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Anti-Jewish attacks on the rise — 103 Comments

  1. Yes, it should have read “anti-Jewish hate crime”, and I will wager it wasn’t a mistake.

  2. Neo

    Meanwhile, the New Yorker Union tweeted its solidarity “with Palestinians from the river to the sea who went on a 24-hour strike yesterday for dignity and liberation.” The tweet has since been deleted.The phrase “from the river to the sea” has long represented the wish to obliterate the state of Israel.

    There appears to be a disconnect here. Employees of a magazine named for the city where it is published – a city that has the highest number of Jewish inhabitants outside Israel- express solidarity with a phrase that not-so-implicitly wants to push Israeli Jews into the sea.

    I am reminded of the iconic New Yorker cover, the View of the World from Manhattan.

    I am glad that though I occasionally read New Yorker articles, I make no financial contribution to The New Yorker that would support the continued employment of those “river to the sea” yahoos.

  3. My early el ed years were spent in a heavily Jewish area of Detroit. I heard this and that, never understood until much later.
    My father talked a lot about the war…a front three hundred miles long and three hundred yards wide–and I was pretty good at the tank/company team by the time I was twelve.
    But not about his baggage. His division, 104th ID Timberwolves, liberated Mittelbau Dora Then they were set to going up and down the back roads of Germany looking for the dead of the camp-to-camp marches. They were to find these poor creatures, put them in mattress covers and mark the spot on a map for the Graves Registration guys coming along later We used up every mattress cover in the Third Army he said. A couple of his guys said, “Lieutenant, I ain’t going to pick no more dead people. I just ain’t”
    Then there was the trainload of dead babies.
    I’d be happy to stand with the Jews.
    But I don’t want to stand with those who are voting to kill me and mine along with themselves.

  4. “Or is it merely an example of the abysmal state of ignorance of echo-chamber journalism these days?“

    Probably ignorance. One of the unexpected results of the information revolution is that ease of access to knowledge has made people respect it less. Folks with no real education on a great many things nevertheless think themselves experts because they consume a lot of info all day online.

    I just read some NeverTrump doofus on Twitter who thought an article claiming that China actually paid less than 8% of the cost of Trump’s tariffs was a big “gotcha” for Trump fans. Of course, as anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows, that really indicates Trump’s tariffs WORKED because it means China raised the price of goods shipped to the US, making those products more expensive and US-produced goods more competitive.

    Which doesn’t mean Trump’s China tariffs were actually good or effective policy, of course. That’s a trickier issue.

    Mike

  5. I guess those diners better arm themselves. If California, or their wives, or sisters-in-law allow it.

    Otherwise they can resign themselves to taking their beatings “like men”.

    You know, because no one really has a right not to be molested and battered.

    Why, that’s Hillbilly thinking to imagine otherwise.

  6. Zaphod,
    I didn’t know that Biden, Obama, Harris , Pelosi and both Clintons were members of your gods tribe. Funny how he considered those like you to be kalbas

  7. @avi:

    How about we do a nice 80/20 Pareto on biggest donors to your list of nasty socially corrosive puppets/politicians? Do I need to draw you a picture?

    Look… I’ve got nothing against Most of You, but clearly some of you are Bad News for all of us, including Most of You. Somehow, we’ve ended up in a world where Us Cattle can’t help you Good Jews deal with your Bad Jews because it’s just too damn dangerous for us to go at them. So it’s on you. Get to work! And it’s not like you guys are incapable of great feats and making deserts bloom. Here’s another chance to shine.

    Epstein’s dead, so I guess your first assignment is go clip the wings of Soros and Spielberg. Happy hunting! 🙂

  8. This year I’m reading the Bible. (I’m about midway through so please, no spoilers.) The main 2 points of the OT are that 1) Jews were chosen by God to preserve his teaching. And what is the idea that Jews are called to preserve? It’s 2) that human beings have free will. It’s so exasperating as a reader to see humans, time after time, disobeying the simplest of commands and yet God never, ever even threatens humans with taking away their free will. He never limits or threatens to limit our ability to think for ourselves. Now I understand why our Founders placed so much importance on the OT. And I understand why there’s a schism between cultural Jews and religious Jews. And maybe that’s what lies beneath the instinctual anti Jewish sentiment by every authoritarian wanna be out there.

  9. “Somehow, we’ve ended up in a world where Us Cattle can’t help you Good Jews deal with your Bad Jews because it’s just too damn dangerous for us to go at them“

    Your response was better in its original German mr Kalba

  10. @avi:

    Always With the Last War. It gets boring.

    How hard is it to see that the understandable fixation with tweaking and twisting to ensure Never Again has thrown up its own bunch of Hegelian/Marxian Contradictions which now in the Current Year look well set to plough you *and the rest of us* under with this turn of the wheel?

    How about trying something different for a change?

  11. “Or you could police your own here so that we all don’t go down to perdition ..”

    We have discussed the questions of “Who is a Jew (or Jewish)?” and “How do you know?” here many times before: leaving it up to those who are self described as Jewish to define the limits of fellowship and mutual identification if they can, or are willing.

    So far as any positive sense to the question goes, the only answer I can consistently recall, is something along the lines of “It is complicated” and complex.

    Thus, apart from an ill defined sense of community of feeling there appears to be no systematic “their own” in any sense which implies the mutual ability to call upon, or out: to declare moral imperatives, or the ability to proscribe, lest a penalty of excommunication, ostracism, “othering”, or alienation be imposed.

    So, Jewishness seems to be a circle that is easy to be included in, but almost impossible to be kicked out of.

    But unlike the ill defined “their” in the instance wherein you repeated the possessive pronoun with regard to the category of white (presumably Gentile) persons, it seems as if there is no one in the Jewish “community” who quite parallels me, as I say: “Let those anal receptive East Coast basta**s fry in the fire they started – they are completely alien to me. Serves them right”

    And that for me, i.e., this seeming reluctance to at least figuratively drag the same class offenders down to the riverside at dawn and make them shoot it out, or be shamed and excluded and mocked forever, is the most puzzling aspect of what some people would characterize as “Jewishness”.

    Gentile “Americans” (by and large purely a formal term involving no sense of mutual identification, recognition, or appreciation anyway) for example, are perfectly happy to have at each other; and can hardly wait for the opportunity to engage in a little so-called “Fratricide”. [It is not fratricide because we are not brothers]

    Why, even the puling woke, who are always whining about acceptance and inclusion and all of that crap, are often seen licking their chops at the prospect – fantasy really – of a little “cultural cleansing”; in their case the cleansing of the Neanderthals from the polity they believe evolution has bestowed upon them.

    I suppose it will have to fall to someone identifying as Jewish as to why there is at least a perception of reluctance on their part to place the annoying [I will not say “their” annoying] on their honor … or else.

  12. Passed through our family room just now and the TV was blaring Geeraldo on Hannity, excoriating Israel and excusing Palestine. Hasty exit on my part.

    Reminded me why I could never stand that “So and So”.

    He was stuck on Palestinian children dying. Apparently he cannot, or will not, connect the dots and acknowledge that Hamas is trying like hell to kill Israeli children. The difference is that Israelis do not view their children as propaganda props. I assume that he was getting his intelligence on the current situation from the AP bureau in Gaza, and like most of his ilk just swallows the offal produced by Hamas.

    The scary part is that I expect Harris-Biden and company to also swallow it.

    On the home front, I wonder how you would define “race war”?

  13. @Oldflyer:

    It is jarring to see mention of Giraldo Rivera and ‘Intelligence’ in the same block of text — no matter what sense of the word Intelligence is involved. The Universe cried out in pain when you did that.

  14. @OldFlyer:

    PS: In the spirit of the ‘In Soviet Russia’ Memeplex which finds humour in improbable reversals of Subject and Object:

    ***On the Home Front, Race War Defines You.***

    PPS: For any Perplexed Ancients, go forth and learn about Internet Memes. Seriously. Deadly Seriously. You may think them childish, frivolous, sub-literate. 99% are. It’s the 1% which are not which you need to be on the lookout for. The young today do not give a flying @#$% for the NYT Op Ed Page. They think in memes. In other words, Memes Can Kill. Or shepherd the flock toward salvation. It all depends.

    You may not be interested in Memes, but Memes are Interested in You.

  15. Said it before; it will be sad/funny when Jews discover their safe spaces are Baptist churches and NASCAR events.

  16. Eva Marie on May 19, 2021 at 9:19 pm said:

    This year I’m reading the Bible. (I’m about midway through so please, no spoilers.) The main 2 points of the OT are that 1) Jews were chosen by God to preserve his teaching. And what is the idea that Jews are called to preserve? It’s 2) that human beings have free will. It’s so exasperating as a reader to see humans, time after time, disobeying the simplest of commands and yet God never, ever even threatens humans with taking away their free will. He never limits or threatens to limit our ability to think for ourselves. Now I understand why our Founders placed so much importance on the OT. And I understand why there’s a schism between cultural Jews and religious Jews. And maybe that’s what lies beneath the instinctual anti Jewish sentiment by every authoritarian wanna be out there.”

    Hi. This is not the place to discuss it in any depth, but there is a problem in understanding Judaism as a modern religious phenomenon that all of your Old Testament readings, no matter how many times repeated, will not help you to overcome.

    It is this: Judaism is not the practice of the religion, or even the ritualistic celebration of the texts of the Old Testament – minus the practices of the Temple – in modern times.

    I studied Judaism – well, to be frank one semester – under a rabbi who taught as an adjunct professor at my school. And even though I was taking notes and remembering the details of the Babylonian and the Palestinian Talmuds, and was his fair haired boy in that class, the implications and practical effect of current Jewish belief regarding and resulting from this body of [interpretive] work, took a long time to sink in.

    I doubt that one Christian out of five thousand, if that many, has any idea of the doctrine of the oral Torah; and if they do know the term, that they have any idea of the actual place the work of the sages has in the construction of the moral sense and sensibility of the present Jewish people.

    Many of those few who might know the term, would probably imagine that the commentaries of the Talmud stood in relation to the Old Testament, as the explanations of Thomas Aquinas stand in relation to the sacred scriptures as seen by Christians: that is, in a clearly subordinate position to the revealed word of God

    My personal opinion is that no analogy could be more misleading.

    I’m not the one to explain it. And if any Jewish believers in the secret Torah wish to take up an explication of the doctrine justifying it, they are welcome.

    I will simply leave a link or two to some Messianic Jews, who, though not unbiased, should know something whereof they speak.

    You of course are free to come to your own conclusions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jizE__hWWBA

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe5Vw3EtnEE

  17. It is passing strange to read Zaphod rant about what American Jews of conservative persuasion should do about leftist American Jews; Zaphod writing from Hong Kong while not an American. No skin in our game. We’re the monkeys but it’s not his circus. Let me guess, for Z it’s about Western civilization?

  18. @Eva Marie:

    That dry old Ironist, Philosophe and Warrior King, Frederick the Great when asked in his salon for arguments supporting the existence of God, said:

    “Gentlemen (for he could not abide Ladies), I give you the Jews!”

    The history of the Jews is not the greatest advertisement ever dreamed up for Free Will. No doubt Bernays (err, oops) could have come up with Something Better.

    Not that the rest of us come out smelling like roses either in the application of free will department, but the thing about being a compact, fairly well-defined group is that you do tend to become the stock photo depiction. At least until you buy up the stock photo companies 😛

  19. There has been an uptick of attacks on a lot of people. If you look at what is happening worldwide, you will also see there is an increase of persecutions of Christians, also. From China to Africa to the Middle East. I have always heard that “ Jews are the canary in the coal mine.” I am thinking Christians have feathers in that same bird cage at this point. Jews and Christians are the canaries for just about any group that is not leftist or Muslim, especially the white people.

  20. DNW:

    What on earth are you talking about? Are you saying that no Jews disagree bitterly and vociferously with other people whom the world (and/or Jews) defines as Jews? Jews are quite famously divided, and “are perfectly happy to have at each other.”

    Perhaps you mean literally, as in Jews killing Jews? Granted; not a whole lot of that. But short of that, there are enormously bitter divisions.

  21. @avi:
    Always With the Last War. It gets boring.
    How hard is it to see that the understandable fixation with tweaking and twisting to ensure Never Again has thrown up its own bunch of Hegelian/Marxian Contradictions which now in the Current Year look well set to plough you *and the rest of us* under with this turn of the wheel?
    How about trying something different for a change?

    lets see Mr Kalba
    the Ravensburg massacres
    the Rheinland massacres
    the crusade massacres
    the Black plague Massacres
    the Hussite War massacres
    the 30 years war massacres
    yada yada yada, again and again

    or as Heine said in 1834
    Christianity – and that is its greatest merit – has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. … Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world’s history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll. (1834)”

  22. @om:

    As America goes, Western Civ goes. At least ordinary Americans can has guns.

    You wouldn’t dare crap on a Jew opining on Israeli Security from the far off vantage point of Hong Kong or for that matter from the rarefied Whiteopia of semi-rural New England — both perfectly justified, I might add — so don’t waste oxygen on me opining on Western matters as a Westerner in Hong Kong.

    The coming collapse of what remains of the Pax Americana will be a global calamity. I don’t expect you to grok what is it will mean to live in foreign parts which look to be thrown into a power vacuum the likes of which has not been seen in the lifetimes of anyone living.

  23. @avi:

    Atavism much? We both. It’s the Human Way. Ain’t it Lovely? Have you figured out how to edit DNA? Nope.. So?

    Therefore best you find a nice nuclear-armed pad in Herzliya and sit things out. Alternatively, the metaphorical you and me could get together find someone else to pick on as a team.

    It’s the Human Way. Ain’t it Lovely?

    Nobody smells like Roses.

    Re finding someone else to pick on together: the good news is that there’s a Target Rich Environment out there.

  24. It is even more passing strange to hear Zaphod wax about Western civilization all the while being fixated on melanin and tribes and the return of pre-civilized behavior, say to the 1940s. Trouble even reaches to Hong Kong it seems. Poor Zaphod, nobody expects a civilized man. Bless his heart.

  25. Zaphod:

    You focus on the Jews and ignore the non-Jews. And your “Jews” are not really Jews except by heritage, as I’ve pointed out many times. For example, Soros was not raised as a Jew and he has said his parents were anti-Semitic.

    There are quite a few rich people who are Jewish, and some of them are into donating to politicians, mostly liberal. The Jews who are more religious tend to be conservative, but they also don’t tend to have that kind of money. So what? Your focus on secular Jews and their politics is getting very tiresome.

    Maybe you should look at this guy for a change, if you’re so into the topic. By the way, here’s an interesting quote from him:

    In February 2012, Adelson told Forbes magazine that he was “against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it. Because I know that guys like Soros have been doing it for years, if not decades. And they stay below the radar by creating a network of corporations to funnel their money. I have my own philosophy and I’m not ashamed of it. I gave the money because there is no other legal way to do it. I don’t want to go through ten different corporations to hide my name. I’m proud of what I do and I’m not looking to escape recognition.”…

    According to federal records, from 2010 through 2020, Adelson and his wife donated more than $500 million to the Republican party campaigns and super PACs.

    Adelson was apparently the largest individual political donor in the US.

  26. Anyone who uses “grok” and expects to be taken seriously, LOL.

    Read that book (Stranger In A Strange Land) nearly 50 years ago. How trippy, that Zaphod likes it, a RAH work that didn’t age well IMO.

    Oops, speaking blasphemy here.

  27. @jon baker:

    “I am thinking Christians have feathers in that same bird cage at this point. Jews and Christians are the canaries for just about any group that is not leftist or Muslim, especially the white people.”

    Could be… could be…

    The thing is that Jews look out for Jews. Whypeepo need to look out for Whypeepo. Jews won’t and can’t do it for them. Jews have their group interests, we have ours. Only an idiot expects another ethnic group to have equal yet alone more concern for his group than its own people.

    Hell, everybody has a right to want the best for their own. e.g. it’s perfectly reasonable for our esteemed hostess to have a post lamenting a rise in violence against Jews. And I’m sure she wouldn’t take exception to a post by (say) a White Prole lamenting a rise in Black on White Prole violence… But to expect Group A to be as heavily invested in the fate of Group B and vice-versa is just Big Rock Candy Mountain Dreaming.

    The question is whether or not Jews and White People have *identical* interests. I would say that they do not. Yes, yes… insert usual disclaimers about groups not being monolithic and having divergent factions, yadda yadda… talking about broad masses here.

    Jews and Whites can, should, and sometimes *do* have parallel or converging interests. We should always be on the look out for ways in which to cooperate for the common good. Jews rightly do not want Whites telling them how to live, and it would be wise for Whites to take the same approach to Op-Ed Opining Jews telling them what’s good for them.

    And there is nothing wrong with having opposing interests. There’s nothing to feel guilty about here, too.

    Common Ground == Shared Benefits. Any fluff and bull$@#% about higher morality is not something any of us can afford in these difficult times ahead.

  28. How civilized to speak of Jews and Whypeepo. And how clever, such a sweet child, bless his heart.

    Not that whypeepo are a monlithic group with an “interest?” Whypeepo seem to have some problems deciding what their “interests” are now a days. LOL

    Something in that Hong Kong water?

  29. neo on May 19, 2021 at 10:14 pm said:

    DNW:

    What on earth are you talking about? Are you saying that no Jews disagree bitterly and vociferously with other people whom the world (and/or Jews) defines as Jews? “

    No. I am saying,

    1,

    “We have discussed the questions of “Who is a Jew (or Jewish)?”… here many times before … So far as any positive sense to the question goes, the only answer I can consistently recall, is something along the lines of “It is complicated” and complex …”

    Thus, I do not claim to know who is and who is not Jewish, nor how mutual recognition and legitimacy is evaluated.

    Nonetheless, self-identified Jewish people seem to believe there is an objective group identity.

    2, Yet,

    ” … apart from an ill defined sense of community of feeling there appears to be no systematic “their own” in any sense which implies the mutual ability to call upon, or out: to declare moral imperatives, or the ability to proscribe, lest a penalty of excommunication, ostracism, “othering”, or alienation be imposed.

    … Jewishness seems to be a circle that is easy to be included in, but almost impossible to be kicked out “

    and,

    ” … it seems as if there is no one in the Jewish “community” who quite parallels me, as I say: “Let those anal receptive East Coast basta**s fry in the fire they started – they are completely alien to me. Serves them right”

    Thus: it seems there is very little in the way of observed “excommunication”, even if only symbolic, informal and a fraternal disowning.

    3,

    “Gentile “Americans” (by and large purely a formal term involving no sense of mutual identification, recognition, or appreciation anyway) for example, are perfectly happy to have at each other; and can hardly wait for the opportunity to engage in a little so-called “Fratricide”.”

    And I meant that literally.

    Thus, a seeming difference

    4,

    ‘ … it will have to fall to someone identifying as Jewish as to why there is at least a perception of reluctance on their part to place the annoying [I will not say “their” annoying] on their honor … or else.’

    Thus, I will leave it to those who claim to know about these matters from the inside, to explain, if they wish

    Neo partly says in reply:

    Jews are quite famously divided, and “are perfectly happy to have at each other.”

    Sure, that is quite well known.

    Perhaps you mean literally, as in Jews killing Jews? Granted; not a whole lot of that. But short of that, there are enormously bitter divisions.

    That, maybe, but generally less. Less in the sense of simply declaring by name someone who claims tacitly or otherwise to share an identity with you, as being denied, disowned, alienated, specifically and overtly othered, and beyond the pale and living redemption or forgiveness. As condemned, “cut dead”, execrated, declared cursed and alien; though not necessarily killed

    Yes, that is what I am talking about.

  30. Oh well.. I do kind of like Gad Saad.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOeYmETz1Dw

    Gad Saad (Jew) and Nassim Taleb (Greek Orthodox Arab who thinks he’s a Phoenician FFS — and might even be right about that) are a good example of two highly ethno-centric and very eccentric gentlemen who come from different camps, but get along because they have some common causes — and common enemies.

    Nothing like Common Enemies to Bring People(s) Together.

    I’m kind of stuck on Mimesis here. Help me out, Om.

  31. Richard Aubrey: “But I don’t want to stand with those who are voting to kill me and mine along with themselves.”

    Exactly!

  32. @neo:

    Sheldon Adelson. Are you not aware that the practically the last thing he did before dying was ship back notorious traitor Jonathan Pollard to Israel in his private jet?

    Shall I quote verbatim what Pollard had to say about the duty of Jews living in other lands to spy for Israel the moment his feet hit the tarmac in Tel Aviv?

    Sheldon Adelson made a very good living out of exploiting gambling addicts, money launderers and prostitutes and all the other charming folks hanging around the casino trade. Hardly a noble character, but someone has to do this kind of job and so we’ll leave Central Casting out of it.

    I’d ask Adelson to defend himself, but he’s taking a dirt nap on (well in) the Mount of Olives. American soil wasn’t good enough for him.

    That’s not to say that Adelson was all bad. Sometimes his interests and American interests coincided. Sometimes they did not. Ultimately his loyalty was Tribal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that ™.

    Everybody has a right to look to their own ethnic interests. Anybody who does not or who talks about some nebulous over-arching moral principles to obfuscate and excuse one group or promote inaction in another group is a fool or a scoundrel.

  33. DNW, I watched both of your videos and although they both deal with the Talmud, they also prove my point. Side note: daf yomi is the practice of reading the Talmud a page a day (takes 7 and a half years) and there’s lots of podcasts that take listeners on that journey. Nothing to do with the subject at hand, I just thought it was cool.

  34. Zaphpod now opines where an American chose to be buried. A bit of a reach. Bless his heart.

  35. @ Zaphod,

    I never expected to find myself in the nominalist role vis-a-vis someone else as the essentialist.

    Nonetheless, I cannot quite grasp what subraces or ethnic groups of persons you consider comprises the category of white people.

    Maybe you are just using it as a flippant term for American suburbanites.

    Or maybe by way of exposure and comparison, you have, as have SerpentZA and Laowhy86 [YouTubers married to Chinese women] come through prolonged and intimate and daily association with Chinese people to believe in certain fundamental hard-wired differences in environmental and social requirements and responses between an “average” Asian, and an “average” Caucasian or Westerner.

    Yet, given your general take on Slavs, Irish, Scandinavians, German 48’ers and the most obviously and indisputably evil of them all as I note, the Unitarians of New England and their crazy hypocrite forebears, I wonder who other than the estimable Scotch Irish and the glorious settlers of the Tidewater, are left?

    Half of English public school boys were once reputedly bugger meat we are told, and the Church of England a job’s program scam run for second sons; the modern Scots seem lunatic, half of France is seeking national death as a way of acheiving “the little death”… etc., etc.

    Who are these white people then? As a class, I don’t think they are anybody easily definable; though, in contradistinction to some populations they may seem so at least in terms of percentages with certain dispositions which manifest in social behavior terms.

    Some time ago, people here were fond of quoting some piece of Kipling doggerel about “The Saxon”. Hell, there ain’t no Saxons anymore.

    And remember who the first birth control/ recreational sex enthusiasts were. White Middle Class American Suburbanites.

    I mean, LOL, who is claiming to stand for Western Civilization and refusing to commit suicide now? The Poles and the Hungarians by all appearances.

    I think “White people” are a lost cause as a generalization. And, in my estimation, they who brought about their own destruction bloody well deserve it.

    Maybe after they are dragged through the streets by their hair, screaming on the way to be “eradicated”, it will be worth gathering the strays and cleaning up. But in the meantime, let their homes burn.

  36. I will simply leave a link or two to some Messianic Jews, who, though not unbiased, should know something whereof they speak.

    In my experience, Messianics know virtually nothing about traditional Judaism except what they learned from a Christian perspective. They do tend to retroactively exaggerate their level of Jewish observance, pre-conversion. That’s besides their intellectual dishonesty at asserting that the very rabbinic Judaism that they reject is in fact filled with symbolic references to Jesus.

    If you’d like to learn something about the concepts of the Written and Oral Torahs, Herman Wouk’s This Is My God is a good start.

  37. @JAM:

    Messianic Jews and a certain sub-type of Puppy-like Philosemitic Evangelicals… O Brave New World! I’m not the most empathetic person at the best of times, but I think I feel your pain.

    Now how about the Karaites? 😀

  38. Eva Marie on May 19, 2021 at 11:43 pm said:

    DNW, I watched both of your videos and although they both deal with the Talmud, they also prove my point. Side note: daf yomi is the practice of reading the Talmud a page a day (takes 7 and a half years) and there’s lots of podcasts that take listeners on that journey. Nothing to do with the subject at hand, I just thought it was cool.”

    Hi Eva,

    Interesting, weren’t they …

    But, how does the dubious doctrine of the Oral Torah prove your contentions as you see it?

    Just asking. Not arguing.

  39. @DNW:

    I fear you may be right, and The Devil Take the Hindmost.

    But a man can lament. Next Year in Jerusalem!

    See you in a few thousand years 🙂

    I used to watch Laowhy and SerpentZA. They’ve made a good business of saying the same thing 10,000 times and keeping up their viewership regardless. Of course they’re right about their basic message. Peoples are different.

    As for me, I’m Irish, Highland Scots, English, and Litvak. Three of those contribute directly to my combative obnoxiousness and the English bit means I can’t cook. Fortunately English forebears were too proletarian to be sodomised at Eton, so small mercies. I guess if I learned to carve runes and recite Sagas I could become a Druid 😀

    PS: It’s almost as if it’s a bad idea to become a Mongrel Race when others around you have not.

  40. @DNW:

    Addendum: There’s also a good deal of the Gordon Chang Shtick about those two. You can make a good living telling Americans that China sucks and is going to fail Real Soon Now.

    Reality is more nuanced and complicated. It might or it might not. But you’d be better off putting your money on heads or tails than whatever Gordon Chang is peddling this week.

  41. Zaphod:

    Your ruminations on Adelson have nothing to do with the point I was making. I was talking about Jews and political donations. No need to repeat myself, either.

  42. Johann Amadeus Metesky on May 19, 2021 at 11:52 pm said:

    I will simply leave a link or two to some Messianic Jews, who, though not unbiased, should know something whereof they speak.

    In my experience, Messianics know virtually nothing about traditional Judaism except what they learned from a Christian perspective. They do tend to retroactively exaggerate their level of Jewish observance, pre-conversion. That’s besides their intellectual dishonesty at asserting that the very rabbinic Judaism that they reject is in fact filled with symbolic references to Jesus.

    What you say may possibly apply to the Israelis I have linked to. But then again, what your experience has convinced you of and what these fellows quoting the Talmud itself are doing, might be two different things. In any event, they are making specific claims regarding the provenance of the Talmud which if false should be easily refuted.

    If you’d like to learn something about the concepts of the Written and Oral Torahs, Herman Wouk’s This Is My God is a good start.

    One of the texts we used in the course was Morris Adler’s “The World of the Talmud”.

    My main original point to Eva of course was that although Christians may not equate modern Judaism with the beliefs of the Karaites (who have been discussed here before) they almost certainly have no idea of the depth of the role of the Talmud in defining Judaism.

  43. “My main original point to Eva of course was that although Christians may not equate modern Judaism with the beliefs of the Karaites (who have been discussed here before) they almost certainly have no idea of the depth of the role of the Talmud in defining Judaism.”

    This. They think it’s Muh Pentateuch all the Way. It ain’t. But a few Hollywood Epics with bearded guys in tents sure made that notion stick. Which is a pity… there’s more Meat in Maimomedes than in his water-divining and repelling namesake 😀

  44. DNW:

    But observant Jews used to do that all the time, and for all I know, many may still do it. Have you not ever heard of someone marrying out of the faith in the olden days and the parents mourning as though for the dead for them? I believe that even in “Fiddler on the Roof,” when the third daughter marries the Russian guy, her father says she is never to be mentioned again, or something like that. At the very end of the play when they are emigrating and she is staying, they do say goodbye and he relents and blesses them, but initially he completely rejects them. Judaism is not a centralized religion, though, so this was an individual decision although a common one.

  45. @ Zaphod,

    The first couple of times I saw Gordon Chang talk I was impressed. But I found a little of him went a long way.

    Now, I am going to have to look up “Litvak”. I keep trying to picture some small state located in a crack between Estonia and Lithuania or Latvia or however they are arranged, or somewhere off Finland or arctic Norway. But truth be told, at the moment I just cannot place it.

    Maybe it is the Lichtenstein of Moldova or something.

    I’ll look it up in the morning.

  46. DNW: 2 points:
    First, the main point of the OT is that humans were created with free will. That Jews didn’t follow the laws as set down by God is the most important point the OT makes – that’s what proves that we are born with free will.
    Second, if you’re a Christian you have to depend on this or that translation of the Bible. But with the creation of Israel, Hebrew was resurrected as a living language. Any kid who can read, can pick up the original texts and understand them. So these words written 2500 to 1000 years ago, that give pause to tyrants and dictators, are as alive as anything written today.

  47. @DNW:

    Lithuanian Jews. Most obnoxious of them all, by many accounts hehe. Have a look at the White-(ish) membership of the ANC (late unlamented Joe Slovo being case in point) — Helluva a Lot of Litvaks. Having Tikkuned the South African Olam into Racial Equality, most have now zapped off to London or Tel Aviv where the Blacks have yet to drive everything to ruin.

    Some funny YouTube videos out there about Moldova. It’s a right Slavic track pants wearing @$%^hole. Salvation won’t be coming from there.

  48. Thus, I do not claim to know who is and who is not Jewish, nor how mutual recognition and legitimacy is evaluated.

    born of a Jewish mother or a halchic Orthodox
    conversion

  49. As for me, I’m Irish, Highland Scots, English, and Litvak.

    So why did your ancestors throw out their native culture to worship someone like me as a god?
    I mean worshipping an oak tree seems pretty high on the evolutionary scale.

  50. @avi:

    I guess they weren’t as ethnocentric and xenophobic as your ancestors. More fool them (mine). So there you go. But some of us are trying to be more like you. Probably too little and too late.

    PS: The Tree didn’t go around Transvaluating Values. Don’t knock the Tree 😀

  51. “I guess they weren’t as ethnocentric and xenophobic as your ancestors. ”
    but we never deified anyone, that would be against the rules

  52. Oh… I’ve got no problem with the idea that Christianity is a Jewish Heresy.

    Which had a good run for a long while, but not looking good of late. Mere Faith doesn’t hold a candle to the Law and the Observance thereof. Now Chesterton would have turned that into something very witty. Chesterton is dead. So, just about is his thing.

    Make no mistake, I’m all for your intransigence as a general principle. It works. Credit where due.

  53. “born of a Jewish mother or a halachic Orthodox conversion”

    That’s a hard row to hoe… although at least being born of a Jewish Mother-in-Law is optional.

    Missed by two generations and sex of offending great-grandparent the easy way in *and* by same logic would slip by the Nuremberg Laws. No wonder I’m such a misfit! Still I did inherit the Solipsism, so there’s that.

  54. Diversity NOW!
    Compare and contrast:
    “Jewish Google employees demand company condemn Israel”
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306458

    “An Open Letter to my Palestinian Arab brethren”
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306498

    It’s all soooo confusing…

    Thankfully, here’s some clarity:
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/541260
    (Should one begin to wonder if Abu Abbas is planning to run for a seat in the US House of Representatives…?, well, symbolically speaking.)

  55. @Barry Meislin

    Gandhi was of the opinion that the Jews should have made a beautiful gesture by cheerfully marching off to the slaughter. Obviously he didn’t get out that much. It’s a funny old world which takes all sorts.

    Just can’t bring myself to get misty-eyed about Palestinians or Iranians though, no matter how hard I try.

    Israeli Decapitation Strike on Google/YouTube would be no bad thing. Fratricide can be constructive.

  56. [Q] shouldn’t that phrase “a Jewish hate crime” be “an anti-Jewish hate crime”? [/Q]

    Yes, it should. But we getting things turned around on us is as old as Jew-hatred.

    I don’t how to answer when I’m asked “what do we do about anti-Semitism, meaning Jew-hatred?”

    I don’t know.

    You recognize it exists, irrational as it is and move on.

    Live a happy life and enjoy yourself.

    That makes Jew-haters mad!!

    Hey, all of you Jew-haters, out there: I have a good life and there’s nothing you can do about it. Now go suffer.

    As Venezuerica goes, respect for individual rights is gone so don’t expect any.

  57. @avi:

    “but we never deified anyone, that would be against the rules”

    Mister Golden Calf for you on Line 3.

    Now how’s that for Esprit de l’escalier?! Took a while to percolate up through my dim-witted neurons, I have to admit.

  58. I have a suspicion that the ‘tweet’ was a bit of free-booting by a Millennial nosepicker on the union staff, who will soon be fired.

  59. There are 21 posts by Zaphod on this thread.

    You got a bad performance review from Hy Goldberg in 1995. Get over it.

  60. Fired or Fried. It’s one thing to sidle up to the Third Rail and count coup, it’s another thing to sit astride it and take selfies. He/She/It is Toast.

  61. Art+Deco:

    There’s the Oldest Profession and then there’s the Oldest Sideshow Attraction.

    A man’s gotta have his entertainment, you know.

    I favour the more whimsical ETA Hoffmann surname coinages — Goldberg falls a bit flat.

  62. Oldflyer –

    Geraldo has moved to Cleveland. I live here too.

    He’s gotta keep the hot wife happy.

  63. I warned of this a while back…
    i would have preferred to be wrong

    The rise of totalitarianism in general includes:

    The demonization of political opponents. Totalitarianism doesn’t see its political opponents as misguided or even good-faith people with disagreements. Rather, it sees groups of people as obstacles to be overcome or destroyed. Oftentimes, groups are scapegoated because of who they are rather than what they think, but typically both types of “dissent” are repressed.

    The formation of political mobs. Ironically, totalitarianism requires some mass support on the ground to get going. These political mobs, which are effectively goon squads, are somewhere between conformity enforcement and an end-zone dance. Political mobs not only demonstrate that the totalitarian movement has meaningful social power on the street, but they also consolidate and increase that power by victimizing individuals who oppose them or groups who have been chosen as a scapegoat.

    Support from allies within the state. In each of the above cases, militias and paramilitary groups operating with impunity because they were protected by sympathetic members of the state apparatus. This need not be over political sympathy. It can simply mean looking the other way while people are victimized, while at the same time attacking anyone who defends themselves against politically motivated violence.

    The politicization of everyday life. The personal is not political. Most people are simply trying to live their lives as best they can, without political considerations. Totalitarian groups, however, believe that everything a person does has a political character. This forces all of society to walk on eggshells.
    Rapid change of social values. When opinions that were very recently considered completely acceptable and normal are quickly and radically viewed as something one dare not express publicly, there is a cultural revolution underway that might well be a prelude to a political and economic one.

    Electoral chicanery. While it’s certainly true that totalitarian ideologies enjoy mass support, they rarely, if ever, win at the ballot box without some chicanery. This could be outright fraud, voter intimidation, voter suppression, or other dirty tricks designed to marginalize opposing views.

  64. Zaphod on May 20, 2021 at 12:42 am said regarding his Litvak ancestry:

    @DNW:

    Lithuanian Jews. Most obnoxious of them all, by many accounts hehe.

    Now, I know.

    I kept picturing some Sami types in log cabins, or a guy with a huge handlebar mustache and a sheepskin fleece fez; posed arrogantly on a mountainside, knife at belt, and pelisse hanging off shoulder.

    Have a look at the White-(ish) membership of the ANC (late unlamented Joe Slovo being case in point) — Helluva a Lot of Litvaks. Having Tikkuned the South African Olam into Racial Equality, most have now zapped off to London or Tel Aviv …”

    I have seen that act before, as I have previously mentioned on this site. In that instance the protagonist was an Episcopalian Church Lady whose excuse for fleeing what she had determinedly wrought, was that her children were being attacked and their bikes stolen. Self sacrifice has its limit apparently; and that limit is reached when there are no Neanderthals left to protect you and indulge your conceits. Then, its off to Neanderthal land, to begin again … in safety.

  65. avi on May 20, 2021 at 1:04 am said:

    “I guess they weren’t as ethnocentric and xenophobic as your ancestors. ”
    but we never deified anyone, that would be against the rules …”

    I suppose that depends on what you mean by, “we”, and “deify”.

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-followers-of-hasidic-rabbi-convicted-of-rape-hail-superhuman-powers-1.6007950

    “God can be incarnated in a human being, in the form of the tzadik,” one of his followers explained to Haaretz. This is a mantra for his most dedicated followers who see the rabbi as God incarnated, and state he is allowed to do anything.

  66. “but we never deified anyone, that would be against the rules”
    Mister Golden Calf for you on Line 3.
    the erev rav,
    check mate

  67. Heretical sect condemned by almost everyone.
    the one thing Dan Brown got correct was that the original Jewish Christians never deified Jesus because that would be considered pagan.

  68. the one thing Dan Brown got correct was that the original Jewish Christians never deified Jesus because that would be considered pagan.

    You need to relearn what is meant by the term ‘correct’.

  69. Avi wryly said [to Zaphod, not to me]:

    So why did your ancestors throw out their native culture to worship someone like me as a god?

    Humorous intent aside: Two assumptions there. 1, Zaphod’s ancestors threw out their native culture; 2, that Jesus (whom you apparently mean) was “like” you.

    To take the second point first – as if it were half seriously meant – we have to ask in what sense Jesus was taken by those who abandoned paganism, to be like you. Virgin birth, amaze the Rabbi’s with your perspicuity and precocious learning, heal the sick, raise the dead, feed the multitudes, walk on water, indicted by blasphemy by the religious authorities of your time, hang on a cross, die and resurrect yourself, much?

    No, and placing aside the historicity of those events which you would certainly reject, of course not. After all, no one has even credited you – deservedly or not – with such acts and virtues. If they had, I am sure it would have been in the news, eh?

    But nonetheless those are the grounds upon which “worship” and honor of, and faith in, Jesus was accorded he of the Gospels.

    So by “like me” you obviously mean something else than the grounds people actually used. But what, exactly, you left unstated.

    Now, to take the first point second.

    Here, I would refer you to the famous passage in Bede, wherein the story of Coifi the pagan priest and his reasoning about his rejection of his own former practices is related.

    And too, a quick glance at the Saga I mentioned the other day, “Hfrankell Priest of Frey” will give an independent non-Christian account of the disillusion of the very priests of paganism with their own religion. Some ruthlessly honest ones, that is.

    I mean worshipping an oak tree seems pretty high on the evolutionary scale.

    I don’t know that the Prophets would agree with you. They certainly condemned it – so say the scriptures – when the Israelites practiced it.

    “You burn with lust among the oaks and under every spreading tree; you sacrifice your children in the ravines and under the overhanging crags.”

    “Surely you will be ashamed of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be embarrassed by the gardens that you have chosen.

    “Then you will know that I am the LORD, when their slain lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, and under every green tree and leafy oak–the places where they offered fragrant incense to all their idols.”

  70. avi on May 20, 2021 at 11:44 am said:

    Heretical sect condemned by almost everyone.
    the one thing Dan Brown got correct was that the original Jewish Christians never deified Jesus because that would be considered pagan.

    I suppose that is directed at me, or at what I had written.

    1, You say “never”. I show someone. You rejoin “heretical”. I say by the admission of Jewish people themselves there is no general authority with the power of proscription. You will no doubt appeal to a “consensus” or a council of rabbis, and nothing ever gets resolved.

    I gave an example you waved it away … we are getting nowhere with my treating you as even partly sincere on this topic.

    2, How would you know what Dan Brown got right?

  71. Blah, Blah. They will come for us all. Jew, Kulak, wrecker, deplorable, family, friends, neighbors (the other N-word). The Black uniforms in the street are “tactical” and are run by those in the big offices who are controlled by those who are stuffing their pockets with worthless paper while smearing cheap praise. Aim high! Those in the street are cannon-fodder (dangerous but expendable). Watch for the “mechanic” who is dealing the cards. Don’t be confused by the psycho-babble or afraid of chaos.

  72. avi, it is not really worth engaging with the narcissistic faux-literate zman.

  73. DNW:

    I think it’s pretty clear what “we” means, actually. “We” does not mean “a fringe sect whose beliefs are repudiated by the vast vast majority” – as opposed to “one of the main foundations, perhaps even the principal foundation, of an entire religion with billions of adherents.”

  74. Eva Marie. As you read the Old Testament you should keep
    in mind Rabbi Hillel’s (ca. 100 BC) summary, “Don’t do to others what is hateful to you. The rest is details”. If you go back to the beginning, Eve is in trouble right away. This is followed by Caine and Able, and on and on… It’s one continuous morality tale of what not to do, if you understand how to read it.

    You could also get a Jewish Bible. It normally has Rabbinical commentary for almost every line of text. It does bog down the reading though.

  75. The “Jewish Bible” published in reformed, now labeled “progressive,” congregations.

  76. I don’t know that the Prophets would agree with you. They certainly condemned it – so say the scriptures – when the Israelites practiced it.

    yes the condemned Israelites who took on pagan customs from their gentile neighbors

  77. FWIW, there is a group of theologians and scholars (not sure how large, mind you) who view Christianity not as a “replacement” for Judaism but as a way of spreading God’s word (AKA gospel) to the (let’s call them) uninitiated.

    As such, Christianity does not compete with, or supplant, Judaism but is viewed as a kind of partner—garnering adherents to a religion based on Judaism but not as stringent, on any number of levels, in its religious demands. IOW providing them with a path—an accessible path—to God.

    There are those, certainly, (on both sides of the aisle) who object to this view (even fiercely) and for several reasons. And yet, there is a “cooperative” aspect to it that some might find theologically relevant, and even attractive.

    (Islam can be regarded in similar fashion, but there are several complications, since as far as I understand it, Islam is seen by the faithful as actually PRECEDING Judaism (never mind the timeline and/or that the Koranic narrative does parallel—can’t say “is based on” I guess—the OT and NT), which relegates Judaism (as well as Christianity) to a category of false (or maybe I should say, “relatively false”), though inspired, religions—and their adherents as “People of the Book”, which is nonetheless a respected category.

  78. “neo on May 20, 2021 at 3:24 pm said:

    DNW:

    I think it’s pretty clear what “we” means, actually. “We” does not mean “a fringe sect whose beliefs are repudiated by the vast vast majority” – as opposed to “one of the main foundations, perhaps even the principal foundation, of an entire religion with billions of adherents.”

    Had to re-read that remark directed to me several times in order to divine precisely what was meant. [pun intended]

    I take it that what is being mooted are

    – the Jewish and Christian religions’ self-identified adherents respectively;

    – and specifically with regard to their attributing man-god status to an identifiable human being [in the case of Catholic (broad def.) Christians, Jesus as the second person of the single triune God],

    – while representing or maintaining an intellectually coherent “we”.

    Now Avi, originally said in the case of Judaism that “never” happened. And then after that, when I adduced the counter example, he maintained that that was in essence irrelevant because the persons denominated were in effect No True …

    Which, I suppose might be true, if we had a crystal clear and universally accepted dogmatic definition of a Jew – which I did not intend to propose, nor claim any knowledge of.

    But Avi did. And Avi informed me that it was : “born of a Jewish mother or a halchic Orthodox conversion”

    So, the Rebbes and their followers, despite being labeled as heretics, are undoubtedly Jewish according to that minimal standard. What authority Avi then has to rely on in order to pronounce them heretics nonetheless – especially if one expands the Torah beyond the written Torah – is another matter. The rabbis according to that, have afterall overcome God as authorities. Who is to say then, and on what basis, they are to be inhibited – no matter who they are – in their proclamations?

    Weight of numbers:

    In accounting the number of self-identified Jewish persons who are both observant and believing, and comparing their numbers against the Chabad group, it appears that the groups having some members who attribute divinity to this or that Rabbi, is indeed relatively small, though not necessarily negligible in either numbers or impact on the Jewish world.

    But either way, it is not a “one -off” when one of them is accorded divine status .

    In re., Chabad Lubavitch, https://www.jewishnorthyork.org/about-chabad-lubavitch-world-wide-movement.html

    “Chabad-Lubavitch, with over 3,500 international branches, is the largest Jewish organization in the world today”

    Wiki:

    “In 1951, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson formally accepted the leadership as the seventh Chabad Rebbe. He transformed the movement into one of the most widespread Jewish movements in the world today. Under his leadership, Chabad established a large network of institutions that seek to satisfy religious, social and humanitarian needs across the world.Chabad institutions provide outreach to unaffiliated Jews and humanitarian aid, as well as religious, cultural and educational activities. Unlike most ultra-Orthodox groups, which are self-segregating, Chabad operates mainly in the wider world and caters to secularized Jews. Schneerson was also believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah, and his own position on the matter is debated among scholars. Chabad’s messianic ideology sparked controversy in the Jewish Orthodox world, engendering recrimination against Chabad. Rabbi Schneerson’s 1994 (3 Tamuz 5754) death shocked many followers. The movement did not appoint a new leader, and is split between moderates, who prefer not to discuss the Messianic question, and Messianics who claim that he did not truly die and will reappear.

    In 2018, Marcin Wodzi?ski estimated that the Chabad movement accounted for 13% of the global Hasidic population. The total number of Chabad households is estimated to be between 16,000 and 17,000.[8] The number of those who sporadically or regularly attend Chabad events is far larger; in 2005 the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reported that up to one million Jews attend Chabad services at least once a year.”

    Rabbi Eliezer Berland, was previously linked to with regard to some of his disciples attribution of divinity to him.
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-followers-of-hasidic-rabbi-convicted-of-rape-hail-superhuman-powers-1.6007950

    He is not the only example.

    Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is probably the more famous case:

    “Rabbi Ariel Sokolovsky is a Moldova-born Chabad rabbi in Portland, Oregon, and a more amiable soul would be hard to find.

    Yet Sokolovsky maintains a blog he entitled “Rebbegod” and refers to Schneerson as “Rebbe-Almighty” among other adulatory sobriquets.

    Drawing on rabbinical sources, he attempts to show that this is not as revolutionary as it sounds. He concedes that there are few people like him who will openly call the Rebbe God. He claims, however, that many people believe it, but do not say so openly for fear of scaring people away from Chabad altogether.

    While he argues that the Rebbe and God are not the same thing exactly, he says that he does not object to people thinking that they are the same thing. …

    Members of the congregation were happy to explain:

    What do the pins signify?”It symbolizes our dedication to the Rebbe above all else.”

    Above all else? Above God? “As far as we are concerned, we can pray to the Rebbe and he can deal with God for us.”

    Is that not turning the Rebbe into a god himself, an idol of your own creation? “The Rebbe was not created; the Rebbe has always been around and always will be.”

    https://www.haaretz.com/1.4804959?v=1621540920526

    And then of course, there is always room for a little comic relief:

    “In 1666 Shabbetai Tzvi was arrested in Constantinople. After a period of imprisonment — during which he held court as messiah, replaced the fast of the 9th of Av (Tisha B’Av) with a festival celebrating his birthday and began to sign his letters “I am the Lord your God Shabbetai Tzvi” [Eventually] Offered the choice of apostasy or death, he chose to convert to Islam. Shabbetai Tzvi became Aziz Mehmed Effendi, and, with a royal pension, lived until 1676, outwardly a Muslim but secretly participating in Jewish ritual.

    https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shabbetai-zevi/

  79. Avi,

    I’m done with your petulant sniping. You cannot even muster the conscientiousness to bother with quotation marks.

    Look up Schneerson and add him to your list of “never” heretics.

  80. @DNW:

    “I kept picturing some Sami types in log cabins, or a guy with a huge handlebar mustache and a sheepskin fleece fez; posed arrogantly on a mountainside, knife at belt, and pelisse hanging off shoulder.”

    I’d settle for being one of these triggering undiplomatic figures as imagined by the painter Ilya Repin:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossacks

    Henry Kissinger they were not:

    Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

    O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons. We have no fear of your army; by land and by sea we will battle with thee. Fuck thy mother.

    Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig’s snout, mare’s arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow. Screw thine own mother!

    So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won’t even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we’ll conclude, for we don’t know the date and don’t own a calendar; the moon’s in the sky, the year with the Lord. The day’s the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!
    —?Koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host

    Whatever the hell Macedonian Wheelwrights ever did to displease the Zaporozhian Cossacks remains a mystery to me.

  81. @Barry Meislin:

    Not a bad bit of workable compromise there. Muzzies might be a hard nut to crack as you suggest.

    Got me thinking though. I wonder how well Judaism would have survived had it not had often unfriendly monotheistic seas of Christianity and and Islam to swim in? Was looking for a long-lived exception, but alas perhaps mythical Khazars and the very real and intriguing and extinct Jews of Kaifeng cannot be presently reached for comment. I mean it’s harder to remain stiff-necked when no-one’s on your case. Not saying Christians or Muslims deserve a big thank you card, mind you… just random thought.

  82. Litvaks are the intellectual elite of Ashkenazi Jews. The best yeshivas were in Lithuania, with the Slobodka yeshiva known as the “mother of yeshivas”. Additionally, the mussar movement, which had a seminal role in today’s orthodox Jewish world, started in Lithuania at the Slobodka and Navaradok yeshivas.

    I suppose that Litvaks have produced their share of renegades and knaves but the simple truth is that due to the influence of R’ Aharon Kotler, who founded the Bais Medrash Gevohah, now in Lakewood, NJ, and others, much of today’s non-Chassidic orthodox Jewish world are the spiritual heirs of Lithuanian yeshivas.

  83. Yeah, life under the Romans was a cake walk. What did the Romans ever do for Judea? Just a random ….

  84. @JAM:

    That’s interesting. Hungarian Jews must have been close to their intellectual equals, although with a more mathematics / hard sciences bent.

    Who sits at the back of the Ashkenazi Classroom? Galicians?

  85. Artfldgr on May 20, 2021 at 10:43 am said:
    I warned of this a while back…
    i would have preferred to be wrong
    The rise of totalitarianism in general includes:
    * * *
    Excellent summary of the components, all of which have been discussed by Neo & The Salon many times.
    I also would have preferred for Artfl (and the many other Cassandra / Jeremiah analogs) to be wrong, but I suppose we will have to deal with the situation we have, and not the one we wish we had.

    The scriptures of the Hebrews, including the ones written by the Jewish disciples of Jesus, can give us some useful advice, on both spiritual and temporal levels.
    I will add that the Book of Mormon (also written by Israelites) was specifically targeted to the people living in The Last Days, and they apparently meant us.

  86. @RA:

    “Said it before; it will be sad/funny when Jews discover their safe spaces are Baptist churches and NASCAR events.”

    I’ve yet to see an Eruv strung around Pit Lane, but will keep a keen lookout for this harbinger of the End of Days.

    And for all you Baptists, Philhellenes, Wanderers in the Desert, and fans of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akRDzcFBcZE

  87. Funny how this thread got hijacked from neo’s original intention. That happens every single time now she writes about something pertaining to Jews.

  88. FOAF:

    That has been the case ever since I began blogging. It used to also be that any post about Jews attracted tons of anti-Jewish trolls.

  89. Phooey.

    To get back to the point of the original post, personal security is paramount.

    This is why you can never discuss it with our liberal co-religionists. They are against it. They don’t want it for Jews. Period. And they are against any means to obtain it: the police or otherwise. If you bring up the particulars of otherwise, you’ll get red flagged so fast your head will spin.

  90. “@JAM:

    That’s interesting. Hungarian Jews must have been close to their intellectual equals, although with a more mathematics / hard sciences bent.

    Who sits at the back of the Ashkenazi Classroom? Galicians?”

    Galitzianers? Hey now…

  91. “@JAM:

    That’s interesting. Hungarian Jews must have been close to their intellectual equals, although with a more mathematics / hard sciences bent.”

    The preeminent ashkenazi rabbi of the 18th century was R’ Eliyahu of Vilna, a Litvak, better known as the Vilna Gaon, the genius of Vilna. In addition to his rabbinical scholarship, he wrote a book on trigonometry and was also knowledgeable about astronomy.


    Who sits at the back of the Ashkenazi Classroom? Galicians?”

    Galitzianers? Hey now…

    Both Polish and Litvak Jews agree that Galitzianers can’t speak proper Yiddish.

  92. @JAM:

    Thanks again. I am now a confirmed Litvak Booster, with some exceptions for any present and ex-Politburo members of the South African Communist Party.

    “Both Polish and Litvak Jews agree that Galitzianers can’t speak proper Yiddish.”

    We have arrived, finally, at Synthesis. A fitting conclusion.

  93. Hamas (Muslim Brotherhood by the Shore, i.e. Team Fascisit) is building its street cred amongst the “squatters” by attempting to kill any jewish civilians that they can reach. They are, of course, friends of the American Progressives. Guess what the Progs have in mind for you.

    The Progs are upset by the thought that the fancy apartment with clean water, electricity, internet that they stole from them productive people can be taken from them in a flash. The IDF “bunker busters” just remind them of what is out in the darkness.

    As long as the population of Gaza tolerates the Hamas gang, they will starve amidst the filth. You know. Sort of like Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago-south, etc.

  94. DNW:

    There are people born Jewish who believe in Jesus, but I think it would be a stretch at that point to call them Jews anymore, except in the genetic sense. Judaism is a religion, but it’s also a people. And then, just to complicate matters, Ashkenazi Jews are also a genetic group.

    However, Lubavitchers are a sect that does definitely identify as Jewish. Not all of them believe in the divinity of Schneerson, as your own quotes indicate:

    …he attempts to show that this is not as revolutionary as it sounds. He concedes that there are few people like him who will openly call the Rebbe God. He claims, however, that many people believe it, but do not say so openly for fear of scaring people away from Chabad altogether.

    In other words, it’s an unJewish thought that would scare adherents away, few people say they believe it but he guesses they secretly do. Not very convincing that this is a widely held belief. And the rest of your quote indicates that even those who do believe it don’t exactly believe it in the manner that Christians believe in Jesus’s divinity.

    What’s more – and this is the most important point – the belief that a person is a god or even God directly contradicts the most basic bedrock belief of Judaism. That’s why some people call these people heretics.

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