Saturday, January 18, 2025

Preposterous: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Via Instapundit, I came across this Jan. 15, 2025 article at Front Page Magazine: "Anglican Church of Ireland Canon David Oxley Claims Jews See Themselves as ‘Master Race’." It is subtitled: "Preposterous charge." Apparently the offending comment by Oxley was this:

“This takes different forms in different times and places, but it is the same horrible idea, that one group of people is intrinsically more valuable than any other. Once that is accepted, then the elimination of others follows as a matter of course – because they don’t count,” Oxley said at the Dublin Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on November 10….

The Front Page author, Hugh Fitzgerald, indicates that Oxley made the comments in the context of criticizing Israel's attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. My concern here is not Israel’s response to the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas, but Fitzgerald's following comment:

The charge is preposterous. No Israeli Jews are taught that they are “intrinsically more valuable than any other.” For god’s [sic] sake, all the Israelis want from the Arabs is that they stop trying to murder them. It’s a simple wish. No “master race” ideology is involved. ...

But is it actually true that Israelis specifically, or even Jews more generally, do not see themselves as more valuable than non-Jews or as a master race? 

    Consider this: Rabbi Ovadia Yosef--"the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973 to 1983, and a founder and long-time spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas party"--said the following about gentiles ("goyim") in an October 10, 2010, sermon:

    “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”

    “In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.

    “This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”

    “Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat… That is why gentiles were created.”

I also came across a statement from Rabbi Yoel Lieberman, also from roughly the same time, discusses in detail why Jews, according to their religious teachings, are inherently--in a very literal sense--superior to the non-Jew, including those that convert to Judaism. Addressing the teachings from various Rabbinical texts, he includes comments such as:

  • "We have already mentioned the words of the Ra’avad with regards to an animal slaughtered by a Gentile: 'for the Gentiles are like animals…and one who thinks of them as something [worthwhile] will gather the wind in his fist.'"
  • "So we see that the Jews, because of their special spiritual level, are considered to be a genus different from all the other people."
  • "Also in 'Gur Aryeh' on the portion of Matot (page 164 s.v. v’ein ha’goyim) it is written: '…and this is what they said "You are called men and the nations are not called men," for the difference that exists between the animal world and man exists within you exceedingly, but the nations are not "men," for their souls are immersed in the material, associated with the materialistic animal world, and this matter is clear.'"
  • "In the World to Come, however, there will be no nation other than Israel. The souls of righteous Gentiles will be allowed to exist in the Future World, but only as an addition and attachment to Israel. They will therefore be secondary to the Jews, just as a garment is secondary to the one who wears it. All that they attain of the ultimate good will have to be attained in this manner, since by virtue of their nature they can receive no more.
     
    "Jews, therefore, are the 'true humanity,' whereas the Gentiles are only 'on a low level of humanity'; Jews 'are true humanity from its authentic roots,' whereas the other nations are 'all on the level of Man in his fallen state' -- and therefore 'are treated as ones belonging to completely different genera.'"
  • "In the book 'Orot,' Orot Yisrael chapter 5, article 10 (page 156), Rabbi Kook wrote: 'The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing, and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality.'"

There is a lot more, but you get the gist. And these were from just the first 2 pages of my Google search. 

    And as I noted in my review of Israel Shahak's book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years:

    Shahak also explains that the classical and orthodox Jews believe that they, and only they, are truly "humans" capable of worshiping the true God. Gentiles are considered "to be, literally, limbs of Satan". While they do recognize the possibility of conversion, they believe that people that convert were "in reality 'Jewish souls' who got lost when Satan violated the Holy Lady ... in her heavenly abode."

    Nevertheless, they believe that certain peoples were incapable of being Jewish: the Mongols "and the nomads in the North, and the Blacks and the nomads in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates," because "their nature is like the nature of mute animals" and "they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey...." Of course, in English translations, in order to conceal this, the word "Blacks" is changed to Kushites, "a word which means nothing to those who have no knowledge of Hebrew[.]"

    It's not that I object to religions believing that they are special or unique when it comes to truth and salvation, but that people like Fitzgerald, deliberately or otherwise, are lying to their readers about widely held beliefs in Israel that may be influencing its policies and conduct. There are, in fact, Israeli Jews that are taught and believe that they are “intrinsically more valuable than any other” people. Do all Israelis believe such? Of course not. But was Oxley's comment preposterous? Not at all.

4 comments:

  1. The US acts like a client state of Israel.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are many who absolutely believe that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But under Christianity, they aren't so special anymore. "So the last shall be first, and the first last." Also the parable of the prodigal son.

      Delete

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