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

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

the foreskin and that shall be the Covenant between Me

and you." GENESIS: 17:9-13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

treasured people." [DEUTERONOMY 7:6]

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

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

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

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

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

He had been reading the works of Heinrich Zimmer on Indian

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

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

something else he wanted to talk about too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

greater part of the Bible."

I thought that later I should perhaps have referred him to

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

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

almost invariably the leading theme is either the virtue of the

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

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

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

righteous servant: all of which is just about diametrically opposed

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

religious sentiment.

In the Orient the ultimate divine mystery is sought beyond

all human categories of thought and feeling, beyond names and

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

or wrathful personality, chooser of one people over another,

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

Such anthropomorphic attributions of human sentiment is -- from

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Torah encompasses and seeks to regulate every moment of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Michael Govrin notes that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      was she climbing up or down?" [SHAHAK, p. 41]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

declare that God has chosen and sanctified Jews from all other

peoples in the same way which he has distinguished between Sabbath

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

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

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

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

     "Unlike many religions," notes Steven Silbiger,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Publication Society translation: other translations include the

     same qualifier; HARTUNG, 1995]

    As Louis Jacobs observes:

    "Among both Jews and Christians the injunction is read simply as 'love
     thy neighbour as thyself' ... [but] in the original context the [Love Thy
     Neighbor] verse means: even when someone has behaved badly
     towards you, try to overcome your desires for revenge but rather
     behave lovingly towards him because, after all, he, too, is a human
     being and a member of the covenant people as you are and
     therefore entitled to be treated as you yourself wish to be treated ...
     The golden rule to love the neighbour applies only to the neighbour
     who is a Jew." [JACOBS, L., 1995, p. 323, 324]

     As Menachem Gerlitz explains the "neighbor" passage:

     'And you shall love your neighbor like your own self' -- this is an important
     rule of the Torah. Every Jew must love his fellow Jew with all his heart. The
     Baal Shem Tov [founder of the ultra-Othodox Hassidim] used to explain
     this as follows: Our Torah teaches us to 'love Hashem your G-d with all
     your heart.' How can we prove to ourselves that we are really fulfilling
     this commandment? Only through the commandment of loving our fellow
     Jew like our own selves. Only by truly loving each and every Jew, every
     son of the Chosen People which Hashem selected from all other nations
     to love, just like a person loves the son of a dear friend." [GERLITZ, M.,
     1983, p. 195]

Judeocentrism, not human universalism, is the core of traditional Jewish understanding of the Old Testament. The influential medieval Jewish theologian, Maimonides, advised that “It is incumbent on everyone to love each individual Israelite as himself as it is said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’” [MANKIN, p. 37] Although there were some Jewish apologetics with this notion as early as Philo, it was Christian and Enlightenment influences that universalized the Ten Commandments, and liberalizing Jews, mainly since the eighteenth century, began to follow suit, bending and broadening the tenets of Judaism (carefully selecting from contradictory religious references) to encompass a humanistic concern for non-Jews in step with modern universalist-oriented values.

Mosaic law or not, the only time-- till the modern state of Israel -- that Jews have had the opportunity to practice Moses' commandments and the rest of their beliefs (towards themselves or anybody) from a position of complete empowerment was, even by their own ancient religious standards, a disaster. The pinnacle of ancient Jewish history was a series of monarchial regimes that represented a turbulent time of failures in living up to Covenantal laws, incessant quarreling, fratricide, genocide, wars of conquest with non-Jewish neighbors, repeated intra-Jewish civil wars, and other struggles for power and control, rife with continuous bloodletting, as violent as any in human history. Most of this is codified as part of the Jewish religious faith/history in the Torah.

The well-known historian, Will Durrant, describes the Israelites' seizure (after the Mosaic moral code was accepted) of the Holy Land from the Canaanites who lived there, like this:

"The conquest of Canaan was but one more instance of a

hungry nomad horde falling upon a settled community. The

conquerors killed as many as they could find, and married the

rest. Slaughter was unconfined, and (to follow the text) was

divinely ordained and enjoyed. Gideon, in capturing two cities,

slew 120,000 men; only in the annals of the Assyrians do we

meet again with such hearty killing. [DURRANT, p. 302]

Even in the Book of Exodus, when Moses (deliverer of the admonition "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and all the rest of it) discovered his own people weakening, "out of control” with idolatrous dancing, naked, before a "Golden Calf," he directed the Levites, the priest caste, to slay three thousand of them. [EXODUS 33:27-28]

Considerable portions of the Bible revolve around violent struggles amongst Israelites for power. Both King David and Solomon -- among the most beloved of the Israelite ancients in the myths of modern Jewry -- had half-brothers with rival claims to the Israelite monarchy murdered. Solomon, for example, arranged for Adonijah to be slain as well as another threat to the throne, Joab, who was even murdered in the Holy Tabernacle. (Both David and Solomon even had forced labor gangs of their own Israelite people). Likewise, Ambimelich, the son of Gideon, (who like most powerful Israelite rulers had a harem of wives and concubines) murdered 70 of his brothers to guarantee the throne for himself. Jeru too, in a fit of ruthlessness, killed the King of Israel, Joram, and then murdered Ahaziah, of the Israelite kingdom of Judah, as well as his two brothers. Then he had all 70 sons of King Ahab decapitated, clearing the way for his own leadership.

In King David's family, notes Joel Rosenberg,

"David's adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah is balanced

by the sexual violation of David's daughter Tamar by David's son

Amnon, the murder of Amnon by his half-brother Absalom, the

appropriation of David's concubines and kingdom by Absalom,

and the slaying of Absalom by David's own servant Joab."

[ROSENBERG, J., 1984, p. 47]

There is too the story of Gibeah (Judges 19:21). An Israelite, enraged by the rape-murder of his concubine by Jews of another tribe, hacked the corpse into pieces and sent a section to each of the twelve Israelite tribes to make an embittered point about solidarity. A confederation of tribes joined together to exact revenge on the perpetrators of the crime. The ensuing Israelite battle against each other took over 60,000 lives (Judges 20:21). The victorious confederation then marched on Jabesh-gilead, a group who had declined to join the coalition against the destroyed Benjaminites. 12,000 soldiers were sent to "smite the inhabitants of Jabed-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and children." (Judges 21) Only female virgins were spared.

Going further along in Jewish religious history, there is the murder of Simon by his son-in-law, Hyrcanus, in another bid for the monarchy, and his son, Aristobulus I, who killed his mother and brother, and imprisoned the rest of his family. After him came his brother, Alexander Jannaeus, to the throne, a "despotic, violent ruler" who reigned during the civil war between warring pro-Greek Israelites (Sadducees) and anti-Greek Israelites (Pharisees). Jannaeus' bloody revenge upon the Pharisees was "as bloody as any in history." [DIMONT, p.89, 90] There was Antipater, "one of history's most unsavory characters," whose family had been "forcibly converted to Judaism" [GOLDBERG, M., 1976, p. 32] and his son, Herod, who murdered a few sons, one of his wives, and range of others including 45 Israelite religious leaders. [DIMONT, p. 95-96] The Torah tells us that the Israelite prophet Elijah slew 450 prophets of the rival deity Baal (I Kings 18) and military commander Jeru killed "all the prophets of Baal, all his worshippers and priests." (I Kings 10:18-27) [LANG, B., 1989, p. 120]

Under the ruler Mannasseh there was the reintroduction of pagan cults, child sacrifices and "systematic murders" in the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah; this kingdom itself had a rivalry with the northern Israelite kingdom, Israel, and -- as noted -- it eventually aligned with Assyrian invaders against its Israelite brethren, ultimately to ancient Israel's complete destruction.

The chaos, internecine warring and corruption, the straying from the “Covenant,” the worship of idols and the fraying of the moral codes of Israelite solidarity resulted in a central Jewish belief that took form in later centuries, that Jews had been scattered in a Diaspora (dispersion) throughout the earth in galut (exile) from the land God gave them, Israel. But 2,000 years of exile experience, notes Alfred Jospe, “could not shatter the image Jews had of themselves. Destruction and exile were a national disaster but not completely unforeseen. They were part of the divine plan ... The Jew was persecuted not because God had abandoned or rejected him; [The Jew] suffered because he was not equal to his moral task. In the words of the prayer book, ‘because of our sins, we were exiled from our land’ ... Suffering was defined as punishment and punishment in turn was a call to duty. Exile was God’s call to return to the faithfulness inherent in Israel’s role as the ‘chosen people.’ The acceptance of punishment opened the gate to redemption and return to the land.” [JOSPE, p. 17] Such a view of human suffering by Judaism, argues Richard Rubenstein, was "a colossal, megalomaniacal and grandiose misreading of a pathetic and defeated community's historical predicament. To this day Jews can be found who delude themselves with the notion that somehow Jewish suffering and powerlessness have redemptive significance for mankind." [KREFETZ, p. 182]

The key to the Israelite future of divine favoritism, and its special covenantal “mission,” was eventually linked to a Messiah who would triumphantly come to lead His people into a glorious future. Originally the Messiah was understood to be merely a nationalist savior, a great and literal king of the Israelite people; later He was reconfigured as an expression of the one God of the Universe who would lord -- physically and spiritually -- over the earth, not in an after-life, but in the here-and-now. [JOSPE, p. 22-23] "Judaism," notes Stephen Whitfield, "in all its forms and manifestations, has always maintained a concept of redemption as an event which takes place on the stage of history and within the community. It is an occurrence which takes place in the visible world, unlike Christianity, which conceives of redemption as an event in the spiritual and unseen realm, an event which is reflected in the soul." [WHITFIELD, American, p. 33]

Over the centuries the Messiah was not quick in coming, and not all answers to questions about changing times were clearly indicated in the seminal Torah, so a written tradition of commentary, argument, and interpretation by respected Jewish religious leaders evolved and became codified in a second religious text called the Talmud. Many argue that it is not the Torah but actually the Talmud -- this later legalese and folklore about the seminal Torah -- that is the crucial source for day-to-day Orthodox Jewish decision making about religious and secular issues. "The Talmud," observes Jacob Neusner, "is the single most influential document in the history of Judaism." [BORAZ, p. 5] "Historically speaking," says Adin Steinsaltz, "the Talmud is the central pillar of Jewish culture." [STEINSALTZ, 1976, p. 266] "The Talmud," adds Robert Goldenberg, "provided the means of determining how God wants all Jews to live, in all places, at all times. Even if the details of the law had to be altered to suit newly arisen conditions, the proper way to perform such adaptation could itself be learned from the Talmud and its commentaries." [GOLDENBERG, R., 1984, p. 166]

This many volumed tome, consisting of Judaism's "legal literature," is really two distinct books merged together, the Mishna (the "oral law," originally written in Hebrew -- a language considerably different than modern Hebrew) and the Gemara (largely commentaries about the Mishna), written mostly in Aramaic three hundred years apart. The Talmud is so difficult to read and so unwieldly that only lifelong experts even think to tackle the original texts. Hence, the Talmud that explains and interprets the Torah has needed plenty of other vast textual explanations to deal with itself; such influential metacommentaries through history include those of Maimonides (including his Mishneh Torah), Joseph Caro (particularly his Shukan Arukh, which has never appeared unabridged in English), [GOLDENBERG, R, 1984, p. 174] and others. Many of such works, too, are so large that they are further distilled into more reasonably digestible abridgements. Rashi's 39 volumes of explanation, for example, are much larger than the talmudic texts it addresses. (Rashi's comments are usually printed as part of the text in Talmudic editions printed since the early Middle Ages). [GOLDENBERG, R., p. 139] It was not until 1920 that the Talmud was translated into another language (German) for the first time. In 1935 it first appeared in English.

Edwin Boraz notes that "the study of the Talmud may be so formidable, challenging, and complex ... [that] one may ask, for what purpose? ... [BORAZ, p. 1] ... [Aside from the 'mishnaic' Hebrew and Aramaic of the original texts] the classic commentaries to the Talmud are written in 'medieval rabbinic Hebrew,' which is a blend of both Hebrew and Arabic. The language barrier alone is arduous." [BORAZ, p. 13] The Talmud also lacks "an inner order ... [it] shift[s] from one subject to another in ways that are not readily apparent. Often, the pronominal references are unclear ... In short, a talmudic passage seems scattered and diffused, rather than a well-reasoned dialectic inquiry." [BORAZ, p. 13-14]

To complicate matters even further, there are even two versions of the Talmud, of Babylonian and Palestinian origin. The latter (called the Yerushalmi), however, is rarely used, even in religious circles. Jacob Neusner notes that "it fills hundreds of pages with barely intelligible writing. [It is] famous for its incomprehensibility ... The Yerushalmi has suffered an odious but deserved reputation for the difficulty in making sense of its discourse." [NEUSNER, 1993, p. x]

A fundamental current of Talmudic discourse, however, is noted by Herman Wouk: "Talmudic political judgment often shows the bitterness of a people trodden by wave after wave of oppressors." [WOUK, p. 201] And what of its legal and moral direction which shifted in emphases so much over the centuries as was politically expedient? This from Wouk again, a devout Jew: "Since the Talmud reports the sayings of hundreds of savants over many centuries, it abounds in contradictory maxims, in conflicting metaphysical guesses, in baffling switches from cynicism to poetry, from misanthropy to charity, from dislike of women to praise for them .... In a word, one can say almost anything about this recording of the talk of wise men through seven centuries, and then find a passage to support it." [WOUK, p. 201]

"For any maxim of the haggada," says Leon Poliakov, "one can be found that states precisely the contrary." The haggada are "non-legal teachings, speculations, stories, legends, and prayers" in the Talmud. (The halakah is its "legal" contents.) "The ancient rabbinic sage used two kinds of speech," says Rabbi Samuel Karff, "halacha and agada [i.e., haggada]. Halacha is the language of Jewish law. It asks and answers the question: 'What must a Jew do to fulfill the covenant?' Agada was the language of the Jewish faith. It tells the story of God's relation to man through his relation to the people of Israel ... Agada remains not only the language of worship, but the language of preaching." [KARFF, S., 1979, p. 8, 11-12]

      "The Jewish tradition is so rich in the diversity of its sacred texts," adds Alan Dershowitz, "that one can find an antidote to virtually any unacceptable statement." [DERSHOWITZ, p. 132] The "antidotes" to every troubling statement in the Talmud suggest a chameleon-like capacity, a religious faith that has the ability to change colors in different milieu, and readily adapt to pressures around it. This capacity is based upon "pilpul" (pepper), a "dialectical technique of reconciling apparently contradictory concepts in the Talmud's texts, often by straining original meanings through the needle's eye ... [It later] degenerated into little more than sophistry." [SACHAR, p. 65] "Talmudic dialectics," notes the Jewish Encyclopedia, "became developed and endowed the Jews who stood beneath the spell of the Talmud with peculiar characteristics, especially imbuing them with a love of hair-splitting which afterwards deteriorated into sophistic subtlety." [GOLDSTEIN, D, p. 133, v. 5, p. 726] The Talmud, notes Robert Goldenberg, has a reputation for "overcomplicated, 'hairsplitting' dialectic." [GOLDENBERG, R., 1984, p. 139] "One of the thirteen rules for interpreting the Torah," says influential modern rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, "is the contradiction between two verses and their harmonization by a third verse." [SOLOVEITCHIK, p. 143] In interpreting the seminal Torah, notes Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Hertog, "each word in the Torah has, according to esoteric tradition, four kinds of meanings: the direct, the interpretive, the allusive, the secret." [ZBOROWSKI/HERTOG, p. 119]

     Canadian Jewish theatre mogul Garth Drabinsky once noted this tradition's influence upon his own personality:

     "Jewish scholars have their own version of the Socratic method: they disssect,
     analyse, interpret, and argue over everything. Today, partly as a result of this
     training, I refuse to take anything at face value, which makes me hard to please.
     No wonder I've been called one of Canada's toughest bosses. What people
     don't realize is that I have a problem pleasing myself. It wasn't until I went to
     Jerusalem for the first time -- and that wasn't until I was thirty-seven -- that I
     really understood my own background. Jerusalem was a buzz-saw of argument.
     You can't survive in Israel unless you're willing to argue -- about everything.
     I felt absolutely at home." [DRABINSKY, G., 1995, p. 26]

Leon Poliakov uses the following story to explain the nature of Talmudic reasoning:

"A goy [non-Jew] insisted that a Talmudist explain to him what the

Talmud was. The sage finally consented and asked the goy the

- 'Two men climb down a chimney. When they come to the bottom,

one has his face covered with soot, the other is spotless. Which of

the two will wash himself?

- 'The one who is dirty,' answered the goy.

- 'No, for the one who's dirty sees the others' clean face and believes

he is clean too. The one who's clean sees a dirty face and believes

- 'I understand!' the goy exclaimed. 'I'm beginning to understand

what the Talmud is.'

- 'No, you have understood nothing at all, the rabbi interrupted, for

how could two men have come down the same chimney, one dirty

and the other clean?' [POLIAKOV, p. 253]

Although Talmudic reasoning considers a variety of argument, Israeli lawyer Uri Huppert explains the fundamental underlining of its "intolerant" discourse:

"It is beyond any doubt that the halachic-Talmudic reasoning is

reached by considering a variety of opinions, hence the sophisticated

rabbinical 'responsa' -- questions and answers -- are regarded as the

very essence of halachic Judaism. But by the same token, this Judaism

cruelly rejects, prohibits, and excommunicates any step or expression

that collides with the legalistic-dogmatic concept of Orthodox Judaism,

which is xenophobic and intolerant by definition, as expressed by the

[modern] Orthodox rabbinical establishment." [HUPPERT, U., 1988,

The Talmud is full of anecdotes, advice, folk wisdom, and material that, by modern standards, affects the non-Jew with feelings of incredulity (but sometimes insult and indignation as we will see later). It is not hard to imagine why so many Jews flocked from the rabbinically controlled ghettos in the European Enlightenment era. Many modern, secularized Jews have looked with dismay upon the wisdom of their ancient sages. We learn in the Talmud, for example, that:

"One who eats an ant is flogged five times forty stripes save one."

"Demons ... have wings like angels ... [and] they know the future."

"A dog in a strange place does not bark for seven years." [HARRIS, p.

"For night-blindedness, let a man take a hair-rope and bind one end of it

to his own leg and the other to a dog's, then let the children clatter a

potsherd after him, and call out, "Old man! dog! fool! cock! ... "

"The bald-headed, and dwarfed, and the blear-eyed are ineligible for the

priesthood." [HARRIS, p. 88]

"Only kings ... eat roast meat with mustard." [HARRIS, p. 88]

"The Rabbis have taught that a man should not drink water on

Wednesdays and Saturdays after night fall ... An evil spirit ... on

these evenings prowls around..." [HARRIS, p. 92]

"These things cause hemorrhoids: -- eating cane leaves, the foliage and

tendrils of a vine, the palate of cattle, the backbones of fish, half-cooked

salt fish, wine, lees, etc." [HARRIS, p. 106]

"These things are detrimental to study [including] walking between two

camels...; to pass under a bridge beneath which no water has flowed

forty days; to drink water that runs through a cemetery..." [HARRIS, p.

"It is not right for a man to sleep in the daytime any longer than a horse

sleeps. And how long is the sleep of a horse? Sixty respirations."

"The daughters of Israel burn incense for [purposes of] sorcery."

Jewish apologists like Alan Dershowitz exclaim immediate indignation at anyone who dares to excerpt such material, despite the fact that they very much represent -- in page after page -- the "folk" flavor of the ancient Talmud. Cloaking himself as protective defender of both Judaism and Christianity, and going back one generation from the interpretive Talmud to the Torah itself, he argues that

"A classic technique of both anti-Semitism and anti-Christianity has

been to cull from Old and New Testament biblical prescriptions that

when taken out of context seem bizarrely out of place in contemporary

life." [DERSHOWITZ, p. 332]

      What, one wonders, do Dershowitz-like commentators have in mind for the correct "context" for understanding Talmudic admonitions, from which anti-Semites have always found a treasure trove of disturbing material? They are just as bizarre when left in their original context, probably more so since hundreds, if not thousands, of the same sorts of archaic perspectives reinform each other, and those who are doing the "culling" are usually the religiously pious. Such "bizarre cullings" as above are not Talmudic aberrations but are part of a common tone of an interwoven multi-rabbinical catalogue, from the very particular perspective of "being Jewish" hundreds of years ago. Such expressions of "folk wisdom" are not just that, they are explication of a distinct religion, and are argued about over and over, debated to this very day in Orthodox circles not towards discard, but towards (in their essential meanings, however they are conjured) use.

    When confronted with the details of Talmudic guidance and logic, some liberal-minded Jews can't actually stomach what they find. Jane Rachel Litman notes that, when faced with the teachings of the ancient rabbis, some Jews respond with abject denial: i.e., arguing, on modern terms, that the old rabbinical sages couldn't have possibly meant what they wrote:

    "The background sound in the small library is muted but intense. Pairs of scholars
     lean over their talmudic texts whispering energetically, trying to puzzle out the
     meaning of the particular sugya, passage. The teacher directs them back toward
     the group and asks for questions. One student raises a hand: 'I don't understand
     verse 5:4 of the tractate Niddah. What does the phrase 'it is like a finger in
     eye' mean? The teacher responds, 'This refers to the hymen of a girl younger
     than three years old. The Sages believed that in the case of toddler rape, the
     hymen would fully grow back by the time the girl reached adulthood and married.
     Therfore, though violated, she would still technically be counted as a virgin
     and could marry a priest. It's an analogy: poling your finger in the eye is
     uncomortable, but causes no lasting harm.
        There is a collective gasp of breath among students. Their dismay is palpable.
     They do not like this particular talmudic text or the men behind it. But its
     authors, the talmudic rabbis, hardly wrote it with this particular group of
     students in mind -- mostly thirty- and forty-year old women in suburban
     Philadelphia taking a four-week class titled 'Women in Jewish Law' at their
     Reform synagogue.
         The questioner perists. 'I don't understand. Are you saying this refers to the
     rape of a three year-old girl?'
       "Or younger,' the teacher responds dryly.
        'I don't see how it says anything about rape and hymens. You must be
     mistaken. I don't believe the rabbis are talking about rape at all. I think this
     statement has nothing to do with the rest of the passage.'
        The teacher (I'll admit now that it was me, a second-year rabbinic student)
     responds, 'Well, that's the common understanding. What do you think it means?'
     The woman is clearly agitated, 'I don't know, but I do know that it couldn't
    be about child rape.' This is week three of the class. The woman does not
    return for week four. Denial." [LITMAN, R., SEPT 2000]

    Litman, the rabbinic student, then confesses that "I find [Elizabeth Kubler] Ross's model helpful when addressing sacred Jewish texts that are violent or xenophobic, that speak of child abuse, human slavery, or homophobia with gross insensitivity. Like so many of my colleagues and students, I often drift confusedly through denial, anger, grief, rationalization (a form of bargaining); sometimes reaching acceptance, sometimes not." [LITMAN, R., SEPT 2000]

     Another Jewish religion teacher, Deena Copeland Klepper, notes that "there are many passages in the Bible that make us squirm." She cites Pslam 137 from the Torah, where Israelites are enjoined to dash innocent Babylonian babies against the rocks. "I have read Pslam 137 with adults in Jewish history classes many times," Klepper says, "it is the best way I know to communicate the anguish of the Israelites in exile from their homeland. And yet reading the text also elicits a horrified reaction in my students. Against the familiarity of the first part of the psalm, that final vengeful outburst against innocent children shocks; it violates my students' modern sensibilities." [KLEPPER, D., APRIL 2001]

Despite such moral problems with ancient texts, says Edward Boaz, "To be sure, the Talmud was written in a historical context vastly different from the world we live in. Its solutions may not be entirely appropriate to ours. But to its credit, the Talmud is not an abstract religious work. It grows out of the needs of people in all walks of life. The authors have created for us a valuable paradigm that may be utilized for meeting the challenges that confront our children." [BORAZ, p. 3]

For all such Talmudic injunctions, the enduring capacity for the Talmud (and other Jewish religious metacommentaries) to be entirely malleable as an authoritative work to fit the occasion at hand is noted by Jacob Katz; of seven Talmudic commentators expressing an opinion about a seminal religious dictate concerning apostasy, "three succeeded in twisting the meaning of the sentence into the opposite of its obvious intention." [KATZ, Ex, p. 81]

To hold the Jewish community tightly together against other peoples, rabbinical arguments can even be consciously used to subvert the original meanings of the seminal Torah itself. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes that

"One of the most famous passages in the entire rabbinical literature

[is] the argument between Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and [other

rabbinical] sages [of his era] on the ritual cleanliness of a broken

and reconstituted oven. Rabbi Eliezer declared it clean; the sages

ruled against him. He 'brought all the proofs in the world' for his

view but none was accepted. After invoking several miracles, he

finally appealed to Heaven itself, 'whereupon a Heavenly voice was

heard saying: Why do you dispute with Rabbi Eliezer, seeing that

in all matters the halakhah agrees with him?' This proof too was

rejected, on the grounds that 'It [the Torah] is not in heaven.'"

     Here, even though Rabbi Eliezer was, according to Jewish law, clearly correct in his opinion about the broken oven, "the assertion of [communal rabbinical] authority [over God] is necessary 'so that disputes should not multiply in Israel.'"] [SACKS, J., p. 165]

     Lothar Kahn notes prominent secular Jewish author Arthur Koestler's views about such Talmudic reasoning:

     "The survival of a brand of scholasticism in today's Talmudic schools was
      an intellectual shock [to Koestler]. The acrobatics in logic in which it indulged
      appeared to aim at the same intellectual and moral evasions as the practices
      relating to Sabbath and Pesach. Interpretations of Mosaic Law, specifically
      devised to evade the original law, struck him as a form of mental corruption."
      [KAHN, L., 1961, p. 151]

The Talmud has always functioned as a flexible apparatus to shift and adapt the Jewish faith over the centuries to current needs and political expediencies. There is enough conflicting argument in the Talmud to prove or disprove virtually anything, resolve from the shelf any theological -- or practical -- emergency, depending on which way contemporary winds blow. In the Talmud, for example, (Sanhedrin 59a) one old sage, Johanan, opins that "A Gentile who takes up the Torah [Old Testament] is deserving of death." This, to say the least, can be rather disconcerting to find, especially for all the millions of non-Jews who have dared to read the Old Testament, but the admonition to kill is there in seminal Jewish religious literature. Of course, on the same page another rabbi, Meir, takes an opposite stance and claims it is meritorious for anyone to absorb the Bible. (UNIV JEW EN, v. 3, p. 4] Both opinions are there, both are legitimate, both religiously sanctioning what a devout Jew essentially chooses to believe, based upon his or her evaluation -- generally within current convention of a maze of interpretations and emphases -- of conflicting rabbinical arguments.

      Despite the extremely malleable capacities intrinsic to the Talmud, one of its historical standards to our own day -- in the Orthodox context (which is what all Jews were till the Enlightenment) -- is religiously sanctioned racism, rooted in the Chosen People ethos and the notion that Jews were superior to all others and destined to remain "apart" from them. "The Talmudic mind," says Norman Cantor, "is hostile to ethnic equality and to universalism. It is very anxious to enforce an ideal of communal purity. All possible contacts with Gentiles are to be avoided." [CANTOR, p. 206] “It is the Talmudic mentality and customs,” wrote David Goldstein, a Jewish apostate, in 1940, “that are largely responsible for the enmity of non-Jews towards Jews. This enmity also exists among Jews themselves, for revolt is the keynote of modern Jews, revolt against Rabbinism, Orthodox Judaism, which is Talmudism.” [GOLDSTEIN, p. 130] "Learning the classic Jewish texts in the yeshivot (religious schools) of both western and eastern Europe," notes Edwin Boraz, "involved generations of traditions. The Talmud became part of the genetic code of our people." [BORAZ, p. 3]

     And what is included in this "genetic code?" "Sadly," says Rabbi Isar Schorsch,

     "a low estimate of non-Jews pervades much of Talmudic liteature. The Mishna
     admonishes Jews not to leave their animals unattended at the inn of a gentile,
     because gentiles are suspected of engaging in beastiality. Gentiles are described
     also as liable to rape and murder, so that a lonely Jew should avoid their
     company ... [T]reatment of the 'other' remains a problem for Judaism. In
     a divided world, we are entilted to take whatever measures will advance
     our narrow interests. And it is such a world, in which holiness and hatred
     are intertwined, that [jailed American fraudster] Rabbi Frankel inhabits."
     [SCHORSCH, I., 4-30-99]