On Being Jewish - from those who aren't

Motek

Tue, Dec 27 2005, 9:25 am

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most Remarkable race which has appeared in the world."
-- Winston Churchill

"The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions." -Leo Tolstoy

"It was in vain that we locked them up for several hundred years behind the walls of the Ghetto. No sooner were their prison gates unbarred than they easily caught up with us, even on those paths which we opened up without their aid." Leroy Beaulieu, French publicist, 1842

"The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside - our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews." -- Thomas Cahill, Irish Author

"One of the gifts of the Jewish culture to Christianity is that it has taught Christians to think like Jews, and any modern man who has not learned to think as though he were a Jew can hardly be said to have learned to think at all." -- William Rees-Mogg, former Editor-in-Chief for The Times of London and a member of the House of Lords

"It is certain that in certain parts of the world we can see a peculiar people, separated from the other peoples of he world and this is called the Jewish people.... This people is not only of remarkable antiquity but has also lasted for a singular long time... For where as the people of Greece and Italy, of Sparta, Athens and Rome and others who came so much later have perished so long ago, these still exist, despite the efforts of so many powerful kings who have tried a hundred times to wipe them out, as their historians testify, and as can easily be judged by the natural order of things over such a long spell of years. They have always been preserved, however, and their preservation was foretold... My encounter with this people amazes me..." -- Blaise Pascal, French Mathematician

"The Jewish vision became the prototype for many similar grand designs for humanity, both divine and man made. The Jews, therefore, stand at the centre of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose." --Paul Johnson, American Historian

"As long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration as to the people who had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest." --Matthew Arnold, British poet and critic

Motek

Tue, Dec 27 2005, 9:26 am

"Indeed it is difficult for all other nations of the world to live in the presence of the Jews. It is irritating and most uncomfortable. The Jews embarrass the world as they have done things which are beyond the imaginable. They have become moral strangers since the day their
forefather, Abraham, introduced the world to high ethical standards and to the fear of Heaven. They brought the world the Ten Commandments which many nations prefer to defy. They violated the rules of history by staying alive, totally at odds with common sense and historical evidence. They outlived all their former enemies, including vast empires such as the Romans and the Greeks. They angered the world with their return to their homeland after 2000 years of exile and after the murder of six million of their brothers and sisters.

They aggravated mankind by building, in the wink of an eye, a democratic State which others were not able to create in even hundreds of years. They built living monuments such as the duty to be holy and the privilege to serve one's fellow men.

They had their hands in every human progressive endeavor, whether in science, medicine, psychology or any other discipline, while totally out of proportion to their actual numbers. They gave the world the Bible and even their "savior."

Jews taught the world not to accept the world as it is, but to transform it, yet only a few nations wanted to listen.
Moreover, the Jews introduced the world to one God, yet only a minority wanted to draw the moral consequences. So the nations of the world realize that they would have been lost without the Jews. And while their subconscious tries to remind them of how much of Western civilization is framed in terms of concepts first articulated by the Jews, they do anything to suppress it.

They deny that Jews remind them of a higher purpose of life and the need to be honorable, and do anything to escape its consequences. It is simply too much to handle for them, too embarrassing to admit, and above all too difficult to live by.

So the nations of the world decided once again to go out of their way in order to find a stick to hit the Jews. The goal: to prove that Jews are as immoral and guilty of massacre and genocide as some of they themselves are.

All this in order to hide and justify their own failure to even protest when six million Jews were brought to the slaughterhouses of Auschwitz and Dachau; so as to wipe out the moral conscience of which the Jews remind them, and they found a stick.

Nothing could be more gratifying for them than to find the Jews into a struggle with another people (who are completely terrorized by their own leaders) against whom the Jews, against their best wishes, have to defend themselves in order to survive. With great satisfaction, the world allows and initiates the rewriting of history so as to fuel the rage of yet another people against the Jews. This in spite of the fact that the nations understand very well that peace between the parties could have come a long time ago, if only the Jews would have had a fair chance.

Instead, they happily jumped on the wagon of hate so as to justify their jealousy of the Jews and their incompetence to deal with their own moral issues. When Jews look at the bizarre play, taking place in The Hague, they can only smile as this artificial game once more proves how the world paradoxically admits the Jews uniqueness. It is in their need to undermine the Jews that they actually raise them.

The study of history of Europe during the past centuries teaches us one uniform lesson: That the nations which received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that the nations that have tortured and oppressed them have written out their own curse." --Olive Schreiner, South African novelist and social activist

"If there is any honour in all the world that I should like, it would be to be an honorary Jewish citizen." -A.L. Rowse, authority on Shakespeare and Elizabethan England

p.s. I have not verified any of these quotes

Motek

Mon, Jul 23 2007, 3:27 pm

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.

His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendour; then faded to dream-stuff and passed away: the Greeks and the Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

The above was written by Mark Twain and first published in HARPER'S magazine, September 1887.

Motek

Mon, Jul 23 2007, 3:33 pm

By Leo Tolstoy

What is a Jew? This question is not at all as odd as it seems. Let us see what kind of peculiar creature the Jew is, which all the rulers and all the nations have together and separately abused and molested, oppressed and persecuted, trampled and butchered, burned and hanged – and in spite of all this yet alive.

What is a Jew who has never allowed himself to be led astray by all the earthy possessions which his oppressors and persecutors constantly offered in order that he should change his faith and forsake his own Jewish religion?

The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from Heaven the everlasting fire and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring and fountain of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions.

The Jew is the pioneer of liberty. Even in those olden days, when the people where divided into but two distinct classes, slaves and masters – even so long ago had a law of Moses prohibited the practice of keeping a person in bondage for more than six years.

This Jew is the pioneer of civilization. Ignorance was condemned in olden Palestine even more than it is today in civilized Europe. Moreover, in those wild and barbarous days, when neither the life nor death of anyone counted for anything at all, Rabbi Akiva did not refrain from expressing him openly against capital punishment, a practice which is recognized today as a highly civilized way of punishment.

The Jew is the emblem of civil and religious toleration. “Love the stranger and the sojourner”. Moses commands, “Because you have been strangers in the land of Egypt”. And this was said in those remote and savage times when the principal ambition of the races and nations consisted in crushing and enslaving one another. As concerns religious toleration, the Jewish faith is not only far from the missionary spirit of converting people of other denominations, but on the contrary the Talmud commands the rabbis to inform and explain to everyone who willingly comes to accept the Jewish religion, all the difficulties involved in its acceptance, and to point out to the would-be proselyte that the righteous of all nations have a share in immortality.

Of such a lofty and ideal religious toleration not even the moralists of the present day can boast.

The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He whom neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he whom neither fire nor sword nor inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the Earth.

He who was the first to produce the oracles of G-d. He who has been for so long the guardian of prophecy, and who transmitted it to the rest of the world – such a Nation cannot be destroyed.

The Jew is as everlasting as is eternity itself.

Motek

Mon, Jul 23 2007, 3:40 pm

"The Jews have played an all-important role in history. They are pre-eminently an historical people and their destiny reflects the indestructibility of the divine decrees. Their destiny is too imbued with the "metaphysical" to be explained either in material or positive historical terms.

I remember how the materialist interpretation of history, when I attempted in my youth to verify it by applying it to the destinies of peoples, broke down in the case of the Jew, where destiny seemed absolutely inexplicable from the materialistic standpoint. And, indeed, according to the materialistic and positivist criterion, this people ought long ago to have perished.

Its survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by a special predetermination, transcending the processes of adaptation expounded by the materialistic interpretation of history.

The survival of the Jews, their resistance to destruction, their endurance under absolutely peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history; all these point to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny...

The historical not only represented man's external relations, but that it might also reveal the very noumenon and essence of his being. The peculiarity of Jewish destiny consists in its incommensurability with either the pre-Christian or the Christian era. Scientific criticism applied to traditional Biblical history can neither discredit the universal role played by the Jews nor offer a satisfactory explanation of their mysterious destiny. Nor does this criticism grapple with the absolutely peculiar tie existing between the Jews and the 'historical,' and their extraordinarily intense feeling for history."

- The Meaning of History by Professor Nicholai Berdysev
Moscow Academy - London 1935, pp. 86-7

Motek

Sun, Sep 16 2007, 12:58 pm

Modern-day Czech historian, E. M. Coran writes:

"I shall attempt to extemporize upon the ordeals of a people, upon its history, which baffles history, upon its fate, which seems to derive from a supernatural logic, in which the unheard-of mingles with the obvious, miracle with necessity. Some call it a race, others a nation, some a tribe.

It prefigures the universal Diaspora: its past summarizes our future. The more closely we scrutinize our tomorrow, the closer we come to and flee this people: all of us tremble at the obligation to resemble it someday ... 'Soon you will be following in our footsteps,' this nation seems to tell us ...

In sum, though attached to this world, they do not belong to it: there is something non-terrestrial in their passage on earth ..."

Motek

Sun, Sep 16 2007, 12:59 pm

John Adams, 2nd US president, wrote the following in response to the argument that Jews should not be given equal rights:

"I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I will still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations ... The Jews propagated to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the greatest essential principle of all morality and, consequently, of all civilization.

"How is it possible [that he-French philospher Voltaire] should represent the Hebrews in such a contemptible light? They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a Bauble in comparison of the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more, and more happily, than any other nation ancient or modern."

mimivan

Sun, Sep 16 2007, 11:00 pm

From the wikipedia article on Jenny Churchill:

Quote:

Moshe Kohn, in an article in The Jerusalem Post on 18 January 1993, alleged that the Jerome family name was originally Jacobson, and that Jennie's ethnic ancestry was, in fact, Jewish, at least on her father's side.

Of course 1) this does not make her Jewish, if on her father's side and 2) If true, the family must have guarded this secret very assiduously since this is the only source I could find for this, and the Wikipedia article on Leonard Jerome makes no mention of it.

Of course Jewwatch, y'mach shemim, mentions it, but I wasn't using their "evidence| Rolling Eyes

Interesting the Herald Tribune reports that Winston Churchill also had some not so pleasant things to say about Jews:

Quote:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/11/news/winston.php

(typical behavior for those who are trying to hide Jewish ancestry... and of course for non jews who have no Jewish ancestry)

Motek

Tue, Sep 18 2007, 4:01 pm

zeldy wrote:

Why do you consider what some non jews say about Jews important?

These aren't comments in which non jews say: Jews are really smart and funny too. They make good neighbors.

The comments are significant, I think, because of the observations they make, things like:

1) the Jews are still around when other nations are not, and that's incredible and was foretold

2) the best of our civilization comes from the Jewish people

3) the Jews are the source of all religion

4) the nations who welcomed the Jews prospered and those who didn't, did not prosper

These are not "stam" compliments but the wonder expressed by non-Jews about a G-dly people. For non-religious Jews, it's very powerful to see how remarkable a people we are and that no, we are not a nation like all others. For religious Jews, it's interesting and even inspiring to be reminded of the truths we know. Although we believe statements like these from our own sources, the fact that non jews corroborate them can be a chizuk to us. No, we don't go to non jews for chizuk, generally, but I don't see a problem in having our eyes opened by statements of non jews. Some of these comments are ideas we may never even have thought about. A number of these statements are quoted in a book by Rabbi Gershon Weiss, a rosh yeshiva in Staten Island.

Motek

Sun, Sep 23 2007, 2:14 pm

Historian Paul Johnson

“All the great conceptual discoveries of the intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they have been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human, of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person, of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews, it might have been a much emptier place.

"Above all, the Jews taught us how to rationalize the unknown. The result was monotheism, and the three great religions, which profess it. It is almost beyond our capacity to imagine how the world would have fared if the Jews had never emerged.

... the Jewish society was appointed to be a pilot project for the entire human race."

Motek

Sun, Sep 23 2007, 2:15 pm

For the Jewish impact on humanity has been protean. In antiquity they were the great innovators in religion and morals. In the Dark Ages and early medieval Europe they were still an advanced people transmitting scarce knowledge and technology. Gradually they were pushed from the van and fell behind, by the end of the eighteenth century, they were seen as a bedraggled and obscurantist rearguard in the march of civilized humanity. But then came an astonishing second burst of creativity. Breaking out of the ghettos, they once more transformed human thinking, this time in the secular sphere. Much of the mental furniture of the modern world too is of Jewish fabrication."

- Paul Johnson
(Christian historian, author of A History of the Jews and A History of Christianity pg. 585-6