THE CAUSES OF ANTI-SEMITISM: A CRITIQUE OF THE BIBLE

BY ARTHUR BLECH (PUBLISHED 2006 BY PROMETHEUS BOOKS.  ISBN-10: 1591024463) 462 pages

Holocaust survivor Arthur Blech long recognized the fact that the roots of anti-semitism lie not in the inherent depravity of humankind, as so many contemporary religious apologists would have us believe, but in the Bible itself.  While Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s ground-breaking work Hitler’s Willing Executioners recognizes the central role of Christian dogma in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust, it stops short of laying the guilt at the doorstep of the Bible’s authors.  Blech corrects this omission.

Yet, The Causes of Anti-Semitism does much more than this.  It covers the entire history of western religion, going back over five thousand years, and continuing up to the present.  The text develops three main theses: 1) The Bible is not the work or word of any god, 2) The Bible’s effect on human conduct did not serve our best interests, and 3) In attempting to live according to biblical standards, the human race has committed a grievous error, with the bloody history of religious strife serving as the real legacy of religion.

Blech (1923-2011) illustrates how much the Bible owes to the laws of the Sumerians, Egyptians, and others who preceded the ancient Hebrews by countless centuries.  For example, he relates how the Babylonians built their ziggurat to their god Marduk and how this incident formed the basis for the biblical story of the tower of Babel.  Clearly, the Hebrews, like every other ancient tribe, were not averse to absorbing the myths, deeds, and accomplishments of others and passing them off as their own.

The author puts the blame where it belongs: On the power-hungry priests, scribes, and redactors who wrote the Old Testament.  These men created a social hierarchical structure which is distressingly familiar to all objective students of religion: An invisible deity on top who only makes his wishes known to a few “special” people within society.  These priests/shamen are never to be questioned.  Government officials are next in line in the religious scheme of things, with the adult members of society underneath them.  At the bottom of the pyramid are women,children, and slaves.  It does not require too much imagination to see who the real beneficiaries are in such a system.

The laws and ordinances of the Old Testament precluded the Jews from achieving any real amity with their neighbors, who rightly saw arrogance behind the idea of any one group being the “chosen people.”  They observed the Jew’s refusal to associate with them, to marry with them, or even to eat with them, and responded in kind.  Such attitudes, all cloaked with the pretentious veneer of piety, could only be viewed as socially divisive.  As Blech correctly observes, “Jews were intolerant because their religion was intolerant.”  (pg. 177)

None of this, of course, can rationalize the inhumane treatment accorded the Jews once the Christians controlled Europe.  Blech skillfully sails through the Christian centuries of intellectual and moral retrogression to arrive at the Holocaust of the Second World War.

By that time, anti-semitism had become so ingrained in western religious thought that far too few people had feelings other than animosity for the Jews.  Thus, we come to see how Blech’s text serves as an invaluable primer for Goldhagen’s book, in addition to its own intrinsic merits.

Richly varied in both text and content, The Causes of Anti-Semitism shows that the Holocaust was not an isolated incident of history, but instead the result of two millennia of anti-Jewish hatred, traceable to the Old Testament and reiterated in the New.  For those not afraid to seek the true origins of racial discrimination and the ugliest historical blots on the collective record of humankind, this book is a must-read.