Jewish History, Jewish Religion - Israel Shahak's shocking revelations

[luc]

I read "Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Shahak around 2004/05. The most shocking thing for me was the examples he gives of "violating the sabbath" and such things, where they approach the religious obligations in the spirit of "cheating 'God'". The really weird mindset inculcated into the religious Jews, he points out, makes them try to use deception and manipulation to seem to follow the letter of the law, while destroying its spirit.

I remember when I was in Jerusalem, an orthodox Jew approached me just after the Sabbath ended - in front of the Wailing Wall, no less! - and asked me whether I'm a Jew; when I said no, he asked me for a lighter so that he could smoke, because orthodox Jews aren't even allowed to carry a lighter on Sabbath. Talk about weaseling and deceiving your God! I witnessed quite a few instances of this "Goy shabbat" thing, not to mention programming systems in advance to avoid having to switch on stuff on Sabbath and so on. Thinking about it, this is really insane! It's like saying "oh, God doesn't want me to have sex outside marriage, so let's come up with a way to get an instant marriage for one night and an instant divorce the next morning".

I wonder what it does to a person's brain to be told your entire life not only that you are speshful and part of a superior race, but also that your God accepts and even likes the most blatant, idiotic weaseling out of his laws and coming up with all sorts of "clever" deceptions!!

 

[Laura]

I wonder what it does to a person's brain to be told your entire life not only that you are speshful and part of a superior race, but also that your God accepts and even likes the most blatant, idiotic weaseling out of his laws and coming up with all sorts of "clever" deceptions!!

One can barely imagine it.

Well, of course, we see how the "helicopter parenting" has worked out for the Liberal/Left types. Recall the child-rearing advice given since the 60s or so, that children are supposed to be rewarded for just about anything; they are supposed to be told that they can do anything at all; they are supposed to be told how special they are, etc etc. So, we can see what it has done to them in that context.

But even that doesn't go as far as being told from birth that you - and your particular group - are special and superior to all other human groups on the planet; and in fact, your religion teaches you that they are actually sub-human, little better than beasts, etc. Shahak gives numerous examples of this type of thinking. It sure makes it clear that there is no "Judeo-Christian" tradition because that is not just anti-Christian, it's anti-human.

How might the Cosmic Information Field react to this? I guess we may soon find out. "Soon" being somewhat relative.

 

[Vulcan59]

For those who can't afford the book, the entire book is published online with the appropriate Copyright Notice. Book can be read here.

 

[Konstantin]

I remember when I was in Jerusalem, an orthodox Jew approached me just after the Sabbath ended - in front of the Wailing Wall, no less! - and asked me whether I'm a Jew; when I said no, he asked me for a lighter so that he could smoke, because orthodox Jews aren't even allowed to carry a lighter on Sabbath. Talk about weaseling and deceiving your God! I witnessed quite a few instances of this "Goy shabbat" thing, not to mention programming systems in advance to avoid having to switch on stuff on Sabbath and so on. Thinking about it, this is really insane! It's like saying "oh, God doesn't want me to have sex outside marriage, so let's come up with a way to get an instant marriage for one night and an instant divorce the next morning".

I wonder what it does to a person's brain to be told your entire life not only that you are speshful and part of a superior race, but also that your God accepts and even likes the most blatant, idiotic weaseling out of his laws and coming up with all sorts of "clever" deceptions!!

I have a similar experience
About 15 years ago I worked in a company where the majority of workers were Muslims. Just 3 people in the company including me were non-Muslim. On their holy month of Ramadan, they were all fasting. Or the majority of them just pretend to fast in front of other Muslims.
A lot of them would come to me so nobody else could see them and would ask me to make them a coffee and hide it somewhere so then they could go without anyone could see them and drink their coffee.

Everyone, One by one asked me not to tell anybody about that.

Everyone pretends that they are fasting just in front of other Muslims, so they would think about them that they are good Muslims.
The same story goes if we had to go somewhere outside of the company. If there will be somebody who is not a Muslim he would go to the store and buy food and eat, so when we would come back in the company he would continue to pretend that he is fasting the whole day.

So, people were lying in front of each other in order to show who is a better Muslim. Because if he doesn't fast the others from his religious group would somehow mark him as a nonbeliever. They were lying themselves and all others.
When I asked them about that they always have an explanation. The explanation was that the days you missed fasting, you can compensate by donating a specific sum of money in the Mosque. So, in the end, the rich individuals can actually buy the " God's mercy" with cheating and be a "good Muslim " while poor people can't do that.

 

[Hi_Henry]

Amazing that an Organic Chemist named Israel Shachak is doing this heavy lifting of explaining in a readable form what is going on within Judaism. The facts are out there but if you try to follow the thread you will get lost if you are not a specialist in this area. Even the term such as "Classical Judaism" will make you wonder what exactly anyone one person is taking about.

The term “Classical Reform” is the most commonly used expression to denote the historic expression of Reform Judaism, as it developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Now you will need to get your head around "Reform Judaism" ..... well I give up.

Here is an interesting comment on Amazon which speak to what is written in Chapter 3 of Shachak's book,
From the book:

Secondly, these ideas play an important contemporary political role, inasmuch as they form part of the explicit system of beliefs of many religious politicians, including most leaders of Gush Emunim, and have an indirect influence on many Zionist leaders of all parties, including the Zionist left.

The comment:

Mevashir
You appear to have mislabeled your review with only one star. Hope you can figure out how to fix it.

I joined the ranks of the ultra Orthodox Jews after my graduation from Harvard. I can confirm that Shachak's claims are valid. He has a very broad knowledge of Judaism and you should be grateful he took time from his work as an Organic Chemist to convey the deeply misanthropic nature of Judaism.

Judaism does have some good points, and Shachak acknowledges them. However his concern is to expose and denounce the paranoid attitude of overwhelming contempt of Orthodox Jews to non-Jewish society. In places like America Jews are a bit more discreet, but in Israel the gloves are off totally.

I once acted as a translator for my Chassidic rebbe in an interview with French TV reporters. The rebbe spent the first ten minutes of the interview insulting goyim and laughing at them like a lunatic. I was mortified to have to translate this crap for these people. I could only pray that they didn't return to France to join the LePen movement.

You might be interested in my blog writings about my journey from secular American Judaism to Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy to Christianity:

https://independent.academia.edu/MichaelPhilipKorn

https://www.academia.edu/6572709/MPKs_Christian_Testimonial

https://www.academia.edu/9098279/FROM_CULT_TO_CHRIST_-_My_Time_Inside_the_Na_Nach_Chassidic_Sect

This last essay depicts the inner workings of one of the popular Chassidic cults in Israel today. I think it confirms everything that Shachak says.

Book Review

 

[Hi_Henry]

Everyone pretends that they are fasting just in front of other Muslims, so they would think about them that they are good Muslims.

Humans like to play the game "Make Believe". I'll venture a guess that it is so everywhere.

When I read sometimes of the alleged accesses in the Buddhist Religion it just reinforces my belief that people are just people everywhere. Be they Hindus, Muslim, Jews or Christians. The difference being only how far they are willing to push the limits of their learned moral code in their society.

 

[Nienna]

The most shocking thing for me was the examples he gives of "violating the sabbath" and such things, where they approach the religious obligations in the spirit of "cheating 'God'". The really weird mindset inculcated into the religious Jews, he points out, makes them try to use deception and manipulation to seem to follow the letter of the law, while destroying its spirit.

So the Jews don't only practice the art of deception in the MOSSAD, but it seems that most of them practice this in every-day living. I don't know whether to laugh or cry! But, I am not surprised. However, having lived with some Baptist relatives for a short time, I can tell you that the Jews are not the only ones who do this; only, maybe not to this extreme.

 

[mkrnhr]

That the deception comes from individuals, that one can accept: You live in certain culture and you don't agree with a certain tradition so you just pretend following it to avoid any ill consequances. However, a religious system that teaches you how to deceive is something completely different. It's like an early version of truth is relative.

 

[thorbiorn]

In this book, I learned that just like Muslims are expected to offer their prayers in the direction of Mekka, Jews are expected to pray with the intention of facing Jerusalem (page 31 of pdf) and besides just like in Islam there are Hadiths and Sunna to lay out the proper interpretation of the Quaran and the rulings of the Sharia, so in Judaism the Talmud literature has a similar role:

It should therefore be clearly understood that the source of authority for all the practices of classical (and present - day Orthodox) Judaism, the determining base of its legal structure, is the Talmud, or, to be precise, the so- called Babylonian Talmud; while the rest of the talmudic literature (including the so-called Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud) acts as a supplementary authority.
[...]
Basically, the Talmud consists of two parts. First, the Mishnaha terse legal code consisting of six volumes, each subdivided into several tractates, written in Hebrew, redacted in Palestine around AD 200 out of the much more extensive (and largely oral) legal material composed during the preceding two centuries. The second and by far predominant part is the Gemaraha voluminous record of discussions on and around the Mishnah. There are two, roughly parallel, sets of Gemarah, one composed in Mesopotamia ("Babylon") between about AD 200 and 500, the other in Palestine between about AD 200 and some unknown date long before 500. The Babylonian Talmud (that is, the Mishnah plus the Mesopotamian Gemarah) is much more extensive and better arranged than the Palestinian, and it alone is regarded as definitive and authoritative.

As others have noted it makes for some horrific reading in the later chapters. Israel Shahak is very helpful with providing examples and cases, in particular Spain and Poland. The latter at one stage included large tracts of what is now Ukraine, and the fate of that country to this day appears to carry the shadows of the past. We know that there in Western Ukraine were anti Jewish sentiments by the followers of Stepan Bandera, who when opportunity appeared formed an alliance with the invading German Nazi forces and shared a similar ideology. About the history of of Ukraine in the 18th century Israel Shahak writes:

The desire of noblemen in neighboring countries to enjoy the power of the Polish pan over his peasants (including the power of life and death without any right of appeal) was instrumental in the territorial expansion of Poland. The situation in the "eastern" lands of Poland (Byelorussia and the Ukraine) colonized and settled by newly enserfed peasants was worst of all.
[...]
In short, in eastern Poland, under the rule of the nobles (and of the feudalized church, formed exclusively from the nobility) the Jews were both the immediate exploiters of the peasantry and virtually the only town- dwellers. No doubt, most of the profit they extracted from the peasants was passed on to the landlords, in one way or another. No doubt, the oppression and subjugation of the Jews by the nobles were severe, and the historical record tells many a harrowing tale of the hardship and humiliation inflicted by noblemen on "their" Jews. But, as we have remarked, the peasants suffered worse oppression at the hands of both landlords and Jews; and one may assume that, except in times of peasant uprisings, the full weight of the Jewish religious laws against Gentiles fell upon the peasants. As will be seen in the next chapter, these laws are suspended or mitigated in cases where it is feared that they might arouse dangerous hostility towards Jews; but the hostility of the peasants could be disregarded as ineffectual so long as the Jewish bailiff could shelter under the "peace" of a great lord.

At the moment Israel is still sheltered "under the 'peace' of a great lord", but what will then happen if that disappears?

One interesting observation is that the author repeatedly mentions that In the

Islamic countries the
information gap is not quite so big; still, very little is known about Jewish society before AD 800 and about the changes it must have undergone during the three preceding centuries.

One wonders if there were holes in the chronology?

 

[Keit]

This is a good overview of Shahak's views and work.

I wonder what it does to a person's brain to be told your entire life not only that you are speshful and part of a superior race, but also that your God accepts and even likes the most blatant, idiotic weaseling out of his laws and coming up with all sorts of "clever" deceptions!!

It is like being subjected to a pathological indoctrination. For example, it is similar to a dynamic described in the Narcissistic family and other books, where a tyrant parent has a "special and favorite" child (Jews), and he turns this child against other siblings (goim/non Jews) and feeds off it. The tyrant parent instructs and expects the favorite child to be kind and obedient, and God fearing, but only toward the parent and their kind. When it comes to the others - all bets are off.

Philosophizing and all kind of interpretations of the written word are a quintessential part of Jewish tradition/religion. Probably that's what happens when your parent is a tyrant and your only choice is finding loopholes. And using such loopholes and various interpretations anything can be justified, even genocide!

There is also this trait:

 

[mkrnhr]

Philosophizing and all kind of interpretations of the written word are a quintessential part of Jewish tradition/religion.

Interesting that you mention this because I was thinking that the over-intellectualizing is part of the problem as well. I read somewhere that the Greeks considered the Jews as something akin to a "people of philosophers". Now if one considers intense philosophising in small groups of people, like schools, you may have an approximate image of the Jewish communities under the control of rabbies in the medieval times. Splitting hair about the nature of god, of the torah, of the law, to a pathological degree may have led to the development of such attitudes and mental gymnastics.

Take the gnostic speculations about the pleroma, mix it with the corporeal representations of the Merkeba and associated magic, the everyday obsession about the law/s, and after a few generations of intense philosophizing, you end up with a rigid mess of a system of thought.

 

[Pierre]

I wonder what it does to a person's brain to be told your entire life not only that you are speshful and part of a superior race,

The results of this kind of environment (nurture) might be even more striking when combined with the high prevalence of psychopathy (nature) among Ashkenazi Israelis (more than 50% according to a recent session).

According to Psychopathy by Carl Frankenstein, it is this kind of specific combination of harmful upbringing combined with a psychopathic genetic potential that leads to fully manifested psychopathic behaviors.

I guess an individual that got the most SDS genetic profiles and upbringing will end up as a very STS individual. That might be one of the reasons why Mossad is "at the apex of the SDS pyramid"

Beside psychopathy (failed OP) there also the interesting case of souled being raised in the kabbalistic Jewish culture in connection with the 4D STS candidates concept as suggested in the Ra channeling sessions.

 

[flashgordonv]

I remember when I was in Jerusalem, an orthodox Jew approached me just after the Sabbath ended - in front of the Wailing Wall, no less! - and asked me whether I'm a Jew; when I said no, he asked me for a lighter so that he could smoke, because orthodox Jews aren't even allowed to carry a lighter on Sabbath. Talk about weaseling and deceiving your God! I witnessed quite a few instances of this "Goy shabbat" thing, not to mention programming systems in advance to avoid having to switch on stuff on Sabbath and so on. Thinking about it, this is really insane! It's like saying "oh, God doesn't want me to have sex outside marriage, so let's come up with a way to get an instant marriage for one night and an instant divorce the next morning".

I wonder what it does to a person's brain to be told your entire life not only that you are speshful and part of a superior race, but also that your God accepts and even likes the most blatant, idiotic weaseling out of his laws and coming up with all sorts of "clever" deceptions!!

When I lived in Sydney, the neighborhood had a very strong presence of Orthodox Jews. They mounted a strong petition to local council to get a wire strung around the suburb,called an eruv, which would allow Jewish people living inside it to avoid the restrictions on the Sabbath. When it was defeated in council, they financed a couple of people to run for the next council elections so their people on the inside could get their eruv approved. I left Sydney just after that, but they were successful getting two councilors elected. These guys were both very young (early 20's) and had the best funded campaigns in the history of the council elections. And all so they could weasel out of the obligations of their faith. Really weirs and devious behaviour

 

[Hi_Henry]

Eruv - very interesting. Had no clue such things existed. Uncle Google provides interesting stuff on this,

Damaged eruv
Going high tech

Lets not go to court

The presiding judge in the lawsuits, John Michael Vazquez, in January 2018 made it clear he felt the municipalities did not have a strong case, and urged them to settle. The three municipalities have settled with the eruv association, allowing the eruv borders to remain. Mahwah has settled a lawsuit from the New Jersey Attorney General accusing it of discrimination.

I'd love to know what "mojo" was lacking making the case "weak".

Like it or not everyone is involved involuntarily in this hidden ritualistic activity. What if the Catholics had a ritual that on Sunday's they must be within sight of a cross thus requiring that a crosses be placed sufficiently high to be visible from all direction by the followers ? My guess there would be a 5 year environmental study/debate required to prove that it didn't offend anyone hence Mission Impossible.

Now I'm curious, is there any other "stuff" out there "Hidden in Plain Sight" ?

 

[Sodajaxon]

Beside psychopathy (failed OP) there also the interesting case of souled being raised in the kabbalistic Jewish culture in connection with the 4D STS candidates concept as suggested in the Ra channeling sessions.
Pierre
SuperModerator

what about the 'other gods' ? the devil is an 'other god', yahweh and jesus are the same person as shouted at me, by a christian, and i must me a devil follower to suggest the devil is a god.
i got excited to encounter this cognitive dissonance, and i asked why does yahway kill Palestinian children, he said "yahway told the jews to do it a long time ago, they are not done.
one moment of contemplation let me say, 'jesus loves jenocide!", kill babies and innocent children! its what jews do!, then he hung up the phone.

my heart is a bit advanced for me, i will grow into my heart, thank you all for being here!