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Old May 2nd, 2011 #1
Karl Radl
The Epitome of Evil
 
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Unseen University of New York
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Default Rabbi Dov Lior and the ‘Inferiority of the Gentiles’

Rabbi Dov Lior and the ‘Inferiority of the Gentiles’


My attention was recently directed to; by anti-Zionist jew Richard Silverstein’s reference to them (1), some comments earlier this year by the Chief Rabbi of Hebron; Dov Lior, on the issue of non-jews. (2) To be sure Rabbi Lior represents an extreme interpretation as he is part of the Israeli religious ultra-nationalist right, but we should note that what he argues; and he is a fully-accredited halakhic authority, could not be done without a reasonable basis in Judaism.

Kobi Nahshoni; for example, summarises his comments at a ‘women’s health conference’ at a fertility clinic (the Puah Institute) as a ‘conservative stance’, which might surprise some readers given what Rabbi Lior is quoted as saying. To wit:

‘If the father is not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterise the people of Israel.’ (3)

Now aside from my disagreement with Rabbi Lior about the traits of non-jews in general (and I am no friend of other races including Rabbi Lior’s own) and Rabbi Lior’s silly use of an oxymoron (as ‘Israel’ is Judaism refers to the jewish people as a biological entity [including apostates] not a place [the name of which is merely incidental and was almost ‘Zion’ which would have been much more appropriate in terms of Judaism]). If a non-jew had said that (changing ‘jewish’ to ‘a gentile’ and ‘the people of Israel’ to ‘the nations’) then we can fairly assume that both Rabbi Lior and Nahshoni would have gone apoplectic and spent a few days; if not years, screaming about ‘anti-Semitism’ (oy vey!), but instead Rabbi Lior’s jewish supremacist comments are merely styled ‘conservative’.

If Rabbi Lior is ‘conservative’ then quite frankly I am not sure I even want to know what ‘extreme’; according to Nahshoni, would be! (4) Advocating sticking the gentiles into gas chambers perhaps? (5)

That said we can find anti-gentile comments easily enough in quite a few mainstream rabbinical works (6) and there have long been a host of such assertions coming out of Israel’s radicalised and highly religious rabbinates. They also have a long pedigree in jewish literature if one agrees with Elliot Horowitz’s argument that the festival of Purim; celebrating the hanging of Haman and his sons and the massacre of thousands of gentiles (Persians) by the jews for daring to want their country controlled by Persians not jews, (7) has long been a source of provoked and unprovoked attacks by jews on gentiles throughout the ages. (8)

Horowitz’s argument to me is convincing as he covers all the bases and marshals an impressive array of evidence (from the writings of Maimonides on the issue of Amalek’s survival to the work of the modern jewish holocaust-obsessed artist Arthur Syzk) that his controversial position; which is an intellectual breath of fresh air, is well founded and he even goes as far as to argue that host desecrations (explicitly) and ritual murders (implicitly) are the product of such phenomena. (9) When they have long been treated by jewish and non-jewish publicists and scholars as being mere figments of the diseased imagination of gentiles (although that said many of the non-jews; such as Herman Strack, who have argued this have done so from ulterior motives [in Strack’s case to convert jews to the ‘light of Christianity’] and the motives of a jew to assert such cases are nonsense is painfully obvious to any thinking person).

Rabbi Lior’s comments; and Nahshoni’s styling them as merely ‘conservative’, is then in this light odious in the extreme in that it suggests that while some rabbis are so liberal as to prefer a known non-jew’s sperm to an unknown jew’s sperm (i.e. preferring to create a Mamzer (10) rather than a Foundling (11) both of which are regarded as lower biological classes in Judaism). Rabbi Lior is merely conservative in arguing that neither a Foundling or Mamzer is good enough for sterile jewish couples and that the only way forward is to adopt children from known jewish families.

Nahshoni understandably does not specify the meaning here; nor does Rabbi Lior in his recorded comments, but it would be interesting to know whether Rabbi Lior would place any further rules on this in terms of the other biological castes in Judaism. Could a sterile jewish couple adopt a child of the Kohanim (the priestly class) or Levites (the helpers in the Temple) which are the two superior classes to the mere Israelite class that Rabbi Lior is presumably referring to? For that matter would a sterile jewish couple of the Kohanim be able to adopt a Levite or an Israelite (as although they are all considered of Israel: they are of a lesser biological purity)? Inquiring minds would like to know Rabbi Lior!

Rabbi Lior’s cause for concern is made very clear when he is quoted as stating that the problem with artificial insemination (by jewish semen) is that there is the potential for it to be ‘confused’ and/or ‘mixed up’, which Rabbi Lior seems to suggest would make an automatic Foundling with a strong potential for a Mamzer as well.

This issue obscures some of the logic behind what Rabbi Lior is saying in so far as he is basing his assertion; that the ‘mixing up’ is likely, on the idea of the ‘evil inclination’ in Judaism of which gentiles are stated to be far more likely to be subject to as they regarded as being something between jews and beasts (hence their designation haAdam [mankind] as opposed to the superior Adam [man] i.e. jews). (12) Gentiles are also considered by jews to be on the same level as ‘am ha-aretz (ignoramuses) (13) and can be exploited as such (14) but are not considered ritually clean. (15) This is what Rabbi Lior means when he says that those who are of uncertain parentage [read mixed or purely gentile parentage] are not ‘100% normal’ and are likely to become ‘criminals’ in so far as non-jewish parentage; for Rabbi Lior, naturally means that a child is likely to become evil because he or she is far more subject to the ‘evil inclination’ that apparently widely afflicts gentiles but not jews.

In essence what Rabbi Lior is trying to say is what the Baseler Rav said quite explicitly:

‘Nobody can deny that we are a people. We are one through descent, blood and race. We have never mingled with our nations and have kept our blood pure. All of us are descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ (16)

So therefore what Rabbi Lior is thinking is that the jews are a holy people and that the gentiles as lesser beings, (17) but the possibility that the clinic might employ a jew or gentile (both subject to the ‘evil inclination’ but in differing degrees) who might then ‘mix up’ the semen producing impure jews who are thought to be pure meaning in effect that the jew is mislabelled as say Israelite when in fact they should be a Mamzer, which has drastic affects given that this status dictates your position in the jewish community and who you can legally marry in Judaism.

Is Rabbi Lior’s position halakhic?

You can bet your life it is!

The difference between him and other; more liberal, Rabbis is one of preference not of opposition. Rabbi Lior thinks that jewish blood shouldn’t be polluted with evil gentile sperm (hence why he advocates the adoption of jewish babies by sterile jewish parents), while other Rabbis think it is preferable to give sterile jewish couple’s Mamzers rather than allow Foundlings to make the blood of Israel ‘impure’ as the Baseler Rav implicitly feared.

References


(1) http://www.richardsilverstein.com/ti...ity-barbarism/ [Last Accessed: 23/04/2011]
(2) http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/Art...006385,00.html [Last Accessed: 23/04/2011]
(3) Ibid.
(4) I am reminded of the comments on Israeli rabbinic extremism in Israel Shahak, Norton Mezvinsky, 1999, ‘Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel’, 1st Edition, Pluto Press: London, pp. 2-4
(5) One automatically thinks here of the revealing comments by Reform jew Peter Gay to the effect that the jews; as a whole, after the war wanted to murder the Germans (but now Hashem’s little darlings have decided to ‘forgive’ most of the Germans [as long as they keep giving them their nice taxes and the odd free arms cache]) (Peter Gay, 1978, ‘Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. x-xi) and indeed were unleashed by the Allies in places with just this result (Leon de Poncins, Timothy Tindal-Robinson (Trans.), 1975, ‘State Secrets: A Documentation of the Secret Revolutionary Mainspring governing Anglo-American Politics’, 1st Edition, Britons: London, pp. 138-149) .
(6) For example Maimonides’ ‘Moreh Nevukhim’, 3:51, which I quote as follows: ‘The people who are abroad* are all those who have no religion, neither one based on speculation nor one received by tradition. Such are the extreme Turks that wander about in the north, the Kushites who live in the south, and those in our country who are like these. I consider these as irrational beings, and not as human beings; they are below mankind, but above monkeys, since they have the form and shape of man, and a mental faculty above a monkey.’ *This should be taken to mean gentiles as the reference to the ‘people who are abroad’ is a veiled reference to ‘the nations’ meaning the gentiles or non-jews. The wide nature of Rambam’s comments on gentiles should be understood in that he attacks Negroes (Kushites), Europeans (the extreme Turks of the North) and the Arabs (those in our country [North Africa as Maimonides lived in Egypt at the time]). This in contrast to Hoffman who claims (on the strength of Shlomo Pines’ academic translation [which disagrees with me only in the identification of the ‘extreme Turks’ which I think is a polite way of saying ‘Europeans’ given the context (I’ve quoted from the Friedlander translation rather than using my own as it enables the average reader to check it if they so wish)]) they are merely directed against negroes (Michael Hoffman II, 2000, ‘Judaism’s Strange Gods’, 1st Edition, Independent History and Research Company: Coeur d’Alene, pp. 65-66) when they are obviously directed against both negroes and Arabs (the last bit Hoffman simply leaves out), while I include Europeans in that per my reading of the Hebrew text (which is a translation from the original Arabic) and its context.
(7) For more information please see the Book of Esther in the Old Testament as the festival of Purim is based on celebrating and given thanks for that chilling story of jewish vengeance.
(8) Elliot Horowitz, 2007, ‘Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence’, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 149-167
(9) Ibid, pp. 172-174; 194-196
(10) Literally ‘Bastard’ i.e. a jew who is the product of an unnatural union (incest, rape, child molestation, unmarried parents, having a non-jewish parent etc).
(11) A jew whose ancestry is uncertain hence the separate biological class.
(12) Jacob Neusner, 2004, ‘Making God's Word Work: A Guide to the Mishnah’, 1st Edition, Continuum: New York, p. 74
(13) Solomon Ganzfried, ‘Kitzur Schulchan Aruch’, 124:13
(14) For example jews are allowed to take interest from non-jews but not jews. Ibid, 106:7 and 90:1-23 which clarifies the pronouncements in 65:23-28 which forbid usurious interest but not interest relating to non-jews (a similar discussion can be seen in 28:11).
(15) For example: Ibid, 28:8 & 10
(16) Arthur Cohn, Emile Marmorstein (Trans.), Jenny Marmorstein (Trans.), 1972, ‘Of Israel’s Teachings and Destiny: Sermons, Studies and Essays’, 1st Edition, Ahron Press: New York, p. 79
(17) Or as Chaim Bermant put it: ‘The difference between the Orthodox Jew, the non-Orthodox Jew and the gentile is that one is a miserable sinner, the other a cheerful sinner, and the third doesn’t even know that he has gone wrong. And therein we touch on the concept of the Chosen.’ Chaim Bermant, 1979, ‘The Jews’, 2nd Edition, Sphere: London, p. 19

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This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...iority-of.html
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gentiles, goyim, israel, judaism, rabbi dov lior

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