Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] A QUESTION OF “AMBIGUITY”? 327
those of their own who did not conform to the dominant narrative? Such
negative speculation can only be labeled “iffy” (historical conjecture) at
best, a term coined by the late U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
and thus we will never know.
Yet Eisen correctly concludes that the evolution of rabbinic thinking
was a step forward from that of their biblical predecessors, adopting a more
peaceful ethic than that presented in the Hebrew Bible and tending toward
peace rather than war, largely rejecting violence, while at the same time
giving additudinal evidence both positive and negative toward non-Jews in
whose midst they lived, even if ghettoized, and thus “on balance . . . more
negative than positive” (108). Eisen also correctly chides his colleagues,
both past and present, when he writes: “However, a violent dimension in
rabbinic Judaism is evident in some of its core doctrines and in its prescriptions
regarding war, and it has often been glossed over by Jewish scholars
and ethicists” (108-109).
The further intellectualization of the Jewish religious tradition is
reflected in the initial philosophical discussions of the medieval period (the
shortest chapter in the book), in which “intolerance toward non-Jews has
therefore been replaced by intolerance toward those who have not achieved
intellectual perfection” (121). And that elitism with which even the neo-
Aristotelian Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), perhaps the greatest intellectual
figure in Jewish history, says must be identified includes Jews as well.
That many during that same period truly believed all “truth” was ultimately
derived from the God-given gift of the Torah/Hebrew Bible does not lessen
that orientation toward the intellect.
Turning next to the mystical aspects of Judaism subsumed under the
umbrella of the Kabbalah (Hebrew, “received tradition”), negativity toward
others again rears its head: “According to most Kabbalists, the non-Jewish
soul was inferior to the Jewish soul” (131), and thus “Kabbalists tended to
have hostile views of Christianity and Islam” (132)—even if, again,
powerlessness dictated restraint and, at times, more diplomatic and disguised
language than historical reality warranted. If the New Testament
understanding that “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith the Lord”
(Romans 12:19) is accepted and ultimately reflects a Judaic/rabbinic perspective
(which it does), then for the earlier rabbis as well as the Kabbalists,
at some future time, the God of Israel will smite its enemies and exact the
vengeance/revenge that is its due. Faith in the future is a hallmark of both
literary traditions.
The longest chapter in the book deals with modern Zionism, and, given
the ongoing reality of the now sixty-plus-year Arab/Muslim-Israel conflict,
this makes sense. Also, the post-1948 reality of the small nation-state of the
Jews presenting themselves as having successfully won its wars and