"Holocaust is Jews own religious fault"

[davefoc]

HansMustermann,
Thank you for the thoughtful and interesting responses.

Your first response misses the point a bit of what I was trying to say about Christian antisemitism. The response of the average Roman to Christianity near the beginning of the religion wasn't what I was talking about.

I was talking about the seeds of Christian antisemitism that were planted at the beginning of the religion that grew along side the growth of the religion. Wikipedia has an article about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_New_Testament

From the article:

...In several places John's gospel associates "the Jews" with darkness and with the devil. This laid the groundwork for centuries of Christian characterization of Jews as agents of the devil, a characterization which found its way into medieval popular religion and eventually into passion plays[citation needed].Other parts of John's gospel associate salvation with the Jews, and link darkness with the world in general. Like the other gospels, it makes many references to the Jewish scriptures.

It has been awhile since I read some of the new testament (I have a small interest in early Christian history) but I was quite surprised to see what struck me as straightforward antisemitism present in some of the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) also.

Well, before Constantine, Christianity was seen by most Romans as just a sub-cult of Judaism. So it's a bit hard to distinguish when they were persecuting Jews thinking they're Christians, and when did they persecute Christians thinking they're Jews.

I'd be interested in seeing the basis that you have for this claim. Although of course Christianity can be seen as an offshoot of Judaism the fact seems to be that Christianity as we know it today developed almost independently of Judaism. There are no early Christian writings that were written in either Hebrew or Aramaic that are known today. The authors of the early Christian writings if they were Jewish at all were probably Hellenized Jews. Assuming that there was a sect of early Jewish Christians their effect is difficult to see. They were possibly massacred into oblivion by the Romans in 66 CE and if they hadn't been completely destroyed then they were further marginalized when the Jewish religious leaders barred them from Synagogues in about 90 CE. Perhaps if any of them were still alive the remnants of them may have been killed in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 132 CE.

My point here is that there may have been a time when Judaism and Christianity were conflated in the mind of the average Roman but it might have been very short because the Religions almost from the very start were very distinct with different holidays, different attitudes toward various Jewish religious laws and for the most part different holy books.

But I don't think really that it's because of that. I don't think that any of the later religious persecutions of any kind (including catholics-vs-cathars, catholics-vs-protestants, both-vs-muslims, etc) had much to do with whatever the Romans thought 1000 years earlier. E.g., when the call to the first crusade caused some people to go murder Jews at home instead, it was simply a case of, basically, "if god wants the heathens killed, wouldn't he want those right here killed too?"

I agree that it is not certain that the early antisemitism of Christianity played a big part in the later anti-Jewish violence but I think there is a good chance that it did. I agree it may be difficult to distinguish between the routine brutalization of minorities that we humans engage in periodically just because the minority is different than we are and brutalization of the Jews by the Christians driven by the early antisemitic aspects of Christianity. One piece of evidence that goes to your point is that the Germans targeted a number of groups besides Jews to be massacred.

That's a bit of a vicious circle. Once the Jews were forced to be penned in their own isolated quarters and whatnot, of course they'd eventually get their own genetic differences.



There is nothing racial about Judaism itself. Even if you count it as needing a jewish mother, just about the only things that would stay constant after a few generations would be the mitochondrial DNA. Even the X chromosome that a daughter gives in turn to her son, can actually be the one from her father.

The only racial differences are, pretty much, because of isolating them in the first place.

The racial differences between Jews and the Christian population that I was referring in to were the racial differences stemming from the fact that the Ashkenazi Jews ancestry is about 50% semitic and about 50% European. My only point was that actual physical appearance differences coupled with cultural/religious differences make the stereotyping and isolation of a minority population more likely.

Maybe, but historically they did not as much voluntarily isolate themselves from the rest of the world, but the other way around. They were forced to live in separate quarters, were given funny names, and a bunch of other stuff.

So I would think the blame is a bit misplaced in this point.

Clearly Jews were able to assimilate into the European population over the years to the point that many if not most Europeans today have at least some ancestry that derives from Jewish people. As I pointed out the assimilation of Jews into German society was very substantial prior to World War II. However I wasn't blaming Jews for not assimilating or claiming that assimilation into the local population was always possible for Jewish people. Clearly it wasn't. And even if it was there obviously wasn't any moral or ethical reason why they should have.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Nobody deserves to be treated as the Jews were in the Holocaust.

However, somewhat to this point: I just recently watched Defiance, and there's a scene when things are really looking bad, and the teacher (a rabbi I believe? earlier in the movie he was chiding one of the brothers for not keeping the faith) offered a prayer that said something like, "God, if this is what it means to be your Chosen people, please choose someone else!"

I wonder how common renouncing Judaism was? (Though I understand the point others have made--the violence directed against Jews was not about religion.)

 

[Cavemonster]

Nobody deserves to be treated as the Jews were in the Holocaust.

However, somewhat to this point: I just recently watched Defiance, and there's a scene when things are really looking bad, and the teacher (a rabbi I believe? earlier in the movie he was chiding one of the brothers for not keeping the faith) offered a prayer that said something like, "God, if this is what it means to be your Chosen people, please choose someone else!"

I wonder how common renouncing Judaism was? (Though I understand the point others have made--the violence directed against Jews was not about religion.)

Israel means "Wrestles with god".

The history of the Jewish religion, even within scripture is of sentiments like the Rabbi you quoted. Lot, Moses, Jacob, and many others were written to have communicated with god, or god's emmissaries and to have argued with them, bargained, disagreed.

To say "Please choose someone else!" isn't to renounce Judaism, but to affirm the central spirit of Judaism which is to wrestle with god.

 

[Pardalis]

Alot of people don't assimilate, that doesn't give anyone the right to round them up and exterminate them. If anything it's German society's fault to have excluded them, like for example Einstein, who after his ground-breaking paper about special relativity, couldn't get a job anywhere because he was Jewish, and he was a cosmopolite. Alot of his German detractors called his findings "Jew science", and that was decades before Hitler.

I'm sorry, but your friend is an anti-semite.

The Jews have been persecuted for centuries, in Russia and throughout Europe, so who could blame them for sticking to themselves? Anti-semitism is what made the Jews (some of them) segregate themselves to begin with.

 

[LostAngeles]

If I'm not mistaken, didn't a number of Jewish people convert during the Spanish Inquisition to avoid being, well, inquisited?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Converso

 

[Ferguson]

It seems like the argument of the OP's coworker ignores the others persecuted by the Nazis. Were the Roma, homosexuals, the mentally disabled, etc. also at fault for not assimilating? If the jews were somehow able to escape Hitler's wrath, the losses would perhaps have been redistributed among the other "inferior" populations.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Israel means "Wrestles with god".

The history of the Jewish religion, even within scripture is of sentiments like the Rabbi you quoted. Lot, Moses, Jacob, and many others were written to have communicated with god, or god's emmissaries and to have argued with them, bargained, disagreed.

To say "Please choose someone else!" isn't to renounce Judaism, but to affirm the central spirit of Judaism which is to wrestle with god.

Is this concept related to the story of Jacob wrestling an angel?

Can you elaborate?

It sure sounded like renouncing their covenant with God more than debating. (Also, the story of Job seems to have said just the opposite was preferred--accepting God's will and praising him no matter how horrible and unjust his actions were.)

In the movie (which was doubtlessly fictionalized) the prayer was shown in stark contrast to the actions of the brother who was leading them (with hit-you-over-the-head allusions to Moses). That is, the rabbi was passively giving up, and the brother (his former bad student) was still holding onto hope and taking action.

ETA: I'm not claiming you are wrong, Cavemonster. I'm admitting my ignorance. Do please elaborate.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Back to the OP, I understand what Oliver's friend is getting at, and I don't think it's necessarily anti-semitic. I've spoken to Jews who will say something similar--that maintaining their identity and customs is much more important than avoiding suffering and oppression. It is not an observation meant to approve of the Nazis' actions or exonerate them of blame in any way whatsoever. Basically, when thugs like this look for someone different, they go for those who are identifiably different.

In fact, my sort of side-track question (about whether many Jews did renounce that identity) points to, perhaps, a more subtle and insidious kind of atrocity committed by the Nazis. To someone raised in such a tradition, renouncing it (or trying to assimilate or pass as a non-Jew), there might be the pain of guilt that could last a lifetime.

 

[Cavemonster]

Is this concept related to the story of Jacob wrestling an angel?

Can you elaborate?

It sure sounded like renouncing their covenant with God more than debating. (Also, the story of Job seems to have said just the opposite was preferred--accepting God's will and praising him no matter how horrible and unjust his actions were.)

In the movie (which was doubtlessly fictionalized) the prayer was shown in stark contrast to the actions of the brother who was leading them (with hit-you-over-the-head allusions to Moses). That is, the rabbi was passively giving up, and the brother (his former bad student) was still holding onto hope and taking action.

Yes, Jacob was re-named Israel after that wrestling match, and the tribes of Israel are his 12 sons and their descendants.

Job was actually not a jew. Various biblical scholars place him as a contemporary of Abraham or of Jacob, but clearly not a descendant of either.

I don't know the movie you're referencing, and context may effect the reading, but on it's own, a challenge to god and a questioning of god's will is very much within the Jewish tradition. It's an odd contradiction since, viewed at the surface, laws of kashrut, and sabbath etc seem to be bowing to every scattered offhanded whim, but in matters of major policy decision, the Jewish tradition is to second guess god.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Job was actually not a jew. Various biblical scholars place him as a contemporary of Abraham or of Jacob, but clearly not a descendant of either.

But surely the story was held as a model of how one should relate to their God, wasn't it?

I don't know the movie you're referencing, and context may effect the reading, but on it's own, a challenge to god and a questioning of god's will is very much within the Jewish tradition. It's an odd contradiction since, viewed at the surface, laws of kashrut, and sabbath etc seem to be bowing to every scattered offhanded whim, but in matters of major policy decision, the Jewish tradition is to second guess god.

<review mode>I recommend the movie. It's based on true events. Several brothers in Bellorussia led a small resistance (mostly trying to keep a growing settlement of Jewish people alive) in the woods. I like very much that it paints morality in many shades of grey rather than black and white.</>

In a way it makes more sense to me than the worry many Christians have about offending God. If he's the supreme being, surely he can take it! Also, he would understand why humans feel the way they do. (This image of God as a wise intellectual debate opponent is pretty starkly different from the jealous God of the Ten Commandments!)

 

[HansMustermann]

Your first response misses the point a bit of what I was trying to say about Christian antisemitism. The response of the average Roman to Christianity near the beginning of the religion wasn't what I was talking about.

Ah, well, christianity got pretty antisemitic pretty fast. No arguments there. I'm just confused why you mentioned Roman antisemitism then.

I'd be interested in seeing the basis that you have for this claim. Although of course Christianity can be seen as an offshoot of Judaism the fact seems to be that Christianity as we know it today developed almost independently of Judaism. There are no early Christian writings that were written in either Hebrew or Aramaic that are known today. The authors of the early Christian writings if they were Jewish at all were probably Hellenized Jews. Assuming that there was a sect of early Jewish Christians their effect is difficult to see. They were possibly massacred into oblivion by the Romans in 66 CE and if they hadn't been completely destroyed then they were further marginalized when the Jewish religious leaders barred them from Synagogues in about 90 CE. Perhaps if any of them were still alive the remnants of them may have been killed in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 132 CE.

Christianity wasn't even formalized until the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. It took a long place in between to get a sense of separate identity, so to speak, or even to figure out exactly what _are_ they believing there.

A lot of sects thought they're still just a sect of Judaism. E.g., the Ebionites were exactly a sect of Judaism that followed Christ as a prophet. (They eventually got classified as heresy, ironically, because they were the people who actually knew Jesus or were related to him, and their descendents. They said he wasn't god and didn't resurrect, btw.)

Even among those who considered themselves distinctly Christian, it wasn't clear at all what _is_ the message in there. Arius for example had completely different idead about the Christ (biological human, different from God, but indeed son of God, in a nutshell) from Pellagius (pretty much: just a mortal human who set a good example and gave some rules, but it's your deeds not brown-nosing Jesus that get you saved or damned) and both were very different from what St Augustine got made official christian dogma. And that's talking just about the major sects.

My point here is that there may have been a time when Judaism and Christianity were conflated in the mind of the average Roman but it might have been very short because the Religions almost from the very start were very distinct with different holidays, different attitudes toward various Jewish religious laws and for the most part different holy books.

Again, the books and holidays were only standardized in 325 CE. Until then, everyone pretty much picked their own interpretation. E.g., nobody really celebrated the birth of Christ at any date until Constantine and the gang decided it's the same as the birthday of the sun (Sol Maximus) on the winter solstice.

I agree that it is not certain that the early antisemitism of Christianity played a big part in the later anti-Jewish violence but I think there is a good chance that it did. I agree it may be difficult to distinguish between the routine brutalization of minorities that we humans engage in periodically just because the minority is different than we are and brutalization of the Jews by the Christians driven by the early antisemitic aspects of Christianity. One piece of evidence that goes to your point is that the Germans targeted a number of groups besides Jews to be massacred.

And the Spanish targetted the Muslims just as well. And the Christians targetted each other all over the place, pretty much. E.g., there's a good probability that the Pellagians were the "snakes" driven out of Ireland by the properly-catholic St Patrick. And from there we have catholics-vs-arians, catholics-vs-cathars, Byzantines purging left and right of any interpretation other than theirs, all the way to the better known catholics-vs-protestants wars.

To use the Spanish again, being a Protestant was just as good a reason to have a talk with the Inquisition, as being a Jew or Muslim.

The racial differences between Jews and the Christian population that I was referring in to were the racial differences stemming from the fact that the Ashkenazi Jews ancestry is about 50% semitic and about 50% European. My only point was that actual physical appearance differences coupled with cultural/religious differences make the stereotyping and isolation of a minority population more likely.

I'm not denying that there are genetic differences. I'm just saying it's a vicious circle. If it weren't for being persecuted, isolated, or almost invariably being asked to change religion to marry anyone else, in the first place, they probably would have mixed more. And then they're persecuted some more for being different. Surely you can see how that goes in a circle.

Clearly Jews were able to assimilate into the European population over the years to the point that many if not most Europeans today have at least some ancestry that derives from Jewish people. As I pointed out the assimilation of Jews into German society was very substantial prior to World War II. However I wasn't blaming Jews for not assimilating or claiming that assimilation into the local population was always possible for Jewish people. Clearly it wasn't. And even if it was there obviously wasn't any moral or ethical reason why they should have.

Well, I guess maybe I'm reading it wrong. That point I was answering at least seems to me like it says the jews wanted to stay separated.

And what I was trying to say is that historically until very recently it wasn't even possible to integrate without renouncing your faith. As in, up to various points in the 19'th century, for most of Europe, in some more enlightened places 18'th century.

Yes, if we're already up to WW2 in Germany, now it was. But the previous (and very long) age of jewish ghettos was pretty much based on what religion you are.

And in various forms or shapes it wasn't "voluntary" except in a very perverted sense of the word. The deal was pretty much "get in there or we kill you". Even when the law or decree itself was phrased as granting a right, rather than as an interdiction to be out of that ghetto, the interdiction was usually somewhere else. You were granted the right to live there as a jew, because you didn't have the right to be one anywhere else.

The ghettos were invariably overcrowded, the threat loomed that in the next pogrom they know where to come for you, etc. Nobody went to live there based on some "ya know, I'd rather be there than mix among christians." Except in the sense that "mix among christians" meant death.

Saying that they isolated themselves because of their own religious issues is just... misleading at best. The only religious issue they had was that they didn't want to give up that religion.

 

[Cavemonster]

But surely the story was held as a model of how one should relate to their God, wasn't it?

There is a lot of writing on this phenomena, both modern and historical.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/arguing-with-god-13167

Here's an interesting one, a Christian reading the Torah and responding positively to the message there about argument with god
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php/index.php?pageId=20469

Theres a certain Christian interpretation that one enters god's graces by boweing one's head and meekly accepting your role as a worthless sinner. This is not the Jewish view!

In the relationship between a parent and a child there must be conflict, it doesn't matter if the parent is always right, for the child to grow up, he must figure out what is right by himself and learn to fight for what he believes rather than kowtowing to authority, and that growing up begins by disagreeeing with their parents.

In the Jewish tradition, maturity is achieved by asking questions and demanding justice, even of god, and it doesn't matter that god is generally right in the end, there is no one in Sodom worth saving, Jonah and Moses must serve as prophets to protect their people. Your teenage son will very likely regret that facial tattoo. But the act of rebelling, of arguing, is the act of taking responsibility, and very much at the heart of the jewish narrative.

 

[dudalb]

Yup, if Jews became Xian then there would not have been the Holocaust. Sure whatever.

If they had let the jews emigrate to the US...but they couldn't ... because of prejudice.

Apparently Oliver is unaware that the Nazis gassed Jews who converted to Christianity with the same enthusiam they gassed Religious Jews.
But then it's Oliver we are talking about.......

 

[dudalb]

But surely the story was held as a model of how one should relate to their God, wasn't it?


<review mode>I recommend the movie. It's based on true events. Several brothers in Bellorussia led a small resistance (mostly trying to keep a growing settlement of Jewish people alive) in the woods. I like very much that it paints morality in many shades of grey rather than black and white.</>

In a way it makes more sense to me than the worry many Christians have about offending God. If he's the supreme being, surely he can take it! Also, he would understand why humans feel the way they do. (This image of God as a wise intellectual debate opponent is pretty starkly different from the jealous God of the Ten Commandments!)

I can't agree about Defiance. It came off to me like a glorifed made for TV Movie. And Edward Zwick will never learn that at times understatement and the indirect approach are the best way to go.
"Glory" remains the only one of his films I think is classic material. Other then that, meh. He is like Stanley Kramer...he allows the "message" of the film to overwhelm the story and characters...and that makes for a preachy movie. And I don't like preachy movies, even if I agree with the sermon.

 

[oggiesnr]

A historical forenote.

The Jews came to England in 1066 as William the Conquerer's Bankers. They basically funded the invasion and for the two centuries they funded the aristocracy. They were very good at it, too good in fact. The will of Aaron the Jew (Lincoln) showed that he owned the mortgages on many thousands of pounds worth of property (I forget the exact figure but it translates into millions today).

The Jewish population was in fact small (a couple of thousand in the UK at most) but their economic power was huge. Their expulsion from England in 1290 had little to do with religion, seperateness or the blood libel but a lot to do with the feudal barons freeing themselves of debt. A classic example is in York when the Jews imprisoned in Clifoord's Tower appealed to Roger de Malbis who they thought of their friend to aid them. In fact the Jews owned the mortgages on his land so when he turned a blind eye and let them be killed he got his land back.

Another footnote. When Shakespeare creates "Shylock" there has not been a Jew in England for three hundred years. Such is the power of the folk memory and the teaching of the church.

Steve

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, England was a bit different, but then all countries have their own quirks.

Plus, in all fairness, the real madness started big time later, when the plague outbursts hit. _Then_ everyone suddenly got the idea that maybe proving their absolute faith in Jesus would help with that horrible plague. E.g., the 15'th century was pretty much all a bloodbath. So 1209 was still somewhat tamer everywhere, by comparison. (Though you probably mean 1290, or am I remembering it all wrong?)

But, anyway, for example in Spain past a point it was illegal to be any other religion than catholic. Even if you had declared yourself converted, it only took one tip to the Inquisition that you really still worship your old god, to get you tortured until you confess or die. It didn't matter if you were a banker or not, though it sure did help if someone wanted your money.

Or in the HRE we had pogroms for excuses as stupid as that supposedly some jew desecrated a communion host (those Jesus-flavoured biscuits for Mass) by eating it. So, you know, let's kill them all. Lots of people killed for basically a Jesus-flavoured Pringle.

I say it's particularly stupid, because (A) even their own dogma said that it only becomes Jesus's body when you eat it, and (B) if Jesus is God, how can any mortal desecrate his body anyway?

E.g., when Austria did a similar expulsion in the 15'th century, that was the pretext: one jew ate a Jesus chip. So 210 jews were burned alive, and the rest ordered to get th heck out of the country. Apparently they thought it's a fair punishment, for whatever crime _one_ person may have commited there.

At any rate, they didn't particularly separate the bankers from the poor there.

 

[Thunder]

blaiming the Jews for the Holocaust is basically saying:

"the European people cannot handle diversity. so either completely conform to European culture and traditions or you risk being murdered".

what a horrible commentary on European civilization.

 

[a_unique_person]

Fault, and the ability to have avoided a situation (when seen in hindsight) are not synonymous.

One of my great grandfathers was Jewish and left Germany at the end of the 1800's. Apparently he felt the anti-semitism back then was getting uncomfortable. To the best of my knowledge, non of his progeny regard themselves as Jewish any more, but his genes have survived. Those who did not leave did not commit any fault, but assimilation is a process that has a long history for helping your progeny survive.

Australia's aboriginals have often been criticised for not assimilating better, and are seen to be at fault by many for not doing so to ensure an optimum outcome for their people.

 

[davefoc]

Ah, well, christianity got pretty antisemitic pretty fast. No arguments there. I'm just confused why you mentioned Roman antisemitism then.

Sorry, my simple point was that during the early years of Christianity the Romans were involved in two wars with the Jews and probably miscellaneous other actions. My suspicion is that to the degree that the average Roman had an opinion about the Jews it was not favorable since it is fairly routine for citizens of countries at war to hold negative views of the people who their soldiers are fighting against.

I see the enmity I would expect the Romans to have held against the Jews as the explanation for the antisemitism in the New Testament. Christianity developed as a gentile religion created by gentiles for gentiles and I expect that if one is trying to found a new religion playing to jingoistic sentiments of the target audience is a good idea if not an essential one.

Christianity wasn't even formalized until the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. It took a long place in between to get a sense of separate identity, so to speak, or even to figure out exactly what _are_ they believing there.

Christianity was fairly well defined much earlier than that. It is true that there were all sorts of sects floating around with all sorts of ideas about what Jesus was but the NT canon as we know it today was probably assembled sometime before 200 CE and according to Wikipedia the Pauline epistles might have been circulating in a collection by 100CE. The big deal at the Council of Nicaea was the issue of Arianism.

A lot of sects thought they're still just a sect of Judaism. E.g., the Ebionites were exactly a sect of Judaism that followed Christ as a prophet. (They eventually got classified as heresy, ironically, because they were the people who actually knew Jesus or were related to him, and their descendents. They said he wasn't god and didn't resurrect, btw.)

We know almost nothing about the Jewish Christians including whether the Ebionites actually were derived from them. I have tried to understand what went on in the very early years of Christianity and what role the Jewish Christians played in developing the Christian religion of today. The information seems very sketchy to me. The only sources of information about these people comes from writings of the early church fathers and whatever truth there is about them in the New Testament.

 

[HansMustermann]

Sorry, my simple point was that during the early years of Christianity the Romans were involved in two wars with the Jews and probably miscellaneous other actions. My suspicion is that to the degree that the average Roman had an opinion about the Jews it was not favorable since it is fairly routine for citizens of countries at war to hold negative views of the people who their soldiers are fighting against.

Well, for us nowadays fighting two wars with someone is a reason to be wary of them, but back then it was the normal state of thing. Rome was at war all the time.

As a bit of trivia, it was supposed that if Rome is at war, the doors of the temple of Janus are open. (The religious ceremonies were held in front of the temple anyway.) During the republic they only got closed twice.

The Germans for example had been attacking Rome's borders for as long as anyone remembers. Rome didn't mind them enlisting in its army and getting land for it.

The Jews and Christians made themselves rather unpopular by another reason: everyone else played nice with everyone else's gods. If I worship Jupiter and you worship Taranis, we'd come up with Jupiter Taranis and be happy. These monotheistic guys were the only ones that went, basically, "No, your Gods are false, your Gods are demons, and you're going to burn in Hell for following them. And, oh, your whole city is the Whore Of Babylon."