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Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Who First Started Insulting Jews With "Non Messianic" to call all believing in Judaism?
Does anyone know who first coined the antisemitic and inflammatory insult displaying entitlement to remove the messianic belief from Judaism by calling all who adhere to Judaism, adherents of some nonexistent entity called "Non Messianic Judaism"?
I’m curious if the person who coined this term would openly admit to being the author of such a display of arrogant entitlement to try to negate a thousands of years old principle of Judaism.
I have only seen this term used by members of a particular group who follow the scriptures of a DIFFERENT religion than Judaism (New Testament) but claim to be Jews ("Messianic Jews")despite having no connection to the Jewish people according to the laws of the Jewish people (Torah). Their messianic belief isn't that of Judaism or the Jewish Bible.
A pretty new attempt that's increasing in use is to justify calling Jesus their “Jewish” Messiah, then openly insult all believers of the religion of Judaism by referring to Judaism as “Non Messianic”. They use this term to apply to Jewish believers (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal) in attempt to negate God’s prophetic vision of the Davidic Messiah found within the Tanakh for Jews. In discussions with Jews around the world, and as evidenced by many questions, answers and comments in response to this insult being applied to Jews in Yahoo Answers, no one I’ve encountered appears to have seen this insult before a little less than a decade ago, so I am curious who began it, and where it was first used.
The term itself reads very clearly as attempt to display entitlement to REMOVE from Judaism one of the very principles OF Judaism. “Non” means without. Messianic refers to a belief in the concept of a Messiah. Messiah is the English translation of the Hebrew word mosiach, meaning an anointed ruler. The prophetic vision of the Davidic messiah of the Jewish Bible is that an anointed ruler descended from the house of David will rule from Israel with humility, mercy and justice and usher in world peace, universal brotherhood and universal knowledge and understanding of God.
It is clearly wrong to call Judaism or any Jewish believer “Non Messianic”. A Jew who is atheist or secular could perhaps be labeled this if they do not believe the principles of the faith of Judaism. The Christian Bible's redefined concept of Messiah is "non Jewish" or Non Torah compliant. Jews don't claim Christians have no messianic belief because their concept is incompatible with that of the Torah and Judaism. It is a DIFFERENT messianic belief. There is no separate movement or branch or sect of Judaism that uses a name of Messianic Judaism because all of Judaism remains messianic in belief. There is as little need to name a separate movement of Judaism monotheistic Judaism as all of Judaism believes that God does not incarnate into human form as the Torah states.
Judaism remains messianic and retains the Jewish Bible’s concept of the Davidic messiah. For adherents of another religion's scriptures to display entitlement to both hijack the name of the Jewish covenant nation and purport to negate the messianic belief of Judaism is arogant and insulting.
PLEASE do not answer or contact me with attempts to try to justify the USE of this insult. Answers that attempt to *justify hateful insults* will be appropriately reported as hate speech.
I do not invite inflammatory speech. I am asking for a very specific bit of information while I’m explaining to any non Jews who stumble upon this who may not have read Jewish forums or q and a forums asking about Judaism what has been going on in the past few years in escalation of antisemitic attacks upon Jews and Jewish communities.
***I am asking for informational/educational purposes if anyone knows exactly who it was that first coined the inflammatory insult of “Non-Messianic” to refer to all of Judaism. ***
In order to counter hate one must be informed of the methods employed to spread the irrational bigotries. As in ages past, terms and concepts foreign to Judaism were created to incite hate to Jews and specifically used concepts that were attempts to REMOVE from Jews, the laws that define us as a covenant nation people and that attempt to remove specific beliefs from Judaism or claim we do and believe things we don’t to incite hate.
Removing laws of self-determination was done to render the Jews impotent as a people, as were the various dispersions and exiles of Jews in history. Claiming Jews believe and do things we don’t justified those persecutions.
The notion of Jews as a race rather than membership determined by Jewish law, and the notion that “chosen people” implied superiority are two that are still spread on a daily basis
Therefore, I am NOT asking for anyone to justify any of those notions used to negate Judaism and the Jewish people. There IS no rational, logical justification to display entitlement to claim authority to remove a principle of faith/belief with an insulting term. I want to know who coined it to try to understand the methods of spreading antisemitism and to educate against bigotry.
The same principle applies for ANY religion or any people. There is no justification to create terms of entitlement to negate the core doctrines or histories for others.
The 13 Principles of Judaism compiled in a list by Maimonides existed since the receiving of the Torah and still exists intact today for Judaism. See the following for explanation of them
http://www.jewfaq.org/beliefs.htm
Jews are increasingly being insulted with the deceptive term “Non-Messianic” to address us. It is clearly insulting and an ad hominem attack to address individuals who have clearly demonstrated belief in Judaism as being “Non Messianic Jews”! Daily there appear questions and answers and more commonly, harassment and personal attacks under closed questions that insult Jews with this term. There are many dozens of instances of Jews being TOLD we are Non Messianic when the individual clearly knows better, or of others answering questions about Judaism with doctrines from the New Testament (texts outside of and antithetical to Judaism) in lieu of Tanakh and Judaism. The NT adherent will claim that all “other” Jews are “non Messianic” to justify labeling themselves Jews in violation of Jewish law, call Jesus the messiah of Judaism (as Christians believe), and justify their missionary attempts to proselytize to and insult Jews and Judaism for explaining actual Judaism.
Despite having first asked people to refrain from insulting Jews with this term and explaining to those who may have first adopted it in ignorance of Judaism that Judaism NEVER Abandoned belief in God's prophecies of the messianic age as detailed in the Jewish Bible’s messianic prophecies and that the term is nonsensical at best to apply to any believing Jew in the world, the use of the term has escalated and in direct response to Jewish objections from Jews around the world. The application of this insult is now most often accompanied by other egregiously antisemitic insults. It is very clear to all Jews I’ve discussed this with from every movement and from Jews in a dozen countries, that its use is a purposeful attempt to inflame and insult Jews and Judaism and misinforms people that Judaism doesn’t have a messianic belief.
It’s like calling someone of another religion who worships a different god, as “godless”. (Oops, these SAME people have done THAT, too when Jews say that Jesus/Yeshua is not God)
I now wonder how soon it will be before they come up with even more insulting terms. Will they soon create a new moniker to refer to all of Judaism as godless because we don’t believe Yeshua/Jesus was god incarnate? Will they then likewise try to justify this new term to claim that because we also didn’t abandon Torah's concept of the nature of God to adopt their religion’s scriptures redefined concept of the nature of God, that we don’t have belief in God either? Judaism is both messianic and monotheistic. No matter the different movements’ disagreements of how to honor the eternal law, the core of the eternal covenant is common to all of Judaism. The “gospels” of the New Testament (even if translated into Hebrew) are not scriptures of Judaism.
Judaism worships the monotheistic Creator and believing Jews will never permit this to be altered within Judaism, and for this reason...those who insist on redefining and negating Judaism but feel entitled to take on the name and identity of the Jewish people also appear to feel entitled to now tell us because we have refused to abandon the prophecy of the Davidic messiah and messianic age found within Judaism’s own Holy Scriptures of the Tanakh in lieu of the REDEFINITION of the “New Testament” that we don’t have a messianic belief.
If that isn’t insulting, what is?
As I’ve detailed before in other writings, it clearly isn’t hate or bigotry to note the differences between the doctrines of different religions as all comparative religion courses require and as is necessary to learn about what people of the world believe from their own perspectives. So when the world’s Jews repeat for the umpteenth time as we have for centuries, that the Christian religion’s Old and New Testaments and their redefined nature of God and nature and job of the Davidic Messiah are outside of an antithetical to Torah and Judaism we aren’t displaying hate to their right to believe different things in their very different religion.
*The Jewish people still refuse to accept that any other religion has a right to *remove any of the the principles of the faith of Judaism from the Jewish people or from our Holy Scriptures*.
If you don’t choose to believe in the laws and ethical precepts of Judaism....don’t believe them. You don't have entitlement to negate them for adherents of Judaism.
Insulting Judaism to call it "non Messianic" creates an unsolvable dilemma for them when they use that term to insult Judaism while claiming Jewish identity. They use it in attempt to NEGATE one of the principles of the religion of Judaism with a term that means messianic belief is NON existent in Judaism, and then try to replace it with the REDEFINED and Torah violating concept from the New Testament calling *it* "Messianic Judaism" when their messiah belief isn't from Judaism or the Jewish Bible.
If Judaism didn't have a belief in God's prophetic vision of the Davidic Messiah in the *eternal* covenant then the creators of their "NEW" covenant replacement theology wouldn't have had it to morph from an anointed king who brings universal brotherhood, peace and worship of God into an incarnate sacrifice for sin. Unwittingly, by the evangelical Christians' creating the purposely inulting term "non Messianic" to negate the religion of Judaism that still retains the belief in what God promised Israel..despite themselves, they've exposed with that one insult term alone, that their New Testament isn't of the eternal covenant of Torah/Judaism at all!
To claim entitlement to negate for another people defining aspects of their doctrine that makes them a people reveals contempt for them, not vice versa. And if there is anything that can be objectively shown about Judaism in the existence of Jewish history is that while empires have come and gone, the refusal of the Jewish people to alter or abandon God’s Torah has kept us alive as a people and shall continue to do so.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Thoughts on Cultural and Religious Identity Theft
Avoid this if you don't like armchair philosphy :) AND I preface this with warning it is long-winded rambling stream of consciousness thoughts combined with other things I've even written elsewhere. I've had this in DRAFT form unpublished for more than a year from the time I wrote what is below and only came upon it again today because of a new post I'd placed on a topic that touches on a little of this one, too. See http://mamaspajamaparty.blogspot.com/2012/05/christopher-columbus-and-jews.html
=========================================
This is all about spirituality and self-identity and being true to oneself while respecting other people. Every people and every person has a sense of purpose to existence or strives to find and fulfill one. It's an aspect of human nature. I'm not discussing or debating atheism vs theism or going to promote a pissing contest over whose religion or philosophy is "best", but I will talk about what people believe.
I think a spiritual void in modern civilization appears to lead many people who have have an identity void to feel entitled to appropriate the paths and identities of *others*. Taking on an identity not really your own isn't exclusive to the malicious, the huckster, the con, or the willfully bigoted troublemaker. People can be genuinely fooled in sincere acceptance and trust what they want to hear.
Yet, no matter the origin or motivation, in their so doing, rather than bringing them a sense of real identity and contentment of self-knowledge, it results in strife and escalates conflict.
In modern civilization, not just in the United States, the “melting pot” of so many different and conflicting cultures, histories, religions and philosophies there are many people living in a "spiritual vacuum".
**I specifically refer to people whose spiritual path, or sense of a spiritual nature is devoid of grounding in a sense of "self", a sense of who they are and who their people are and what their people's collective purpose and message is to the world through their own identity.**
I see this in so many different people who flit from one group, one religion, one identity to another. These people without a grounded center, a sense of *self in relation to others* often readily justify latching onto anything that fills that that void. This is how we live in a world where a science fiction author can create an idea that we’re all alien spawn and all women secretly want to abort their babies and all human problems stem from experiences while in your mother’s womb…and hundreds of thousands of other people can be gullible enough to believe it and where celebrities are spokespersons to promote it. ( the late L. Ron Hubbard, his Scientology and the Hollywood celebrities that follow it)
We live in a world where ethnocentrism isn't considered a virtue but it is still widely accepted in the manner it has taken on new forms. Rather than what more overt forms of this thinking inspired in the past, to try to eliminate peoples and religious or spiritual paths once claimed “inferior” by outright mass murder, the socially acceptable methods employed are assimilation, appropriation and identity theft. Fake Indian nations and groups are big business and show utter arrogance in their sense of entitlement to take ritual items, symbols, names and stories and misappropriate them for whatever purpose suited them. The "Black Hebrew Israelites" with their New Testament doctrine and racist ideology and the equally deceptively named "Messianic Judaism" in it's different forms based entirely on which Church is sponsoring them, displays extreme self-righteousness in their entitlement to claim Divine authority to either negate outright, or redefine Torah to mean things antithetical to Torah and Judaism.
All while claiming utmost love for the very people's whose history, spirituality and cultures they've hijacked and misappropriated very offensively.
Too many people who possess this spiritual void and lack of who and what they are are easy prey for the charlatan. They claim no responsibility for bad behavior to do so because they come from a paradigm that teaches "let the buyer beware" and that freedom means that you're free to do anything or say anything you want to say if you can say it is your "freedom of speech" to do so.
A more respectful way to live and actually honor any other group is to stop ignoring the ill effects such entitlement perpetrates. It is not respect that inspires groups or individuals to appropriate the identity, symbols, culture and history of another people and pervert those things by turning them topsy turvy, most often to impose beliefs that are offensive to and violate the laws of the authentic nation people.
The impostor groups also simultaneously declare great love and loyalty to the identity they claim while the words they use to speak of the original people display hatred and insult to the laws, ethics, values and the actual peoples whose identity they hijack.
While I'm only detailing a couple of different groups this applies to more than just the two I'll talk most about here.
The surviving Native American Indian nations and the Jewish covenant nation people have many different groups who openly display bigotry and hostility to the original nation peoples they will claim to *be* while they simultaneously corrupt and distort their histories, traditions, laws, and their different spiritual beliefs.
Other common experiences shared by these very different peoples:
Any individual or group that speaks out *against* the bigoted display of entitlement to hijack and remove the right of a people to maintain their own unadulterated history and laws, is then chastised as the bigot and condemned for their hatred at not being "tolerant". The commonly hurled deflection is to say you hate us because you don't want to give us the freedom to choose what to believe. This is also projection, but it is often effective to their co-religionists.
Sometimes the mention of love of all people or brotherhood is even brought up to deflect the misrepresentation of identity or history or belief.
The Europeans would not have survived on the shores of the foreign continents had it not been for the mercy/civilized assistance of it's native inhabitants who taught them how to find and cultivate foods. This was the case for both North and South America.
From farming methods of the Natives of the northeast that taught Europeans how to rotate crops to ensure soil fertility that when imported to Europe staved off famines that had regularly plagued parts of Europe for thousands of years, to the 5,000 year old weaving techniques of the Peruvians that were incorporated into textile making, to medicines (aspirin among a great many others) to systems of law (Ben Franklin and other "Founding Father's" directly credit) borrowed from the Iroquois, the Europeans were far behind in many areas thought to represent "civilization". Modern farmers still use an adaptation of the Iroquois "three sisters" system of corn, beans and squash that preserve soil fertility.
In a time when the very lives of early European astronomers were being persecuted for their "heresies" to declare the solar system to be heliocentric, the Incas and others had accepted and gone far beyond this in astronomical knowledge.
The native inhabitants of the Americas helped the very peoples who committed genocides. And the effort to eliminate them still exists, although rather than through outright murder, this is continuing through assimilation, discriminatory laws and other forms of socially acceptable bigotries that are even sometimes perpetrated in ignorance.
What can we do if we are genuinely caring for another but wish to learn about them and the wisdom that another people may have to share and not misappropriate?
There is a difference in sharing wisdom and culture with one another in the methods I illustrated and in misappropriating the identity and spiritual wisdom and life of other nations.
As humans who wish to know brotherhood and respect for one another we also hope to learn from one another. We can learn from many different First Nations Peoples..but they key is to let us learn what they want to TEACH us.
ASK rather than take. Some things can't belong to every person. Mixing the customs and religions of the different nations who still survive is not respecting them. Their ways belong to them.
Use that guide for any people, not just the different nations of the Americas.
Those precepts are what I wish people would also do for Jews. The world would be a much nicer place if people behaved in a way that simply respected the rights of peoples to be different from one another in their own purpose and path.
Jews are more open with our beliefs and practices than many Native peoples, but we are also accustomed to seeing this openeness abused in the same manner. We don't proselytize when we share to help dispel misinformation that leads to hate.
Perhaps if history and sociology courses included the topic of cultural and religious identity theft, tragedies of the past may be averted from repeating themselves in new forms.
If we can't learn this lesson, we are indeed doomed to keep repeating the history. The legacy of culture vultures, no matter which one's bones they're trying to pick clean, will ultimately doom the vultures, too.
Finding out who you are and where you belong may lead you to a path you might not have always chosen for yourself before you began a search to learn about the past of your ancestors, but if you don't know where you came from, it is certainly easier to get lost.
You may decide that the people you came from are not the people you wish to belong to now and your loyalties and path is elsewhere or you may decide that someone else strayed away from where you should have been all along. But if you decide to be a part of a particular people or path, you can't redefine their criteria for membership/citizenship to suit YOU, you are obligated to abide by their laws. If you don't meet their criteria for belonging, you haven't really found your people if that's the case.
Shalom y'all.
=========================================
This is all about spirituality and self-identity and being true to oneself while respecting other people. Every people and every person has a sense of purpose to existence or strives to find and fulfill one. It's an aspect of human nature. I'm not discussing or debating atheism vs theism or going to promote a pissing contest over whose religion or philosophy is "best", but I will talk about what people believe.
I think a spiritual void in modern civilization appears to lead many people who have have an identity void to feel entitled to appropriate the paths and identities of *others*. Taking on an identity not really your own isn't exclusive to the malicious, the huckster, the con, or the willfully bigoted troublemaker. People can be genuinely fooled in sincere acceptance and trust what they want to hear.
Yet, no matter the origin or motivation, in their so doing, rather than bringing them a sense of real identity and contentment of self-knowledge, it results in strife and escalates conflict.
In modern civilization, not just in the United States, the “melting pot” of so many different and conflicting cultures, histories, religions and philosophies there are many people living in a "spiritual vacuum".
**I specifically refer to people whose spiritual path, or sense of a spiritual nature is devoid of grounding in a sense of "self", a sense of who they are and who their people are and what their people's collective purpose and message is to the world through their own identity.**
I see this in so many different people who flit from one group, one religion, one identity to another. These people without a grounded center, a sense of *self in relation to others* often readily justify latching onto anything that fills that that void. This is how we live in a world where a science fiction author can create an idea that we’re all alien spawn and all women secretly want to abort their babies and all human problems stem from experiences while in your mother’s womb…and hundreds of thousands of other people can be gullible enough to believe it and where celebrities are spokespersons to promote it. ( the late L. Ron Hubbard, his Scientology and the Hollywood celebrities that follow it)
We live in a world where ethnocentrism isn't considered a virtue but it is still widely accepted in the manner it has taken on new forms. Rather than what more overt forms of this thinking inspired in the past, to try to eliminate peoples and religious or spiritual paths once claimed “inferior” by outright mass murder, the socially acceptable methods employed are assimilation, appropriation and identity theft. Fake Indian nations and groups are big business and show utter arrogance in their sense of entitlement to take ritual items, symbols, names and stories and misappropriate them for whatever purpose suited them. The "Black Hebrew Israelites" with their New Testament doctrine and racist ideology and the equally deceptively named "Messianic Judaism" in it's different forms based entirely on which Church is sponsoring them, displays extreme self-righteousness in their entitlement to claim Divine authority to either negate outright, or redefine Torah to mean things antithetical to Torah and Judaism.
All while claiming utmost love for the very people's whose history, spirituality and cultures they've hijacked and misappropriated very offensively.
Too many people who possess this spiritual void and lack of who and what they are are easy prey for the charlatan. They claim no responsibility for bad behavior to do so because they come from a paradigm that teaches "let the buyer beware" and that freedom means that you're free to do anything or say anything you want to say if you can say it is your "freedom of speech" to do so.
A more respectful way to live and actually honor any other group is to stop ignoring the ill effects such entitlement perpetrates. It is not respect that inspires groups or individuals to appropriate the identity, symbols, culture and history of another people and pervert those things by turning them topsy turvy, most often to impose beliefs that are offensive to and violate the laws of the authentic nation people.
The impostor groups also simultaneously declare great love and loyalty to the identity they claim while the words they use to speak of the original people display hatred and insult to the laws, ethics, values and the actual peoples whose identity they hijack.
While I'm only detailing a couple of different groups this applies to more than just the two I'll talk most about here.
The surviving Native American Indian nations and the Jewish covenant nation people have many different groups who openly display bigotry and hostility to the original nation peoples they will claim to *be* while they simultaneously corrupt and distort their histories, traditions, laws, and their different spiritual beliefs.
Other common experiences shared by these very different peoples:
Any individual or group that speaks out *against* the bigoted display of entitlement to hijack and remove the right of a people to maintain their own unadulterated history and laws, is then chastised as the bigot and condemned for their hatred at not being "tolerant". The commonly hurled deflection is to say you hate us because you don't want to give us the freedom to choose what to believe. This is also projection, but it is often effective to their co-religionists.
Sometimes the mention of love of all people or brotherhood is even brought up to deflect the misrepresentation of identity or history or belief.
The Europeans would not have survived on the shores of the foreign continents had it not been for the mercy/civilized assistance of it's native inhabitants who taught them how to find and cultivate foods. This was the case for both North and South America.
From farming methods of the Natives of the northeast that taught Europeans how to rotate crops to ensure soil fertility that when imported to Europe staved off famines that had regularly plagued parts of Europe for thousands of years, to the 5,000 year old weaving techniques of the Peruvians that were incorporated into textile making, to medicines (aspirin among a great many others) to systems of law (Ben Franklin and other "Founding Father's" directly credit) borrowed from the Iroquois, the Europeans were far behind in many areas thought to represent "civilization". Modern farmers still use an adaptation of the Iroquois "three sisters" system of corn, beans and squash that preserve soil fertility.
In a time when the very lives of early European astronomers were being persecuted for their "heresies" to declare the solar system to be heliocentric, the Incas and others had accepted and gone far beyond this in astronomical knowledge.
The native inhabitants of the Americas helped the very peoples who committed genocides. And the effort to eliminate them still exists, although rather than through outright murder, this is continuing through assimilation, discriminatory laws and other forms of socially acceptable bigotries that are even sometimes perpetrated in ignorance.
What can we do if we are genuinely caring for another but wish to learn about them and the wisdom that another people may have to share and not misappropriate?
There is a difference in sharing wisdom and culture with one another in the methods I illustrated and in misappropriating the identity and spiritual wisdom and life of other nations.
As humans who wish to know brotherhood and respect for one another we also hope to learn from one another. We can learn from many different First Nations Peoples..but they key is to let us learn what they want to TEACH us.
ASK rather than take. Some things can't belong to every person. Mixing the customs and religions of the different nations who still survive is not respecting them. Their ways belong to them.
Use that guide for any people, not just the different nations of the Americas.
Those precepts are what I wish people would also do for Jews. The world would be a much nicer place if people behaved in a way that simply respected the rights of peoples to be different from one another in their own purpose and path.
Jews are more open with our beliefs and practices than many Native peoples, but we are also accustomed to seeing this openeness abused in the same manner. We don't proselytize when we share to help dispel misinformation that leads to hate.
Perhaps if history and sociology courses included the topic of cultural and religious identity theft, tragedies of the past may be averted from repeating themselves in new forms.
If we can't learn this lesson, we are indeed doomed to keep repeating the history. The legacy of culture vultures, no matter which one's bones they're trying to pick clean, will ultimately doom the vultures, too.
Finding out who you are and where you belong may lead you to a path you might not have always chosen for yourself before you began a search to learn about the past of your ancestors, but if you don't know where you came from, it is certainly easier to get lost.
You may decide that the people you came from are not the people you wish to belong to now and your loyalties and path is elsewhere or you may decide that someone else strayed away from where you should have been all along. But if you decide to be a part of a particular people or path, you can't redefine their criteria for membership/citizenship to suit YOU, you are obligated to abide by their laws. If you don't meet their criteria for belonging, you haven't really found your people if that's the case.
Shalom y'all.
Christopher Columbus and Jews
I've been sent links to this news item by seven different Jewish friends from around the country this week: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/20/opinion/garcia-columbus-jewish/index.html
While I always thank all my friends for sharing items of interest to Jews I have great misgivings as a Jew as to how these discoveries are being reported. I feel such a strong gut feeling that this will be used as new fuel for hate propagandizing. I think this will be claimed as evidence of Jews believing we have entitlement to do and say whatever we can for gain to justify abuse of other peoples. Please read on to see why I say this and share if you'd like with anyone else who you think might be find equal cause for concern.
I say this because how Jews react to this news is very important. This history of the atrocities Christopher Columbus perpetrated is likely as little known by many Jews as the possibility he is a Jew. Before Jews begin to embrace Christopher Columbus as some kind of Jewish hero whose mission was really to save the Jews in secret, we cannot ignore or dismiss that his journals and the history of others writings of his life and travels clearly reveal that he treated the indigenous peoples horrifically and was not living the ethics of Judaism in his encounters with them. If he had desire to save Jews as his own people, he did so demonstrating a worldview that came from being assimilated into the sense of entitlement prevalent among the empires of Europe of the day to abuse others and use the profits deriving from torture of others to save Jews at the expense of the lives of innocents. That is clearly not a Jew that Jews want to hold up as any sort of hero. I just now "Googled" a few key phrases and here is just one article that addresses his horrific treatment of a people he noted displayed innocence, beauty and generosity
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html
I hope this is not dismissed because if it is, this will make the Jews who hold him up as a hero (even in ignorance of his atrocities) to be just as lacking in compassion for others and WILL be used as additional "evidence" to support a current common propagandizing lie that the Jews do to the Palestinians like the Europeans did to the Indians. If Columbus is **embraced as a hero among Jews** that will be a massive feather in the cap of the Islamofacist propagandist.
There has already been far too much propaganda being spread by Islamofacists and their supporters to try to equate Jews and the State of Israel with lies that Israel treats Palestinian Arabs the same way the Europeans treated the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. An online Lakota friend informed me more than a decade ago they have even had people come to their tribal elders at both the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota and present lectures seeking their nation's support to speak out against the State of Israel with the lie that Israel was committing genocide to the Palestinians as the European and the U.S. government had long been doing to the Indians. Thankfully, he and others did not fall for this propaganda, but he said many of their younger people did. I was so shocked and at first I just couldn’t even believe anyone would fall for this. I then went to the Native American chat rooms of Yahoo and if any of the people there had seen anything like that. It gave me an even sicker feeling when several Indians of other nations replied that they had also "learned" about what Israel was doing to the Palestinians from people coming to their tribal gatherings.
So based upon this and what I have seen displayed in Yahoo Answers in the past 4 years, I cannot deny or dismiss the fact that they are the targets of propaganda for the purpose of legitimizing the lie that Jews treat Palestinians like the European invaders and the govts of countries in North and South America treats the Indians and feel entitled to do so.
It is interesting to know if Columbus was a Jew if for no other purpose than to set the history straight if the facts support this. It is just as important to make it equally clear and keep straight that his treatment of the indigenous people was not displaying the values, ethics, goals or beliefs of Judaism. He is no hero to the Jewish people. If he was a Jew he was a bad Jew.
Jewish history shows that Jews value getting the history right, no matter what it reveals. From what we show in our own Holy Scriptures, the Tanakh onward we've never shied away from the honest history about our own or calling out the bad Jews for being bad. Lessons are learned from understanding the good, the bad and the ugly...Jews don't need to be embracing him as a *Jewish hero* or a hero of any kind.
He did not embody the ethics of Judaism even if he did leave money to the poor as a Jewish custom or wished to keep some aspects of Jewish heritage and connection. If he was indeed a Jew, he definitely wasn't one of our good guys.
That needs to be in the news, too.
=====================EDIT=====================
I thought the following email I received a short time ago from a young man had enough interesting points to share here. He doesn't have a blogger account to post this himself under comments. He gave me permission to share his email here. This is from my friend "Feivel" as I will identify him by screen name, a 24 year old Orthodox Jewish Israeli American studying to be a Rabbi. He brought up some interesting points especially regarding Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498), prominent leader of the Spanish Inquisition and the liklihood that Columbus fled as a Jew....then RETURNED to Spain.
Here is what he had to say:
"I have heard before that he was Jewish or a converso but you didn't hear this before the real nature of the man came about. When he was "the hero" no one said he was Jewish now that his legacy is being looked at honestly, he is all of a sudden a converso.
I have seen or read about some of that evidence and dots in his will as a way for his sons to say Kaddish? I doubt that. He left money to a Jewish man. Ok. That does not mean he was Jewish. Two Jews paid for the Armada? Well, ok but Isabella would NEVER have given him the green light if he was Jewish or even remotely suspected of it and if it it so obvious to scholars today then it would have been REALLY obvious to church officials back then who would have imprisoned his family upon seeing the will (which the church would have seen).
I think you are right. It is a way to not bash Columbus's reputation (he doesn't need any help in that category as his actions do that themselves) but a way to bash us.
Torquemada had the queens ear (110%) and if he had even hinted that he thought Columbus was a converso then Columbus would not only have not been given money and a green light but he would have been thrown in prison and maybe executed. They would have searched for and found the will with the "Jewish symbol" on it. That would have been enough.
I just don't put much stock in the fact that he was Jewish but I will admit that Simon Weisenthal's assertion that he was Jewish.....makes me not totally discount it...
I have the utmost respect for Weisenthal and his research so I keep an open mind. Clearly there were thousands of people who chose Catholicism over death or expulsion and a guy like Torquemada going against a guy like Columbus, expulsion would not have been an option I fear. So how can he keep it sooo secret in his own time but in our time its "obvious". If he was going to find a new homeland, then why sail back to Spain where he knew persecution might still await him. If he was found to be Jewish after the expulsion, hero or not, he would have been executed (probably quietly). Whatever we do, unless my time frame is off, we MUST put Torquemada in the picture and he was so evil and so vicious that he would not have allowed Columbus to live. Historical records have it that Torquemada could actually enter the king and queen's chambers without knocking and it is recorded that he stormed in one day and berated them when they contemplated allowing the Jews to remain in Spain or at least a few Jews. They listened to him and did as he "commanded". An odd position for a "simple priest" and oddly, of course, he himself was by Jewish law, Jewish. His maternal grandmother was a converso.
So I think you are 110% correct. To "accurse" Columbus of being Jewish or a Marrano is really going to be used as another tool in the arsenal of the anti-Semite.
My guess is that his being Jewish would have been further removed than Torquemada's heritage would have been and your blog is also right in that we do need to understand history accurately. IF he was a converso or a marrano (which seems to be the actual theory) then I would be interested in how he pulled off staying hidden and not in Torquemada's crosshairs.
IF he was a converso then he was a heretic. If he was a marrano then....well, that's a little more fuzzy but certainly he would have outwardly indicated belief in the trinity which is something most of us would die before we did (or at least I think I would but having never been faced with that dilemma who knows). I cannot imagine worshipping a false deity. We are commanded to preserve life at all cost but obviously there are exceptions and that is the major one. So claiming him as "one of our own" is not something I would do with any relish and would have to say if he was then he was an apostate and therefore, we can distance ourselves from him.
I will say that I think the motivation most people have in researching him is scholarly (as opposed to the "hitler was Jewish" thing that is going on now) but I think their conclusions are coming too quick and based on too little evidence."
ANOTHER EDIT:
For those who have doubts as to the evidence to show that Christopher Columbus was a brutal slave trader and responsible for the enslavement, torture and genocide of at least three million people he wrote were innocents, read this essay and note it's references.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15026955/Thief-Slave-Trader-Murderer-Christopher-Columbus-and-Caribbean-Population-Decline
==============================================
Other references of his own words
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus1.asp
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/01-col.html
http://www.ushistory.org/documents/columbus.htm
http://earlyamericas.wordpress.com/anthology/columbus-letter-from-the-fourth-voyage/
Strange Cruelties: The Spanish Slaughter The Natives, West Indies, c. 1513 Bartolome de las Casas
details the Spanish treatment of the native peoples
While I always thank all my friends for sharing items of interest to Jews I have great misgivings as a Jew as to how these discoveries are being reported. I feel such a strong gut feeling that this will be used as new fuel for hate propagandizing. I think this will be claimed as evidence of Jews believing we have entitlement to do and say whatever we can for gain to justify abuse of other peoples. Please read on to see why I say this and share if you'd like with anyone else who you think might be find equal cause for concern.
I say this because how Jews react to this news is very important. This history of the atrocities Christopher Columbus perpetrated is likely as little known by many Jews as the possibility he is a Jew. Before Jews begin to embrace Christopher Columbus as some kind of Jewish hero whose mission was really to save the Jews in secret, we cannot ignore or dismiss that his journals and the history of others writings of his life and travels clearly reveal that he treated the indigenous peoples horrifically and was not living the ethics of Judaism in his encounters with them. If he had desire to save Jews as his own people, he did so demonstrating a worldview that came from being assimilated into the sense of entitlement prevalent among the empires of Europe of the day to abuse others and use the profits deriving from torture of others to save Jews at the expense of the lives of innocents. That is clearly not a Jew that Jews want to hold up as any sort of hero. I just now "Googled" a few key phrases and here is just one article that addresses his horrific treatment of a people he noted displayed innocence, beauty and generosity
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html
I hope this is not dismissed because if it is, this will make the Jews who hold him up as a hero (even in ignorance of his atrocities) to be just as lacking in compassion for others and WILL be used as additional "evidence" to support a current common propagandizing lie that the Jews do to the Palestinians like the Europeans did to the Indians. If Columbus is **embraced as a hero among Jews** that will be a massive feather in the cap of the Islamofacist propagandist.
There has already been far too much propaganda being spread by Islamofacists and their supporters to try to equate Jews and the State of Israel with lies that Israel treats Palestinian Arabs the same way the Europeans treated the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. An online Lakota friend informed me more than a decade ago they have even had people come to their tribal elders at both the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota and present lectures seeking their nation's support to speak out against the State of Israel with the lie that Israel was committing genocide to the Palestinians as the European and the U.S. government had long been doing to the Indians. Thankfully, he and others did not fall for this propaganda, but he said many of their younger people did. I was so shocked and at first I just couldn’t even believe anyone would fall for this. I then went to the Native American chat rooms of Yahoo and if any of the people there had seen anything like that. It gave me an even sicker feeling when several Indians of other nations replied that they had also "learned" about what Israel was doing to the Palestinians from people coming to their tribal gatherings.
So based upon this and what I have seen displayed in Yahoo Answers in the past 4 years, I cannot deny or dismiss the fact that they are the targets of propaganda for the purpose of legitimizing the lie that Jews treat Palestinians like the European invaders and the govts of countries in North and South America treats the Indians and feel entitled to do so.
It is interesting to know if Columbus was a Jew if for no other purpose than to set the history straight if the facts support this. It is just as important to make it equally clear and keep straight that his treatment of the indigenous people was not displaying the values, ethics, goals or beliefs of Judaism. He is no hero to the Jewish people. If he was a Jew he was a bad Jew.
Jewish history shows that Jews value getting the history right, no matter what it reveals. From what we show in our own Holy Scriptures, the Tanakh onward we've never shied away from the honest history about our own or calling out the bad Jews for being bad. Lessons are learned from understanding the good, the bad and the ugly...Jews don't need to be embracing him as a *Jewish hero* or a hero of any kind.
He did not embody the ethics of Judaism even if he did leave money to the poor as a Jewish custom or wished to keep some aspects of Jewish heritage and connection. If he was indeed a Jew, he definitely wasn't one of our good guys.
That needs to be in the news, too.
=====================EDIT=====================
I thought the following email I received a short time ago from a young man had enough interesting points to share here. He doesn't have a blogger account to post this himself under comments. He gave me permission to share his email here. This is from my friend "Feivel" as I will identify him by screen name, a 24 year old Orthodox Jewish Israeli American studying to be a Rabbi. He brought up some interesting points especially regarding Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498), prominent leader of the Spanish Inquisition and the liklihood that Columbus fled as a Jew....then RETURNED to Spain.
Here is what he had to say:
"I have heard before that he was Jewish or a converso but you didn't hear this before the real nature of the man came about. When he was "the hero" no one said he was Jewish now that his legacy is being looked at honestly, he is all of a sudden a converso.
I have seen or read about some of that evidence and dots in his will as a way for his sons to say Kaddish? I doubt that. He left money to a Jewish man. Ok. That does not mean he was Jewish. Two Jews paid for the Armada? Well, ok but Isabella would NEVER have given him the green light if he was Jewish or even remotely suspected of it and if it it so obvious to scholars today then it would have been REALLY obvious to church officials back then who would have imprisoned his family upon seeing the will (which the church would have seen).
I think you are right. It is a way to not bash Columbus's reputation (he doesn't need any help in that category as his actions do that themselves) but a way to bash us.
Torquemada had the queens ear (110%) and if he had even hinted that he thought Columbus was a converso then Columbus would not only have not been given money and a green light but he would have been thrown in prison and maybe executed. They would have searched for and found the will with the "Jewish symbol" on it. That would have been enough.
I just don't put much stock in the fact that he was Jewish but I will admit that Simon Weisenthal's assertion that he was Jewish.....makes me not totally discount it...
I have the utmost respect for Weisenthal and his research so I keep an open mind. Clearly there were thousands of people who chose Catholicism over death or expulsion and a guy like Torquemada going against a guy like Columbus, expulsion would not have been an option I fear. So how can he keep it sooo secret in his own time but in our time its "obvious". If he was going to find a new homeland, then why sail back to Spain where he knew persecution might still await him. If he was found to be Jewish after the expulsion, hero or not, he would have been executed (probably quietly). Whatever we do, unless my time frame is off, we MUST put Torquemada in the picture and he was so evil and so vicious that he would not have allowed Columbus to live. Historical records have it that Torquemada could actually enter the king and queen's chambers without knocking and it is recorded that he stormed in one day and berated them when they contemplated allowing the Jews to remain in Spain or at least a few Jews. They listened to him and did as he "commanded". An odd position for a "simple priest" and oddly, of course, he himself was by Jewish law, Jewish. His maternal grandmother was a converso.
So I think you are 110% correct. To "accurse" Columbus of being Jewish or a Marrano is really going to be used as another tool in the arsenal of the anti-Semite.
My guess is that his being Jewish would have been further removed than Torquemada's heritage would have been and your blog is also right in that we do need to understand history accurately. IF he was a converso or a marrano (which seems to be the actual theory) then I would be interested in how he pulled off staying hidden and not in Torquemada's crosshairs.
IF he was a converso then he was a heretic. If he was a marrano then....well, that's a little more fuzzy but certainly he would have outwardly indicated belief in the trinity which is something most of us would die before we did (or at least I think I would but having never been faced with that dilemma who knows). I cannot imagine worshipping a false deity. We are commanded to preserve life at all cost but obviously there are exceptions and that is the major one. So claiming him as "one of our own" is not something I would do with any relish and would have to say if he was then he was an apostate and therefore, we can distance ourselves from him.
I will say that I think the motivation most people have in researching him is scholarly (as opposed to the "hitler was Jewish" thing that is going on now) but I think their conclusions are coming too quick and based on too little evidence."
ANOTHER EDIT:
For those who have doubts as to the evidence to show that Christopher Columbus was a brutal slave trader and responsible for the enslavement, torture and genocide of at least three million people he wrote were innocents, read this essay and note it's references.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15026955/Thief-Slave-Trader-Murderer-Christopher-Columbus-and-Caribbean-Population-Decline
==============================================
Other references of his own words
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus1.asp
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/01-col.html
http://www.ushistory.org/documents/columbus.htm
http://earlyamericas.wordpress.com/anthology/columbus-letter-from-the-fourth-voyage/
Strange Cruelties: The Spanish Slaughter The Natives, West Indies, c. 1513 Bartolome de las Casas
details the Spanish treatment of the native peoples
Thursday, May 10, 2012
I received the following little fable today from a friend.
A horse fly found himself in a barn with several horses and cows present. There was manure everywhere for him to consume. This was exciting and he ate and ate and ate beyond his limit. With his abdomen protruding he tried to fly away and could not become airborne. He thought to himself, I am a fly and I know how to fly. About that time he saw a shovel in the corner of the barn. He thought I’ll climb up to the top of that shovel and leap off as I am a fly. Surely, if I get airborne I'll fly away. He did exactly this and leaped. He went straight down and splatted on the ground below.
The moral of the story:
Never fly off the handle when there is a possibility you are full of shit.
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