judge

Really? So Israel , for example, welcomes Muslims to join their state in the same way it does jews?

Does it also give moslems settlement land in the same way it does jews?

Whwn did this change?

Toto

Please stay on topic for this forum. Discussion of current Israeli policies belongs in PD

Toto

Here are my notes on the session. There will be a DVD available later.

The session was moderated by Paul Kurtz, the founder of Prometheus Books and the various Centers for Inquiry. He mentioned the book by Arthur Blech, The Causes of Anti-Semitism: A Critique of the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk), which holds that a cause of anti-Semitism is Jewish exclusivity, along with Christian doctrine. {Blech originally self-published his book, which is now published by Prometheus. I read a previous version that I though very insightful. Blech was present but not on the panel.)

Carol Bakhos started off with an ecumenical, interfaith approach. She claimed that the problem was that religious texts were taken out of their historical and literary contexts. She gave no examples of these mistaken contexts, but spent too much of her brief time recounting a parable from Boccaccio's Decameron, turned into a play by Lessing, of a King with three loyal good sons, and one valuable ring, who had determined that he would leave the ring to one son, who would be his heir. But because the three were all good, he secretly had two nearly exact copies made up and gave one to each son in private, so that after his death, no one knew who the rightful heir was. (She neglected to explain that the parable was told by a Jew as a way of avoiding the question of which of the three "Abrahamic" religions was the true religion. I somehow think that Bakhos did not know her audience.) She stated that competitive religious truth claims lead to the denigration of the other, but that this does not do justice to these rich religious texts.

Scott Bartchy followed with "scripture as atomic energy – benign or dangerous?" All NT texts were written by Jews. Every new religion starts off as a minority, but lasts because it meets some need. There were 6 to 8 million Jews in the 1st c. Roman Empire and maybe 100,000 Christians, so the NT is essentially protest literature of a Jewish minority against a majority. Before Constantine made Christianity an official religion of the Empire, relations between Christians and Jews were non-violent, if contentious, but Constantine was the one who changed things so Christianity was defined by belief in dogma, not by practice.

He recommended Amy Jill Levine's latest book, The Misunderstood Jew (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Reuven Firestone stated that anti-Semitism was just a natural expression of antipathy between competing religions, and there was nothing unique about it. He also analyzed Christianity as a new religion, and saw anti-Jewish statements in the Christian and Islamic scriptures as the residue of competition for religion market share. The relatively virulent anti-Semitism in the Qur'an compared to its treatment of Christians was the result of a historical accident: Mohammed went to Medina, a city with a large Jewish population, not to an adjacent city with more Christians. But unfortunately, holy writ cannot be changed, and will continue to plague us. (It was sort of a relief to find someone admitting that the texts are problematic, not just misunderstood.) In the later Q&A period, Firestone said that religion is a human institution meant to mediate between the human and the transcendent. It was never meant to bring peace – sometimes the society thinks that its interests are not served by peace.

Hoffman said he would give the Cliff Notes or Anti-Semitism for Dummies. He said it is a modern myth that religions are essentially good, and violence is an aberration. He then said that the idea that Jews, Christians, and Muslims have a lot in common is piety or self-delusion, since all three religions practice exclusivism, and exclude each other. He traced the Christian-Jewish conflict to the Roman idea that what is old is true. The Romans didn't like the Jews, but they respected the antiquity of their god. Christians were then moved to claim that the Jews had misunderstood their own god and their own tradition. He claimed that the god of Imperial Christianity was Gentile, not Jewish, and that Christians read the Hebrew Scriptures backwards. The modern renewed fundamentalism is a continuation of ancient polemics. He ended by saying that he disagreed with the idea that the cure is for everyone to learn more about other religions, or that the cure for bad religion is good religion. If someone is drowning in salt water, they don't need an extra dose of fresh water. In the later question section, he rejected Bartchy's claim that anti-Semitism was a 4th century phenomenon. He spoke about his own thesis on Marcion, who is reputed to be anti-Jewish; but Marcion in fact took the Jews at their word, and did not try to appropriate their religion.

Eddie Tabash then said that the problem is that people believe in supernatural events. We can't turn everyone into a secular humanist, but if we can at least make them aware of doubts about their religion, perhaps we can make them less likely to take the Book of Leviticus too seriously.

S.C.Carlson

Thanks for the summary, Toto. It sounded like a thought-provoking session.

4321lynx

There were roots of anti-semitism other than religious. True, religion played a big part, as it always does when it delineates one group, tribe, nation, call it what you will, from another. The religions, or the Xtian "cult" or "heresy", and the orthodox Jewish religion at that time, were hostile to one another from the start. Or from the time of Saul/Paul's "conversion", although even then, as befits any "true believer", he was on his way to Damascus to prosecute, ?persecute, ?suppress, that heresy. If we are to believe what we're told.

Modern anti-semitism (by modern I mean in the last 1000 years, give or take the odd hundred), also had important roots in the position in society of Jews in the diaspora. They were, broadly speaking, traders, innkeepers, moneylenders in a small everyday way, as well as, in the past 2-300 years especially, in a big way as bankers. Of course I am excluding the doctors, lawyers, philosophers etc.
And they were FOREIGNERS, living amidst the other peoples. Dressed differently, had a different language, different Holy Days, different customs, & did not want to assimilate, worked hard and helped each other, to stay separate.
And to an ignorant population, to ignorant priests, bishops, popes, or to those same groups with some "agenda", they were "Christ killers". Religious diffrences, AS ALWAYS EVERYWHERE, accentuating or even fomenting dislike and all that goes with it.

But I think the economic & ethnic reasons underlay & were more important than religious reasons in the developement of mutual contempt, antipathy, negative judgement, hate, prejudice, called antisemitism. No diaspora, no antisemitism. Merely the usual neighbourly hates, prejudices, aggressions, invasions, enslavements, massacres & other humane & human behaviours.

One could see a similar attitude of the indigenous population to the foreigner among them, occupying an economic niche similar to the Jews in Europe, namely the East Indian in East Africa and the Lebanese & Syrian in West Africa. And this before any religious fanaticism entered into the picture on either side. And not mitigated in E Africa in areas where both the Africans and the Indians were Muslims.( Though how much, if any, Muslim freemasonary there was in their dealings is hard to say. I suspect none form what I know. Nothing personal, just business.)

Of course, once the Jews began to assimilate their undoubted abilities, education, and devotion to the work at hand, presented a challenge, competition, a threat, to the middle class and gave them a "reason" for antisemitism.

All religions in history have promoted or produced hate & wars with the "foreigner", whether or not he resided on the nation's borders, all the more so in fact if he were seen as the enemy inside the borders. That was what religions were for, to define friend from foe; this being prominent among their other functions.

gstafleu

That goes back to Blech's thesis about exclusivity, doesn't it?

In general, if any large enough group in a society sets itself apart from the main culture in a sufficiently visible manner, that does not bode well for that group.

Gerard Stafleu

neilgodfrey

Religious prejudices no doubt have fanned latent racism but this is surely spot on. But the biblical "memes" need to find fertile soil to do their dirty work. It helps to remember Jews have not been the only victims but Romanies (Gypsies) have been lumped with them for similar treatment -- variously along with witches and homosexuals et al. Singling out Jews at the expense of these others does unfortunately tend to risk serving sectional interests today at the expense of these other minorities by failing to address racism per se.

Edward Said's valuable contribution to this debate ("Orientialism") was the observation of how since the holocaust of WW2 anti-semitism has bifurcated into the guilt-response cum displacement equation of jews:good::arabs:bad -- both sides of the expression of course being unhealthy unrealistic mythical nonsense. I suspect that much of the rekindled expressions of anti(jewish)semitism in recent years has been a reaction -- albeit an equally pathological one -- against this bifurcation.

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

Toto

There is no doubt that racism is a general problem, especially if exacerbated by economic conditions. Reuven Firestone, who said that he was an ordained rabbi and a practicing Jew, thinks that this is what anti-Semitism is. But is it not a problem when human prejudice is reinforced and validated by religious texts, especially for religions that tend to idolize those texts and search through them for solutions to political problems?

neilgodfrey

No doubt it is a problem but democracy and the principles of free speech are by nature always messy. Totalitarianism and censorship are sometimes seen as answers for those who cannot abide messiness. When we do see racism being fanned with references to sacred texts why not ask "why now?" "why here?" "why this group?" -- it's not as if this mad religiously sanctioned rhetoric has always had such political sway on all peoples with such texts at all times.

Surely those of us who are not stirred to racism as a result of this or that tract have a responsibility to understand why others are so aroused, and to promote the range of measures necessary to manage that social problem like any other social problem. One place to start looking for such solutions might be to study societies, sub-groups and times where racism is/was not an issue despite the veneration of those texts -- not to mention systemic government policies that may well be working at a more subliminal level under guises other than racism.

I even wonder if it is a good thing on balance that the bible does contain such rot as anti-semitisms along with its other immoralities and prejudices -- such tidbits have surely saved many more from coming under (and departing from) the sway of its broader superstitions and antiquated ethics.

But to seek to ban or attack holy books on such grounds is surely only going to deepen prejudices and inflame worse reactions.

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com