As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions [I think these are the writings from which Mr. Gordon Hansen likes to select those that support his prejudices against gays and women], we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam....2As ever and always, Christopher Hitchens, thank you, thank you for your mind and your heart.
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- The rest of the paragraph:
Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for "mind" or "intellect," and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over "exile" or "return." It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the "messianic" Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.
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Hitchens's logic is tainted with anti-Semitism. It's disturbingly easy to extrapolate his words thus: Judaism is the root of religious evil; religious evil is responsible for human misery; Judaism is responsible for human misery. This syllogism leads to the ovens of Auschwitz. Judaism is certainly the root of monotheism, which implicitly carries the message "there is only one way to live your life." This is the hazard that mankind has tripped over for millennia.
ReplyDeleteDon't think so, Ken. Easy to extrapolate as you suggest if you chop the logic a bit. One might even more easily be anti-Christian for its prophecy-derivation and anti-Islamic for its plagiarism, since Christianity and Islam have led directly to a good deal more human evil than Judaism.
ReplyDeleteI can't accuse Hitchens of anti-Semitism based on the cited passage, but he is at least guilty of sloppy writing. And since the Jews never forced conversion at the point of a sword or tortured nonbelievers in an Inquisition, labeling Judaism "the root of religious evil" reveals a shocking lapse of historical perspective.
ReplyDeleteKen, just for you, I've added the balance of Hitchens's paragraph that I excerpted (in Footnote 1). I give the ancient Israelites the benefit of doubting that they intended any evil when they planted the monotheistic seed, however poisonous was the root of the vine that sprouted from it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Morris. The paragraph shows that H. appreciates Jewish culture; he gives credit where credit is due. But the paragraph does not elaborate on the "root of religious evil" observation. He allows it to stand. I would have preferred a more considered statement — something like this: "At the root of Judaism is monotheism, which became the centerpiece of Christianity and Islam, and, ultimately, a source of much evil." Yes, H's formulation is terse and quotable, but it's also fodder for simple minds.
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