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Re: Antisemitic: Khazars convert to Judaism


I don't like to to post this stuff , but the truth must come out.
"After the lifetime of Jesus the Old Testament, with the New Testament, was translated into Latin by Saint Jerome, when both came to be regarded by the Church as of equal divine authority and as sections of one Book."

A modern encyclopaedia.

THE TORAH

"And the Lord spake unto me, saying. . . This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee . . . And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it . . . And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them. . . to drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance . . . And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them; neither shalt thou make marriages with them. . . ye shall destroy their altars and break down their images. . . For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth . . . And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them. . . But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction until they be destroyed . . . He shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven, there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them . . . Every place whereon the soles of your
feet shall tread shall be yours. . . even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be . . . Of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shall save nothing alive that breatheth . . . thou shalt lend unto many nations and thou shalt not borrow . . . Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods. . ."

Deuteronomy.



THE NEW TESTAMENT

"Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God. . . I am not come to destroy" (the law or the prophets) "but to fulfil . . . Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies. . . He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes . . . Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth . . . what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. . . this is the first and great commandment; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. . . One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. . . Let brotherly love continue . . . Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased . . . Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees . . . ye are the children of them which killed the prophets . . . This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations . . . Forgive them, for they know not what they do . . . God that made the world and all things herein . . . and hath made of one blood all nations of men . . . be it known therefore unto you that the

573

salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it . . . What then? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also . . . for the promise, that he should be of the world, was not to Abraham, and to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith . . . One God and father of all who is above, all . . . let brotherly love continue . . . For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction . . ."

The Gospels, Acts and Epistles.



No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of a continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

You decide what you would rather  have .THE NEW TESTAMENT or THE TORAH

aloha Robert

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I know that the jews have a long diaspora :            www.biblebelievers.org.au/luther.htmhistory.

www.biblebelievers.org.au/expelled.htm

Extracts from Martin Luther's booklet:

"THE JEWS AND THEIR LIES"

OF THE UNKNOWABLE NAME AND THE GENERATIONS OF CHRIST (1543)
Volume 47: "The Christian in Society" IV, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). pp 268-293


"Such a desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous and devilish lot are these Jews, who for these fourteen hundred years have been and still are our plague, our pestilence, and our misfortune."

Martin Luther—Angel to the Fifth or Sardis Church Age 1520-1752


Jewish authorities are well aware of the two phases of Luther's ministry: that wherein he wrote his "Jesus Christ was Born A Jew," filled with sympathy for their long unbelief which he laid on the unsympathetic attitude of the Roman Catholic church. Luther's study of the TALMUD became the dividing line. His second and last phase was one of warning against the self-styled Jews as of Christianity and of Christians. After Luther became conversant with the TALMUD and the ritual cursings of Judaism, he DE CLAREd that a person who condones such blasphemies partakes of them.

"I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's Word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen."

***

"He did not call them Abraham's children, but a 'brood of vipers' [Matt. 3:7]. Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they DE CLAREd, 'He has a demon' [Matt 11:18]. Our Lord calls them a 'brood of vipers'; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: 'If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did . . . You are of your father the devil.' It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today."

***

"They are the real liars and bloodhounds, who have not only perverted and falsified the entire Scriptures from beginning to end and without ceasing with their interpretations. And all of the anxious sighing, longing and hoping of their hearts is directed to the time when some day they would like to deal with us heathen as they dealt with the heathen in Persia at the time of Esther . . . "

***

"Oh how they love the book of Esther, which so nicely agrees with their bloodthirsty, revengeful and murderous desire and hope. The sun never did shine on a more bloodthirsty and revengeful people as they, who imagine to be the people of God, and who desire to and think they must murder and crush the heathen. And the foremost undertaking which they expect of their Messiah is that he should slay and murder the whole world with the sword. As they at first demonstrated against us Christians and would like to do now, if they only could; have also tried it often and have been repeatedly struck on their snouts . . ."

***

"Their breath stinks for the gold and silver of the heathen; since no people under the sun always have been, still are, and always will remain more avaricious than they, as can be noticed in their cursed usury. They also find comfort with this: 'When the Messiah comes, He shall take all the gold and silver in the world and distribute it among the Jews.' Thus, wherever they can direct Scripture to their insatiable avarice, they wickedly do so."

"Therefore know, my dear Christians, that next to the Devil, you have no more bitter, more poisonous, more vehement and enemy than a real Jew who earnestly desires to be a Jew. There may be some among them who believe what the cow or the goose believes. But all of them are surrounded with their blood and circumcision. In history, therefore, they are often accused of poisoning wells, stealing children and mutilating them; as in Trent, Weszensee and the like. Of course they deny this. Be it so or not, however, I know full well that the ready will is not lacking with them if they could only transform it into deeds, in secret or openly."

***

"A person who does not know the Devil, might wonder why they are so at enemity with the Christians above all others; for which they have no reason, since we only do good to them."

***

"They live among us in our homes, under our protection, use land and highways, market and streets. Princes and government sit by, snore and have their maws open, let the Jews take from their purse and chest, steal and rob whatever they will. That is, they permit themselves and their subjects to be abused and sucked dry and reduced to beggars with their own money, through the usury of the Jews. For the Jews, as foreigners, certainly should have nothing from us; and what they have certainly must be ours. They do not work, do not earn anything from us, neither do we donate or give it to them. Yet they have our money and goods and are lords in our land where they are supposed to be in exile!"

***

"If a thief steals ten gulden he must hang; if he robs people on the highway, his head is gone. But a Jew, when he steals ten tons of gold through his usury, is dearer than God himself!"

***

"Do not their TALMUD and rabbis write that it is no sin to kill if a Jew kills a heathen, but it is a sin if he kills a brother in Israel? It is no sin if he does not keep his oath to a heathen. Therefore, to steal and rob (as they do with their moneylending) from a heathen, is a divine service . . . And they are the masters of the world and we are their servants—yea, their cattle!"

***

"I maintain that in three fables of Aesop there is more wisdom to be found than in all the books of the Talmudists and rabbis and more than ever could come into the hearts of the Jews . . ."

***

"Should someone think I am saying too much—I am saying much too little! For I see in [their] writings how they curse us Goyim and wish as all evil in their schools and prayers. They rob us of our money through usury, and wherever they are able, they play us all manner of mean tricks . . . No heathen has done such things and none would to so except the Devil himself and those whom he possesses—as he possesses the Jews."

***

"Burgensis, who was a very learned rabbi among them and by the grace of God became a Christian (which seldom occurs), is much moved that in their schools they so horribly curse us Christians (as Lyra also writes) and from that draws the conclusion that they must not be the people of God."

***

"Now behold what a nice, thick, fat lie it is when they complain about being captives among us! Jerusalem was destroyed more than 1,400 years ago during that time we Christians have been tortured and persecuted by the Jews in all the world. On top of that, we do not know to this day what Devil brought them into our country. We did not fetch them from Jerusalem! . . . Yes, we have and hold them captive, as I would like to keep my rheumatism, and all other diseases and misfortunes, who must wait as a poor servant, with money and property and everything I have! I wish they were in Jerusalem with the other Jews and whomsoever they would like to have with them."

***

"Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools . . ."

***

"Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people. "

***

". . . their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain."

***

"Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are doing if you permit the blind Jews to mislead you. Then the saying will truly apply, 'When a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit' [cf. Luke 6:39]. You cannot learn anything from them except how to misunderstand the divine commandments . . ."

***

"Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them."

***

"Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security."

***

However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it. But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath."

***

"If I had to refute all the other articles of the Jewish faith, I should be obliged to write against them as much and for as long a time as they have used for inventing their lies—that is, longer than two thousand years."

***

". . . Christ and His Word can hardly be recognized because of the great vermin of human ordinances. However, let this suffice for the time being on their lies against doctrine or faith."

***

"Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway, they have their reward for constantly giving God the lie."

***

"No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants."

***

". . . but then eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!"

***

"Over and above that we let them get rich on our sweat and blood, while we remain poor and they suck the marrow from our bones."

***

"I brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule—if my counsel does not please you, find better advice, so that you and we all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all Christians, all authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us . . . With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience."

***

"Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew."

***

"However, we must avoid confirming them in their wanton lying, slandering, cursing, and defaming. Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their devilish ranting and raving by shielding and protecting them, by giving them food, drink, and shelter, or by other neighborly deeds."

***

"Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not to tolerate their wanton and conscious blasphemy."

***

"Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death."

***

"What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Let us apply the ordinary wisdom of other nations like France, Spain, Bohemia, et al., who made them give an account of what they had stolen through usury, and divided it evenly; but expelled them from their country; For as heard before, God's wrath is so great over them that through soft mercy they only become more wicked, through hard treatment, however, only a little better. Therefore, away with them!"

***

quot;How much more unbearable it is that we should permit the entire Christendom and all of us to be bought with our own money, be slandered and cursed by the Jews, who on top of all that be made rich and our lords, who laugh us to scorn and are tickled by their audacity!"

***

"What a joyful affair that would be for the Devil and his angels, and cause them to laugh through their snouts like a sow grinning at her little pigs, but deserving real wrath before God."

***

"What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must pratice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengenance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

> First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly—and I myself was unaware of it—will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. . . .

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuternomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the Law of the Lord." Those villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You are Peter," etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the Word of God, and therefore he forfeited the righ to teach.

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let they stay at home. . . If you princes and nobles do not close the road legally to such exploiters, then some troop ought to ride against them, for they will learn from this pamphlet what the Jews are and how to handle them and that they ought not to be protected. You ought not, you cannot protect them, unless in the eyes of God you want to share all their abomination.

Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that, as said above, they have no other means of earning a livelihood than usury, and by it they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess. Such money should now be used in no other way than the following: Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set himself up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children, and the maintenance of the old or feeble. For such evil gains are cursed if they are not put to use with God's blessing in a good and worthy cause.

Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]). For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants."

***

"But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews' synagogues and forbid them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God's Name? They will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. For our knowledge of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God."

***

Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:

First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire. That would demonstrate to God our serious resolve and be evidence to all the world that it was in ignorance that we tolerated such houses, in which the Jews have reviled God, our dear Creator and Father, and his Son most shamefully up till now but that we have now given them their due reward."

"To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden—the Jews . . ."

"Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew. When you lay eyes on or think of a Jew you must say to yourself: Alas, that mouth which I there behold has cursed and execrated and maligned every Saturday my dear Lord Jesus Christ, who has redeemed me with His precious blood; in addition, it prayed and pleaded before God that I, my wife and children, and all Christians might be stabbed to death and perish miserably. And he himself would gladly do this if he were able, in order to appropriate our goods . . ."

"Such a desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous, and devilish lot are these Jews, who for these fourteen hundred years have been and still are our plague, our pestilence, and our misfortune."

"I have read and heard many stories about the Jews which agree with this judgment of Christ, namely, how they have poisoned wells, made assassinations, kidnapped children, as related before. I have heard that one Jew sent another Jew, and this by means of a Christian, a pot of blood, together with a of wine, in which when drunk empty, a dead Jew was found. There are many other similar stories. For their kidnapping of children they have often been burned at the stake or banished (as we already heard). I am well aware that they deny all of this. However, it all coincides with the judgment of Christ which DE CLAREs that they are venomous, bitter, vindictive, tricky serpents, assassins, and children of the devil, who sting and work harm stealthily wherever they cannot do it openly. For this reason, I would like to see them where there are no Christians. The Turks and other heathen do not tolerate what we Christians endure from these venomous serpents and young devils . . . next to the devil, a Christian has no more bitter and galling foe than a Jew. There is no other to whom we accord as many benefactions and from whom we suffer as much as we do from these base children of the devil, this brood of vipers."

***

"We are at fault for not slaying them."

***

"I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people, as suggested above, to see whether this might not help (though it is doubtful). They must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish. They surely do not know what they are doing; moreover, as people possessed, they do not wish to know it, hear it, or learn it. There it would be wrong to be merciful and confirm them in their conduct. If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices and thus merit God's wrath and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated."

***

"They exalt themselves and praise God for separating them from the heathen. . . In order that their raving, frantic and foolish nonsense might be perfect, they praise and thank God, first, that they are human beings and not animals; secondly, that they are Israelites and not Goyim; thirdly, that they were created as Men and not as Women. Such foolishness they do not have from Israel, but from Goyim."

"For thus the historians write that the Greek PLATO daily gave such praise and thanks to God, if such blasphemy and haughtiness could be called the praise of God. For that man (Plato) also praised his gods for these three things, that he was a man and not an animal, a man and not a woman. a Greek and not a non-Greek or barbarian. Such is the praying of a fool and the praise of a blasphemous barbarian: just as the Mals imagine that they alone are human beings and all the rest of the world nothing but inhuman beings, ducks, or mice."

***

"My essay, I hope, will furnish a Christian (who in any case has no desire to become a Jew) with enough material not only to defend himself against the blind, venomous Jews, but also to become the foe of the Jews' malice, lying, and cursing, and to understand not only that their belief is false but that they are surely possessed by all devils. May Christ, our dear Lord, convert them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly and immovably in the knowledge of him, which is eternal life. Amen."

***

"Even with no further evidence than the Old Testament, I would maintain, and no person on earth could alter my opinion, that the Jews as they are today are veritably a mixture of all the depraved and malevolent knaves of the whole world over, who have then been dispersed in all countries, similarly to the Tartars, Gypsies and such folk."

 


Here are excerpts from Luther's reply to the Talmudic charge that Jesus did His miracles by magic with the Tetragrammaton, or Shem Hamphorash, the consonants of the word Jehovah (by which the Rabbis whistle up the demons)? Published in 1543:

"Vom Schem Hamphoras und
vom Geschlecht Christi"

By Martin Luther;
from
The Jew in Christian Theology
,

Gerhard Falk, McFarland and Company, Inc., Jefferson, NC and London, 1931:

"But your [God's] judgment is right, justus es Dominie. Yes, so shall Jews, but no one else be punished, who held your word and miracles in contempt and ridiculed, insulted and damned it for such a long time without interruption, so that they will not fall, like other humans, heathens and all the others, into sin and death, not up in Hell, nor in the middle of Hell but in the pit of Hell, as one cannot fall deeper . . ."

***

"Even if they were punished in the most gruesome manner that the streets ran with their blood, that their dead would be counted, not in the hundred thousands, but in the millions, as happened under Vespasian in Jerusalem and for evil under Hadrian, still they must insist on being right even if after these 1,500 years they were in misery another 1,500 years, still God must be a liar and they must be correct. In sum, they are the devil's children, damned to Hell. . ."

***

"The Jews too got what they deserved. They had been called and elected to be God's mouth as Jeremiah says . . . Open your mouth wide and I will fill it; they however, kept tightly closed their muzzles, eyes, ears, nose, whole heart and all senses, so he polluted and squirted them so full that it oozes from them in all places and devil's filth comes from them."

***

"Yes, that tastes good to them, into their hearts, they smack their lips like swine. That is how they want it. Call more: 'Crucify Him, crucify Him.' Scream more: 'His blood come upon us and our children.' (Matthew 27:25) I mean it came and found you . . ."

***

"Perhaps, one of the merciful Saints among us Christians may think I am behaving too crude and disdainfully against the poor, miserable Jews in that I deal with them so sarcastically and insulting. But, good God, I am much too mild in insulting such devils. I would fain to do so, but they are far greater adepts at mockery than I and possess a god who is master in this art. It is the Evil One himself.

"Even with no further evidence than the Old Testament, I would maintain, and no person on earth could alter my opinion, that the Jews as they are today are veritably a mixture of all the depraved and malevolent knaves of the whole world over, who have then been dispersed in all countries, similarly to the Tartars, Gypsies and such folk."

 

***

Speeches delivered at the B'nai B'rith Convention in Paris explain Luther's changed attitude toward "Jews":

"As long as there remains among the Gentiles any moral conception of the social order, and until all faith, patriotism, and dignity are uprooted, our reign over the world shall not come . . . And the Gentiles, in their stupidity, have proved easier dupes than we expected them to be. One would expect more intelligence and more practical common sense, but they are no better than a herd of sheep. Let them graze in our fields till they become fat enough to be worthy of being immolated to our future King of the World . . . We have founded many secret associations, which all work for our purpose, under our orders and our direction. We have made it an honor, a great honor, for the Gentiles to join us in our organizations (such as Masonry), which are, thanks to our gold, flourishing now more than ever. Yet it remains our secret that those Gentiles who betray their own and most precious interests, by joining us in our plot, should never know that those associations are of our creation, and that they serve our purpose. One of the many triumphs of our Freemasonry is that those Gentiles who become members of our Lodges, should never suspect that we are using them to build their own jails, upon whose terraces we shall erect the throne of our Universal King of the Jews; and should never know that we are commanding them to forge the chains of their own servility to our future King of the World . . . We have induced some of our children to join the Christian Body, with the explicit intimation that they should work in a still more efficient way for the disintegration of the Christian Church, by creating scandals within her. We have thus followed the advice of our Prince of the Jews, who so wisely said: 'Let some of your children become cannons, so that they may destroy the Church.' Unfortunately, not all among the 'convert' Jews have proved faithful to their mission. Many of them have even betrayed us! But, on the other hand, others have kept their promise and honored their word. Thus the counsel of our Elders has proved successful. We are the Fathers of all Revolutions, even of those which sometimes happen to turn against us. We are the supreme Masters of Peace and War. We can boast of being the Creators of the Reformation!

Calvin was one of our Children; he was of Jewish descent, and was entrusted by Jewish authority and encouraged with Jewish finance to draft his scheme in the Reformation. Martin Luther yielded to the influence of his Jewish friends unknowingly, and again, by Jewish authority, and with Jewish finance, his plot against the Catholic Church met with success. But unfortunately he discovered the deception, and became a threat to us, so we disposed of him as we have so many others who dare to oppose us . . . (Phillip II, by William Thomas Walsh, p. 248: 'The origin of Calvin' (whose real name was Chauvin). See also: Lucin Wolf, in Transactions, Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol. XI, p. 8; Goris, Les Colonies Marchandes Meridionales à Anvers; Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain, III, 413).

Many countries, including the United States have already fallen for our scheming. But the Christian Church is still alive . . . We must destroy it without the least delay and without the slightest mercy. Most of the Press in the world is under our Control; let us therefore encourage in a still more violent way the hatred of the world against the Christian Church. Let us intensify our activities in poisoning the morality of the Gentiles. Let us spread the spirit of revolution in the minds of the people. They must be made to despise Patriotism and the love of their family, to consider their faith as a humbug, their obedience to their Christ as a degrading servility, so that they become deaf to the appeal of the Church and blind to her warnings against us. Let us, above all, make it impossible for Christians to be reunited, or for non-Christians to join the Church; otherwise the greatest obstruction to our domination will be strengthened and all our work undone. Our plot will be unveiled, the Gentiles will turn against us, in the spirit of revenge, and our domination over them will never be realized. Let us remember that as long as there still remain active enemies of the Christian Church, we may hope to become Master of the World . . . And let us remember always that the future Jewish King will never reign in the world before Christianity is overthrown . . . " (London Catholic Gazette, February, 1936; and in Paris Le Reveil du Peuple). luther.htm

 


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Preceding -- Following



ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES

 

 

by Bernard LAZARE

Translated from the French

_____________________

 

 

Chapter Six

 

 

 

 

 

ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION


WHEN the first breath of freedom swept over the world at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the Jews were but a nation of captives and slaves. Cooped up in the ghettoes, whose walls their own foolish hands helped only to make thicker, they were retired from human society, and, for the most part, lived in a state of lamentable and heartrending abjection. Their intellect had become atrophied, as they had themselves barred all the doors and shut all the windows through which air and light might have come to them.

The number of those who had escaped this abasement was very limited, and the Jews who succeeded in keeping a free brain and proud spirit were in the lowest minority. These were mostly physicians, as medicine is the only science permitted by the Talmud; at the same time there were philosophers occasionally, and we shall see the role they played in Italy during the Renaissance.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Jew had become the serf of the Imperial Chamber in Germany; in France he was the king's serf, the serf of the lord, less even than a serf, for a serf could still own something, while a Jew in reality had no property; he was

a thing rather than a person. The king and the lord, the bishop or the abbot, could dispose of all his belongings, i.e., of all that seemed to belong to him, since for him the possibility of owning was purely fictitious. He was taxable at will; he was subjected to fixed imposts, without prejudice to confiscations, and while, on the one hand, the Church was making every effort to attract to it the Jew, on the other hand, the baron and church dignitaries kept him in his condition. If he turned to Christianity he lost his possessions in favour of the lord, who was anxious to make good the loss of the taxes which he could no longer levy on the convert, and thus it was to his interest to remain in the slaves' prison. He was looked upon as a beast, impure and useful at that, as lower than a [73] dog or hog, to which the personal toll likened him, however; he was the one forever accursed, he upon whom it was lawful, even meritorious, to shower the blows which the Crucified had received in Pilate's pretorium.

The only country where the Jews could claim the dignity of human beings was closed to them at the opening of the sixteenth century. The capture of Granada and the conquest of the Moorish Kingdom had deprived the Jews of their last refuge. The whole of Spain became Christian on the day (January 2, 1492) when Ferdinand and Isabella entered the Mohammedan city. The holy war of the Spaniards against the infidels ended victoriously, and the Moors in existence were cruelly persecuted in spite of the security which had been granted them. The victory having aroused on the one hand fanaticism, and the national sentiment on the other, Spain, now free from the Moors, wished to get rid of the Jews, whom the Catholic king and queen expelled the very year of Boabdil's fall, while the Inquisition doubled the severities against the Marranos and the descendants of the Moriscoes.

Still, the time of great sorrows had passed for the Jews, notwithstanding that the circumstances to which they had been reduced were lamentable. They began to descend the hill which they had so laboriously climbed, and if they found as yet no complete security in their paths, they met with more humaneness, more pity. The manners soften at this epoch, the souls become less rude, people actually acquire the idea of a human being; this age when individualism increases, better understands the individuals; while personality develops, more tenderness is displayed towards the personality of the other.

The Jews felt the effects of this state of mind. They were despised all the same, but they were hated in a less violent way. It was still sought to attract them to Christianity, but that was by persuasion. They were banished from a good many cities and countries; they were driven from Cologne and Bohemia in the sixteenth century; the trade-bodies of Frankfort and Worms, led by Vincent Fettmilch, forced them to leave those cities; but as serfs of the Imperial Chamber, they were efficiently protected by their suzerain. If Leopold I sent them out of Vienna, if later on Maria Theresa expelled them from Moravia, these decrees of exile had but a temporary effect, their consequences were felt but for a short time; and when the Jews re-entered the cities by virtue of un-[74] doubted tolerance, they were not molested. The massacres of Franconia and Moravia, the funeral piles of Prague, were exceptions in the sixteenth century, and as for the extermination ordered in Poland by Chmielnicki, in the seventeenth century, they reached the Jews by ricochet only.

Hereafter there have been no systematic persecutions, except those kept up in Spain against the Jewish converts, and in Portugal when introduced by the Pope Clement VII, at the request of John III, and after the massacres of 1506. Even there the inquisition was entrusted to the Franciscans, who had shown themselves less cruel than the Spanish Dominicans.

Still the Jews did not change. Such as we have seen them right in the Middle Ages, we find them also at the moment of the the Reformation; morally and intellectually the mass of the Jews was perhaps even worse. But if they had not changed, those by their side had changed. People were less believing, and therefore less inclined to detest heretics. Averroism had prepared this decadence of faith, and the part played by the Jews in the spread of Averroism is well known; so that they thus had worked for their own benefit. The majority of Averroists were unbelievers, or more or less assailed the Christian religion. They were the direct ancestors of the men of the Renaissance. It is owing to them that the spirit of doubt, as well as the spirit of investigation, had worked itself out. The Florentine platonists, the Italian Aristotelians, the German humanists came from them; thanks to them Pomponazzo composed the treatises against the immortality of the soul; thanks to them, too, among the thinkers of the sixteenth century sprang up the theism which corresponded with the decadence of Catholicism.

Animated by such sentiments, the men of this period could not glow with religious indignation against the Jews. Other preoccupations engaged them, though, and they had to abate two powerful authoritiesscholasticism and the supremacy of Rome. The struggles of the preceding century, the schisms of the West, the license in the manners of the clergy, simony, the sale of benefices and indulgences, all these had weakened the Church and impaired the Papacy. There were protests rising against them on all sides. "The clergy must be made moral," said the Father of the Vienna Synod (1311). The movement of the Hussites, that of the Frerots, the Fraticellians, the Beghards, had already been a protest against the wealth and corruption of the Church; but the Papacy was[75] incapable of reform, and the Reformation had to take place outside of and against it.

The Humanists were its promoters. Everything turned them away from Catholicism. The Greeks of Constantinople, fleeing from the Turks, had brought to them the treasures of the ancient literatures. By discovering a new world Columbus was to open for them unknown horizons. They were finding new reasons for combating scholasticism, that old servant-maid of the Church. The humanists were becoming sceptics and pagans in Italy, but in Germany the emancipating movement which they helped to bring about was becoming more religious. To beat the scholastics the humanists of the empire became theologians, and went to the very sources in order to arm themselves better; they learned Hebrew, not as Pico di Mirandola and the Italians had done, in the way of a dilettante or out of love for knowledge, but in order to find therein arguments against their opponents.

During these years which ushered in the Reformation, the Jew turned educator, and taught the scholars Hebrew; he initiated them into the mysteries of the kabbala after having opened to them the doors of Arabic philosophy. Against Catholicism he equipped them with the formidable exegesis which the rabbis had cultivated and built up during centuries: the exegesis which protestantism, and later on rationalism, would make good use of. By a singular chance the Jews, who had consciously or unconsciously supplied humanism with weapons, had also given it the pretext for its first serious battle. The contest for or against the Talmud was the forerunner of the disputes over the Eucharist.

The struggle started at Cologne, the city of the inquisition and capital of the Dominicans. A converted Jew, Joseph Pfefferkorn, once more denounced the Talmud before the Christian world, and, with the aid of the great inquisitor, Hochstraten, obtained from the Emperor Maximilian an edict authorizing him to examine the contents of the Jewish books and destroy those which blasphemed the Bible and the Catholic faith. From this decision the Jews appealed to Maximilian, and succeeded in having the power originally conferred upon Pfefferkorn transferred to the archbishop elector of Mayence. As his advisors the archbishop took the doctors, the humanists, and among them Reuchlin, who felt no unbounded sympathy for the Jews, having even attacked them once upon a time. But though he scorned the Jews in general, he was a hebraizer[76] for all that, and as such was doubtless more interested in the Talmud than in the inquisitorial tribunal with its arrests. He, therefore, violently fought the projects of Pfefferkorn and the Dominicans, and not only DE CLAREd that the books of the Israelites ought to be preserved, but even maintained that chairs of Hebrew ought to be created in the universities. Reuchlin was accused of having sold himself for the gold of the Jews. He replied with a terrible pamphlet, The Mirror of the Eyes, which was condemned to be burned.

But new times were approaching; the storm foreseen by everybody broke over the Church. Luther issued at Wittenberg his ninety-five theses, and Catholicism not only had to defend the position of its priests, but was also forced to fight for its essential - tenets. For a moment the theologians forgot the Jews, they even forgot that the spreading movement took its roots in Hebrew sources.

Nevertheless, the Reformation in Germany and England as well was one of those movements when Christianity acquired new force in Jewish sources. The Jewish spirit triumphed with Protestantism. In certain respects the Reformation was a return to the ancient Ebionism of the evangelic ages. A great portion of the protestant sects was semi-Jewish, the anti-trinitarian doctrines were later preached by the protestants, by Michel Servet and the two Socins of Sienna among others. Even in Transylvania anti-trinitarianism had flourish since the sixteenth century, and Seidelius had asserted the excellence of Judaism and of the Decalogue. The Gospels had been abandoned for the Old Testament and the Apocalypse. The influence exercised by these two books over the Lutherans, the Calvinists and especially the Reformers and the English revolutionists, is well known. This influence continued to the nineteenth century; it produced the Methodists, Pietists, and particularly the Millenaries, the men of the Fifth Monarchy, who in London dreamed with Venner of a republic and allied themselves with the Levellers of John Lilburne.

Moreover, Protestantism, at its inception in Germany, endeavoured to win over the Jews, and in this respect, the analogy between Luther and Mohammed is striking. Both had drawn their teachings from Hebrew sources, both wished to have the remains of Israel stamp with approval the new dogmas which they were formulating. But the Jews had always been the stubborn people of the Scriptures, the people with the hard nape, rebellious against[77] injunctions, tenacious, fearlessly faithful to its God and its Law.

Luther's preaching proved vain, and the irascible monk issued a terrible pamphlet against the Jews. 67 "The Jews are brutes," he said; "their synagogues are pig-sties, they ought to be burned, for Moses would do it, if he came back to this world. They drag in mire the divine words, they live by evil and plunders, they are wicked beasts that ought to be driven out like mad dogs."

In spite of these violent outbursts and excitement, in spite of the numerous controversies, which had taken place between the protestants and Jews, the latter were not ill-treated in Germany; people had no spare time to busy themselves with them.

Overwhelmed with miseries, decimated by war, ruined, reduced to slavery, a prey to destitution and famine, the peasants of the sixteenth century no longer went for the Jewish money-lender or the Christian usurer, but they aimed higher; they attacked in the first place a whole classof the richand then the social order as a whole. The revolt was general; at first it was the peasants of the Netherlands, then, and chiefly, those of Germany. All over the Empire they founded secret societies, the Bundschuh, 68 the Poor Conrad, the Evangelic Confederation. The peasants of Speyer and of the banks of the Rhine rose in 1503; the bands of Joss Fritz, in 1512; the peasants of Austria and Hungary, in 1515; those of Suabia, in 1524; those of Suabia, Alsace and the Palatinate, in 1525. All marched with the battle cry: "In Christ there is no longer master or slave." The tradesmen joined them; knights, like Goetz von Berlichingen, placed themselves at their head, and they massacred the nobles and set the castles and convents on fire. In this formidable movement which convulsed a part of Europe until 1535, everywhere leaving deep traces, the Jews had been neglected, they had ceased to be the scapegoat, and the poor wretches, famished and miserable, no longer fell upon them.

Were they as happy in the Catholic countries? Yes, for there, too, they ceased to be the chief and sole enemies of the Church, and it was no longer they that were feared. The relaxation of religious ideas brought in Italy a rapprochement between a certain class of Jews and the various classes of society. First, the humanists, the poets, visited the Jewish scholars, philosophers and physicians. This familiarity had begun in the fourteenth century, when Dante was seen to have for his friend the Jew Manoello, the cousin of the philosopher Giuda Romano; it continued in the fifteenth and[78] the sixteenth centuries. Alemani was the teacher of Picodi Mirandola, Elias del Medigo publicly taught metaphysics in Padua and Florence, Leo the Hebrew published his platonic dialogues on love. The Jewish printers, like the scholar Soncino, were in constant touch with the literature of the period; his library was the centre of Hebrew publications, and he even rivaled Aldo by publishing Greek authors. Hercules Gonzago, bishop of Mantua and disciple of the Jew Pomponazzo of Bologna, accepted the dedication of Jacob Mantino, who had translated the Compendium of Averroes, while other princes encouraged Abraham de Balmes in his work of translation. 69 And not only the sceptical, even unbelieving faction, of the Hellenists and Latinists, worshipers of Zeus and Aphrodite more than of Jesus, were on good terms with the Jews, but the lord and the bourgeois were likewise. "There are," says the bishop Maiol, "persons, and often persons of quality, both men and women, who are so foolish and senseless as to take counsel with Jews over their most intimate affairs, to their own detriment. They (the Jews) are seen visiting the houses and palaces of the great ones, the dwellings of officers, councillors, secretaries, gentlemen, both in the city and country." People did not content themselves with receiving Jews, they went to their houses, and, what is more, attended their religious ceremonies. "There are among us," says again Maiol, "some who visit and superstitiously revere the synagogues"; and, addressing them, he exclaims: "You hear the Jews blow their trumpets on the days of their festivities, and you run with your families to look at them." Thus it went on during the seventeenth century. In Ferrara they went to hear the sermons of Judah Azael, and, in 1676, Innocent XI threatened with excommunication and a fine of fifteen ducats those who frequented the synagogues. After the terrible shock which had just disturbed the Church, they more than ever wished to guarantee security to the Catholic dogma. Julius III had the Talmud burned in Rome and Venice upon denunciation by Solomon Romano, a converted Jew; Paul IV condemned it again at the request of another convert, Vittorio Eliano; Pius V and Clement VIII did likewise.

During the dogmatic and theological reaction which followed the Reformation, the Roman Church, friendly to the Jews heretofore, came to be the only government, almost the only power, systematically to persecute Judaism. Paul IV revived the ancient canonic laws and had the Marranos burned; Pius V banished the[79] Jews from his domains, except from Rome and Ancona, after having issued his Constitution against the Jews, while the Spaniards, as they penetrated further into Italy, were driving them from Naples, Genoa and Milan.

The other sovereigns had not the same motives as the popes to attend to the Jews. And so, from the sixteenth century on, legislation against the Jews ceased. We find only the edict of Ferdinand I against Jewish usuryin Germany; a few decrees in Poland, and much later, the prohibitions of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Again to find anti-Jewish legislation, it will be necessary to study modern Russia, Rumania and Serbia, which we shall shortly do.

Anti-Judaism consisted chiefly in molestations and outrages. The populace delighted in jeering the Jews, and the grandees often gave them a chance to do it. Leo X, that ostentatious pontiff, who was fond of buffooneryhe had at his side two monks to divert him with their pleasantrieswould order races between Jews, and, being very shortsighted, would watch them, glass in hand, from the heights of his balconies. During the carnival in Rome the people would parody the burial of rabbis, and a Jew would be marched through the city streets, mounted backward on a donkey and holding the animal's tail in his hand. On the ghetto-gates a sow was carved, and they were often covered with obscene groups, in which rabbis were represented. The sow symbolized the synagogueexactly as with the Israelites the Roman Church was designated by the Hebrew name for hogand the Jews were constantly reminded of it; a painter once even related at Wagenseil how he had painted a sow on the door-leaf of the arch of a synagogue which he was engaged to adorn.

With the scholars, the learned and the theologians, anti-Judaism was becoming dogmatic and theoretical. True they wanted to bring the Jews back, but by soft measures. It was no longer a question of burning their books, but of translating them. It was said that now that the Christian faith had struck deep enough roots, there was no danger to believers from publishing Hebrew books, as had been done in the case of those of the Arians and other heretics. Thus it would be possible to know the polemic practices of the Israelites, and it would thus be possible successfully to combat them.

This study brought about a result quite different from that expected. By scrutinizing the Jewish spirit one came nearer to the[80] Jews, and thereby became more sympathizing with them. Men, like Richard Simon, e.g., who had prepared themselves for scientific exegesis, through talmudists and hebraizing researches, could not look with hatred upon those from whom they held their knowledge. Others were anxious to know when the Jews would be called to Christian communion. The seventeenth century was the most propitious time for the disputes over the recalling of the Jews. In France this question as to whether the Jews would be recalled at the end of the world or before itdivided Bossuet and the Figurists led by Duguet. 70 In England the Millenaries proclaimed the return of the Jews.71 In Germany also this opinion had its advocates, such as Bengal, e.g. In France, not only did the convulsionaries of Saint-Menard proclaim the approaching entry of the Jews into the Church, but some were seen entertaining these dreams until our days, and in 1809 President Agier fixed upon 1849 as the year of the conversion of the Jews.

All over Europe the Jews enjoyed the greatest tranquility during the eighteenth century. In Poland alone they fared badly for having once lived too well. They had been prosperous there up to the middle of the seventeenth century. Rich, powerful, they had lived on an equal footing with the Christians, treated as though of the people amid whom they lived; but they could not help giving themselves up to their usual commerce, their vices, their passion for gold. Dominated by the Talmudists they succeeded in producing nothing beyond commentators of the Talmud. They were tax collectors, spirit-distillers, usurers, seigneurial stewards. They were the noblemen's allies in their abominable work of oppression, and when the Cossacks of Ukraine and Little Russia had risen, under Chmielnicki, against Polish tyranny, the Jews, as accomplices of the lords, were the first to be massacred. It is said that over 100,000 of them were killed in ten years, but just as many Catholics and especially Jesuits, were killed as well.

Elsewhere they were very prosperous. Thus, in the Ottoman Empire, they were simply liable to the tax on foreigners and subject to no other restrictive regulations, but nowhere was their prosperity so great as in the Netherlands and England. Marranos fleeing the Spanish Inquisition had settled in the Netherlands in 1593, and thence settled a colony in Hamburg, then, later on, under Cromwell, one in England, whence they had been banished for centuries and whither Menasse-ben-Israel brought them back. [81] The Dutch, as practical and circumspect a people as the English, utilized the commercial genius of the Jews and turned it to their own enrichment. In France Henry II had authorized the Portuguese Jews to settle in Bordeaux, where, on the strength of the granted privileges, confirmed also by Henry III, Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI, they acquired great wealth in maritime commerce.

In the other cities of France there were few of them, and, besides, those residing in Paris or elsewhere had settled there only because of the administrative tolerance. In Alsace alone there was a great agglomeration.

Their splendid condition provoked no violent demonstrations; now and then protests would be heard, they would say with Expilly: "With infinite grief one sees how such base people, who had been received in the capacity of slaves, possess costly furniture, lead a refined life, wear gold and silver on their garments, dress showily, perfume themselves, study instrumental and vocal music and ride horseback for mere diversion." At the same time, greater and greater toleration was shown them from day to day; the world was drawing nearer to them. Were they, in turn, drawing nearer to the world? No. They seemed more and more to attach themselves to their mystic patriotism; the further they went, the more the dreams of Kabbala haunted them, with ever renewed confidence they awaited the Messiah, and never had the pseudo-Messiahs been received with so much enthusiasm as they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Kabbalists exhausted arithmetical combinations to calculate the exact date of the coming of him, who was so longed for. Toward 1666, the date most commonly designated as the sacred date, all Jews of the Orient were raised by the preachings of Sabbatai Zevi. From Smyrna, where Sabbatai had proclaimed himself Messiah, the movement spread to the Netherlands, and England even, and everybody expected the restoration of Jerusalem and of the holy kingdom from the King of Kings, as Sabattai was called. The same enthusiasm was displayed in 1755 when Frank appeared in Podolia as the new Messiah.

These hopes which the illuminism of the Kabbalists entertained helped to keep the Jews apart, but those who were not seduced by the speculations of dreamers, were weighed down by the yoke of the Talmud, a yoke at all events even ruder and more humiliating.[82]

So far from decreasing, the Talmudic tyranny had even increased since the sixteenth century. At this time Joseph Caro had edited the Shulchan Aruch, a Talmudic code, whichaccording to the traditions inculcated by the rabbinistsset up as laws the opinions of the doctors. Up to our time the European Jews had lived under the execrable oppression of these practices. 72 The Polish Jews improved even upon Joseph Caro and refined the already enormous subtleties of the Shulchan Aruch by making additions thereto, and they introduced the method of Pilpul (pepper-grains) into their instruction.

Accordingly, as the world grew kinder to them, the Jewsat least the massesretired into themselves, straightened their prison, bound themselves with tighter bonds. Their decrepitude was unheard of, their intellectual sinking was equaled only by their moral debasement; this nation seemed dead.

However, the reaction against the Talmud had proceeded from the Jews themselves. Mordecai Kolkos, 73 of Venice, had already published a book against the Mishna; in the seventeenth century, Uriel Acosta 74 violently fought the rabbis, and Spinoza 75 exhibited little affection for them. But anti-talmudism displayed itself particularly in the eighteenth century, at first among the mystics, such as, e.g., the Zoharites, disciples of Franck, who DE CLAREd themselves enemies of the doctors of the law. At any rate these opponents of the rabbinites were unable to extricate the Jews from their abjection. To begin this task, it was necessary for Moses Mendelssohn, a Jew and philosopher at the same time, to array the Bible against the Talmud. His German version (1779)was a great revolution. It was the first blow dealt to the rabbinical authority. The Talmudists, too, who had once wished to kill Kolkos and Spinoza, violently attacked Mendelssohn, and prohibited, under penalty of excommunication, to read the Bible which he had translated.

These outbursts of rage were of no avail. Mendelssohn had followers: young men, his disciples, founded the periodical Meassef, which advocated the new Judaism, endeavoured to snatch the Jews from their ignorance and humiliation, and prepared their moral emancipation. As for political emancipation, the humanitarian philosophy of the eighteenth century was working hard to bring it about. Though Voltaire was an ardent Judoephobe, the ideas which he and the Encyclopaedists represented were not [83] hostile to the Jews, as being ideas of liberty and universal equality. On the other hand, if the Jews really were isolated in the various states, they still had some points of contact with those surrounding them.

Capitalism had by this time developed among the nations; stock-jobbing and speculation were born; the Christian financiers applied themselves to them with a zeal, just as they had applied themselves to usury, just as they had, in the capacity of farmers-general, collected imposts and taxes. The Jews could, therefore, take their place among those whom "discounts were enriching at the public's expense, and who were masters of all possessions of the French of all classes," as already Saint Simon was saying.

The economic objections which were raised against their possible emancipation had no longer the same import as in the Middle Ages, when the church wanted to make the Jews the only representatives of the class of money-brokers. As for the political objections, that they formed a State within the State, that their presence as citizens could not be tolerated in a Christian society and was even injurious to it, they remained valid until the day when the French Revolution dealt its direct blow to the conception of a Christian State. And so Dohm, Mirabeau, Clermont-Tonnerre, the Abbot Gregoire were right with regard to Rewbel, Maury and the Prince de Broglie, and the Constituent Assembly obeyed the spirit which had guided it since its inception when it DE CLAREd on September 27, 1791, that the Jews would enjoy in France the rights of actual citizens The Jews were on the threshold to society.

FOOTNOTES

67 The Jews and their Lies, Wittenberg, 1558.

68 The confederate shoe.

69 Abraham de Balmes translated into Latin the greatest part of Averroes's writings, and his translations were in use in the Italian universities until the end of the seventeeth century.

70 On this point consult Duguet, Regles pour l'intelligence des Saintes Ecritures, 1723. Bossuet, Discours sur l'Histoire universelle, part II. Rondet, Dissertation sur le rappel des Juifs, Paris, 1778. Anonymous, Lettre sur le proche retour des Juifs, Paris, 1789, etc.

71 Gregoire, Histoire des sectes religieuses, t. II (Paris, 1825).

72 In Russia, Poland and Galicia they are extant even to-day.

73 Consult Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea, v. II, p. 798. Hamburg.

74 Exemplar vitae humanae (Published by Limbroch, 1687).

75 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.

Preceding -- Following


 

 

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This text is chapter 6 of the English translation of L'Antisémitisme, son histoire et ses causes, by Bernard LAZARE (real name: Lazare BERNARD), first published in Paris in 1894, several times republished, lastly by the publishing house La Vieille Taupe (= the Old Mole) in 1982, reprinted in 1985, ISBN 2-903279-09-8. The book is still on sale and may be ordered from the publisher, BP 98, 75224 Paris cedex 05, France. We believe it costs 80 F (around 15 US$) This republication triggered a controversy which is documented in a booklet later published by Les Editions de la Différence, Contre l'antisémitisme, Histoire d'une polémque, Paris, 1983, 127 p. This material will be displayed with the French text of Lazare.

 

WARNING An English translation, under the title Antisemitism, Ist History and Causes, appeared in London in 1967, by Britons Publishing Company. No name is given for the translator. In fact, this is more an adaptation than a proper translation. Paragraphs are quite often abridged and sometimes altogether suppressed. Serious students should refer to the French original text. Nevertheless, as this book provides a glimpse into an epochal reflexion on antisemtism, we follow this text and do not interfere with the translation itself. A US edition was later done on this English publication: University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1995, 208 pages. pbk $10.

We thank the Australian friend who lent us this rare and deeply thought book.
This text has been displayed on the Net, and forwarded to you as a tool for educational purpose, further research, on a non commercial and fair use basis, by the International Secretariat of the Association des Anciens Amateurs de Recits de Guerres et d'Holocaustes (AAARGH). The E-mail of the Secretariat is <aaarghinternational@hotmail.com. Mail can be sent at PO Box 81475, Chicago, IL 60681-0475, USA..
We see the act of displaying a written document on Internet as the equivalent to displaying it on the shelves of a public library. It costs us a modicum of labor and money. The only benefit accrues to the reader who, we surmise, thinks by himself. A reader looks for a document on the Web at his or her own risks. As for the author, there is no reason to suppose that he or she shares any responsibilty for other writings displayed on this Site. Because laws enforcing a specific censorship on some historical question apply in various countries (Germany, France, Israel, Switzerland, Canada, and others) we do not ask their permission from authors living in thoses places: they wouldn't have the freedom to consent.
We believe we are protected by the Human Rights Charter:


 

 

ARTICLE 19. <Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.>The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, in Paris.


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