AboutDavid Expertise I am an expert in Middle Eastern history, and Israeli history in particular. My main focus is Biblical analysis, the origins of Islam, and medieval and modern historical events in Israel. Everything you see happening in the world today, has a history.
Experience I am a free-lance writer who has previously lived in, and studied the history of, Israel.
Organizations I contribute to the One Israel Fund and will be joining CAMERA shortly.
I read Israel Shahak's book "Jewish History, Jewish Religion, the Weight of Three Thousand Years"... the book shocked me, but I found many things which Mr. Shahak said in the book to be true from other sources. Yet Shahak has been condemned in Jewish circles as telling outrageous lies, and of being a self hating Jew. I want to believe that this is the case but over the years I have accidentally found other sources to support his statements.
For example I read in a Jewish Encyclopedia that in modern day Israel Jews get around the law forbidding planting during the Sabbath year by performing a fictitious sale of land in Israel to a gentile for that year, allowing them to plant. Then after the year the land is returned. The sale is not even real, just ritualistic. The gentile cannot refuse to sell the land back. Shahak has this in his book.
I read in the Jerusalem Post that in 1998 Israeli Rabbis protested the fact that the IDF left on the Sabbath to help rescue lives in the explosion of the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The protest was because Jews were violating the Sabbath to save gentile lives, which Shahak said is forbidden according to the Talmud and Maimonides. In the Jerusalem Post article the Chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel defended the actions of the IDF. The only problem is that his excuse for defending it was not because gentile lives were precious, but because if Jews did not help there would be a scandal, which might cause harm to Jews. According to Shahak's book the only time a Jew can save the life of a gentile on the Sabbath is when it might cause a scandal or if he is paid to do so.
Also I have to mention Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the man who walked into a mosque in Hebron and opened fire on innocent worshippers. I read about him in detail and the articles which I read said that he was an American Israeli doctor in the IDF. Before the Hebron incident where he was killed there was a different event which gave him some public exposure. He was a doctor in the IDF but he refused to treat gentiles, even if they were members of the IDF (such as Druze, and even some Christian and Muslim volunteers). The IDF tried to court marshal him for this, because you can’t run an army when the doctors refuse to treat its soldiers. The IDF took him to court and he won the case. He claimed that his religion would not allow him to treat gentiles because the only rabbinical authorities he recognized were Maimonides and Kahane. This event shocked me even more than the whole business with the rabbis protesting the IDF trip to Kenya. I wasn’t shocked so much by the fact that he refused to treat gentiles as by the fact that he won the court marshal case in the modern state of Israel, and was allowed to continue as a doctor in the IDF, even though he would not treat gentiles.
In Shahak’s book he states that even though there are many Jewish doctors and nurses who do treat gentile patients one must wonder about the quality of care given to these gentiles because of rabbinical statements by men such as Maimonides and Kahane.
Shahak has stated that the Talmud condemns and mocks Christianity by mocking Jesus himself. I have read many articles which say that this is not true. These articles say that the Talmud doesn't even mention Jesus. A Jewish friend of mine also said that the Talmud does not mention Jesus. Yet according to a Lubavitch website all the accustions which Shahak states about what the Talmud says about Jesus and Christianity is true. This is the website: http://www.noahide.com/yeshu.htm
For many decades I have heard many Jews say that anti-semitism exists because Christians believe that the Jews killed Jesus. I personally know a Holocaust survivor who says that the Nazis did what they did because of Christianity and he hates Christianity as a religion. But many Christians I know, including myself, like Jews because they are the people of the Old Testament, and because Jesus and all the disciples were Jewish. The accurate Christian belief is that Jesus had to die because of the sins of humanity, and that He laid down His life Himself, no one took it from Him. It is even stated that way in the New Testament. The belief is that only He could lay down His life because He was the Son of God and only He had the power to do this. No one could have killed Him unless He allowed it. He died voluntarily as the perfect sacrifice needed to atone for sin.
I am 40 years old and in my life I have also met many anti-semites and not one of them have given this reason for disliking Jews. Not one has said that it was over religion. Every single one of them has said that the reason they dislike Jews is because Jews are unsavory in their business dealings with gentiles. Religion has never been given as a reason in my experience. In Shahak's book he has stated that according to the Talmud, and historical Jewish scholars like Maimonides, a Jew is required to be honest in his business dealings with other Jews, but the opposite it true when it comes to gentiles. Much of it centers around the statement "You shall love your fellow", but a gentile is not "your fellow" according to Jewish law since the Middle Ages.
I have read parts of the Talmud on line which tell the reader to treat one group of people terribly, but I have read that this group is translated as Canaanites and idolators. This might be the fact, but I have also read that for some Jews all gentiles are considered Canaanites, and all Christians are considered idolators because Christians believe in the Trinity, and that Jesus is God. Shahak mentions this in his book. If this is the case, then Shahak's statements in his book concerning the Talmud and Jewish Law/Halacha are true.
I like Jewish people and I have many Jewish friends. Two of my Jewish friends have said that Shahak's book was total fiction and full of lies, but when I presented these questions to them they tred to avoid the issues and gave vague explanations which didn't answer anything. If I probed with more questions they became angry. So I have to wonder what the truth is having read Shahak's book and having come accross many other sources which confirm his statements, such as the Jerusalem Post and even a Lubavitch website. I have to wonder what the real truth is. Can you help me understand.
Thank you: A.J.
Answer Hi AJ, thank you for your question. All your questions you asked me and posed to your two Jewish friends were simply insulting and your friends were completely justified in becoming very angry. I would too, however, since my nephew's name is also AJ, I'll be nice to you.
There is an old Jewish saying: The greatest enemies of the Jewish people are the Jewish people. Jewry today is rife with self-haters. This isn't a new phenomenon. This type of thing goes back centuries and centuries. And the bad part about it is that the self-hating Jew creates even more anti-Semites among the gentile peoples. I don't believe you're an anti-Semite, but supposing you were, who can blame you with idiots like Israel Shahak roaming around. One thing to remember though - criticism of Israel and Jews is definitely not anti-Semitism. But if it's based on lies, it is.
First, a little of Israel Shahak's background. He came to Israel from Poland shortly after WWII and joined the kibbutz movement, which was later at the forefront in the fight against Israel and for the Arabs. As such, in the early 50s, he supported the Arab fedayeen raids against Israelis and strongly condemned Israel when that country put a stop to those raids in the Suez War of 1956 (along with Britain and France for their own reasons) leading to the conquest of the Biblical lands of the Sinai - the site of Israel's Exodus from Egypt. In the 1960s he became involved in the Israeli League Against Religious Coercion. Following the Six-Day War of 1967, he disavowed his affiliation with the League, believing them to be "fake liberals" who used liberal principles to fight religious influence in Israeli society, but failed to use those same principles to fight Israeli treatment of Arabs who, traditionally, liked to roam around Israel killing Israelis, something that didn't seem to bother Shahak. Instead, he joined the so-called Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, being elected president of the League in 1970. That same year he established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions to fight against the administrative detention of terrorists.
You should also consider that some of his closest friends and colleagues were Noam Chomsky, also a self-hating Jew, and well-known anti-Semites Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said.
RE the "other sources" that seem to confirm Shahak's rantings, one source you mentioned was the Jerusalem Post. That newspaper was established as an independent newspaper and as such, must use the articles of writers no matter their opinions. The "sources" you read in the Post were probably from Jews who were just as self-hating as Shahak. One writer that comes to mind is Larry Derfner, but there are certainly others. There is also Haaretz, a paper that describes itself as "left-of-center", but in reality, is an anti-Semitic Jewish paper, famous for their many fabrications about Jewry in order to promote a political agenda. The Jerusalem Report is also very much like Haaretz.
[The following was taken from wikipedia.] In 1965 Ha'aretz printed a letter from Shahak in which he claimed to have witnessed a Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jewish man refusing to allow his telephone to be used to call an ambulance for a non-Jew as it was the Jewish Sabbath. In the letter, Shahak also claimed that members of the rabbinical court of Jerusalem confirmed that the man was correct in his understanding of Jewish law, and that they backed this assertion by quoting from a passage from a recent compilation of law. The issue was subsequently taken up in The Jewish Chronicle, leading to significant publicity.
In 1966, Immanuel Jakobovits, who was later appointed Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, disputed the veracity of Shahak's story, and asserted that Shahak had subsequently been forced to admit that he had fabricated the incident (according to Jackobovits, "in true Protocols style") in order to support his thesis. Jakobovits also cites a lengthy responsum by Isser Yehuda Unterman, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel at the time, who stated that, "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish lives no less than Jewish lives." (end quote)
Nothing in the Talmud or Maimonides (who was a physician himself who helped many gentiles) mentions that Jews should refuse to aid gentiles. I, personally, have heard of no rabbi protesting any Israeli group who went to Kenya on the Sabbath in order to save lives. In fact, the Israeli Rescue Teams are internationally famous for rescuing any and all peoples around the world whether their work falls on the Sabbath or not. Even for enemies of the Jews, Jewish law clearly states not to hate the enemy. But in cases where aid IS refused, it's only where helping someone, such as a terrorist, may imperil Jewish lives. As long ago as the 13th Century, Rabbi Menachem Meiri had stated that the prohibition to desecrate the Sabbath for the sake of Gentiles applied only to 'the ancient heathens ... because they professed no religion at all, nor did they acknowledge their duty to human society.' In Israeli hospitals today, doctors help anyone, as doctors all over the world do, regardless of who that individual is.
The sale of lands that you mention, from a Jewish Encyclopedia, refers to the law of shmittah. This is an ancient Jewish law that prohibits the cultivation of land for 1 year every 7 years in order not to over-exhaust the soil. In 1888, there was a huge controversy over this law. Since 1878, Jewish farming communities were being revived in Israel. These communities were still young and struggling when the controversy broke out and not cultivating the land for an entire year would ruin their fragile economies, so eventually, some of the rabbis ruled that it could be permitted so long as during that year, the land was symbolically sold to gentiles. The land was to revert back to the previous owners when the year was up. This arrangement was not secret, everyone knew what was expected of them.
RE Baruch Goldstein. He did not kill 29 Muslim worshippers in a mosque. He killed 29 Muslim worshippers in a Jewish holy site, part of which was occupied by Arabs. This happened a day after a group of Arabs at the site had shouted "Kill the Jews". Israeli press reports did mention that Goldstein, as a physician, refused to treat non-Jews. But witnesses who knew him well, including colleagues who didn't necessarily agree with him politically, insisted that he treated anybody who needed it, whether Arab, Jew, Druze, or whoever. Regardless, someone with Goldstein's political affiliation would not say that he follows the laws of Maimonides and Kahane. He would say that he follows the laws of God.
True, nothing in the Talmud mocks Christianity. The website that you mention is not a Lubavitch website. It is Noahite - former Christians who have rejected Christianity in favor of the pre-Judaic covenant that God gave to Noah which they believe all gentile must follow. Their writings about Jesus are a rebellion against Christianity whom they believe is a false religion and an abandonment of God's Laws in favor of the laws of the man named Jesus. Their connection to the Lubavitch is their close alliance with them, and their, and the Lubavitch, stupid idea that the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe Menahem Mendel Schneersohn, is the messiah. If the rabbi were alive today, he'd probably get a big laugh out of that.
Some of the anti-Semites that I, personally, have met, do give the "Jews killed Jesus" reason for their hatred of Jews. But that is just a roll-over from the Middle Ages up to and including the 19th century. In those days, that was a very popular reason to hate Jews. Of course, nowadays, "Israel and its policies" are a convenient excuse for hating Jews. RE Jewish business dealings, true it does say in the Bible that, for instance, a Jew should loan money to a Jew without interest but to a gentile with interest. This was to discourage friendly relations with the heathens who would turn Israel away from God. This was probably what was quoted by other Jewish sources including Maimonides. But this law hasn't been followed for centuries. In fact, David ben Maimon, Maimonides' brother, was a merchant in precious stones who dealt honestly with everybody, Jews and gentiles alike. RE other forms of business dealings, Jews are no more or less honest that gentile businessmen. There simply is no law in Judaism that says that Jews should be dishonest with gentiles.
