre-eminence in Eastern Europe

 

Page III

8. Jews and Slavery [83 Kilobytes] [about 16 paper pages] Jewish religious concepts of slavery; Jewish domination of the slave traffic of Slavs, beginning in the 5th century; Prominent Jews in the early Ku Klux Klan, as defenders of slavery and the southern Confederacy; The Nation of Islam's controversial book, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews; the Jewish role in the slave trading of Africans; Jewish apologetics and mainstream academic rejection of The Secret Relationship.

9. Jewish Crime [121 Kilobytes] [about 15 paper pages] Jewish crime, focusing here in the late 1800s and early to mid-1900s; Jewish criminal networks in New York City and other major cities; the central Jewish influence in the birth of "organized" crime; prominent Jewish fraudsters and scam artists; Meyer Lansky and "the Syndicate"; Jewish pre-eminence in Las Vegas (and other international "Sin Cities") and its criminal underworld; Jewish criminal contributions to the founding of modern Israel; modern Jewish myth of categorical historical innocence and nonviolence versus the facts of history; noteworthy Jewish criminals in more modern times.

10. Jews and "White Slavery" (the International Prostitution Trade at the Turn of the 20th Century) [54 Kilobytes] [about 12 paper pages] Jewish domination of the early 20th century prostitution trade, including the United States, Argentina, Poland, Germany, South Africa, Russia, Austria, Brazil and other countries; Jewish control of three-quarters of the prostitution trade in New York City and Chicago; modern Jewish dismissal of such historical facts as Nazi-type hate propaganda; modern Israel's importance in the international prostitution trade today.

11. The Jewish Cosmology of Victimhood (Part 1) [101 Kilobytes] [about 21 paper pages] The Jewish self-conception and enforcement of collective categorical innocence through history; Jewish martyrology mythology; Jewish legend versus historical fact; Cecil Roth's pre-Holocaust assessment of the collective Jewish innocence tradition; the post-Holocaust age of Jewish apologetics; political use of the Jewish "cult of the persecuted" for modern Israel.

12. The Jewish Cosmology of Victimhood (Part 2) [130 Kilobytes] [about 25 paper pages] The Talmud as an ethnocentric, ahistorical compilation; traditional Jewish disinterest in non-Jewish history; Jewish celebration of its continuously proclaimed historical martyrdom; secular Jewish historical revisionism to fit religious "chosen sufferer" models; Jewry's categorical and militant insistence upon its historical innocence; Jewish conviction that all non-Jews hate Jews; effects of the "persecution tradition" upon the psychology of Jewish children; Jewish insistence upon the martyrological role, even while functioning as economic oppressors.

13. The Jewish Dictates of History [153 Kilobytes] [about 32 paper pages] Continued growth of "Jewish Studies" and the Jewish academic's role in maintaining the martyrological legend; Gentile disdain for Jews across history, culture, language, and class; singular Jewish focus upon anti-Semitism as a "mystifying disease"; the ban on criticizing anything Jewish in western society; influence upon Jewish Studies programs by wealthy philanthropic propagandists; Jewish Studies centers as outposts for ethnocentrism and pro-Israel polemics; examples of Jewish historical revisionism and militant resistance to face the more unpleasant facts of Jewish history; Jewish narcissism; Jewish censorship of dissenting views; the growing intra-Jewish debate about alleged Jewish powerlessness through history.

14.Who/What Is a Jew? [60 Kilobytes] [about 13 paper pages] Paradoxical lack of Jewish consensus about who exactly is a Jew; traditional racial definitions of Jewish identity; the enduring racial undercurrent definition today; popular Jewish identity as being "History's Greatest Victims"; Jewish need for anti-Semitism as an identity anchor; Jewish self-conception of superior intelligence; Jewish arrogance; lack of Jewish humility as an anti-Gentile hostility; Jewish preoccupation with "materialism and superiority."

 

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15. Assimilation/Intermarriage/Conversion to Judaism [89 Kilobytes] [about 15 paper pages] Traditional Jewish resistance to intermarriage (marriage to a non-Jew); recent Jewish alarm at high rates of intermarriage; Gentile spouses' conversion to Judaism; Jewish spouses' intense connection to Jewish identity; popular Jewish rejection of converts to Judaism; centrality of Jewish racial belief that real Jews are born that way.

16. The Jewish Self-Conception of Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual Superiority [85 Kilobytes] [about 11 paper pages] The Jewish celebration of Jewish Nobel prize winners; Jewish celebration of alleged Jewish superiority in intelligence over other peoples; racist arguments that Jews are genetically more intelligent than others; Jewish arrogance as a solicitation of non-Jewish hostility; Jewish chutzpah -- pushiness, nerviness; Jewish claims to superiority as part of Chosen People ethnocentrism.

17. Other Jewish Contributions to Modern Racist Currents [53 Kilobytes] [about 20 paper pages] Prominent Jewish racial theorists in the early 1900s; the Jew as "genius"; Jewish superiority claims based upon Ashkenazi (European Jewish) models -- not the Sephardim (Jews from the Middle East); Jewish genetic diseases from centuries of interbreeding; genetic myths of Jewish identity.

18 (In two parts)
The Holocaust and Genocide (pt. 1) [501 Kilobytes] [about 93 paper pages] The Nazi persecutors' inadvertent rejuvenation of Jewish identity; early Israeli shame of Holocaust survivors, and today's heroizing of them; creation of the secular Holocaust theology in the 1960s; Israel's "redemptive" 1967 victory over the Arabs as a milestone in Jewish Holocaust cosmology; the Holocaust and Israel as cores of modern Jewish identity; German fascism's Master Race ideology as an echo of Jewry's Chosen People claim; precedents for Nazi-inspired genocide (and other racist policies) in original Jewish teachings; the reification of such material in some Jewish quarters today; Holocaust-centeredness throughout the western mass media; Jewish religious tenets and anti-Black racism; the importance of the symbol of Amalek in Jewish tradition, the injunction that he should be eternally hated, and the continuous call for his extermination; the Holocaust in the forgotten context of World War II; Nazi intention to exterminate Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and others; the undercurrent of Chosen People racism in the idea that murdered Jews are more important than anyone else murdered; modern Jewish defamation of Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians and other Eastern Europeans; Jewish exclusionism and separatism in pre-World War II Eastern Europe; the lack of Jewish resistance to the Nazis; Jewish collaborators with German fascists; Jewish domination of postwar communist secret police organizations and concentration camps; Jewish double standards for World War II era history: one standard for Jews, and another for non-Jews; mainstream Jewry's resistance to the facts of World War II-era history.

18 (In two parts)
The Holocaust and Genocide (pt. 2) [543 Kilobytes] [about 124 paper pages] Jewish and western world obsession with the Holocaust; Jewish insistence that the "Holocaust was unique"; Holocaust uniqueness as part of the traditional Chosen People concept; the importance of Jewish Old Testament-sanctioned genocide in understanding the Holocaust; the invention of the Jewish dead as heroes and martyrs for the Jewish cause; the proliferation of worldwide Holocaust museums as Judeo-centric and Israeli propaganda posts; the usurping of distinctly American patriotic sites beneath the Jewish martyrological flag; the Holocaust as Big Business; the proliferation of Judeocentric Holocaust classes in American schools; international Jewish aspects of the world Holocaust history scene; the Auschwitz convent controversy; popular mass media renditions of the Holocaust: Shoah, Maus, Schindler's List; the trial of John Demjanjuk, accused mass murderer.

 

Page V

19 (In two parts)
The Accusation of Anti-Semitism (pt. 1) [387 Kilobytes] [about 121 paper pages] The necessity of the anti-Semite in Jewish identity; the insistence that anti-Semitism is an irrational, mystifying, psychological "disease" and that Jews are categorically innocent and blameless for the tragedies that have befallen them; Sigmund Freud and his theories of psychoanalysis; continued Jewish domination of the field of psychoanalysis; psychoanalysis as a "Jewish science"; "Being Jewish" as a psychological condition; Freudianism as a dictatorial and elitist enterprise; Freudianism and talmudism; Freudianism and money; psychoanalysis as a device to explain the categorical irrationality of anti-Semitism; post World War II Anti-Defamation League studies of anti-Semitism; the ADL studies as propaganda; Jewish obsession with anti-Semitism, even when it has become popularly negligible; the accusation of links between Christianity and Nazism; anti-Semitism as a Gentile reaction to Jewish racism, elitism, separatism, and chauvinism; Jewish efforts to defame as anti-Semites many of the great names of the western tradition and literature; the Anti-Defamation League's campaigns of censorship; Jewish censorship of dissenting Jews; popular Jewish literature with racist, anti-Gentile themes; the Jewish anti-Gentile folk tradition.

19 (In two parts)
The Accusation of Anti-Semitism (pt. 2) [557 Kilobytes] [about 80 paper pages] Jewish "self-hate" as the Jewish version of anti-Semitism; Jewish historical revisionism even in dictionaries world wide; evidence that popular negative opinion about early Jewish Russian immigrants to America in the early 19th century was not unfairly biased; logical origins of Jewish self-hatred; Jewish neurosis, the myths of the Jewish family, Jewish mothers; the Jewish "cult of the shiksa"; the Jewish American Princess; traditional Jewish sexual mores; criticism of Jews by Karl Marx and Theodore Herzl; Jewish-Israeli identity and the creation of a macho Jewish male model; violent Jewish "revenge" novels; Jewish suspicion of non-Jews; further 1960s Anti Defamation League studies of anti-Semitism and the labeling of much of the U.S. population to be anti-Semites, despite the fact that much Gentile criticism of Jewry was based on verifiable evidence.

 

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20 (In two parts)
Jewish Influence in Popular American Culture (part 1) [526 Kilobytes] [about 111 paper pages] Jewish tribal identity in modern America; Jewry's "civil religion" and its inherent contradictions; Jewish and Zionist influence in the creation of "multiculturalism"; continued Jewish attack upon Christian identity and institutions; the Jewish deconstruction of the WASP and Christian-oriented status quo; the marginalization of Christian identity in American popular culture; Jewish assault upon the Pope; Jewish resistance to interfaith "dialogue" and its propensity to attack and complain; the double standard throughout American society that treats Judaism as a "most favored" religion; blatantly anti-Christian public policy in Israel; America's abandonment of Christian self-sacrificing, "universalist" principles for Jewish aggrandizing, "particularist" ones; Israel as the focus of modern Jewish identity (both religiously and secularly); Jewish self-obsession and narcissism -- allegiance to the international tribe; the traditional question of Jewish loyalty (to Israel or America?); Zionist domination of Jewish American life; Jewish spies and international Jewish networks to aid Israeli agents; Jewish/Israeli intrigue and the atom bomb; the traditional Jewish concept of "galut" -- the feeling of exile, and estrangement from non-Jews; Jewish spy networks as communists; purges of Jews accused of disloyalty in Eastern Europe; Israeli spy systems throughout the world;

20 (In two parts)
Jewish Influence in Popular American Culture (pt. 2) [531 Kilobytes] [about 112 paper pages] Massive Jewish abandonment of left-wing movements and a retreat to traditional tribalism; renewed Jewish interest in religious Orthodoxy; Jewish domination, exploitation, and self-interest in the African-American civil rights movement; Jewish anti-Black racism; the proclivity of Jews towards servants and maids; Jewish paternalism over the African-American community; Jewish self-conceptions of being an oppressed minority group, even as it exists as a socioeconomic dominator; multicultural minority groups' reluctance to accept Jews; Jewish influence in the creation of the "Victim is King" ideology throughout popular America; Jewish self-interest and predominance in lawsuits that killed affirmative action quotas; Jewish academic pre-eminence in dictating other ethnic realities; Jewish doctors and America's circumcision popularity; Jews as an academic power elite; Jewish economic domination in African-American ghettos; Jewish slum lords; Jewish dominance of the New York City school system; the Jewish attack upon Afro-centrism; lifestyle hypocrisies of wealthy liberal Jews; the tradition of Jewish name-changing; Jewish tribalism in American politics; Jewish pre-eminence in "separation of Church and state" lawsuits; Jewish religious exploitation of legal channels to garner federal funds; the pro-Jewish legal double standard that effects Judaism and Christianity; public Jewish universalist facades over private chauvinist identities.

 

Page VII

21. Money, Class, Power [408 Kilobytes] [about 88 paper pages] Jews as the wealthiest ethnic group in America and as a key strata in western societies; Jewish pre-eminence in the fashion and clothing industry; Jewish monopolization of the diamond business; extinction of a Jewish proletariat; Jewish American billionaires; prominent Jewish entrepreneurs in Europe; Jewish international influence in real estate; Jewish-owned department stores, liquor conglomerates, and numerous other companies, from toy- to weapons-manufacturing; Jewish CEOs of giant American companies; growing Jewish dominance of the business side of the sports world, as team owners, agents, and professional league officials; Jewish money and entrepreneurial power in basketball, baseball, football, boxing, skiing, wrestling, body building; traditional Jewish tribalism in the marketplace.

22. Wall Street/Jewish-Israeli Ethics, and the World of Fund Raising [299 Kilobytes] [about 64 paper pages] The Jewish "Old Crowd" and "New Crowd" on Wall Street; Jewish activism in corporate mergers and acquisitions; investment banking; Jewish corporate raiders; Michael Milken and the Jewish-centered Wall Street scandals of the 1980s; Jews and international white collar crime; financial and other scandals in Israel; protective flight to Israel for Jewish criminals throughout the world; Jewish professional scam artists; Jewish criminal contributions to the state of Israel and major Jewish organizations; sexual harassment and exploitation in the Jewish-dominated psychoanalytic field; Jewish organizations' focus on raising money above all other considerations; the question of Jewish values and ethics.

23. Drugs and Drug Money Laundering within Jewish Networks: the "Russian" Mafia, the "Ultra-Orthodox," and Others [294 Kilobytes] [about 62 paper pages] Jewish historical influence in the criminal drug world; drug money laundering in New York City's Jewish diamond world; the international cocaine triangle: Israelis, other Jewish couriers and launderers, and the Colombian drug cartel; drug money laundering through Jewish ultra-Orthodox religious networks; special privileges afforded Jews in prison; Jewish pre-eminence in the smuggling of marijuana and Ecstasy; Jewish pre-eminence in the "Russian" Mafia; Jewish Russian influence in the giant International Monetary Fund scandal; crime in the ultra-Orthodox community; criminals' protection from being identified as Jewish in the mass media; the exploitation of the accusation of anti-Semitism by Jewish criminals; the Jewish ethnic media's self-reflections about the crisis in Jewish ethics.

 

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24. (In three parts)
Jewish Influence in the Mass Media (pt. 1) [362 Kilobytes] [about 76 paper pages] Jewish control of the mass media; Jewish filmmakers, comedians; the popularity of psychoanalysis in Hollywood; non-Jewish movie stars in the Jewish world; the Jewish "shiksa cult" and its role in institutionalized sexual predation in Hollywood; Jewish dominance of major Hollywood studios; Jewish screenwriters; Jewish nepotism; pre-eminence of Jewish women in the Hollywood power elite; Norman Lear, Aaron Spelling, and other powerful Jewish executives of note; the name-changing of Jewish celebrities; African-American resistance to Jewish Hollywood hegemony; the semantic issue of whether "Jews control Hollywood" or "Jewish individuals control Hollywood."

24 (In three parts)
Jewish Influence in the Mass Media (pt. 2) [591 Kilobytes] [about 123 paper pages] Laurence Tisch's pro-Israel CBS experiment; Time-Warner; erosion of family values at Jewish-dominated Disney-ABC; prevalence of drug glorification in Hollywood; Jewish pre-eminence in the strip tease and pornography worlds; the usual Hollywood double standard: a loving portrayal of Judaism and deconstructive attack upon Christianity; TV's celebration of Jewish identity and mass media defamation of Italian Americans, Ukrainians, Muslims, Arabs, and others; Jews at the helm of sleazy entertainment; Jewish pre-eminence in the news world, the publishing trades, the talent agency scene, radio, music; international Jewish pre-eminence in the mass media from Brazil to Poland.

 

Page IX

24 (In three parts)
Jewish Influence in the Mass Media (pt. 3) [513 Kilobytes] [about 103 paper pages] The mass media's censorship of critical stories about Jews or Israel; Jews and the "intellectual" and "radical" media; Jewish dominance in the music world; Dear Abby, Ann Landers, and Jewish domination of the "agony aunt" field.

25. Literature - "Intellectuals" - "The Family" [274 Kilobytes] [about 59 paper pages] Jewish dominance of the "American intellectual elite"; the intellectual "Jewish Mafia"; seminal influence of the Partisan Review; the change from the Jewish intellectual base from the socialist camp to the affluent elite; the Jewish "explosion" of literary talent; "Being Jewish" as a marketable commodity; Jewish authors' return to traditional Jewish identity and linkage to the Holocaust; Jewish pre-eminence in sociology, anthropology, and other academic fields; Jewish chauvinism and ethnocentrism in literature; Jews of the poetry world; Jewish pre-eminence in the intellectual elite of Europe.

26. Modern Art [370 Kilobytes] [about 81 paper pages] Jewish pre-eminence in "high culture," including classical music and the visual arts; Jewish talent agencies; Jewish dominance in the entrepreneurial realm of the visual arts; predominance of Jewish art dealers, critics, curators; Jewish philanthropy to art museums ("he that pays the piper calls the tune"); Jewish dominance of the photography field; defamation of Christianity in the art world.

 

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27 (In two parts)
Government (pt. 1) [300 Kilobytes] [about 60 paper pages] Jewish pre-eminence in American government; Jewish economic influence, especially within the Democratic Party; money control by a special interest group as the destroyer of true democracy; the dominant Jewish-Israeli lobbying organization: the American Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC); Jewish lobbying for Israel, Holocaust-related issues, Jewish immigration to America, and other ethnocentric concerns.

 27 (in two parts)
 Government (pt. 2)   [420 Kilobytes]

[about 83 paper pages] Jewish/Zionist domination of the Bill Clinton administration; the Monica Lewinsky case; Israeli spies in the American government; Jewish/Israeli influence in governments throughout the world.

 

Page XI
 

28. Israel and Zionism [566 Kilobytes] [about 144 paper pages] The myths about Israel; an overview of Zionism; Jewish American fantasies about the Jewish state; the American mass media as a tool for Israeli propaganda; Israel as a separatist, racist, and undemocratic country; the obnoxious "sabra"; the condition of Arabs under Israeli rule; institutionalized torture of arrested Palestinians; Israeli exploitation of internationally imported laborers; intra-Jewish racism; the Israeli weapons industry and Israeli support for worldwide dictatorships.

29. Epilogue [31 Kilobytes] [about 6 paper pages]

 

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30. Bibliography (in four sections on one page) [Total four sections equal about 117 paper pages] Books, magazines, journals, newspapers, and Internet sites from which the thousands of citations in this project are found.

       Bibliography A-D [210 Kilobytes]
       Bibliography E-I  [190 Kilobytes]
     Bibliography J-P  [230 Kilobytes]
     Bibliography Q-Z  [230 Kilobytes]

 

       OTHER LINKS: Other Web sites of related interest. (Outside Links)

INTRODUCTION

"All critics of Jews should not be tagged as anti-Semites. We are not a nation of Christs, Spinozas, and Einsteins; that the Nazis are brutes does not make us angels ... Criticism is not the same as hatred, and critics are not our enemies. The greatest friends of a people are not those who praise but those who honestly find fault. A people without criticism is either a dictatorship or a community so deeply embedded in smug self-satisfaction as to be on the road to decadence."

-- William Zuckerman, Jewish author [written before World War II,
    in Goldstein, D., p. 119] 

"The far-reaching consequences of the [Jewish] martyr complex go beyond any effect of the individual Jew ... and do not leave unmarked even the most sympathetically inclined Gentiles. Since the Jew is hypersensitive on the subject of his Judaism, Gentiles fear to offer constructive criticism lest they be accused of prejudices. Thus the Jew is denied the benefit of honest evaluation of the very real differences and prejudices existing ... I believe we Jews will never be normal individuals so long as we foster our martyr complex, so long as we remain evasive of self-appraisal and self-improvement, and so long as it is easier to blame the other fellow for our own faults."      
   
    Maurice M. Feurlich, Jewish author
    -- in "Children of the Martyr Race," The Forum, NYC, September 1937; cited in Goldstein, D., p. 116    
 

"By accusing western democracies of anti-Semitism, the Jews put them on the defensive. As long as guilt feelings can be profitably mined, advantages can be gained. But the lode is not likely to last forever."
             
                -- Moshe Leshem, former Israeli diplomat, p. 253-254]

"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own government must arm themselves with the power which knowledge brings."                -- James Madison

     It is a daunting task to write a book, knowing full well that it swims counter to one of the strongest contemporary currents, and that it will automatically and categorically be rejected without investigation by the cultural, educational, and political machinations of modern western society, not for failings in its intellectual, scholarly, or moral rigor, but because its subject matter is publicly configured (by militantly enforced convention tended to by a powerful "special interest" group) to be beyond the pale of criticism. The subject matter in this volume is individuals, by virtue of their identity within an extremely politically active group, who are rendered completely free from the responsibility of such group association. It is further daunting, and disturbing, that such a volume is -- by blanket dictate -- condemned, even in its mere conception, to be an immoral, innately prejudicial, and even evil, enterprise.

     We are all socialized in Western society to resist judging any individual by his or her ethnic/group association. It's a noble ideal: Why prejudge anyone about anything? Let any individual be completely evaluated upon his or her respective merits. America is educationally, and legally, configured as a "tolerant" society, champion of a variety of multicultural perspectives. As reasonable as this may seem, however, there can be a profound double standard subliminally at work here. What about when the "individual we must not prejudge" is part of a sub-community that itself prejudges all who are not part of that group's boundaries of identity, a group that consistently acts by its self-protective, self-expansive biases? Is it "prejudicial" to criticize individuals who maintain -- actively or passively -- such group allegiance, within, and transcending, the American matrix? And is it not morally reasonable, and in fact morally necessary, to criticize any collectivity, to the degree it deviates, at core, from the inter-ethnic tolerant, and universalistic, ethic of the American sociopolitical framework? And what about when such a group can, alternately or collectively, self-configure as a racial, ethnic, religious, nationalist, and political organization? Does such a community merit categorical immunity from criticism?

     Herbert Spencer's well-known quote about prejudicial intolerance seems especially written for this volume:

"There is a principal which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principal is contempt prior to investigation."

     Jewish scholar Samuel Dresnev, speaking about academia's failings on another subject, wrote something which also has application here:

"The hesitancy to speak out is understandable, but it is not pardonable. Safety is no substitute for honesty. History will ultimately judge those who failed their responsibilities as scholars and human beings." [DRESNEV, p. 221]

     What you are about to read may be shaped by some to be another Satanic Verses, another forbidden topic, this one American-style -- guaranteed magnet to those manning the censorial posts of free speech American democracy. But, unlike Salmon Rushdie's work, this is not a fictionalized attack on Islam that is assailed by narrow-minded Ayatollahs; it is a real-life investigation of those of great strength, and thereby guaranteed to incur emphatic condemnation -- not by dictatorial regimes across the world, but here at home.

     This book aims to methodically present a virtual encyclopedic collection of facts towards deconstructing the many myths about Jewish history and identity, and to investigate the ways in which these myths are used towards enormous economic, cultural and political advantage, extremely detrimental to non-Jews. The book also deconstructs the artifice behind incessant Jewish accusations of the generic "anti-Semite," accusations that are ceaselessly wielded as a political tool towards further Jewish empowerment. It also addresses Jewish pre-eminence in American (and, hence, world) popular culture, including the mass media (TV, film, radio, newspapers, book publishing, music, et al), academia, the international art world, and the profoundly disturbing hold of pro-Israel Zionism within the American government. It explores the reasons why who is identifiable as Jewish in the upper echelons of power is important, why it is necessary to have open public discussion about this subject, and why such an investigation is not an immoral and prejudicial enterprise, but rather its antithesis: an enterprise of solid moral and rational worth. Knowing full well that such assertions will be relentlessly assailed as recycled "anti-Semitic canards," this work is meticulously footnoted every inch of the way, overwhelmingly citing Jewish scholarship itself as authoritative sources, as well as the popular mass media (of whom most authors on Jewish subjects are also Jewish). This book, representing over 2,000 book-form pages, gleans evidence using approximately 10,000 citations from about 4,000 bibliographic sources (books, magazines, newspapers, government documents, and scholarly journals), relying heavily upon what is commonly known in academic jargon as "secondary sources" (i.e., not "first source" archival documents and so forth). This is purposeful, for a crucial concern of this volume is what the Jewish community understands and says about itself, and how so much of these beliefs are spread as popular opinion for all others.

     The chapter about anti-Semitism in this volume was the original section which led me to dig yet deeper and deeper into all realms of Jewish identity, history, economics, politics, and power. The more I dug at a range of university libraries, the more disturbed, stunned, I became at what I was finding. And why was this not part of common public discourse? Again and again I shook my head at what I found: the systematic historical revisionism and successful Jewish lobbying efforts to canonize Jewish religious myth (rooted in its cosmology of consummate victimhood) in secular form, reshaping the complexion of everything from the history of the world to the very premises of American democracy itself.

     While Jewish censorial dictate decrees that no one should even begin to read such a volume as this, let alone expose the issues herein to public forum, this author suggests (however bizarre it may seem) an open, democratic approach to the issue. Choose any ten currently popular books about the Jewish community. Read them. And then read this one. Think for yourself. Look deeper into the differences between this volume and the others. What do these differences mean? Is this a work of irrational bigotry? Have Jews always been history's pre-eminent, and saintly, victims? Is noting who is Jewish in the President Clinton administration a manifestation of "prejudice?" There are few books that can completely change a reader's opinion about its subject. As I have been well advised, this is one of them.

     The immunity from questioning and debate that is afforded the modern Jewish community reflects a stupendously lofty position of influence and privilege; one might notice it holds a rank generally reserved for the likes of despotic potentates and censorial political regimes. And, of course, God. Who else is beyond criticism? Volumes weigh the shelves in the world's libraries that impugn and defame beliefs that were formerly beyond questioning. In "free societies," anyone who wants may write, and publish, works that attack Christianity; assail the "historical revisionism" of Afro-centrism; deconstruct the myths of Hinduism; defame the Pope; disdain Republican, Democratic, communist, or any other ideology; emblazon the whole of Islam as a hotbed for irrational mania and terrorism; write entire volumes about the alleged worldwide Japanese economic "conspiracy"; and vilify the entirety of the nebulous entity known as the "white establishment" and anyone dictated by skin color to be within it. But, curiously, in the vast expanse of deconstructive engines of all and everything, one cannot criticize the sacrosanct domain of Jewish history, politics, and identity, unless the critic is willing to be systematically marginalized in all walks of life, prepared to be tarnished and branded as a contemptible hate-filled "anti-Semite," risk losing her or her job, and be categorically lumped into mainstream society's moral and intellectual garbage dump reserved for the likes of the Nazis and Ku Klux Klan.

     "True opinion," wrote prominent Jewish American journalist Walter Lippman (1889-1974), "can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known; if they are not known, false ideas are just effective as true ones, if not a little more effective." [LIPPMAN, W., LIBERTY AND THE NEWS, 1920] Enforced ignorance of the full Jewish story, mass censorship, and fear of reprisals for its telling, are among the reasons why no substantial scholarly volume critical of Jewry of this sort has ever been published in America. Never could it be published by an American mainstream publisher. Among many other things, this volume illustrates why. (Professors Albert Lindemann of the University of California and Kevin MacDonald of California State University, both publicly charged by Jewish reviewers as anti-Semites for recent scholarly volumes about Jewish history, have begun, however cautiously, in roundabout ways, to knock on the Iron Door).

     We live in a land where to state in summary overview, in public forum, the parameters of America's "Jewish issue," is to invite categorical dismissal as a prejudiced bigot. Without evidence and information, few have entree into the reasoned discussion that should be happening about this in a truly "free" society. Hence, anyone open to exploring the issue of Jewish-Zionist pre-eminence, even domination, in popular culture, must be prepared to expend enormous effort in examining the huge dimensions of the issue, breaking past knee-jerk platitudes. The acquisition of knowledge is no easy task. Nor is the search for truth. This giant book was created for free-thinkers who are so inclined, to honestly examine the facts of Jewish history, identity, and socio-political control. To understand, too, the continuous turmoil in modern Israel, one must start here, with the BIG picture.

      It is also the conviction of this author that there is a very small number of individuals in the Jewish community who, critical of their own community, recognize clearly the dimensions of the issues herein. These people are heroes in this story -- the ones who know that, sooner or later, the injustices perpetrated in the collective name of the Jewish community must be frankly addressed. And changed. These injustices, in the long term, are good for no one. The author of this work argues that the issues in this work are better raised here, in an academic context, towards public discussion and debate, than any other. The increased Balkanization of American society, certainly the divisions in Israel, and the world at-large, are a danger to everybody. And Jewish ethnocentrism -- coupled with an unusual transnational power to assert it -- has few parallels.

     The author of this work is against stereotypes, prejudices, irrational biases, discrimination, racism, and all the other buzzwords that signify ignorance, intolerance, injustice and evil in our day. Yet when such buzzwords are used so loosely as political ramrods and shields to ward off legitimate criticism everywhere in the power struggles of "cultural pluralism," they lose their moral and intellectual moorings. Such systematic screening from criticism grossly rewards -- and institutionalizes -- pure propaganda. The world's Jews do not talk and act with one head. There are many expressions of international Jewry. Yet such diversity does not mean that their self-defining commonalities that impact non-Jewish others are beyond reproach, immune from critical commentary. Of course not all Blacks are stereotypically "the same," but they are different, as a group -- in character, history, and collective world view -- from Hispanics. Of course not all Americans are equal, but they are certainly different as a people (in all their diversity) than, say, Indonesians. Likewise, there are many kinds of Muslims, but they definitely have more in common with each other than they do with Methodists. Not all Germans were Nazis, but few question the enforcement of a collective German responsibility for their Aryan fascist movement. (If more Germans had stood up and taken active stands against those that claimed to speak for them, history would have been different).

     As Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has observed about "political correctness" in the "Jewish joke" context:

     "People who oppose telling ethnic jokes would have us believe that
     the whole genre is nonsense, that alcoholics, neurotics, oversensitive
     people and shady characters are evenly distributed among all groups.
     However, tolerant as it sounds, this assumption makes no sense, for
     it implies that history and culture have no impact on human beings.
     But of course, they do. What makes Jews Jewish is a specific religious
     culture and historical experience that have shaped their values and
     strongly influenced how they view the world." [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 10]
 

     Amitai Etzioni, a Jewish scholar and an escapee from Nazi Germany, in discussing the German peoples' collective responsibility for Hitler's fascism, has thoughts that also have important relevance here. In the following quote he is talking about Germans, but his argument can just as well be applied to Jews (or any other people):

"Communal responsibility is based on the fact that each of us is born into a community and shares its history, memories, identities, achievements, and failures. We are not simply human beings who can retreat behind a Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance,' secure in our universal rights and historical innocence. We are also members of specific families and communities ... We are all co-responsible for that which our community has perpetrated or condoned, for both sins of commission and omission." [ETZIONI, p. 13-14]

     Fair enough. In this respect, the subject of this volume is not Germans, but Jews. They will be held here, of course, accountable to the same "communal responsibility" as any other people. This simple premise, however, (daring to hold Jews responsible for their collective actions and inactions now and across history) is, of course, in today's world, an extremely radical -- and even dangerous -- position. Why this is so, and how it came to be that simply to ask questions (and even to state unpleasant facts) about the Jewish community -- a special interest group in America of unparalleled power and influence -- is considered a virtual crime today, is part of the forthcoming story.

     Let us proceed then.

                

"Reason and documentation ... attest to the fact that anti-Jewish
hostility has not been (and is not) constant and ubiquitous. If it
had been, the conclusion is obvious: Jews could not have survived individually or collectively, religiously or ethnically."
                                                                    Alan Edelstein

 

"Medieval Jewry, much as it suffered from disabilities and contempt, still was a privileged minority in every country in which  it was tolerated at all."  
                                                                    Salo Baron, p. 259, 1972

 

"If Judaism is fundamentally altruistic in an evolutionarily meaningful sense, it would be expected that Jews [through history] would characteristically engage in self-sacrificing behavior on behalf of gentiles -- a thesis for which there is absolutely no evidence."                                                 Kevin MacDonald, p. 64


"Indeed, the more religiously conservative a Jew is today, the less likely he or she is to identify with universalistic ideologies or with the non-Jewish 'poor and downtrodden.'"
                                                   Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, 1982,
 

                                                      p. 112  
  

"My God," she gasped with grief. "Who died?" "Don't worry for nothing," Max assured her. "It's nobody. They're burying a man called Blenholt today. He's not a Jew."

                                                            Daniel Fuchs, fiction, "Homage to Blenholt

                                                            [in BERSHTEL, p.113]

                                                                                                   

 

                            

 

     In order to understand the present and prospects for the future, something must be understood about the past. Jews claim their origins to a seminal patriarch, Abraham, in the land of Ur (today part of Iraq) 4,000 years ago. Abraham was not a farmer or village member of a settled community. He was likely one of the "wandering" tribes of his time, a citizenship less, "outsider" social class known as the "Apiru," or "Habiru" (Hebrews) who were scattered across a wide area of the Middle East, from Syria to Egypt. [ANDERSON, p. 33] According to traditional Jewish religious belief, God is reputed to have singled out 75-year old Abraham among all people on earth and struck an arrangement with him, providing his progeny the consummate family inheritance:  "If Abraham will follow the commandments of God, then He, in His turn, will make the descendants of Abraham His Chosen People and place them under His protection ... God at this time stipulates only one commandment, and makes only one promise." [DIMONT, p. 29] The initial agreement, by modern standards, seems extraordinarily peculiar. God's commandment was that all males by the eighth day of birth must have the foreskin of their penises cut off, a painfully literal branding of Jewish distinction around the male procreative organ:

 

 

                "God ... said to Abraham ... You shall circumcise the flesh of

                the foreskin and that shall be the Covenant between Me

                and you."    GENESIS:  17:9-13

 

     With this physical marking, notes Barnet Litvinoff, “no male child born of Jewish parentage is ever allowed to forget he is a Jew ... it reminds him of the doctrine of the chosen people.” [LITVINOFF, p. 5] "As a sign of this sacred bond, of being special seed, Chosen," note Herbert Russcol and Margarlit Banai, "The Lord of the Universe commands Abraham" to circumcize "every man child among you." And as the Torah states it: "I will establish my covenant between Me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant." [RUSSCOL/BANAI, 1970, p. 173] Is this alleged commandment by God to the Abrahamic "seed" in Jewish tradition not racial?

 

      "Circumcision," says Lawrence Hoffman, "has thus remained the sine qua non of Jewish identity throughout time. Jews came to believe that it warded off danger, and even saved Jews from damnation, that the sign of circumcision was tantamount to carrying God's ineffable name carved in the flesh, that it was a means of attaining mystical unity with the creator, and that it brought about visionary experience." [HOFFMAN, p. 11] It also symbolized, on the male genitals, special attention to the genetic continuance of the progeny of Abraham, that -- if they obeyed the laws and demands of God -- they would someday be as "numerous as the stars."

 

     “By the very sexual act itself,” says Philip Sigal, in explaining traditional thinking, “the circumcized mystically transmits the covenant to the foetus.” [SIGAL, p. 20]  Until the 20th century, it was normal that during the mezizah phase of the circumcision ritual, the mohel (the expert who performed the circumcision) took the infant's "circumcized member into his mouth and with two or three draughts sucks the blood out of the wounded part. He then takes a mouthful of wine from a goblet and spurts it, in two or three intervals, on the wound." [ROMBERG, p. 45] Today, notes Rabbi Immanuel Jacobovits, "the original method of sucking by mouth tends to be increasingly confined to the most orthodox circles only." [JACOBOVITS, p. 196]

 

      In exchange for circumcision and following God's orders, the Jews were promised the land of Canaan (the land mass of today's Israel, more or less), a place that was already inhabited. [DIMONT, p. 29]  This land for circumcision exchange is the root of Jewish tradition, from which centuries of rules, regulations, dictates, interpretations and other additions have followed. God's spiritual link to Jews is understood to have originated, of all things, around a piece of real estate commonly understood to be part of the "Covenant,” which, says Alfred Jospe, “is the agreement between God and Israel by which Israel accepts the Torah [Old Testament] .... The concept of covenant signifies the consciousness of what the truth is.” [JOSPE, p. 15] “The covenant,” adds Will Herberg, “is an objective supernatural fact; it is God’s act of creating and maintaining Israel for his purposes in history.” [EISENSTEIN, p. 274] "The covenant made for all time means that all future generations are included in the covenant," notes Monford Harris,

     "Being born into this covenental people make one a member of the covenant.
     Berith is election. This is very difficult for moderns to understand, let alone
     accept. It is our modern orientation that sees every human being as an
     'accidental collocation of atoms,' the birth of every person as purely
     adventitious. From the classical Jewish perspective, being born to a Jewish
     mother is a divine act of election." [HARRIS, M., 1965, p. 90-91]
 

 

     "For Israel," notes Edward Greenstein, "God's immanence found expression in the perception of God as a super-person." [GREENSTEIN, E., 1984, p. 89] The idea that God was some kind of tradesman, and that he was a distinctly dialectical Other to humanity, as a Lord, King, Patriarch, Commander, and even Warlord of a worldly provenance has -- with the religious commentaries and meta-commentaries that evolved from His commands in Judaism  -- provided fuel for modern scholarly debate about Jewish (and linked strands of Christian) creations in the world of secular affairs, most particularly in their materialist, rationalist, and patriarchal flavors. The result, in today's Orthodox Judaism, says Evelyn Kaye, is a "community [that] has developed an insular, single-minded approach which is completely intolerant of any views that differ from its own." [KAYE, p. 23]

 

      Whatever else they believed, Jews have traditionally understood themselves to be -- by hereditary line -- special, intrinsically better than other people: they were divinely esteemed. The Old Testament stated it plainly:

 

       "For you are people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the

        peoples on earth the Lord your God chose you to be His

        treasured people."     [DEUTERONOMY 7:6]

 

       The notion that Jews -- originally defined racially as the Israelite progeny of Abraham (and a special lineage through his son Isaac, then Jacob, and so on) -- are the "Chosen People" of God is the bedrock of Jewish self-conception and it resonates deeply in some form to Jewish self-identity to this day. What exactly such a mantle of greatness confers has, for most, changed drastically over (particularly recent) centuries, and is still a delicate source for self-reflection and debate, ranging from traditional racist theories against non-Jews (still entertained by many Orthodox Jews, and most of Zionism) to more modern, liberalizing, and even secular notions that Jews are destined to lead humankind to some kind of redemptive glory.

 

     The extraordinary self-perpetuating ethnocentric premises of traditional Judaism have been remarked upon by many modern scholars. Likewise, they have often addressed the drastically different ethical and spiritual views of Judaism and Oriental religious faiths (such as Hinduism and Buddhism). Such a gap is poignantly illustrated in this story by the great popular folklorist, Joseph Campbell:

   

                "A young Hindu gentleman came to see me, and a very pious

                 man he proved to be: a worshipper of Vishnu, employed as a

                 clerk or secretary of one of the Indian delegations at the UN.

                 He had been reading the works of Heinrich Zimmer on Indian

                 art, philosophy and religion, works that I had edited many years

                 before, and which he wanted to discuss. But there was

                 something else he wanted to talk about too.

                         "You know, " he said after we had begun to feel at home

                 with each other, "when I visit a foreign country I like to acquaint

                 myself with its religion; so I have bought myself a Bible and for

                 some months now have been reading it from the beginning; but

                 you know" ... and here he paused, to regard me uncertainly, then

                 said, "I can't find any religion in it!"

                       ... Now I had of course been brought up on the Bible and I

                 had also studied Hinduism, so I thought I might be of some

                 help. " Well," I said, "I can see how that might be, if you had

                 not been given to know that a reading of the imagined history of

                 the Jewish race is here regarded as a religious exercise. There

                 would then, I can see, be very little for you of religion in the

                 greater part of the Bible."

                         I thought that later I should perhaps have referred him to

                 the Psalms; but when I then turned to a fresh reading of these

                 with Hinduism in mind, I was glad that I had not done so; for

                 almost invariably the leading theme is either the virtue of the

                 singer, protected by his God, who will "smite his enemies on

                 the cheek" and "break the teeth of the wicked;" or, on the other

                 hand, of complaint that God has not yet given due aid to his

                 righteous servant: all of which is just about diametrically opposed

                 to what an instructed Hindu would have been taught to regard as

                 religious sentiment. 

                         In the Orient the ultimate divine mystery is sought beyond

                 all human categories of thought and feeling, beyond names and

                 forms, and absolutely beyond any such concept as of a merciful

                 or wrathful personality, chooser of one people over another,

                 comforter of folk who pray, and destroyer of those who do not.

                 Such anthropomorphic attributions of human sentiment is -- from

                 the point of view of Indian thought --  a style of religion for

                 children." [CAMPBELL, Myths, pp. 93-94]

       

     "If you will obey my voice," God tells Jews in their seminal religious text, the Torah, "and keep my Covenant, you shall become my own possession among all people, for all the earth is mine." [EXODUS 19:5] This anthropomorphized model of the Israelite God is someone profoundly concerned with ownership, allegiance, and control -- key values in the self-promotive tenets of classical Judaism and their practical application in history. After all, the seminal Jewish religious text -- the Torah (in Christian tradition the first five books of the Old Testament) -- was created as a kind of Jewish family album, an ancient listing of Israelite genealogies and pedigrees that codifies sacred recipes for group solidarity, self-aggrandizement (land conquest, et al), and self-preservation for those with direct ancestral linkage to Abraham.

 

     "The biblical faith [of the Old Testament]," writes scholar Bernhard Anderson, "to the bewilderment of many philosophers, is fundamentally historical in character. It is concerned with events and historical relationships, not abstract values and ideas existing in a timeless realm." [ANDERSON, p. 12] "The halakah [Jewish religious law] does not aspire to a heavenly transcendence," notes influential modern rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, "nor does it aspire to soar upon the wings of some abstract, mysterious spirituality. It fixes its gaze on the concrete, empirical reality and does not let its attention be diverted from it." [SOLOVEITCHIK, p. 92] "There is no Valhalla [afterlife Paradise] in Judaism," notes Chaim Bermant,

     "and no Garden of the Houris, and while there was paradise and hell, both were to
     be experienced mainly on earth ... Neither heaven with all its joys, nor hell with all
     its torments (which, as described in the Talmud, are akin to those of Tantalus)
     have a central place in the Jewish faith, Judaism is of this world and in so far
     as it believes in the Kingdom of Heaven at all it is as somethng which will become
     manifest on earth." [BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 16]
 

 

       Beyond Israelite genealogies, the Torah (the Old Testament)  includes an ancient compilation of rules and regulations, elaborated upon in meta-commentaries by later Judaic religious texts, especially the Talmud, which codifies correct behavior for all the minutia of daily living.  In Jewish tradition, “the whole keynote of being,” says sociologist Talcott Parsons, “starting with the creation, was action, the accomplishment of things.” [PARSONS, p. 103] (And one of the "keys to Jewish success," says Jewish business author Steven Silbiger, is to "be psychologically driven to prove something.") [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 9]

 

     “Judaism is not a revealed religion,” wrote the great German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, “but revealed legislation. Its first precept is not ‘thou shalt believe’ or not believe, but thou shalt do or abstain from doing.” [GOLDSTEIN, D., p. 43, in Jerusalem]  "A constant motif of post-Enlightenment ethics," says rabbi Jonathan Sacks, "is the rejection of religious authority as an external command to which one submits. For this reason [philosopher] Hegel is sharply critical of the Jewish structure of law. 'Of spirit,' he writes of Judaism, 'nothing remained save pride in slavish obedience.' Much of Nietzsche’s work is a deepening set of variations on this theme. Judaism, he says, introduced 'a God who demands.' The autonomous self, central to modern ethics, is radically incompatible with the structures of Jewish spirituality, built as they are on the concept of mitzvah, command." [SACKS, J., p. 100-101]

 

       The all-encompassing and dictatorial manner of Jewish Orthodoxy in the Talmudic (and other) interpretations of the Old Testament is reflected in this observation by Gerson Cohen:

 

          "The Torah encompasses and seeks to regulate every moment of

          life ... Nothing human is beyond the scope of judgment and its

          program of prescription. It is for this reason that Torah is often

          called a way of life, for its purpose is to teach the Jew how to act,

          think, and even feel." [COHEN, in KLEINE, p. 92]

 

     The obsessive nature of even modern Jewish Orthodoxy within a tight web of restrictive daily dictates, and the surrender to what Israeli scholar Israel Shahak calls its innate "totalitarianism," [SHAHAK, p. 15] is reflected in this comment by Egon Mayer:

 

     "What are the first words that one should utter upon awakening? There

     is a rule. How many steps may one take from one's bed before washing

     at least the tips of one's fingers. There is a rule." [MAYER, Suburb]

      Michael Govrin notes that

    "A Jew is born into an already articulated biography. In the traditional
     context of Halacha -- the Jewish Law (which until two hundred years
     ago was the only way a Jews could define him or herself) -- a Jew's
     life is codified to a unique extent. From rising in the morning to the moment
     of falling asleep at night, from birth to death and burial, the myriad
     of gestures, thoughts, and intentions is pre-articulated, forming a specific
     mold into which the life is poured. The private life in a given historical
     moment is a personal variation on that generic mold; always seemingly
     only a re-enactment -- not an 'invention' -- of a preexisting role in an ongoing
     plot that started with the first Jews, and is still unfolding." [GOVRIN, M.,
     2001]
 

 

      Charles Liebman and Steven Cohen note that the "halakaha [Jewish religious law] commands that before eating bread a Jew must recite a blessing, and before this blessing the hands must be washed and a blessing recited over the hand washing. Even the manner in which the hands are washed is prescribed: the kind of utensil used, the order in which the hands are washed, the number of times each hand is washed." [LIEBMAN/COHEN, p. 125]

 

    "It is a commonplace," adds Eunice Lipton, "that an abiding and secularized aspect of Jewish tradition is its valuing of sensual satisfaction. Jewish law acknowledges appetite; one is even is told how often one should make love ... One might say that Jewish validation of the senses results from the emphasis on human life in the present as opposed to any interest in any afterlife." [LIPTON, p. 289]  Evelyn Kaye, who grew up in an Orthodox community, notes that "Orthodox Judaism plans to regulate every minute, every action and every thought of life ... [KAYE, p. 126] ... The code of Jewish law dictates a range of regulations for sexual intercourse, including when and where it may be experienced, as well as what to think about during the act." [KAYE, p. 125]  "It is forbidden," says the Code of Jewish Law, "to discharge semen in vain. This is a graver sin than any other mentioned in the Torah ... It is equivalent to killing a person ... A man should be extremely careful to avoid an erection. Therefore, he should not sleep on his back with his face upward, or on his belly with his face downward, but sleep on his side, in order to avoid it." [GANZFRIED, p.17] "There are even rules," says Kaye, "about what you may think about while you sit on the toilet." [KAYE, p. 17] 

 

    Israel Shahak underscores Orthodox Judaism's complex honing of regulations to the point of hairsplitting for even purely theoretical concerns that appear to be extraordinarily esoteric in a modern context:

 

     "During the existence of the Temple, the High Priest was only allowed

      to marry a virgin. Although during virtually the whole of the talmudic

      period there was no longer a Temple or High Priest, the Talmud devoted

      one of its more involved (and bizarre) discussions to the precise

      definition of the term 'virgin' fit to marry a High priest. What about a

      woman whose hymen had been broken by accident? Does it make any

      difference whether the accident occurred before or after the age of three?

      By the impact of metal or wood? Was she climbing a tree? And if so,

      was she climbing up or down?" [SHAHAK, p. 41]
     
      One of the most profoundly important dimensions of traditional Judaism (one that has had enormous repercussions for Jewish relations throughout history with their non-Jewish neighbors) is its injunction to fellow members that Jews must -- conceptually, and through most of history, physically -- live “apart,” “separate,” distinct from other human beings. Jewish self-conception, from its early days, was antithetical and antagonistic to other peoples. "Separation of Israel from the nations [non-Jews]," says Moshe Greenberg, "in order to be consecrated by God took the extreme form of condemning to death any who worshipped or tempted others to worship alien gods." [GREENBERG, p. 28]

 

     In later years, throughout the Jewish diaspora, this developed into the Jewish self-conception as a "nation apart" -- physically as well as conceptually distanced from all other peoples. "In their determined efforts to prevent assimilation and loss of identity as a small minority in the midst of a hostile majority," notes the Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, "the rabbis deliberately set up barriers for the explicit purpose of preventing social interaction with gentiles [non-Jews], and decrees were enacted to erect barriers against this danger. The partaking of meals with gentiles was forbidden ... food cooked by gentiles was banned." [WERBLOWSKY, p. 269]  "The underside to this sense of chosenness [per the Chosen People idea]," says Rabbi Isar Schorsch, "is an inclination to dichotomize the world between 'them' and 'us. Categories of people are set apart by the fact that God has assigned them far fewer mitzvot [commandments] to keep. Three of those 100 blessings [Orthodox Jews must recite each day] praise God for 'not having made me a gentile,' 'for not having made me a woman,' and 'for not having made me a slave.'" [SCHORSCH, I., 4-30-99] Even in a 1988 survey, "more than a third of Reform rabbis -- traditionally the most 'integrated' and 'outreaching' of the major Jewish denominations -- endorsed the proposition that 'ideally, one ought not to have any contact with non-Jews.'" [NOVICK, P., 1999, p. 181]

 

     Such a "nation apart" admonition is part of classical Jewish religious (and related to secular Zionist) belief to the present day. Jewish author Alfred Jospe notes that

 

         “when a male Jew is called to the Torah, he recites the traditional 

          blessing, asher bahar banu mi’kol ha’amim, praising God ‘who

          has chosen us from among all other nations.’ When Jews recite their

          daily morning prayer they say the benediction, she’lo assani goy,

          thanking God ‘that he has not made [us] gentiles.’ When they

          pronounce the benediction over the Sabbath [Saturday] wine, they

          declare that God has chosen and sanctified Jews from all other

          peoples in the same way which he has distinguished between Sabbath

          and weekday. When Jews make Havdalah on Saturday night, they

          recite the traditional ha-mavdil, glorifying God for setting Jews apart

          from all other peoples just as He set apart the sacred from the profane

          and light from darkness.” [JOSPE, p. 10-11]

     "Unlike many religions," notes Steven Silbiger,

     "Judaism is more than simply a belief system that anyone can adopt. To
      become Jewish means enlisting in a tribe. The relationship or covenant
      is between God and the Jewish people, rather than between God and
      individual Jews. Judaism is a religion with a strong ancestral component."
      [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 11]
 

 

       In the ancient Greek and Roman worlds people were polytheists, and relatively tolerant of each other’s theology. Judaism, however, was expressed throughout their diaspora as an elitist, confrontational faith, engendering ill will everywhere. "It was not sensible," says Jasper Griffin, "nor was it good manners [in the ancient world] to allege that other peoples' gods did not exist. Only a madman makes fun of other peoples' religious practices, says the historian Herodutus in the fifth century BCE ... The response of the Jews [to other religions] was felt to be shocking and uncouth, as well as dangerous for everybody." Jewish rejection of the religions and communities in which they lived "placed an inseparable barrier between them and full acceptance into the classical world; as later on, even more acutely, it did with Christians." [GRIFFIN, p. 58]

 

 

 *****************
 

 

          The seminal source of Jewish history and sacred law is recorded in the Torah  (the Old Testament of the Bible in Christian tradition, consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Biblical scholars tend to believe that the Old Testament (which sometimes cites conflicting facts in various places) was essentially four different written narratives eventually combined together, each section originally written between 800 to 1600 years after the events described allegedly occurred. Within these texts we read that Abraham and the early Israelites settled tentatively in the land of the Canaanites, but that famine eventually drove them towards Egypt. The ancient Hebrews were reportedly enslaved in Egypt, (a period of momentous impact even in current Jewish collective memory), but were ultimately led back to Canaan  -- the Promised Land -- by Moses in a 40-year trek across the desert in the thirteenth century BCE. Moses became instrumental in mediating God's demands to the Hebrew people and instituting laws of behavior and belief for them, known today as the Mosaic code.

    

      Eventually the Israelites forcibly reestablished themselves in the land of Canaan and over the following centuries divided into sub-clans, fighting and warring among themselves, and against others. The most drastic intra-Jewish schism was the establishment of two conflicting monarchies -- Israel, in the northern areas, and Judah, in the south. When ancient Israel joined a coalition of non-Jewish states in threatening the southern Jewish kingdom, Judah joined the powerful Assyrian kingdom which destroyed Israel in about 723 BCE. Judah was destroyed, in turn, in 586 BCE, by Babylonian invasion, concluding  the first Jewish expulsion from their proclaimed homeland.  Jews were allowed to return in 538 BCE under the sovereignty of the Persian monarch, Cyrus; the Romans were masters of the Palestine area by about 100 BCE. The Jews were ultimately expelled en masse again, this time by the Romans, when Israelites repeatedly revolted against Roman rule. By the third century CE most Jews were scattered all across the Roman Empire, from India to Spain. In Jewish lore, this is the solidification of the Jewish "galut" (a term meaning exile, with derogatory connotations) in non-Jewish lands, i.e., the Diaspora (dispersion).

 

     It is necessary to again underscore, against the grain of modern popular (and largely secular) Jewish opinion, that the Old Testament is a compilation of stories, genealogies, and Godly dictates that were intended by its Jewish authors to be purely intra-Jewish in scope. The ten commandments of Moses -- "Love your neighbor, "Thou shalt not kill," and all the rest of it -- did not represent in origin for Jews a universalistic creed.  "Love your neighbor” meant love your fellow Israelite. "Thou shalt not kill" meant don't kill those of your own people.  "[Jewish] tradition," says Charles Liebman, "argued that the essence of Torah is the obligation to love one's neighbor as oneself, with the term 'neighbor' implying only 'Jew.'" [LIEBMAN, Rel Tre, p. 313] John Hartung notes that careful inspection of the Torah/Old Testament "Love Thy Neighbor" commandment make this clear, for example, in Leviticus 19:18:

 

     "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children

     of thy people but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." [Jewish

     Publication Society translation: other translations include the

     same qualifier; HARTUNG, 1995]

    As Louis Jacobs observes:

    "Among both Jews and Christians the injunction is read simply as 'love
     thy neighbour as thyself' ... [but] in the original context the [Love Thy
     Neighbor] verse means: even when someone has behaved badly
     towards you, try to overcome your desires for revenge but rather
     behave lovingly towards him because, after all, he, too, is a human
     being and a member of the covenant people as you are and
     therefore entitled to be treated as you yourself wish to be treated ...
     The golden rule to love the neighbour applies only to