Judaism ForumATTENTIONHi TSJ! This, I think, is the root of it. This is what has caused individual pagans (Roman & Greek), Christians (Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant) & Muslims to hate us - our insistence on being different, on maintaining our own customs, our own beliefs, our own language, etc., our refusal to go with the flow and accept what others "know to be the truth." The late scholar Michael Grant noted in his From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Hellinistic World (see http://tinyurl.com/3wx8b) that, "The Jews proved to be unassimilated and unassimilable." Did you ever watch that old TV series Northern Exposure? In one episode, the town sponsored a grueling marathon for wheelchair-bound athletes. One of the competitors was plagued by her personal demon, External Validation (personified as a smartly dressed handsome young man named Oscar Pulitzer). One of the show's regulars, Ed (whose personal demon was Low Self-Esteem, personified as an ugly little green man) tried to help her overcome her personal demon. I (the amateur psychologist) think that most people crave external validation. How do you know that you're OK, right, etc.? What makes you feel secure in your beliefs? When everyone around you does as you do, believes as you do, acts as you do, and is as you are. But along comes someone who not only refuses to act, think or believe as you do, but refuses both bribes and threats to do so and is willing to endure degradation, humiliation or even death as the price of maintaining his own beliefs, customs, ways of thinking & acting, etc. This is the Jew! I purposely wrote, "... individual pagans (Roman & Greek), Christians (Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant) & Muslims to hate us..." in the preceeding paragraph. Christianity is no more inherently anti-Semitic than orthodox Judaism is inherently anti-Christian. There is all too often a gulf between what our respective faiths teach regarding the other, on the one hand, and what individual Christians & Jews may believe regarding the other, on the other hand. All too often we may harbor prejudices and bigotries that contravene the "official" doctrines/beliefs of our faiths. While individual Christian and Islamic anti-Semites may twist certain elements of their respective faiths in order to give peculiarly Christian or Islamic spins on Jew-hatred, anti-Semitism is, as I believe, far older than either Christianity or Islam. My theory is that if A hates B, B is merely the external focus of some deep, pre-existing spiritual unease, some gnawing blight, in A's heart; B is merely the the object which A has latched onto as an outlet for these very powerful, strong negative emotions. Look at Korah's attempted coup d'etat against his cousins Moses & Aaron. Look at the several versions of Numbers 16:1. The KJV says: The NKJV is the same but without the square brackets. The NASB says: What exactly did Korah take? The original Hebrew doesn't say. In the original Hebrew text, no object is provided for the verb vayikakh ("took"). A better translation of the whole verse would be: There was a very, very good commentary on Korah in last the 18.6.04 edition of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's English dailies. Here http://tinyurl.com/32la3 is the whole article. I'll quote the last two paragraphs: Genesis 26:12-16 says: Through a combination of his own industry and Divine blessing, Isaac becomes very wealthy. We can assume that his Philistine neighbors also benefited from Isaac's success (from trading with him, etc.). Yet the text tells us that, "and the Philistines envied him." There was no rational basis for their envy which eventually prompted their king, Abimelech, to tell Isaac: The Hebrew for the above phrase is lech meh-imanu ki atzamta mimennu maod. The last three Hebrew words are ambiguous and the phrase could be read as: It is a principle of Judaism and of Jewish Biblical exegesis that (to quote our Sages): "The actions of the fathers are a sign to the children," i.e. that the actions of our Patriarchs and ancestors in the scriptures are a paradigm and a model for subsequent Jewish history. Here, in these verses from Genesis, we see one of the models of anti-Semitism throughout Jewish history: The Jew as leech, as an economic bloodsucker. The Philistines envied Isaac's material success and, if we accept the variant reading, accused him, leech-like, of taking from them and getting wealthy from them, even though the text testifies that Isaac did no such thing & that Isaac owed his wealth to God and to his own industry. Their irrational hatred of him (see Genesis 26:27) was such that even though Isaac's presence in their midst was to their material benefit (via the wells of his father & through trading with him), they still expelled him, the first of many such expulsions that would follow in later eras. Thus economic anti-Semitism. Racial anti-Semitism first appears in Genesis 39. After Joseph has resisted the seductive wiles of Potiphar's wife and runs out of Potiphar's house, Mrs. Potiphar summons the household slaves and relates to them her version of events, which she repeats to her husband (furthering altering the account of what actually happened. It is a principle of Jewish Biblical exegesis that there is no wasted or redundant ink in the scriptures & that we can learn much from seemingly trivial turns of phrase, subtle differences in the text and from the seeming repetitions of accounts. Genesis 39:12-13 tells us: In Genesis 39:14-15, Mrs. Potiphar tells the other slaves: In Genesis 39:17-18, Mrs. Potiphar tells her husband: . Note the subtle differences in the three accounts. I quote from Studies in Genesis by the late Prof. Nehama Leibovitz: BTW, our Sages say that God Himself set Potiphar's wife on Joseph in order to punish Joseph & teach him a lesson. What did Joseph do to deserve this? Genesis 39:5-6 tells us: Of what possible relevance is the last, italicized, phrase? The text would not remark on such a thing just for the hell of it (so to speak)! Some have suggested that it is merely a lead-in to Potiphar's wife having lecherous designs on Joseph's person. I will quote the late Prof. Leibovitz again: Different we are, separate we must be. It is precisely when Joseph began to forget this that he was reminded of his status, of his Hebrew-ness, in a rude fashion. Be well! ssv |
🌈Pride🌈 goeth before Destruction
When 🌈Pride🌈 cometh, then cometh Shame