"I don't believe in western morality"

The previous post contains a link to this page, which contains what I consider to be reasonable discourse from various rabbis. When I posted the link, I had not yet read down to the final offering, from a Rabbi Friedman of Chabad. These words are all very striking, especially the opening sentence:

I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral.

The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).

The first Israeli prime minister who declares that he will follow the Old Testament will finally bring peace to the Middle East. First, the Arabs will stop using children as shields. Second, they will stop taking hostages knowing that we will not be intimidated. Third, with their holy sites destroyed, they will stop believing that G-d is on their side. Result: no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war.

Zero tolerance for stone throwing, for rockets, for kidnapping will mean that the state has achieved sovereignty. Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.

Rabbi Friedman later published a semi-retraction, no doubt because someone clued him into the fact that he had posted his monstrous words in a public place, where the goys might read them. But I think that his original statement reflects his truest self -- the toothpaste cannot be re-tubed -- and that his sentiments do indeed represent the feelings of many other Jews. Not all, not most, but many, and a growing percentage.

Increasingly, I see a distinction between the Judaism I knew growing up -- the Judaism which produced Albert Einstein, Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, Stanley Kubrick, Will Eisner, Arthur Miller and many other exemplars of western culture -- and a vicious new Judaism. This new Judaism never has and never will produce an Einstein or a Mahler. This new Judaism despises western culture.

Look again at the opening words of the Rabbi's statement.

Look again at those earlier posts which discuss Israeli writers who use the term "western culture" derisively.

For many years, we've been told that Israel represents an outpost of "the west" in a region inhospitable to American and European cultural values. But is it? What I call "old Judaism" was perhaps the finest thing to be found in the west -- the conscience of the west. What I call "new Judaism" is, as the Rabbi himself admits, not western at all. It is something alien. It is Other. An Israel suffused with the spirit of New Judaism bears much less resemblance to European values than does, say, a cosmopolitan city like Beirut.

Hitler had dissociated himself from traditional Western morality. When Rabbi Friedman says that he does not believe in Western morality, he is saying that he despises what Hitler despised, and that he embraces the vile new "morality" that Hitler sought to impose upon the world.

Friedman: "The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children..."

Change the words "Jewish way" to "German way" and you have here the distillation of Hitlerism.

Rabbi Friedman may now want to suggest a difference between his views and Adolf's, but any attempt to do so at this point amounts to ex post facto sophistry, an attempt to talk his way out of an inescapable damnation. Sorry, Rabbi: You said the words and you cannot un-say them. You are, by your own declaration, not moral.

Compare Friedman's words to these, written by Ludwig von Mises back in 1940 -- and note, once again, the distinction between traditional western morality and a new morality which, unfairly, is here called eastern:

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini constantly proclaim that they are chosen by destiny to bring salvation to this world. They claim they are the leaders of the creative youth who fight against their outlived elders. They bring from the East the new culture which is to replace the dying Western civilization.

It is a law of nature, they say, that great historic changes cannot take place peacefully or without conflict. It would be petty and stupid, they contend, to overlook the creative quality of their work because of some unpleasantness which the great world revolution must necessarily bring with it. They maintain one should not overlook the glory of the new gospel because of ill-placed pity for Jews and Masons, Poles and Czechs, Finns and Greeks, the decadent English aristocracy and the corrupt French bourgeoisie. Such softness and such blindness for the new standards of morality prove only the decadence of the dying capitalistic pseudo-culture.

Von Mises sounded many of the notes that I am trying to sound. Hitlerism pretended to defend the west even as it betrayed every decent thing to be found in western culture. We see a similar dichotomy between what I have called New Judaism (anti-western) and Old Judaism (pro-western.)

One factor differentiates the evils of the 1940s from the evils afflicting our present society: Religion. Rabbi Friedman believes that

Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.

This sounds like Nietzsche. The only difference is that Nietzsche categorized that "disastrous morality of human invention" as Jewish, while Friedman would use the word "Jewish" to describe his proposed alternative (pseudo-)morality. But that distinction is a matter of mere semantics; otherwise, both men are alike in condemning what Nietzsche called "slave morality." Might makes right, and violence is an absolute good. Anyone who preaches anything else preaches weakness.

Friedman differs from Nietzsche in one major way: The Rabbi claims that his "might makes right" weltanschauung has God's stamp of approval. This appeal to the supernatural distinguishes 21st century barbarity from the varieties predominant in early 20th or the late 19th. Like Friedman, the vile Christian Dominionists and Islamic jihadists argue that their disgusting philosophies have divine sanction.

Well, if we must confront the topic of religion, then let's do it.

"New Jews" (as I have defined the term) like Friedman spurn western morality by dictate of their tribal war god, whose name they are forbidden to utter. Of course, a restriction which Jews may fairly apply to co-religionists does not apply to me. Their god bears the name of yod-heh-vav-heh, which was probably pronounced Yahu. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Think of that name as "Ya-HOOOOO!" -- a war-shout which will be remembered fondly by any kid who grew up reading Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos (which was created by a couple of wonderfully talented Jews, I might add).

For the ancient Hebrews, that name served pretty much the same function it held for Sgt. Fury: It was a battle-cry to be uttered while shedding blood.

A close reading of the Bible demonstrates that the Hebrews were not originally monotheists (although some modern rabbis may pretend otherwise) but monolatrists, as defined here. Yahoo (my preferred transliteration) was not originally conceived as a transcendent, mystical entity. He was basically a brutish, ax-wielding killer-god like Ares, only stupider. Over time, Jews redefined Yahoo, spruced him up, made him look presentable in mixed company. The retarded brother of Ares became, at first, a God-in-chief like Zeus. Later still, the name Yahoo was dropped, and the Jews embraced the concept of a God who was an Inconceivable Something, immeasurably greater Zeus.

The Bible stitches together those very old tales of Yahoo and later writings about that transcendent Inconceivable Something. The stitches are pretty obvious when you look for them.

Alas, the old tales of Yahoo the Bloodthirsty Brute remained codified in scripture and sacralized by tradition. See, for example, the book of Joshua: That, more than any other, is Yahoo's book. As long as that disgusting scripture is considered holy, the spirit of the primeval war-god will continue to haunt us all -- Jew, Christian and Moslem.

Every time a warrior smiles as he guts an enemy, he does so at the behest of Yahoo.

Old Jews (again, as I have defined that term) have always seemed to view those gruesome ancient tales of Yahoo as vaguely embarrassing holdovers from a hazy past -- as folklore. Old Jews prefer the impossible task of trying to find words to describe that Inconceivable Something. New Jews don't bother to make the attempt: They worship the old god, the original god, the tribal god, the god of the book of Joshua, the god of gore.

As long-time readers know, my own religious inclinations come from that strange realm between agnosticism and Gnosticism. (Those who would accuse me of anti-Semitism should keep in mind that the inventors of Gnosticism were Alexandrian Jews.) To the Gnostics, Yahoo was the god of evil, and they were not afraid to rewrite or to toss away those ancient writings which still bore his taint. In Gnosticism, the transcendent entity -- that Inconceivable Something Above Everything Else -- was not Yahoo, was nothing like Yahoo. In their legends, Yahoo had pretensions of transcendence, of being The Only One. But he was kidding himself.

To the Gnostics, Yahoo was a pre-moral brat who (unfortunately) possessed great power. Remember the nearly-omnipotent kid played by Billy Mumy in that old Twilight Zone episode? The one who would blink you "into the cornfield" if you thought bad thoughts about him? That is Yahoo. Or at least a version of him.

Yahoo is the vile deity worshiped by people like Rabbi Friedman and Jerry Falwell and Osama Bin Laden. Yahoo is the god of all fundamentalists. Yahoo is the reason why fundamentalists of every stripe -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim -- have set their faces against everything considered decent in the western tradition.

The Gnostics rejected Yahoo, preferring the goddess Sophia. The name means Wisdom. She was once popular among the ancient Hebrews, and you can still spot her spirit floating through various Biblical texts, if you know where to look. Great Jews like Einstein and Mahler never had anything good to say about Yahoo. But they seemed to have great respect for Sophia, even though they did not use that name.

You may know this deity better under another name: Athena. The goddess of Wisdom.

She has also been called a goddess of war. Actually, her metier was not battle (although she always fought in the forefront, when fighting was necessary) but strategy. Planning. She was, more importantly, the goddess of the arts, of craftsmanship and culture, of the olive tree and all that it implies.

Democracy was invented in her city.

According to legend, she planted the first olive tree on the Acropolis. As long as that olive tree survives, democracy will survive. Many tyrants -- including the Nazis -- have tried to uproot that tree, but the secret worshipers of Athena have always managed to replant it, using an offshoot of the original. It's still there; you can go to Greece and see it for yourself.

The temple of the war-god Yahoo, built by the evil Herod, was destroyed long ago. Do not mourn for it. Athena's temple, the Parthenon, still stands on the Acropolis. It has taken quite a beating, but much of it is still there. It provided the architectural and spiritual model for many other fine buildings, including our Supreme Court and the Madeleine Church in Paris. The city of Athena is the shining city on the hill.

I am a disciple of Athena. Although I may not believe in her literal existence, I can -- paradoxically -- feel her presence, at least when I am my best self.

I believe that the Parthenon is the cradle of the west, the birthplace of democracy, the temple of Wisdom. The culture of Athens gave us Phidias, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Agatharchos -- the founders of our culture, the forebears of all that is civilized in the western tradition.

The elected leaders of Athens were ceremonially brought into the Parthenon, where the priestess of Athena (it's worth noting that Yahoo had priests, while Athena had priestesses and arrephoroi) told the politicians that they would lose all power if they ever lost respect for the rights of the citizens. I think we should have a ceremony of that sort nowadays.

I believe that all of the many sins of the western world -- the tyrannies, the mass murders, the racism, the enslavements, the long periods of ignorance and darkness -- were brought about not by men who worshiped the Goddess of Wisdom but by those who held her in contempt.

I still believe in her. And unlike the acolytes of the bloody Yahoo, I believe in western morality.