Judaism discovered

Critics, Criticism and Apologetics

As noted throughout this book, we have delineated Judaism's situationist response to opposition, depending on its own position of strength or weakness in the majority gentile society. Moreover, we have made reference to a "Revelation of the Method" which has emerged in our time, when secrets long-guarded, denied and even lied about, are now finally being disclosed, by the rabbis, Zionists and Talmudic Judaics themselves. A case at hand is that of Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, a writer for the influential and politically powerful Jewish Press Orthodox newspaper located in Brooklyn, New York. Yitzchok Adlerstein's column, "Noah Feldman And The Fear Of Being Different" ¹¹⁵⁶ is a response to remarks made by a dissident Orthodox Judaic intellectual, Noah Feldman, in the New York Times Magazine in July of 2007. Adlerstein's column represents an attempt at damage-control and salvaging the reputation of Judaism, and in the course of that attempt, we gain insight into the rabbinic mentality and the means by which it defends the rabbinic religion. Noah Feldman alarmed the modern Orthodox Judaic world when he outlined in the New York Times two exceedingly sensitive areas of rabbinic law and practice. The first are the laws governing Talmudic physicians treating gentiles; and the second concerns the relationship between rabbinic law and the murder of rebels against Judaism, and the murder of Palestinians.

Alderstein writes, "Feldman made a point of highlighting practices and attitudes toward non-Jews that he bargained would — or should — make us uncomfortable. We have always preferred to keep them under wraps, not always quite sure how to explain them to others, or even to ourselves, but quite sure that if others found out about them, they would hold them against us."

This is quite an admission and worthy of the rabbinic Revelation of the Method moniker, venahafokh hu.¹¹⁵⁷ Rabbi Alderstein observes that his fellow rabbis have always been able to keep knowledge of the rabbinic teachings concerning non-Jews "under wraps." This admission is a marked break from past reactions from the Synagogue to revelations concerning

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Judaism's attitude toward non-Judaics, which in the past usually encompassed heated denials and accusations that the investigator making the revelations was of low integrity, no decency and less reputation and possibly even "sick." Ah, but there's a catch: the confession from Rabbi Alderstein that there has indeed been a Judaic cover-up, is quickly followed by disinformation. We know from the history of psychological warfare, that sometimes a warring party will concede a truth about itself mainly in order to spin that truth in a direction that renders it less harmful to itself and more confusing to the enemy. Rabbi Alderstein's next sentence fulfills that requirement, stating that the rabbis were "not always quite sure how to explain them to others, or even to ourselves..."

This suggests a certain naivete, a guileless approach to Judaism's teachings about gentiles that suggests little or no pre-meditation or stratagem. Rabbi Alderstein puts forth the equivalent of a gee-whiz uncertainty factor in Judaism: Aw shucks, we didn't want to intentionally cover this up, and we never developed a strategy for concealment or amelioration of our actions when inadvertent concealment was revealed.

This is a clever suggestion that will have cachet among many persons whose knowledge of Orthodox Judaism's epistemology of dissimulation is scant. Alderstein's suggestion leads the reader to reason that it wasn't the rabbis' fault that God saddled them with harsh truths about the gentiles, and that like a bumbling yeshiva nerd or Woody Allen type, they were "not always quite sure how to explain" these harsh teachings "to others, or even to ourselves." That's somewhat endearing, isn't it? — supposed Old Testament believers faithful to a 'wrathful Old Testament deity⁵ and mired in the existential dilemma of how to explain that wrath to outsiders.

Readers who come this far in these pages should know by now what a tissue of absurdities Rabbi Alderstein is proposing. Circumlocution, diversion, feints, word tricks, epistemological traps and false leads have been intentionally threaded throughout the labyrinth of the massekhtot of Rabbinic halakha as a means of deceiving the gentiles, from the Tannaitic texts onward. The very crux of the Torah SheBeal Peh (oral law) of Judaism is its status not only as superior to the Tanakh (the Old Testament), but as an arcane gnosis. This is the nature of the sacred rabbinic texts: not only what they literally contain but also what they teach, imply and suggest according to an ocean of subsequent commentaries and decryptions, hidden

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from all but the inner circle that constitutes rabbinic Judaism. In Judaism the very definition of Klal Yisorel (the "Jewish people") is demarcated by possession of the knowledge of the Talmudic and Kabbalistic arcana. This is in contrast to the Old Testament-only (sola Torah SheBichtav) Israelites who would eventually embrace and follow Christ. The rabbis' great fear that Christians would be viewed as the true Jews, the authentic heirs of the patrimony of Yahweh, was resolved on the basis of the principle of the possession of the secret lore that emanated from the Torah SheBeal Peh. Christians can't be Jews and can't be Israel, the rabbis taught, because they don't know the secret teachings that are derived from the formerly oral Traditions. One of the last of the Palestinian Amora'im, Rabbi Judah bar Shalom, related this distinction: "When the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, 'Write down!,' Moses asked for the Mishnah to be put in writing. But because the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw that the gentiles would translate the Torah and read it in Greek, and thereupon would declare, 'We are Israel,' and so far the scales would be even, so the Holy One, blessed be He, said to the goyim ('the nations') 'You aver that you are My children? I cannot tell; only they who possess My arcana are my children."

Ephraim Urbach, Professor of Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, comments on this dictum which Rabbi Judah bar Shalom attributes to God: "It is clear that this dictum explains the superiority of the Oral Torah as an answer to the claims of Christianity following upon Paul's statement concerning the Church as the true heir of Israel..."

Indeed, we would add that the criterion of possession of a secret gnosis as a validation of the integrity of one's connection to the God of the Bible, is one of the foremost teachings of the western secret societies and of the spate of recent books and films inspired by the rabbinic gnosis and its hermetic and masonic epigones, from Holy Blood, Holy Grail to The Da Vinci Code; Bart D. Ehrman's The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed and Hyam Maccoby's Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil. The message of these books and films is that since Christianity "limits" itself to the Biblical narrative about Yahweh and Jesus, without recourse to secret rabbinic and occult lore purporting to explain and enlarge the scriptures, Christianity cannot be the true faith. Hence, the rabbis' strict criterion about possession of secret lore being the true test of a religion's claim to a divine

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heritage, is upheld by New Agers and occultists claiming to offer a liberating and more freewheelin' understanding of sacred history. These alleged opposites (rabbis and occultists) converge in their objective of undermining the Bible-centered faith of Christianity on the rabbinic basis that it cannot be true because it encompasses solely the Bible. They exercise a corollary function as well, in mocking the premises of New Testament Christianity. Though it is a separate issue, mockery of Christianity is a rabbinic law and it is threaded throughout the New York and Hollywood media, from movies such as "The Life of Brian," "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" and "The Last Temptation of Christ" (distributed by Lew Wasserman), to the first in the "Shrek" series of children's films in which a Christian church is desecrated by having its windows ecstatically kicked out and gloriously smashed into ruins. The 1999 film "Dogma" (initially produced in a distribution deal with Harvey Weinstein) is a "comedy" which Variety described as an "assault on the established denominations and institutions, in particular the Roman Catholic Church." The film's "heroine" works in an abortion clinic and is depicted as a direct descendant of Jesus. There is also "Rufus," a naked Black man who falls from the sky and announces that he was the thirteenth apostle but was excluded from the New Testament because of his color. To replace the crucifix, a cardinal fashions a new image of Jesus, "Buddy Christ," an effigy who winks and gives everyone the thumbs-up sign, even as an "excrement monster" engages in various obscene antics.

In an episode of the TV series, "The Five Mrs. Buchanans," the Catholic character, Mrs. O'Leary, is shown to have a "greedy little hand" while a virtuous Judaic lady denounces the Christian celebration of Christmas. The series was co-produced by Jan Siegelman. In the made-for-TV movie, "Judgment Day" directed by Bobby Roth, a devout Lutheran is shown to be a murderous cretin. There are hundreds of Hollywood movies and television programs in the same vein. Meanwhile Paramount's weekly television series "Brooklyn Bridge," directed by Sam Weisman, celebrated the wisdom, decency, warmth and humanity of two Judaic families, the Silvers and the Bergers who reside in Brooklyn in the 1950s and who are occasionally harassed by gentiles.

When the western entertainment media mock Christianity they do so with the permission of the Talmud-derived, authoritative rabbinic text:

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"Mockery of Jesus Christ (Idols') is permitted.** —Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 167:13.

Rabbi Maimonides classified Jesus Christ as an idol and the Christian religion as a form of idolatry and he ruled that Christians are subject to all the disabilities placed on idolaters by rabbinic law. Cf. Moses Maimonides, Epistle to Yemen;¹¹⁵⁸ and Hilchot Avodah Zara 9:4.

To return to Rabbi Alderstein, his claim of being "not always quite sure how to explain" Judaism's anti-gentile laws "to others, or even to ourselves..." is maintained by the secrecy that continues to shroud Judaism's intricately formulated hermeneutic of permissible dissimulation and concealment. Yet one small part of the vast wall of secrecy is beginning to crack. The reality of Judaism's racist contempt for gentiles is coming increasingly to the fore and this is the problem Alderstein is addressing, through Feldman: "In making us face up to them, Noah Feldman may have done us a favor. We have dealt with 'problematic' texts in roughly the same way for the better part of a millennium. The old way will not work any longer, and the sooner we realize and react appropriately, the better."

Rabbi Alderstein is signaling that Judaics are in the Revelation of the Method era where some secrets will leak out as an inevitable function of the Zeitgeist. "The old way" (heated denials of the existence of laws permitting the murder of gentiles, for example) which have been in place for about the last thousand years (starting from the time of the era of the Rishonim), "will not work any longer." The denial strategy alone is not working. Some truths about Judaism will have to be revealed, for purposes of damage control and as a means of managing them, lest the rabbis lose control altogether of the process of revelation. Here is a surprising admission from Rabbi Alderstein that departs from nearly a thousand years of disinformation: "The medieval church did a good job - often aided and abetted by Jewish apostates - in ferreting out what they saw as anti-gentile and anti-Christian nastiness in the Gemara."

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It has always been claimed by almost all Orthodox rabbis, their masonic allies and some (but not all) Protestants, that the medieval (Catholic) church, in its investigation of the Talmud (Gemara), represented a bottomless sinkhole of falsification, inquisition, hysteria, witch-hunting and holocaust on an unprecedented scale, intending to pin - using perjury and hysterical fantasies — on poor, powerless rabbinic apostles of love and tolerance, the "canard" that Judaism teaches hatred for Christians and racist abnegation of all shkotzim (gentiles).

That was the old public relations line. Now we are told, mutatis mutandis, that the medieval church actually did a competent job of ferreting out the truth about Judaism, using learned talmidim ("Jewish apostates") who converted to Christianity, to guide churchmen to hidden Talmudic passages revealing anti-gentile and anti-Christian "nastiness." Even as of this writing, no Christian or gentile can make a statement like Alderstein's in a public forum, without inviting concerted opprobrium from college professors, the clergymen of Churchianity, the media and "watchdog" groups.

Rabbi Alderstein does, however, qualify his admission that the medieval church was on the right trail. Voila, in our modern times, to do as the medieval church did is, sure enough, according to Alderstein, "antisemitic": "Modern anti-Semitic groups have revived the practice, and there are no shortage of websites that will gladly direct you to the exact places in the Talmud that prove we detest all non-Jews, and actively promote their demise."

Notice that Rabbi Alderstein does not deny that there are places in the Talmud that contain detestation of "non-Jews" and promote their demise; rather he only states that the websites that report these facts are "anti-Semitic." This is an interesting hint at how the rabbinic establishment is seeking to manage and misdirect the new revelations pouring forth in new media run by grassroots auto-didacts, concerning the truth about Orthodox Judaism. Gentiles are still forbidden from publishing the truth, however. Gentiles are not allowed to proceed on the basis that a prominent and oft-consulted rabbi such as Alderstein, who is on the staff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Loyola Law School and the Jewish Press, has conceded that the medieval church was telling the truth about Judaism. If a gentile were to study and publish that truth, doing so would nevertheless still result in the gentile being stigmatized as an "anti-Semite." How do we know this?

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Read what Rabbi Alderstein has written, "Modern anti-Semitic groups have revived the practice." The confirmation of truths about Judaism that were unearthed by medieval critics has yet to result in the granting of a right to gentiles to publish these truths free of intimidation, blacklisting and ad hominem attacks. This is an interesting conundrum: truth, by itself, even when admitted to be the truth, does not necessarily carry with it the right to be articulated or disseminated. This was the message that was also conveyed to Jesus: you can't say that about us (John 10: 26-31).

Rabbi Alderstein's next sentence casts a bit more light on where he is heading: "I am not saying, God forbid, that Noah Feldman is an anti-Semite." Perish the thought. Feldman cannot be tossed on the dung heap of derision and mockery like an independent gentile scholar would be were he to write truthful revelations about Judaism's law concerning gentiles. Feldman, an Orthodox Judaic, somewhat wayward (he married a shiksa), but still in the fold (as we will show), is the authorized conduit for the new revelations about the Talmud; authorized by virtue of the fact that he was published by the New York Times newspaper (in part to elude charges that the Times' routine vilification of conservative Islam, particularly in matters pertaining to violence, women's issues, clothing, sexuality and education, is "balanced' by publishing critiques of Orthodox Judaism, although the ratio in the pages of the Times is something approximating ten powerful, wholesale indictments of Islam for every comparatively mild and heavily qualified critique of Judiasm).

Rabbi Alderstein continues dropping hints: "One of the prosecution witnesses in the Beilis blood libel was a Fr. Justinas Pranaitis, possibly hired because of his 1892 work Talmud Unmasked, still used by Jew-haters today. Most Jews are unaware of the literally thousands of hate sites on the Internet because we simply don't run into the untermenschen^lim who hang out on such sites. The New York Times Magazine, however, is harder to run from."

Here Alderstein is stating a de facto principle: revelations about Judaism, even when truthful (such as those documented in the research of Justinas Pranaitis), are "hateful" and the province of "Jew-haters," if they do not come from approved Zionist conduits such as the New York Times writer

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Noah Feldman, correctly timed and accompanied by the proper spin. "Justinas Pranaitis," better known as LB. Pranaitis, was a Catholic priest and the author of the Russian classic, Christianity in the Judaic Talmud: The Secret Rabbinic Doctrine on Christians (St. Petersburg, 1892), the title of which, after his death, was abbreviated by ill-advised, would-be publicists into the lurid title, "The Talmud Unmasked." Alderstein suggests that "Jew haters" use Pranaitis' book today. Ergo, any unbiased person interested in researching this subject must consult only approved sources such as Feldman and Alderstein, or risk having the lethal "Jew hater" label pinned to themselves in perpetuity.

"Most Jews are unaware of the literally thousands of hate sites on the Internet because we simply don't run into the untermenschen." Untermenschen is a word made infamous by Nietzsche and the Nazis as a synonym for a lower order of sub-human and this is gatekeeper Alderstein's view of those who dare to violate conformist taboos and access websites that are critical of Judaism. The reader's attention is also drawn to Alderstein's obsession with websites as the source of the alleged "Jew hate." The only book he mentions is Rev. Pranaitis's work from 1892. This writer's Judaism's Strange Gods, published in 2000, from which our pamphlet, "The Truth about the Talmud," was derived and which subsequently was cribbed and quoted throughout the Internet, is not mentioned. Probably because books, even in the twenty-first century, still enjoy a higher reputation than "the web," and since it is Rabbi Alderstein's seeming intention to degrade non-approved sources of information about Judaism, his objective may best be achieved by ascribing to them the status of an Internet rumor. However, one wonders how he is going to accomplish his goal after citing the fundamental competence and accuracy of the Church's medieval investigation of Judaism.

Rabbi Alderstein next ventures into the realm of apologetics. What is the most effective way for Talmudists to handle the inevitable Niagara of revelations about the contents of sacred rabbinic texts that are going to pour forth in the years ahead? "The first step is to weed out the misquotes and the misunderstood sources. Nine times out often, the proof-texts cited by critics are goofy errors. We must learn what the errors are, and be quick to demonstrate the fallacies."

Here we would tend to agree with Alderstein, up to a point. One of the reasons why rabbis like Alderstein cite websites as the principal examples of

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criticism of Judaism, is because it permits them to make a blanket condemnation of an entire genre (the online web), rather than having to tackle an individual book or text. "Websites" are equated with "goofy" attacks. This is clever of Rabbi Alderstein because by way of reply, one can't defend a genre. Few lucid persons would attempt to say that "books" generally are a culprit in the sense that the Internet generally is made culpable. We are aware of dreadful books unworthy of the paper they were printed on, and, by contrast, of classic volumes of lasting value. One cannot condemn all books critical of Judaism. It would be preposterous. Reasonable people should be able to see through Alderstein's blanket generalization concerning the Internet, in that, by pointing people to the web in general, rather than to specific websites, he can use the many sub-par or infiltrated websites to indict every website that contains a skeptical study of Judaism. It's a sly attempt at conflation and it falls on its face. Yes, there are goofy, nonsensical and fabricated statements attributed to the Talmud by intellectually sloppy, eccentric or malicious people, as well as by Talmudic agents themselves,, seeking to muddy the waters. Many times we have to correct or expunge spurious "Talmud" passages sent to us by some naive but well-meaning person who had received them from a third party. But it is a cheap shot to focus on these "amateur hour" attacks on the Talmud and thereby conflate the laziness and sloppiness of those error-prone scribblers, with the work of scholars of the calibre of Donan, Pfefferkorn, Eisenemenger, McCaul, Pranaitis, Chiarini or Provan. Still focused on the Internet, Rabbi Alderstein implies that about one-tenth of the websites are not goofy, but contain damaging facts: "The remaining ten percent can still do much damage. But they don't have to — and won't for most decent people — for several reasons. First of all, many of them are a product of their times. Certain references to early Christians are a case in point."

Whoa there. Did you catch that sneaky insinuation? "Decent people" won't allow the truth about the Talmud to damage their regard for Judaism. But if you're not a "decent" person, you will permit the facts to alter your perceptions. So don't let that happen to you if you want to be considered "decent" in the eyes of the Judeo-American power structure.

Next, the rabbi escorts us into the core of his lawyer's brief for the defense. As we review it, keep in mind that none of the alibis and excuses that he serves up to his fellow Talmudists, can be borrowed for helping us to

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understand German or Christian animus toward Judaics. With the particularism that is the hallmark of the rabbinic mentality, these alibis and excuses are the sole province of Judaic self-defense and cannot be employed by others. Alderstein: "John Chrysostom, the fourth century Church Father's ...vitriol against Jews was surpassed by none and was embraced for centuries thereafter, including by the Nazis. Chrysostom remains a saint in the Church, and many Jews get unhinged by the mention of his name....some disparaging remarks in the Talmud against early Christians should be understandable to today's Christians, if only as an exercise in parity. We ought not — and should not — expect them to be pleased by the language. But we have an argument in equity that they should be able to tolerate their existence, in the same way that similar (or much worse) passages regarding the Jews appear in their literature."

Rabbi Alderstein's point one: There are Nazi Christians. One of these Nazis was a Church Father, Chrysostom, and Chrysostom's sainthood has not (yet) been withdrawn by the Church. Rabbi Alderstein's point two: The Talmud's hatred for Christians is an "exercise in parity" based on "an argument in equity" which Christians should tolerate because "much worse passages regarding the Jews appear" in Christian "literature."

First things first. Jesus and the apostles were assaulted and killed as a result of their teachings. Jesus and the apostles assaulted and killed no one. The source of the animus of St. Chrysostom toward the petrified Phariseeism ("Judaism") which he confronted in the fourth century, was the Phariseeism that had been weaponized after Calvary, and later in the stoning of Stephen and the massacres of Christians instigated by Judaics without any rightful claim to retaliating for previous "Christian" atrocities since there had been none up to that time. The "atrocity" in the rabbinic mind was that the "minim" ("apostate" Christian Jews) had followed the hated Yoshke (Jesus). There is no "parity" and no "equity" here, except in the rigged courtrooms of Talmudic-masonic jurisprudence. Instead, we see the old familiar self-justification and refusal to take responsibility for anything that is evil in Judaism. Rabbinic violence? Talmudic libel? It's all a defensive reaction to evil first generated by hateful gentiles and Christians. Pray tell, where do we find in the writings of the Church Fathers and Christian saints, the pornography, lies and vitriol that come anywhere near to the raw hatred which the Talmud spews in the vilest terms for Jesus Christ, which its puts

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in hell, boiling in hot excrement and His Virgin Mother, Mary, whom it denies as a whore who prostituted herself with carpenters and Roman soldiers? Moreover, where in the Christian scriptures or canonical writings is there a theological finding that rabbis and Judaics do not have souls? To claim that Christian literature contains "much worse" invective than the Talmud is an example of rabbinic hyperbole and Talmudic chutzpah.

"The passages in the Talmud that deal with Jesus himself (if they in fact do — the Rishonim, our great medieval commentators, were split on this), in far less than complimentary fashion, can be dealt with similarly," says Alderstein. Whereas previously it was an "antisemitic fabrication" to claim that Jesus Christ was libeled in the Talmud, now it seems that He was after all libeled, although Judicas depend for a final verified determination not on the evidence of the texts themselves, but on the opinions of "the Rishonim, our great medieval commentators." Independent contemporary scholars have no standing in the determination. But for now, the point is half-conceded, with the understanding that we can deal with the libel of Jesus "similarly." Meaning, we suppose, that Jesus was another Nazi prototype like Chrysostom who was justifiably hated by the rabbinic authors of the Talmud because Jesus had harsh things to say about the Pharisees. Rabbi Alderstein: "There are yet other passages (in rabbinic sacred texts) that are extremely dismissive of categories of non-Jews. Many of them, in fact, were aimed not at all non-Jews but at the idolatrous near-savages known to Chazal. To be sure, there are disputes going back to the Rishonim as to which passages refer to which groups. But many Jews are unaware as to how many mainstream decisors restricted the application of certain Gemaros to idolators, explicitly excluding the civilized folks among whom we live today."

This is to laugh. This is Shmuley Boteach all over again. Many of the Gemara passages which were "extremely dismissive" of non-Jews were aimed "not at all non-Jews." First we note that Alderstein says "many" but not all, leaving himself a loophole for accounting for those rabbinic texts that clearly state that gentiles in general do not possess a soul (nefesh). What we are asked to believe is that in the days of the "savages," rabbis took a dim view of gentiles who were so unlike the "civilized folks" among whom the adherents of the religion of Judaism circulate today. That sounds eminently reasonable. We can't blame the rabbis for decreeing that Attila the Hun acted as though he had no soul; but now they appreciate our "civilized" gentile culture,

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especially in light of how pro-Israeli our government is and how pro-rabbinic our churches are.

Alderstein preys on the ignorance which gentiles (and even some Judaics) have about Judaism. For in fact, Judaism teaches, in the words of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, that "Even the best of the gentiles should all be killed." This principle is reiterated time and again in the secret core of Judaism, though denials, and explanations that his statement applies only to "idolaters" will be found at the outer limits of Judaism. At its core, however, we find a dogma that is so hateful it is terrifying, because it undercuts all of the precepts of charity toward the Other, toward the Samaritan, that have been instilled in us in western, Christian culture. The Talmud decrees that even the kindness of gentiles toward Judaics is a sin (BT Bava Batra 10b). All of the good that gentiles do on behalf of Judaics is done from selfish motives because gentiles "contain no good."

as is written in Etz Chayim, Portal 49, ch. 3, that all the good that the nations do, is done out of selfish motives.

Since their nefesh emanates from kelipot which contain no good, it follows that any good done by them is for selfish motives.

So the Gemara³⁰ comments on the verse,*¹ "The kindness of the nations is sin" — that all the charity and kindness done by the nations of the world is only for their self-glorification...