Troubling Posts From WorldWeiss

[a.saccus]

Troubling Posts From WorldWeiss

This morning I read the following post (Weiss posted it yesterday), and I‘m having difficulty believing it. Is this just my overactive imagination, or does anyone else smell something funny here?

I’m Too Harsh on My People

For a few years when I was trying to establish myself in journalism, I shared an apartment on the Lower East Side with my grandmother and grandfather (when my future wife came to visit, she called me Shtetl Eddy). One day my grandmother leaned against the elevator door waiting for the elevator and gave me a look. "You're harsh, did you know that." I guess I'd just laid into her. (And she could be tough).

Yesterday I got a note from a friendly commenter saying I was stoking the fires of antisemitism, and toughdove, an old friend, says he wants me to come up with better rhetorical ways of addressing my issues. These guys are both right; and I intend to learn from them. I'm not changing my views, but I think I have to work on my sensitivity. My big excuse is that all my growing-up I was told about antisemitism (then I got to college and freaked out about all the WASPy finals clubs that didn't want me), then I got out into the world and antisemitism was there, but it has really made very little difference at all in my life.

One big issue on this blog is the idea that Jewish history is changing in important ways in the U.S. right now. This isn't your grandmother's diaspora. Understanding that is big work, but I've got to find a tender chord...

Posted by Phil Weiss on January 19, 2007 10:34 AM

This is not just a case of a writer having a bad day or a hangover: the past week has been quite tumultuous at MondoWeiss: rabid Zionist attacks, removal of offensive posts, accusations of murder, apologies for an item of misinformation, and now the above article.

Items that concern me:

1. The title. “My People". This does not sound like the universalist, assimilated, good ol’ Phil Weiss I admire.

2. “…a friendly commenter saying I was stoking the fires of anti-Semitism…" Phil’s about as anti-semitic as Jimmy Carter. What kind of “friend" would say such a thing, and why is Phil so eager to call him “a friend"? More worrisome, why does Phil say later “he’s right"?

3. “…and toughdove, an old friend, says he wants me to come up with better rhetorical ways of addressing my issues." What’s “better" than the truth Phil has been speaking? And moreover, this tough old bird wants “better rhetoric" not more truth.

4. Speaking of the unnamed men in #2 and #3, Weiss says, “I intend to learn from them." I'm almost afraid to ask -- Learn what?

5. “…I have to work on my sensitivity." Given Phil’s talent, that’s like saying Wilt Chamberlain needs to work on his height.

6. “I’m not changing my views." Right.

And in today’s post, entitled “Why Jews Are Not Leading an Antiwar Movement This Time Round�here

But I'd like to throw in another factor: class. Since Vietnam, Jews have risen dramatically in American society. My people are now implicated in the power structure in ways we never imagined in the '60s.

and concludes the article:

Today's Jewish world is not the shtetl. We have assimilated, we are the American success story. Morally and emotionally, Jewish kids tend to identify with blue-state powers-that-be. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions that prove the rule: as a body we have little class interest in challenging the assumptions of the (corrupt!) ruling class that got us into this disastrous war.

Not quite sure, but I don't think he said anything there.

I used to listen to him because he was saying something true. Is that all going to change now? And does that have anything to do with this My People business?

I'm worried about Phil Weiss.

 

[Ruth]

Looks like all the Jewish people who 'talk' are being warned not to say anything 'inappropriate'.

Reminds me of the scene in Total Recall, where Douglas Quaid's 'friend' is attempting to persuade him not to go to Recall Labs. When people chose to go against the 'advice' of a 'minder' that's when things start to get a little fraught.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Perhaps it has something to do with these?

http://jewishracism.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-dont-more-jews-speak-out.html

Why Don’t More Jews Speak Out?

Christopher Jon Bjerknes

http://www.jewishracism.com

Jewish rabbinical culture had a firm grip on Jewish life for many, many centuries. Their clannish Talmudic doctrines are deeply ingrained in the Jewish psyche. The Jewish law of din moser entitles rabbis to pronounce a death sentence on any Jew who informs on the tribe:

"A group of rabbis have issued a halachic opinion implying that OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh deserves to be killed. The rabbis, all connected with a movement to resurrect the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish governing body, said in their halachic ruling this week that Naveh was guilty of being a moser, a Hebrew word that can be roughly translated as an informant or traitor."—Matthew Wagner, "Rabbis: Naveh deserves to be killed", The Jerusalem Post, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1167467765105&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull, (18 January 2007).

"Two additional halachic laws are of special importance both generally and specifically when related to the Rabin assassination. These two laws, employed since talmudic times to kill Jews, were invoked by the assassin, Yigal Amir, as his justification for killing Prime Minister Rabin and are still emphasized by Jews who approved or have barely condemned that assassination. These are the 'law of the pursuer' (din rodef) and the 'law of the informer' (din moser).[Notation: 'Moser,' the Hebrew word for informer, is a terrible insult for Jews, similar to the word 'collaborator' for Palestinians.] The first law commands every Jew to kill or to wound severely any Jew who is perceived as intending to kill another Jew. According to halachic commentaries, it is not necessary to see such a person pursuing a Jewish victim. It is enough if rabbinic authorities, or even competent scholars, announce that the law of the pursuer applies to such a person. The second law commands every Jew to kill or wound severely any Jew who, without a decision of a competent rabbinical authority, has informed non-Jews, especially non-Jewish authorities, about Jewish affairs or who has given them information about Jewish property or who has delivered Jewish persons or property to their rule or authority. Competent religious authorities are empowered to do, and at times have done, those things forbidden to other Jews in the second law. During the long period of incitement preceding the Rabin assassination, many Haredi and messianic writers applied these laws to Rabin and other Israeli leaders. The religious insiders based themselves on later developments in Halacha that came to include other categories of Jews who were defined as 'those to whom the law of the pursuer' applied. Every Jew had a religious duty to kill those Jews who were so included. Historically, Jews in the diaspora followed this law whenever possible, until at least the advent of the modern state. In the Tsarist Empire Jews followed this law until well into the nineteenth century."—I. Shahak and N. Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Pluto Press, London, (1999), pp. 137-138.

 

[a.saccus]

Perhaps it has something to do with these?

Most definitely.

"Two additional halachic laws are of special importance both generally and specifically when related to the Rabin assassination. These two laws, employed since talmudic times to kill Jews, were invoked by the assassin, Yigal Amir, as his justification for killing Prime Minister Rabin and are still emphasized by Jews who approved or have barely condemned that assassination. These are the 'law of the pursuer' (din rodef) and the 'law of the informer' (din moser).

I guess when you’ve been making laws and commandments for 2000 years plus, you can think up some real lulus and have something on hand for EVERY occasion.

BEYOND HYPOCRISY -- AND INTO CLOUD-CUCKOO LAND

Coincidentally, I too, was thinking about morality this evening. I found a webpage on the Jewish Virtual library that has, for a serious article, the most goofy statements about “Ethical Monotheism" that I have ever read.

http://www(dot)je(no space here)wishvir(no space here either)uallibrary.org/js(no space)ource/Ju(no space)daism/mono.html

I have this theory that some sort of STS / Tribal organizational balance needs to be maintained here; so that for every vile, heinous activity like the one you cited above, there needs to be some innocuous, silly, out to lunch thing to balance it -- or else disarm or distract one’s alertness from the events in Palestine. The passages I cite are ones that I personally find ironic in light of what‘s going on. Just a small sample:

Ethical monotheism means two things:

1. There is one God from whom emanates one morality for all humanity.

2. God's primary demand of people is that they act decently toward one another.

If all people subscribed to this simple belief—which does not entail leaving, or joining, any specific religion, or giving up any national identity—the world would experience far less evil.
[…]
Second, and more important, nature is amoral. Nature knows nothing of good and evil. In nature there is one rule—survival of the fittest. There is no right, only might. If a creature is weak, kill it. Only human beings could have moral rules such as, "If it is weak, protect it." Only human beings can feel themselves ethically obligated to strangers.

Thus, nature worship is very dangerous. When people idolize nature, they can easily arrive at the ethics of Nazism. It was the law of nature that Adolf Hitler sought to emulate—the strong shall conquer the weak. Nazism and other ideologies that are hostile to ethical monotheism and venerate nature are very tempting. Nature allows you to act naturally, i.e., do only what you want you to do, without moral restraints; God does not. Nature lets you act naturally - and it is as natural to kill, rape, and enslave as it is to love.
[…]
In light of all this, it is alarming that many people today virtually venerate nature. It can only have terrible moral ramifications.

One of the vital elements in the ethical monotheist revolution was its repudiation of nature as god. The evolution of civilization and morality have depended in large part on desanctifying nature.
[…]

One God and One Morality

The oneness of God is an indispensable component of ethical monotheism. Only if there is one God is there one morality. Two or more gods mean two or more divine wills, and therefore two or more moral codes. That is why ethical polytheism is unlikely. Once God told Abraham that human sacrifice is wrong, it was wrong. There was no competing god to teach otherwise.

One morality also means one moral code for all humanity. "Thou shall not murder" means that murder is wrong for everyone, not just for one culture. It means that suttee, the now rare but once widespread Hindu practice of burning widows with their husband's body, is wrong. It means the killing of a daughter or sister who lost her virginity prior to marriage, practiced to this day in parts of the Arab world, is immoral. It means that clitoridectomies, the cutting off of a girl's clitoris (and sometimes more), a ritual practiced on almost one hundred million women living today mostly in Africa, is immoral.

One Humanity

One God who created human beings of all races means that all of humanity are related. Only if there is one Father are all of us brothers and sisters.

Human Life is Sacred

Another critical moral ramification of ethical monotheism is the sanctity of human life. Only if there is a God in whose image human beings are created is human life sacred. If human beings do not contain an element of the divine, they are merely intelligent animals.

It get's a little tricky here, so let me see if I've got this right:

If life is NOT being treated as sacred -- and even if you only consider the slaughter in Gaza and Baghdad and Lebanon, I'd say life wasn't being treated as sacred --then what follows?

--there is no God?

--man created God in his (man's) image?

For many years, I have been warning that a totally secular world view will erode the distinction between humans and animals. The popular contemporary expression "All life is sacred" is an example of what secularism leads to. It means that all life is equally sacred, that people and chickens are equally valuable. That is why the head of a leading animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has likened the barbecuing of six billion chickens a year to the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust; and that is how PETA could take out a full page ad in the Des Moines Register equating the slaughter of animals with the murder of people.

Such views don't so much enhance the value of animal life as they reduce the value of human life.

Jews and Ethical Monotheism

Since Judaism gave the world ethical monotheism, one would expect that Jews would come closest to holding its values. In some important ways, this is true.

I wonder what the list of unimportant ways looks like?

And this guy thinks he's a teacher; he's got a whole set of tapes and instructional materials.

:) :( It's so sad, it's funny. :( :)

 

[Mr. Premise]

a., this is not silly. The crux of the matter is the definition of human being. For some Jews only Jews are humans, so they are not required to act ethically towards gentiles. For other Jews, all humans are humans so they are required to act ethically towards everyone. The former could be called the Talmudic point of view. The latter view is more compatible with Enlightenment ideas.

Coincidentally, I too, was thinking about morality this evening. I found a webpage on the Jewish Virtual library that has, for a serious article, the most goofy statements about “Ethical Monotheism" that I have ever read.

http://www(dot)je(no space here)wishvir(no space here either)uallibrary.org/js(no space)ource/Ju(no space)daism/mono.html

I have this theory that some sort of STS / Tribal organizational balance needs to be maintained here; so that for every vile, heinous activity like the one you cited above, there needs to be some innocuous, silly, out to lunch thing to balance it -- or else disarm or distract one’s alertness from the events in Palestine. The passages I cite are ones that I personally find ironic in light of what‘s going on. Just a small sample:

Ethical monotheism means two things:

1. There is one God from whom emanates one morality for all humanity.

2. God's primary demand of people is that they act decently toward one another.

If all people subscribed to this simple belief—which does not entail leaving, or joining, any specific religion, or giving up any national identity—the world would experience far less evil.
[…]
Second, and more important, nature is amoral. Nature knows nothing of good and evil. In nature there is one rule—survival of the fittest. There is no right, only might. If a creature is weak, kill it. Only human beings could have moral rules such as, "If it is weak, protect it." Only human beings can feel themselves ethically obligated to strangers.

Thus, nature worship is very dangerous. When people idolize nature, they can easily arrive at the ethics of Nazism. It was the law of nature that Adolf Hitler sought to emulate—the strong shall conquer the weak. Nazism and other ideologies that are hostile to ethical monotheism and venerate nature are very tempting. Nature allows you to act naturally, i.e., do only what you want you to do, without moral restraints; God does not. Nature lets you act naturally - and it is as natural to kill, rape, and enslave as it is to love.
[…]
In light of all this, it is alarming that many people today virtually venerate nature. It can only have terrible moral ramifications.

One of the vital elements in the ethical monotheist revolution was its repudiation of nature as god. The evolution of civilization and morality have depended in large part on desanctifying nature.
[…]

One God and One Morality

The oneness of God is an indispensable component of ethical monotheism. Only if there is one God is there one morality. Two or more gods mean two or more divine wills, and therefore two or more moral codes. That is why ethical polytheism is unlikely. Once God told Abraham that human sacrifice is wrong, it was wrong. There was no competing god to teach otherwise.

One morality also means one moral code for all humanity. "Thou shall not murder" means that murder is wrong for everyone, not just for one culture. It means that suttee, the now rare but once widespread Hindu practice of burning widows with their husband's body, is wrong. It means the killing of a daughter or sister who lost her virginity prior to marriage, practiced to this day in parts of the Arab world, is immoral. It means that clitoridectomies, the cutting off of a girl's clitoris (and sometimes more), a ritual practiced on almost one hundred million women living today mostly in Africa, is immoral.

One Humanity

One God who created human beings of all races means that all of humanity are related. Only if there is one Father are all of us brothers and sisters.

Human Life is Sacred

Another critical moral ramification of ethical monotheism is the sanctity of human life. Only if there is a God in whose image human beings are created is human life sacred. If human beings do not contain an element of the divine, they are merely intelligent animals.

It get's a little tricky here, so let me see if I've got this right:

If life is NOT being treated as sacred -- and even if you only consider the slaughter in Gaza and Baghdad and Lebanon, I'd say life wasn't being treated as sacred --then what follows?

--there is no God?

--man created God in his (man's) image?

For many years, I have been warning that a totally secular world view will erode the distinction between humans and animals. The popular contemporary expression "All life is sacred" is an example of what secularism leads to. It means that all life is equally sacred, that people and chickens are equally valuable. That is why the head of a leading animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has likened the barbecuing of six billion chickens a year to the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust; and that is how PETA could take out a full page ad in the Des Moines Register equating the slaughter of animals with the murder of people.

Such views don't so much enhance the value of animal life as they reduce the value of human life.

Jews and Ethical Monotheism

Since Judaism gave the world ethical monotheism, one would expect that Jews would come closest to holding its values. In some important ways, this is true.

I wonder what the list of unimportant ways looks like?

And this guy thinks he's a teacher; he's got a whole set of tapes and instructional materials.

:) :( It's so sad, it's funny. :( :)

 

[a.saccus]

a., this is not silly. The crux of the matter is the definition of human being. For some Jews only Jews are humans, so they are not required to act ethically towards gentiles. For other Jews, all humans are humans so they are required to act ethically towards everyone. The former could be called the Talmudic point of view. The latter view is more compatible with Enlightenment ideas.

Thank you for jogging me back on track, Donald. I was being silly myself.

I know what you’re saying; and if this gentleman is truly an assimilated, morally universalist, nice guy and not someone spreading cointelpro of a Judaic New Age variety while Beirut gets bombed back into the stone age, then I DO owe him an apology -- but only a small one.

The apology is needed because you are correct in that I conflated this man and his moral universalism with the acts of the Zionists crushing Gaza, just because they were both Jews. It’s always dangerous to categorize and stereotype anybody. That certainly deserves an apology.

Mr. D. Praeger, my apologies.

The small size of the apology is because some of the things he said really WERE bad:

Thus, nature worship is very dangerous. When people idolize nature, they can easily arrive at the ethics of Nazism.

Nature lets you act naturally -- and it is as natural to kill, rape, and enslave as it is to love.

There is no connection between nature worship and Nazism outside the initial letter “n".

And it is UNnatural and INhuman to kill, to rape, and to enslave one’s fellow man. Period.

++++++

But this raises a very important point I haven‘t seen brought up here before. When non-Jews come to speak of “Jews", we must realize that there is an unusually wide diversity of types all covered by the same name: “Jew". Unless we know and differentiate them, we’ll make the same mistake I did above, and you so properly called me on.

So here’s my contribution: a list of the varieties of Jewish identities I‘m aware of. We need to know how to separate the sheep from the goats, lest we, in our turn, wind up being responsible for another holocaust by lumping together the innocent along with the guilty. A person is not automatically a Zionist just because he's a Jew. You have to talk with them first.

-- There is the secular Jew, a person whose parents, at least one of them, were Jewish. This person may have no connection whatever to the Jewish community, and yet call himself a Jew when asked. All he know about Israel is what he reads in the New York Times.

--There is a large portion of Israeli settlers, with Ashkenazi roots from the Pale, who have one or more Jewish parents, but who were basically raised as atheists in Russia. My understanding is that as settlers in the occupied territories, as they often are, they are quite aggressive toward Palestinians.

--There is the conventional silent majority type, who regularly attends temple and probably gives to some support-Israel charity. All he knows about Israel is what he sees on Fox TV.

--There is the successful businessman who regularly works his connections at the synagogue, but probably doesn’t think much more about his religion than the Christians who make sure to think about Jesus on Chistmas and Easter. Period.

--There are the intellectuals, the professionals, doctors, lawyers which have benefited from the excellent Tribal group evolutionary strategy -- so beautifully investigated by Kevin MacDonald -- to rise to the top of their fields.

--There are the orthodox of the superstitious variety who, while not understanding the ultimate origin and consequences of their religion, spend a great deal of time studying it.

--There are the orthodox of the thinking variety, like Neturei Karta, who are struggling against the appropriation and perverision of their universalist tradition by the Zionist atheists.

----Then there is the fire-breathing Zionist atheist, who is in no way religious, but deliberately uses his Jewish identity as a cover for his psychopathic imperialistic tendencies. This is the one we’ve got to worry about. This is the wolf in sheep’s clothing, who willingly drags down all the other categories of Jews into his maelstrom.

As the crises increase, many of the above groups of Jews, who have never thought deeply about their religion, how it really got started, and how being a Chosen People in the hands of the Zionist Pathocrats can lead, not to holiness but to becoming the holy terror to the nations--these people will have to start thinking. As the Wave passes through, they will literally face the Moment of Truth, the Declaration of Priorities, and have to shed their dual loyalties and choose one way or the other, Jew or non-Jew.

For our part, we have to be open and understanding, and welcome them back into the One And Only Humanity, that, most ironically of all, they've never really left, except in their minds.

For we shall go, all together, into the future; or we shall go, all together, into endless night.