racism defense conquest human rights
*
"THE
Jewish religion
was admirably fitted for defense,
but was never designed
for conquest."
Gibbon,
The Dicline and Fall of th Roman Empire
~*~
~*~
MY
thesis is
that rabbinic Judaism
and Pauline Christianity
as two different hermeneutic systems for reading the Bible
generate two diametrically opposed, but mirror-like, forms of racism -
and also two dialectically possibilities
of anti-racism.
~*~
THE
genius of Christianity
is its concern for all of the peoples of the world;
the genius of rabbinic Judaism
is its ability to leave other people
alone.
-
THIS is
grounded theologically
in rabbinic Judaism in the notion that in order to achieve salvation,
Jews are required to perform [or better, to attempt to perform]
the entire 613 commandments given to Noah
that form a sort of natural,
moral Law.
-
Jewish
theology
understands the Jewish People to be priests
performing a set of ritual acts
on behalf of the
entire world.
-
Clearly,
the temptation to arrogance
is built into such a system,
but not the temptation to "Sacred Violence"
that leads to forced conversion,
whether by the sword, ridicule,
or the Pound, or deculturation
in the name of the new
human community.
-
Christianity
is the system
that proposes that there is something which is necessary for all:
faith in Jesus
Christ.
~*~
AND
the evils
of the two systems
are the precise obverse
of these
genii.
-
IF
in Christian churches today,
one may be uplifted by the expression of concern
- and often activist intervention -
on behalf of the oppressed peoples of the world,
one is equally troubled, often enough,
by the missionizing activities and discourse
of those same
churches.
-
ON
the other hand,
in most traditional synagogues one would be hard put
to discover that gentiles exist,
except as enemies of the Jews or potential enemies,
friends of the Jews or potential friends,
but at least no one is proposing to convert or change those gentiles
into Jews.
-
Indeed,
the explicit theological notion is
that they may earn a place in the Next World
without even hearing of Jews,
let alone converting
to Judaism.
~*~
Pauline universalism
even at its most liberal and benevolent
has been a powerful force for coercive discourses of sameness,
denying, as we have seen, the rights of Jews, women, and others to retain
their difference.
As Balibar has realized,
this "universalism" is indeed
a racism:
"This leads us
to direct our attention
towards a historical fact
that is even more difficult to admit
and yet crucial,
taking into consideration
the French national form
of racist tradition.
There is,
no doubt,
a specially French brand
of the doctrines of Aryanism,
anthropometry and biological geneticism,
but the true "French ideology"
is not to be found in these:
it lies rather in the idea
that the culture of the "land of the Rights of Man"
has been entrusted
with a universal mission to educate
the human race.
There corresponds
to this mission a practice of assimilating dominated populations
and a consequent need
to differentiate and rank individuals
or groups in terms of their greater or lesser aptitude for - or resistance to -
assimilation.
It was this simultaneously subtle and crushing form
of exclusion/inclusion which was deployed in the process of colonization
and the strictly French [or "democratic"]
variant of the "White mans'
burden."
THIS
discourse
was characteristic of liberal Germany,
as Marc Shell points out, and still persists in the United States of North America of today in such "liberal" expressions as
"too Jewish."
Shell
documents such notions
in the discourse of the contemporary Russian ideologue Igor Sharevich,
who argues that Jews must abandon their difference
IF they wish to be full citizens
of Russia.
THE PARADOX
in such discourse is
that nearly always, as Shell emphasizes,
the justification for coercing Jews to become Christian, Russian, citizens
of the world is paradoxically the alleged intolerance of -
the Jews.
The parallels
between this modern liberal discourse
and that of PAUL - and perhaps even more so of Justin Martyr
as discussed in earlier myDistories -
seem obvious
to me.
~
~
"THE
Jewish religion
was admirably fitted for defense,
but was never designed
for conquest."
Gibbon,
The Dicline and Fall of th Roman Empire
~*~
~*~
MY
thesis is
that rabbinic Judaism
and Pauline Christianity
as two different hermeneutic systems for reading the Bible
generate two diametrically opposed, but mirror-like, forms of racism -
and also two dialectically possibilities
of anti-racism.
~*~
THE
genius of Christianity
is its concern for all of the peoples of the world;
the genius of rabbinic Judaism
is its ability to leave other people
alone.
-
THIS is
grounded theologically
in rabbinic Judaism in the notion that in order to achieve salvation,
Jews are required to perform [or better, to attempt to perform]
the entire 613 commandments given to Noah
that form a sort of natural,
moral Law.
-
Jewish
theology
understands the Jewish People to be priests
performing a set of ritual acts
on behalf of the
entire world.
-
Clearly,
the temptation to arrogance
is built into such a system,
but not the temptation to "Sacred Violence"
that leads to forced conversion,
whether by the sword, ridicule,
or the Pound, or deculturation
in the name of the new
human community.
-
Christianity
is the system
that proposes that there is something which is necessary for all:
faith in Jesus
Christ.
~*~
AND
the evils
of the two systems
are the precise obverse
of these
genii.
-
IF
in Christian churches today,
one may be uplifted by the expression of concern
- and often activist intervention -
on behalf of the oppressed peoples of the world,
one is equally troubled, often enough,
by the missionizing activities and discourse
of those same
churches.
-
ON
the other hand,
in most traditional synagogues one would be hard put
to discover that gentiles exist,
except as enemies of the Jews or potential enemies,
friends of the Jews or potential friends,
but at least no one is proposing to convert or change those gentiles
into Jews.
-
Indeed,
the explicit theological notion is
that they may earn a place in the Next World
without even hearing of Jews,
let alone converting
to Judaism.
~*~
Pauline universalism
even at its most liberal and benevolent
has been a powerful force for coercive discourses of sameness,
denying, as we have seen, the rights of Jews, women, and others to retain
their difference.
As Balibar has realized,
this "universalism" is indeed
a racism:
"This leads us
to direct our attention
towards a historical fact
that is even more difficult to admit
and yet crucial,
taking into consideration
the French national form
of racist tradition.
There is,
no doubt,
a specially French brand
of the doctrines of Aryanism,
anthropometry and biological geneticism,
but the true "French ideology"
is not to be found in these:
it lies rather in the idea
that the culture of the "land of the Rights of Man"
has been entrusted
with a universal mission to educate
the human race.
There corresponds
to this mission a practice of assimilating dominated populations
and a consequent need
to differentiate and rank individuals
or groups in terms of their greater or lesser aptitude for - or resistance to -
assimilation.
It was this simultaneously subtle and crushing form
of exclusion/inclusion which was deployed in the process of colonization
and the strictly French [or "democratic"]
variant of the "White mans'
burden."
THIS
discourse
was characteristic of liberal Germany,
as Marc Shell points out, and still persists in the United States of North America of today in such "liberal" expressions as
"too Jewish."
Shell
documents such notions
in the discourse of the contemporary Russian ideologue Igor Sharevich,
who argues that Jews must abandon their difference
IF they wish to be full citizens
of Russia.
THE PARADOX
in such discourse is
that nearly always, as Shell emphasizes,
the justification for coercing Jews to become Christian, Russian, citizens
of the world is paradoxically the alleged intolerance of -
the Jews.
The parallels
between this modern liberal discourse
and that of PAUL - and perhaps even more so of Justin Martyr
as discussed in earlier myDistories -
seem obvious
to me.
~
~
28 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 21 mrt 2008
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