A Vet's Duty

Speaking to a luncheon of WW II veterans, I urged them to write their memoirs and send them to the US Military Archives. That's what I did with "The Misadventures of Cpl. Sachs."  Without the testimony of the veterans, much of our country's wartime history will be lost when they die. Tell your story! It's your final duty to your country.

Jews cf American Indians

1720indians/jews/1-20-15

1021 words

Jews and Indians

While reading Kent Nerburn’s wonderful book, “Neither Wolf nor Dog” about the relationship of Indians to Whites I realized how much Jews and Indians have in common. They are both victims of Christian imperialism. In the case of the Jews, the oppression began long before the so-called “discovery” of the Americas. Of course, North and South America didn’t have to be “discovered” for the people who already lived here knew where they were. The Christian oppression of Jews began long before Columbus with Constantine, the Roman emperor who was reputed to have converted on his deathbed, making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire.

Until then the Roman policy was to tolerate all religions as long as people paid their taxes. Ten percent of the empire was then Jewish. But with the development of Christianity as an offshoot of Judaism, the Christian Scriptures were in competition with Jews. Oddly, in spite of origins in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Book Of John of  Christian Scripture is anti-Judaism. How anti-Judaism became anti-Jewish and Anti-Semitism may be the subject for another historical discussion.

What did happen with the establishment of the Christian church of the Roman Empire in the fourth century was the establishment of strict anti-Jewish laws. No new synagogues could be established and no new graveyards. Anyone who was not born Jewish could not be circumcised on pain of death. Intermarriage was against the law. This put an end to Jewish conversions of gentiles.

Other religions were also suppressed, churches being built on the locations of pagan temples. The only religion to be tolerated was Christianity.

Whether this contributed to the decline and fall of the empire after the Jewish rebellion in 76 AD and the siege of Mosada which necessitated the withdrawal of Hadrian’s forces from Britain may be a subject of debate. Certainly Hadrian's army being called back to Rome abandoned Britain to the Vikings who came later. 

Later Jewish children were occasionally kidnapped and converted. In the Middle Ages Jews, who were not permitted to own land or join a guild, were confined to ghettos, the Jewish version of a Reservation. In Russia that reservation was the Pale of Settlement.

Later, in the fifteen century, the Spanish Catholic Inquisition gave Jews the options: convert, leave the country, or be put to death. If a so-called Converso, or Maranno (pig Jew) were to secretly practice Judaism, the penalty was torture and death.

Having conquered Europe, the Christian imperialists turned to new lands. Columbus came to the so-called New World with two agendas: gold and conversion of native peoples to Christianity. Catholic priests, speaking Spanish or Latin, demanded instant conversion of the Santa Domingo native peoples who, if they did not immediately accept Jesus as their savior were put to death torn apart by dogs. Only a handful survived by hiding in a cave.

Many Jews fled the Inquisition to Mexico and New Mexico where some crypto-Jews still identify themselves as Jews though they do not practice Judaism. The Inquisition officially ended in 1992, five hundred years after it began.

So what do the Jews have in common with the Indians?

After the fall of the Second Temple and Mosada, the Jews were evicted from their land into the Diaspora, the spreading out. Fleeing from one country to another, they were periodically expelled, from England, France, and Germany. In Russia Jews were restricted to a special reservation called the Pale of Settlement, but were subject to Pogroms.

Yet, unlike most Indians who were converted to Christianity and forbidden to practice their own religion or speak their naïve language, Jews managed to retain their religion and their language, Yiddish for the Ashkenazi and Ladano for those Spanish and Portuguese Jews to fled mainly to Turkey.

The Indians were also forcibly evicted from their lands and kept in reservations. In America the Christian oppression with Indian schools was parallel to the fifteen century Inquisition, except the Jews were able to escape. The Indians did not, their children kidnapped and forced to attend Missionary schools. Yet both Indians and Jews are tribal people. A code word for Jews is “MOT” member of the tribe.  

   The strongest connection between Jews and Indians is being victims of Christian imperialism. Even today, so-called Jews for Jesus try to appeal to unwitting Jews. More insidious Christian evangelists hope that all Jews should move to Israel, a plan that may be to make the United States Judenrein (cleansed of Jews) but also to bring on the prophesied Armageddon, after which the Jews who are not killed will accept Jesus and become Christians.

Just as Indians were portrayed in Western movies as whooping savages, in Mexico at Easter celebrations Jews are dressed as clowns, fools for not accepting Jesus. I guess that’s what they get for not being white or Christian.

     Assimilation is still the greatest threat to both Indians and Jews, which brings up the issue of race. A white man cannot become an Indian, but can a Jew become a Christian? Martin Luther thought that if the Catholic Church were reformed the Jews would convert. They did not. He was furious and wrote an anti-Jewish tract, ”On the Jews and their Lies.” His reasoning was that since Jews did not become Christians, they must be a race. That’s the origin of the myth that Jews, who actually come in all colors, are a race. Hitler, who was raised Catholic and went to parochial school, planned to obliterate the Jewish race, and murdered six million in his attempt.

      The parallel to Hitler's program of extermination was the American whites' distribution of smallpox infected blankets to the Indians, a form of biological warfare. 

      The Indian tragedy is that, deprived of their land and dislocated, discouraged from speaking their own languages and worshipping in the old ways, they have become demoralized, often alcoholic, subject to domestic violence. The Jews have fared better, integrating into white society, but the specter of the Holocaust hangs over all their heads. There is a new de-facto out migration as Jews leave France to avoid anti-Semitism, this time from a different imperialistic movement: Islam. At least for the time being, the Jews have a homeland to return to.

      Islam, which once occupied Europe to the gates of Vienna, is again on the rise. ISIS beheads those   who do not accept their version of Islam. What goes around comes around.  History repeats itself.