Over Passover, I went to a lecture entitled "Principles of Oppression: Egyptian Policies in the Thought of ChaZal."<\/p>\n
It was an endless listing of horrible things that the rabbis of the Talmud invented about the Egyptians 3200 years ago (at the time of the Exodus).<\/p>\n
How would we Jews feel if the Egyptian Coptics down the street were reading the same type of texts, only this time the bad guys were Jews?<\/p>\n
From Midrash Zuta on the Song of Songs: "For a Jewish child would enter the home of an Egyptian see a nursing babe and thus the Egyptian child would be handed over…" How do you like it now, rebosai?<\/p>\n
As opposed to the more subtle and sophisticated narrative of the Torah (where some Egyptians are portrayed as good — such as Pharoah’s daughter and the midwives Shifra and Puah — and some Israelites are portrayed as bad), Midrash is almost always one-sided propaganda. In the Pentateuch, Esau is and Jacob are complicated characters. In the midrash, Esau is the embodiment of evil and Jacob the embodiment of good.<\/p>\n
If this literature were not ours, we would think it primitive.<\/p>\n
Jews are jolly lucky that they’ve got me around to sort them out. If I weren’t alive and blogging in the heart of Los Angeles Orthodox Judaism, all sorts of rabbis would be running around diddling kids.<\/p>\n
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Over Passover, I went to a lecture entitled "Principles of Oppression: Egyptian Policies in the Thought of ChaZal." It was an endless listing of horrible things that the rabbis of the Talmud invented about the Egyptians 3200 years ago (at … Continue reading