Universalism’s toxic saccharine
(According to Honig) The world pretends that no people is culpable for the holocaust and no particular group was targeted. But the same hatred of the Jews which offered them no escape from their destruction, now singles them out for hatred as the new Nazis. And most of the same countries that doomed the Jews to their fate in Europe are now dooming them to their fate in their homeland.T. Belman
“By universalism’s distorted yardstick, bloodstained Germany can under fortuitous circumstances transform into spotless, progressive New Germany, while Jews (whose life-affirming, justice-affirming and peace-affirming ethos is the antithesis of what Germany generated) can become the New Nazis.”
By Sarah Honig
If a netherworld truly exists, then its most infamous denizen, one Adolf Hitler, must be rubbing his hands in glee. During his lifetime, when he preoccupied the entire world with his war, he never ceased to proclaim hysterically that his paramount aim was annihilating all Jews. Obsessively he reiterated his resolve to cause all nations to unite in recognition of inborn Jewish villainy.
To some extent he already succeeded among his contemporaries. The Allies never sincerely cared about Jews and never fought for them. They protected their own skins. Europe’s Jews were eventually liberated via the much-belated byproduct of Germany’s defeat. The enormity of the Holocaust could have been lessened, but it was nobody’s priority.
The Allies’ indifference derived from their own Judeophobia, albeit of lower grade than the Nazi variety. Mere months before World War II’s outbreak, when the Holocaust was about to be kick-started, Britain published its notorious White Paper ruling out this country as a viable asylum for refugees from Hitler’s hell. Germany’s Jews were already shorn of citizenship and fleeing, stateless, in all directions. Hitler’s threats were well recorded, shouted in the world’s face and hardly kept secret.
The White Paper encompassed all the dubious goodwill the international community could reluctantly muster, lest “changes on the ground” occur that might rile Arabs in and around the Jewish homeland.
Yet the fault wasn’t Britain’s alone. Hitler tauntingly invited all democracies to take his Jews, if they were so fretful about them. He knew that for all their self-righteous rhetoric, these states wouldn’t accept his provocative challenge. After 1938’s Anschluss, their representatives met in Evian-les-Bains, on Lake Geneva’s French shore, to decide what to do with Nazism’s desperate victims, pounding on their gates in search of sanctuary. They never even called them Jews, lest they incur the fuehrer’s wrath.
It turned into a great Jew-rejection fest. Britain bristled at any hint of allowing refugees into Eretz Yisrael, mandated to it to administer as the Jewish National Home. Progenitors of today’s Palestinian terrorists made sure endangered Jews wouldn’t be sheltered, and His Majesty’s government appeasingly assented.
The vast empty spaces of Canada, Australia and New Zealand were likewise off-limits.
The American humanitarianism of Franklin Roosevelt, who unreservedly shared the predispositions of his European counterparts, consisted of tossing the undesirable hot potato into the international arena, because Jews weren’t wanted in the Land of the Free either.
Indeed FDR toyed with the notion of shipping German Jews to Ethiopia or Central Africa. The UK favored the jungles of Venezuela or Central America. Mussolini changed direction northward. Instead of exposing Berlin’s urbane Jews to the rigors of the tropics, he opined that the Siberian arctic might be a preferable hardship.
The competition was on: who’d suggest a more remote and less hospitable exile in which to dump those whom the British Foreign Office shamelessly labeled “unwanted Jews.”
The motivation wasn’t much more beneficent than Hitler’s initial choice of Madagascar.
These were the seeds. Once war erupted, all attempts to rescue Jews were rejected. The Allies couldn’t even be bothered to bomb the railways into Auschwitz or the crematoria therein, though they did drop leaflets at a POW camp nearby.
Maddeningly, if he could peek into our reality today, a gloating Hitler would discern a world which had turned against the Jewish state in almost knee-jerk unison. The sovereign Jewish aggregate is treated like a despised pariah among the nations.
Pro forma none of this bears Third Reich hallmarks. The cynical pretense is that of enlightenment and benevolent antagonism to Nazism. The sappy “universalist” lesson learned from the Holocaust suggests that history’s greatest premeditated crime wasn’t particularized but had something nebulous to do with human nature and hate for nameless “others.”
The identity of both victims and perpetrators has conveniently been scrapped from history – the Jewishness of the six million and the Germanic faces of their murderers. A convenient mythology of German victimhood and lack of culpability is now the prevalent liberal theme. Holocaust atrocities were committed by indeterminate Martians called Nazis. Something bad happened about which nobody knew and for which nobody is blameworthy.
That essentially was the recurrent refrain of Pope Benedict XVI’s frosty homily at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2006. To hear the Bishop of Rome, no occupied country ever colluded in deporting its Jews, none spawned greedy looters and collaborators, while the occupiers themselves were an alien band of no distinct ethnicity, known generically as Nazis, or, in his words, “a ring of criminals.”
Germany found itself embroiled in the unpleasantness almost incidentally. Gone from public discourse is the fiendish underside of German Jew-revulsion (the very term anti-Semitism was minted in 19th-century Germany). The Judensau (Jew-sow) was, for example, a shocking popular cultural mainstay of German religious and institutional artwork from medieval days and beyond. It’s still proudly exhibited on cathedrals, churches and public structures.
Most notable is the bas relief on the Wittenberg Stadtkirche, where Martin Luther preached. Luther himself commented: “Here on our church in Wittenberg a sow is sculpted in stone. Piglets and Jews lie suckling under her… A rabbi lifts her hind leg, holding her tail high and looking intensely under her tail and into her Talmud, as though reading something acute or extraordinary, which is certainly where they get their ShemHaMphoras [God’s explicit name, shoddily transliterated from the Hebrew].”The inscriptions above the bas relief indeed read: ShemHaMphoras and Rabini.
The roots of the Holocaust are embedded deep in Germany’s psyche and cannot be explained away as mere aversion to foreigners. Analogies to Islamophobia are spurious. Jews resided in Germany from the dawn of its history and were more Germanized than Germans. They were hardly outsiders and certainly not Germany’s enemies.
And yet the past is conveniently shunted aside. At the very most, Jews and Germans are viewed as players inadvertently cast in given roles as the genocide drama unfolded. These roles, we’re told, are eminently interchangeable.
By universalism’s distorted yardstick, bloodstained Germany can under fortuitous circumstances transform into spotless, progressive New Germany, while Jews (whose life-affirming, justice-affirming and peace-affirming ethos is the antithesis of what Germany generated) can become the New Nazis.
This has seeped into Israel’s discourse, too. Political-correctness purveyors make sure we don’t dwell on our fears of falling victim to a new genocide but that we admonish ourselves for being potential New Nazis – vis-à-vis genocidal Arabs, illegal infiltrators and even elderly Holocaust survivors.
Instead of teaching our young not to count on the conscience of other nations, we inculcate in them sensitivity to the demoralizing narratives of those who slander the Jewish collective.
Self-flagellating demagoguery reigns supreme among us, painting ourselves blacker than black, while absolving our enemies of any sin (foremost the inimical descendants of Nazism’s avid Arab collaborators).
If Holocaust Remembrance Day obliges us to anything, it is to see the Holocaust again through Jewish eyes and resist universalism’s toxic saccharine. Otherwise, Hitler will have won. Syrupy sanctimony demonizes our national revival and simultaneously dulls our vigilance in the face of threats from Hitler’s Islamic torchbearers.
Note: The American people are standing by us and so are others. Thank you.
Not until Jews everywhere and Israel in particular, prove to the rest of the world that Jews do not need their help. We can take care of the Arabs and all other anti-semites. We will have the respect of the most anti-semites only when Jews quit trying to be the nice guy and become ass hole mean. When Israel annexes Judea and Samaria and tells the Arabs and other Muslims to kiss our rear end and we tell the EU and the US to stay the hell out of our business, we will get that respect. When Israel gets a tough, mean as hell Prime Minister, we will get that respect. When Israel and Jews world wide decide that the game will be played only with their rules, we will get their respect.
Sarah Honig is the Best writer on the web. This essay is a masterpiece of form and content, it should not only be read but studied.
This is Ted Bellman’s opinion and notation, not Sarah Honigs.
LIES BECOME TRUTH IN KOSOVO
By Eugene Narrett, PhD
“the lie becomes truth.” Another warning for Israel. The signal features of the New World Order described by George Orwell in his prescient novel, 1984 are the re-writing and forgetting of history overseen and demanded by the State as the price of each subject’s survival. Acquiescence to a society organized around chronic war in which last year’s enemy becomes this year’s ‘eternal’ friend is achieved by media made a branch of government, the Ministry of Newspeak. No other news sources are permitted. Books have been burned or sequestered. Memory is the ultimate “thought-crime.” Each person must practice “double think,” the conscious denial and suppression of thoughts and knowledge that contradict the State’s official lies.
Complementing the distortion of the present and forgetting of the past is a steady stream of propaganda droning out of televisions and loudspeakers identifying and demonizing the enemy du jour. All workers must gather for a “daily hate” that displaces thought by emotion, makes hysteria habitual and allows employers and sensitivity trainers to observe and punish inadequate zealotry and conformity. The result is that
“the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”
This process is in high gear domestically in the official promotion of multi-culturalism and is being applied to the Balkans and Israel with lessons every individual in the West must learn if its life is to remain worth living. NATO-American policy from the Balkans to Libya and its presentation of that policy in the media expresses the most destructive features of our culture of forgetting. Abrogated laws, hubris in the name of compassion, aggression in the name of peace and, above all, relentless dishonesty reflect a society on the brink of collapse into manufactured crises, mass hysteria and tyranny.
Obadiah Shoher
Samson Blinded
Jews concentrate on the Holocaust as a horrific event without realizing that the catastrophe was a part of the larger plan. The Anglo-American cooperation with Germany in annihilating the Jews hints that Jews are unwelcome far beyond Europe.
The West applied sanctions on North Korea and Pakistan easily, but not on Iran. America provides annual aid to Egypt, whose only enemy is Israel. The American push for democratization of Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt cannot be mere stupidity. Gazans continue to receive foreign aid after electing Hamas, which calls for destruction of Israel. The Fatah government is allowed to spend foreign aid on its terrorist wing. Israel’s means of defense are curtailed continually: Gaza war, Mabhouh’s liquidation, and the plans to attack Iran were all condemned. The international community forces Israel into indefensible borders and purposely humiliates by demanding that Jewish sacred places be left to Arabs, just as the Poles and Ottomans used synagogues for horse stables. The world presses Israel for a nineteenth-century solution by which Jerusalem would become Christian under the nominal international jurisdiction.
It was only the European part of the Holocaust that ended six decades ago.
The US establishment acquiesced in establishing Israel but offered no practical help. After the Arabs promised to drown the Jews in the sea if Israel were established, America pressured the Jews not to declare their state. The United States fought in many post-WWII wars and supported one side or the other in scores of other conflicts. Israel got no help from America in the 1947-48 war.
The Israeli War of Independence was long and bloody and America had plenty of opportunities to intervene. It didn’t. A little later in 1956, America applied diplomatic pressure and threatened military action to stop an Israeli-Franco-British strike against Egypt. Both Israel and Egypt were economically irrelevant to America, but it helped Egypt, not Israel. America has not hesitated to support colonialist powers against their vassals: France received US aid to fight in Vietnam. Egypt and Vietnam had similar communist regimes, but America supported the Egyptians. Its attitude to Egypt stems from a built-in dislike of Jews. The US establishment does not hate Jews enough to exterminate them but is sufficiently contemptuous of Jews to neglect helping them even in grave danger, whether by bombing Nazi death camps or supporting the newborn Jewish state against six regular Muslim armies.
The support Israel now enjoys from America is a self-delusion.
Yamit,
You were right, but you are wrong! Just like Judaism must be taught and practiced from father to son, so too must Antisemitism. The specifics of Antisemitism do not make sense to newbies. The stereotypes must be relearned in every generation. If the Jews stand tall and do not apologize for who they are, but invite (figuratively) the ‘other’ to view them, they will not succumb to the irrationality of hate. There are thousands of Germans who spent summer vacations on kibbutzim who now oppose creeping Euro-Antisemitism.
Israel’s problem is that no matter how welcoming and positive the population is, the world’s peoples are so multitudinous that Israel’s efforts only make minor dents. In that sense, Hitler and the Arabs have won. We are powerful enough to survive as we gather together, but not powerful enough to change the attitudes of self-interested parties since there is insufficient contact. On the whole, Antisemitism is a malady whose vector is ignorance, though there are other predisposing factors. Frankly, what seems to have worked best is Chabad whose approach allows small numbers of committed individuals to make contact with hundreds of thousands of people who would never have had the opportunity to speak with a practicing Jew.
Jerry – what you say makes sense… but…
On another thread, another day, one gentleman mentioned the warrior heritage of the Jews. The only way to have people respect us, is to have them fear us, and the only way to make them fear us is to beat the living daylights out of our enemies, wherever they are. In fact, Mossad, at one time, was able to invoke such fear; if you crossed Israel, you know you were going to suffer payback… I don’t know if Mossad still inspire this fear; I hope so…
We can only hope that Yamit has a direct, influential, line to the powers that be in Israel.
If the Jews stand tall and do not apologize for who they are
,
Jerry, that’s the key.
Nothing to apologize for.
They need to stand tall and be proud for who they are.
rongrand:
stand tall and be proud, even if they have to stand on their tippy tip toes.
The proud, the tall, the idiots.
I disagree with your premise that antisemitism is an acquired cultural anomaly. Judaism is revolutionary and is based on revolutionary predicates. The very word HEBREW means: “traverse or pass over”) the people from over on the other side. From Abraham till today the Jews have stood on the other side against the whole world and proclaimed that we hold the truth.
a basic tenet of Judaism regarding Am Yisrael which must be repeated a thousand times over: The Name of God and of Am Yisrael is connected to one another in a direct way. It is a connection that cannot be severed. This is why the degradation of the Jewish People is a degradation of His Holy Name, and the elevation of the Jewish People is a sanctification of His Name.
Deep in the recesses of their consciousness, the goyim have always sensed since the beginning of history, that the Jewish People are tied to the true God. But it is difficult for them to come to terms with this. They have always tried to deny this, but it is precisely their hysterical denials which bear out this point. Their obsessive hate for Jews, and their attempts to replace the Jews as the chosen ones – from Esau to Pharo to Nebuchadnezer to Christianity, until the Germans and Arabs of today – all this is proof that their conscious gives them no rest. This is the deeper understanding of the saying: “Esau hates Yaakov”, which is manifested today in a phenomenon coined “anti-Semitism.”
See preview of the
The Book The Jewish Revolution
The Jewish revolution
Why The Jews: Understanding the root of the world’s longest hatred.
The question is why, if Nazis could generate this kind of hatred of productive and law-abiding Jews, Jews and other infidels cannot whip up similar hatred of militant “Muslims.” It should be relatively easy, for example, to take part of “The Eternal Jew” in which Jews are compared to scurrying rats and interpose pictures of militant “Muslims” demanding Sharia law, threatening violence, and so on–just make sure to cut the clip before the word “Juden” is spoken. Take a look at some of the White Aryan Resistance’s cartoons of Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, and so on (preferably on an empty stomach) and adapt the concepts to create cartoons of militant “Muslims”–but always make sure there is truth behind the picture so it won’t be dismissed as just a nasty picture.
As stated by Joseph Goebbels, who learned his trade from Triple Entente propaganda and possibly the American Yellow Press, propaganda must appeal to the man in the street and the man in the beer hall. The latter must be taught to view the Islamic supremacist as a physical threat to his safety and that of his family (e.g. images of buck jihadists raping women of the Propaganda Man’s ethnicity–blonde women in Northern Europe, olive-skinned women in Southern Europe), a threat to his economic well-being (e.g. militant “Muslims” as parasites leeching off the working European’s tax money), and basically as filthy plague-carrying rats and subhuman vermin in general.
How about (for Jews) propaganda comparing militant “Muslims” with Nazis?
Propaganda was never the reason or cause for Jew Hatred, especially in CHRISTIAN EUROPE! At best the Nazi propaganda just reinforced preexisting beliefs about Jews. Nazi imagery only in some cases exaggerated commonly held 15 centuries of Christian Church blood libels against Jews. Like any other definable group (except Jews) Non Muslims need to be taught that Muslims and Islam are threats. As most people are ignorant not only of others general history they are ignorant of their own as well. When you add PC to the mix the Jews seem to be the only group that PC doesn’t shield from open attack. I wonder why?
Hitler’s only real target was the Jews, because they were all that stood between him and success. So long as the Jews survived, Hitler could never triumph. The Jewishly-rooted concepts of God and morality had taken hold in the world, and Hitler knew that either his own ideologies or those of the Jews would prevail. The world would not abide both.
Hitler said:
The Ten Commandments have lost their vitality. Conscience is a Jewish invention; it is a blemish, like circumcision.
The evil of Hitler lay not in his understanding of who the Jewish people are. His evil grew from his reactions to that understanding. Ironically, Hitler had a clearer understanding of who the Jewish people are, and what they have accomplished, than many Jews have today.
______________________________________________________________
Nietzsche said G-d is dead!
G-d said Nietzsche is dead!
Yamit, I think there’s a lot of truth in this, especially vis-a-vis Muslims. There is a burning jealousy and envy at play – that Ishmael was rejected and Isaac was the son of promise. (Even though Ishmael was specially blessed by the angel of God, a figure that Hagar thought was God Himself.)
For ‘goyim’ Christians though [or Messianic Jews for that matter], the dynamic is much more complicated. We know Israel was chosen, set aside from the beginnging by God for special purposes. Foremost among these, to give birth to Messiah. We know this because the Torah and Tanakh are our ‘Old Testament’.
We don’t feel envy though, because we think that God’s outreach to Gentiles – that was prophesied in the Torah and Tanakh – has come to pass.
Moreover, Paul the apostle, a Jew like all the other ‘Christian’ apostles, spoke of envy not in the Gentiles, but in the hearts of his brothers and sisters. Why? Because God began to move among the Gentiles. Even Peter in the New Testament – the man Catholics call the first Pope – was aghast that God would have anything to do with Gentiles.
The question Paul asked was, “Is God the God of Jews only? Or of Gentiles too?”. It was answered by most Jews of that time as, ‘us only’. Today, we might get a more mixed response. But if God is a God of Gentiles too, could there be envy in the Jewish heart that God also loves Gentiles?
Yamit said,
John said,
Oat says,
Fairy tale gibberish. Any mildly observant Jew knows this is ridiculous and we’ve known it for time immemorial.
Judaism is not exclusive, anyone can join the Jewish people through proper sincere conversion. The Temple Mount, referred to in the Book of Deuteronomy tens of times as “The place the L-rd will choose,” called the ritual center by Biblical scientists, and of which was said in the beautiful, the mother of all prayers, of Solomon of the Temple [1Kings 8] “The L-rd said that the He would dwell in, a settled place for you to abide forever.” As if Solomon were saying to G-d that “as long as you are obscured there cannot be any contact between us. I am building you a tangible, clear, geographic home in which you can receive the prayers of your people Israel and the prayers of any who wish to pray to you,” for “your eyes to be open toward this house night and day.” A request for G-d to center his prayer-accepting heart around this house. “What prayer and supplication be made by any man, or by all your people Israel… and he shall spread forth his hands toward this House.”
“And also the foreigner who is not of your People Israel…when he shall come and pray toward this House, and you shall hear.”
“If your people go out to battle against their enemy, and they shall pray to the L-rd toward the City which you have chosen and the House I have built for your name.”
And so all, individual and collective, Hebrew and non-Jew, shall find the way to G-d only through this House. Not only by entering it, for those far away too, there is no other way to the Heavens: “If they sin against you, and their captors carry them away to the land of their enemy, and pray to you toward their Land which you gave to their fathers, the City which you have chosen and the House I have built for your name, and you will hear.” (What brilliant thinking! For those who come to pray he mentions only the Temple. And for those in Exile in the distant Diaspora, he includes the Land, the City and the Temple.)
The imagery and phrasing of this prayer are so concrete and concise that they make it the ultimate expression of Hebrew belief. It rises above all that philosophers and theologians and even prophets have written in all the generations that followed.
The localization of the Temple, despite Solomon’s full knowledge that “not even the Heavens can contain you,” and the idea is wider and more open than pantheism, yet nonetheless, or perhaps precisely because of this,
Also note the reference in this prayer to war; let us do away with the notion of on being a pacifist before the era of the Messiah, for the ideas are intertwined: G-d’s return to the Temple and a war of conquest, with revenge upon enemies.
Compare with Christian exclusivity: Do Jews and Christians Worship the Same God?
NO!!!!
It seems to me that we Jews do everything we possibly can to protect the rights of minorities, including those of our enemies–the Islamist groups and their propaganda– that are today operating in the US. In this effort we invoke the banner of “Civil Rights”, “anti-racism”, “free speech”, to name just a few. I believe we are under the impression that if we protect other minorities, then, by analogy, the well-being of the Jewish minority will be assured.
However, in this assumption, just as in the delusions of peace partners willing to make peace with Israel if only Israel make suicidal concessions, we are willfully and dangerously self-deceiving. Past and present history should disavow us of such false interpretations of reality. But no, we make the same tragic efforts to appease, under the guise of moral superiority, flavored with the cowardice that unremitting anti-Semitism has engendered in us.
I agree with many of the comments above. The only way we can achieve security in this world that wants to get rid of us is to stand up and refuse to cooperate. It is an old story–bullies will only back off when you fight back.
I suppose you could argue that Judaism is non-exclusive in that anyone can, theoretically, convert. But cannot all religions say the same? In reality, practitioners of Judaism do not seek converts. It is not an evangelizing faith. It’s what my pastor would call a ‘holy huddle’ – an epitaph he would apply to Christians who don’t love their neighbor.
Christianity is universal because – not just in theory but in practice – all are welcome and all are sought after. ‘God is not willing that any should perish.’
Jesus was exclusive in the sense that he came ‘only to the lost sheep of Israel’, but he then sent his followers to Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
Speaking of his fellow Jews he said, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”
Speaking of the Gentiles he said, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”
Firstly Judaism unlike Christianity is not a religion, if one converts he converts into the nation of Israel. They become one of the tribe so to speak. Salvation comes from righteousness by observing the 7 laws of Noah! Judaism does not state any belief that one must be a Jew to reach the world to come after death. Therefore there is no theological imperative among Jews to seek converts. We take a laissez-faire position about others beliefs unless they are pagan. You know what that means by now. Father Son and Casper, the friendly ghost as example.
For us any triune believer is a Pagan. Their god cannot be ours by definition. How many times in the Tanach is THE MESSIAH mentioned? Ans. 0 Times. When you see Elijah the prophet let me know. No Messiah without Elijah proceeding the Messiah. john the Baptist already said he wasn’t if that’s where you intend to go.
Elijah the prophet must precede the messiah: Elijah is known as the herald of the Redemption from the prophet Malachi (3:23), “Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord.” Longing for the redemption is included in the blessings of the reading of the prophetic portion in the synagogue on Sabbaths and festivals: “Let us rejoice, O Lord our God, with Elijah the prophet, Your servant.” This is also demonstrated in a concrete way by placing a fifth cup of wine on the Passover eve Seder table, known as “Elijah’s cup.” The fifth cup arose out of a halakhic dispute as to whether one is required to drink four or five cups of wine, a question that will be resolved only with the coming of Elijah. In the hope that Elijah will arrive and bring redemption on Passover eve, the door to the street is opened in the course of the Seder service so that he may enter. The longing for Elijah is reflected in the Sabbath Zemirot, in folk songs, and in the Piyyutim (religious poems). Many of these are sung after the Sabbath, when the longing for redemption and for a better future increases. Others are sung on festive and joyous occasions.
I love it when you quote the NT.
You are quite right about Elijah. Our explanation is that Jesus comes to mankind twice and will indeed be preceded by Elijah the next time.
Some of your ancient rabbis held a similar view of two messianic visitations. From http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0014_0_13744.html:
Judaism has since erased the dying Messiah ben Joseph from its theology, perhaps because he is so eerily reminiscent of Jesus! Passages previously thought to refer to this figure, are now considered to speak of Israel (Isaiah 52, 53). And you’ve even reduced Messiah ben David to the point of irrelevance.
Christian belief is that there is only one Messiah – Anointed One. We don’t need two because of the Resurrection of Jesus (which we see prophesied in the Tanach). Being the first fruit of the resurrection – faithful believers to follow – he will come back himself.
Well, even with this viewpoint, there would still be an imperative for Israel to tell the world about the 7 Laws of Noah. Else, the world is damned and Israel hasn’t fulfilled its role as light to the Gentiles.
Mark 9:2-8
Yamit:
SIR: I am indded highly impressed with your limitless knowledge of religion, politics,economics and just about everything else on this earth and beyond.
There is never,” I don’t know ” or “only the future will tell”.
Rather than attempting the impossible, i.e. refuting your arguments, may I humbly quote the great Gertrude Stein, when asked to comment on the enduring question of the meaning of life.
she responded,
” there aint no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer.
THAT’S THE ANSWER.”
More Christian Pagan gibberish. In Judaism there is no original sin, any righteous man or women will never be damned as you pagans believe. Even called King Cyrus was called Messiah.
Obviously the Noahide laws predated Biblical law and was given through Noah to all of mankind. There is no need to improve upon them as they are G-ds basic laws. They are basic laws and modalities for ethical living in the real world and no concept or promises of rewards or punishments were stated nor implied. The fruits of living according to G-ds laws are it’s just rewards. You buy a toaster oven and on the appliance and in the operating instructions there are warnings of dangerous mishandling. You have free will to heed and obey the warnings or not. Things go better when you follow safety instructions but it’s your choice. We ain’t got No lakes of fire or Hell! Maybe a little purgatory until you shape up, that’s it.
Next time? You mean my grandmother? You can say anything if it’d next time can’t you? There is no source for next time about The messiah coming back from the dead to fulfill all he was supposed to do according to scripture the first time. Get Real! Every time you get pinned with no credible ans you revert to next time. “In the next world, willful Stupidity will be punished!”
Try this on I give it low marks for credibility as I do for the whole messiah shtick but many Jews hold to them see here:
The “light unto the nations” promise is contained in the problematic Isaiah 42, traditionally a favorite of messianics for its verse, “the former things came to pass, and new things do I declare.” It cannot override the explicit commandment that Jews are “the people that dwells alone.” Atheist Jewish liberals would not dare say to their gentile friends that Jews possess something which gentiles lack; that the Jewish way of life is inherently better. We can fulfill our purpose of being the light to the nations which is similar to the beacon’s. Ships sail toward it, but it doesn’t go forward to the ships. The beacon stays on its island; the ships move. Nations can start admiring the Jewish way of life only if we prove it to them. After the 1967 war, Jews became hugely popular around the world. By staying in Israel and making it into a strong, daring, unusual state, Jews have the best chance to draw gentiles to our values.
Lol, he added Moses? Who mentioned Moses in this context in Jewish sources? Elijah was not to be a vision but a real physical return. I had the same vision but without J guy. Do you believe me? Dreams don’t cut it….!!!!! You guys are shooting blanks today?
There is indeed a rabbinic tradition of Messiah ben Joseph being raised from the dead:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=510&letter=M#1628
http://www.messiahtruth.com/yosef.html, ironically a counter [Christian] missionary site:
These rabbis drew on the same passages Messianics do:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Isaiah53.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Psalms16.html:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Psalms22.html (Christians and Messianics view this whole Psalm as a vivid description of the crucifixion):
All this doesn’t prove anything, of course. But it does show there is a basis in the Tanakh for a resurrected Messiah.
First your opinion is of no importance or relevance to me as as you said. you have no ans.
2ndly you are arrogant enough to think because you have no ans. there are none.
3rdly you quote G. Stein: a woman of little real talent, unpatriotic American lezzi (Alice Tolkas) and best known for her hashish recipes and collaborating with the Nazis. .
Not impressed.
There is indeed a rabbinic tradition of Messiah ben Joseph being raised from the dead:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=510&letter=M#1628
http://www.messiahtruth.com/yosef.html, ironically a counter [Christian] missionary site:
These rabbis drew on the same passages Messianics do:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Isaiah53.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Psalms16.html:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Psalms22.html (Christians and Messianics view this whole Psalm as a vivid description of the crucifixion):
All this doesn’t prove anything, of course. But it does show there is a basis in the Tanakh for a resurrected Messiah.
Living the lie.
You missed a verse:
“And he said to them, ‘In truth I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.’” – Mark 9:1
Completely false prophecy. It never came to pass, from then till today. It stamps jesus as a false prophet and a pompous and foolish charlatan.
Same thing a few verses after your selction:
“But I tell you that Elijah has come and they have treated him as they pleased, just as the scriptures say about him.’”
– Mark 9:13
There is no such thing written of Eliyahu. The reference to the prophet is at the end of Malachi, the last verses of chapter 3 (we have no 4). Your jesus is bluffing the ignorant.
Note the irony in bold:
“For, behold, the day cometh, it burneth as a furnace; and all the proud, and all that work wickedness, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall set them ablaze, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
But unto you that fear My name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings; and ye shall go forth, and gambol as calves of the stall.
And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I do make, saith the LORD of hosts.
Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, even statutes and ordinances.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers; lest I come and smite the land with utter destruction.”
You guys should have followed the gnostics 1800-1900 years ago who wanted to have nothing to do with any claim to continuation from the Jews and their Tanach. After all, if you’re going to start a new pagan fairy tale, wipe the slate clean. The jokers who cobbled your New Testament together were as sloppy as they came back then.
I hate everything the world is doing and has done forever , to hate the hand that feeds them, gives them medical and all aid, but the hate goes on from evildoers. One thing all can take to the bank is G-d won’t be mocked. Looks like Prophecy is being fulfilled very quickly and I know the weapons used against Israel will be on the enemy. Israel has been pushed to where SHE will act, because She does realize the world will not love HER thought She has blessed the world in every way including the best..G-d and HIS Word..Hold onto your seat, Damascus will be rubble soon, the nukes in Iran will blow and the “worm is not done yet !)…Israel has been painted in a corner for generations and She knows one day She will have NO other way to exist but to destroy the enemies of G-d and and of Themselves. I watched for years and now I see finally old Turkey taking its place..and the other nations and America too who is stabbing HEr will pay more of a price than in weather and will find out war will be here too. Denial won’t change what G-d has said..He says He is in the JWhirlwind..We haven’t seen nothing yet and we have Russia and N. Korea and others plotting with Obama to use the finger trigger to send Missles to our shores and the jihad will come out of the woodwork. What insantiy and all in the name of humanity..LOOK back and see how G-d felt about the enemies of Israel..killed by the millions …HE is about to show the world WH IS G_D…He is it and will be forever and so will Israel and the Jews rule from Jerusalem forever. Those who suport, love and stand by Israel will rejoice with them in THAT DAY. Those who did not bless HER are cursed….Genesis…none will have a excuse..think on that..
Noch a hyperventilating christian.
According to the account, he was physically there, along with a resurrected Moses.
Have I got a joke for you!
There were these 4 guys who said they went up a mountain and met Moses and Elijah and expected people to believe them.
Hahahahahahahahaha!
Yamit said,
This is not true. Judaism recognizes the Jewish RELIGION (which one “converts” to) as passed from mother to daughter, but Jewish TRIBAL MEMBERSHIP (such as Cohen status, which cannot be converted to) as passed from father to son. Judaism is a religion only, and not a “tribe”.
Calvary
Yamit, I think there’s a lot of truth in this, especially vis-a-vis Muslims. There is a burning jealousy and envy at play – that Ishmael was rejected and Isaac was the son of promise. (Even though Ishmael was specially blessed by the angel of God, a figure that Hagar thought was God Himself.)
That is your Xtian belief. The Muslims won’t agree with it, their superiority in their beliefs is one of the reasons they didn’t see Jews as a threat, nor do they have an agenda to convert us. Life wasn’t a bed of roses as dhimmis but at least they didn’t seek to kill us for our beliefs. Moreover, Muslims do accept Jews as having the truth, though they think of us as lowly dhimmis. That is unlike xtianity and Messianics, who are busy converting under the guise of love.
http://www.jewishisrael.com
I believe Yamit used the word tribe here generically, referring to the entire Nation of Israel – as in “welcome to the club”. There is a generic national membership (Kohanim are also the “Children of Israel”, where Israel=Jacob) and subdivisions within consisting of descendants of Jacob’s sons.
Not so. The Qur’an repeats numerous times Islam’s claim that we have corrupted the Torah. The Qur’an also claims the christians have corrupted their beliefs, turning jesus into a deity when the Qur’an claims he was a human prophet.
Shyguy
Corrupting the Torah could be interpreted as meaning that man added to Gods word. They have the same paralled in their Hadeeths which they admit. Otherwise, why do they eat Kosher and not class xtians and Jews as pagans which they do to other religous groups. Though I concede the extremists amongst them do claim otherwise, however that is not the majority belief. Historically, Jews were accepted as monotheists, the corrupted scriptures were not for them to follow, but they accept it for us. That is more than xtianity believes, whose agenda is either kill or convert us. Even the “friends” messianics have this agenda.
Yes, you’re right about Muslim beliefs on Jesus, and though they do consider Jesus a Prophet they reject the deification which they believe Paul introduced. In actual fact, Muslims are more anti xtian because of the trinity, and deification, than they are anti Jewish. Generally they tend to believe that though the Gospels and Torah are corrupted, their followers do still believe in God.
It could be argued that it’s hard to believe that any religion got corrupted by man, when there are so many different sects, heck even the Rabbonim don’t always agree with one another.
Islam differs from Christianity that they do accept believers in the one God as Book People even if their scriptures are corrupted and they consider themselves superior for that matter. In any case, my original point was in response to the guy who mentioned envy. Envy and jealousy is something that xtianity had against Jews, the Muslims simply see as monotheists who went wrong, and xtians as monotheists turned pagan, but still accord them the status of Book People so long as they know their place.
Am Yisrael Chai
Judaism has the aspect of religion since it does have a core of common beliefs and rituals that are shared. It has the aspect of the nationalistic bond since the Land of Israel is ours, irrespective of whether we live there or not. It also has the aspect of familial relationship, as mentioned, since Jews are related through our common ancestors. To reduce the “being” Jewish to a mere religious experience is to reduce the Jew and Judaism to that level of the gentile. A gentile can be measured by his adherence to his religion. If a Protestant decides to leave his religion and become a Hindi, then he effectively has broken with his Christian belief and is considered in the eyes of his former group as a one who has left the fold. He is no longer connected with his community, and more likely, he will be ostracized for leaving. However his family relationship with his cousins remains, as does his citizenship.
In an another manner, if a Brazilian Catholic were to leave Brazil and renounce his citizenship and accept the citizenship of another country, such as English citizenship, he would cut his national relationship with Brazil and establish a new one with England. However, he would maintain his religious relationships to his fellow Catholics.
The familial relationship, however, is one that is impossible to sever. It is one that is created by birth to a family and exists with or with out the consent of the two parties involved. Judaism is a combination of all three: religion, national, and family. Therefore, the relationship between the Jews is inherently stronger than a mere religious bond of two Hindus, as an example.
Judaism is not just a religion which has no relationship to a land. Judaism is also a nationality and is land based. The Land of Israel has been given by G-d to each and every Jew, not because of any external reason, other than G-d promised it to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to their descendents. Since the attachment of other nationalities living on a particular parcel of land is not divinely given, the relationship of the inhabitant is associated to his living in that specific land. Leaving that territory will effect a break in his mutual relationship with the inhabitants. Judaism is a national identity, of supra patriotic consequence and independent of the fact of whether the Jew lives in Israel or not. His nationality is inherently related to the Land of Israel since G-d granted it to him as a descendent of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and therefore irrevocable.
Judaism includes religion yet combines it with nationhood and family, and like a family, whether you like Uncle Joe or not, he is your uncle and it can’t be changed. This inherently makes Judaism more than just a religion. Jews are not merely bound by religious beliefs, they are mishpacha, family, and the family ties exist perpetually and are not given to be broke by rhyme nor reason. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
This is Judaism - a dynamic family relationship that includes a national territory and belief in the one G-d.
Who else is like our people, Israel?
Actually Christianity believes the Torah and Tanakh are the unaltered world of God. We don’t believe it is corrupted like Muslims do. When we speak of Judeo-Christian civilization, we are speaking of the common values we share through the Tanakh. Jews do not have this commonality with Muslims. No amount of romanticizing will change this.
Sure, just never mind the fact that the Tanach stands in complete opposition and contradiction to the NT. No amount of romanticizing will change this.
My Mommy always says, “always listen to your Grand Mufti”!
Calvary” Re:#27 & 29
You can’t now use rabbinic sources to back you up when it’s convenient. You reject rabbinic understandings and halachic positions on every other point of contention with Christianity. If you accept their positions re: Messiah ben Yosef then to be consistent you must accept their positions re; Jesus? Can’t have it both ways!!
ShyGuy
My Mommy always says, “always listen to your Grand Mufti”!
That was a Saudi religious leader wasn’t it? As I said above, how many Muslims subscribe to this view? The Saudi scholars are followed by how many Muslims? From what i’ve seen, they’re mostly condemned by the main lain Sunni and Shia leaders. Muslims I know condemn these sort of extremists. I see your point and agree with you. They shouldn’t be ignored or their importance trivialised, and should be propogandised so those who have an alternate view should gain a voice.
Calvary
Jews do not have this commonality with Muslims. No amount of romanticizing will change this.
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I am not romanticing. Over 70% of the worlds market of Kosher consumers are Muslim. They do not eat Christian food. We are permitted to pray in a Mosque but not in a church. That is not romanticing. Those are facts.
KEVIN!!!
KEVIN!!!
Universalism, the denial or renunciation of the self and of individual responsibility. None of us are equal, we are all different. Some believe that it is better to hide behind universalism. No one is then responsible. That is Great!!!!
I have to tell everyone that this thread is very enlightening. One of our best. Everyone managed to remain cordial while expressing strong difference. Thank you.