by Alfred Lehmberg
| The Jew is well nigh
impossible for the garden-variety Gentile to understand, and, for that
reason, too easy for the uninformed and irrational Gentile—an arbitrary
and decidedly harsh majority schooled only in furious ignorance and crass
mediocrity—to reflexively mistrust and conveniently revile. Harder
for the belated Gentile to understand and appreciate is the unbroken thread
of existence that Jews have enjoyed, if only institutionally, since 2000 BC,
when Abraham was called out of Chaldean Ur to the land of Canaan to a
home his God said he could provide for him. The suggested scope of God and
time is intimidating
and envy provoking to all but the most detached observer. This writer would make that aspiration... be that detached. Jews have cultivated the long view. In the fullness of recorded time this unbroken thread of Jewish consciousness witnesses great civilizations of the past as they are born—watches them as they mature and decline—and are then on hand to record the final passing of many of them. The aforementioned scope that this suggests is unsettling to an average American non Jew—that more micro-scoped American who traces a short lineage back through a few lackluster and unconnected generations to indifferent countries, at best, but loses the thread, at last (!), after only a few hundred years. I myself have had this lackluster, unconnected, and indifferent experience. I know of where I speak. ...More than unsettling, this tremendous scope could provoke a reflex of juvenile pique, and encourage inevitable envy... hatred? It could even force childish behaviors from those who might *otherwise* conduct themselves with informed and enlightened maturity... of a sort. Who are they—these aforementioned "disconnected and tradition-less" might ask. Who are these Jews—a creed surviving virtually unchanged for many millennia? Have they had value, worth, and an ability to make key contribution to the other civilizations of the world? There is little—if any—doubt that this is so... and that's a large part of the problem, isn't it. Indeed, who are they? Has anyone ever, really, asked that question? And given there that there are ~many~ who think they can, and negatively, is there any justification for their persecution as a people?
In an effort to exorcise unsupported demons regarding solid justifications for my anti-Semitism, I struck off down that rocky path. If I was going to be a bigot, I wanted to be able to, intelligently, support this bigotry. The reader might notice the contradiction in terms. By its nature bigotry defies intelligent support. Case in point: Here's a crudely bigoted joke regarding a Jewish farmer who once had the task of moving cow manure (...fertilizer, purchased from the *joke teller*, presumably...) to his own fields for use. After the Jew had moved every hand-picked and tiny scrap of it, and to the predictably false-bottomed and psychopathic mirth of the joke teller, the Jew sucks the manure furiously from his fingers and then spits into his garden (...presumably to gain the utility of every last little poopy bit?). What a typical Jewish thing to do, one might think through hearty, though largely uninformed and corrosive, laughter. How like a Jew to be that stingy... ...ah... hearty mirth... eh what? Pause to wipe laughter's tears. But wait! One might consider this "joke" from a different perspective, altogether! One might then begin to understand that the kind of individual to suck manure from his fingers—actually the very last thing the Jew would do—might be the kind of person to WORK his earth with more attention to detail and efficacious pride! That person might remove more plow breaking stones from his land to increase what was tillable. That man might go out by torch light and hand-pick the hoards of insects from his crops that will eat a major share of his neighbor's effort. That man might be more careful of his irrigation; he is sure to be working longer hours; and he might, obsessively, be thinking of ways to work even MORE efficiently! Verily, a man who is willing to suck the manure from his fingers for that little bit of an extra edge is an easy man to envy, and (for the worst of us) an easier man to hate. So, Hateful persecution is the jealous result—clearly explained in a forthcoming sidebar—while Jewish contribution may be KEY, in spite of (...and perhaps BECAUSE of!) that hatred, to a successful western world civilization in the 21st century! This contribution precipitates because Jews, in the aggregate, had the better ideas FIRST, or AT MINIMUM insured the best ideas of others were made a matter of durable record! No one else was ~doing~ this, really (at the time that it had counted for western civilization, Islam was well on the way to owning the WHOLE thing!)! What follows is a ~minute~ portion of illustration and example regarding the contribution of an ethical institution, exemplified by enduring bequests to total humanity (undeniably!), and made by JEWS... in the fields of HISTORY, LAW, MEDICINE, MATH/SCIENCE, and OF COURSE Religion . . . It may then be argued that Jewish institutional cognition, and comparative solution to cognitive dissonance (Atherton J S 2003) actually DEFINES success as it is enjoyed in the 21st Century! To start at the taproot, Jewish contributions to history have positively increased the constructive self-awareness of individual human beings because Jews understood early the value of real truth, consistency, ethics and integrity. Indeed, the Jews, very precociously, painstakingly, and importantly... recorded in their history a system of observed ethics, the Halachah, which governed all aspects of a "justice", an "ethics", and some "manners" and was seldom, if ever, so solidly treated with adjacent ideologies. It has these efficacious roots in many thousands of years of Jewish (Human!) cognition (Haynes LN). This new integrity allows them to define history as it should be defined: an accurate retelling of past events more as they ~actually~ happened! It eschewed a preferred and complementary fiction largely practiced today in an early 21st century. Kind of an early AlienView, if I may be so bold. ...And sure, they put their flawed spin on it—like every other religion creating Gods in their own image to do their bidding—but compared to EVERYONE else they were a sun source of historic integrity! To illustrate this integrity:
This kind of integrity is nurtured in an institutional memory that no other earthly (western!) institution, government, or religion had ever had—and does not yet, even now this writer suggests— a memory that spans more than five thousand years of unbroken consciousness! One may not find the same kinds of institutional memory in ANY comparable western religion—or certainly in either son Christianity or grandson Islam. It becomes obvious that Judaism is itself first a body of history. Indeed, the first five books of the bible were written primarily as a history. It was only after 444 BC that the Pentateuch (as the former is called) came to have the religious significance that it has today (Haynes LN), and, as the reader might come to see, the origins of ancient history may have more Jewish precedence than is presently accepted! Aristobulus, a Jewish philosopher writing in Alexandria about 100 BCE, wrote that the wisdom of the Jews predated Greek philosophy and was in fact "its source and model" (Grant 274). This is no idle and irresponsible boast, good reader! This is a supportable statement of pious scholarship from Jewish institutional memory (...as self-serving as it appears to be!), and it is scholarship not, actually, discounted. Yes! Another key contribution made to history by the Jews is the history that comes to western civilization from the East. Psychotic hostilities between Christian and Islamic factions complicated the transference of collected knowledge bodies. These factual histories would probably have been lost to western civilization but for the singularly proportioned Jewish transmission (Speilvogel 356). In fact, some educators argue that the Jews are ~mainly~ responsible for the transmission of ANY wisdom or knowledge to a metaphoric CAVE dwelling western civilization of the time! These wisdoms were in the very useful fields of Medicine, Aristotelian philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics. (Haynes PI). Humankind, but assuredly western civilization, would indeed find it difficult to be without the history gained in this manner, and certainly has the Jew to rightfully thank. [...it could be argued that Jews provided Christendom with the intellectual weapons it would find necessary to stop Islam and push them back out of Spain, for an injection of real irony.] To briefly summarize: early on, the Jews have been in possession of information that very few had. They did not hoard, and they did not covet. Behavior such as that would not be consistent with their demonstrated ethics. Jews eschewed empty ritual and lived, in the aggregate for ethical behavior (Haynes PI). Moreover, they were the middle men separating two hostile factions. It is no great stretch to imagine that this situation incurred the wrath of all sides against the persecuted (and innocently reasonable) Jew in the center. Further, it could be said—then as now—that a reason for their persecution is similar to the reasons a bookish child is beaten up in a school playground. Remember please the aforementioned sidebar for the POINT of this paper... Why are Jews persecuted? ...Because their shining example shames the persecutor! Moving on, Jewish contribution to the concept of LAW has been responsible for moving an evolving jurisprudence closer to real justice and AWAY from the (too convenient) arbitrary of a bloodily tyrannous past. In parallel, respect for the law is the ~essence~ of an ancient Jewish integrity. Still more, the name "Jew" means "People of the Law" to the ancient contemporaries of the Jews (Haynes LN). This ethical notoriety encourages a real and lasting precedent for an obvious Jewish contribution to the currently applied and foundational concept of LAW as it is now generally known! In this obvious and seminal contribution the Jews actualize one of the noblest elevations for humanity as can be conceived! Verily! They provide a template for a new kind of law, conceptually, that causes a ripple of positive effect to cascade down through time to the present day! This ripple very possibly elevates Humankind from the primitive brute of the past to the rational thinker of the future. Simply stated, it is a new way of legal thinking called Mosaic Law. Mosaic Law is a concept (remembered in that unbroken thread of consciousness for thousands of years years, remember, that sees man's ~Law~ as a body that is superior to mere ~man~. No longer, FINALLY, is it necessary for any righteous individual to be subject to the vague and arbitrary pronouncements of some privileged other. There is now the potential, at least, for all to be EQUAL before the law (Wouk 39)(Grant 60). This shall be the best idea of all because it is the qualifying equity that fertilizes the academic ground — it makes other ideas more possible!!! This leads to the greatest blessing to man as can be found anywhere on the planet: the freedom to think creatively, and to (responsibly) profit from it! Later on, when groups of men make this stick to the maximum that they can, humankind will comparably take off in the humanities and technologies like soaring birds! This new kind of freedom — this potential for modern luxury — this late 20th Century technological wonderland and economic colossus... may be a gift of the Jews!!! At all levels, this body of Jewish law positively insinuates, permeates, and saturates much of western law, presently, in a protective self-checking soak. In other words, Old Jewish Law touches everyday human problems in real world ways. To illustrate, Jacob Rabinowitz (a professor of law at Hebrew University) offers persuasive documentation concerning the rules governing home mortgage, general release, and trial by jury. What follows is a rough brief of what it means to the individual: When one mortgages a home in this late 20th Century, and has that transaction made safe — the ghost of an old Jewish man, as ethical, fair, and serious as can be expected, arranges the details of that sale (Finkelstein 16). When a release is signed, one can be made safe from many of the legal entanglements that the unscrupulous person can inflict on the common person. That same old Jewish man is there, verifying the authenticity of the document (Finkelstein 9). When one can throw her fate to a jury of men and women and not have to depend on the fickle, prejudiced, and criminally arbitrary whims of a ruling dictator, that person can thank the Jews for their original ideas and ancient institutional memory (Finkelstein 20). As a result, the common man in this century has a potential quality of life that can be achieved in no other way. Surely, a debt of gratitude to aggregate Jewry is due, apparently, one more time.
Arturo Castiglioni, a Yale medical history professor, suggests that Jewish contribution to medicine may have relieved the suffering of man more than the contribution of any other religious institution. Real irony there. The Jews, he explains, as the great ethical middle men of the Mediterranean, had the great factual gifts of Science and Medicine pass directly through their competent hands. The reverence for those gifts, the knowledge promised, instilled the Jew with a desire to catalogue that knowledge, build upon it, and consequently become some of the most respected and sought after physicians of the ancient times. This was, of course, before the jealously facilitated persecutions would hamstring that marvelous thrust, and make any contribution (save survival) impossible for them (Finkelstein 185). However, the seed was sown; and as Harry A. Savitz, M.D. reports, by 1974 AD, 30% of all the prestigious Nobel Prizes given in medicine and biology were awarded for ideas of Jewish doctors (Finkelstein 211). This is in spite of (and perhaps because of) the Jewish people's lack of access to colleges and universities for so many of the darker periods in their long history. Regardless, this is an ASTOUNDING imbalance between the size of the population and the size of the contribution made! Savitz continues that other medical contributions of original ideas abound! Arthur Kornberg wins the Nobel prize in Genetic Research in 1959, then heads a team that virtually explains the operation of the virus! This new idea leads to the miraculous strides humanity has taken in the area of genetic research today! If AIDS is ever cured, it will likely be a Jew that prepared the culture slide. On a note that strikes some as very personal, especially those that have parents or relatives deformed by polio; it was a Jew, Jonas Salk, who defeated that terrible virus, and fired new ideas for the cures of other viral diseases. Abraham Wakesman, the man who wiped out Tuberculosis inventing the first antibiotic effective against it, was a Jew. The work of a Jewish biochemist by the name of Ernst Boris Chain was key in the discovery of Penicillin (Finkelstein 211). Finally, it remains to be said that Jewish scholarship in medicine is second to none, provides original ideas that elevate all men and women, and will certainly share that information unquestionably and fairly! Selfless scholarship notwithstanding, proper perspective demands that all remember to take into account that Jews are not superior intellects when compared to the remaining balance of humankind — for all of their scholarship, and all of their contribution! They would be the first to admit it! What IS superior about them, though, is a "capacity for hard work" that was documented as early as 50 BC (Grant 226), and must have surely been in evidence before then. This might compel the rest of humankind to kick sand in the face of Jewry — to lash out in impotent, humiliated, and childish rage at their greater spirit and heart! A certain kind of child violently resents being made to look bad, and is compelled to DISPLAY this pointless and destructive immaturity — that sidebar to the point, remember. True Jews are no *better* than the rest of humanity, there is of course no biological superiority, but still accomplish more because they work harder. They'll work no less hard in the next category of Math and Science. Jewish contributions to the fields of Math and Science have perhaps increased the knowledge of humankind more than can presently be appreciated — a result of us not being as smart as we think we are! Moreover, the preceding contributions iterated in this paper pale to insignificance when compared with the contributions of Jews to Science and Mathematics in the 20th century! Consider, only two men, both Jews, have stood humankind on a figurative ear with their contributions. Those two men are, of course, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. Freud advanced ideas that addressed the very real possibility of influences from an unconscious past that impact, seriously, on the decisions of the conscious present. Armed with the knowledge of this possibility and potentiality, the decisions of this present are more intelligently made. It is written in more places than one that "Freud's lasting impact on the modern world [. . .] cannot be denied" (Wolf 1). In contrast, if Freud compelled humanity to look inside SELF for new and compelling answers (and more appropriate questions), Einstein compelled humanity to look inside the very fabric of reality -extant- for answers... as far reaching as can not yet even be imagined! For better or worse the secrets of the atom were his gifts, and the legacy he left will (perhaps!) not be easily eclipsed. The contribution of ideas such as these transcends normal understanding, and thrusts branches of active progression into equally progressive skies. Ironically, Jews show the rest of us how wonderful (and unjustly tragic sometimes) it is to have hard work pay off! But there were other (earlier) contributions (no less interesting) that perhaps lead directly to the fantastic gifts of Freud and Einstein. For instance Maimonides, a Jewish physician/philosopher much revered as a truly original thinker, wrote a skillful document called "Guide for the Perplexed." His newer idea suggested ways science and religion might be efficaciously linked (Eban 107). Astonishingly, this is what St. Thomas Aquinas and his "Summa Theologica" was, LATER, all about. Maimonides; however, predated the ~PLAGIARIZING?~ Aquinas by many decades. The utility of this wonderful concept, invented by Maimonides, shows that the use of science to search for an understanding of God [TRUTH]), is GOOD for a progressive and rational humankind! The Jews and their fresh ideas have hurried us along on this path to the bravely progressive and the immanently rational. IT IS STRANGE THEN, AS ONE (LATER) REFLECTS ON THE "SIDEBAR," THAT THE BULK OF AN UNCARING HUMANKIND KEEPS TRYING TO KNOCK THE JEWISH PASSENGER OFF THIS VEHICLE OF CIVILIZATION! Research indicates that the Jew is perhaps a major designer, builder, and maintainer of that very same vehicle. It does not seem smart for the vaster bulk of humankind to do that — not smart on a multitude of levels. The last category discussed certainly sheds no more light: the Jewish contribution to Religion. The Sun source of Christianity and Islam is Judaism. It has been said that if Judaism is the father, then Christianity is the son, and Islam is the grandson (Haynes LN). It is a continuing wonder that vocal elements of Christianity and Islam can turn so thoroughly and viciously on their father Judaism. Islam can publish in leading news magazines that it is the destiny of Islam to "kill the Jew, torture the Jew, and wipe Israel from the surface of the world (US NEWS & World Report)." Christianity, accepting the weight of all hyperbole, has long been responsible for some of the most heinous and brutal persecutions... that even caused one mainstream scholar to remark, "The persecutions and the new [false] image of the hated Jew stimulated a tradition of anti-Semitism that proved to be one of Christian Europe's most insidious contributions to the Western heritage" (Speilvogel 356). This is a preposterous condition when one realizes that if Judaism had not been around to provide the very idea of monotheistic shoulders on which the other two religions STAND, Islam and Christianity would have no meaning, validity, OR history at all. Verily, Judaism provided the taproot idea for the two most popular religions today, and is of course reviled for its trouble. ...No good deed shall go unpunished, I've read! Further validity for Judaism as a contributor to positive religious ideas can be demonstrated out of common knowledge. The Crusades are a holy war of abomination, and Christianity has always been violently factionalized. In parallel, the Jihad (...almost a sixth pillar of Islamic faith!) is a Muslim holy war of abomination, and Islam has always been violently factionalized (Haynes PI). What holy wars have the Jews involved themselves with within the last two millennia, and when have they ever been violently factionalized to a remotely similar degree? Could it be that obvious that the maturity of Judaism precludes that kind of behavior? It is THIS kind of maturity that Jewry displays to the world, though it would seem that most are blind to same. Judaism, comparatively, is an idea of calm, reflection, scholarship, and real maturity cooperating as a collection of ethically thinking and rational human beings. This concept of mature adulthood, of course, has real application on many levels. Where, in Judaism, are the rabid pronouncements that are found in Islam? Where are the blatant anti-fraternal institutional doctrines and teachings as are found in Christianity? Lastly, what can these acts BE but the acts of rebellious children against their rational and doting parent! "Et tu" Christianity? There is much evidence to suggest that Judaism was a key in the spread of, if not the NURTURING of Christianity (Haynes LN). This is forgetting for a moment that the crucifixion of Christ (as engineered by them) is REQUIRED for the soul of Christianity to have any meaning and validity at all. When the destruction of their nation occurred in 70 AD at the hands of the obliviously decadent Romans, and the Jews were scattered across the Roman Empire like dust before the wind in the great Diaspora, they took the idea of Christianity with them as they went. They spoke first to the gatherings of Jews as they found them. Jews were the very WHEELS of Christianity. Again, it is no leap of faith that this was a thunderous contribution to the idea, spread, and eventual success of a, then -upstart-, Christian creed! To conclude, the positive contributions of the Jews to humanity have fruitfully interspersed the fields of history, law, medicine, math/science, and religion with tremendously useful ideas and cultural inventions/innovations. In many cases, Jews have been the key to an improvement in these and other particular social disciplines. They have done this as a result of: character, the gainful use of their God's gifts, withering hard work, and attention to scholarship that matters! They have accomplished all this in spite of: slanderous, horrific, unethical, barbarous, and inhuman treatments at the hands of a sizable minority, if not a majority, of their fellow human beings. And who are those human beings, really? They are a room full of unsupervised children — the sidebar for this paper's point. These mewling kids are the kinds of children who will find the differently minded one among them, and torment her mercilessly. Some of these children are bigger, smarter, and more ethical that some of the other children; but all are corrupt, selfish, and juvenile; except (perhaps) for one. This writer interjects at this point that it is a wonder sometimes how human beings will tolerate behavior from their nations that they would NEVER tolerate from their own children, but that seems to be our inexplicable and regrettable way. To further illustrate, the child named "Iraq" sees something he likes that is in the possession of the little rich (but weaker) child named "Kuwait." "Iraq" reaches out, pokes Kuwait in the eye, and takes "Kuwait's" possession. Some of the bigger children stand around and pontificate about their reasons for stepping in (or not!), but the biggest child selfishly needs something that Kuwait has, and that need is the terrible excuse. In the scuffle that follows, the oldest and wisest child watches as "Iraq" flails its knife around (said to be dipped in poisons); and is even stabbed by it a few times — but can do nothing — some of the other children might come in on Iraq's side, and turn a scuffle into a brawl. The wise child shows restraint; the wise child shows maturity. The wise child is trying to look to the responsible long view while the rest are caught up with the sociopathic short term. The Jew is the wise child demonstrating in word, thought, and deed that the adult in this room full of mewling children is Jewish. The rest of the children are as so many rebellious, unenlightened, frightened, and frightening (and sometimes RETARDED!) teenagers. The brush is broad folks, but a lot of that paint sticks. Too, don't worry about a Jewish conspiracy. If there HAS to be any conspiracy (and there is), it won't be one of Jewish manufacture. No. We should BE that lucky.
A postscript: ...Want to know what the
real problem with Jews is, related to ALL of the preceding? It is that
they'd have enough institutional courage and respect for themselves to
wrestle with their God and the God of Christianity and Islam!
"Israel" means, literally, "wrestle with God." Moslems and Christians
fear God. Jews respect God. Moslems and Christians obey God.
Jews deal with God. Moslems and Christians are inferior to God. Jews
are the children of God. Moslems and Christians submit to God...
Jews wrestle, struggle, or grapple with God! That's the problem with Jews.
They have courage. They take responsibility. They make opportunity.
The Alien View compels me to support, and have greater appreciation for... the
pluckier bunch.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cognitive dissonance. (2008, September 1). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:32, September 1, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&oldid=235545707 Eban, Abba. My People:
History of the Jews.
AL, 2 Feb.
1993.
Personal Interview. 12 Mar. 1993.
Note — If you think my references lean in favor of the Jews, find controverting references that counter my assertions competently. Good luck to you. |
