Judaism discovered

JUDAISM DISCOVERED
MICHAEL HOFFMAN

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I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no strange gods before me.

Exodus 20:2-3*

*Verse 3 is from the Latin Vulgate according to Douay.

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"Woe unto you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge."

Luke 11:52
"The Jews as.well as the National Socialists want to impose on God their plans for the glory of their race and nation...And both these forces are being used by Satan to inflict disaster on the world. There is laughter in hell when human beings succumb once more to the temptation of the Garden of Eden and put themselves in the place of God, whether the new divinity be the Jewish race or the German race."

Rev. Fr. Denis Fahey

The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganization of Society (1939)
"Illustrations and reasons of the laws of Moses I never take from the Talmud. The oral traditions of the ignorant rabbis...(give) not the sense of the Mosaic writings. Many of the laws in the Pentateuch would make a strange figure indeed, if we were to interpret them as the Pharisees did, whose exposition, according to Christ's declaration, in many cases served to inculcate doctrines and precepts directly the reverse of what Moses had taught and commanded...Those, therefore, who in this work expect to find Talmudic law, will be much disappointed. I do not even mean to mention the names of those men, whose oracles are held up to us in the Talmud; nor indeed of the rabbis in general....even with regard to Jewish antiquities, prior to the Babylonian captivity, the Talmud is...an impure source of information...a book...which appeals only to oral traditions can tell us nothing worthy of credit...I have nothing to do with the law of the present Jews..."

Johann David Michaelis Commentaries on the Laws of Moses*

"At no period of his life was D'lsraeli a rabbinist or Talmudist; a large and liberal* philosophy raised him...above all the exclusive, intolerant and anti-social glosses with which the authors of the Mishna and Gemara have encumbered and distorted the Mosaic legislation."

W.C. Taylor

"Memoir of the Late Isaac D'lsraeli"*
"According to Jewish law, the minute a Jew betrays his people and country to the enemy, he must be killed. No one taught me that law. I've been studying the Talmud all my life, and I have all the data."

Yigal Amir,* assassin of Yitzhak Rabin

*New York Times, November 27,1995
"Citing a tale from the Talmud in which the rabbis tell God, 'You gave us a document to interpret, and a methodology for interpreting it. Now leave us to do our job/ (Harvard Law Prof. Alan) Dershowitz sees a lesson for Americans."

Karen J. Greenberg "The Letter and the Law"*

* Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2008
"If they get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow

Babylon: The Cradle of the Talmud

The cities of Sura and Pumbedisa (also spelled Pumbeditha) are reputed to be the places where the Tanna'im and the Amora'im concocted Judaism's authoritative Talmud. In Sura was allegedly established, circa the third century A.D., the foundational "Yeshiva Gedola" which functioned for hundreds of years but fell on hard times after the Christian conquest of Mesopotamia. Only with the subsequent Muslim conquest were the many decrees and limitations that had been placed on Babylon's rabbis lifted. Other important Talmud centers in Babylon cited in the legends of the Gemara include Neharde'ia and Mechoza. Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, sixteen commandos from the U.S. Army's elite "MET Alpha" unit, under the command of Col. Richard R. McPhee, were dispatched on a mission to search Baghdad in order to locate rabbinic antiquities, including "one of the most ancient copies of the Talmud in existence, dating from the seventh century."*

*New York Times, May 7, 2003
Caveat

Readers of this book are forewarned. There is a death penalty for critics of Judaism who study the Talmud. BT Sanhedrin 59a:

³ Rabbi Yobanan said: A non-Jew who engages in the study of Torah is liable for execution, for the verse states (Deuteronomy 33.4): "Moses commanded us a Torah, an inheritance for the congregation of Jacob" — ⁶to us, the Jewish people, the Torah was given as an inheritance, but not to them, the other nations.

By "Torah" is here signified the Oral Torah, the Torah SheBeal Peh, i.e. the Talmud and other rabbinic sacred texts that originated in, or are derived from, the formerly oral "traditions of the elders."¹ The question will be asked, if there really is a death penalty, why is it that nowadays the Talmud can be freely accessed and read without interdiction? Those who make this point so

as to demonstrate that the preceding tractate Sanhedrin is no longer in effect, have neglected to consult the rabbinic "fine print" —

A non-Jew who engages in Torah. The

Rishonim offer various explanations for this prohibition. According to Meiri, a non-Jew is only forbidden to study Torah, if his intention is to gain knowledge in order to vex Jews.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, commentary on BT Sanhedrin 59a

Access to the Talmud is not a crime for those who refrain from criticizing the religion of Judaism ("vexing Jews"). Jesus Christ quoted the forerunner of the Talmud, the Mishnah as it was repeated in its oral form. As a critic of those Pharisaic doctrines he had no right to study them, according to the rabbis, and He paid for His study and critical evaluation with His life. The same fate awaits all skeptical researchers and scholars who dare to peer into the pages of the Talmud.

"If a non-Jew studies the Talmud, he is subject to the death penalty." Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Yad Hachzakah 10:9. As part of the rabbinic hermeneutic of concealment and dissimulation, Rabbi Moses Maimonides anticipated that the medieval gentile powers would learn of Judaism's death sentence for reading their book. Thus, he made it appear as though on earth only an unspecified "punishment," but not execution, would be the fate of critics of Judaism who dared to study the Talmud, alluding to capital punishment of such offenders only in the after life. This is a set-up laid for the unwary, uninitiated reader of the devious Maimonides (cf. Sefer Shofetim, Hilkhot Melakhim 10:9). If rabbinic supremacy reaches sufficient heights of near total control of much of the West in the twenty-first century, critics of Judaism who study the Talmud or based their writings on a study of it in the past, will be subjected to criminal penalties, including death, though very likely under cover of convictions for other crimes.

Another text that, when partially quoted by apologists for Judaism, can be made to serve as a decoy, is found later in BT Sanhedrin 59a, where it is said by Rabbi Meir that "a non-Jew who engages in the study of the Torah is like a High Priest." This Talmud passage is used out of context on many occasions to prominently showcase to the gentile world the claim that

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Judaism regards the non-Jew as an equal, even a "High Priest" when engaged in the study of God's Word.

Such an interpretation of this passage is intellectually dishonest nonsense. One only has to read further in Sanhedrin 59a, where the Gremara supplies its own very specific context, to discover that the citation does not overturn the death penalty for Talmud study by non-Judaics: "This Baraita seems to contradict Rabbi Yohanan's ruling that a non-Jew who studies the Torah is liable for the death penalty. The Gemara explains: There in the Baraita Rabbi Meir is referring to a non-Jew who studies the seven Noachide laws that non-Jews are obligated to observe. A non-Jew who studies the seven Noachide laws is indeed worthy of praise. But a non-Jew is forbidden to study the rest of the Torah, as was declared by Rabbi Yohanan."

As a reflection of rabbinic law, certain countries in Europe make it a crime for gentile critics to quote the Talmud. In early 2005 "...a court in Berlin convicted Claus Cremer...of...North Rhine-Westphalia, of incitement. Cremer was accused of taking a passage of the Talmud out of context by insinuating that Judaism endorses child abuse."²

Introduction

Rabbi Jacob Neusner: "That sustained, systematic exposition, through one instance after another, of the right reading of the Torah in both its media comes to Israel now as in the past in a single document, the Talmud of Babylonia. That statement of fact describes the centrality of Talmud in the future curriculum of the Judaic intellect, the priority of the Talmud from the time of its closure in about 600 C.E. to the present time. For 'Judaism' is Rabbinic Judaism, and the Talmud of Babylonia is the authoritative statement of the Torah that Judaism embodies.

"The Talmud is the prism, receiving, refracting all light. To state the proposition in academic language: into that writing all prior canonical writings emerged; to it, all appeal is directed; upon it, all conclusions ultimately rest. In the language of Torah itself: study of the Torah begins, as a matter of simple, ubiquitous fact, in the Talmud.

"...In all times, places, and writings, other than those rejected as heretical, from then to now, the Talmud formed the starting point and the ending point, the alpha and the omega of truth; justify by appeal to the Talmud, rightly read, persuasively interpreted, and you make your point; disprove a proposition by reference to a statement of the Talmud and you demolish a counterpoint. In reading the written Torah itself, the Talmud's exegesis enjoys priority of place. Scripture rightly read reaches Israel in the Talmud (and related writings of Midrash); sound exegesis conforms to the facts of the Talmud...

"In all decisions of law that express theology in everyday action, the Talmud forms the final statement of the Torah, mediating Scripture's rules. Innovation of every kind, whether in the character of the spiritual life or in the practice of the faith in accord with its norms, must find justification in the Talmud.

"That is the power of this Judaism, which for as long time, and for the majority of practitioners of Rabbinic Judaism today, defines the normative, the classical, the authentic Torah: Rabbinic Judaism. That formulation of the theology of Rabbinic Judaism, which is to say, of the Torah, therefore constitutes the Talmud's re-presentation of the Torah.. .to know the Torah, we have to think in the way in which Torah teaches us to think. No prior

document spells out that way, in massive, tedious, repetitive detail, case by case by case, as does the Talmud of Babylonia."

The Pharisees were originally only a sect within Israel. They were not the dominant force. The majority of the Israelites rejected the oral law which is what the Talmud is~the oral tradition of the elders committed to writing after the crucifixion of Christ and the destruction of the Temple. The great mass of Israelites, the Am-ha-aretz were not Pharisees and were oblivious to the orally transmitted traditions of the elders and were thus regarded as ignoramuses by the Pharisees. The Pharisees did not yet have a hold over the majority of the people of Israel; though the Pharisees did represent a potent underground current of corruption that had existed within Israel since the time of the Golden Calf. It is interesting to note in this regard that the rabbis teach that the Israelites did not sin in their worship of the golden calf. Rabbi Zalman Melamed of Bar Ilan University in Jerusalem writes:

"...we can classify the sin of the Golden Calf as not a true fall'; it was not substantive, but just a result of confusion, a foolishness that overtook a nation impatiently awaiting its leader, Moses. In one rabbinic passage, in fact, our (Talmudic) sages compare the sin of the calf to an unfaithful wife's intimacy with a eunuch! In other words, the sin was not substantive..."

Another example of the rabbis' theological casuistry is even more egregious. Chazal at BT Avodah Zarah 4b state that the Jewish people only worshipped the golden calf to give a theological "opening" (pischon peh)⁵ to future baalei teshuvah (Judaics who never knew Judaism or who gave up Judaism and who subsequently join, or return, to the fold). If this seems too far-fetched, Rashi concocted an alternate escape clause: blaming the worship on incitement by the "erev rav," a racially "mixed multitude of clever trouble-makers and rabble-rousers who used sorcery and accompanied the Jewish people when they left Egypt." Hence, a spell was placed on Jews and that is why they worshipped the golden calf. Bottom line: it wasn't their fault. Sound familiar?

In contradiction to this rabbinic assertion, the reader will recall the famous scene in the Book of Luke when the Pharisees, using their sly ability
to twist words, which has remained with their spiritual heirs to this day, try to ensnare Jesus, when they ask Him, "By whose authority do you teach?" And Jesus countered by asking of them a question in turn, "By whose authority did John baptize?" This passage in Luke illuminates the extent to which the peasantry among the Jewish people, the am ha-aretz, were on Jesus' side at that time. The Pharisees murmured among themselves, "If we answer that God sent John, He will say why were you not then baptized? But if we say John's authority did not come from God, the people will stone us because they believe that John was a prophet."

The common "people" of Israel, the am ha-eretz, for a time believed John the Baptist and did not hold with the Pharisees or their anthropomorphic traditions. What is the status of Judaics in our time who do not believe in the Talmud? How do the rabbis judge Judaics who have not learned and may even have rejected the Talmud? Here's a series of rabbinic definitions of the Am-ha-eretz in the Talmud, showing how Jews who did not highly regard or acquaint themselves with the oral tradition were viewed by the Pharisees.

BT Sotah 22a: "It has been reported, if one has learned Scripture and Talmud but did not obey Rabbinical scholars, Rabbi Eleazar says he is an am ha-Aretz. Rabbi Samuel ben Nachmani says an am ha-Aretz is a boor (literally, 'bor' in Hebrew); Rabbi Jannai says an am ha-Aretz is a Samaritan; Rabbi Aha b. Jacob says he is a magician. Our Rabbis taught: Who is an Am ha-Aretz? Whoever does not put on tefillin. Rabbi Ben Azzai says: Whoever has not tzitzit on his garment. R. Jonathan b. Joseph says: Whoever has sons and does not rear them to study the Talmud. Others say: Even if he learned the Old Testament scripture, but not Talmud, he is a boor."

BT Pesahim 49a-b: "But let him not marry the daughter of an am ha-aretz, because they are detestable ('sheketz') and their wives are vermin, and of their daughters it is said, Cursed be he that lies with any manner of beast.'

"It was taught, Rabbi said: An am ha-aretz may not eat the flesh of cattle, for it is said, This is the law of the beast, and of the fowl; whoever engages in [the study of] the Talmud may eat the flesh of beast and fowl, but he who does not engage in [the study of] the Talmud may not eat the flesh of beast and fowl.

"Rabbi Eleazar said: An am ha-aretz — it is permitted to stab him (even)

on the Day of Atonement which falls on the Sabbath.
"Said his disciples to him, Master, may we slaughter him (ritually)?

"The rabbi replied: This (ritual slaughter) requires a benediction, whereas that (stabbing of the am ha'aretz) does not require a benediction.

"Rabbi Eleazar said: One must not join company with an am ha-aretz on the road, because it is said, for that (the Talmud) is your life, and the length of your days: He has no care (pity) for his own life (as demonstrated by not studying Talmud), how much the more for the life of his companions!

"Rabbi Samuel ben Nachmani said in Rabbi Yochanan's name: One may tear an am ha'aretz like a fish!

"Said Rabbi Samuel ben Isaac: And (this means) stab him along his back.

"Greater is the hatred with which the ignoramuses {am ha'aretz) hate the (Talmudic) scholar, than the hatred with which the goyim hate Israel, and their wives (hate even) more than they."

BT Pesahim 49a-b: "Our Rabbis taught: Six things were said about the ignoramuses: We do not commit testimony to them; we do not accept testimony from them; we do not reveal a secret to them; we do nothing for their orphans; we do not appoint them stewards over money; and we must not join their company on the road. If an am ha-aretz loses something, the scholar is not required to notify him; the am ha-aretz should not benefit from any physical good in this world!" Modern Orthodox Judaism interprets BT Pesachim 49b as stating that "Jewish ignoramuses are greater antisemites than Gentiles." The Kabbalah (Zohar: Exodus 7b) teaches that at the "end of days" the am ha'arertz, these "wicked Jews" will become the allies of the enemies of Klal Yisroel."

This book may be banned, suppressed and otherwise proscribed and forbidden because of the documentation it brings to light concerning the religion of Orthodox Judaism. The depressingly familiar litany of tedious smears ("bigoted-antisemitic-Jew-hatred") may be set forth as justification for the suppression. Because we expose Judaism, this work may be regarded as beyond the pale, beyond intellectual consideration, and beyond the normative protections of freedom of speech and press. How many persons will be able to penetrate this charade and discern that it is actually a function of rabbinic cozenage, is anyone's guess. There are hundreds of Muslim-bashing books on the market, in libraries and schools and hawked prominently on display

shelves at national chain bookstores: The Next World War: What Prophecy Reveals about Extreme Islam and the West by Grant R. Jeffrey (Random House), and Radical Islam's War Against Israel, Christianity, and the West by Richard Booker. Ah, you say, but those books only attack Islamic extremism, not Islam itself. Not so. There is Norman Geisler, Answering Islam; Alvin J. Schmidt, The Great Divide: The Failure of Islam, R.C. Sproul, The Dark Side of Islam; Mark A. Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism: What the Quran Really Teaches; Don Richardson, Secrets of the Koran: Revealing Insights into Islam's Holy Book; Joel Richardson, Antichrist: Islam's Awaited Messiah; John Ankerberg, The Facts on Islam; Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam; Gregory M. Davis, Religion of Peace? Islam's War Against the World; there are dozens of titles in this vein. There is nothing approaching this deluge of criticism concerning Judaism. Any respectable priest or pastor who published "The Dark Side of Judaism" or "Secrets of the Talmud: Revealing Insights into Judaism's Holy Book"; would soon be seen with a cup in his hand seeking spare change on the sidewalk outside his former church. Any reputable but untenured professor who published "Judaism and Terrorism: What the Talmud Really Teaches" would soon be out of a job and a reputation. The epithet, "Antisemite!" would dog the clergyman and the professor for the rest of their lives, or for as long as they stood by their research; in the event that they repudiated it and recanted, however, there might be some slim hope of salvaging their vocation.

Critics of Islam however, are the toast of western society. In The Death cf the Grown-Up, published by the prestigious St. Martin's Press in 2007, author Diana West's "cultural analysis fits...with Ms. West's grand thesis about the West's failure to confront Islam. Not Islamic fundamentalism, not Islamism, but Islam...the threat to the West comes from tenets inherent in Islam, not from extremists or terrorists distorting the message." Substitute in the preceding sentence the words Judaism and Judaic for Islam and Islamism and Diana West's book wouldn't merit two lines in the New York Times, much less a nearly one-quarter page review, whether critical or fulsome (this particular one was critical), complete with author photo and a max highlighting the book's price and page length. That kind of spotlight in the "newspaper of record" represents about $20,000 worth of free publicity.

By this means the book comes to the attention of the nation's booksellers and librarians and enters the marketplace of ideas, to be considered, debated, denounced or celebrated. Its attack on the religion of Islam does not preclude these developments.

It is not that we are opposed to honest Christian or scholarly analysis of Islam, however critical. But we can't help noting the deafening silence of all of these "courageous" crusading Christian authors and "politically incorrect" intellectuals when it comes to the "dark side" of what the Talmud "really teaches." When it comes to Judaism they are as pusillanimous and spineless as any candy store schlemiel. They have apparently forgotten that the first mission of Jesus Christ was to the "lost sheep of the House of Israel (Matt. 15:24)." Today we are content to let them remain lost, while we thump our chests in glorious, rabbinic-approved crusades against the hated Muslim.

The book you hold in your hands is dedicated to a dissuasion from Judaism, and no matter how erudite, it will not — without a huge, ground swell-populist surge from the grassroots — receive any attention whatsoever from the Establishment's house organs, whether in Manhattan or Milwaukee; or from the glossy Christian magazines and theology journals. We would be glad to be proved wrong, but this has been the pattern in the recent past. Our book crosses the perimeter of America's thoroughly Talmudic culture disguised as an intellectual forum. The gatekeeper is an 800 pound gorilla, that shrine of the sacrosanct, Judaism.

Do with Judaism as Diana West and dozens of prominent, affluent and celebrated clergymen, pundits, professors and politicians have done with Islam, and the writer who does so just bought his or her book a one-way ticket to the bottom of the memory hole. Habent sua fata libelli: "The fate of the work illustrates its argument." Even in the matter of comparative religion, Judaism enjoys superior status, privileges and immunities. In almost every sphere it is on the ascendant, even as it howls ever more and ever again of "persecution!"

We once gave a speech, "The Jew Haters Who Wrote the Talmud." Need we elaborate on its contents? There is a candid saying one hears privately and only inside Orthodox Judaism: Meimis atzmo b'oholah shel Torah — a phrase which connotes, "We are killing ourselves in the study of the Torah."⁷

A literal translation would be "Killing ourselves in the tent of Torah." But the connotation is in line with the sentiment of a more common public proverb, S'iz shuer tsu zayn a yid.