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Why the Jews? The Reason For Antisemitism

I summarize and quote from the excellent book by Dennis Prager and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason For Antisemitism:

For nearly all of Jewish history people recognized that antisemitism was a reaction to the Jews and Judaism. But today Jew-hatred is generally attributed to factors having little to do with Jews and Judaism. The causes of antisemitism are generally held to be economics, political use of the Jews as scapegoats, general ethnic prejudice, the psychopathology of hate, and human irrationality - all of which dejudaize Jew-hatred.

Among those most committed to these dejudaizing interpretations of Jew-hatred are secular and non-Jewish Jews [the Jews of porn] who are committed to the notion that Jews are not essentially different from all other people. Accordingly, they want to believe that antisemitism is but another form of bigotry, that it is not permanent, that in the secular world it will die out, that there are no rational reasons for Jew-hatred, and/or that antisemitism is a sickness...

* Scapegoats... That Jews are merely convenient targets for a society in trouble... Yes Jews have been used as scapegoats but that does not explain Jew hatred. Why the Jews?

* Economics. Because Jews are rich. But then why not hate all rich people? And not hate poor Jews? For instance, Jews were not hated because they lent money. They lent money because they were hated.

* Psychology. While there is little doubt that Adolf Hitler and many of his associates were psychologically disturbed, this fact did not cause antisemitism, let alone the Holocaust. Were the tens of millions of Germans and other Europeans who supported Nazi antisemitism also sick? Did tens of millions of Christians in medieval Europe hate Jews because they were sick? Is Soviet antisemitism a funciton of some psychosis? Is the Muslim world pathological because it wants the Jewish state destroyed?

The ultimate cause of Jew hatred is that which makes Jews Jewish - Judaism.

For thousands of years Judaism has consisted of three components: God, Torah, and Israel; that is, the Jewish (conception of) God, Jewish law, and Jewish nationhood. Jews' allegiance to any of these components has been a major source of antisemitism because it has rendered the Jew an outsider, and most important, it has been regarded by non-Jews (often correctly) as challenging the validity of the non-Jews god(s), law(s), and/or national allegiance.

By affirming the one and only God of all mankind, thereby denying legitimacy to everyone else's gods, the Jews entered history at war with other people's most cherished values. The Jews compounded this hostility by living by their own all-eoncompassing laws in addition to or even instead of the laws of their non-Jewish neighbors. And by continually asserting their own national identity in addition to or instead of the national identity of the non-Jews among whom they lived, Jews have created hatred of Jews.

From its earliest days Judaism's reason for being has been to change the world for the better, (in the words of the ancient prayer Aleinu) "to perfect the world under the rule of God." This attempt to change the world, and to challenge the gods, religious or secular, of the societies around them, and to make moral demands upon others (be it through Judaism, communism, feminism, etc) has constantly pissed off non-Jews.

Judaism also holds that the Jews were specially chosen by God to improve the world.

As a result of Jews living Judaism, they have led higher quality lives than their non-Jewish neighbors. Jews have nearly always been better educated; Jewish family life has usually been far more stable; Jews aided one another more than their non-Jewish neighbors helped each other; and Jews have been far less likely to become drunk, beat their wives, abandon their children...