One of our readers wrote to a Sephardi Jewish writer David Shasha and asked for his view of this document. Here is Shasha’s response with comments of our readers:

From David Shasha, New York:

Regarding the Attitudes forwarded by Mr.Shamir:

Israel Shamir is a very clever anti-Semite and each quote is assuredly accurate.

In order to properly deal with this one must look not to the original legal texts but their application in the rabbinical literature known as responsa.

I do not doubt that in the many centuries of Ashkenazi life under retrograde Christians - who Shamir is in love with -- that these laws were applied rigorously -- although the Jews living under oppression could do little with them. It would be like the native Americans having laws discriminating against Anglos.

As far as Sephardim go -- you must purchase a copy of S.D. Goitein's a Mediterranean society which in its second volume contains all the information you will need to see how interfaith relations were conducted in the middle east in the middle ages.

The larger picture -- which Shamir does not discuss at all -- is the similar legislation in Christianity and Islam when it comes to gentiles. The key here is who has power.

This does not exonerate some of the shameful statements -- just puts them into a clearer perspective.

David Shasha

From Joh Domingo:

While it is important to hear from all sides, I object to Mr. Shasha’s lazy assertion of «similar legislation in Christianity and Islam when it comes to gentiles.» Jews have an annoying habit of condemning all religion when it is their own religion they have a problem with. There is no similar legislation in Islam and Christianity. Mr. Shasha is a clever anti-gentile.

Jews seem utterly incapable of assuming any responsibility at all, it always has to be a universal failing; if Israel is a monstrous State, it is only one of several in the region. If they kill people, it is nothing compared to Hama, Syria decades ago. Now, if their Talmud expresses hatred against Gentiles, Islam and Christianity does so as well. I am sorry, you don't get a free pass, verify where there is hatred expressed against non-Muslims in the Quran.

Also, the idea that Jews exercised no power is absolute crap. Jews have always exercised some power, and for most of their European history, were an autonomous self-governing unit. Most of their time spent in Eastern Europe they were de-facto lords over the peasantry, who, more often than not, were squatting on land sublet to them by lazy feudal lords.

JohD

From Anthony:

David Shasha wrote:

Israel Shamir is a very clever anti-Semite and each quote is assuredly accurate.

___________

What he meant:

I can not refute what he has published, as it is accurate.

_____________

In order to properly deal with this one must look not to the original legal texts but their application in the rabbinical literature known as responsa.

___________

 What he meant:

The only defense I have is to mention the reams & reams of Judaic Apologetics (written after the fact), which attempt to justify the blatant racism in my Religion's source books.

_____________

I do not doubt that in the many centuries of Ashkenazi life under retrograde Christians - who Shamir is in love with -- that these laws were applied rigorously -- although the Jews living under oppression could do little with them. It would be like the native Americans having laws discriminating against Anglos.

 ____________

Read: 

Somehow, with this logic, the racist & repressive laws in Jewish literature miraculously feel «justified» now... It's «OK» for minorities to discriminate against majorities... as long as it doesn't happen the other way around.

______________

 As far as Sephardim go -- you must purchase a copy of S.D. Goitein's a Mediterranean society which in its second volume contains all the information you will need to see how interfaith relations were conducted in the middle east in the middle ages.

 ____________

This is my throw-away «recommended-reading» line to correct the poor self-hating Jew/Goy... so that any Gentile-mind-slaves who may be reading can feel comfortable that the (real) poor, persecuted, yet brave Jew is defending himself appropriately (Never mind that Shamir is ethnically Jewish too!)

______________

 The larger picture -- which Shamir does not discuss at all -- is the similar legislation in Christianity and Islam when it comes to gentiles.

____________

Let's ignore for a minute the fact that neither Christianity, nor Islam, have «blood-ties» as a virtual pre-requisite to any member of the human race becoming a fully fledged, and FULLY ACCEPTED member. Meaning that such legislation in the Jewish religion is even more sinister (even more diabolical) than one, at first, realises...

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This does not exonerate some of the shameful statements -- just puts them into a clearer perspective.

 ___________

2. Michael Hoffmann objects to the Attitudes:

Dear Mr. Shamir

Apologetics for the Mishnah, Gemara etc. run the gamut from outright misrepresentation and dissembling to a more subtle epistemological spin based on a fallacious notion of Talmudic indeterminancy. The latter error is what the website in question is retailing. In the sections on treatment of gentiles they refer to halachic rulings as «opinions» and they posit one «opinion» against another «opinion,» which gives the impression that there is no dogmatic rabbinic position pro or contra gentiles. Israel Shahak rejected this line and so do I. He demarcated the actual praxis of Orthodox Judaism vis a vis gentiles, which was unwavering in its hostility, except in so far as the goyim might have the predominant position, in which case there was to be a tactical modification of the hostility.

Those who interpret the sages to the goyim and do not explain to them that the Mishneh Torah and Shulchan Aruch are binding on all Orthodox Judaics as halacha, not «opinion» do a grave disservice. Are the laws of niddah an opinion? Certainly not. Neither are they when it comes to how to treat the goyim.

Of course I am well aware that none of the sages are unanimous on every point, especially when it comes to minhag and other non-essentials. We are all cognizant of the recent Israeli debate concerning Haredi indolence in which the Shulchan Aruch was mustered to defend loitering in a kollel, while the kibbutzniks mustered the Mishneh Torah to argue that performing some work is indeed seemly. Rambam was also on the conservative side of the issue on the wilder
forms of Kabbalistic superstition.

But halachic rullings have been reached in both cases, by rabbinic consensus, as expressed in praxis. This is the key exegetical principle which the website authors have omitted or suppressed. The Shulchan Aruch has prevailed. Talmidim do not have to work and the ultra-Orthodox penchant for magic amulets in service of Shas party candidates as dispensed by Ovadia Yosef and many others, is not a red line in Orthodox Judaism, however much it may be regarded as crass or vulgar. There is Sephardic Kabbalah and there is the David Mamet version. Differences in this realm are matters of style and not substance.

There is much more I could say along these lines had I the time to reference additional cases, but hopefully this will suffice for the present.

 Michael Hoffman

Reply of the authors of Attitudes:

            On the nature of Halacha

            Michael Hoffman (hereinafter MH) is a fairly well known critic of Judaism who speaks from the Christian standpoint. He has written several books on the subject, one of which I have recently glanced through. Information about this book, including rather instructive reviews, can be found on Amazon. Recently MH lambasted an essay entitled “Judaic Sources on the Attitude Towards Gentiles”, which was published on the Talk Reason site, among others. The gist of his criticism boils down to the following.

            From his point of view, the essay’s authors have committed the widespread folly of “pluralizing” Jewish Halacha.

…they refer to halachic rulings as «opinions» and they posit one «opinion» against another «opinion,» which gives the impression that there is no dogmatic rabbinic position pro or contra gentiles’.

            MH asserts:

’the Mishneh Torah and Shulchan Aruch are binding on all Orthodox Judaics as halacha, not «opinion»’.

            He asks:

            ’Are the laws of niddah an opinion?’

            And he replies:

            ’Certainly not. Neither are they when it comes to how to treat the goyim.’

            To put it briefly: MH believes that in Orthodox Judaism “opinions” expressed by religious authorities are marginal or irrelevant altogether when compared to the mighty “solid” Halacha, i.e. the virtually incontrovertible and fully binding actual imperative that replaces them. Just as there are “opinions” concerning every possible issue, there is the halachic conclusion that is of the only practical importance. This begs the question of how to determine what this conclusion is, where to look for it. This question has no clear-cut answer. However, as MH maintains, in those cases where an “opinion” is put forward in Yosef Caro’s Shulchan Aruch or Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, it automatically becomes a halachic conclusion due to the “obligatory” nature of both codices. Otherwise the conclusion is derived from other sources through a more complicated procedure which does not concern us in this case.

            Therefore, as MH believes, it would be methodologically and practically incorrect to view the treatment of gentiles by Orthodox Judaism as the sum of “opinions” on the subject, as suggested by Jewish religious thinkers. On the contrary, these “opinions” have long given birth to a detailed system of Halacha, which alone defines the attitudes of Orthodox Judaism to the “other”. Those who continue to perceive Judaism as a pluralism of “opinions”, let alone rely on later or contemporary “opinions”, sin against the truth. All exceptions are plainly marginal, and do not change the rule. It was this mistake – a grave and painful one – that the essay’s authors have committed, according to MH. In their scheme of things, the totally “black” attitude toward gentiles on the part of Judaism acquires a rainbow of colors, while the criticism of the Jewish system’s xenophobia loses its edge.

            I will have to begin with the regrettable fact that MH’s methodology is appalling, and his results attest to this. Like many Western intellectuals, he studied Jewish disciplines solely from the outside and in a highly formal fashion. More specifically, he has never given any thought to the precise way an Orthodox Jew studies the Talmud or Maimonides, what he does with the text, how he compares the texts, or the way he reconciles them with religious observance. For MH, the text has an autonomous existence as a faithful description of reality, and is therefore perceived within the context of contemporary Western culture. Specifically, a Halachic text simply must not contain any contradictions; as soon as contradictions come into play, the text disappears. Halacha, from MH’s point of view, is nothing but text embodied in behavior, so it can be examined linguistically and linearly, disregarding any conflicts, including conflicts of “opinion”, and ignoring its true phenomenology. As a result, MH exhibits a purely mechanical attitude to Judaism. Moreover, he engages in meticulously constructed and carefully nurtured circular reasoning that, while having no direct bearing on any specific issues (including the issue of Judaism’s treatment of gentiles) nevertheless directly determines his view on this issue.

From the very start, probably while still a student, MH fashioned a model of Halachic Judaism based on the principle “Judaism is identical with Halacha, which is identical with the Shulchan Aruch”. After all, he invariably perceives in any attempt to see Judaism as a multi-layered entity an attempt to destroy the original model, and thus a mistake. Had he not developed this a priori systematic view, had he started by studying Judaism in an empirical manner without conceiving and adopting his ideas prematurely, he would have formed a different, far more chaotic yet more accurate picture. Judaism is by no means identical with its own Halacha, if the latter is understood as a sum of “terminal” rules of conduct fixed by specific texts. What is more, such “terminal” texts probably do not even exist.

            The fact that MH is insufficiently familiar with rabbinic materials and less than meticulous in the way he applies them does not at all imply that he is an ignoramus – far from it. He has read and absorbed a great deal and has a fairly good grasp of facts. However, from his present vantage point drawing theoretical conclusions is a highly dangerous business: flawed mastery of the material and lack of proper hermeneutic technique inevitably lead to highly disputable results. In fact, in order to become a serious Talmudic expert, one must spend at least some time studying the Talmud, Halacha, and other Jewish disciplines for their own sake, rather than as mere targets of criticism. Otherwise it is extremely difficult – albeit not impossible – to uncover their multi-layered depths. For that matter, this is equally true in respect to other ethnographic situations. One must develop a rapport with the tribe which is being studied.

            The aforementioned multi-layered essence is an extremely crucial phenomenon, one that must be grasped in order to understand what really happens in the Jewish Orthodox world. This multi-layeredness is of a fundamental, immutable nature. It was this phenomenon that produced the gigantic corpus of halachic literature of the last centuries. If the Talmud, the Mishneh Torah and the Shulchan Aruch alone were sufficient from the practical point of view, then what was the point of writing the entire library of the achronim? Why did the Chafetz Chaim write the Mishnah Brurah, which merely rearranges part of the Shulchan Aruch? On the other hand, if Halacha were no more than a system of rules, why would any self-respecting Orthodox Jew spend years studying the rather tangled ancient texts, above all the Babylonian Gemara? Why should he not content himself with Chafetz Chaim on the one hand and the collection of Agadot on the other? Finally, what is the purpose of the dozens of new halachic treatises being published each year?

            Both the early and the post-Shulchan Aruch rabbinic literature is indispensable in order to understand the nature of true Halacha, the role of the non-halachic part of Jewish teachings in Judaism, and so on. Thus, in his investigation MH overlooks an important, perhaps even a critical element. What exactly is it?

            Let us forget for the time being the issue of Jewish-gentile relations.

            Judaism is primarily, if not exclusively, a neatly designed system of tribal relations. That is precisely why it leaves virtually no place for God, and none at all for metaphysics, yet it overflows with primeval mysticism, with outright shamanism that is absolutely essential for the tribe’s existence. All the rest is diverse, carefully ordered social practice – in other words, Halacha, the nature of whose order we are discussing.

            We know next to nothing about pre-rabbinical Judaism. About its successor, however, we know quite a good deal. Rabbinical Judaism, otherwise known as halachic Judaism, represents a peculiar scholastic system that owns its structural order to both Western and Eastern sources. Judaism discovered scholasticism, albeit somewhat belatedly, by the Talmudic period; and from the time of the rishonim, i.e. from the 11^th-12^th century, scholasticism brought to a kind of perfection became Halachic Judaism’s essence. As a matter of fact, we should keep in mind that any sort of orderly continuity in Judaism traces its origins to that period; therefore, the Judaism we live with today is of a relatively late kind, originating in the scholastic era. Any attempt to stretch the Jewish tradition back to earlier times is problematic. It may be stretched back as far as the Talmud, but any similarity with biblical Judaism is roughly like that between Bolshevism and Russia before Peter the Great – a mere matter of accidental and dubious congruities.

            I will not go into two crucial issues: first, whether it makes any sense to talk about pre-rabbinical Halacha (probably not), and second, how Halacha was organized in the early-rabbinical times. In my opinion, no code of rules of individual and collective behavior, however voluminous, can be directly correlated to, let alone identified with, Halacha: Halacha is a system which generates practical rules, and that, in theory at least, is what makes the code flexible and universal – in other words, it is a non-terminal phenomenon. Again, Halacha is a rule-generating device. As any device, it constitutes a system, and a relatively simple one at that. This is not to say that the laws generated by Halacha are equally systematic and simple – far from it. On the whole, the Halacha takes no responsibility for the results, leading to the diverse interpretations and the oceans of literature that appear to be so much hot air. To be sure, Judaism has no monopoly on this systematic phenomenon; nevertheless, we should keep in mind that it has taken this phenomenon to its logical conclusion. I would like to note that any self-respecting collective could construct a Halachic-style system of its own, but this would require considerable effort – above all intellectual.

            Let us consider an example. It is easy to pronounce “Though shalt not eat meat with milk”. Such a rule can have one of two senses: it can either reflect the existing practice, i.e. add nothing of substance, being a mere instance of mnemonics that registers the actual situation (fine, they don’t eat the two…) or prescribe a practice that has not yet come into being. At first Judaism distinctly opted for the second scenario, probably due to its obvious scholastic advantage. Indeed, who can vouch that the existing practice is regulated, elegant, and compatible with the system? After all, you must agree that saying “thou shalt not eat meat with milk” does not yet mean producing a regulated prescription – this statement may conceal a multiplicity of diverse meanings. As we know, quite a few interesting things may be said about what should not be eaten with what – and eating is only the tip of the iceberg! That is why Judaism began to construct an entire theory around this idea, a large part of which has no immediate practical importance. It is no accident, by the way, that the “meat-and-milk theory”, one of Judaism’s most impressive features, was created by rabbinical Judaism virtually from scratch. Indeed, as late as the third-fourth centuries BCE (if not later) the Jews knew nothing of it. Jewish Hellenistic literature, while providing detailed reasoning for the prohibition against taking part in gentile meals, does not make the slightest mention of the meat-and-milk issue. The editor of Genesis did not even think of eliminating the passage where Abraham serves his guests beef with butter. No wonder: the biblical commandment “thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk” had a magical rather than a culinary meaning, as was to be expected. Moreover, the Talmud itself tells in fairly explicit terms that in the Mishnaic period – i.e. the first-second centuries BCE – the meat-and-milk prohibition was only beginning to go into effect, that tradition had no knowledge of it, and that from time to time it underwent various mishaps.

            Having taken up the meat-and-milk prohibition, the Halacha built a spectacular scholastic edifice around it. I will not discuss it at present – this would take too much time and space. I will only note that it is made up entirely of “opinions” and abounds in astonishing contradictions: after acknowledging the validity of a certain “opinion”, no matter whether the opinion admonishes or appeases, it then goes on to use its opposite as the basis for further consideration. Ultimately, Halacha did not produce a set of terminal rules (this is not only unlikely due to the virtually infinite number of versions to be included in the set, but is also halachically undesirable, since such a set, once compiled, would have been unsystematic and unwieldy – ugly, to put it bluntly – while Halacha strives for elegance and beauty). Instead, it gave birth to a halachic predicate, or rather a system of predicates that, if need be, may be developed and extended.

            Thus Halacha is, above all, a predicate in the mathematical sense of the word – i.e. a function of statements and logical variables. For theoretical and practical purposes alike, this predicate is asked questions, like the Delphic Oracle. Yet it only after the substitution of appropriate arguments – above all situational ones, but also personal, i.e. a set of “opinions” that the asker wants to use as a guideline – that Halacha can “spit out” practical advice. More often than not even this is impossible – the advice retains elements of uncertainty or unsolved variables, so that it acquires a practical meaning only after new scholastic disputes. Be that as it may, Halacha in itself issues no practical instructions. What is more, it harbors unconcealed disdain toward practical matters – exactly as Catholic scholasticism did in the Middle Ages.

            What is important to us in this instance is the fact that reference to Halacha clearly implies an appeal to a halachic “opinion”. In other words, it varies from person to person and from place to place. What is more, a Jew is actually allowed some leeway in moving around the scholastic tree – as long as he does not climb down.

            Everyone knows that the classical “practice” recommends abstaining from dairy products for six hours after eating meat. Along with this “practice”, there are interesting alternatives: four hours, three hours, two hours, and even one hour. Anyone who goes deeper will see that one can do away with any break altogether. What does Halacha have to say on this matter? All of the above, of course, and moreover all at once. The more erudite the halachic explorer, the more remarkable the meanings he will unearth within halachic predicate. In the spirit of medieval philosophical inquiry, quite a few Jewish scholars vie with one another in hunting after formal halachic proof for anything at all – even as far as permission to consume pork. Of course, the most gifted of them succeed in finding such proof. Only Orthodox Judaism’s undisputable propensity for discipline prevents the influx of heresies that would put these discoveries into practice; whereas in the Christian world, quite a few “clever” people eagerly took part in the ceremony of spitting on the cross, in the not unreasonable belief that this was a profoundly mystical experience. For the sake of fairness, it must be said that Jewish “deviations” were also in evidence – but those were thoroughly suppressed and outlawed much faster than their Christian equivalents.

            The incredible complexity of arriving at practical decisions within the framework of Halacha gives rise to numerous reference books that reduce composite predicates to simpler ones. Such are works like the Mishneh Torah or the Shulchan Aruch. However, one must be very naïve to seriously regard them as codices of terminal pronouncements. Neither of the books makes the slightest attempt to prescribe practical rules of conduct – they merely simplify the previously existing pattern. Philology must not be allowed to mislead the reader. Anyone who tries to actually follow the counsel of Maimonides and Caro, even in those cases where the text appears to justify this, inevitably ends up committing halachic blunders.^[1] This is conclusively borne out by the enormous halachic library devoted entirely to the analysis and further simplification of theories put forth by Maimonides and Caro as halachic predicates. It is a revealing fact that the formally scholastic Mishneh Torah and Shulchan Aruch were accompanied by halachic works of a different kind, critical in their style and technique – yet even they do not aspire toward turning Halacha into a practical, or even a practically realizable, guide. It is true that Maimonides and Caro are foremost halachic authorities. What is untrue is that their assertions constitute guidelines for practical action rather than contemplation, and it is still more untrue that they no longer function as “opinions” to be substituted into the initial halachic predicate.

            MH confidently cites the example of the laws of niddah – of “family purity” – as the epitome of halachic clarity. I am afraid that he does not even realize the extent to which this example backfires against him. He asks a rhetorical question: “Are the laws of niddah an opinion?” The trouble is that the affirmative answer is the obviously true one. Yes, these laws are “opinions” – or rather a complex combination of “opinions”.

            At this point I will not discuss the question of who conceived the idea of having the Torah text include views, popular among many primitive peoples, that label menstruating women unclean, and use this as the reason to limit the period of permissible sexual contacts, and when this began. Something else is far more interesting: already at the time of the Talmud the Jewish sages were tangled up in their views concerning this issue. Strangely enough, Halacha is quite reconciled to logical confusion and even open ignorance of the “truth”. There is no doubt that a practical guide is not reconcilable with this, and that is yet another indirect proof that Halacha is no such guide.

            Thus the Talmud offers two undeniably contradictory and clearly incompatible halachic systems (which were never meant to be compatible) for calculating the periods of purity and impurity as well as the time of permissible sexual intimacy. The editors of the Talmud could have easily put their own work in order by removing one of the systems, reconciling the two, or inventing a third, “the true system”. A practical guide would have done exactly that – but not a scholastically theoretical work. The Talmud blithely left this an open issue, leaving it up to the individual to choose one of the contradictory views – once the predicate is opened, of course. That is exactly what happened. The famous Rashi chose one version, Maimonides another. It is virtually certain that both they and their communities not only thought but also acted in different fashions. No problem: this is perfectly acceptable in Judaism. Therefore the original contradiction, which did not harm Halacha and was not censured by it, was passed down to the rishonim. Only at a somewhat later time was the decision made to do away with such a flagrant contradiction. Some medieval thinker unified the prohibitive elements of both systems, giving birth to the system more or less identical to the one we have today – a very rigid one, to be sure, and one often mistaken for original. In addition, an entire series of vague, poorly formulated utterances by classical medieval thinkers produced new strictures, this time clearly introduced just in case. So, is this today’s monolithic practical Halacha? Not on your life! Fairly recently the esteemed Ovadia Yosef suggested revising the laws of niddah in accordance with the opinion (“opinion”) of Yosef Caro in the Shulchan Aruch – which, incidentally, is far more lenient than the currently accepted opinion. At the same time, religious women with certain physical problems are urged to consult a knowledgeable rabbi. He will insert some variables into the halachic predicate and come up with radically different practical recommendations, equally based on certain “opinions”. What, then, are we to do with the immutable (according to MH) Halacha?

            Therefore Judaism is the same orderly and organized arrangement of “opinions” as a stone is an arrangement of molecules. Both Halacha and Aggada are fashioned entirely of these “opinions”. Any halachic act is a manipulation of “opinions”.

            To be sure, “opinions” are not of equal meaning and value. Moreover, they may stand in complex and controversial relation to one another. However, to ignore the existence of “opinions” is roughly equivalent to ignoring the corpuscular nature of matter or the crystal structure of metal. Halacha is not an amorphous blob of chaotic information. It possesses form and structure. Only by keeping this in mind can it be studied in a productive manner. Anyone who regards Halacha as an arrangement of specific injunctions – “thou shalt do this” – is not only unversed in Judaism but should also brush up on his sociology. Any “thou shalt” must inevitably be continued with “if you belong to such and such society, and find yourself in such and such situation”. Any attempt to shorten this formula ascribes to the Halacha a mistaken unit of measurement – say, kilometers instead of kilometers per hour. No wonder that this ultimately leads to meaningless, irrelevant, and infinitely formal results.

            Let us return to the issue of Judaism’s attitude to gentiles. To begin with, when we examine the halachic core of this issue we view it exclusively from the outside. In our interest in Halacha all of us – MH, the essay’s authors, and even I – are not bound by it; on the contrary, we are at liberty to analyze and even judge it. However, judging does not mean simplifying or distorting. We are simply obligated to consider the halachic predicate that defines Judaism’s practical and ideological attitude to gentiles in all its complexity. And we definitely have no right to forget that this predicate contains pockets designed to contain multiple “opinions” – both attractive and not so – without which it is meaningless.

            The essay’s authors, by citing a variety of halachic “opinions” (far from all, but due to limited space carefully selected for their importance and meaning), have done a great service for the discerning reader. Only when possessing some sort of a complete picture of relevant “opinions” and circumstances can one attempt to sum up as important a phenomenon as Jewish xenophobia. It would be totally meaningless to, as recommended by MH, focus exclusively on “Orthodox practice” – if only because it makes up a miniscule fraction of the halachic picture, making it impossible to analyze its own ideological foundation, and finally, being ambiguous to a far greater extent than the ideology that stands behind it. Ultimately, if we reduce Halacha to the actions of an Orthodox Jew, to his conduct in immediate proximity to a gentile, then suddenly Halacha will begin to look much better. Essentially, what do we care if the Jews consider gentiles to be inferior to dogs, if there are countless decrees that, out of fear of repercussions, permit Jews to treat a gentile, to hire him, and even to give him correct change? The true face of Jewish xenophobia is revealed only when we refer to theoretical Halacha, to its non-terminal elements – yet if so, it would be sheer folly to ignore Jewish-gentile relations in their seeming diversity, expressed first and foremost in the various halachic and aggadic “opinions” devoted to the issue.

            What is truly fascinating and outright amazing is the fact that it is precisely this diverse range of “opinions”, taken as a whole (certainly including humanitarian “opinions”), that demonstrates the genuine nature of Jewish Orthodox xenophobia in all its glory. The final conclusions, without any doubt, are absolutely devastating. That is why the conclusion drawn by MH is little different from the one offered by the essay’s authors (if we ignore the fact that the latter try to express themselves in more academic terms). Judaism is indeed a not-so-pleasant doctrine with racist undertones, rejecting universal values and classical humanism, viewing gentiles as inferior beings and preparing a grim future for them. However, this conclusion can be accurately deduced only if we take into account the fact that Maimonides, to take one example, while strictly forbidding a Jew to return an item lost by a gentile and threatening the gentiles with genocide in the messianic times, simultaneously enjoins the Jews to never shortchange a gentile. Xenophobia cannot be understood until one has uncovered its underlying mechanisms and driving forces. Thus today’s hassidic cannibalism can only be truly appreciated when compared with the gentle MO racism; without Meiri’s amusing “liberalism”, the warped bigotry of the Tanya's author or of the Maharal appears both incomplete and incomprehensible. The very fact that Western Orthodox Jews of today are forced to invent the most outlandish arguments and stratagems for justifying civilized social conduct and yet are incapable of rejecting the classical Jewish discourse weighing the extent of the gentile’s subhuman status is far more revealing than the intolerant passages in Maimonides or Caro. Ultimately, how tolerant were the times in which they lived? Are they all that bad when viewed against their contemporaries? On the other hand, who in the enlightened world but the Orthodox Jews remain mired in medieval intolerance? The very inability to renounce it – combined with the clumsy attempts to camouflage it – gives Orthodox Judaism away. Its disdain for gentiles is so intense that it seriously believes that latter to be incapable of sensing the true motives and the thinly disguised nature of the Jewish attitudes toward them. This is what Halacha is, and it is pointless to replace it with a set of eternal prohibitive formulas: not to heal a gentile, not to save him from drowning, not to participate in his rejoicing, not to cease hating him, not to return his lost items, not to compliment him. These formulas could be easily counterbalanced with other, “liberal” ones. Nothing can counterbalance the xenophobic Halacha that stands behind them.

            Only the entire spectrum of Jewish Orthodox views, in all its motley variety, reveals the deliberate purpose and depth of Jewish xenophobia. Only when seen against the backdrop of the clumsy liberal exertions within Orthodox Judaism does the tribal nature of Jewish prejudice becomes patently clear. MH can rest easy: the juxtaposition of xenophobic and liberal “opinions” not only does nothing to soften the final assessment of Judaism, it even exacerbates the assessment: after all, if this is what the “liberals” are like, what can we expect from the conservatives?

            On the other hand, MH should be careful not to employ overly formal methods and ploys. His conclusions, though not all that original, are correct, but his proofs are so far from reliable that I would take up the challenge of driving him into a corner. Still, there is an appropriate adage, a pretty good play on words long adopted by adventure novels: Forewarned is forearmed.^[2] Let the formalist think about it.