The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'Jewish History, Jewish Religion' by Israel Shahak Part 3

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

63 MinutesPG-13Pete continues reading of Israel Shahak's 1994 book, "Jewish History, Jewish Religion - The Weight of Three-Thousand Years." In this episode he covers chapter 3.Antelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/Jewish History, Jewish ReligionVIP Summit 3-Truth To Freedom - Autonomy w/ Richard GroveSupport Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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The Lidl New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. I want to welcome everyone back to part three of my reading of Israel Shah Hoc's Jewish history, Jewish religion, the weight of 3,000 years. Before we jump into this, I want to remind everybody about Thomas and my movie reviews. I have a page on my website, Freemand Beyond the Wall.com forward slash movies. We also set up so that instead of getting every movie individually, you can get a subscription for a year for all the movies we do. Probably going to do more, probably going to do 12 or more, probably more.

It's 100 bucks for a year. Otherwise, it's going to be 10 bucks a movie. And I'm going to have a new one dropping this week. And I have a feeling most of you are going to want to hear it. So also my partnership with Antelope Hill Publishing, if you enter Pete Q, all lowercase, one word at checkout, you get 5% off your order. All right. I will say this about this chapter. This will probably, this may be the most controversial chapter we read.

He's going to explain what rabbis. I'll let him talk about it. They don't believe what you think they believe. Okay? And come into this knowing that he is somebody who, you know, lived in Israel, this whole life, and he knows what he's talking about. And I'll comment throughout this, because I've read this chapter more than once, so that I can know what they believe.

And, yeah, I'll just say trigger warning to a lot of people. All right. Chapter 3. Orthodoxy and interpretation. This chapter is devoted to a more detailed description of the theologico-legal legal structure of classical Judaism. However, before embarking on that description, it is necessary to dispel at least some of the many misconceptions disseminated in almost all foreign language, that is, non-Hebrew,

accounts of Judaism, especially those who propagate such currently fashionable phrases as the Judeo-Christian tradition or the common values of the monotheistic religions. Because of considerations of space, I shall only deal in detail with the most important of these popular delusions that the Jewish religion is and always was monotheistic. Now, as many biblical scholars know, and as a careful reading of the Old Testament, easily reveals, this a-historical view is quite wrong. In many, if not most, books of the Old Testament, the existence and power of other gods are clearly acknowledged, but Yahweh Jehovah, who is the most powerful God, is always very jealous of his rivals and forbids his people to worship them. It is only very late in the Bible,

in some of the later prophets that the existence of all other God's other than Yahweh is denied. I think it's when they come back from Babylon. What concerns us, however, is not biblical, but classical Judaism. And it is quite clear, though much less widely realized, that the latter, during its last few hundred years, was for the most part, far from pure monotheism. The same can be said about the real doctrine. dominant in present-day Orthodox Judaism, which is a direct continuation of classical Judaism. The decay of monotheism came about through the spread of Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah,

which developed in the 12th and 13th centuries, and by the late 16th centuries, had won an almost complete victory in virtually all the centers of Judaism. The Jewish Enlightenment, which arose out of the crisis of classical Judaism, had to fight against this mysticism and its influence more than against anything else. But in latter-day Jewish Orthodoxy, especially amongst the rabbis, the influence of the Kabbalah has remained predominance. For example, the Gush Eminem, and I'm pronouncing that wrong, I apologize, movement is inspired to a great extent. by cavalistic ideas. Knowledge and understanding of these ideas is therefore important for two reasons.

First, without it, one cannot understand the true beliefs of Judaism at the end of its classical period. Secondly, these ideas play an important contemporary political role inasmuch as they form part of the explicit system of beliefs of many religious politicians, including most leaders of Gushimunum, and have an indirect influence on many Zionists,

leaders of all parties, including the Zionists left. Okay. Indirect influence. This exists. We all know it exists. We all have beliefs that have been proven wrong at some point or another. And it wasn't something that was directly taught to us. It was something like Judeo-Christianity. A lot of us didn't get that in school. It was just something that was a given. We heard it over and We heard it in the news. We heard it from Ben Shapiro, people like that. Things do not have to be taught to you directly. You do not even need to understand things to be greatly influenced by them.

He's going to talk about that. According to the Kabbalah, the universe is ruled not by one God, but by several deities of various characters and influences emanated by a dim, distant, first cause. omitting many details, one can summarize the system as follows. From the first cause, first a male god called wisdom or father, and then a female goddess called knowledge or mother, were emanated or born. From the marriage of these two, a pair of younger gods were born, son, also called by many other names, such as small face or the holy blessed one, and daughter, also called lady,

or matronite, a word derived from Latin, Shikina, Queen, and so on. These two younger gods should be united, but their union is prevented by the machinations of Satan, who in this system is a very important and independent personage. Anybody's head exploding it? Imagine how I felt somebody who went to seminary and grew up in the church, went to Catholic school,

outread this. And somebody who went to a Protestant seminary and a conservative Protestant seminary. The creation was undertaken by the first cause in order to allow them to unite, but because of the fall, they became more disunited than ever, and indeed Satan has managed to come very close to the divine daughter and even to rape her. Parentheses, either seemingly or in fact, opinions differ on this. Close parentheses. The creation of the Jewish people was undertaken in order to mend the break caused by Adam and Eve, and under Mount Sinai, this was for a moment achieved. The male god's son, incarnated in Moses, was united with the goddess Shikina.

Unfortunately, the sin of the golden calf again caused disunity in the godhead, but the repentance of the Jewish people has mended matters to some extent. similarly, each incident in biblical Jewish history is believed to be associated with the union or disunion of the divine pair. The Jewish conquest of Palestine from the Canaanites and the building of the first and second temple are particularly propitious for their union, while the destruction of the temples and exile the Jews from the Holy Land are merely external signs not only of the divine disunion, but also of a real hoaring after strange gods. Daughter falls closely into the power of Satan, while son takes various female satanic personages to his bed

instead of his proper wife. The duty of pious Jews is to restore through their prayers and religious acts the perfect divine unity in the form of sexual union between the male and female deities. They teach you this in church. Did you learn this in Sunday school? How about RCIA? But, you know?

Thus, before most ritual acts, which every devout Jew has to perform many times each day, the following Kabbalistic formula is recited. Quote, for the sake of the Congress, that's a sexual Congress, of the Holy Blessed One in His Chicana, for the sake of the Congress of the Holy Blessed One in His Shikina. The Jewish Morning Prayers are also a arranged so as to promote the sexual union, if only temporarily. Successive parts of the prayer mystically corresponds to successive stages of the union. At one point, the goddess approaches with her handmaidens, at another that God put his arm

around her neck and fondles her breast, and finally the sexual act is supposed to take place. Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the Kabbalists, are designed to deceive various angels, quote, in parentheses, imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence, or to propitiate Satan. At a certain point in the morning prayer, some verses in Aramaic, rather than the more usual Hebrew, are pronounced. This is supposed to be a means for tricking the angels who operate the gates through which prayers enter heaven and who have the power to block the prayers of the pious. More trickery.

the angels only understand Hebrew and are baffled by the Aramaic verses being somewhat dull-witted, presumably they are far less clever than the Kabbalists. So he's putting that in parentheses here, saying that, you know, obviously these angels are dumber than the Kabbalists. The angels open the gate and at this moment all the prayers, including those in Hebrew, get through. Or take another example. both before and after a meal, a pious Jew richly washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions, he is worshipping God by promoting the divine union of son and daughter,

but on the other he is worshipping Satan, who likes Jewish prayers and ritual acts so much that when he is offered a few of them, it keeps him busy for a while, and he forgets to pester the divine daughter. Indeed, the Kabbalists believe that some of the sacrifices burnt in the temple were intended for Satan. For example, the 70 bullocks sacrificed during the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles were supposedly offered to Satan in his capacity as ruler of all the Gentiles, in order to keep him too busy to interfere on the eighth day when sacrifices made to God. many other examples of the same kind can be given. Several points should be made concerning this system and its importance for the proper understanding of Judaism, both in its classical period and in its present political involvement in Zionist practice.

First, whatever can be said about this Kabbalist system, it cannot be regarded as monotheistic, unless one is also prepared to regard Hinduism, the late Greco-Roman religion, or even the religion of ancient Egypt, as monotheistic. Those people who love going out shopping for Black Friday deals, they're mad, aren't they? Like, proper mad.

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Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Secondly, the real nature of classical Judaism is illustrated by the ease with which this system was adopted. faith and beliefs, except nationalistic beliefs, play an extremely small part in classical Judaism. What is of prime importance is the ritual act, rather than the significance which that act is supposed to have, or the belief attached to it.

Which I think many Christians would look upon that and say it's legalistic. so all of these ritual acts are legalistic in language we should understand. Therefore, in times when a minority of religious Jews refused to accept the Kabbalah, as is the case today, one could see some few Jews performing a given religious ritual believing it to be an act of worship of God, while others do exactly the same thing with the intention of propitiating Satan. But so long as the act is the same, they would pray together and remain members of the same congregation, however much they might dislike each other. But if instead of the intention attached to the

ritual washing of hands, anyone would dare to introduce an innovation in the manner of washing, a real schism would certainly ensue. Okay, so say you found out that when your pastor leads prayer before the reading of or after the reading of scripture before he gives a sermon after the sermon to open up service. Say you found out that he, his intention in his prayers was that he was praying to multiple gods and even Satan. And he was hoping that just by the, just by your intention in prayer, it didn't even have to be what you mean. It's just the fact that you're praying, a legalistic kind of praying,

that he would see that as helping his prayers to multiple gods and Satan be met. How would, if the congregation found out that that was happening, how would they feel? How would they react? Do you understand how actually sinister this is? The same can be said about all. sacred formulas of Judaism. Provided the working is left intact, the meaning is, at best, a secondary matter. For example, perhaps the most sacred Jewish formula, hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God,

the Lord is one, recited several times each day by every pious Jew, can at the present time mean two contrary things. It can mean that the Lord is indeed one. but it can also mean that a certain stage in the union of the male and female deities has been reached or is being promoted by the proper recitation of this formula. However, when Jews of a reformed congregation recite this formula in any language other than Hebrew, all Orthodox rabbis, whether they believe in unity or in the divine sexual union, are very angry indeed.

Finally, all this is of considerable importance in Israel and in other Jewish centers, even at present. The enormous significance attached to mere formulas, such as the law of Jerusalem, the idea and motivations of Gush and Eminem, the urgency behind the hate for non-Jews presently living in Palestine, the fatalistic attitude towards all peace attempts by Arab states, all these and many other traits of Zionist politics, which puzzles so many well-meaning people who have a false notion about classical Judaism, become more intelligible against this religious and mystical background. I must warn, however, against falling into the other extreme and trying to explain all Zionist politics in terms of this background. Obviously, the latter influences vary an extent. Bangurian was adept at manipulating them in a controlled way for specific ends. Under Began, the past exerts a much greater influence upon the present. But what one should never do is to ignore the past and its influences,

because only by knowing it can one transcend its blind power. You want me to keep going? I remember when I read that first section in this chapter. I think I read it three times. And I didn't want to believe it. Is he lying? Why would he lie? New heading.

Interpretation of the Bible. It will be seen from the foregoing example that what most supposedly well-informed people think they know about Judaism may be very misleading unless they can read Hebrew. All the details mentioned above can be found in the original text or, in some cases, in modern books written in Hebrew, for a rather specialized rebuttal. leadership. In English, one would look for them in vain, even where the omission of such socially important facts distorts the whole picture. There is yet another misconception about Judaism, which is particularly common among Christians, or people heavily influenced by Christian

tradition and culture. This is the misleading idea that Judaism is a biblical religion, that the Old Testament has in Judaism the same central place and legal authority, which the Bible has for Protestant or even Catholic Christianity. Again, this is connected with a question of interpretation. We have seen that in matters of belief, there is latitude. Exactly the opposite holds what respect to the legal interpretation of sacred texts. Here the interpretation is rigidly fixed, but by the Talmud rather than by the Bible itself. Many, perhaps most, biblical verses prescribing religious acts.

and obligations are understood by classical Judaism and by present-day orthodoxy, only in a sense which is quite distinct from, or even contrary to, their literal meaning as understood by Christian or other readers of the Old Testament who only see the plain text. The same division exists at present in Israel between those educated in Jewish religious schools and those educated in secular Hebrew schools, where on the whole, the plain meaning of the Old Testament is taught. This important point can only be understood through examples.

It will be noted that the changes in meaning do not all go in the same direction from the point of view of ethics as the term is understood now. Apologetics of Judaism claim that the interpretation of the Bible originated by the Pharisees and fixed in the Talmud is always more liberal than the literal sense. But some of the examples below show us this is far from being the case. Let us start with the Deca log itself. The Eighth Commandment, Thou Shall Not Steal, is taken to be a prohibition against stealing, that is, kidnapping, a Jewish person. The reason is that, according to the Talmud, all acts forbidden by the Decalogue are capital offenses. Stealing property is not a capital offense, while kidnapping of Gentiles by Jews is allowed

by Talmudic law, hence the interpretation. A virtually identical sentence, Ye Shall Not Steal, Leviticus 1911, is however allowed to have its literal meaning. The famous verse, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, etc. Exodus 2124, is taken to mean I money for I, that is, payment of a fine rather than physical retribution. Here is a notorious case of turning the literal meaning into its exact opposite. it. The biblical text plainly warns against following the bandwagon in an unjust cause. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to rest judgment. The last words of this sentence, decline after many to rest judgment, are torn out of their

context and interpreted as an injunction to follow the majority. The verse, thou shalt not. not seeth a kid in his mother's milk is interpreted as a ban on mixing any kind of meat with any milk or milk product. Since the same verse is repeated in two other places in the Pentateuch, the mere repetition is taken to be a treble fan, forbidding a Jew to eat such a mixture, to cook it for any purpose, and to enjoy or to benefit from it in any way. In numerous cases, general terms such as thy fellow, stranger, or even man, are taken to have an exclusivist chauvinistic meaning. The famous verse, thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself, is understood by classical and present-day

Orthodox Judaism as an injunction to love one's fellow Jew, not any fellow human. Similarly, the verse, neither shall thou stand against the blood of thy fellow, is supposed to mean that one must not stand idly by when the life of a fellow. Jew is in danger, but as we will see in Chapter 5, a Jew is in general forbidden to save the life of a Gentile because he is not thy fellow. The general injunction to leave the gleanings of one sealed and vineyard for the poor and the stranger is interpreted as referring exclusively to the Jewish poor and to converts of Judaism. To Judaism. The taboo laws relating to corpses begin with the verse, this is the law when a man dieeth in a tent,

all that come into the tent shall be unclean seven days. But the word man, Adam, is taken to mean Jew, said that only a Jewish corpse is taboo, that is, both unclean and sacred. Based on this interpretation, pious Jews have a tremendous magic reverence towards Jewish corpses and Jewish cemeteries, but have no respect towards non-Jewish corpses in cemeteries. Thus, hundreds of months. Muslim cemeteries have been utterly destroyed in Israel, in one case in order to make room for

the Tel Aviv Hilton, but there was a great outcry because the Jewish cemetery on the Mounts of Olives was damaged under Jordanian rule. Examples of this kind are too numerous to quote. Some of the inhuman consequences of this type of interpretation will be discussed in Chapter 5. Finally, consider one of the most beautiful prophetic passages Isaiah's magnificent condemnation of hypocrisy and empty ritual and exhortation to common decency. One verse, Isaiah 115 in this passage is, And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yay, when you make many prayers, I will not hear.

Your hands are full of blood. Since Jewish priests spread their hands when blessing the people during service, this verse is supposed to mean that a priest who commits accidental homicide is disqualified from spreading his hands and blessing, even if repentant, because they are full of blood. It is quite clear, even from these examples, that when Orthodox Jews today, or all Jews before about 1780, read the Bible, they are reading a very different book

with a totally different meaning from the Bible as read by non-Jews or non-Orthodox Jews. This distinction applies even in Israel, although both parties read the text in Hebrew. Experience, particularly since 1967, has repeatedly corroborated this. Many Jews in Israel and elsewhere, who are not Orthodox and have little detailed knowledge of the Jewish religion, have tried to shame Orthodox Israelis or right-wingers who are strongly influenced by religion, out of their inhuman attitude toward the Palestinians, by quoting at them verses from the Bible in their plain, humane sense.

It was always found, however, that such arguments do not have the slightest effect on those who follow classical Judaism. They simply do not understand what is being said to them, because to them the biblical text means something quite different than to everyone else. If such a communication gap exists in Israel, where people read Hebrew and can readily obtain correct information, if they wish, one can imagine how deep is the misconception abroad, say among people educated in the Christian tradition. In fact, the more such a person reads the Bible, the less he or she knows about Orthodox Judaism. For the latter regards the Old Testament as a text of immutable sacred formulas, whose recitation, as an act of great merit, but whose meaning is wholly determined elsewhere. And as Humpty Dumpty told Alice, behind the problem of who can determine the meaning of words, there stands the real question, which is to be master.

Literally like quoting the Constitution to somebody. You have the Constitution, then you have constitutional law. What does the plain text of the Constitution mean? does it matter what does constitutional law say you catch them in the corner of your eye distinctive by design they move you even before you drive the new cooper plug-in hybrid range for mentor leon and terramar now with flexible pc finance and trade-in boosters of up to two thousand euro search cooper and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves.

Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Those people who love going out shopping for Black Friday deals, they're mad, aren't they? Like, proper mad. Brenda wants a television and she's prepared to fight for it.

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Lidl, more to value. New heading. Structure of the Talmud. It should therefore be clearly understood that the source of authority for all the practices of classical and present-day Orthodox Judaism, that determining base of its legal structure

is the Talmud, or, to be precise, the so-called Babylonian Talmud, while the rest of the Talmudic literature, including the so-called Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud, act as a supplementary authority. We cannot enter here into a detailed description of the Talmud and Talmudic literature, but confine ourselves to a few principal points needed for our argument.

Basically, the Talmud consists of two parts. First, the Mishnah, a terse legal code consisting of six volumes, each subdivided into several tractates written in Hebrew, redacted in Palestine around 80,200 out of the much more extensive and largely oral legal material composed during the preceding two centuries. And if I understand correctly, it's basically what the Pharisees, if you know your new testament, what the Pharisees believed and taught and were formulating even at the time and passing along orally. The second and by far prominent, predominant part is the Gamara, a voluminous record of discussions on and around the Mishnah.

There are two roughly parallel sets of Gamara, one composed in Mesopotamia, Babylon, between about AD 200 and 500, the other in Palestine between about AD and some unknown date long before 500. The Babylonian Talmud, that is, the Mishnah plus the Mesopotamian Gamara, is much more extensive and better arranged than the Palestinian, and it alone is regarded as definitive and authoritative. The Jerusalem-Palestinian Talmud is accorded a decidedly lower status as legal authority, along with a number of compilations known collectively as the Talmudic literature containing material which the editors of the two Talmuds had left out. Contrary to the Mishnah, the rest of the Talmud and Talmudic literature is written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic, the latter language predominating in the Babylonian Talmud. Also, it is not limited to legal matters. Without any apparent order or reason, the legal discussion can subtly be interrupted by what is referred to as narrative. Agatha. A medley of tales and anecdotes about rabbis or ordinary folk, biblical figures, angels, demons,

witchcraft, and miracles. These narrative passages, although of great popular influence in Judaism through the ages, were always considered even by the Talmud itself as having secondary value. Of greatest importance for classical Judaism are the legal parts of the text, particularly the discussion of cases which are regarded as problematic. The Talmud itself defines the various categories of Jews in ascending order as follows. The lowest are the totally ignorant, then come those who only know the Bible, then those who are familiar with the Mishnah or Agatha, and the superior class are those who have studied and are able to discuss the legal part of the Gamara. It is only the latter who are fit to lead their fellow Jews in all things.

The legal system of the Talmud can be described as totally comprehensive, rigidly authoritarian, and yet capable of infinite development, without, however, any change in its dogmatic base. that's an incredible sentence. The legal system of the Talmud can be described as totally comprehensive, rigidly authoritarian, and yet capable of infinite development without, however, any change in its dogmatic base. In other words, if there's a law in there, that it, something that is forbidden, that a Jew breaks, or one of them, you know, one of the highest class breaks, they can just interpret it.

in another way, without changing its dogma. Every aspect of Jewish life, both individual and social, is covered, usually in considerable detail with sanctions and punishments provided for every conceivable sin or infringement of the rules. The basic rules for every problem are stated dogmatically and cannot be questioned. What can be, and has discussed at very great length, is the elaboration and practical definition of these rules. Let me give you a few examples.

Not doing any work on the Sabbath. The concept work is defined as compromising exactly 39 types of work, neither more, neither less. The criterion for inclusion in this list has nothing to do with the arduousness of a given task. It is simply a matter of dogmatic definition. One forbidden type of work is writing. The question that arises, how many characters must one write in order to commit the sin of writing on the Sabbath? The answer is two. Is the sin the same?

irrespective of which hand is used? Answer, no. However, in order to guard against falling into sin, the primary prohibition on writing is hedged with a secondary ban on touching any writing implement on the Sabbath. Another prototypical work forbidden on the Sabbath is the grinding of grain. From this, it is deduced by analogy that any kind of grinding of anything whatsoever is forbidden, and this in turn is hedged by a ban on the practice of medicine on the Sabbath, except in cases of danger to Jewish life, in order to guard against falling into the sin of grinding a medicament. It is in vain to point out that in modern times such a danger does not exist,

nor for that matter did it exist in many cases even in Talmudic times, for, as a hedge around the hedge, the Talmud explicitly forbids liquid medicines and restorative drinks on the Sabbath. What has been fixed remains forever fixed, however absurd. Tritzilian, one of the early church fathers, had written, I believe it because it is absurd. This can serve as a motto for the majority of Talmudic rules with the word believe, replaced by practice. The following example illustrates even better a level of absurdity reached by this system.

One of the prototypes of work forbidden on the Sabbath is harvesting. This is stretched by analogy to a ban on breaking a branch off a tree. Hence, riding a horse or any other animal is forbidden as a hedge against the temptation to break a branch off a tree for flogging the beast. I would think even if you're riding and the horse goes under a tree, you could possibly break a branch by hitting it. It is useless to argue that you have a ready-made whip or that you intend to ride where there are no tree. What is forbidden remains forbidden forever. It can, however, be stretched and made stricter. In modern times, riding a bicycle on the Sabbath has been forbidden because it is analogous to riding a horse. My final example illustrates how the same methods are used, also in purely theoretical cases, having no conceivable application in reality. During the existence of the temple, the high priest was only allowed to marry a virgin.

Although during virtually the whole of the Talmudic period, there is no longer a temple or a high priest, the Talmud devotes one of its more involved and bizarre discussions to the precise definition of the term virgin fit to marry a high priest. What about a woman whose hymen has been broken by accident? Does it make any difference whether the accident occurred before or after the age of three? By the impact of metal or of wood? was she climbing a tree? And if so, was she climbing up or down? Did it happen naturally or unnaturally? All this and much else besides it is discussed in lengthy detail. And every scholar in classical Judaism

had to master hundreds of such problems. Great scholars were measured by their ability to develop these problems still further. For as shown by the examples, there is always scope for further development, if only in one direction, and such development did actually continue after the final redaction of the Talmud. However, there are two great differences between the Talmudic period, ending around 8,500, and the period of classical Judaism from about AD 800. The geographical area reflected in the Talmud is confined, whereas the Jewish society reflected in it is a complete society with Jewish agriculture as its basis. This is true for Mesopotamia as well as Palestine.

Although at that time, there were Jews living throughout the Roman Empire, and in many areas of the Sassanid Empire, it is quite evident from the Talmudic text that its composition, over half a millennium, was a strictly local affair. No scholars from countries other than Mesopotamia and Palestine took part in it, nor does the text reflect social conditions outside those

these two areas. Very little is known about the social and religious conditions of the Jews in the intervening three centuries. Talking about from 500 to 800, from the time the Talmud was closed to the time of classical Judaism. But from 8,800 on, when more detailed historical information is again available, we find that the two features mentioned above had been reversed. The Babylonian Talmud, and to a much lesser degree, the rest of the Talmudic literature is acknowledged as authoritative, studied and developed in all Jewish communities. At the same time, Jewish society had undergone a deep change, whatever and wherever it is, it does not include peasants.

The social system resulting from this change will be discussed in Chapter 4. Here we shall describe how the Talmud was adapted to the conditions, geographically much wider and socially much narrower, and at any rate radically different of classical Judaism. We shall concentrate on what is, in my opinion, the most important method of adaptation, namely the dispensations. That word sounds familiar. As noted above, the Talmudic system is most dogmatic and does not allow any relaxation of its rules,

even when they are reduced to absurdity by a change in circumstances. And in the case of the Talmud, contrary to that of the Bible, the literal sense of the text is binding, and one is not allowed to interpret it away. But in the period of classical Judaism, various Talmudic laws became untenable for the Jewish ruling class, the rabbis, and the rich. One day, if I feel really, really motivated, I'll read 200 years together. See you guys. And you'll see. Wendy mentions the rabbis and the rich, just how heinous they were.

So not only non-Jews, but to fellow Jews in the palest settlement in Russia. In the interest of these ruling classes, a method of systematic deception was devised for keeping the letter of the law while violating its spirit and intention. It was this hypocritical system of dispensations, head at him, which, in my view, was the most important cause of the debasement of Jews. Judaism in its classical epoch. The second cause was Jewish mysticism, which, however, operated for a much shorter period of time. Again, some examples are needed to illustrate how the system works. Number one, the taking of interest. The Talmud strictly forbids a Jew on pain of severe punishment to take interest on a loan made to another Jew. Parenthesis, according to a majority of Talmudic authorities, it is a religious duty to take as much interest as possible, on a loan made to a Gentile.

Very detailed rules forbid even the most far-fetched forms in which a Jewish lender might benefit from a Jewish debtor. All Jewish accomplices to such an illicit transaction, including the scribe and the witnesses, are branded by the Talmud as infamous persons disqualified from testifying in court, because by participating in such an act, a Jew as good as declared, that he has no part in the God of Israel. It is evident that this law is well suited to the needs of Jewish peasants or artisans or of small Jewish communities who use their money for lending to non-Jews. But the situation was very different in East Europe, mainly in Poland, by the 16th century.

There was a relatively big Jewish community which constituted the majority of many in many towns. The peasants subjected to strict serfdom, not far removed from slavery, were hardly in a position to borrow at all, while lending to the nobility was the business of the few very rich Jews. Many Jews were doing business with each other. In these circumstances, the following arrangement called, I'm going to try this one, Heteroska, business dispensation, was devised for an interest-bearing loan between Jews, which does not violate the letter of the law, because formally it is not a loan at all. The lender invests money in the business of the borrower,

stipulating two conditions. First, that the borrower will pay the lender at an agreed future date a stated sum of money. In reality, the interest in the loan, as the lender's share in the profits. Secondly, that the borrower will be presumed to have some sufficient profit to give the lender his share unless a claim to the contrary is corroborated

by the testimony of the town's rabbi or rabbinical judge, etc., who, by arrangement, refuses to testify in such cases. In practice, all that is required to take is to take a text of this dispensation, written in Aramaic and entirely incomprehensible to the great majority, and put it on a wall of the room where the transaction is made. The copy of this text is displayed in all branches of Israeli banks. This is in parentheses. He says, in practice, all that is required is to take a text of this dispensation, written in

Aramaic and entirely incomprehensible to the great majority, and put it on a wall of the room where the transaction is made, parentheses. A copy of this text is displayed in all branches of Israeli banks, or even to keep it in a chest, and the interest-bearing loan between Jews becomes perfect. legally legal and blameless. Are you confused? You're supposed to be. Two, the sabbatical year. According to Tom Mudak law based on Leviticus 25, Jewish-owned land in Palestine must be left fallow every seventh sabbatical year when all agricultural work, including harvesting on such land, is forbidden. There is ample evidence that this law was rigorously observed for about 1,000 years from

the 5th century BC till the disappearance of Jewish agriculture in Palestine. Later, when there was no occasion to apply the law in practice, it was kept theoretically intact. However, in the 1880s, with the establishment of the first Jewish agricultural colonies in Palestine, it became a matter of practical concern. Rabbis sympathetic to the settlers helpfully devised a dispensation, which was later perfected by their successors in the religious Zionist parties and has become an established Israeli practice. This is how it works. Shortly before a sabbatical year, the Israeli Minister of Internal Affairs gives the chief rabbi a document,

making him the legal owner of all Israeli land, both private and public. Armed with this paper, the chief rabbi goes to a non-Jew and sells him all the land of Israel, and since 1967, the occupied territories. for a nominal sum. A separate document stipulates that the buyer will resell the land back after the year is over, and this transaction is repeated every seven years, usually with the same buyer. Non-Zionist rabbis do not recognize the validity of this dispensation, claiming correctly that since religious law forbids Jews to sell land in Palestine to Gentiles,

the whole transaction is based on a sin and hence null and void. The Zionist rabbis reply, however, that which is forbidden is a real sale, not a fictitious one. Three, milking on the Sabbath. This has been forbidden in post-Talmudic times through the process of increasing religious severity mentioned above. The ban could easily be kept in the diaspora since Jews who had cows of their own were usually rich enough to have non-Jewish servants who could be ordered using one of the subterfuges to. described below to do the milking. The early Jewish colonists in Palestine employed Arabs for this and other purposes, but with the forcible imposition of the Zionist policies of exclusive Jewish labor, there was need for a dispensation. This was particularly important before the introduction

of mechanized milking in the late 1950s. Here, too, there was a difference between Zionist and non-Zionist rabbis. According to the former, the forbidden milking becomes permitted, provided the milk is not white but dyed blue. This blue Saturday milk is then used exclusively for making cheese, and the dye is washed off into the way. The way. Non-Zionist rabbis have devised a much subtler scheme, which I personally witnessed operating in a religious cabots in 1952. He's saying that, not me. They discovered an old provision which allows the udders of a cow to be emptied on the Sabbath, purely for relieving the suffering caused to the animal by bloated udders, and on the strict condition that the milk runs to waste on the ground.

Now, this is what is actually done. On Saturday morning, a pious kibbutznik goes to the cow shed and places pails under the cows. There is no ban on such work in the whole of the Talmudic literature. He then goes to the synagogue to pray. Then comes his colleague, whose honest intention is to relieve the animal's pain and let their milk run into the floor. But if by chance a pail happens to be standing there, is he under any obligation to remove it? Of course not. He simply ignores the pails, fulfills his mission of mercy, and goes to the synagogue. Finally, a third pious colleague goes into the cow shed and discovers, to his great surprise, the pails full of milk. So he puts them in cold storage and follows his comrades to the synagogue. Now all is well, and there's no need to waste money on

blue dye. Four, mixed crops. Similar dispensations were issued by Zionist rabbis and respected the ban, based on Leviticus 1919, against sowing two different species of crop in the same field. Modern agronomy has, however, shown that in some cases, especially in growing fodder, mixed sewing is the most profitable. The rabbis invented a dispensation according to which one man sows to field lengthwise with one kind of seed, and latter that day his comrade, who does not know about the former, sows another kind of seed crosswise. However, this method was felt to be too wasteful of labor, and a better one was devised. One man makes a heap of one kind of seed in a public place and carefully covers it with a sack or piece of board. The second kind of seed is then

put on top of the cover. Later, another man comes and exclaims in front of witnesses, I need this sack and removes it so that the seeds mix naturally. Finally, a third man comes along and is told, take this and sow the field, which he proceeds to do. Five, leaven substances must not be eaten or even kept in the possession of a Jew during the seven or outside of Palestine, eight, days of Passover. The concept leavened substances was continually brought in the aversion to so much as seeing them during the festival approach to stay.

area. They include all kinds of flour and even ungrounded grain. In the original Talmudic society, this was bearable because bread, leavened or not, was usually baked once a week. A peasant family would use the last of the previous year's grain to bake unleavened bread for the festival, which ushers in the new harvest season. However, in the conditions of the post-Talmetic European In Jewry, the obvious, the observance was very hard on a middle-class Jewish family, and even more so on a corn merchant. A dispensation was therefore devised by which all these substances are sold in a fictitious sale to a Gentile before the festival and brought back and bought back automatically after it. The one thing that must be done is to lock up the taboo substances for the duration of the festival. In Israel, this fictitious sale has been made more efficient.

Religious Jews saw their leaven substances to their local rabbis, who in turn sell them to the chief rabbis, the latter sell them to a Gentile, and by a special dispensation, the sale is presumed to include also the leaven substances of non-practicing Jews. Six. Sabbath goi. Perhaps the most developed dispensations concerned the goy of Gentile of Sabbath. As mentioned above, the range of tasks ban on the Sabbath has widened continually. But the range of tasks that must be carried out or supervised to satisfy needs or to increase comfort also keeps widening. This is particularly true in modern times, but the effect of technological change began to be felt long ago. The ban against grinding on the Sabbath was a relatively light matter for a Jewish peasant or artisan, say in the second century Palestine, who used to hand.

handmill for domestic purposes. It was quite a different matter for a tenant of a watermill or windmill, one of the most common Jewish occupations in Eastern Europe. But even such a simple human problem as the wish to have a hot cup of tea on a Saturday afternoon becomes much greater with a tempting samovar used regularly on weekdays standing in the room. These are just two examples out of a large number of so-called problems of Sabbath observance, and one can state with certainty that for a community composed exclusively of Orthodox Jews, they were quite insoluble, at least during the last eight or ten centuries, without the help of non-Jews. This is even more true today in the Jewish state because many public services such as water,

gas, and electricity fall into this category. Classical Judaism could not exist even for a whole week, without using some non-Jews. But without special dispensations, there is a great obstacle employing non-Jews to do these Saturday jobs. For Talmudic regulations forbid Jews to ask a Gentile to do on the Sabbath any work which they themselves are banned from doing. I shall describe two of the many types of dispensation used for such purposes. First, there is the method of hinting,

which depends on the casuistic logic according to which a, sinful demand becomes blameless, if it is phrased slyly. As a rule, the hint must be obscure, but in cases of extreme need, a clear hint is allowed. For example, in a recent booklet on religious observance for use of Israeli soldiers, the latter are taught how to talk to Arab workers employed by the army as Sabbath goyem. In urgent cases, such as when it is very cold and a fire must be lit, or when light is needed for religious service, a pious Jewish soldier may use a clear hint until the Arab, it is cold or dark here. But normally an obscure hint must suffice.

For example, it would be more pleasant if it were warmer here. This method of hinting is particularly repulsive and degrading in as much as it is normally used on non-Jews, who, due to their poverty or subordinate social position, are wholly in the power of their Jewish employer. A Gentile servant or employee of the Israeli army who does not train himself to interpret obscure hints as orders will be piteously dismissed. Pitylessly dismissed. The second method is used in case where what the Gentile is required to do on Saturday is not an occasional task or personal service, which can be hinted at as need rises, but a routine or regular job without constant Jewish supervision. According to this method,

called implicit inclusion of the Sabbath among weekdays, the Gentile is hired for the whole week or year without the Sabbath being so much as mentioned in the contract. But in reality, workers only performed on the Sabbath. This method was used in the past in hiring a Gentile to put out the candles in the synagogue after the Sabbath Eve prayer, rather than wastefully allowing them to burn out. Modern Israeli examples are regulating the water supply or watching over water reservoirs on Saturday. A similar idea is used also in the case of Jews, but for a different end. Jews are forbidden to receive any payment for work done on the Sabbath, even if the work itself is permitted. The chief example here concerns the sacred professions, the rabbi or Talmudic scholar,

who preaches or teaches on the Sabbath, the cancer who sings only on Saturdays and other holy days on which similar bands apply, the sexton and similar officials. In Talmudic times, and in some countries, even several centuries after, such jobs were unpaid. But later, when they became salaried positions, the dispensation of implicit inclusion was used, and they were hired on a monthly or yearly basis. In the case of rabbis and Talmudic scholars, the problem is particularly complicated because the Talmud forbids them to receive any payments for preaching, teaching, or studying Talmudic matters, even on weekends. For them, an additional dispensation stipulates that their salary is really not a salary at all, but compensation for idleness. As a combined result of these two fictions, what is in reality payment for work done mainly or even solely on the Sabbath is transmogrified into payment for being idle on weekdays.

new heading social aspects of dispensations two social features of these and many similar practices deserve special mention first a dominant feature of the system of dispensations and of classical judez and as much as it is based on them is deception deception primarily of god if this word can be used for an imaginary being so easily deceived by the rabbis who consider themselves cleverer than him imagine people with power who can rain down bombs, start wars, run your banking, who think that they're tricking God. Even if you don't believe in God, just consider that. No greater contrast can be conceived than that between the God of the Bible, particularly of the greater prophets, and of the God of classical Judaism. The latter is more like the early Roman Jupiter,

who was likewise bamboozled by his worshippers or the gods described in Frazier's golden bow. From the ethical point of view, classical Judaism represents a process of degeneration, which is still going on. And this degeneration into a tribal collective of empty rituals and magic superstitions has very important social and political consequences. For it must be remembered that it is precisely the superstitions of classical Judaism, which have the greatest hold on the Jewish masses, rather than those parts of the Bible or even the Talmud, which are of real religious or ethical value. The same can be observed also in other religions which are now undergoing revival. What is properly regarded as the most holy and solemn occasion of the Jewish liturgical year, attended even by many non-Jews who are otherwise far from religion, is the Kolnidri prayer

on the eve of Yom Kippur, a chanting of a particularly absurd and deceptive. dispensation by which all private vows made to God in the following year are declared in advance to be null and void. That sounds great, right? Like all, any kind of prayer, you can just say one prayer one day of the year and then anything you vow to God. And think about it, if your vows to God are made null and void, if you're willing to lie to God and you're willing to go behind his back, what are you going to do to your fellow man? Or in the area of personal religion, the goddess prayer set on days of mourning by sons for their parents in order to elevate their departed souls to paradise, a recitation of an Aramaic text incomprehensible to the great majority. Quite oblivious to popular regard given to these, the most superstitious parts of the,

the Jewish religion is not even to its better parts. Together with the deception of God goes to the deception of other Jews, mainly in the interest of the Jewish ruling class. It is characteristic that no dispensations were allowed in the specific interest of the Jewish poor. For example, Jews who were starving, but not actually on the point of death, were never allowed by their rabbis, who did not often go hungry themselves, to eat any sort of forbidden food, though kosher food is usually more expensive. The second dominant feature of the dispensations is that they are in large part obviously motivated by the spirit of profit. And it is this combination of hypocrisy and the profit motive which increasingly dominated classical Judaism. In Israel, where the process goes on, this is dimly

perceived by popular opinion despite all the official brainwashing promoted by the education system and the media. The religious establishment, the rabbis and the religious parties, and by association, to some extent, the Orthodox community as a whole, are quite unpopular in Israel. One of the most important reasons for this is precisely their reputation for duplicity and venality. Of course, popular opinion, which may often be prejudice, is not the same thing as social analysis. But in this particular case, it is actually true that the Jewish religious establishment does have a strong tendency to chicanery and graft due to the corrupting influence of the Orthodox Jewish religion. Because in general, social life, religion is only one of the social influences. Its effects on the mass of believers is not nearly so great

as on the rabbis and leaders of the religious parties. Those religious Jews and Israel, who are honest, as the majority of them undoubtedly are, are so not because of the influence of their religion and rabbis, but in spite of it. On the other hand, in those few areas of public life in Israel, which are wholly dominated by religious circles, the level of chicanery, venality, and corruption is notorious, far surpassing the average level tolerated by general non-religious Israeli society. In Chapter 4, we shall see how the dominance of the prophet motive in classical Judaism is connected with the structure of Jewish society and its articulation with the general society

in the midst of which Jews lived in the classical period. Here I merely want to observe that the prophet motive is not characteristic of Judaism in all periods of its history. Only the Platonist confusion which seeks for the metaphysical, timeless essence of Judaism instead of looking at the historical changes in Jewish society has obscured this fact. And this confusion has been greatly encouraged by Zionism and its reliance on historical rights, a historically derived from the Bible. Thus, apologists of Judaism claim, quite correctly, that the Bible is hostile to the prophet motive while the Talmud is indifferent to it.

But this was caused by the very different social conditions in which they were composed. As was pointed out above, the Talmud was composed in two well-defined areas, in a period when the Jews living there constituted a society based on agriculture and consisting mainly of peasants, very different indeed from the society of classical Judaism. In Chapter 5, we shall deal in detail with the hostile attitudes and deceptions practiced by classical Judaism against non-Jews. But more importantly, as a social feature, is the profit-motivated deception practiced by rich Jews against poor fellow Jews, such as the dispensation concerning interest on loans. Here I must say, in spite of my oppositions of Marxism, both in philosophy and as a social theory, that Marx was quite right, when in his two articles about Judaism, he characterized it as dominated by Protestantism. profit-seeking, provided this is limited to Judaism as he knew it, that is, it's a classical

Judaism which in his youth had already entered the period of its dissolution. True, he stated this arbitrarily, ahistorically, and without proof. Obviously, he came to his conclusion by intuition, but his intuition in this case, and with the proper historical limitation, was right. All right. I hope you're enjoying this. I hope you're getting something out of it. Hope you're learning a lot. I remember the first time I read this book I did. And, yeah, you'll notice there were ads during this. If you go to Freemambi On The Wall.com forward slash support,

there's five ways you can support me there. My website right there, substack, gum road, subscribe to our Patreon. You get the episodes early and ad-free. And you can even get access to the telegram group, which is awesome. All right. until part four. Take care. Thanks. Bye.