Time: Mon Sep 15 17:53:24 1997
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Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 17:40:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <culturex@vcn.bc.ca>
Subject: SNET: Re: [PNEWS] HISTORICAL FACTS re: Talmud
To: snetnews@world.std.com
Cc: rrecords@resistance.com, keltie@ftcnet.com, cafe@df.org
Content-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.96.970915180118.25623B@cyprus.atlantic.net>
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, The Combat Zone wrote:
> From: The Wiesenthal Center
>
> THE TALMUD DOES NOT TEACH RACISM
>
> By Dr. Ephraim Isaac
>
> Director of the Institute of Semitic Studies in Princeton, New Jersey,
> Ethiopian-born Ephraim Isaac received his Ph.D. in 1969 from Harvard
> University where, in addition to advanced research in Semitic languages and
> literature, he was involved in founding the Afro-American Studies
> Department. The following short piece refuting the libel that the Talmudic
> rabbis "invented racism" was written as an Afterword for Harold Brackman's
> Ministry of Lies: The Truth Behind The Nation of Islam's "The Secret
> Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows,
> 1994). For a fuller discussion of his views on this subject, see "Genesis,
> Judaism, and the 'Sons of Ham'," Slavery & Abolition, Vol.1, No.1 (May,
> 1980), pp. 1-17.
>
> --------------------------------------
>
> I am pleased to contribute a few words to this refutation of the false claim
> that the Jewish people "dominated" the slave trade that victimized so many
> millions of Africans and African-Americans. I also want to take this
> opportunity to correct another matter close to my heart, both personally and
> professionally. I mean the odious libel that the Talmudic Rabbis "invented"
> racism: a view that is currently being peddled by both white and Black
> writers in and out of academia.
>
> As a Black Jew, I am profoundly saddened to see the continuing exchange of
> hate language, mutual reproach, and anger flying across college campuses
> between African Americans and American Jews. But I have no problem taking
> sides: I am against hate.
>
> In the late 1960's, when I received my doctorate in comparative Semitic
> literature at Harvard, the phenomenon of "white racism" took on the status
> in political discourse of a kind of American version of "original sin." I
> was glad to see heightened sensitivity to prejudice, as I still am today.
> But then already I was becoming increasingly concerned as American social
> scientists, ignorant of the relevant ancient languages, began delving far
> into the past in search of the origins of racism in ancient literature.
>
> The Babylonian Talmud, the massive pre-fifth century commentary on ancient
> Jewish law written in Armaic and Hebrew, became one focus of this search.
> Supposedly, the Talmudic Rabbis read racist content into the Biblical story
> of how Noah, angered by Ham's irreverence, cursed his son's progeny.
> According to Hebrew Myths, the oft-quoted book by Robert Graves and Raphael
> Patai, "Ham is told by his outraged father that, because you have abused me
> in the darkness of the night, your children shall be born black and ugly;
> because you have twisted your head to cause me embarrassment, they shall
> have kinky hair and red eyes; because your lips jested at my expense, theirs
> shall swell; and because you neglected my nakedness, they shall go naked!"
>
> In an erudite dissertation on the history of Black-Jewish relations
> completed before my own work on this subject was published, Dr. Harold
> Brackman cited this sensationalized passage. He did not argue that the
> Talmudic Sages "invented racism." Quite to the contrary, he showed that
> racism as it later developed did not exist in ancient times, and that
> incipient color stereotypes can be found in non-Jewish sources among
> Hellenistic and early Christian writers. However, he did accept as accurate
> the Graves-Patai paraphrase of a false attribution to the Talmud. I am
> gratified that my work has demonstrated to Dr. Brackman and other American
> scholars that there is nothing in the Talmud even remotely resembling this
> passage.
>
> The passage is a misleading rendering of a text interpolated into a medieval
> Hebrew Biblical commentary called Tanhuma that describes Ham as having red
> eyes, curved lips, and singed hair and beard. It is taken out of context and
> inflated with additional fragments of post-medieval legends about Ham.
>
> The uninterpolated, older version of Tanhuma and earlier Jewish commentators
> struggled with the puzzle of why Noah in the Biblical story cursed his
> grandson Canaan rather than his irreverent son. They held that "a curse
> cannot be put where a blessing has already been put" and that Ham had been
> blessed previously with all the members of Noah's family when they left the
> ark. Other commentators said that Canaan was singled out for the curse to
> spare the rest of Ham's family including Cush, the ancestor of African
> peoples. The Book of Jubilees, the oldest known Jewish commentary on
> Genesis, named even Ham and his other sons including Cush among those who
> cursed Canaan for allegedly usurping the land of Israel. As in Biblical
> times, national aspirations - not race - were the crux of Noah's curse in
> Rabbinic literature.
>
> Distorting the Talmud has long been a favorite anti-Jewish ploy. Catholic
> writers during medieval times; Martin Luther during the Protestant
> Reformation; Houston Stewart Chamberlain, later a favorite of Nazis, in the
> nineteenth century - all did it. I do not like to see my Black brothers
> falling victim to this same antisemitic lie.
>
> As an African and a Jew, I know the pain and sorrow of being hated, being
> treated as less than human. Over the years, I have read much offensive and
> detestable literature comparing Jews to demons and bloodsuckers, or the
> cranial capacity of Africans to that of crocodiles, African languages to
> animal grunts, African religious practices and Rabbinic Judaism to nothing
> more than superstition. Renewed slanders impugning the Universalistic ethic
> of tolerance embedded in the Torah and the Talmud will accomplish nothing
> except to play into the hands of racists who hate both Blacks and Jews.
>
***** Usenet on Future Villages: vcn.false-creek; listserv on Future Cities: send email to khadija@wn.apc.org with "subscribe your-email-address" in the body; URL updates: <http://users.uniserve.com/~culturex> *****From ???@??? Mon Sep 15 17:58:20 1997
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Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 17:48:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <culturex@vcn.bc.ca>
Subject: SNET: Re: Poley & Soule off-topic
To: Bruce A Mackenzie <BMackenzie@draper.com>
Cc: Evan Soule <josephnewman@earthlink.net>,
Elaine Mullen <EMullen@it.berklee.edu>,
Robert Pearlman <OnLine.Manager@nss.org>,
David Anderman <DavidA@cwo.com>,
Bruce Mackenzie <BMackenzie@draper.com>, NSS-Discuss@nss.org,
artemis-list@lunacity.com, snetnews@world.std.com,
liberty-and-justice@pobox.com
-> SearchNet's SNETNEWS Mailing List
This man has claimed to have an advanced system of electromagnetic
propulsion which is capable of putting balloons into space. Now it seems
to me that that is either valid or not. If it is valid the world should
rejoice. If it is not he should be refuted once and for all by space
experts on lists like NSS-Discuss. THIS HAS NOT BEEN DONE TO DATE.
That is emphatically NOT "off topic"!!!
FWP.
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Bruce A Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello Poley & Soule ,
>
> You folks are "off-topic" and can be removed without warning from
> the NSS-Discuss list by either Elaine or myself, as list administrators.
> You both have stretched the limits of the NSS-Discuss topics in the past.
>
>
> Please do NOT "cross-post" the same message to multiple lists.
>
> Please ONLY talk about the NSS or space development.
>
> Please do NOT post PERSONAL mail.
>
> Please do NOT make personal attacks.
>
>
> >> I thought you might like to post these famous inventors who are also
> >> opposed to the House version of the bill:
>
> >> Hello Evan: I didn't know you were on NSS-Discuss. You were given a fair
> >> chance to present your case for the Newman Free Energy Machine on
> >> USA-Tesla
>
> >> Could you please tell us on NSS-Discuss about the Newman
> >> Space Balloon?
>
> >> CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- More than 20 Nobel laureates said Thursday that
> >> proposed changes in U.S. patent law would foster intellectual piracy and
>
>
> -Bruce Mackenzie, e-mail list administrator. BMackenzie@draper.com
>
***** Usenet on Future Villages: vcn.false-creek; listserv on Future Cities: send email to khadija@wn.apc.org with "subscribe your-email-address" in the body; URL updates: <http://users.uniserve.com/~culturex> *****
-> Send "subscribe snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
-> Posted by: Franklin Wayne Poley <culturex@vcn.bc.ca>
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