The Final Solution
May 25th, 2004, 07:00 AM
The Jewish Faction
(Expanded from SOBRAN’S, May 2004, pages 3–6)
Jews in America are often spoken of as a “minority.” So they are, in more than a numerical sense, as I will explain. But despite their small numbers they are also a powerful faction, though the term faction is rarely applied to them.
In Federalist Number 10, James Madison gave a famous and useful definition of the word: “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
The organized Jewish faction is what I call the Tribe. It’s a bit more specific than “the Jews”; but it includes most Jews, who, as many opinion polls show, overwhelmingly support the state of Israel and, furthermore, overwhelmingly favor “progressive” causes like legal abortion, “sexual freedom,” and “gay rights.”
What is striking about the Tribe is not that its positions on such matters are necessarily wrong, but that they are anti-Christian. They are even anti-Judaic, in that they contravene the moral code of Moses. Jews today define themselves formally by descent (or, less politely, race, though the term is taboo) rather than by religion; and, less formally, by antagonism to Christianity. It would be inaccurate to say that the Tribe adopts certain social attitudes and political positions even though these are repugnant to most Christians. It adopts them chiefly because they are repugnant to Christians.
Within the Tribe, one of the worst sins a Jew can commit is to become a Christian, as witness Jewish hostility to Jews for Jesus. An irreligious or atheist Jew may claim Israeli citizenship at any time, but a Jew who has converted to Christianity may not. This antagonism is so predominant that the Tribe opposes not only government endorsements of Christianity, but even the public exaltation of the Old Testament (as in displays of the Ten Commandments on public property) because Christians have adopted it too. The “Judaeo-Christian tradition” is a sentimental myth, treasured by many Christians but by very few Jews.
The Tribe has no pope or authoritative body defining its creed, but its attitudes aren’t hard to discern. As Samuel Johnson says, a community must be judged non numero sed pondere — not by numbers, but by weight. And the preponderance of Jewish sentiment is clear: it loathes Christianity and Christian influence in public life. It resents Christian proselytizing, one of the first Christian duties (virtually banned in Israel). It considers the Gospels the very source of what it calls anti-Semitism. In fact, the very word anti-Semitism is basically a Tribal synonym for Christianity.
This was all spelled out for even the most naive observer by the fierce Tribal reaction to Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. The barely concealed hatred of Christianity came roaring forth long before the movie was even finished. The columnist Charles Krauthammer spoke for many Jews when he wrote that the story of Christ’s Passion had “resulted in countless Christian massacres of Jews, and prepared Europe for the ultimate massacre — six million Jews systematically murdered within six years — in the heart, alas, of a Christian continent.” Alas indeed!
That Christianity caused the Holocaust, along with “countless” other Christian persecutions of Jews “for almost two millennia,” was a given for Jews commenting on the film. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, along with other Jewish leaders, flatly predicted that Gibson’s film would cause hatred and violence against Jews — implying, of course, that Christians are fully capable of such rabid conduct even now, though it would be directly contrary to Christian doctrine. William Safire of the New York Times virtually blamed the Holocaust on Christ himself, citing the words “I come not to bring peace, but a sword” as evidence of Christianity’s inherent violence.
Since the allegations about the past are never more definite than Krauthammer’s unspecified “countless” (would that be more, or less, than six million?), we are dealing here not with genuine historical memory, but with a mythological caricature of Christian history that still obsesses the Tribal mind, both shaping and expressing its present feelings. So much for “interfaith dialogue.” As Rabbi Jacob Neusner has observed, for most Jews today Auschwitz has replaced Sinai as the definitive moment in the Jewish past. And Auschwitz is projected all the way back to Calvary.
It’s now a Tribal article of faith that until the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the Catholic Church taught that all Jews were “Christ-killers.” This is of course false, as older Catholics know first-hand and as anyone else can easily ascertain. The notion that the Church “reversed” this supposedly ancient teaching displays modern ignorance of the way the Church does business: It assumes that she can arbitrarily make and unmake doctrines, like a contemporary dictator changing the Party line overnight. She acts slowly and deliberately precisely because she can never repudiate a settled teaching while claiming infallibility. Even Catholic children used to grasp that.
When I joined the Church in 1961, the only Jews I knew personally were some quite amiable neighbors. If anyone had told me that the Halman family down the street bore special responsibility for the Crucifixion, I would have been utterly mystified. So bizarre an idea would have been an impediment to my conversion: it simply wouldn’t have made sense. And it never occurred to my Catholic mentors; they didn’t need a new Church council to tell them that it was nonsense. They didn’t speak nonsense. It had nothing to do with loving or hating Jews as such. I was far more inclined to hate Protestant heretics at that point, but I never even thought of blaming them for, say, Communist persecution of Catholics. It would have been about as rational as blaming Julius Caesar for Pearl Harbor.
The Tribe, however, embraces the mythical charge of “Christ-killing” in order to reverse it: Christians are Jew-killers. And it all began, by implication, with Christ himself, whose followers, immediately after his death, naturally began implementing his principles of charity by persecuting Jews, a course they have persisted in “for almost two millennia.”
Astute readers will sense a discrepancy here. Christians were in no position to persecute anyone for nearly three centuries, until the conversion of Constantine in A.D. 313. Meanwhile, they suffered some pretty severe persecution themselves. According to the Acts of the Apostles, it began with the Jews who rejected Christ and tried furiously to exterminate the infant Church. We also know this from the testimony of one of the persecutors themselves, the turncoat Saul of Tarsus, whom we know as St. Paul. Paul himself died as a result of charges brought by the Tribe before Roman officials, just as Christ had.
The Tribe’s cohesion and survival over the two succeeding millennia has often seemed miraculous, even to Christians. By a fine irony, the Talmud claims “credit” for Christ’s death beyond what the Church has actually taught: It says that “our sages” justly condemned him to death as a sorcerer, not even mentioning a Roman role in the event. The Gospel of John merely says that “his own received him not” and the creeds say that he “suffered under Pontius Pilate,” passing up golden opportunities to affix Tribal guilt at the outset.
[Cont'd]
http://www.sobran.com/articles/faction.shtml
(Expanded from SOBRAN’S, May 2004, pages 3–6)
Jews in America are often spoken of as a “minority.” So they are, in more than a numerical sense, as I will explain. But despite their small numbers they are also a powerful faction, though the term faction is rarely applied to them.
In Federalist Number 10, James Madison gave a famous and useful definition of the word: “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
The organized Jewish faction is what I call the Tribe. It’s a bit more specific than “the Jews”; but it includes most Jews, who, as many opinion polls show, overwhelmingly support the state of Israel and, furthermore, overwhelmingly favor “progressive” causes like legal abortion, “sexual freedom,” and “gay rights.”
What is striking about the Tribe is not that its positions on such matters are necessarily wrong, but that they are anti-Christian. They are even anti-Judaic, in that they contravene the moral code of Moses. Jews today define themselves formally by descent (or, less politely, race, though the term is taboo) rather than by religion; and, less formally, by antagonism to Christianity. It would be inaccurate to say that the Tribe adopts certain social attitudes and political positions even though these are repugnant to most Christians. It adopts them chiefly because they are repugnant to Christians.
Within the Tribe, one of the worst sins a Jew can commit is to become a Christian, as witness Jewish hostility to Jews for Jesus. An irreligious or atheist Jew may claim Israeli citizenship at any time, but a Jew who has converted to Christianity may not. This antagonism is so predominant that the Tribe opposes not only government endorsements of Christianity, but even the public exaltation of the Old Testament (as in displays of the Ten Commandments on public property) because Christians have adopted it too. The “Judaeo-Christian tradition” is a sentimental myth, treasured by many Christians but by very few Jews.
The Tribe has no pope or authoritative body defining its creed, but its attitudes aren’t hard to discern. As Samuel Johnson says, a community must be judged non numero sed pondere — not by numbers, but by weight. And the preponderance of Jewish sentiment is clear: it loathes Christianity and Christian influence in public life. It resents Christian proselytizing, one of the first Christian duties (virtually banned in Israel). It considers the Gospels the very source of what it calls anti-Semitism. In fact, the very word anti-Semitism is basically a Tribal synonym for Christianity.
This was all spelled out for even the most naive observer by the fierce Tribal reaction to Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. The barely concealed hatred of Christianity came roaring forth long before the movie was even finished. The columnist Charles Krauthammer spoke for many Jews when he wrote that the story of Christ’s Passion had “resulted in countless Christian massacres of Jews, and prepared Europe for the ultimate massacre — six million Jews systematically murdered within six years — in the heart, alas, of a Christian continent.” Alas indeed!
That Christianity caused the Holocaust, along with “countless” other Christian persecutions of Jews “for almost two millennia,” was a given for Jews commenting on the film. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, along with other Jewish leaders, flatly predicted that Gibson’s film would cause hatred and violence against Jews — implying, of course, that Christians are fully capable of such rabid conduct even now, though it would be directly contrary to Christian doctrine. William Safire of the New York Times virtually blamed the Holocaust on Christ himself, citing the words “I come not to bring peace, but a sword” as evidence of Christianity’s inherent violence.
Since the allegations about the past are never more definite than Krauthammer’s unspecified “countless” (would that be more, or less, than six million?), we are dealing here not with genuine historical memory, but with a mythological caricature of Christian history that still obsesses the Tribal mind, both shaping and expressing its present feelings. So much for “interfaith dialogue.” As Rabbi Jacob Neusner has observed, for most Jews today Auschwitz has replaced Sinai as the definitive moment in the Jewish past. And Auschwitz is projected all the way back to Calvary.
It’s now a Tribal article of faith that until the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the Catholic Church taught that all Jews were “Christ-killers.” This is of course false, as older Catholics know first-hand and as anyone else can easily ascertain. The notion that the Church “reversed” this supposedly ancient teaching displays modern ignorance of the way the Church does business: It assumes that she can arbitrarily make and unmake doctrines, like a contemporary dictator changing the Party line overnight. She acts slowly and deliberately precisely because she can never repudiate a settled teaching while claiming infallibility. Even Catholic children used to grasp that.
When I joined the Church in 1961, the only Jews I knew personally were some quite amiable neighbors. If anyone had told me that the Halman family down the street bore special responsibility for the Crucifixion, I would have been utterly mystified. So bizarre an idea would have been an impediment to my conversion: it simply wouldn’t have made sense. And it never occurred to my Catholic mentors; they didn’t need a new Church council to tell them that it was nonsense. They didn’t speak nonsense. It had nothing to do with loving or hating Jews as such. I was far more inclined to hate Protestant heretics at that point, but I never even thought of blaming them for, say, Communist persecution of Catholics. It would have been about as rational as blaming Julius Caesar for Pearl Harbor.
The Tribe, however, embraces the mythical charge of “Christ-killing” in order to reverse it: Christians are Jew-killers. And it all began, by implication, with Christ himself, whose followers, immediately after his death, naturally began implementing his principles of charity by persecuting Jews, a course they have persisted in “for almost two millennia.”
Astute readers will sense a discrepancy here. Christians were in no position to persecute anyone for nearly three centuries, until the conversion of Constantine in A.D. 313. Meanwhile, they suffered some pretty severe persecution themselves. According to the Acts of the Apostles, it began with the Jews who rejected Christ and tried furiously to exterminate the infant Church. We also know this from the testimony of one of the persecutors themselves, the turncoat Saul of Tarsus, whom we know as St. Paul. Paul himself died as a result of charges brought by the Tribe before Roman officials, just as Christ had.
The Tribe’s cohesion and survival over the two succeeding millennia has often seemed miraculous, even to Christians. By a fine irony, the Talmud claims “credit” for Christ’s death beyond what the Church has actually taught: It says that “our sages” justly condemned him to death as a sorcerer, not even mentioning a Roman role in the event. The Gospel of John merely says that “his own received him not” and the creeds say that he “suffered under Pontius Pilate,” passing up golden opportunities to affix Tribal guilt at the outset.
[Cont'd]
http://www.sobran.com/articles/faction.shtml