Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil

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Jacobs, Joseph; Broydé, Isaac (1906). "Microcosm". In Singer, Isidore; Funk, Isaac K.; Vizetelly, Frank H. (eds.). Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol.8. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. pp.544–545. Kraemer, Joel (2007). "Microcosm". In Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred (eds.). Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol.14 (2nded.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. pp.178–179. ISBN 978-0-02-866097-4. Which leaves Israel free to entrench its own version of one state, which denies millions of Palestinians basic rights. Silencing Palestinians isn’t a particularly effective way to fight rising antisemitism, much of which comes from people who like neither Palestinians nor Jews. But, just as important, it undermines the moral basis of that fight. The moral argument for isolating Israel is to protect so-called international standards of human rights. The moral claim for annihilation is that it would liberate Islamic land from a kind of Jewish desecration and evil. Argument number two is a variation on this theme. Maybe it is not bigoted to oppose a people’s quest for statehood. But it is bigoted to take away that statehood once achieved. “It is one thing to argue, in the moot court of historical what-ifs, that Israel should not have come into being,” argued New York Times columnist Bret Stephens earlier this month. However, “Israel is now the home of nearly 9 million citizens, with an identity that is as distinctively and proudly Israeli as the Dutch are Dutch or the Danes Danish. Anti-Zionism proposes nothing less than the elimination of that identity and the political dispossession of those who cherish it.”

Albo rejects the assumption that creation ex nihilo is essential in belief in God. Albo freely criticizes Maimonides' thirteen principles of belief and Crescas' six principles. According to Albo, "belief in the Messiah is only a 'twig' unnecessary to the soundness of the trunk"; not essential to Judaism. Nor is it true, according to Albo, that every law is binding. Although every ordinance has the power of conferring happiness in its observance, it is not true that every law must be observed, or that through the neglect of a part of the law, a Jew would violate the divine covenant or be damned. Contemporary Orthodox Jews, however, vehemently disagree with Albo's position believing that all Jews are divinely obligated to fulfill every applicable commandment. It is an understandable impulse: let the people threatened by antisemitism define antisemitism. The problem is that, in many countries, Jewish leaders serve both as defenders of local Jewish interests and defenders of the Israeli government. And the Israeli government wants to define anti-Zionism as bigotry because doing so helps Israel kill the two-state solution with impunity. During a speech in the Knesset by US vice-president Mike Pence, Israeli Arab lawmakers are ejected for protesting against the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Photograph: Ariel Schalit/AFP/Getty Images

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I think the answer lies in its refocusing. Because much of the antisemitism we see around us today can be captured in a reformulation of Hilberg’s aphorism. Blesséd Spinoza: a biography of the philosopher", by Lewis Browne, The Macmillan Company, 1932, University of Wisconsin - Madison

With expulsion from Spain came the dissemination of Jewish philosophical investigation throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Northern Europe and the Western Hemisphere. The center-of-mass of Rationalism shifted to France, Italy, Germany, Crete, Sicily and Netherlands. Expulsion from Spain and the coordinated pogroms of Europe resulted in the cross-pollination of variations on Rationalism incubated within diverse communities. This period is also marked by the intellectual exchange among leaders of the Christian Reformation and Jewish scholars. Of particular note is the line of Rationalists who migrated out of Germany, and present-day Italy into Crete, and other areas of the Ottoman Empire seeking safety and protection from the endless pogroms fomented by the House of Habsburg and the Roman Catholic Church against Jews.In traditional Judaism, the yetzer hara is not a demonic force, but rather man's misuse of things the physical body needs to survive. Thus, the need for food becomes gluttony due to the yetzer hara. The need for procreation becomes promiscuity, and so on. In the 13th century, Meir ben Simon of Narbonne wrote an epistle (included in Milhhemet Mitzvah) against early Kabbalists, singled out Sefer Bahir, rejecting the attribution of its authorship to the tanna R. Nehhunya ben ha-Kanah and describing some of its content: Rabbi Jacob Emden was a student of his father Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch ben Yaakov Ashkenazi a rabbi in Amsterdam. Emden, a steadfast Talmudist, was a prominent opponent of the Sabbateans (Messianic Kabbalists who followed Sabbatai Tzvi). Although anti-Maimonidean, Emden should be noted for his critical examination of the Zohar concluding that large parts of it were forged.

When I first saw the film, I remember wondering what the next phase would be. How could one update the phrase for the C21st? Where might antisemitism go next? In Jewish tradition, the Leviathan is a terrifying primordial sea monster, perhaps having the form of a giant crocodile, sea serpent, dragon, or whale. The Leviathan is referenced throughout the Hebrew Bible, in Psalms, Job, and Isaiah and, according to tradition, is very ancient, having been created by God at the beginning of time. Leviathan has a counterpart land monster, called Behemoth. In some version of the legend, Leviathan is the female mate of Behemoth. In others, God originally created two Leviathans, male and female, but slew the female so they could not reproduce and destroy the world. There is also a Jewish legend that in the messianic era the Leviathan will be slain and the righteous will dine on its flesh. LilithDavidson, Israel, ed. Sa'adya's Polemic against Hiwi Al-Balkhi: A Fragment Edited from a Genizah Ms, Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1915.