Posted on 04/05/2002 8:14:55 AM PST by Richard Poe
Edited on 03/07/2004 6:34:25 PM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]
"I DON'T BLAME GERMANY for the Holocaust: I blame Christendom for the Holocaust," says Hyam Maccoby of the Leo Baeck Institute for Jewish Studies in London.
Maccoby argues that Jews would fare better in a world without Christians. Many Jews quietly agree.
With Christianity retreating before a blitzkrieg of secular schooling, parental indifference and ACLU law suits, Jews may soon have a chance to test Maccoby’s theory, exploring a new life in pagan America.
They may be in for a shock. Moses’ people were enslaved not by Christians, but by pagan Egyptians. Pagan Romans annihilated the Jewish kingdom in AD 70.
A recent incident in Hamilton, Massachusetts suggests further problems ahead.
On Easter Sunday, the Rodkechar family * was driving home from church, when they saw demonstrators wielding anti-Israel placards, such as, "Stop the Jewish Holocaust Against the Palestinians."
Bill Rodkechar – a senior officer in the Naval Reserve, with 15 years of active service – was offended. "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East," he says.
Rodkechar accosted the demonstrators. "That land belongs to Israel," he chided them.
"The Arabs have deeds, signed and sealed," retorted a demonstrator. "All that you have is the Old Testament."
"Don’t you believe in the Bible?" asked Rodkechar.
"I’m not a Christian."
That stopped Rodkechar in his tracks. Born a Jew, Rodkechar had converted to Christianity seven years earlier, and was now a devout Baptist. Whether as Jew or Christian, he had always respected the Bible, and so did most people he knew.
Rodkechar had never met anyone quite like these demonstrators. "They were derisive, mocking," he remembers. "Something about them looked suspicious. They didn’t appear to be interested in the Palestinian cause. Their purpose was not to have a discussion. Their purpose was to provoke."
"I guess we don’t have anything to talk about," said Rodkechar, and began driving away.
According to Rodkechar, the men shouted after him, "Sieg Heil! Death to the Jews!"
It is alleged that, in the verbal exchange that followed, Rodkechar's 18-year-old son Ed jumped out of the car with a baseball bat and began swinging at his father’s tormentors. No one was hurt, but Ed was arrested and charged with assault.
Unwittingly, Rodkechar and his family had encountered members of the fast-growing, neo-Nazi National Alliance (NA). Across the Internet, anti-Semitic Web sites gleefully trumpeted the incident.
"Lunatic Zionist Attacks NA Members," cried the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network.
"Jewish Youth Arrested After Attacking NA Member with Baseball Bat," reported the anti-Semitic Overthrow.com – quite inaccurately, inasmuch as Ed is not Jewish (Jewishness is inherited only through the mother’s line, and Ed's mother is not Jewish.)
In their disdain for the Bible, Rodkechar's tormentors foreshadow the New Paganism looming in America’s future.
"I despise Christianity and ALL it stands for," writes one correspondent on the National Alliance message board. "It is, in my opinion, an alien and virulent influence on White society and one of Semitic origin at that."
Heinrich Himmler would have agreed. "We should not forget that in the long run, the Pope in Rome is a greater enemy of National Socialism than Churchill or Roosevelt," he once said. Himmler encouraged his SS troops to worship ancient Germanic gods.
The SS is gone, but adoration of Aryan deities still flourishes.
When columnist Jon Dougherty criticized the U.S. military for appointing chaplains to conduct pagan ceremonies, his May 18, 1999 article in WorldNetDaily.com provoked a deluge of indignant letters from military pagans, including followers of the "Asatru" faith, which honors Nordic gods.
"I remain loyal to the pre-Christian faith of my ancestors," wrote Roy Tapio Kosonen, who claimed to have served for six years as an intelligence specialist in the U.S. Army Reserve.
Asatru is a "warrior religion," noted Kosonen. "We do not believe in `turning the other cheek.’"
Of course, Nordic paganism does not always lead to Nazism. But, as the Rodkechars learned, interfaith dialogue has a way of breaking down when you remove the Bible from the equation.
"Followers of the Christian Right are among the most philo-Semitic citizens of this country," notes Rabbi Daniel Lapin, in his book America’s Real War.
Rabbi Lapin’s organization Toward Tradition urges Jews and Christians to join forces against the coming darkness.
"As a Jew, I am extremely grateful to be living in a country that… has legally granted me full religious expression," he says. "I am worried that my grandchildren may not have the same freedoms, not because of Christians, but because of a removal of Christian values from this country."
* The names of Rodkechar family members have been changed here to protect their privacy.
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Richard Poe is a New York Times-bestselling author and cyberjournalist. His latest book is The Seven Myths of Gun Control.
Once you have a people, a population that rejects the truths of that, (The Jews still being God's chosen people), then you open up all kinds of doors to persecute the Jews, something that any pagan or agnostic can use to justify their perverse hatred of Jews and Israel.
Surely you aren't suggesting there is anti-goyism in the Jewish community. Heaven forbid!
Christianity is not bad for the Jews. I'm sure Jews resent being prosyletized, but aside from that, it's been the perversion of Christianity in some sects in some limited time frame that has been unkind. Christianity in and of itself is not bad in any way. It's a good religion. It's the select individual people who are (sometimes) bad.
There were a wide variety of pagan areas of settlement to choose from, then and now.
If Christianity was responsible for the Holocaust, why did the Holocaust occur only after Christianity was no longer the official religion of Germany?
Individuals like Mr. Baeck stir up hatred and animosity. He is a dangerous fool.
How very true. You don't hear any anti-semitism within the Southern Baptist Church, for instance (just try it and see how far you get). It's a matter of believing the Bible. Jesus was a Jew that loved His people, and God's covenant with Abraham and his decendents is still in effect. It always gripes me that American Jews like Norman Lear see Christianity as their foe. We are stuck, because of our beliefs, with supporting Israel and refusing to stand for anti-semitism even while being reviled by liberal American Jews. Oh well, we have a great many friends among Jews that recognize that those who truly believe the Bible aren't out at all to *get* them. Far from it.
If they are advocating violence, they should be squashed. We don't need that crap in this country.
Rabbi Lapin agrees with you. Visit an excellent site
http://www.ziva.com/tt/newpage11.htm"
My grandfather, an orthodox Jew from Poland, who lived through pograms in the late 1800's and early 1900's, both by Poles and Russians, had a very deep distrust for anyone non-Jewish. Given his experience, I can't say that I blamed him. He lost his wife in one of those raids.
However, it's the least religous Jews, the reform and more liberal, that seem to have a deep seated hatred for Christianity. They also seem to have a resentment and hatred of the more religous sects of Jews, especially the Orthodox and Chasidic Jews. I believe that it's due to guilt. They resent the Orthodox Jews because they realize that Judism is a Religion, not a "cultural identity." They feel inadequet, knowing that they should be keeping the ideals of their religion holy, but instead, go through a few "rituals," on occasion, designed to make them feel as though they've got some sort of "connection to Judism." The orthodox Jews represent the commitment that they refuse to make, and resent them for it. Christianity represents something that they desperately want, the feeling of forgiveness and contentment that devout Christians feel from accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Because it's something that they want, but feel guilty about, they resent and even hate Christians. They want nothing to remind them of their shortcomings, hense the drive to eliminate everything Christian from society.
Again, the deeply religous Jews are not threatened by Christianity, and realize that, at least now, religious Christians, especially in America, are really the best friends that Jews, and the State of Israel, have.
Mark
Actually, if you check out your history, you'll find that the Arabs were allied with the NAZIs in WWII. They actively pushed for the "final solution," in particular, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He even met with muslim members of the SS.
Mark
I thought the NA were white supremecists.
I know very well about the Mufti's close affiliation with Hitler. And I know also that Arafat is the mufti's nephew, and that Saddam Hussein was raised by an uncle who was the Mufti's #1 advisor.
Funny, the Egyptians weren't Christians, the Greeks under Antiochus Epiphanes weren't Christians, and the Romans under Titus weren't Christians. Doesn't look to me like life with non-Christians was such a picnic for the Jews.
(The Nazis weren't Christians, either, but some people think they were.)
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