For those of you who don’t know me well, or your knowledge of me comes from many years ago from either my days in the government schools or the Air Force, I assure you that I am a Trinitarian Christian, and that I believe all people are born with a sin nature. No race is free from the curse of Adam, and everyone needs Christ.
Having made those prefacetory comments, let’s dig in.
When I look at Bahar Soomekh, the actress who played Dorri, the daughter of the Persian store owners in the movie “Crash” (and Dr. Lynn Denlon in the reprehensible “Saw III”), I say to myself, “That is one hot looking Persian.” The man who is an adherent of dispensationalism would probably say, “That is one hot looking Jewess.” I would maintain that Mrs. Soomekh is a Persian, who follows a variety of Judaism and belongs to the Jewish culture specific to Persia and Los Angeles. The dispensationalist would say that she is a Jew, but would not and could not account for her obvious Persian racial features (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F).
If you look at Persian Jews, Ashkenazic Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and Sephardic Jews, they are obviously not from the same race (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ethnic_divisions). Or just look at well-known Jews in the entertainment industry such as Alicia Silverstone, Sarah Silverman, Larry David; Sammy Davis Jr. (who was black!); or Paula Abdul; it is obvious that we are not talking about one, homogeneous race.
Jews only constitute a race when it is convenient for the Anti-Defamation League (henceforth referred to as ADL) or some similar body to yell “Anti-Semite”. When a Jew thinks he is being attacked for his race, instead of his religion, it hardens his view, because he cannot help what race he was born into. That is why it is very important that the rabbis and Jewish organizations twist comments about Judaism, Jewish culture, Israel, etc., into being about race. It makes their jobs much easier.
Jews were treated as a race by the Third Reich and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Europe. However, this is because the Jews that hailed from Poland and the western USSR (pure-blood Ashkenazic Jews), frequently have some distinct physical traits. And Ashkenazic Jews look considerably different from Sephardic Jews, which I will talk more about shortly.
Can a Jew be a Christian? Most Jews would answer “No”. According to the ADL’s and Israeli immigration department’s websites in times past, the answer was a resounding “No”. This web site lists all of the reasons why a Jew can’t be a Christian, http://www.jewish-history.com/Cresson/cresson15.html. All of the cited reasons are religious in nature. If being a Jew consisted purely of being a member of some race, then that person could be of any religion he or she wanted to be. But from these Jewish sources, being Jewish is tied to either to the Jewish religion, or more accurately–not being a Christian. You can be a Buddhist and be a Jew, but you can’t be a Christian because the Jewish religion is inherently anti-Christian.
The Anti-Defamation League’s web site has said in the past as well that Jews who converted to Christianity are no longer Jews. Still sounds like it a religious issue to me. But then, of course, the ADL, or Israel or some other Jewish group will turn right around and treat the subject of being Jewish as being part of a race instead of a religious groups. Groups like the ADL want to have their cake and eat it to. It is good for business. “You can’t convert to Christianity because you are Jewish, and because the Christians hate us, you need to give money to the ADL.”
From “Jews Who Were Israelis’: Anti-Semitism and the Mumbai Chabad Center” by Shaul Magid (http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religionandtheology/850/%E2%80%98jews_who_were_israelis%E2%80%99:_anti-semitism_and_the_mumbai_chabad_center):
“In some ways, this issue revolves around the vexing question of “who is a Jew?,” a question whose origins reach back at least to Paul’s Letter to the Romans and is crucial in determining the status of citizenship in the modern “Jewish” State of Israel. One interesting articulation of this dilemma is the 1962 Israeli Supreme Court case of Brother Daniel. Oswald Rufeisen (a.k.a. Brother Daniel), born a Jew in Poland in 1922, was able to escape the Nazis and saved other Jews in the White Russian city of Mir by disguising himself as a Gentile. He secured a job with the Germans as a policeman, eventually converting to Catholicism and becoming a Carmelite priest.
“In the late 1950s, Brother Daniel applied for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, which allows any Jew to settle in Israel and become a citizen. The Israeli government denied his request on the grounds that even though he was born a Jew, his conversion to Catholicism rendered his (secular) status as a Jew null and void. (Emphasis mine) The Israeli Supreme Court upheld the decision against the general opinion of Rabbinic Law which states that, according to halakha (traditional Jewish Law), Brother Daniel, despite being a Carmelite priest remained, by most definitions, a Jew.
When Jews do push the race angle, it is frequently to push “Jewish racial supremacy”. Here’s a quote from Manichem Begin, former prime minister of Israel, in a speech he made to the Knesset, quoted by Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts,” (New Statesman, June 25, 1982):
“Our race is the Master Race. We Jews are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves.”
While many Jews do not believe in this sort of rubbish, plenty of them do. Look around, these sorts of sentiments are not exactly rare.
Unfortunately, a lot of the confusion on this issue among Christians started with dispensationalism, which is popular among many evangelicals, Baptists and charismatics. Does the Bible teach that the Jews were a monolithic race in the Old Testament? No, it certainly does not.
Abraham left Ur and settled in Canaan. There he made converts of his servants and others around him, who were presumably Canaanites. From there, the story of the “chosen people,” not the “chose race,” goes to Egypt.
During their time in Egypt, the numbers of the Hebrews expanded drastically. The problem of trying to explain the population explosion that took place in Egypt prior to the Exodus is most easily explained if one believes that the servants of Jacob and their descendants are counted, in addition to Egyptian converts. Consider this quote from Gary North’s “Moses & Pharaoh”, (p. 20):
“If as many as 3,000 came into Egypt in Joseph’s day, then the rate of population growth over the next 215 years was 3.18% per annum in order to reach 2.5 million by the time of the Exodus. Had this rate of increase been maintained after their settlement of Canaan, there would have been over 2 billion of them 215 years later, not counting the “mixed multitude” (Ex. 12:38) that went with them out of Egypt. Two hundred and seventy five years after the settlement of Canaan, there would have been 13.8 billion, roughly equivalent to three times the world’s population in 1980.”
This continued population explosion obviously did not happen, which gives credence to the conversion argument. Now the dispensationalist pastors will yell and scream that this was a sign of a miracle. That’s nothing more than sloppy exegesis looking for a quick cop out.
Think about this. Rahab, the former prostitute from Jericho, who hid the spies, was later included in the lineage of Christ, and she was not a part of the Exodus from Egypt. King David’s friend, Uriah the Hittite, was presumably a convert, and he, too, was not a part of the Exodus, but rather a Hittite.
In the Old Testament, after ten generations a person from a heathen tribe was considered a full-member of Israelite kingdom. There were no racial conditions presented.
From Esther 8:17 (NKJV): “In every province and in every city, wherever the edict of the king went, there was joy and gladness among the Jews, with feasting and celebrating. And many people of other nationalities became Jews because fear of the Jews had seized them.”
The Geneva Study Bible offers the following commentary about the above verse: “Conformed themselves to the Jew’s religion.” That is the obvious interpretation.
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary states: “8:15-17 Mordecai’s robes now were rich. These things are not worth notice, but as marks of the king’s favour, and the fruit of God’s favour to his church. It is well with a land, when ensigns of dignity are made the ornaments of serious piety. When the church prospers, many will join it, who will be shy of it when in trouble. When believers have rest, and walk in the fear of the Lord, and the comfort of the Holy Ghost, they will be multiplied. And the attempts of Satan to destroy the church, always tend to increase the number of true Christians.”
The Jewish Encyclopedia offers the following on Esther 8:17: “Before the day set for the slaughter arrived a great number of persons, in order to avoid the impending disaster, became Jewish proselytes, and a great terror of the Jews spread all over Persia (viii. 17).” http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=483&letter=E
More things to think about:
1) Jonah preached to Nineveh and many people there repented of their evil, Ninevehites were not “racial Jews,” yet many found saving faith.
2) Moses was married to a Midianite (and possibly an Ethiopian, too), a dark-skinned race, so Moses children were not “pure-bred Jews” from Egypt. Yet, the children of Moses are obviously considered Jews. And even more ironically, according to Jewish law, which is itself based on nothing permanent, one’s “Jewishness” comes from the mother.
3) The Canaanites tricked Joshua into being their slaves and thus became a part of the two Israeli kingdoms.
4) King David is described as having a ruddy or red appearance. That does not sound very “Jewish looking” to me because most so-called racial Jews have darker hair (red hair sure does sound Celtic, though). Of course if you want to say there are red-headed Jews, such as the adorable Kyle Brovloski on South Park, then I will respond that this makes my point: that to be a Jew means you can be from any race.
5) The wives of Jacob were Egyptians, yet, Jacob’s children were considered Jewish.
6) What happened to the ten lost tribes? They obviously ended up inter-marrying with people beyond the borders of the two kingdoms.
7) Ruth was a Moabite
These references are all from the OT, which supposedly the followers of Judaism love. But the reality is that they don’t. The Talmud is their real holy book.
From what I can tell, it wasn’t until the Babylonian captivity that the Jewish racial superiority syndrome started to become a part of the Hebraic religion. As a rebuke to the Jewish leaders who espoused pride in being descendants of Abraham, Christ said, “for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham” (Matthew 3:9).
The first chapter of Matthew lists the genealogy of Christ. Look at all of the non-Jewish people: Tamar (v. 3), Ruth the Moabite (v. 5), Rahab (v. 5), and Bathsheba (v. 6).
The Biblical argument I encounter most frequently trying to prove that there is a Jewish race is Romans 10 & 11. In light of the facts from the Old Testament, the “pro-Jew” interpretation of these two chapters, which is not at all concrete, needs to be rethought. More than a few post-millennialists subscribe to the “Jewish race view” because it allows them to look politically correct (at least this is what I think). There are people that reject this pro-Jew interpretation of Romans 10/11, Reformed theologian James Jordan is one of them (of course I have tons of issues with many of Jordan’s beliefs, so my citation here should not be misconstrued as an endorsement).
In closing this section, I would say the concept of replacement theology confuses the issue because their was no chosen race to replace.
What does observing the natural order, or God’s natural revelation tell us?
The Hebrews/Jews/Israelites were a people–not a race. Texans are a people. Even if you use the Alamo-era as a standard, Texans were comprised of whites, Mexicans, American Indians and blacks. Of course, the whites were the dominant race, and there may have been a dominant race among the Israelites, too.
If you look at an Ethiopian Jew, what do you see? An Ethiopian. If you look at a Persian Jew, what do you see? A Persian. The previously cited article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ethnic_divisions has more information about Jewish ethnic divisions, and it is absolutely fatal to the idea that there is a Jewish race.
I believe in the premise as postulated by Arthur Koestler, who was Jewish, in his book “The Thirteenth Tribe” (despite Koestler’s impeccable Jewish credentials, the book quickly fell down the memory hole). He believed that the Ashkenazim were descendants of the Khazars, a people who were from what is today southern Russia. With time, undoubtedly some Slavic blood entered the mix. Others have written about this subject, too, so Koestler isn’t the only one. But that only explains the background of the Ashkenazim. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars or http://khazaria.com for more.
But even among the Ashkenazim, you have Jews as diverse looking as the aforementioned comedians Larry David and Sarah Silverman. Larry David is a white looking as I am.
The other major Jewish group in the West (aside from the Persian Jews in the Los Angeles basin), are the Sephardic Jews, who are a mix of Berber, Latin, Arab, Chaldean and Assyrian.
Back in 2001, there was an article in the journal “Human Immunology” that stated that there were almost no genetic differences between Palestinians and Jews of Middle Eastern origin. However, a firestorm of protest from “certain quarters” drove the journal to retract that article. As The Guardian, a liberal, mainstream newspaper in the UK newspaper wrote concerning the controversial article, “In common with earlier studies, the team found no data to support the idea that Jewish people were genetically distinct from other people in the region. In doing so, the team’s research challenges claims that Jews are a special, chosen people and that Judaism can only be inherited,” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/25/medicalscience.genetics). You should ask yourself, why is there such a drive to avoid open debate on this topic. The truth does not fear being investigated.
As I mentioned earlier, Jews only constitute a race when it is convenient for the ADL or some similar body to yell “Anti-Semite”. The Semitic people themselves are comprised of Assyrians, Arabs, and some Jews, so the term “anti-Semite” as commonly employed is grossly inaccurate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic). And it turns out, that the Jews of Semitic origins, which are also referred to as Sephardic or Mizrahim, fare pretty poorly among their Ashkenazim brethren in Israel who clearly see them as being from another race. This article http://www.meforum.org/707/post-zionism-and-the-sephardi-question elaborates further. FYI, you can frequently find articles addressing such controversial subject matter in Israeli newspapers such as Haaretz–but you won’t find such articles in American newspapers. Consider, too, the recent revelations about the Ashkenazim using 35,000 Sephardic Jewish children in medical experiments involving ultra-high level of X-rays, http://web.israelinsider.com/views/3998.htm.
Another article detailing how the Mizrachi Jews, the true “Middle Eastern Jews,” are considered to be another race by the reigning Ashekenazim in Israel can be found here http://www.newvoices.org/opinion?id=0037. A pertinent quote from the author, who happens to be a Mizrachi woman:
“Mizrachi Jews who came to Israel with promises of green plots of land and Jerusalem of Gold were plopped down in the middle of the night for months on end, in desert tent colonies. This lowly beginning allowed for continual discrimination against Mizrachi Jews, who largely came from trade or agricultural backgrounds and lacked the educated sophistication of their Ashkenazi counterparts.
“Such prejudice continues to be a shameful part of Israeli society, as the periphery of modern Israel continues to be populated by Mizrachim. The stratification is seen in common parlance, and is seen in the racialized slang term “arsim,” which refers to young Mizrachi troublemakers. Despite the musical and culinary bliss of Ramleh, my time in Israel has been a constant reminder of the Mizrachi/Ashkenazi divide. In Israel, the music, food, and art that remind me of home are categorized as “ethnics,” a Hebraicized English word that means “everything that is not white European.” (Emphasis added)
As far as defenses of the Jewish race position goes, I think the only one the rabbis can come up with is from the oral tradition–that is the Talmud or perhaps the Kabbalah. I am more than prepared to deal with this in hopefully a future short paper on the Jewish religion. But for now I will say that such a position, because it runs contrary to the created order, would indicate that “G-d” is an irrational and capricious deity. But those are things that the Christian God are not.
Posted by shotgunwildatheart 
Posted by shotgunwildatheart 
Posted by shotgunwildatheart 
