Is Judaism a racist religion?

[Igby]

No problem.

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

I going to walk on eggshells with this one but here goes. If religion is manmade, as many aetheist and scientists believe, and the Jews consider themselves the chosen people because of the bible, then a manmade claim is being used for racist superiority. On other other hand, if the bible is the word of God, the Jews are merely going along with a choice that was made by God.

It's a common misconception that Jews consider themselves superior because they are "God's chosen people." It's still held by the big three (Reform, Orthodox and Conservative Judaism) that the Jews were chosen by God, but Reform and Conservative explicitly reject the notion that Jews are superior to any other people. Only very fundamentalist Orthodox factions and whackjob sects still preach superiority complexes.

"God's chosen people" refers to an ancient covenant made with God, that the Jews would be really really nice and uphold God's laws. The Jews were "chosen" basically because the prophets said God told them so.

I'm Reform, and here you can read the "Guiding Principles", if you can be bothered. It's lazyboy Judaism.

I'd also like to point out that not all Jews are happy with the Israeli government. There's an enormous difference between supporting the Kadima and supporting Israel's existence.

[HydrogenBond]

Sometimes one has to go to the edge and look over into the abyss, to see what is in the hearts of men. Please forgive any misunderstanding, but here is something I saw while looking over the edge.

The holocost led to about 7 million Jews being killed. If we divide that by two, that means about 3.5M males died. If we divide that by 3, that implies about 1M males from 16-40 years of age. That amounts to about a million man army.

I often wondered why the Jews didn't organize a resistance movement, considering they had a million man army, in potentia. Even if the whole army got killed, and ended with the same mortality rates, i.e, including civilian casulaties of 6 million, it would have made a huge difference in the outcome of the war. If would have also altered the way the allies would have responded to them. They would been glad to fight with their Jewish brothers in arms. It was not like the Holocost was something that happened overnight. Something bad was in the wind for many years. Not everyone had the means to escape to neutral terriory, leaving the majority the choice to fight or comply.

This is where the contrast between the bible being the word of man or the word of God, or whether God exists or not makes a big difference on how one interprets the actions and outcome recorded in history. If religion is a fabrication of man and God does not exist, the choice to comply instead of fight and sacrifice for justice, was sort of like making a deal with the Devil to avoid the hard realities of war. The Devil, like the Nazi's, stabbed them in the back and the rest is history.

If one interprets this dark chapter of history as due to their faith in God, to protect or redeem them, God's actions would be contingent on the premise that the Jews have obeyed the heart of the convenant. If they did not, historical precidents (old testament) implied that they would be given into the hands of their oppressors to be enslaved and killed. In the Old Testament prophets oftened warn them at crossroads when they began to "marry the daughters of foreign gods". The prophets were ignorred until it was too late and Isreal ended enslaved to other nations. But in all cases, God had eventually has mercy on a remnant, and restores them.

Either through the laws of man, i.e, unwilling to sacrifice for team liberty or through the laws of God, i.e, broke the convenant, the Jews need to accept some level of responsibility for the dynamics of the Holocost. In the Old testament God does not rag on the oppressor, since it was might of his arm. His anger and his mercy was dictated to the choices make by the keepers of his convenant.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

I often wondered why the Jews didn't organize a resistance movement, considering they had a million man army, in potentia. Even if the whole army got killed, and ended with the same mortality rates, i.e, including civilian casulaties of 6 million, it would have made a huge difference in the outcome of the war.

Without geographic, organizational, economic, and industrial separation from the main German population, it’s implausible that German Jews could have offered a significant conventional military resistance to their own national military. At best, they could have resisted only in the ways usually available to such a population – spying and sabotage.

One of the reasons given by German officials for confining both Jews and other social and political “undesirables” to concentration camps during WWII was precisely because of their potential to undermine the German war effort in this way.

In wondering why the Jews didn’t organize a resistance, I think HydrogenBond is failing to sufficiently account for the effectiveness of the planning and execution of this interment by the German government.

That the failure of German Jews to foresee the Holocaust and resist it is due to a culture-wide pacifist ideology is not, I believe, supported by historic data in 2 major areas:

• Non-Jewish Holocaust victims. According to multiple sources (eg: this wikipedia article), in addition to the 5.1-6.0 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, 2.9-4.5 non-Jews were also killed, many of them Christians, of other religions, or atheists.
• Enlistment of non-German Jews in allied armed forces. There was no mass exemption of Jews from the drafts of the allied nations, nor evidence that Jews volunteered for military service with less or greater frequency than the rest of the population.

It was not like the Holocost was something that happened overnight. Something bad was in the wind for many years. Not everyone had the means to escape to neutral terriory, leaving the majority the choice to fight or comply.

Based on conversations I’ve had with, and accounts I’ve read of Holocaust survivors, while there was a widespread sense of “something bad in the wind”, few understood until too late how bad the holocaust would be. Most internees appeared to believed what they were told by officials – that they were being interned for national security reasons, and would be released after the war was over. As in similar incidents of genocide, there was widespread disbelief among Holocaust victims that they would actually be killed, or be permitted to be killed, by people they had lived among and enjoyed good relations for generations.

A parallel exists between the Holocaust and the much smaller (about 110,000) Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Although unhappy and fearful, Japanese Americans offered little organized resistance to their internment, hoping that they would not be betrayed and murdered by their own country. As they were not abused, were released after the war, and even, after 40 years, compensated for their lost time and property, their trust proved justified. Tragically, the trust of European Jews in their countries did not.

IMHO, there is a psychological predisposition among most human beings in all cultures to “look on the bright side” of even the most dire situations. Most of the time, this quality is beneficial, preventing social panic and disorganized violence. Sometimes, though, unscrupulous people exploit it to enslave and/or kill numbers of people they would, without this tendency, be unable to. This is seen not only on a large scale, such as during the Holocaust and more recent incidents such as the 1994 genocide of about 1 million Rwandans, but on a small scale, such as Richard Speck’s 1966 murder of 8 student nurses in their shared home.

[HydrogenBond]

Part of what I was trying to show is that if one tries to analyze history using historical precident or modern 20/20 hindsight one can often get a different picture of a situation.

The Germans and Nazi's are often called Christians. Aythough most may have been brought up that way, when they became Nazi's they became something else, which had nothing to do with the teachings of Christ. In fact, it was anti-Christian and much closer to modern godless aethiests. Yet the aetheist philosophy is never given any burden of responsibility for the atrocities of WWII.

In a historical sense this may have been the miscalculation of the Jews. They thought they were dealing with merciful Christians but instead were actually dealing with cold blooded aetheists.

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

In a historical sense this may have been the miscalculation of the Jews. They thought they were dealing with merciful Christians but instead were actually dealing with cold blooded aetheists.

Jeez, Louise - you make it sound like a real bad thing being an atheist! And also, as if the atheists were responsible for the holocaust!

The holocaust was driven by ideology, not religion. And that, once again, doesn't count as racism - the Jews weren't persecuted for their skin colour or racial affiliation, but for their professed belief. And they, as Jews, could've been any imaginable skin colour; they were killed for being Jews - not for being white or black or any other colour.

[Freddy]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

Part of what I was trying to show is that if one tries to analyze history using historical precident or modern 20/20 hindsight one can often get a different picture of a situation.

The Germans and Nazi's are often called Christians. Aythough most may have been brought up that way, when they became Nazi's they became something else, which had nothing to do with the teachings of Christ. In fact, it was anti-Christian and much closer to modern godless aethiests. Yet the aetheist philosophy is never given any burden of responsibility for the atrocities of WWII.

In a historical sense this may have been the miscalculation of the Jews. They thought they were dealing with merciful Christians but instead were actually dealing with cold blooded aetheists.

Almost all German soldiers identified themselves as Christians. Hitler promoted Christianity, with him as Christ's replacement. Those Christians who followed Hitler were considered good Germans, while those who opposed Hitler were sent to concentration camps. The idea that athesism was involved in Hitler's Germany is simply incorrect.