Jewish History, Jewish Religion : The Weight of Three Thousand Years (Pluto Middle Eastern Studies)

Rating:
Summary: Intentionally Misleading
Review: The author intentionally misrepresents and distorts Jewish tradition and belief in order to support a radically anti-Israeli political position. It is hard to know what motivated Shahak to weave such a deceptive and gross caricature of Jews and Judaism. Certainly, his aim was to align himnself with those who wish Israel's demise. A miserable sad book, full of lies. This book is prominently featured on Nazi and Arab web sites.

Rating:
Summary: Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism
Review: The next time someone tells you anti-Zionism is not anti-Judaism, please cite this book. It is a total and 300 percent proof that the two phenomena are one and the same. In today's climate, Israel is the international Jew, and hating Israel amounts to hating Jews and the Jewish faith. This book proves this beyond a reasonable doubt, and the fact that it is highly placed on all Arab and Muslim anti-Israel websites is another indication of the same. Bosh and balderdash, a great huge piece of trash.

Rating:
Summary: This book is NOT mediocre
Review: This book is niether fantastic nor poor. It would have been more useful had it mentioned the Bolshevik revolution triggered by the Jews, namely the Zionists, and covert zionist efforts to exploit Habsburg states' prosperity only to fulfil, decades later in the 18th century, there "legitimate" oppression against the Palestinians. The author would have found copious documented evidence in Cherep Speredoviche's histroic accounts in numbers, names, and venues of Jewish agent provocateur activities and similar notorious events. This may largely explain why this Cherep Speredoviche was mysteriously killed after releasing such a "divulging" accounts.

Rating:
Summary: A Revisionist Interpretation of Classical Judaism.
Review: _Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years_ by Israel Shahak is one of the more radical and controversial books to have gained some level of respectability dealing with the age old "Jewish question". Among other things, the author tries to understand, by tracing the history of classical Judaism and appealing to arguments found in the Talmud and regularly used by rabbis, certain highly anti-social and discriminatory adaptations of the Jews (particularly the extreme orthodox). The author makes the contention that because he is treating Judaism as a religion and not as the Jewish race that his book is not anti-semitic. While this may be true, I doubt whether the distinction is a meaningful one at all, considering that the Jewish religion is enforced in such a manner so as to virtually guarrantee racial integrity, one is defined to be a Jew if one had a Jewish mother, i.e. making the Jews a constituted race. The charge of anti-semitism while appropriate seems really unimportant here because the book does bring up some interesting and important points which are indeed true, though perhaps provocative. Some of the more notorious claims in this book such as that the Jews offer special prayers to both G-d and Satan, the descriptions of Jesus and Christians found within the Talmud (conveniently excised in more updated post-Enlightenment politically correct versions, though retained through oral tradition), the exclusivity and double standards of Jews in dealing with Gentiles as recommended by the Talmud particularly with regard to usury and the saving of a Gentile life, the insanity of various regulations which Jews are obliged to follow (particularly concerning work on the Sabbath), and the power attained by Jews in medieval Europe frequently provoking peasant uprisings (by oppressed European serfs) against them. The author makes several other important claims, noting how the Jewish rabbis corrupted the religion through the Talmud, making use of dispensations (in an attempt to deceive their G-d) which were frequently driven entirely by the profit motive, the promotion of Jewish interests first, and the oppression of heretical Jews and the Jewish poor at the expense of the wealthy Jew. In addition, the author notes how Judaism became increasingly intolerant and closed in, especially bigotted against Christians (frequently Jews would ritually curse Christians, Christ, or engage in such provocative acts as spitting on Crucifixes or burning copies of the New Testament), but also against Arabs and Muslims, and even blacks (in fact Shahak claims that the great Jewish scholar Maimonides was an anti-black racist based on his comments about blacks, comparing them to "mute animals"). For example, the comments about Jesus, as charlatan and son of a prostitute, in the _Toledot Yeshu_ are notoriously known. Shahak makes an interesting distinction between peasant uprisings in Europe (which frequently persecuted the Jews, but which were often provoked as a consequence of severe oppression) and the Nazi persecution of Jews which came from above (rather than below) in the form of an oppressive totalitarian technicized state. While Shahak makes some interesting points, and his book is a needed corrective (particularly in a political environment where books with titles such as _Hitler's Pope_ and _Hitler's Willing Executioners_, blaming all Germans for the Nazi catastrophe have been made widely available), I believe it is both somewhat unfair and highly motivated by a political agenda. Of course, the antagonism between Jew and Gentile is ages old, and unlikely to ever be resolved, but in addition Shahak's agenda seems to revolve around both support for the state of Israel and the denial of rights to self determination to the Palestinians. (Shahak of course writes in the tradition of Enlightenment humanism, and is influenced by French Revolutionary ideas of universal human rights, something that I find personally problematic.) This is a more complicated issue, particularly for Americans to deal with. Also, many of Shahak's examples are taken from the extreme right among orthodox Jewish rabbis in Israel. Certainly, similar type statements could be found in reverse against the Jews and non-Muslims if they had been taken from the extreme right of militant Islam. Nevertheless, the book is courageous in that it does attempt to provide a historical position which could otherwise never see the light of day in the modern politically correct (sanitized) culture, were it not embraced by a significant segment of the left itself. Those who sneer at this and cry out "anti-semitism" need only be reminded that books with titles _Why I Am Not a Christian_ and _Why I Am Not a Muslim_ similarly exist.