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Jewish Crypsis – Half-Jews

Published on September 24, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Age of Treason Radio

What is a half-jew? Someone who is part jew and part something else.

Mamzer is a word jews use to describe a broad range of illegitimate offspring, including partial jews. The German word mischling specifically means part-jew.

These are terms akin to mulatto and mestizo, commonly used in the Americas to describe the results of mixing Whites with Africans or Amerindians. Likewise hapa, which originally meant part-Hawaiian but has spread and broadened to mean part-Asian/Pacific Islander.

The term half-jew causes cognitive dissonance when the lie that jewishness is all about religion clashes with the reality that it is about heredity. Examples of the resulting denial and confusion are easy to find.

How is someone ever “half” jewish (or any other religion)?

I hear all the time people saying that they are “half” jewish. Or they are half “catholic”?

How are you a “half” of any relgion? Its like being a virgin; either you are or you are not. You cannot be a “half” a virgin.

It is not the same as being born from two different racial parents where you are half and half.

Judiasm is not a race or ethnicity, it is a religion. The ethnicity of Jewish decent is mediteranean.

Such denial and confusion is found mostly among non-jews, who for various reasons can’t face the fact that jewishness is racial. A different kind of psychological strain is found in half-jews, many of whom realize that jewishness has always been based more on who your parents are than what beliefs you profess – that it is racial. Their situation can be understood as an “identity crisis”. Those who are part-White tend to reject Whiteness and grasp onto their jewishness instead, even though the jews, as a group, reject them.

In 2011 I detailed one example of half-jew behavior in An Unamusing Mischling Meltdown. “Unamused” initially claimed that he wasn’t a jew and didn’t care about the jews, and that “the Stormfronters” who think differently and reject him are stupid/crazy/evil. When challenged it became clear that he was lying, that he identified more with jews than Whites.

Whereas a half-jew striking a pose as pro-“white” is atypical, siding with jews is not. Snark, sarcasm and neurosis abound.

David Kersh: Half Jews? Modern Day Judaism as a Math Problem, by David Kersh, 13 Jan 2012:

The other day, driving back from a family member’s bar mitzvah, my eldest son wanted to know if he would get to have one someday.

I told him it was not going to happen and reminded him of his blessed half-Jewishness; I added, however, that though he did not have a choice in regards to the bar mitzvah business, he did have a choice as to which half of his body could be Jewish. If he wanted his legs and arms to be Jewish, or his hair Catholic and his ears Jewish, that was fine; needless to say, as his penis is not circumcised that would naturally have to be part of his non-Jewish self.

Something did not sit right with this concept. It was too simplistic, a one size fits all way to deal with identity. Maybe it worked in the olden days, post-shtetl and pre-Obama. After all, not all half-Jews are worth the same. For starters, there is the case that if the mother is Jewish and the father is non-Jewish, the kids are not half-Jews, but full Jews; or that a circumcised son of a Jewish father is supposedly more Jewish than my sons. I surely lose points not just by having three uncircumcised boys, but having three uncircumcised boys who eat Spanish ham (sometimes on a bagel, though) with milk on a daily basis. On the other hand, I must be able to claim points for the six months spent in Jerusalem wandering aimlessly and playing out the part of a wondering Jew; or the fact that I complain a lot; or that I feel ethically, intellectually and just plain superior to my neighbors; or that I give every cool person I like, from a Portuguese landscape architect to a Malian guitarist, a Jewish ancestor; or that I am clumsy; or, God forbid, that I am writing a piece about Jewish identity because I am confused about my Jewish identity.

The jew cries out in pain as he strikes his half-jew kids.

The Half-Jewish Book: A Celebration, by Daniel Klein and Freke Vuijst, published in 2000:

It’s happening fast: The population of half-Jews in America is well on its way to surpassing the population of full Jews. And with this population shift has come a revolutionary transformation of what it means to be half-Jewish. Sure, some people say that you are either Jewish or not, that there’s nothing in between–but the authors emphatically disagree. They say half-Jews are a unique subculture of people who draw from both sides of their heritage and synthesize their cultural halves into a remarkable new identity.

The Half-Jewish Book celebrates this unique identity that until now has been ignored, maligned, and misunderstood. There’s half-Jewish humor. Half-Jewish/half-Catholic Bill Maher: “I come from a mixed religious background–when I went to confession, I brought a lawyer with me.” And there’s half-Jewish beauty–Gwyneth Paltrow, Joan Collins, and Jane Seymour, just for starters. There are half-Jewish writers (Proust, Salinger), and half-Jewish characters in fiction by authors ranging from Philip Roth to Salman Rushdie. There’s even that half-Jewish cartoon phenomenon Tommy Pickles, in Rugrats. There are half-Jewish politicians–Fiorello La Guar-dia, Barry Goldwater, Dianne Feinstein. And there are the extraordinary number of people, like General Wesley Clark, who discovered as adults that they were half-Jewish and then embraced their newfound double heritage.

Beta-Gershom:

Do you have Jewish and Gentile ancestry?

If you have mixed ancestry, you may have wondered “I am a Jew?, or what nation do I belong to?”. Unfortunately, most of the different Jewish denominations disagree regarding “who is born a Jew?”. They disagree because each has interpreted the language of the Torah differently. The reason this has happened is quite simple: the texts that speak of children of intermarriage in the Written Torah do not explicitly state whether a child of intermarriage is, or is not, a part of Israel. Hence, each denomination has interpreted according to their particular traditions.

The Half-Jewish Network: Welcoming Adult Children & Grandchildren of Intermarriage

WHAT IS THE HALF-JEWISH NETWORK?

The Half-Jewish Network is a social, networking, support, cultural, research and advocacy organization for adult children and other interested descendants of intermarriage and interfaith/intercultural relationships. It was founded in 2005.

The Half-Jewish Network is willing to provide advice and guidance to spiritual and secular organizations that seek effective ways to welcome the adult children and other descendants of intermarriage.

The Half-Jewish Network welcomes adult children and other descendants of intermarriage from all religious, secular and cultural backgrounds.

WE WELCOME . . .

We cordially invite the adult children and other descendants of either a Jewish father or a Jewish mother to join us. We make no distinctions between them.

Adult children and other descendants are welcome whether they identify as Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, agnostics, atheists, “both,” “neither,” “uncertain,” “secular,” and many other self-identifications.

No one is required to either adopt or renounce any particular spiritual or cultural identity in order to join and remain a member of the Half-Jewish Network.

We welcome biracial, multiracial and mixed heritage adult children and other descendants of intermarriages.

We greet “DNA half-Jewish people,” who have learned that they have partial Jewish ancestry from genealogical searches and DNA tests.

We are glad to see adult adoptees, stepchildren and other non-biological descendants of intermarriages.

WHY DOES THE HALF-JEWISH NETWORK EXIST?

Astonishingly, at the present time — despite the fact that there are thousands of us living in countries all over the world, including Israel — there are almost no resources for us of any kind.

We have very few opportunities to network — talk, meet, share stories and information and form friendships and relationships.

There is very little known about us. There are few research studies on us or brochures and literature for us or groups engaged in outreach to us.

We also have almost no public “voices” or spokespersons to give feedback or comments when decisions are made about us in the Jewish world and in other faith-based and secular communities.

This neglect is in glaring contrast to the huge amount of research on — and numerous organizations and spokespersons for — interfaith couples (our parents) — and the related support groups for the parents of interfaith couples (our grandparents) — within both Judaism and Christianity. (We have not yet found such groups within other cultures yet.)

Jews in ALL Hues | Dual-Heritage Jews:

Currently, 52% of all Jews (28 and under) in the United State are Dual/Multiple Heritage Jews. Dual or Multiple-Heritage Jews include people who have one Jewish parent, Adopted Jews, Jews By Choice, Jews of Color, among others (including those with one Sephardi and one Ashkenazi parent). Despite stereotypes surrounding intermarriage (and children of intermarriage), and Jews from diverse backgrounds Dual or Multiple-heritage Jews are the future of American Jewry.

Jewish Multiracial Network | Because Jews come in all Colors!

Diversity is diversity’s greatest strength.

The Half-Jew’s Complaint, by Sadie Stein, Jezebel, 9 Jul 2009:

Debates are raging in Israel over whether to let people claim Jewish identity based on either parent. More conservative factions want to stick to matrilineality. Us half-Jews are confused.

The podcast will be broadcast and available for download on Tuesday at 9PM ET.

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Jewish Crypsis – Wannabe Jews

Published on September 17, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Age of Treason Radio

The flip side of “conversion” – non-jews who want to be jews.

Jews make changes in order not to be noticed as jews, not to stop being jews. Wannabe jews are non-jews who actually want to change into jews. They believe this is possible based in part on their own misunderstanding of the nature of jewishness, and in part on jewish dishonesty about it.

Non-jews can’t really start being jews any more than jews can stop being jews. In both cases the same biological essence of jewishness stands in the way. At the same time we see that the ideological essence of identity is powerful in its own way.

Non-jews who hold jews in high esteem, with wannabe jews being an extreme example, can still serve the best interests of jews. Those so disposed are in a sense an extended phenotype of jews. While jews cultivate the worship of jews, ideologically speaking, and welcome the benefits the consequent sevice this provides them, they also firmly discourage and resist those who mistake it for an invitation to join them biologically.

Some jews, like Michael Freund and Stanley Hordes, espouse relatively inclusivist notions, but the reality is that jewishness is exclusivist. Jews stereotypically urge their children to marry other jews. “Intermarriage” with non-jews is deplored by those who don’t condemn it outright. Though jews are disdainful of tribemates who “convert”, or otherwise demonstrate disloyalty, their consensus is that nothing a jew says or does stops them from being a jew.

Focusing on jewish attitudes regarding Stanley Hordes and his “Hispanos” highlights, once again, that jewishness is about peoplehood, not relgion or beliefs.

Mistaken Identity? The Case of New Mexico’s “Hidden Jews”, by Barbara Ferry and Debbie Nathan, The Atlantic, Dec 2000:

To make a distinction that will later prove germane, [Hordes] is an Ashkenazi. Ashkenazic Jews trace their ancestry to Northern and Eastern Europe, whereas Sephardic Jews trace theirs to Iberia. Almost all Jews in North America today are Ashkenazim. Before the late nineteenth century the Jews in Latin America were overwhelmingly Sephardim.

He also began spending more and more time promoting his growing belief that Sephardic crypto-Judaism had survived four centuries of secrecy in the Southwest. The proposition, if true, was astonishing. And it held enormous appeal for Jews elsewhere in the United States, still grappling with the legacy of the Holocaust and eager for stories about Jewish survival against all odds.

The jews liked the idea, until they didn’t. As it became increasing clear that a number of very brown “crypto-jews” were eager to “rejoin” the tribe, the jewishness-as-religion-and-culture pretense gave way quickly to the jews-as-hereditary-biological-group reality.

EVEN as Hordes and the Sandovals were riding a wave of celebrity, an undercurrent of trouble was gathering force. The problems had started in 1992, when an Indiana University graduate student named Judith Neulander arrived in New Mexico with notebooks, cassette tapes, and hopes of pursuing her own research in crypto-Jewish studies.

Neulander wanted to be the first folklorist to dignify the claims with ethnographic research. As she derisively puts it now, she wanted to be “Queen of the Crypto-Jews.”

It wasn’t long before she ran across the work of the anthropologist Raphael Patai.

IN the 1940s Patai had visited Venta Prieta, a dusty town near Mexico City, where people have been calling themselves Jews at least since the 1930s. When Patai arrived, on the heels of World War II, the Venta Prietans actually had a synagogue. Their prayers sometimes included a few sentences in halting Hebrew. In the spring they celebrated Passover, with a seder and flatbread. With their short stature, black hair, and dark skin, the Venta Prietans were indistinguishable from the mestizo Catholic population that dominates Mexico. Yet they claimed descent from one of the country’s Inquisition-era Sephardic families, the Carvajals, and said that their religion was handed down over the centuries from them.

As Patai poked through Venta Prieta’s history, he accumulated persuasive evidence that its people were not descended from Jews at all. Instead they were the inheritors of what might be called crypto-Protestantism. In the early decades of this century, it seems, a fundamentalist splinter group called the Church of God Israelite left Mexico City to proselytize elsewhere; some settled in Venta Prieta. The group was a branch of the Church of God (Seventh Day) — a sect originally located in Iowa, and now headquartered in Colorado. As the name suggests, Church of God (Seventh Day) members observe the sabbath as Jews do, on the last day of the week — Saturday. They ignore Christmas and Easter, believing these holidays to be “pagan.” Branches in the Southwest celebrate their own versions of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkoth, along with Passover, which they mark with a ceremony that includes unleavened bread.

The doctrinal roots of the Church of God (Seventh Day) go back to the Reformation, to an obsession among some Protestants with the Second Coming and the Millennium. One scenario, which is repeated these days by many televangelists, has it that Jesus will not return to earth until all the world’s Jews are gathered together to welcome him back. If present-day Jews are uninterested in doing so, then perhaps they can be replaced by worthier ones, by Jews who accept Christ as the Messiah. These more promising Jews, in the view of some fundamentalist Protestants, disappeared with the ten lost tribes of Israel. Now they must be found, so that the Savior can return.

This logic has engendered a centuries-old preoccupation with identifying certain gentiles as long-lost Jews.

The long discourse on “Hebraic Protestantism” in the middle of the article comes across as an attempt to sow confusion, to disguise what’s really at the heart of all forms of crypto-jewishness – the centuries-old preoccupation jews have with their best interests as a people.

This still reflects the impact and influence jews have, even if only indirectly on the thinking of others.

Fifty years later, Neulander believes, the children and grandchildren of former members are recalling their elders’ Old Testament customs and misinterpreting their last words about being Jews. These recollections, Neulander says, have been skewed by Stanley Hordes and others who are ignorant of the Southwest’s true recent history. It is a history that includes both fundamentalist Protestants and other groups whose behavior could be wrongly construed as crypto-Judaism. Muslims, too, fled the Inquisition, settled in New Spain, eschewed pork, and ignored priests. Sephardic immigrants also came to Mexico and the Southwest from countries such as Morocco and Turkey, where they had practiced Judaism openly for centuries. Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe have been in Mexico and the Southwest for 150 years. They have intermarried with Latinos, and many have even embraced the Catholic Church. They might have kept dreidels in the house, but that is no sign of the Inquisition.

When asked about Neulander, society members often sneer, sometimes without having looked at any of her work. Even those who have done the reading find it easy to despise her. For when Neulander makes her arguments, she presents more than just dry scholarship on Protestantism. She also speculates about the reasons Hispanos might be inventing what she calls an “imaginary crypto-Jewish identity.”

Neulander thinks they are doing it because they are, in effect, racists. Colonial Spaniards were obsessed with proving they had “pure” blood, untainted by that of what they regarded as inferior peoples. The same has been true for many New Mexicans, and Neulander believes that the concern for purity — limpieza de sangre — is intensifying, now that Hispanos are being boxed in by Anglo newcomers and Mexican immigrants. As noted, Hispanos have always been loath to be called Mexicans. But that is how Anglos in the region have identified anyone who speaks Spanish. So, Neulander theorizes, some Hispanos are using crypto-Jewish identity as a postmodern marker for ethnic purity. What better way to be a noble Spaniard than to be Sephardic, since Sephardim almost never marry outside their own narrow ethnic group — and would certainly not intermarry with Native Americans? Neulander also comes at the racism issue from another, not quite compatible angle. She stresses that Protestant lost-tribes logic is deeply anti-Semitic. Below its Judeophilic veneer lies the belief that because they reject Jesus, most of today’s ethnic Jews will in fact go up in flames at the Apocalypse.

Such talk frightens and offends those who call themselves anusim. True, some of them are fixated on finding a noble Spanish past. But some from Hispano families are politically liberal, involved in civil-rights work, and proud of their mestizo complexions and ancestry. They are eager to stir into their Raza Cósmica mixture what they see as the ultimate outsider blood — that of Jews.

In typical jewish fashion, Neulander’s “thinking” inverts reality. Never mind the famous endogamy of crypto-jews – the mestizos are the real “racists” obsessed with purity. And those Protestant wannabe jews? Well, clearly they just hate jews.

“Thinking” like this is about transferring attention and blame elsewhere, to disguise jewish ethnic chauvinism.

Let’s shift our focus now from poor mestizo communities full of wannabe jews to some examples of more or less well-known and well-to-do individual wannabe jews in America.

What Attracted Madonna To Kabbalah?

Madonna was drawn to Kabbalah while she was pregnant in the mid-’90s, and the [Kabbalah Centre] group acknowledges that it wouldn’t have taken off with celebrities if she hadn’t jumped on the trend.

In Can There Be Judaism Without Belief In God? Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, explains:

I’m a Jew by choice—I converted 50 years ago, and I’m even more satisfied with that choice now than I was a half-century ago. That’s partly because being Jewish is mostly not about beliefs, but about connections with other people, sharing values and a collective destiny.

Kol Nidre Helped a Convert Find a Sense of Belonging in the Jewish Community, by Annette Gendler, Tablet Magazine, 12 Sep 2013:

When the cantor sang those first few notes—a sliver of sobbing laced between the high and low notes, invoking centuries of Jewish pleading with God—what had been just another prayer somehow got under my skin and became an experience. There I was, in the sanctuary that is never as full as it is on Yom Kippur, amid all these people wrapped in prayer shawls, all of us standing and listening to the cantor repeating Kol Nidre three times, each time a little louder. As I alternatively looked down at my prayer book and surveyed the crowd, I felt a shiver crawling up my arms, and I thought to myself, “This is what it means to belong to something larger than yourself.”

Luke Ford – most hated Jewish blogger – interviews me, 7 Mar 2010:

Luke Ford is probably the most hated Jewish Blogger, he told me that he has been banned from almost every shul in LA and receives death threats when he walks down the street. Along with the fact that he was called the Matt Drudge of the porn industry, made me kind of excited to be interviewed by him.

Is Luke Ford good for the Jews?, by Brad A. Greenberg, Jewish Journal, 2 Aug 2007:

He is an LA blogger who writes about kinky porn, Orthodox Judaism and sinful politicians. But Luke is a contentious figure in the Jewish community, of which he is a convert into, and is both loved and loathed by people in the porn industry.

This is the only shul that’s let him continue davening there after discovering the depraved world within which he works. Judaism is not about a personal relationship with God, and without an accepting community there is no religious observance. For a convert like Ford, there is no Jewish identity absent Judaism.

“Orthodox Judaism in general, not just going to shul, gives me much needed structure,” Ford says after the service ended. “I have no core. I’m way too flexible on the things I do. This gives me some structure, and it’s important for me to bounce off the same people everyday…. It gives my life meaning, it gives my life rhythm, it gives my day a beginning and end. And it reminds me that there is a God.”

A recent blog post by Ford notes the difference between universalist and particularist morality and the tribal/racial nature of jewishness. Life In A Tribe, 15 Sep 2013:

Growing up a Seventh-Day Adventist among other WASPs, it never occurred to me that it was OK to cheat, steal, abuse outsiders. Sure, some Adventists did it, but there was no widespread belief that such cheating of outsiders and the government was ok. Rather, there was the belief that what belongs to Caesar belongs to Caesar. In Adventism, as I recollect, there was no different moral code for treating those inside and outside the group. I never heard from anyone that it was religiously OK to cheat the government with taxes, etc.

I’ve learned over the past 20 years, however, that the tribal approach to life is different. When you practice Orthodox Judaism, for instance, that tends to limit your social interactions with non-Jews and can easily spill over to dismissing them. The tribal racial approach to life emphasizes your group over outsiders.

Luke Ford Returns To Aish HaTorah (Orthodox Judaism Los Angeles), 10 Jan 2011. OY! So wannabe it hurts. OY!

Wannabe jews see the advantages of jewish collectivism and are attracted to it, hoping to participate. The real jews, for their part, prefer servants over “converts”.

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Jewish Crypsis – Crypto-Jews – Part 2

Published on September 10, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Age of Treason Radio

MARANO, JewishEncyclopedia.com:

Crypto-Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. The term, which is frequently derived from the New Testament phrase “maran atha” (“our Lord hath come”), denotes in Spanish “damned,” “accursed,” “banned”; also “hog,” and in Portuguese it is used as an opprobrious epithet of the Jews because they do not eat pork. The name was applied to the Spanish Jews who, through compulsion or for form’s sake, became converted to Christianity in consequence of the cruel persecutions of 1391 and of Vicente Ferrer’s missionary sermons. These “conversos” (converts), as they were called in Spain, or “Christãos Novos” (Neo-Christians) in Portugal, or “Chuetas” in the Balearic Isles, or “Anusim” (constrained) in Hebrew, numbered more than 100,000. With them the history of the Pyrenean Peninsula, and indirectly that of the Jews also, enters upon a new phase; for they were the immediate cause both of the introduction of the Inquisition into Spain and of the expulsion of the Jews from that country. The wealthy Maranos, who engaged extensively in commerce, industries, and agriculture, intermarried with families of the old nobility; impoverished counts and marquises unhesitatingly wedded wealthy Jewesses; and it also happened that counts or nobles of the blood royal became infatuated with handsome Jewish girls. Beginning with the second generation, the Neo-Christians usually intermarried with women of their own sect. They became very influential through their wealth and intelligence, and were called to important positions at the palace, in government circles, and in the Cortes; they practised medicine and law and taught at the universities; while their children frequently achieved high ecclesiastical honors.

The article describes the widespread dispersal of the jews expelled from Spain, mainly to Turkey (Ottoman empire) and Netherlands (Flanders).

Xueta, Wikipedia:

The Xuetes (Catalan pronunciation: [ʃuˈətə]; singular Xueta, also known as Xuetons), were a social group on the island of Majorca, descendants of Majorcan Jews who either converted to Christianity or were forced to keep their religion hidden. They practiced strict endogamy.

The assault on the calls — the Majorcan Jewish ghettoes — in 1391, the preaching of Vincent Ferrer in 1413, and the conversion of the remainder of the Jewish community of Majorca, in 1435, constituted the three events that gave rise to the social phenomenon of the conversos, which, unlike the individual conversions that had preceded them, were not based on individual religious conviction but on the necessity of overcoming a collective peril.

Crypto Jews, Am I Jewish?:

One interesting example is the “Belmonte Jews” in Portugal. A whole community survived in secrecy for hundreds of years by maintaining a tradition of intermarriage and by hiding all the external signs of their faith. The Jewish community in Belmonte goes back to the 12th century and they were only discovered in the 20th century.

Many of the immigrants from Portugal were secondary immigrants from the Jewish Expulsion in Spain of 1492. However, a later similar decree was also issued in Portugal in 1497 effectively converted all Jewish children, making them wards of the state unless the parents also converted. Therefore, many of the early crypto-Jewish migrants to Mexico in the early colonial days were technically first to second generation Portuguese with Spanish roots before that. The number of such Portuguese migrants was significant enough that the label of “Portuguese” became synonymous with “Jewish” throughout the Spanish colonies.

So many perceived crypto-Jews were going to Mexico during the 1500s that officials complained in written documents to Spain that Spanish society in Mexico would become significantly Jewish. Officials found and condemned clandestine synagogues in Mexico City.

The Association of Crypto-Jews – Hispanic Sephardi Crypto Jews.

Two jews, Michael Freund and Stanley Hordes, wish to discover and reintegrate crypto-jews with the main body of jews. The main body of jews do not.

With children under chuppah, Ynetnews, 7 Aug 2013:

Ariel and Gila Arditi have been waiting for this moment for a very long time: Years of expectations to receive the special approval that they have completed their conversion process and can get married according to Jewish Law; several years of fighting for Israeli recognition as conversion seekers, while their children already live in Israel as Jews; and decades of leading a double life: Colombian Jews who know they have Jewish roots and observe various customs on different dates.

The Arditi couple knew they were the descendants of the Anousim from Spain, who were forced to convert to Catholicism in the 14th and 15th centuries by the Inquisition. Their ancestors continued to observe mitzvot secretly, despite the persecution and torture.

“She knew she wasn’t Jewish according to Jewish Law, but that her roots are Jewish. When her parents retired, they came to Israel immediately – when it was clear to them that they didn’t have any other place to live, or any other life, other than living as religious Jews.”

According to Birenbaum, the trouble began when they tried to covert. “They didn’t receive a visa, and their request to convert was denied. The State of Israel asked them to leave – and they didn’t want to.

[Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund adds,] “Their ancestors were taken from us, they were kidnapped from us, against their will. And nonetheless, despite all the persecution – they continued to preserve their Jewish identity and pass it down from one generation to the next. Now, when they wake up 500 years later and known on our national door, how can we possibly slam it in their faces?”

More about Michael Freund, AKA Columbus of hidden Jews, Ynetnews, 25 Jan 2011:

He wanders Amazon jungles, travels to Chinese villages, searches Spain for Marranos, and sees India’s Bnei Menashe as his life’s mission. Michael Freund has an obsession: Discovering remote Jews

In a remote village in the Amazon, you find Jews.

Freund, an American immigrant, has a mission: Locating remote and hidden Jews and descendants of the Jewish people.

He devotes all his efforts and resources to this project as founder and director of the Shavei Israel organization, which works to strengthen the connection between descendants of Jews and Israel and the Jewish people.

According to assessments, he has put his own money into the project while raising large sums in donations from others. His organization is active in many countries throughout the world and helps different communities: From the descendants of Bnei Anousim (whom historians refer to as Marranos) in Spain, Portugal and South America, to remote communities in places such as China.

“It’s a type of fixation that doesn’t let me rest,” said Freund. “I feel obligated to these communities forgotten by history, but they haven’t forgotten us.

By all accounts, there are millions of Marranos throughout the world. “They are descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who converted under duress, many of whom continued to practice Jewish customs in secret despite the persecution they faced at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition,” he said and added, “The Marranos are a living and breathing phenomenon, but the Jewish world largely ignores them.”

The last time Freund succeeded in obtaining permission to bring a group to Israel was in 2007, when 230 Bnei Menashe from the Indian state of Manipur made aliyah. Since then, the aliyah has stopped.

Freund is a gentle person. He doesn’t get angry. He doesn’t raise his voice. But he is frustrated. “I simply do not understand why these wonderful people are stuck and forced to wait years before being allowed to fulfill their dreams. This is a big mistake. The Bnei Menashe want to be here and deserve to be here,” he says.

Some claim that they want to come to Israel to improve their financial situation.

“If this was the case, then one would expect a certain percentage of them to leave Israel and move to the West, but they’ve all remained here. After they get here hardly any of them remove their kippah. They are very religious and committed Zionists. We’ve conducted a comprehensive study of the Bnei Menashe immigrants and found that only 5% of the community is supported by welfare. The rest of them work for a living.”

Are you sure that all these groups you deal with are really of Jewish descent?

“We have to be careful because it’s easy to get carried away and to start seeing Jews everywhere. So I’m always skeptic as first. Two years ago I received a letter from a group of Native Americans in the United States, who claimed that they were of Jewish descent. They sent me various materials, and I understood fairly quickly that their claim was without any basis.

What motivates you?

“I see it as my mission in life. There are people who travel great distances to look for spectacular views. I go to look for Jews. We are a small nation and we don’t have all that many friends out there. So we should be reaching out to descendants of the Jewish people to cultivate a stronger connection with them. Two years ago a genetic study was carried out in Spain and Portugal which found that 20% of the male population of Iberia has Jewish genetic material. Because of all the persecution we have endured throughout the centuries, the Jewish nation was scattered to the four corners of the earth. So it isn’t surprising that there are traces and remnants of Jews in all sorts of remote places.

A Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview with Stanley Hordes, So you think you’re a Crypto-Jew?, Amy Klein, 18 May 2009:

JTA: Can a last name help someone tell if they have Jewish blood?

HORDES: There’s quite a bit of confusion over this question — some people think that names ending in “es” or “ez” are uniquely Jewish. The “es” suffix simply means “son of.” But put yourself in the position of someone in 1492 who has made the gut-wrenching decision to stay in Spain and convert to Catholicism. Now if your name was Avraham Ben Moshe, and you’re trying to quickly assimilate into Old Christian society, the first thing you’d do is get rid of that name. You’d likely take a name like the Old Christians have, such as Gonzalez or García — or de la Cruz, de Jesus or Santa Maria. There’s only a very small number of cases where a name is uniquely Jewish. I’ve heard so many stories about the name Rael coming from “Israel.” Every Rael I’ve ever found in New Mexico goes back to one Jewish family in southeastern Spain that had converted to Judaism in the 1480s. But you have to be careful about names. There’s no other way of ascertaining proof of ancestry except by playing the “who begat whom” game, or conducting extensive archival research through the genealogical records.

JTA: What about DNA?

HORDES: DNA testing potentially can tell us an awful lot. But we’re at only an early stage of this kind of research, and at this point the commercial testing companies can only tell who your mothers’ mother’s mother’s mother is or your father’s father’s father’s father — all the way back. They can’t tell you anything about your mother’s father’s family or any of the other thousands of ancestors. But culture is not passed down through genes — it’s interesting, but it does not define who you are. A lot of us are more interested in cultural traits and Jewish consciousness, including the extent to which descendants of Crypto-Jews tended to marry within the group. The genetic and genealogical research supplies us with a historical plausibility of suggestive Crypto-Jewish practices that may have been passed down. All of these avenues of research complement each other.

JTA: Some think this whole issue is untrue, like folklorist Judith Neulander, who thinks Hispanos might be inventing an “imaginary Crypto-Jewish identity,” according to the December 2000 Atlantic Monthly article “Mistaken Identity: The Case of New Mexico’s Hidden Jews.”

HORDES: Anthropologist Seth D. Kunin addresses these issues in his recently released “Juggling Identities: Identity and Authenticity Among the Crypto-Jews,” (Columbia University Press). We know that thousands of Crypto-Jews on the Iberian Penisula converted to Catholicism,but secretly held to their ancestral Jewish faith and customs. Some believe that people are inventing a past that they never had in order to deny their black or Indian family background — to climb the social ladder by showing how “white” they are. But there are so many more conventional ways to assert whiteness, why would you want to be Jewish when being different is not valued in that community?

Mistaken Identity? The Case of New Mexico’s “Hidden Jews”, by Barbara Ferry and Debbie Nathan, The Atlantic, Dec 2000:

THE telling has become almost stylized through repetition. In the mid-1980s a number of people with Spanish surnames began stealing into an office in Santa Fe, peering over their shoulders, shutting the door behind them, and whispering that their neighbors were engaging in strange customs that were decidedly out of place in the region’s overwhelmingly Catholic culture. Soon those reports would lead to proud testimonials from southwesterners of Iberian descent claiming kinship with Jewish victims of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. And not just genetic descent: some of these people would say that though outwardly they were raised as Christians, their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were secretly observant Jews. Such stories are now so common in the Southwest that almost everyone takes them at face value.

The phenomenon’s first elaborations can be traced to Stanley Hordes, who in the early 1980s was New Mexico’s state historian.

Twenty years ago he was thirty-one and had just defended his doctoral dissertation, which was written at Tulane University, in New Orleans, and dealt with the Jews of colonial Mexico. More specifically, it dealt with what are known as the crypto-Jews — a people whose ranks swelled in 1492, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain ordered all Jews to convert to Christianity or be banished from the kingdom. Up to 50,000 of Spain’s 125,000 to 200,000 Jews were baptized, joining 225,000 descendants of the converts of previous generations. The others would not give up their religion. Some fled to North Africa, Italy, and Navarre (then a kingdom on the border between Spain and France). Many more went to Portugal, though Portugal itself would soon demand conversion, and thousands of Jews there also underwent baptism. In both Spain and Portugal many conversos sincerely embraced the Church and intermarried with so-called Old Christians. A smaller number, however, continued secretly in their old beliefs, under cover of Catholicism. These were the crypto-Jews.

To make a distinction that will later prove germane, he is an Ashkenazi. Ashkenazic Jews trace their ancestry to Northern and Eastern Europe, whereas Sephardic Jews trace theirs to Iberia. Almost all Jews in North America today are Ashkenazim. Before the late nineteenth century the Jews in Latin America were overwhelmingly Sephardim. Throughout the Diaspora, Sephardic Jews have eaten food made with olive oil, chickpeas, and other Mediterranean ingredients; Ashkenazic foods such as bagels, lox, kugel, and borscht are not traditionally part of their diet. Yiddish, with its German and Slavic components, has nothing to do with Sephardic Ladino, which mixes Hebrew with medieval Spanish, Turkish, and Moroccan. Today Sephardic Jews make up only 10 percent of the Jewish population worldwide.

BY the early 1990s Latinos by the dozens from New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, and Arizona were coming forward with tales of a Jewish past. At conferences and in Internet forums they recalled playing with toys resembling dreidels (the four-sided tops associated with Hanukkah) as children. They reported that their parents had baked a flat, unleavened bread in the spring. They remembered mothers and grandmothers calling out on their deathbeds, “Children, we are really Israelites.”

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Jewish Crypsis – Crypto-Jews – Part 1

Published on September 3, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Age of Treason Radio

Examining crypto-jews – also known as secret jews, hidden jews, New Christians, conversos, marranos, and anusim.

Crypsis, Wikipedia:

In ecology, crypsis is the ability of an organism to avoid observation or detection by other organisms.

Crypto-jews are an open secret. Here are two examples in recent news.

‘Hidden Jews of Poland’ visit Israel, by Rabbi Levi Brackman, 1 Sep 2013, Ynetnews:

Sixteen young Polish Jews, many of whom have only recently discovered their Jewish roots, arrived in Israel last month for a special seminar organized by Shavei Israel, an organization that aims to strengthen the connection between descendants of Jews and the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

“There is a growing thirst among young Poles with Jewish roots to learn more about their Jewish religious and cultural heritage,” said Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund.

“This awakening would have been unthinkable just 25 or 30 years ago, but since the downfall of Communism, an increasing number of Poles have sought to reclaim and affirm their Jewish identity. We owe it to them to assist them in any way that we can.”

Freund added that “with the start of the new Jewish year just a few weeks away, it is fitting that these young Poles have come to Israel to rekindle their bond with the Jewish people. They represent the future of Polish Jewry, which despite decades of suffering and persecution is now beginning to thrive.

“There can be no sweeter revenge for what was done to us seven decades ago in Poland than to reconnect as many of these young Polish Jews as possible with Israel and the Jewish people.”

Today, there are approximately 4,000 Jews registered as living in Poland, but experts suggest there may be tens of thousands of other Jews in Poland who to this day are either hiding their identities or are simply unaware of their family heritage.

In recent years, a growing number of such people, popularly known as the “hidden Jews of Poland,” have begun to return to Judaism and to the Jewish people.

Peekaboo, Another Jew, at Age of Treason, May 2013.

Quoting Venezuela’s ‘anti-Semitic’ leader admits Jewish ancestry:

In an interesting twist, [Nicolás] Maduro, the political successor of the late president Hugo Chávez, told the press last week that he himself was descended from Sephardic Jewish ancestors.

“My grandparents were Jewish, from a [Sephardic] Moorish background, and converted to Catholicism in Venezuela… The mother of [Minister of Communication and Information] Ernesto Villegas also comes from a similar background,” Maduro said last week

The readers’ comments at AoT are informative. Of particular note are the comments of the erstwhile crypto-jew onwatch/Stuart, whose great concern that Whites should not exclude jews helps demonstrate why they must be excluded.

The main focus in this installment is on the large number of crypto-jews who trace their origins to The Inquisition in Spain, more than 500 years ago. The figure most associated with that inquisition is Tomás de Torquemada, Wikipedia:

Tomás de Torquemada, O.P. (1420 – September 16, 1498) was a 15th-century Spanish Dominican friar and the first Grand Inquisitor in Spain’s movement to restore Christianity among its populace in the late 15th century. As well as being Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada was also the confessor to Isabella I of Castile. He is notorious for his zealous campaign against the crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims of Spain. He was one of the chief supporters of the Alhambra Decree, which expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492.

He was the nephew of a celebrated theologian and cardinal, Juan de Torquemada,[2] who was the grandson of a converso

Alhambra Decree, at Wikipedia, provides an idea just how well-off the jews had been with the muslims:

Beginning in the 8th century, Muslims had conquered and settled most of the Iberian Peninsula. Jews, who had lived in these regions since Roman times, were considered “People of the Book” and given special status and often thrived under Muslim rule.[3] The tolerance of the Muslim Moorish rulers of al-Andalus attracted Jewish immigration, and Jewish enclaves in Muslim Iberian cities flourished as places of learning and commerce.

One example of special treatment that the jewish persecution narrative serves to justify:

As of November 2012, Sephardic Jews have been given the right to automatic Spanish nationality without the requirement of residence in Spain. Prior to November 2012, Sephardic Jews already had the right to obtain Spanish citizenship after a reduced residency period of two years (versus ten years for foreigners).

So you think you’re a Crypto-Jew?, by Amy Klein, 18 May 2009, Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

Technically, a converso refers to a person who underwent a conversion himself/herself, but the term has been used to refer to their descendants as well. A Crypto-Jew, or secret Jew, is someone who practices his/her Judaism secretly while openly professing another religion. “Anusim” is a Hebrew term for people who were forced to convert against their will, while “meshumadim” refer to willing converts. The term “marrano” is more complex, and there are many different histories for the term. The one that makes the most sense to me is a combination of two Hebrew words: “mumar”(convert) and “anús” (compelled one). Marrano means swine and was meant as a pejorative term used by Jews who did not convert to describe Jews who did.

That last sentence conflicts with the usual etymology of marrano offered in mainstream/non-jew sources like Wikipedia.

Anusim:

[Marrano] is the insulting term Spanish antisemites gave to the anusim.

Marrano:

Originally the term was used by common people. The insult was mostly racist, as people viewed – in a superstitious and prejudiced way – the descendants of forced New Christians as a racial group identifiable by their bad denture, which allegedly proved their sinful soul.

Marrano acquired connotations of “filthy-dirty” (sucio) and “unscrupulous” (sin escrúpulos) during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition, when the term was used to impugn the character of recalcitrant crypto-Jews.

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William Pierce

Published on September 1, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Blog

This month’s special program is a selection of recordings of Dr. William Luther Pierce. It will be broadcast each Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday starting at 9PM ET and streaming until the next scheduled program.

From the William Luther Pierce page at Metapedia:

Dr William Luther Pierce III (September 11, 1933 – July 23, 2002) was the leader of the White survival organization the National Alliance and a principal ideologue of the white nationalist movement. First educated as a physicist, he later worked with George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. Pierce became well known as the author of a novel, The Turner Diaries (1978), written under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. He founded the religion of Cosmotheism, an admixture of panentheism, and promoted White nationalism, and White survival world-views.

These recordings are a small sample taken from the Dr. William Pierce Audio Archive at Internet Archive, which has over 300 audio files available for download.

For more information see also The Legacy of Dr. William Pierce.

Pierce-19770313 – Human Dignity – A Racial Ethic, 17:32

Pierce-19960420 – Men of Valor, 23:12

Pierce-19970301 – The Jewish Problem, 21:47

Pierce-19970802 – The Psychology of Political Correctness, 23:35

Pierce-19980711 – Thinking about a White Future, 22:38

Pierce-20020413 – Tiptoeing around Our Problems, 23:22

Total run time: 2:12:06

(Note: There is no audio download for this program – please tune in via the MP3 Stream.)

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Jewish Crypsis – Religion – Part 4

Published on August 27, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Age of Treason Radio

Three prominent aspects of the jews’ religion: moser, the Kol Nidre and Purim.

MOSER, JewishEncyclopedia.com:

The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia

An informer, denunciator, or delator; synonyms are “masor” (abstract, “mesirah”), “delator” (), and “malshin” (abstract, “malshinut”), from the last of which are derived the Portuguese “malsim,” and also the Spanish “malsin,” together with the adjective “malsinar” and the abstract nouns “malsindad” and “malsineria.” Nothing was more severely punished by the Jews than talebearing; and no one was held in greater contempt than the informer. On account of the fact that his deeds frequently caused mischief and even entailed death and destruction, the sages of the Talmud compared the “moser” to a serpent.

In Talmudic Times.

The Jews suffered much during the persecutions under Hadrian through informers in their own ranks; especially teachers of the Law were betrayed by the delators.

Moser means specifically a jewish race-traitor, a jew who betrays jews.

Note the attempt to use SUFFERINK! and POISECUTION! to distract from the reality that a moser does not simply betray the jews by siding with non-jews, but informs the non-jews concerning jewish wrong-doing. The jews regard the informing as the real wrong-doing.

A more contemporary source confirms this understanding of the moser concept. Jewish Word | Moser, Moment Magazine:

The Jewish Snitch

Earlier this year, Nechemya Weberman, a member of the Hasidic Satmar community in New York, was sentenced to 103 years in prison for sexually abusing a young girl over the course of three years, beginning when she was 12. The case, needless to say, sparked an uproar within the community. Some were outraged over the 54-year-old Weberman’s behavior, but others were furious for a different reason—that he had been turned over to the police at all. Four men were arrested on charges of witness intimidation, after allegedly offering the girl, who later testified against Weberman, half a million dollars to drop the case and suggesting that she move to Israel. To some, the girl was a moser, a rabbinic term for a Jew who informs on another Jew.

Moser is not a term familiar to many outside close-knit ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, which often choose to deal with offenses within the fold. This preference has a legal origin as well as a cultural one, stemming from a rabbinic prohibition on mesirah, meaning “delivery” or “handing over” in Hebrew. Rabbinic law mandates that a Jew may not report another Jew’s malfeasance to a secular government, even when the behavior in question violates both secular and Jewish law. Nor can a Jew abet the turning over of another Jew’s financial or physical property to the government.

When recording I voiced my uncertainty whether the girl is a jew. Now I realize that “the girl was a moser” clearly implies she is.

By placing a fellow Jew in mortal danger, a moser takes on the status of a rodef, literally a “pursuer,” or one who is chasing a victim with murderous intentions. An individual or community is permitted to stop a rodef by any means necessary—even if that means killing him before he has the chance to kill his intended victim. What’s more, no formal decree must be issued to declare someone a moser or a rodef, and anyone may take action against the deemed criminal. “If someone is running after somebody else to kill him, I don’t go to a bet din to ask them. I’ve got to stop him right there,” says Steven Resnicoff, professor of law and co-director of the Center for Jewish Law and Judaic Studies at DePaul University and an Orthodox rabbi.

This thinking goes beyond dealing with traitors.

Jewish morality plus jewish identity equals a license for jewish aggression against non-jews. The first half of the equation is the notion that jews are “permitted to stop” whomever or whatever they perceive as a “mortal danger” “by any means necessary-even if that means killing”. The second half is that jews think constantly of themselves in terms of SUFFERINK! and POISECUTION! – past, present and future. Jews perceive themselves in perpetual “mortal danger”, thus justifying their perpetual aggression against others.

Emory’s Broyde explains that the rules against informing don’t pertain to actions that harm the community or endanger others’ safety—in cases of violent criminals, for example, one may inform the secular authorities.

This is telling in light of the example cited. The rabbi harmed at least one member of their community, and perhaps others. Those who fault the girl, calling her a moser, are saying that in their estimation she causes their community more harm than the rabbi.

KOL NIDRE, JewishEncyclopedia.com:

Prayer recited in the synagogue at the beginning of the evening service on the Day of Atonement; the name is taken from the opening words. The “Kol Nidre” has had a very eventful history, both in itself and in its influence on the legal status of the Jews. Introduced into the liturgy despite the opposition of rabbinic authorities, repeatedly attacked in the course of time by many halakists, and in the nineteenth century expunged from the prayer-book by many communities of western Europe, it has often been employed by Christians to support their assertion that the oath of a Jew can not be trusted.

Form of Prayer.

Before sunset on the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the congregation has gathered in the synagogue, the Ark is opened and two rabbis, or two leading men in the community, take from it two Torah-scrolls. Then they take their places, one on each side of the ḥazzan, and the three recite in concert a formula beginning with the words , which runs as follows:

“In the tribunal of heaven and the tribunal of earth, by the permission of God—blessed be He—and by the permission of this holy congregation, we hold it lawful to pray with the transgressors.”

Thereupon the cantor chants the Aramaic prayer beginning with the words “Kol Nidre,” with its marvelously plaintive and touching melody, and, gradually increasing in volume from pianissimo to fortissimo, repeats three times the following words:

“All vows [], obligations, oaths, and anathemas, whether called ‘ḳonam,’ ‘ḳonas,’ or by any other name, which we may vow, or swear, or pledge, or whereby we may be bound, from this Day of Atonement until the next (whose happy coming we await), we do repent. May they be deemed absolved, forgiven, annulled, and void, and made of no effect; they shall not bind us nor have power over us. The vows shall not be reckoned vows; the obligations shall not be obligatory; nor the oaths be oaths.”

The Kol Nidre amounts to a preemptive oath to forsake all subsequent oaths. Thus the oath of any jew who engages in this ritual cannot be trusted. Naturally the jews regard those who object as more at fault than themselves.

PURIM, JewishEncyclopedia.com:

Jewish feast celebrated annually on the l4th, and in Shushan, Persia, also on the 15th, of Adar, in commemoration of the deliverance of the Persian Jews from the plot of Haman to exterminate them, as recorded in the Book of Esther.

Nevertheless Purim has been held in high esteem at all times and in all countries, some even maintaining that when all the prophetical and hagiographical works shall be forgotten the Book of Esther will still be remembered, and, accordingly, the Feast of Purim will continue to be observed (Yer. Meg. i. 5a; Maimonides, “Yad,” Megillah, iii. 18; comp. Schudt, “Jüdische Merkwürdigkeiten,” ii. 311). It is also claimed that Purim is as great as the day on which the Torah was given on Sinai (“Mordekai” on B. M. ix., end; comp. Lampronti, “Paḥad Yiẓḥaḳ,” s.v. “Purim”). In Italy the Jews, it seems, have even used the word “Purim” as a family name, which also proves the high esteem that the festival enjoys among them (Vogelstein and Rieger, “Gesch. der Juden in Rom,” ii. 420; but comp. Steinschneider in “Monatsschrift,” 1903, p. 175).

The Book of Esther does not prescribe any religious service for Purim; it enjoins only the annual celebration of the feast among the Jews on the 14th and 15th of Adar, commanding that they should “make them days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.” It seems, therefore, that the observance of Purim was at first merely of a convivial and social nature. Gradually it assumed religious features.

Judaism 101: Purim

Significance: Remembers the defeat of a plot to exterminate the Jews

Observances: Public reading of the book of Esther while “blotting out” the villain’s name

The Book of Esther

The story of Purim is told in the Biblical book of Esther. The heroes of the story are Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia, and her cousin Mordecai, who raised her as if she were his daughter. Esther was taken to the house of Ahasuerus, King of Persia, to become part of his harem. King Ahasuerus loved Esther more than his other women and made Esther queen, but the king did not know that Esther was a Jew, because Mordecai told her not to reveal her identity.

The villain of the story is Haman, an arrogant, egotistical advisor to the king. Haman hated Mordecai because Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman, so Haman plotted to destroy the Jewish people. In a speech that is all too familiar to Jews, Haman told the king, “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people’s, and they do not observe the king’s laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them.” Esther 3:8. The king gave the fate of the Jewish people to Haman, to do as he pleased to them. Haman planned to exterminate all of the Jews.

Mordecai persuaded Esther to speak to the king on behalf of the Jewish people. This was a dangerous thing for Esther to do, because anyone who came into the king’s presence without being summoned could be put to death, and she had not been summoned. Esther fasted for three days to prepare herself, then went into the king. He welcomed her. Later, she told him of Haman’s plot against her people. The Jewish people were saved, and Haman and his ten sons were hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordecai.

The book of Esther is unusual in that it is the only book of the Bible that does not contain the name of G-d. In fact, it includes virtually no reference to G-d. Mordecai makes a vague reference to the fact that the Jews will be saved by someone else, if not by Esther, but that is the closest the book comes to mentioning G-d. Thus, one important message that can be gained from the story is that G-d often works in ways that are not apparent, in ways that appear to be chance, coincidence or ordinary good luck.

In a nutshell Purim is the celebration of the triumph of jews over their enemies. Specifically, it is a victory achieved by means of deception, seduction and exploitation of others – whereby a single wiley crypto-jewess manipulates one group of goyim into warring on another group of goyim in the service of jewish interests. The moral of the story and righteousness of it all rests upon the jewish license noted above: proactively exterminating “mortal dangers” “by any means necessary”.

These three things have little or nothing to do with God, or serving God, unless God is understood as the people who are being served, the jews themselves.

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Jewish Crypsis – Religion – Part 3

Published on August 20, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Age of Treason Radio

Concerning jewish peoplehood.

Continuing commentary on the article briefly mentioned and linked in the previous installment, Can There Be Judaism Without Belief In God?, Moment Magazine (emphasis added):

Avraham Infeld

Judaism is not a religion and was not a religion until the emancipation and our encounter with modernity. Rather, it’s the culture of the Jewish people. Like most ancient cultures, it was a religious culture, and the relationship between God and the Jewish people as a whole—not the individual Jew—was an integral part of the basis of that culture. Does an individual Jew have to believe in God to be a part of Judaism? I don’t think so. I believe that practicing Judaism demands recognition of the fact that you’re part of a culture with a narrative that has God as a central player, part of a people that have had a love affair with God for thousands of years. The narrative of this relationship is probably the central theme in the culture of this people. Being a people means identifying with a shared memory and narrative and having responsibility for its future, its renaissance, its well being. That’s what Jews are. It’s like asking “Can a Frenchman be French without being Catholic?” Of course he can, but he has to understand that being French was built on the Catholic tradition. We are taught that a Jew—never mind how he sins, even in the sin of apostasy—always remains a Jew. Jewish culture is not based on the individual Jew’s relationship to God, but rather on his relationship to his community and the community’s relationship to God: We pray in the plural. We need a minyan.

. . .

Membership in the people is the necessary condition for being a Jew (I don’t know if it’s sufficient), while saying, “your God is my God,” is not a requirement.

. . .

Avraham Infeld is a senior scholar and advisor at the NADAV Foundation and President Emeritus of Hillel International.

Masha Gessen

The concept of Jewishness as a religious affiliation is a recent one. It’s a post-World War II American idea, which will take years to unpack, but essentially it’s a cultural reaction to the need not to think of Jews as an ethnicity. The rest of the world thinks of Jews as an ethnic group, and to maintain a separate and cohesive population it’s useful to have a religion, but it’s not necessary, as other groups have demonstrated. The Roma have adopted whatever religion is dominant in the society in which they’re living, an unusual story for a small population in the diaspora, but possible. Same with the secular Jews of the Soviet Union. For nearly seven decades, Jews maintained a separate identity without religion and without a common language. The common experience of discrimination forged a common identity that bound them together.

. . .

Masha Gessen is a Moscow-based journalist and the author of several books, including Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene.

Leora Batnitzky

It is difficult to conceive of Judaism as a long-term, sustainable tradition without belief in God, or, at the very least, belief in the Jewish people. For example, one of the questions about Zionism is whether or not, as a belief in the Jewish people outside of God, it is sustainable over the generations. I’m not sure it is. I’m not saying that all Jews do believe in God, and I don’t think God fills a void in any kind of easy way, but the notion of God gives some kind of trans-historical, or trans-subjective dimension to why we think we ought to do what we ought to do. The question comes down to what it means to sustain a belief in God in Judaism, and that’s a complicated issue. One interesting example of someone who struggled with this issue is Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. He rightfully recognized that defining Judaism just in terms of God was problematic, and he also claimed that, in many ways, modern science made notions of God obsolete. But he continually struggled to think of a notion of God that infused Jewish peoplehood with meaning.

The question is, why be Jewish? One thing I think most Jews would agree on—and there aren’t many things—is that it’s not easy to be Jewish alone. It’s communal. So what sustains the community? Answers about history and culture are important, but without a God that somehow transcends human history, Judaism becomes just one cultural option among many. It becomes like ice cream flavors; different people like different flavors, but why should we force our children to like our flavor? Without God, arguments for Jewish continuity—that there should be Jews in the future—end up resorting to ethnic chauvinism.

Leora Batnitzky is chair of the Religion Department at Princeton University and author of How Judaism Became a Religion.

Jack M. Sasson

Especially before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, belief in God was generally not a troubling issue for Mizrachi Jews in the Middle East, as there was little differentiation between the religious and social spheres.

. . .

The Latin word religio (from which we derive “religion”) has to do with connectives, attaching people together. In that sense, an increasing investment in communal acts—synagogue worship and joyous occasions such as engagement, marriage, bar-mitzvah and brit milla—give moments in which members of the community renew their commitments to each other as well as distribute rewards to loyal members.

Jack M. Sasson is the Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Judaic and Biblical Studies at Vanderbilt University.

In this article even the jews arguing in favor of God do so ultimately out of their concern for the jews, not God.

The consensus in response to the question, “Can There Be Judaism Without Belief In God?”, was yes, of course. The respondents seemed to interpret the question as: Can the jews continue to exist without Belief in God?, or, Is God good for the jews? The whole point of the exercise was to examine the two most fundamental questions of group identity: Who is us? What’s best for us?

Jewish peoplehood, Wikipedia:

Jewish peoplehood (Hebrew: עמיות יהודית, Amiut Yehudit) is the awareness of the underlying unity that makes an individual Jew a part of the Jewish people.[1]

The concept of peoplehood has a double meaning. The first is descriptive, as a concept factually describing the existence of the Jews as a people. The second is normative, as a value that describes the feeling of belonging and commitment to the Jewish people.

The first significant use of the Peoplehood concept was by Mordecai Kaplan, a 20th-century Jewish thinker, who was searching for a term that would enable him to describe the complex nature of Jewish belonging. Once the State of Israel was founded, he rejected the concept of nationhood, as it had become too closely identified with statehood, and replaced it with the Peoplehood concept.[11]

Kaplan’s definition of Judaism as “an evolving religious civilization” illumines his understanding of the centrality of Peoplehood in the Jewish religion. Describing Judaism as a religious civilization emphasizes the idea that Jewish people have sought “to make [their] collective experience yield meaning for the enrichment of the life of the individual Jew and for the spiritual greatness of the Jewish people.” The definition as a civilization allows Judaism to accept the principles of unity in diversity and continuity in change. It is a reminder that Judaism consists of much that cannot be put into the category of religion in modern times, “paradoxical as it may sound, the spiritual regeneration of the Jewish people demands that religion cease to be its sole preoccupation.”[12] In the sense that existence precedes essence and life takes precedence over thought, Judaism exists for the sake of the Jewish people rather than the Jewish people existing for the sake of Judaism.[5]

Kaplan’s purpose in developing the Jewish Peoplehood idea was to create a vision broad enough to include everyone who identified as a Jew regardless of individual approaches to that identity.[13]

Kaplan saw and struggled to serve the best interests of the jews, collectively, as a people.

The term “jewish peoplehood” is found wherever and whenever jews advocate and discuss their group interests.

Koret Foundation:

The Impact of Strategic Philanthropy

Here is an example of rich jews, selectively investing in what they think is good for the jews. Their two main “Grant Program Areas” are Initiative on Jewish Peoplehood:

Jewish Peoplehood

Love of education. Respect for hard work. Appreciation of community. And pastrami on rye. Mix together in equal parts and you have the makings of a people – the Jewish people.

For thousands of years, the concept of Jewish Peoplehood has inspired, intrigued, vexed, and perplexed Jews and non-Jews alike.

and Initiative to Combat Anti-Semitism.

Why the Jewish Community Should Fund Peoplehood, by Misha Galperin, Forward.com:

Prominent Jewish sociologists have identified the declining bonds of peoplehood as one of the most significant challenges posed by modernity and by a culture of universalism. Having been raised in a world of pluralism and tolerance, Jews younger than 45 do not necessarily privilege their Jewish brothers and sisters above others when it comes to friendship, marriage, volunteerism and charitable giving.

What’s the difference between jewish peoplehoodism and “racism”? “Racism” is White peoplehoodism, which is demonized and pathologized by jews.

The Shelf Life Of Jewish Peoplehood, The Jewish Week:

Leon Wieseltier once wrote that being Jewish is not like other identities, and “perhaps there is a relief in allowing it to be different.

“I think to be Jewish is not to be an American or a Westerner or a New Yorker,” he wrote. “To be a Jew is to be a Jew. It is its own thing. Its own category; its own autonomous way of moving through the world. It’s ancient and thick and vast, and it’s one specific thing that is not like anything else.”

Wieseltier’s articulation is both comforting and obfuscating. It implies in a privileged, almost condescending way that we are beyond explication. We can almost hear an adolescent whine: “But no one understands me.”

Wieseltier is literary editor of The New Republic, a putative “liberal”.

Jewish World Homepage. The source for the image above.

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Jewish Crypsis – Religion – Part 2

Published on August 13, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Age of Treason Radio

Zohar, Wikipedia:

The Zohar (Hebrew: זֹהַר, lit Splendor or Radiance) is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah.[1] It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five books of Moses) and scriptural interpretations as well as material on Mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology. The Zohar contains a discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of Ego to Darkness and “true self” to “The Light of God,” and the relationship between the “universal energy” and man. Its scriptural exegesis can be considered an esoteric form of the Rabbinic literature known as Midrash, which elaborates on the Torah.

The Zohar is mostly written in what has been described as an exalted, eccentric style of Aramaic, which was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (539 BCE – 70 CE), was the original language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, and is the main language of the Talmud.[2]

The Zohar first appeared in Spain in the 13th century, and was published by a Jewish writer named Moses de Leon. De Leon ascribed the work to Shimon bar Yochai (“Rashbi”), a rabbi of the 2nd century during the Roman persecution

Poisecution!

There are people of religions besides Judaism, or even those without religious affiliation, who delve in the Zohar out of curiosity, or as a technology for people who are seeking meaningful and practical answers about the meaning of their lives, the purpose of creation and existence and their relationships with the laws of nature,[7][8] and so forth; however from the perspective of traditional, rabbinic Judaism,[9][10] and by the Zohar’s own statements,[11] the purpose of the Zohar is to help the Jewish people through and out of the Exile and to infuse the Torah and mitzvot (Judaic commandments) with the wisdom of Kabbalah for its Jewish readers.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “On the other hand, the Zohar was censured by many rabbis because it propagated many superstitious beliefs, and produced a host of mystical dreamers, whose overexcited imaginations peopled the world with spirits, demons, and all kinds of good and bad influences.”

Kabbalah, Wikipedia:

According to the Zohar, a foundational text for kabbalistic thought, Torah study can proceed along four levels of interpretation (exegesis).[5][6] These four levels are called pardes from their initial letters (PRDS Hebrew: פרדס‎, orchard).

Peshat (Hebrew: פשט‎ lit. “simple”): the direct interpretations of meaning.

Remez (Hebrew: רמז‎ lit. “hint[s]”): the allegoric meanings (through allusion).

Derash (Hebrew: דרש‎ from Heb. darash: “inquire” or “seek”): midrashic (Rabbinic) meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses.

Sod (Hebrew: סוד‎ lit. “secret” or “mystery”): the inner, esoteric (metaphysical) meanings, expressed in kabbalah.

Distinction between Jews and non-Jews

A number of medieval Kabbalistic sources contain statements to the effect that the Jewish soul is ontologically different from the soul of non-Jews; for example, it is held by some that Jews have three levels of soul, nefesh, ruach and neshamah while non-Jews have only nefesh.

Such theologically framed hostility may have been a response to some medieval demonization of Jews which developed in some parts of Western and Christian society and thought

David Halperin[62] argues that the collapse of Kabbalah’s influence among Western European Jews over the course of the 17th and 18th century was a result of the cognitive dissonance they experienced between the negative perception of Gentiles found in some exponents of Kabbalah, and their own positive dealings with non-Jews, which were rapidly expanding and improving during this period due to the influence of the Enlightenment.

However, a number of renowned Kabbalists claimed the exact opposite. In their view, Kabbalah transcends the borders of Judaism and can serve as a basis of inter-religious theosophy and a universal religion. Rabbi Pinchas Elijah Hurwitz, a prominent Lithuanian-Galician Kabbalist of the 18th century and a moderate proponent of the Haskalah, called for brotherly love and solidarity between all nations, and believed that Kabbalah can empower everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, with prophetic abilities.

Yet another example of jewish duality – kabbalah is by jews, about jews, for jews AND it’s for everyone!

Cabal, by Rabbi Julian Sinclair, The Jewish Chronicle:

Cabal entered the English language in the late 16th century to mean a secret intrigue, plot or conspiracy. This coinage coincided with the rising awareness of Jewish mystical teachings, the Kabbalah, in non-Jewish circles. (The word Kabbalah derives from the word meaning “receive,” denoting the private, oral nature of its transmission from teacher to student.)

Kabbalah was at one time a bone of contention between ashkenazi jews in Eastern Europe. Misnagdim and the Hasidic Judaism, Wikipedia:

The reconciliation took place in response to the perceived even greater threat of the Haskala, or Jewish Enlightenment. Despite this, the distinctions between the various sects of Hasidim and other Orthodox Jews remain, although now, there is almost no conflict between these two groups.

In the mid-19th-century the influence of modern changes in Jewish society arrived East from the Western European secularising Haskalah (Jewish “Intellectualism”) movement. While the unsuccessful 1812 French invasion of Russia by Napoleon had sought to bring Jewish emancipation from the non-Jewish political structures of Poland and Russia, Haskalah sought to reform and rationalize Jewish thought and life from within the Jewish community, to form an image of Jewish observance in the character of non-Jewish modernity.

The threat of Haskalah helped heal the division between Hasidism and Mitnagdim, as they saw a common goal in protecting sincere Jewish observance of the common folk

The use of Hebrew for anything other than prayer and study is, according to them, profane. Hence Yiddish is the vernacular and common tongue for many Hasidim around the world.

Haredi Judaism, Wikipedia:

Haredim view themselves as the most authentic group of Jews

The word denotes staunchly Orthodox Jews and is increasingly being used in the diaspora in place of “ultra-Orthodox”, which some view as inaccurate or offensive,[16][17] it being seen as a derogatory term suggesting extremism.

Many Haredim view manner of dress as an important way to ensure Jewish identity and distinctiveness

To Zionists, Haredi Jews were either “primitives” or “parasites”; to Haredi Jews, Zionists were tyrannizing heretics.

Despite the animosity, it was necessary for the two groups to work out some modus vivendi in the face of a more dangerous enemy, the Nazis. This was achieved by a division of powers and authority, based on the division that existed during the British Mandate in the country. Known as the “status quo”, it granted political authority (such as control over public institutions, the army, etc.) to the Zionists and religious authority (such as control over marriage, divorce, conversions, etc.) to the Orthodox.

Why Do Some Jews Spell “God” G-d?, by Ariela Pelaia, judaism.about.com:

The custom of substituting the word “God” with G-d in English is based on the traditional practice in Jewish law of giving God’s Hebrew name a high degree of respect and reverence.

Significant names and contexts:

YHWH/Yahweh (I am), not spoken ever
Adonai (master, lord), prayer only
HaShem (The Name), other times

Kabbalists use “Ein Sof”, meaning void, infinite, endless.

Atheist Jews: Judaism Without God, by Kimberly Winston, The Huffington Post:

In the 1920s, American Conservative Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan developed the theology of what would become Reconstructionist Judaism, founded on the idea that God is not personal, but a summation of all natural processes. Four decades later, Reform Rabbi Sherwin Wine came out as an atheist and founded “Humanistic Judaism,” which emphasizes secular Jewish culture and history over belief in God.

And because Judaism is not dogmatic — unlike Christianity and Islam, there is no creed to adhere to — atheists can be open about their lack of belief and still belong to a synagogue.

“Atheism is not much discussed in Jewish life,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.

“An individual who attends synagogue, participates in Jewish communal affairs, and contributes heavily to Jewish charities would undoubtedly be considered a very fine Jew, without asking questions about whether or not that person believed in God.”

Shaul Magid, a professor of modern Judaism at Indiana University, said atheists may join synagogues because American Judaism lacks “a vibrant secular Jewish movement.”

“They go because they want some kind of ethnic identity,” Magid said. “They don’t care about the prayers. It allows them to feel a sense of Jewishness, but has little to do with religion.”

That’s what prompted Jennifer Cohen Oko, a Washington, D.C.-based writer, to join a Reform synagogue, her first. Neither Cohen nor her husband believe in God, but, like many Jews, they joined for their two children.

“I want my kids to understand they are Jewish, to be proud of being Jewish and to understand their heritage,” Cohen said. “And then they’ll have a choice. If they want to go that way (towards belief in God), great. If they don’t, they’ll have a sense of where they came from.”

This article linked to Can There Be Judaism Without Belief In God?, Moment Magazine:

Rebecca Goldstein

As an atheist who identifies with my Jewishness, I believe this is a very important question. From a purely philosophical point of view, it might seem like a contradiction; Judaism is a religion that at the very least presupposes, as all religions do, a belief in God. But many of us make a distinction between Judaism as a religion and Judaism as a cultural and ethical outlook.

. . .

The contradictions might seem glaring, but centuries of Jewish history since the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, have proved that Jews are too strong for narrowly defined contradictions. One of the most important responsibilities a person has is to carefully and conscientiously examine her beliefs.

Robert Putnam

I don’t know whether it’s theologically kosher to be both a Jew and an atheist, but if it isn’t, half the Americans who call themselves Jews aren’t quite legit. Of self-identified Jews in the nationally representative surveys David Campbell and I did for our book American Grace, 50 percent say they have doubts about the existence of God. That figure is much higher among Jews than any other major religious group in America. (Among members of all other faiths, only 10-15 percent express any doubts at all about God’s existence.)

I’m a Jew by choice—I converted 50 years ago, and I’m even more satisfied with that choice now than I was a half-century ago. That’s partly because being Jewish is mostly not about beliefs, but about connections with other people, sharing values and a collective destiny.

Robert Putnam is the author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community and the Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University.

Avraham Infeld

Judaism is not a religion and was not a religion until the emancipation and our encounter with modernity. Rather, it’s the culture of the Jewish people. Like most ancient cultures, it was a religious culture, and the relationship between God and the Jewish people as a whole—not the individual Jew—was an integral part of the basis of that culture. Does an individual Jew have to believe in God to be a part of Judaism? I don’t think so. I believe that practicing Judaism demands recognition of the fact that you’re part of a culture with a narrative that has God as a central player, part of a people that have had a love affair with God for thousands of years. The narrative of this relationship is probably the central theme in the culture of this people. Being a people means identifying with a shared memory and narrative and having responsibility for its future, its renaissance, its well being. That’s what Jews are. It’s like asking “Can a Frenchman be French without being Catholic?” Of course he can, but he has to understand that being French was built on the Catholic tradition. We are taught that a Jew—never mind how he sins, even in the sin of apostasy—always remains a Jew. Jewish culture is not based on the individual Jew’s relationship to God, but rather on his relationship to his community and the community’s relationship to God: We pray in the plural. We need a minyan.

. . .

Membership in the people is the necessary condition for being a Jew (I don’t know if it’s sufficient), while saying, “your God is my God,” is not a requirement.

Masha Gessen

The concept of Jewishness as a religious affiliation is a recent one. It’s a post-World War II American idea, which will take years to unpack, but essentially it’s a cultural reaction to the need not to think of Jews as an ethnicity. The rest of the world thinks of Jews as an ethnic group, and to maintain a separate and cohesive population it’s useful to have a religion, but it’s not necessary, as other groups have demonstrated. The Roma have adopted whatever religion is dominant in the society in which they’re living, an unusual story for a small population in the diaspora, but possible. Same with the secular Jews of the Soviet Union. For nearly seven decades, Jews maintained a separate identity without religion and without a common language. The common experience of discrimination forged a common identity that bound them together.

Leora Batnitzky

It is difficult to conceive of Judaism as a long-term, sustainable tradition without belief in God, or, at the very least, belief in the Jewish people. For example, one of the questions about Zionism is whether or not, as a belief in the Jewish people outside of God, it is sustainable over the generations. I’m not sure it is. I’m not saying that all Jews do believe in God, and I don’t think God fills a void in any kind of easy way, but the notion of God gives some kind of trans-historical, or trans-subjective dimension to why we think we ought to do what we ought to do. The question comes down to what it means to sustain a belief in God in Judaism, and that’s a complicated issue. One interesting example of someone who struggled with this issue is Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. He rightfully recognized that defining Judaism just in terms of God was problematic, and he also claimed that, in many ways, modern science made notions of God obsolete. But he continually struggled to think of a notion of God that infused Jewish peoplehood with meaning.

The question is, why be Jewish? One thing I think most Jews would agree on—and there aren’t many things—is that it’s not easy to be Jewish alone. It’s communal. So what sustains the community? Answers about history and culture are important, but without a God that somehow transcends human history, Judaism becomes just one cultural option among many. It becomes like ice cream flavors; different people like different flavors, but why should we force our children to like our flavor? Without God, arguments for Jewish continuity—that there should be Jews in the future—end up resorting to ethnic chauvinism.

Leora Batnitzky is chair of the Religion Department at Princeton University and author of How Judaism Became a Religion.

Jack M. Sasson

Especially before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, belief in God was generally not a troubling issue for Mizrachi Jews in the Middle East, as there was little differentiation between the religious and social spheres.

. . .

The Latin word religio (from which we derive “religion”) has to do with connectives, attaching people together. In that sense, an increasing investment in communal acts—synagogue worship and joyous occasions such as engagement, marriage, bar-mitzvah and brit milla—give moments in which members of the community renew their commitments to each other as well as distribute rewards to loyal members.

Jack M. Sasson is the Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Judaic and Biblical Studies at Vanderbilt University.

Judaism is based on people, not religion.

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Jewish Crypsis – Religion – Part 1

Published on August 6, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Age of Treason Radio

Concerning judaism and the false idea that jewishness equates with religion. The question is, which religion?

Torah, Wikipedia.

Five books, “dictated to Moses by God”.

At that time it was forbidden to write and publish the oral law, as any writing would be incomplete and subject to misinterpretation and abuse.[44]

However, after exile, dispersion and persecution, this tradition was lifted when it became apparent that in writing was the only way to ensure that the Oral Law could be preserved. After many years of effort by a great number of tannaim, the oral tradition was written down around 200 CE by Rabbi Judah haNasi, who took up the compilation of a nominally written version of the Oral Law, the Mishnah (Hebrew: משנה). Other oral traditions from the same time period not entered into the Mishnah were recorded as “Baraitot” (external teaching), and the Tosefta. Other traditions were written down as Midrashim.

After continued persecution more of the oral law was committed to writing.

A self-image as a persecuted group is a defining characteristic, the core belief of judaism.

One kabbalistic interpretation is that the Torah constitutes one long name of God, and that it was broken up into words so that human minds can understand it.

The Torah is what all types of jews, and the Abrahamic religions, have in common.

Christians call it the Pentateuch, the first portion of the Old Testament. Muslims call it Tawrat, viewing jews and Christians as “people of the book”, and Moses as a prophet.

Tanakh, Wikipedia:

three traditional subdivisions: The Torah (“Teaching”, also known as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (“Prophets”) and Ketuvim (“Writings”)

According to the Talmud,[1] much of the contents of the Tanakh were compiled by the “Men of the Great Assembly” by 450 BC, and have since remained unchanged. Modern scholars believe that the process of canonization of the Tanakh became finalized between 200 BC and 200 AD.

The adoption of the Christian chapter divisions by Jews began in the late Middle Ages in Spain, partially in the context of forced clerical debates which took place against a background of harsh persecution and of the Spanish Inquisition (the debates required a common system for citing biblical texts). From the standpoint of the Jewish textual tradition, the chapter divisions are not only a foreign feature with no basis in the mesorah, but are also open to severe criticism of three kinds

Oral Torah/Talmud, Wikipedia:

The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (Hebrew: משנה, c. 200 CE), the first written compendium of Judaism’s Oral Law, and the Gemara (c. 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible.

Much of the Gemara consists of legal analysis. The starting point for the analysis is usually a legal statement found in a Mishnah. The statement is then analyzed and compared with other statements

. . .

Another important function of Gemara is to identify the correct Biblical basis for a given law presented in the Mishnah and the logical process connecting one with the other: this activity was known as talmud long before the existence of the “Talmud” as a text.

The process of “Gemara” proceeded in what were then the two major centers of Jewish scholarship, the Land of Israel and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud or the Talmud Yerushalmi. It was compiled in the 4th century in Israel. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled about the year 500 CE, although it continued to be edited later. The word “Talmud”, when used without qualification, usually refers to the Babylonian Talmud.

The influence of the Babylonian Talmud has been far greater than that of the Yerushalmi.

The Talmud is often cryptic and difficult to understand.

Pilpul

During the 15th and 16th centuries, a new intensive form of Talmud study arose. Complicated logical arguments were used to explain minor points of contradiction within the Talmud. The term pilpul was applied to this type of study.

Hairsplitting, a “talmudic” tendency toward tedious arguments, is another key jewish characteristic. In the context of judaism the need arises out of contradictions created by jewish dishonesty about who they are and what they believe. The most important argument for jews revolves around the question: “What is good for the jews?”. Much confusion is created by their own attempts to disguise, deny, or otherwise explain this away.

The history of the Talmud reflects in part the history of Judaism persisting in a world of hostility and persecution.

Persecution, again.

Full scale attacks on the Talmud took place in the 13th century in France, where Talmudic study was then flourishing. The charge against the Talmud brought by the Christian convert Nicholas Donin led to the first public disputation between Jews[66] and Christians and to the first burning of copies of the Talmud in Paris in 1242.

The Talmud was likewise the subject of the Disputation of Barcelona in 1263 between Nahmanides (Rabbi Moses ben Nahman) and Christian convert, Pablo Christiani.

In 1415, Pope Benedict XIII, who had convened the Tortosa disputation, issued a papal bull (which was destined, however, to remain inoperative) forbidding the Jews to read the Talmud, and ordering the destruction of all copies of it. Far more important were the charges made in the early part of the 16th century by the convert Johannes Pfefferkorn, the agent of the Dominicans.

Note the active agency in these “attacks” are “converts” (i.e. jews) revealing jewish secrets, particularly revealing the hostility of jews toward others, encoded in their Talmud.

Contemporary accusations

Criticism of the Talmud is widespread, in great part through the Internet.[89]

The Anti-Defamation League’s report on this topic states that antisemitic critics of the Talmud frequently use erroneous translations or selective quotations in order to distort the meaning of the Talmud’s text, and sometimes fabricate passages. In addition, the attackers rarely provide full context of the quotations, and fail to provide contextual information about the culture that the Talmud was composed in, nearly 2,000 years ago.

Jews blame non-jews for secretive jewish behavior, for the harm created by jewish crypsis.

Zohar, Wikipedia:

The Zohar (Hebrew: זֹהַר, lit Splendor or Radiance) is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah.[1] It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five books of Moses) and scriptural interpretations as well as material on Mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology. The Zohar contains a discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of Ego to Darkness and “true self” to “The Light of God,” and the relationship between the “universal energy” and man. Its scriptural exegesis can be considered an esoteric form of the Rabbinic literature known as Midrash, which elaborates on the Torah.

The Zohar is mostly written in what has been described as an exalted, eccentric style of Aramaic, which was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (539 BCE – 70 CE), was the original language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, and is the main language of the Talmud.[2]

The Zohar first appeared in Spain in the 13th century, and was published by a Jewish writer named Moses de Leon. De Leon ascribed the work to Shimon bar Yochai (“Rashbi”), a rabbi of the 2nd century during the Roman persecution

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Voices of Music

Published on August 2, 2013 by Tanstaafl in Blog

This month’s special program is based on performances that Voices of Music, the Early Music ensemble, has made available on YouTube. It will be broadcast each Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday starting at 9PM ET and streaming until the next scheduled program.

From the Voices of Music home page:

Voices of Music performs both renaissance and baroque music, drawing upon the many and varied sources for historical performance practice. Based in San Francisco, our venue in St. Mark’s Lutheran provides one of the finest concert experiences in the Bay Area. Performances are one on a part, with an emphasis on combining both instrumental and vocal styles of interpretation and ornamentation. Our ensemble is the first Early Music Ensemble in America to broadcast highlights from our performances in High Definition Video.

In most cases the visuals make these selections worth watching as well as listening to. During transcoding I took the liberty of trimming off most of the applause and silence. The notes below are excerpts of the YouTube descriptions for each video.

Pachelbel Canon in D Original Instruments (4:14)

About the performance: the canon is played using not only the instruments but also the bowing techniques from the time of Pachelbel. As you can see from the video, especially if you look at the high definition version, the string instruments are not only baroque, but they are in baroque setup: this means that the strings, fingerboard, bridge and other parts of the violin appear just as they did in Pachelbel’s time. No metal hardware such as chinrests, clamps or fine tuners are used on the violins, allowing the violins to vibrate freely. A good example of baroque bowing can be seen in the extended passage of repeated notes: the musicians play these notes on one bow—the shorter & lighter baroque bow—to created a gliding effect. The players also hold the bow very differently which affects the balance and touch. Both the style and the amount of vibrato are based on baroque treatises which describe the methods for playing, bowing & articulation in the late 17th century. The narrow, shimmering vibrato blends with the baroque organ. The organ used is made entirely of wood, based on German baroque instruments, and the pipes are voiced to provide a smooth accompaniment to the strings, instead of a more soloistic sound. The large bass lute, or theorbo, provides a complement to the organ not only in the texture of the chords but also the long strings which occasionally sound the bass notes an octave lower. The continuo players play supporting chords and voices to the canon, carefully avoiding parallels and doublings of the parts.

Another feature of the video is the subtle differences in not only the sound and color of the instruments, but also the different techniques of the players. All three are playing baroque violins with baroque bows, yet each person has her own distinct sound and bowing style—each bow has a different shape and balance. If you look at paintings of 17th century players you will see that they are all different, because that individuality of sound and technique was highly valued. This allows the players and the listeners to hear and appreciate the “Voices of Music.”

More about Pachelbel’s Canon at Wikipedia.

J.S. Bach: Air on the G String (5:08)

Bach under the Stars.

More about Air on the G String at Wikipedia.

J.S. Bach: Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen BWV 51 (4:26)

Bach’s cantata is Italian in nature and makes extensive use of ritornello form within the larger framework of the Da Capo Aria. The original manuscripts are unusual in that they have “doublets” or extra parts for the strings, along with minimal solo and tutti markings.

Jauchzet Gott is the only cantata by Bach for both solo trumpet and solo soprano, and the highly virtuosic solo parts are demanding even by Bach’s standards. The soprano part covers two octaves and extends to high C. It is not known for whom the solo parts were composed; presumably the trumpet part was penned for the brilliant trumpeter Gottfried Reiche, and it is tempting to assume, as previous scholars have noted, that the solo soprano part was written for a visiting singer, as there was no known local singer at that time with a similar repertory. The first noted performance of the cantata was on the 15th Sunday after Trinity, on 17 September 1730; the ms. is also marked “et in ogni tempo”, meaning that it could be performed at any time during the year. Although some scholars have drawn comparisons to music composed for the court at Weißenfels, the style and the scoring of the work seem most closely related to Italian composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti who composed many works for virtuoso singers and trumpet players . There is also the slim chance that Nicola Porpora, who had connections in Germany and visited in 1724, just prior to the date of BWV 51, or Caldara may have presented similar works. Nonetheless, at its core, the cantata is fashioned with Bach’s signature contrapuntal style.

J.S. Bach: Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, Largo BWV 1043 (5:48)

The entrancing slow movement from the Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor by J.S. Bach (BWV 1043), accompanied by a montage of HD images from the ESA.

Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for organ BWV 565 (9:45)

Bach’s signature work for organ solo, performed on a Flentrop organ by Rodney Gehrke, as part of the Voices of Music “Great Works” series. One of the most brilliant and creative compositions ever written for the organ, the Toccata and Fugue are characterized by a grand, cathedral-like architecture. Pedal points provide the foundation, strettos engrave recurring design motifs on the architraves that join immense columns of sound, quirky modulations form spandrels at the ends of phrases, blue notes spout from the gargoyles guarding the rails of free-form episodes–episodes that form a fan-vault over the chords; subject and counter-subject weave rood-screens between the main formal sections, the fugue rules square the structure in balanced harmony, and striking modal colors provide illumination through the clerestory windows of Bach’s imagination.

The work is unique in many respects, and these unique qualities–for example, the solo statement of the fugue subject in the pedals at 6:50 is unprecedented in any work of the baroque–have led some musicologists (not us) to speculate that the work may not be by Bach, or that it is an arrangement drawn from a work for another instrument. But what instrument besides the organ could build a cathedral of sound?

Dandrieu: La musète et double de la musète (2:55)

The musète (musette) from the Suite in C from Book I of the French organist and composer Jean-François Dandrieu (Paris, 1705).

Lully: Chaconne from Phaeton, with baroque dance (4:22)

The Chaconne from the Opera Phaeton by Jean-Baptiste Lully (LWV 61, 1683)

Antonio Vivaldi: La Follia, with baroque dance (9:40)

In 1705, eager to make his mark as a composer of both opera and instrumental music, the young Vivaldi published his first set of twelve trio sonatas as Opus 1. The last sonata, which is a highly virtuosic set of variations on the “La Follia” dance pattern (titled only “Follia” in the print), is one of his most famous works; Vivaldi takes Corelli’s variations on the same theme-and-bass pattern from Corelli’s Opus 5 (1700), which was already a famous work, and adds figuration of even greater complexity.

Antonio Vivaldi: In turbato mare RV 627 (16:19)

Antonio Vivaldi is known primarily as a composer of concertos, but in his own time he was an opera impresario, hastily dashing off concertos for cash (sometimes in coach trips from one production to another) to fund his lavish productions. For special occasions, or special patrons–such as the orchestra in Dresden–Vivaldi brought the full force of his compositional abilities to the table, and crafted masterpieces of counterpoint, in stark contrast to many of his hastily composed works. Vivaldi’s sacred works are nearly as compelling as his best concertos, and the motet “In turbato mare irato” combines typical operatic melismas, recitatives and Da Capo arias, as well as a challenging vocal range of two octaves. Composers of the baroque period (especially Handel) often used a number of compositional tricks to speed the process of churning out music, such as recycling large pieces of thematic material, or piling all of the instruments onto one part to avoid the complexity of full counterpoint. In turbato, in contrast, is composed with a four-part harmony throughout. The fully-allegorical text can be read as an odyssey towards spiritual or intellectual light, but the verses are suffused with secular sensuality, paralleling the Italian art and religious architecture of the same period.

The original score contains a brief recit with continuo, we have turned this into an accompagnato piece in which the strings play the harmonies.

Heinrich Biber: Sonata IV in C Major for Trumpet and Strings (4:53)

Although Biber gives the title “Sonata” for the works in this collection, “Sonatae tam aris quam aulis servientes” (Salzburg, 1676), stylistically, this work is in many respects one of the earliest trumpet concertos. Virtuoso parts are provided for the trumpet and first violin, and the rich accompaniment results from the blend of the two violas and the continuo group.

Pergolesi: Stabat Mater (39:03)

In his short life, Giovanni Pergolesi composed a wide variety of music in the major genres of the time. His primary compositions were also operas, especially the new Opera Buffa (comic opera). His highly influential mini-opera, La Serva Padrona (1733) was the subject of a fierce debate in France over the future of opera, and was one of the most popular operas of the mid-18th century. The Stabat Mater, written in 1736, may have been composed for members of the secular nobility, the Cavalieri della Vergine dei Dolori, that met in Naples and commissioned a setting of the Stabat Mater every year. A few years earlier, Alessandro Scarlatti set the same text for members of the same group. Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater was an immediate hit, and was copied, imitated, arranged and reprinted many times throughout Europe. When it was engraved in London in 1749, it quickly became the most frequently printed musical work in the 18th century.

Henry Purcell: Pavan in B Flat (4:04)

Henry Purcell’s sumptuous Pavan in B Flat

Johann Kapsberger: Toccata Arpeggiata (5:25)

The Toccata Arpeggiata from Johann Kapsberger’s Book I (Venice, 1604). Performed on the theorbo by David Tayler. Live video from the SF based Early Music Ensemble Voices of Music, from the Great Artists Series 2012.

Musicological Notes:

My reconstruction of the style of playing the lute in the first decade of the 17th century is based on a study of the many different musical genres from the time, including the keyboard and lute toccatas, the violin sonatas and the wide variety of vocal music, including the Littera Amorosa. Early keyboard and lute music reveals a dizzying array of arpeggiation patterns, with very few written-out works that use a relentless or uniform approach. Another feature of this early 17th century style is that the music almost always has contrasting sections, and this feature is present in both vocal and instrumental works. Chord patterns, arpeggios and melodic fragments are combined to form these sections, as well as provide small ritornellos. Echo, piano and forte effects, which were just starting to be used (Monteverdi, 1607) are added with gradations, within the small but present dynamic range of the lute.

Literary influences for my interpretation center around the poetical forms in vogue 1600-1610, including the sonnet and especially the freer and rhythmically complex form of Gabriello Chiabrera: rhymes, lines, line breaks, chiasmus and caesuras are woven into the musical fabric.

Lastly, my approach tries to recreate a more improvisatorial style that provides a kind of musical antecedent to the unmeasured preludes of Louis Couperin, Jacquet de la Guerre and Chambonnieres, as I imagine that such a style must have existed in order for later composers to imitate it. There are many ways to interpret Kapsberger, and I hope to see many more versions by my colleagues.

Total run time: 1:56:02

(Note: There is no audio download for this program – please tune in via the MP3 Stream.)

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