* Jews did a better job emphasizing the social and cultural aspect and lifestyle benefits of their religion, like stable marriages and families, than Christian churches. Secular Jews identify as Jews, secular people raised as Christians rarely say they are “secular Christian” which is too bad since that is a perfectly respectable view. For example, Winston Churchill, typically non-observant WASP, said he was not a pillar of the church, but more like a flying buttress, supporting it from the outside.
* One of the benefits of having a religion that has race as its central tenet. It’s easy to stop believing in God. It’s much harder to stop believing in race.
* That young Orthodox Jews escaped from Orthodoxy to secularism in the past is no guarantee that it will happen in the future. You fail to take into account the increase in reactionary stridency among the ultra-Orthodoxy that has developed over the last 50 years, a response to what the ultra-Orthodox see as the threat of assimilation. To prevent assimilation, they limit the secular education of their children (in some cases leaving their English communication skills crippled), marry them off very young and encourage them to have children as soon as possible after marriage. Thus they are ill-equipped for life in the secular world and could even lose their families if they ever thought seriously about escape. Emigration to the U.S. also aided my own ancestors who wanted to secularize 100 years ago. For the most part, their parents stayed behind in Poland and the Pale, leaving them more free once they were here. If current day young hasidim or haredim ever emigrate, it will to be Israel where they will be smothered by the powerful local hasidic and haredi communities waiting to absorb them.
* The decline of Christianity will be bad for the Jews, very bad. Jews have thrived under Christianity: financially, professionally, politically, intellectually, and most importantly, demographically, like under no other suzerain, not even under their own organically developed leaders. Leave aside the distracting fog of “anti-semitism”, “pogroms”, “ghettos”, etc and focus on the numbers. Starting from a small kernel of several thousand, settled in northern Italy and southern France 1,000 years ago, Ashkenazim developed into one of the most numerous and powerful nations in Europe by the dawn of the 20th century. At the outbreak of the WWII the world Jewish population stood at close to 15,000,000. The vast majority of this population developed through centuries of Christian suzerainty. And despite the destruction of WWII the Jewish population is robust and growing.
The spectacular demographic, cultural, financial and political success of Jews could only have happened under Christian suzerainty. Behold the Jewish populations of the levant, controlled by their own community leaders for over 2,000 years, and under the suzerainty of Islam. By the dawn of the 20th century most of them were unremarkable and, excepting what was Iraqi, withered demographically. Some small populations, as in Yemen, could be classified as semi-mentally retarded, due to inbreeding and lack of any intellectual stimulation aside from rote recitations of scripture. And in the shtetls of Europe, what a dismal and futile experience it was for the hundreds of years that the Jews were tightly controlled in so many aspects of life by their rabbis. Christianity has been liberating for the Jews.
There are several explanations for why Christianity uniquely encourages Jews to thrive. I will emphasize one: Christianity is the only widespread ethical system that mandates an imperative to altruism. No other major, contending ethical system mandates this imperative to anything approaching the degree that Christianity does, not Islam, not Hinduism, not Buddhism, not Judaism. None of them do. Yes, yes, wicked Christians have tortured, slaughtered, enslaved and genocided countless souls over the millennia, but such wickedness has always, ultimately been condemned by Christian society, contemporaneously and in posterity. White Christians of all sects feel great guilt over mistreatment of Jews (as they do of Africans and (Ha!) Muslims) today and in the past, and make great efforts to act on this guilt. Jews misconstrue these efforts as a reach for justice, a justice that any rational person would reach for. In the Christian mind, justice has nothing to do with it. It is guilt, a debt owed to the defiance of the Christian God’s will and law, what motivates. As recompense for perceived sins of the past white Christians do feel a responsibility to protect the Jews. Protect them socially, politically, militarily, etc… But when Christianity goes, this sense off altruism, guilt, obligation to protect will go with it. The Jews’ trump card in dealing with the white man will be rendered useless. From the Jews’ sense of particularism, appealing to the white man through a sense of rational justice at that point will be futile. The white man will be concerned solely with his own interest and well being.
As refutation of my point, one could point to Scandinavia, the Netherlands or Britain, almost post-Christian societies, and their suicidally altruistic and guilt-ridden policies regarding muslim immigration. Countries where writing on this blog could get one prosecuted. These societies, and others, are running on the fumes of Christian culture. Only the guilt and altruism remain, driving them towards disaster. In the not too distant future cold, hard, intransigent reality will compel these societies to truly understand Islam and the irredeemable danger their political leaders have put them in. Fifty years hence, Scandinavia will be a very different place. At that point, altruism and guilt will vanish like the previous years fashions. And when they vanish they will vanish for the Jew too.
Without Christianity, and its attendant morality, Jewish particularism will have a very tough time of it, dealing with the white man.
* The pleasure of reading Steve’s take on Times stories is that I go from feeling like I’m being lectured to by a jerky professor, to watching the smartalecky kid take on the professor and show him up.
* Liberals act so smug when they find proof of racism, but don’t understand–or pretend they don’t understand — one simple truth: You can’t eliminate racism b/c you can’t eliminate race. There is the major difference in racism. The difference among races.
And no matter how loudly the Jew screams “NOT EVERY!!!” these average differences will always resurface in peoples understanding and perception. When they do, this is nothing to feel smug about. Of course they have.
