Subject: perceptions of Jews
Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny
the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the
most remarkable race which has appeared in the world."
-- Winston Churchill
"The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the
everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the
religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the
peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions."
--Leo Tolstoy
"It was in vain that we locked them up for several hundred years behind the
walls of the Ghetto. No sooner were their prison gates unbarred than they
easily caught up with us, even on those paths which we opened up without
their aid."
--A. A. Leroy Beaulieu, French publicist, 1842
"The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside - our outlook and our inner
life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being
Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best
words, in fact - new, adventure surprise, unique, individual, person,
vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope,
justice - are the gifts of the Jews."
--Thomas Cahill, Irish Author
"One of the gifts of the Jewish culture to Christianity is that it has
taught Christians to think like Jews, and any modern man who has not learned
to think as though he were a Jew can hardly be said to have learned to think
at all."
--William Rees-Mogg, *former Editor-in-Chief for //The Times of London and a
member of the House of Lords
"It is certain that in certain parts of the world we can see a peculiar
people, separated from the other peoples of the world and this is called the
Jewish people.... This people is not only of remarkable antiquity but has
also lasted for a singular long time... For where as the people of Greece
and Italy, of Sparta, Athens and Rome and others who came so much later have
perished so long ago, these still exist, despite the efforts of so many
powerful kings who have tried a hundred times to wipe them out, as their
historians testify, and as can easily be judged by the natural order of
things over such a long spell of years.
They have always been preserved, however, and their preservation was
foretold...
My encounter with this people amazes me..."
--Blaise Pascal, French Mathematician
The Jewish vision became the prototype for many similar grand designs for
humanity, both divine and man made. The Jews, therefore, stand at the center
of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose."
--Paul Johnson, American Historian
As long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness
will come to Israel for inspiration as to the people who had the sense for
righteousness most glowing and strongest."
--Matthew Arnold, British poet and critic
"Indeed it is difficult for all other nations of the world to live in the
presence of the Jews. It is irritating and most uncomfortable. The Jews
embarrass the world as they have done things which are beyond the
imaginable.
They have become moral strangers since the day their forefather, Abraham,
introduced the world to high ethical standards and to the fear of Heaven.
They
brought the world the Ten Commandments which many nations prefer to defy.
They
violated the rules of history by staying alive, totally at odds with common
sense and historical evidence. They outlived all their former enemies,
including vast empires such as the Romans and the Greeks. They angered the
world with their return to their homeland after 2000 years of exile and
after the murder of six million of their brothers and sisters.
"They aggravated mankind by building, in the wink of an eye, a democratic
State which others were not able to create in even hundreds of years. They
built living monuments such as the duty to be holy and the privilege to
serve one's fellow men.
"They had their hands in every human progressive endeavor, whether in
science, medicine, psychology or any other discipline, while totally out of
proportion to their actual numbers. They gave the world the Bible and even
their "savior".
"Jews taught the world not to accept the world as it is, but to transform
it, yet only a few nations wanted to listen. Moreover, the Jews introduced
the world to one God, yet only a minority wanted to draw the moral
consequences. So the nations of the world realize that they would have been
lost without the Jews.
And while their subconscious tries to remind them of how much of Western
civilization is framed in terms of concepts first articulated by the Jews,
they do anything to suppress it.
"They deny that Jews remind them of a higher purpose of life and the need to
be honorable, and do anything to escape its consequences. It is simply too
much to handle for them, too embarrassing to admit, and above all too
difficult to live by.
"So the nations of the world decided once again to go out of 'their' way in
order to find a stick to hit the Jews. "The goal: to prove that Jews are as
immoral and guilty of massacre and genocide as some of they themselves are.
"All this in order to hide and justify their own failure to even protest
when six million Jews were brought to the slaughterhouses of Auschwitz and
Dachau; so as to wipe out the moral conscience of which the Jews remind
them, and they found a stick.
"Nothing could be more gratifying for them than to find the Jews into a
struggle with another people (who are completely terrorized by their own
leaders) against whom the Jews, against their best wishes, have to defend
themselves in order to survive. With great satisfaction, the world allows
and initiates the rewriting of history so as to fuel the rage of yet another
people against the Jews.
This in
spite of the fact that the nations understand very well that peace between
the parties could have come a long time ago, if only the Jews would have had
a fair chance.
"Instead, they happily jumped on the wagon of hate so as to justify their
jealousy of the Jews and their incompetence to deal with their own moral
issues.
When Jews look at the bizarre play, taking place in The Hague, they can only
smile as this artificial game once more proves how the world paradoxically
admits the Jews uniqueness. It is in their need to undermine the Jews that
they actually raise them.
"The study of history of Europe during the past centuries teaches us one
uniform
lesson: That the nations which received and in any way dealt fairly and
mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that the nations that have
tortured and oppressed them have written out their own curse."
--Olive Schreiner, South African novelist and social activist
"If there is any honor in all the world that I should like, it would be to
be an honorary Jewish citizen."
--A.L. Rowse, authority on Shakespeare
Topic: Perceptions of the Jews (Read 2801 times)