When Victims Rule (pdf)

THE CAUSES OF HOSTILITY TOWARDS JEWS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
charges, “its earliest strata reflecting the conditions of the ancient world,
enabled Eisenmenger to prove such theses. The legal and ethical systems of the
ancient world were dualistic … In the period of the Mishnah and Talmud, the
question of whether the property of non-Jews was protected by law was still
under dispute. Certain individuals who were considered subversive – idol worshippers
and the like – remained outside the absolute protection of the [Jewish]
law even in matters of life and death.” [KATZ, From, p. 18]
Katz goes on to argue that those rabbinical opinions that asserted, for
instance, “that one should actively work towards [“‘sectarians’ and ‘infidels’”]
deaths became merely “theoretical material.” [KATZ, p. 18] Or as another apologetic
Jewish scholar, Louis Jacobs, puts the Eisenmenger issue:
“There is no doubt that the Talmudic Rabbis, living among pagans,
had a poor opinion of the Gentile world around them even while admiring
some of its features. At times some of the Rabbis gave vent to the
harshest feelings, as in the notorious statement ‘Kill the best of the
goyyim.’ Johann Andreas Eisenmenger (1654-1704) in his Endecktes Judenthum
(Judaism Unmasked) collected such adverse passages in order
to prove to his satisfaction that the Jews hate all Gentiles. It became an
important aspect of Jewish apologetic to demonstrate that Eisenmenger
had either misunderstood many of the passages he quotes or had taken
them out of context.” [JACOBS, L., 1995, p. 184-185]
Ultimately, Eisenmenger aligned evidence from Jewish religious law to
exhibit an alleged foundation which suggests that, when the Messiah comes,
non-Jews would be destroyed. But not only that. Based on the citational evidence
he could piece together, Eisenmenger thought “it stood to reason that
[Jews] would carry out the commandment of destruction even in the present
on those whom it was within their reach to injure and harm.” [KATZ, p. 19] In
fact, this theme of vengeful Jewish destruction of non-Jews was addressed in a
volume by professor Abraham Grossman in Hebrew, in 1994, specifically investigating
Ashkenazi (European Jewish) religious society. A summary of his conclusions
in Religious and Theological Abstracts states that
“[The] Ashkenazi believed in the conversion of the Gentiles as part of
the redemptive era, following the stage of vengeance … The idea that a
link exists between vengeance to be carried out against the enemies of Israel
and the redemption, and that vengeance is a forerunner to redemption,
can be found in the Bible, the Talmud, and in apocalyptic
literature, and should not be viewed as uniquely Ashkenazi.”
[REL&THEO, 38:1, 859]
As renowned sociologist Max Weber once noted:
“In the mind of the pious Jew the moralism of the law was inevitably
combined with the aforementioned hope for revenge, which suffused
practically all the exile and post-exilic sacred scriptures. Moreover,
through two and a half millennium this hope appeared in virtually every
divine service of the Jewish people, characterized by a firm grip upon
two indestructible claims – religiously sanctified segregation from the
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