Holocaust Dialogues, 4 : “What Should US Jews DO?”

“In your view it [seems that it] does not matter what the Jews do; what Israel does… the fate of the Jews is predetermined.”

Based on history, on events barely seven decades past, the likelihood that the Diaspora will face another Holocaust is high. Is it inevitable, “predetermined” as my accuser suggests? Inevitable yes, just one more in a long history of anti-Jewish, antisemitic outrages over the past 2000 years; but not predetermined. We Jews can change the course of our history.

David T, Why are you so apologetic? Even in the NT, if you take the facts as presented in it, there is no evidence that the Jews Killed Jesus. The term the “Jews killed Jesus” comes later in history, by some of the gospels and the political/religious early Christian hierarchy.

As a new participant, RV, you may not be aware of my overall project. My interest is to respond to two questions: Why the Jews, the answer to which will be found in early Christian scripture, expanded upon by centuries of theology, and; Why the likelihood of a future and more successful Final Solution? The answer to this question will be sought in the latest three centuries, in secularism emergent from the Age of Reason. For the present we are discussing the role of Christian scripture and the evolution of theological anti-Judaism that provides the foundation for what evolved into secular ‘scientific” antisemitism. It was the pseudoscience of eugenics, enthusiastically developed in the US and exported to Nazi Germany that evolved into “annihilative” antisemitism, the Holocaust.

I read your past articles, and it is obvious that you do not separate between facts and ideology. The facts in the New Testament (NT) are simple. The high priests of the temple did not like Jesus (a Jew), could not kill him directly; there was nothing that they could use against him in Jewish law… So they informed on him to the Romans (Italians). The Italians were the ones who judged and executed him… The worst factual thing done by Jews according to the NT was: The Temple priests informing on him, and Judas divulging his location. They did not kill him. The stories of THE JEWS KILLED him appeared later, and it will not surprise me if they were planted/inserted later during the 4th century to justify the separation of early Christians from Judaism.

 

“So why do you apologize?

I’m not certain what you mean by me “apologizing,” RT. My writings reflect that I hold Christianity responsible for its persecution of our people. That the anti-Judaism contained in scripture has been unreflectively accepted since the earliest days of that religion as “fact.” That according to history (only Paul, not the gospels, is considered “historical”) Judea was ruled by a “Jewish” quisling regime including the “monarchy(ies)” and the temple, both of whose leaderships were appointed by and owed their survival to their Roman overlords.

As I recall the gospels represent the “Sanhedrin” as charging Jesus with “blasphemy,” something scholars today dismiss not even a crime, and certainly not warranting execution! So even were Jesus “convicted,” by Jewish law there would never have been a recommendation to Pilate to crucify, that uniquely Roman punishment reserved for insurrectionist: slow and painful death meant to set an example.

The point, RV, is the facticity of those events as represented in gospels. The writings are not themselves “historical.” But they have become “historical as a matter of faith over the centuries. The gospel charge of “deicide” provides the passion for Jew-hatred for so long as Christianity survives, a “fact” not contingent on whether or not the events actually occurred but rather on their appearance in the gospels, accepted by the faithful as the “inerrant word of God.”

Today’s Church did not actively perpetrate the Holocaust. The direct issue motivating the coming final Final Solution to Christendom’s Jewish Problem is not today theologically based, the assertion that “the Jews” killed Jesus. Rather it is an “unconscious” animus born of those basic scriptural writings, the “myth” of Jewish guilt transformed through association with the theological mystique of “the Wandering Jew” condemned forever to destitution and homelessness (Augustine). It is the unconscious surviving Idea of Christianity’s “malevolent Jew” that serves as trigger to the emotions that surface seemingly randomly in response to stress causing events in society.

It is “the Jew” as sinister survival magnified by nearly two thousand years of superstition reified as stereotype that provides the rationale for the secular Holocaust.

In your view, it does not matter what the Jews do; what Israel does does not matter. The fate of the Jews is predetermined. Why do you waste your and the readers time if you truly believe in it?

Nothing is predetermined, RV. To appreciate our history over the past two thousand years in Diaspora; to recognize the prejudicial constant, repetitive periods of persecution, expulsion and murder; its progression more recently towards the goal of the Final Solution; our default decision by choosing to live in the comfort and familiar surroundings of the Diaspora. Our fate is no more predetermined than is the fate of the smoker. What both have in common is the high probability of life-threatening consequences.

But in order for we Jews to appreciate that an alternative is possible we must first surrender our denial. All is not well. What see today, that which appears “normal” exists today, its future as such is a product of wishful thinking and will respond to new circumstances in the future. Once the consoling myth that today will continue forever into the future, the hope that kept much of German Jewry in place until escape was no longer possible, then will it become possible to overcome our denial, to accept historical precedent as indicator of Tomorrow, and remove ourselves from harms way.

But the precondition to Choice is recognition and acceptance of the danger; acceptance of the meaning of our Diaspora history

So what are the choices for US Jews? Otherwise all what you tell is a fairy tale without any purpose! What should a Jew in the US do?

That search for an answer is the purpose my writing, RV, of our discussion. We, the Jews, not I, a Jew, can arrive at such an answer. Our answer will result from the process of our collective effort.

Nor do I exclude the state of the Jews from the the circle of danger. Israel, born of the Western Diaspora is also is prone to myopia, is too dependent upon the West, inheritor of that Holocaust culture. As an Israeli, RV, do you see reason for hope in a Europe seven decades after their lands saturated with Jewish blood growing increasingly intolerant to Moslems. Does not the trend in Europe of governments such as Hungary and Austria increasingly legitimizing political antisemitism raise concern also for a state of the Jews? Or the obvious fact that Israel no longer represents the necessary American “ally” it once did, that the Special Relationship meant expediency to the senior partner, not commitment?

You would no doubt demand of me an answer also for Israel and I would again defer to all aware of the problem participating in the discussion, a collective effort to answer the question to our survival: a Jewish solution, a Zionist solution to Christendom’s final Final Solution to its “Jewish Problem.”