Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 06:52:29 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?anna=20miller?= <ruboutthewords-AT-yahoo.co.in>
Welcome to Palestine Chronicle!
Tuesday, 13th November 2001
Israel Shahak Jewish Fundamentalism
Wednesday, November 07 2001 -AT-
05:15 AM GMT
Jewish autonomy before the rise
of the modern nation
state allowed rabbis to engage
in a wide spectrum of
persecution, of which violence
against women was but
one category
By Israel Shahak and Norton
Mezvinsky
The Religious Background of
Rabin's Assassination:
The Jewish rabbinical
authorities in some eastern pans of
Europe could inflict somewhat
tougher punishments.
These punishments, however,
were less severe than
those that had been imposed in
Spain. The heads of the
Jewish community in Prague
decided in 1612 that all
Jewish prostitutes had to leave
the town by a certain
date or be branded after that
date with a hot iron (Asaf,
p. 114). The prostitutes' main
offence was that they
were seen drinking non-kosher
wine with some unnamed
notables of the community. The
most tolerant
communities were those in Italy
who, as Asaf recorded,
gave full encouragement to the
prostitutes, because
they saved "bachelors and fools
from the worse sins- of
adultery or of cohabitation
with non-Jewish women."
In his previously mentioned
article, Rosen recorded
research of new Jewish
historians showing that Italian
Jews copied the Renaissance
custom according to which
a husband or brother can kill
his wife or sister with
impunity if he suspects her of
adultery. To remove the
resultant blemish upon the
honor of an insulted husband,
Jews committed many of these
murders in the synagogue
during prayer in order to
obtain publicity. A Jew, named
Ovadia, from Spoleto, for
instance, murdered his wife in
the synagogue and, after
explaining his reasons, received
no punishment. The Italian
authorities put Ovadia on trial
and fined him, but the Jews did
not believe he had done
anything wrong. Soon
thereafter, he remarried another
Jewish woman. Brothers in other
cases murdered
suspected women. Referring to
his research, Rosen cited
one such case in Ferrara in the
mid-sixteenth century.
The murderer brother worked for
a charity organization
that was affiliated with the
congregation; he was able to
continue in his job after the
murder. Rosen determined
and reported that in such cases
the rabbis usually did not
react.
Jewish autonomy before the rise
of the modern nation
state allowed rabbis to engage
in a wide spectrum of
persecution, of which violence
against women was but
one category. The rabbis
employed various types of
violence against Jews who
committed religious or other
sins. Jewish fundamentalists,
wanting to revive a
situation that existed before
the hated modern influences
allegedly corrupted the Jews,
emphasized this violence.
The centrality of violence in
the Halacha played an
important role in the
development of Orthodox Judaism.
Orthodox Judaism historically
had a double system of law.
There was, on the one side, a
more normal system of
law, but there was, on the
other side, been a more
arbitrary system of law
employed in emergencies. These
emergency situations most often
occurred when rabbis
had great communal power. The
rabbis, alleging that
heresy and infidelity were at
dangerously high levels,
often suspended the normal
system of laws, at least in
the area of guarding the
beliefs of the community, and
used emergency powers to avert
God's wrath. A relevant
example for our study concerns
the death penalty. In the
normal system of law, the
halachic application of the
death punishment against a Jew
was almost impossible to
carry out, as opposed to its
much easier application
against a non-Jew. Even
inflicting less severe punishment
against Jews, such as thirty
nine lashes, was difficult.
The normal talmudic alternative
to the death penalty for
Jews who killed other Jews was
release of the Jewish
murderer without further
punishment. The Talmud posits
another alternative. This
alternative, as described by
Maimonides in his commentary,
Laws of the Murderer and
of Taking Precautions, chapter
4, rule 8, is that Jewish
murderers, absolved of the
death punishment by a
rabbinical court, could be "put
into a small cell and given
first only a small amount of
bread and water until their
intestines narrowed and then
[fed] barley so that their
bellies would burst because of
the illness."
Rabbinical judges experienced
difficulty in inflicting
punishment when Jewish autonomy
was limited by secular
authorities. Only those
rabbinical judges who were
appointed by what was called
"laying of hands," for
example, could at first inflict
flogging limited to thirty nine
lashes. Rabbis later devised a
new more arbitrary way of
inflicting punishment called
"stripes of rebellion." The new
method, which could be used by
any rabbi, included
harsher punishments. The number
of lashes, for example,
was unlimited. The cutting of
limbs and unlimited
imprisonment time were added.
After the talmudic period
and following the declines of
the Roman and Sassanid
Empires and of the Muslim
caliphates, Jewish communities
in many places became more
autonomous and thus the
opportunities for rabbis to
impose more severe
punishments increased.
The Jewish religious
authorities perpetrated most of the
violence against Jews who were
considered to be
heretics or religious
dissenters. The punishments imposed
had to be warranted by the
Talmud, or at least by
interpretation of the Talmud.
The Talmud was composed
under the rule and authority of
two strong empires, the
Roman and the Sassanid; both of
these empires lirnited
the powers of Jewish autonomy
much more than did
subsequent medieval regimes.
Talmudic sages frequently
complained that under the rule
of these two empires,
they did not have the power to
punish Jewish criminals
with death but rather only with
flogging. The few cases
in which talmudic sages
attempted to execute a Jewish
criminal prompted strict
official investigations. One of
these few cases, mentioned in
the Palestinian Talmud,
concerned a Jewish prostitute
in the third century who
was finally executed.
Apparently because execution was
so difficult to enforce, the
Talmud does not order a death
punishment for Jewish heretics
but does enjoin pious
Jews to kill them by employing
subterfuges. The major
halachic codes, although
emphasizing that the death
punishment should be inflicted
only if execution was
possible, contain such
prescription. The paradigmatic
expression of this command in
the codes comes ironically
under the section devoted to
saving life. The question is
posed: What is a pious Jew to
do when he sees a human
being drowning in the sea or
having fallen into a well?
The talmudic answer, still
accepted by traditional
Judaism, is that the answer is
dependent upon the
category to which the human
being belongs. If the
person is either a pious Jew or
one guilty of no more than
ordinary offences, he should be
saved. If the person is a
non-Jew or a Jew who is a
"shepherd of sheep and
goats," a category that lapsed
after talmudic times, he
should neither be saved nor
pushed into the sea or well.
If, however, the person is a
Jewish heretic, he should
either be pushed down into the
well or into the sea or; if
the person is already in the
well or sea, he should not be
rescued. This legal
stipulation, although mutilated by
censorship in certain editions
of the Talmud and even
more in most translations,
appears in Tractate Avoda
Zara (pp. 26a-b). Maimonides
also explained this
stipulation in three places: In
the Laws of Murderer and
Preservation of Life,
Maimonides contrasted the fate of
non-Jews with that of Jewish
heretics. In the passages
from Laws of Idolatry
Maimonides only discussed Jewish
heretics. In Laws of Murderer
and Preservation of Life
(chapter 4, rules 10-11), he
wrote:
The [Jewish] heretics are those
[Jews] who commit sins
on purpose; even one who eats
meat not ritually
slaughtered or who dresses in a
sha'atnez clothes (made
of linen and wool woven
together) on purpose is called a
heretic [as are] those [Jews]
who deny the Torah and
prophecy. They should be
killed. If he [a Jew] has the
power to kill them by the
sword, he should do so. But if
he has not [the power to do
so], he should behave so
deceitfully to them that death
would ensue. How? If he
[a Jew] sees one of them who
has fallen into a well and
there is a ladder into the
well, he [should] take it away
and say: "I need it [the
ladder] to take my son down
from the roof," or [he should
say] similar things. Deaths
of non-Jews with whom we are
not at war and Jewish
shepherds of sheep and goats
and similar people should
not be caused, although it is
forbidden to save them if
they are at the point of death.
If, for example, one of
them is seen falling into the
sea, he should not be
rescued. As it is
written:"Neither shall you stand against the blood of
your fellow" (Leviticus 19:16) but he [the non-Jew] is
not your fellow. In Laws of Idolatry, chapter 2, rule
5 Maimonides stated:
Jews who worship idolatrously
are considered as
non-Jews, in contrast to Jews
who have committed
[another] sin punishable by
stoning; if he [a Jew]
converted to idolatry he is
considered to be a denier of
the entire Torah. [Jewish]
heretics are also not
considered to be Jews in any
respect. Their repentance
should never be accepted. As it
is written: "None that go
into her return again, neither
[do] they hold the paths of
life" (Proverbs 2:19). [This
verse is actually a reference
to men who frequent "a strange
woman," that is, a
prostitute.] In regard to the
heretics who follow their
own thoughts and speak
foolishly, it is forbidden to talk
with or to answer them, as we
have said above [in the
first section of the work] so
that they may ultimately
contravene maliciously and
proudly the most important pans of the Jewish religion
and say there is no sin [in doing this]. As it is
written: "Remove your way far from her and come not
near the door of her house." (Proverbs 5:8)The last
verse refers again to men who "frequent a
strange woman", that is, a
prostitute. The commentators
explained that this passage
meant that a truly repentant
idolatrous Jew is accepted by
the Jewish community, but
a heretic is not accepted. A
heretic who wants to
repent, however, may do it
alone. The main reason for
this difference is seemingly
that an idolatrous Jew,
including one who converts to
Christianity, accepts
another religious discipline,
while a heretic follows his own
views and is thereby considered
to be more dangerous.
In chapter 10, rule I of Laws
of Idolatry, Maimonides,
after explaining the
extermination of the ancient
Canaanites and again asserting
that no Jews should be
killed, said: "All this applies
to the seven [Canaanite]
nations, but Jewish informers
and heretics should be exterminated by one’s own hand
and put into bell,
because they cause trouble to
Jews by removing their
hearts from being true to the
Lord, like Tzadok, and Beitos [the alleged founders of
the Sadducean sect] and their pupils. Let the name of
the wicked perish." In his next rule Maimonides
asserted that non-Jews should not
be healed by Jews except when
danger of non-Jewish
enmity exists. In his
Fundamental Laws of Torah, the first
treatise of his codex, chapter
6, rule 8, Maimonides, after
explaining that Jews are
forbidden to burn or otherwise to
destroy the holy script and
that they may not even damage any Hebrew writing in
which one of the seven sacred names of God is written,
ruled: If a Torah scroll was written by a Jewish
heretic, it
should be burned, together with
all its sacred names [of
God], because the heretic does
not believe in the
holiness of God and could not
write it for God but must
have thought that it is like
other books. Therefore, given
this view, God is not
sanctified [by it] and it is a commandment to burn it
[the scroll] so that no memory is
left of the heretics or to
their deeds. But, a Torah scroll written by a non-Jew
should be put away with the other
holy books that deteriorated or
were written by non-Jews.Although he did not instruct
Jews to burn heretical
books, Maimonides probably
based the above passage
upon many directives issued by
talmudic sages since
about AD 100. These directives
called for the burning of
books by heretics. Indeed,
talmudic sages even boasted
at times about burning such
books themselves. Halachic
codes did not so instruct, but
rabbinical response
frequently called for and
Jewish history is replete with
examples of Jews burning Jewish
books. Together with
burial of books in cemeteries,
this reached a high point in
the eighteenth century.
Although minimized in many
apologetic histories of Jews,
especially in works written in
English, the burning and the
burial in cemeteries of books
in the history of Judaism was
far more intense than in the
histories of either
Christianity or Islam.
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