What is Antisemitism?

This information has been gleaned from Alan Lazerte's course on antisemitism given at Fraserview Assembly, January, February and March 1983 as Director of the Canadian Friends of the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem.

The information from this course was a shock to most of us; it was an eye opener in many ways, especially regarding the Christians persecution of the Jew; which contributed to the Nazi attempt to totally exterminate them. This essay was written as a requirement of taking seriously Alan's attempt to put the course together. He did his part as teacher excellently. God has chosen well. I was eager to learn. At Alan' suggestion this essay is being printed to circulate to others who may not have a chance to attend the lectures. It is also printed to cement my own vow before God to bridge the gap and make amends to the Jew for the way Christians, the Canadian Government and others have failed them.

I dedicate this to the children that never came; and to my brother who died trying to stop a mad man that was on the loose in Germany.

In the Greek Hellenistic period no other nation denied the gods of it's neighbours; on the contrary they recognized those gods, identifying them with their own deities. These heathen "gods" created a social bond between people in their domains. None of the people refrained from dining at table with their neighbours and from partaking of the sacrifices offered to their gods except the Jews. None of the peoples refused to send gifts to its neighbours temples, except the Jews. None of the peoples was unequivocally hostile to intermarriage except the Jews.

In the eastern Mediterranean area friction arose over the difference in occupations between Jews and Gentiles. The Jewish population was engaged primarily in small scale farming; the non-Jewish population occupied itself primarily in commerce. The sea trade was almost entirely in the hands of the trans-Jordanian cities, which connected Syria, Asia Minor and the regions of the Euphrates with the Arabian countries. The inhabitants of Eretz Israel had connections abroad. Non-Jews also knew that Jews looked upon their land as their divine inheritance.

The first serious manifestation of antisemitism was in the days of the Syrian, Antiochus Epiphanes in 175 B.C. Hellenistic rulers saw the unfriendliness of the Jews as obstacles to the cultural scene. He undertook to destroy those laws of the Talmud that he regarded as unacceptable to humanity. To this end he desecrated their place of worship by sacrificing a pig on their altar in Jerusalem, and ordered that the residual juices be sprinkled over the Holy Books containing these Jewish laws.

Greek authors in the first century portrayed the Jewish people as descendants of a mob of lepers. They further stated that because of this uncleanness Jews shunned the flesh of pigs, since pigs were more prone to contract disease. The Gentiles knew that their own pagan religions and practices rendered them unclean in the eyes of the Jews.

The fact remains that even after four thousand years the idea of a covenant between the Jews and Jehovah is still alive; and is mentioned daily in prayers in synagogues throughout the world. The idea of a covenant with God has remained constant. Because Jehovah is immortal He never dies and because He never dies He never has to be reincarnated. Thus the Jews dispensed with the reincarnation rites of the pagans. The Jews' God was invisible. The concept of "one God", Jehovah, being completely withdrawn from sexuality led to a curb of licentious impulses through inner discipline. By contrast, the Greek gods themselves set the pattern for the unbridled lust and perversion which finally weakened the moral fibre of that people; whereas the Jews, even when they later came in contact with the Greeks, refused to indulge in the Grecian sexual excesses, which included even temple prostitution. The Jewish religion did away with all fertility rites.

As a consequence of the Jewish dietary laws, intermarriage was forbidden and no real social intercourse with gentiles was possible. Also, Jews refused to enter into Emperor worship. It was considered to be an expression of loyalty to the state. About their own religious practices a libel began to circulate that Jews actually sacrificed humans on their altars, allegedly using the blood for Passover rites. Further it was said that the sacrificed person must be a Christian or one of their children. This became known as the "Blood Libel" against the Jews. It mattered not that it was a total fabrication.

Another libel circulating was that unclean leprous people were expelled from Egypt, and that the Jews were these people. Therefore, being foreigners, it was stated that the Jews had no right to claim ancient Israel as their divinely given land.

The destruction of the temple by Titus in 70 CE was seen as hatred by God of the Jews, and as punishment. Jews in Rome felt the barbs of Roman writers. Nero's teacher was anti-Semitic. Cornelius Tacitus wrote about every libellous fabrication against Jews that he could find in Greek anti-Semitic literature. Juvenal wrote a poem revealing that to him the Jews were hateful not only to man but to the gods as well.

In the fourth century CE, when Constantine became the Roman Emperor and supposedly converted to Christianity, he harnessed political power to religion and passed anti-Jewish laws, whereby Jews were excluded from every sphere of political influence and denied civic rights.

The Gospel accounts began to be the source from which wrong teachings grew, until the word "Deicide" meant the Jews killed God, and were labelled "Christ-killers". Matthew 27:25 which spoke of some Jewish leaders was used instead to apply to all Jews: "His blood be on us and on our children...Ye are of your father the devil."

Converts to Christianity and converts to Judaism sparked a seriously divisive rivalry. Religious competition began between the Greek fathers of the Church, and Jews. Church laws were passed whereby Jewish relations with Christian women was now punishable by death. Antisemitism at this time was mainly limited to the clergy, who were the educated minority.

Islam arose in the seventh century CE, and also attacked the Jews because the Jews did not recognize Muhammad as a legitimate Prophet. The Koran contained their writings; and many statements in it were hostile to Jews. In the Middle Ages church councils legislated to prevent contact with the Jews because Christians were saying after visiting synagogues that the Jews were better priests.

The above catalogue is only the tip of the iceberg! One would think that anti-Jewish atrocities would have ended with the nightmare of the Holocaust. One-third of the world's Jews were murdered by an ungodly German conspiracy that had accused the Jews of "conspiracy". It is not often emphasized that two-thirds of the world's Jews survived; and that due to the faithfulness of their G-d. God has again, as in times past, protected them from total extermination, as He promised. (the Book of Esther, and Jeremiah 31:35-37)

The Holocaust was the final catalyst which led to the re-creation of the State of Israel in 1948. But we have to go back at the very least to the Dreyfus Case to understand the long range process.

Alfred Dreyfus was the son of a wealthy Alsatian family in France. He entered the French Army in 1892 and became a Captain, and the only Jew. He was framed by a fellow officer for allegedly giving secrets to the enemy, arrested and tried for treason. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Eventually Emile Zola took up the fight proclaiming the man's innocence and published an open letter to the President of France titled "I ACCUSE." Dreyfus was eventually declared unjustly convicted by the Parliament of France. The injustice was totally motivated by Jew-hatred.

During the course of the trumped-up trial a Jewish journalist became involved; and he was the man that was to lead the Jews back to their Land. His name was THEODORE HERZL (1860 - 1904 A.D.) and he called European Jewry together in Basle, Switzerland in 1897 at the now famous "First World Zionist Congress". There in 1897 he publicly predicted to friend and foe alike that the Jews would be back in "the Land" of Palestine "within 50 years". In 1947, exactly fifty years later the United Nations passed the "Resolution For the Partition of Palestine", which lead to the declaration of Statehood on May 14,1948.

With the shouts of "death" to the Jews still ringing in his ears from the Dreyfus Trial, Herzl became convinced that the only solution was the mass exodus of the Jews from their present places of residence to a territory of their own... So out of the suffering of the Dreyfus family came the State of Israel. Herzl became the father of Political Zionism and founder of the World Zionist organization.

Herzl was born in Budapest. He left a German students society in 1883 in protest against his first encounter with anti-Semitism. He came across this "Jewish problem" again and again in his life. Although he graduated in 1884 with a doctorate of law he left the legal profession and became a famous writer. He wrote many literary works, some of them plays.

In 1891 he became the Paris correspondent of a Vienna newspaper. He pursued politics and organized the first Zionist Congress is Basle in 1897. (In 1960, Israel issued a centenary stamp with a well known painting of Herzl on the bridge at Basle.) The World Zionist organization was formed. He was chairman and remained so for the next five congresses. He knew Great Britain would be the deciding factor in the realization of Zionist aims. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration became the launching-pad for the founding of the modern Jewish state.

Herzl did not have an easy task. Even his own people were difficult on this issue. His heart failed in 1904. He did not live to see the creation of Israel in 1948. But in 1949 he was laid to rest, reinterred, in a place that was named in his honour Mount Herzl, in Jerusalem. A Herzl monument stands nearby. The anniversary of his death on the 20th of Tammuz was declared a National Memorial Day in Israel. In the April 1983 issue of the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, following a report on Jerusalem there is a picture that could be titled: "The sorrow of the Jewish People". There are three young Israeli ladies, soldiers, who happen to be very beautiful standing or kneeling at the Herzl Tomb site where there are three new graves...the first soldiers to die in the 1982 conflict in Lebanon.

1983 was the 50th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power; since he was made chancellor in 1933. There was an extensive report on this subject in the April 1983 issue of the Jerusalem Post. Their man in Bonn stated: "There has been no substantial break with the past. Therefore West German Democracy must continue to be subject to question by Germans more than by anyone else." The Post also offered these words which are worth contemplating. Perhaps you never considered this. I had not...

"The destruction that Hitler brought on his own people ranks only after the mass murder he committed on the Jews and the destruction and death rained upon the Soviet Union. He left Germany not only physically ruined, but stripped of its' self respect, ashamed of its' place in human history, uncertain of its' identity, seeking refuge in the compulsive reconstruction of material damage."

They also mentioned...

"The war Hitler unleashed and the organized mass murder that was a central part of his design cost the lives of 40 million human beings in Europe alone. Among them 6,000,000 Jews - two-thirds of the Jews in Europe. More than 6,000,000 of his own people also died and others were left hungry."

God promised Abraham:

"I will bless those who bless you (and your descendants); and I will curse those who curse you" (Genesis 12:1-3)

We can see that the Germans have paid an awful price for allowing this man to lead them down a path contrary to Scripture, by declaring them to be a super race. The man who wanted to obtain the whole world, gained nothing but eternal damnation. He and those who followed him lost everything.

What about Canada?

Most of us would be quick to say that our hands are clean. A truly shocking indictment of our role in the Holocaust can be found in the book "None is Too Many". This title was taken from a statement made by an immigration official when a delegation of Jews went to Ottawa in 1939 to ask: "How many Jews will Canada take in?" The Immigration Minister answered "None is too many".

The authors, Irving Abella and Harold Troper, published this book in 1982 and was on the Canadian Best Sellers List. They received an award early in 1983 for it. It is thoroughly researched and documented proof that our top bureaucrat in the Immigration Department, Fred Blair, a professing Christian, wanted no Jews in Canada and did everything he could in the way of roadblocks to prevent it. In studying it I find I want to scream with the agony of our shame.

MacKenzie King didn't want them. Perhaps he was too busy talking to his dead mother and his dead dog as he gazed into his crystal ball (all told in his published diaries). The authors record that Canada's Prime Minister thought Hitler had a good face and that he was sweet. King was deathly afraid of what Quebec would do if he gave in and allowed in refugees. The French -Canadian press was very hostile to Jews (Le Devoir). There was also a very vocal fascist Party in Quebec; headed by Adrianne Arcand.

Blair had the opportunity to rescue thousands, but wouldn't budge on his restrictive policy. He just didn't want any Jewish immigrants.

Lester Pearson said that we didn't have a boat. Ottawa would not listen either to the pleas of George Vanier; even though he was Canadian Ambassador to France and was there on the scene.

Conservative Robert Manion didn't want any either. In the midst of all of the obstruction the Toronto Globe & Mail asked at one point "Does Canada stand for anything?" Manion wanted no Jews as long as Canadians were unemployed. Ernest LaPointe of Quebec and the Le Devoir newspaper and Vincent Massey of External Affairs wanted Jews kept out of Canada. Massey was a fringe member of the Pro-German anti-Semitic Cliveden set centred around Lord and Lady Astor in London; where Vincent was Canadian High Commissioner.

We had one social worker on the scene and her name was Charlotte Whitton, outspoken Mayor of Ottawa. She fiercely fought not to have Jewish children here as she favoured British children. She led a movement to evacuate endangered British mothers and children. The Canadian Jewish Congress saw her as an enemy of Jewish immigration. Oscar Cohen said she "almost broke up the inaugural meeting of the congress on Refugees by her insistent opposition and very apparent anti-Semitism."

The saddest story I have ever read in my life is the whole chapter from the Abella book titled "The children that never came." It takes care of any pride we may have in being Canadians. It is documented evidence 25 pages in length of continuous pleading on behalf of officials in places like France and Poland to take children whose lives were in immediate danger. Blair's hard hearted efforts lead to the declaration in the end of that chapter that reads: "There were no more schemes to help...save the refugee children. None were needed." By the time of the allied invasion of France in June 1944 most of these children had been murdered. NOT ONE of them had made it to Canada! They had been talking at times about as many as 5000.

I am happy to report that good has come out of the publishing of this book. The authors report that Lloyd Axworthy, current Minister of Immigration, apologized for the behaviour of predecessors and promised that it would never happen again. But also having read some papers by these authors prior to publication, Ron Atkey, former Conservative Minister of Immigration, took the responsibility and opened the doors to the BOAT PEOPLE because he did not want to be known as another Frederick Blair.

In "Bridges for Peace", the 1983 issue from Tulsa, Oklahoma we read about the state of anti-Semitism as in this day, media coverage is slanted.

"While some would have you believe the world is becoming a better place and anti-Semitism is on the wane, I believe that careful observation will prove otherwise. In the last two years, we have seen a growing double standard used by the media in reporting events concerning Israel. And as we saw this past summer in Greece, Italy, and France, this very distorted, even false media reporting about Israel's involvement in Lebanon resulted in attacks against local Jewish communities solely because they were Jewish; regardless of their affiliation with Israel. For example: In France a video tape of a Palestinian boy holding his bleeding, dying sister was repeatedly shown as the result of an aggressive Jewish attack on civilians in Lebanon. Local Frenchmen, incensed by this news, staged an anti-Israel, anti-Jewish march which culminated in the bombing of synagogues and Jewish owned businesses killing many. It was later proven that this video tape was six years old and showing the destruction of the Tel-Zatar refugee camp by the SYRIANS in 1976. Jews were NOT even involved but the ugly head of Anti-Semitism had already shown itself."

AND SO IT NEVER SEEMS TO END.
But it will. One day the Bible says we shall take the hem of the Jews' skirt and go with them to Zion because we know God is with them. Zechariah tells us that the Lord will come and place His feet on the Mount of Olives. He will fight for His people Israel against all the nations of the world. All the land of Israel will dwell in safety and peace when the Messiah comes. He will rule and reign from Jerusalem, the Son of David, sitting on David's throne. (Read 2 Samuel 7:11-16; and Psalm 2:6-8;and 89:20-37). Regardless of Israel's sins of the past the Lord will forgive, cleanse, and restore (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

Christians throughout the world are awakening to a call to stand by the side of the Jewish people. Beginning in 1979 Christians in Jerusalem rallied to her side when the governments of the World began to pull their embassies out of Jerusalem in fear because of the Arab oil power. The "International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem" was established. With people like Jan Willem Van Der Hoeven and the Comfort Zion ministry of Merv and Merla Watson, Jews are beginning to be provoked to jealousy. They are watching Christian love in action; and hope is being reborn when they see 5000 Christians celebrating during the Jewish "Feast of Tabernacles", dancing with joy on Mount Zion and supporting them in their hour of need.

If Canada's Joe Clark had kept his promise to move our embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, he would have done better. Six months after breaking his promise he ceased to be Prime Minister; and twelve months later he was removed as Leader of the Progressive-Conservative Party.
Coincidence? God hears our promises; even "election promises". The Scripture says God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse her. Every nation that has persecuted the Jews has, in the long run, inherited the negative side of God's promise to Abram: "and I will curse those who curse you (and your descendants)."

SO IN CONCLUSION:
Anti-Semitism is a venomous condition of the heart of man and not just prejudice, hatred or discrimination. Jealousy and envy of the Jew more than anything else seems to be the main root of this condition. It is a spiritual problem. But Jeremiah said it best and it is truth from God's Word... "The heart is deceitful, and desperately wicked; who can know it?".

Anti-Semitism engages man in a conduct that is: inconceivable, unbelievable, shocking, grotesque, incomprehensible, unthinkable, inhumane and intolerable.

This information has been gleaned from Alan Lazerte's course on anti-Semitism given at Fraserview Assembly, January, February and March 1983 as Director of the Canadian Friends of the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bridges for Peace-current news direct from Christians in Israel through Tulsa. The Jerusalem Post - current news direct from Jews in Israel. The ISRAEL POCKET LIBRARY BOOK ON ANTI-SEMITISM. Canadian Book "None is Too Many", Irving Abella and Harold Troper. Friends of the Christian Embassy Canada, Israel Report. Jews' God and History; by Max I. Dimont. A Signet Book.

I dedicate this to the children that never came; and to my brother who died trying to stop a mad man that was on the loose in Germany.

WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT ANTI-SEMITISM?
Asia Times, Scott Shay, November 15, 2018

Anti-Semitism is frequently viewed as “the canary in the coal mine.” It signals a more general climate of prejudice that manifests with an increasing hatred of Jews. In the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, many articles have made this point. They focused on the extent of anti-Semitism in the US, and its relationship to other forms of ethnic, religious, and even gender-based prejudice.

While the “canary in the coal mine” viewpoint is important, the questions about anti-Semitism are far broader. To address them, we need a clear understanding of anti-Semitism itself. I stand with those who think anti-Semitism is a distinct form of prejudice – not because the degree of its cruelty (for the damage done by other prejudices has been no less deadly) but because of its nature. By understanding anti-Semitism, we can defeat much more than hatred of Jews and other peoples.

Anti-Semitism is about power. It is distinct from other prejudices by its obsession with perceived malevolent Jewish power and by its pervasiveness among disparate societies, political and ideological groups, and eras. From Nazism and Communism, from most streams of Christianity until the last century, to present day Islamism, from the hallowed halls of Harvard University to backwater towns, from an ancient Pharaoh to a current Malaysian prime minister, anti-Semites have accused the Jews of all manners of conspiracies to rule the world and destroy other peoples. This is not the case with racism against African peoples or Native Americans, for example, who are accused by racists of many heinous things, but not of world domination.

To understand anti-Semitism, we need to understand malevolent power more generally. The Bible continues to offer the most sophisticated intellectual and moral contribution to the nature of malevolent power we have through its discussion of idolatry. Unfortunately, most modern folk view idolatry as irrelevant. They think idolatry is about worshiping stones or spirits. This is a grave misunderstanding. While power is a natural phenomenon involving many facets, such as resources, strength, strategy, or information, the Bible defines idolatry as a set of lies about power and authority. Idolatry is the process of attributing of superior and inexplicable power and authority to finite people, animals and natural processes.

Since finite beings are limited by nature, which also limits all forms of power, idolatry is by definition a lie. Yet this lie is the basis for much human injustice, just as the Bible explains. From Pharaoh in Egypt to Senacharib in Assyria, idolaters built temples, ran pageants and wrote poems and epics to exult their “supernatural” power and authority. These lies justified their selfish oppression of the masses and their greedy conquests of other peoples. Idolatry underpins all genuinely malevolent power.

The Bible also describes how idolatry is always vulnerable to the truth. Neither Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar or Sanacharib were the gods or demi-gods they pretended to be. They could all be, and were all, toppled. Not that this is easy, nor without many casualties for they had natural power: military might and resources. But, their supposed supernatural power and authority was exposed as a lie.

As the biblical texts describe, the only God worth worshipping is above nature and incorruptible. No person is or can ever be divine; no person can ever have power or authority beyond nature, even though, as the Bible explains, we all carry a spark of divinity in ourselves, a soul.

Based on this fundamental axiom, the Bible mandates us to treat each other equally, for example, by loving our brothers and sisters in humanity as ourselves (Leviticus 19: 17-18) or by not doing unto others what we don’t wish done to ourselves (Talmud Shabbat 31a). These axioms are the root of justice and have come to be known as the Golden Rule. Justice is the opposite of malevolent power. Idolatry destroys the conceptual foundations of justice. You don’t need to believe in God or in the soul to reject idolatry.

Sadly, the 20th century provided a catalog of idolaters, who not only promoted their power but tried to avoid being exposed. Dictators like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Kim Jun-il on the left and Hitler and Saddam Hussein on the right, relied on idolatry. Whether they claimed to be atheistic or religious, they turned to Pharaoh’s playbook building statutes of themselves, they promoted songs, stories and pageants about their greatness, and they demanded complete obedience to their worldview.

Stalin famously ordered the Soviet space agency to project his face into the sky. Yet fearing they would be exposed, 20th-century idolatrous leaders turned lies into the truth and evil into good. Idolaters called themselves the victims and their victims the perpetrators. While the Nazis rounded up and murdered the Jews and conquered most of Europe, Hitler claimed he was defending the world from “Jewish evil and world domination.” In the name of “progress,” Pol Pot murdered Cambodian citizens with eyeglasses because they might “mislead” others. This subversive dynamic of idolatry underpins all anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is the projection of idolatry onto Jews. Anti-Semites are not people who criticize or debate specific Jewish viewpoints or communal decisions in a spirit of mutual respect. They are people who themselves harbor projects of domination and exploitation, but who fearing to be exposed, project their own malevolent intentions onto Jews. In Charlottesville, anti-Semitic marchers who genuinely seek white supremacy shouted, “Jews won’t replace us.”

Khomeini who wished to bring the entire world under Islamist control, regularly accused the Jews of seeking world domination. Hitler, railed against a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Germany, when he wanted to destroy the Jews! Anti-Semites say the Jews control the media, the Jews control the banks, the Jews control the Congress and so on all for their own benefit when this is actually what they themselves wish to do. Still, you might ask, why single out the Jews?

It is not the Jews’ success, nor their actual power that is the source of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism has often proliferated at times when the Jews were poor and powerless. Jews who tried returning to their hometowns in Europe after surviving the concentration camps could certainly attest to that. Rather, it is the Jews’ historic connection with monotheism that has made them the central target of this projected idolatry. This has been true even when many Jews are neither religious nor conversant in the texts.

By accusing Jews of malevolent and demonic control over organs of power (media, Congress, banks, etc.), true idolaters (whatever their specific ideology) project their own idolatry onto the Jews and thereby maintain their own delusions. Every idolater fears that their lies about power could be exposed. Yet since they refuse to reject their own injustice and lies, idolaters must eliminate the Jews who are connected to a God who upholds universal justice. Then “their god” that is to say, they win. The fact that so many anti-Semitic attacks occur at synagogues or in Jewish community centers, cemeteries, rather than at the other places Jews supposedly control, speaks to this connection.

This dynamic is also apparent in the anti-Semitic rants of a small minority of purportedly Christians or Muslims, who supposedly worship the same omnibenevolent God. The Bible anticipates this problem. While the first two commandments prohibit idolatry, the third commandment (according to the Christian count, the second commandment), prohibits oppression under the false guise of acting as God’s sole spokesperson or attributing to God ideas that are not in the Scriptures. This third commandment is too often trivialized as to merely prohibiting pronouncing God’s name in vain. However, if that is all there is to this commandment, it would not have been in the top ten. It is, further, the only commandment in the Ten for which there is no atonement. That tells the reader to take close notice. This commandment follows the first two on idolatry because it is simply another form of idolatry except under the hijacked guise of monotheism. The Bible warns against this phenomena of idolaters in monotheistic garb on multiple occasions. And for this reason, the Bible is accessible to everyone. Moreover, it was ordained to be read by everyone, as we are each responsible for understanding the dangers of idolatry.

Anti-Semitism is “the canary in the coal mine,” but not just for the rise of prejudice. Anti-Semitism is the sign of widespread idolatry and when idolatry takes hold in a society the real horrors begin. The greatest anti-Semites not only victimized other groups they destroyed the moral fabric of their own societies. Nazis not only hated and murdered the Gypsies and Slavs; they turned many ordinary Germans into liars, snitches, thieves and murderers. By uniting to combat anti-Semitism, people of all stripes can join together in combating idolatry which is the fundamental corrupting influence on society.

Antisemitism …
What is it?

What is Unique About
Antisemitism?