1. The central issue addressed by Romans is not personal salvation, justification by faith, but rather, the problem of integrating jew and gentile into the people of God.

Thomas substantially excludes several of the chief premises of Augustine…namely: that the primary purpose of the letter is a theological articulation of the relationship between works and grace (Thomas understands it to be the instruction and coalescence of Jews and Gentiles in Rome, not a dispute about grace and free will)  (p. 106)

2. In consequence, the focus shifts from salvation of individuals. The rejected view had put everyone — specifically, jew and gentile — on the same plane.

Practical theological corollaries derive from these speculative, exegetical determinations. Theologians who assert justification sola fide as the thrust of Romans generally emphasize God’s impartiality and relativize the distinctive status of Jews and Gentiles because only one way exists in the personal economy of salvation: faith in Christ. If faith in Christ alone warrants salvation, no ongoing rationale exists for the Jews’ historical prerogatives nor for the maintenance of Jewish rites of worship. In other words, the historical priority of the Jews as the covenant people no longer assures priority in the present offer of salvation: usually it is expressed that the favored status of Jews has been superseded altogether by the “new Israel,” the Christian Church. (p. 124)

3. Consequently, election and predestination in chapters 9-11 are expounded in a corporate fashion, such that the election of Israel in the old covenant must continue to stand due to the faithfulness of God; their current falling away is part of the predestinating plan involving the admission of the Nations (e.g. p. 98). The ordinances and “dignity” of jews continue unabated.

Aquinas is presented as a course-correction to the then-dominating Augustinian position of supersessionism, i.e. that the church has replaced Israel, the continued existence of the jews being a scarecrow to the nations to show the fearful consequence of falling from grace.

Once corporate Israel has been redefined as the remnant Israel who believed in the Lord, historical Israel is replaced by a metaphorical, not an eschatological, Israel of Jews observing covenantal obligations. In turn, there is no need to preserve historical Israel except as an indirect or unwitting witness to the truths of Christianity. Therefore, when Paul states in Romans 11.26 that “all Israel will be saved,” Augustine must reconfigure who constitutes Israel in order to maintain a doctrine of election, reprobation, and, ultimately, divine salvation in accord with divine justice as he construes it. Paul’s teaching on these matters is thereby (consciously or unconsciously) subordinated to that of Augustine. However tolerant Augustine is alleged to be, he significantly denigrates the Jews’ function and dignity as articulated by Paul in Romans 9-11.  (p. 72)

The expositions of election and grace differ between the A’s in a surprising way: Augustine’s, apparently from an early period, posits election in terms of foreseen faith (though not foreseen merit), while Aquinas’ language is strikingly imbued by the freedom of God in unconditioned choice. The way this difference becomes significant to the subject at hand, is that Augustine’s approach pushed him in the direction of faith as decisive, with the apostasy from faith being consistent with rejection; thus the jews forfeited their prior position by apostasy and this ends things for them. For Aquinas, election rooted in the inscrutable purpose of God opens the way to view the jewish apostasy as a temporary phase within predestinated history that continues. Thus, the author suggests, the jews are still part of “salvation history” and enjoy a dignity therefore that should be respected.

In evaluating the argument of the book, several observations can be made.

1. The quotes from Aquinas on the subject of election and predestination are interesting in their own right, apart from the jewish question. Some themes may be part of the inheritance of our Westminster standards. For example, Predestination is distinguished from Providence in general, as “Predestination should be said properly only of those things which are above nature, in which the rational creature is ordered.” (p. 9) The “certain and definite” number that appears in WCF 3.4 has a long history: Aquinas “agrees with Augustine that ‘the number of those predestined is fixed, and can be neither increased nor diminished.’” (p. 106)

2. The failure to interact with Augustine’s more mature thought on election renders the connection to his solution of the jewish problem tentative at best. That is, when Augustine matured to see election based entirely on God’s freedom, apart from foreseen faith as well as works, would this alter his solution to the question of elect Israel?

3. It is interesting to note on the basis of information in this book that the “new perspective on Paul” is actually not a new perspective.

4. The author’s desired end of achieving a position favorable to jews is a scarcely concealed motive, so that the theological reflections bent to this end do not have the ring of seeking the truth at any cost.

5. There is the assumption throughout that a view that does not hold the jews up on a platform of dignity with respect to the plan of God will have the consequence of desiring their persecution.

Jews are tolerated as a pool of potential converts. In extreme form, such theological deconstruction of Israel’s dignity fomented the most virulent anti-Judaism historically, and abets contemporary anti-Semitism. (p. 125)

But substitute any other nation to test the thesis: obviously, it is false, unless there is something so obnoxious about jews that something overwhelmingly and theologically positive would always be needed to restrain the nations’ natural desire to eliminate such undesirables. But if that is so, it would contribute to honesty to state it plainly. Otherwise, the impression is sometimes given that this is, apart from what we might have learned from the Bible, just another tribe like many others, and their persecution something simply irrational and inexplicable, which could only be accounted for by a theology of “supersessionism” somehow — even though such an account makes no sense in the case of other tribes.

6. Building further on this point, even apart from the status of jews in “salvation history,” the political norms at stake are never addressed in this book. It is almost as though, if jews have a claim on God’s promises to Abraham, then the nations are obligated to carve out a place in their national life for jews. But what is the theory of politics and the life of nations that underlies such a conclusion? We get this even from people that see no connection between church and state in any other matter, though I am not suggesting this is the case with Boguslawski.

7. The use of the term “salvation history” (e.g. pp. 3, 66f, 127) is an unfortunate one for human history in which redemption, already accomplished, continues to be applied. He speaks of a continuing specifically jewish role in salvation history (e.g. p. 8).  But this would seem to contradict the finality of redemptive history in God the Son incarnate, as suggested in the book of Hebrews. Historia and ordo need to be distinguished.

8. Specifically, John G. Gager is quoted saying

Paul never explicitly equates Israel’s salvation with conversion to Christianity, but even more… he uses faith (pistis) not just of Christians but of Jews as well. Rom 3.30 asserts that God ‘will justify the circumcised on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised because of their faith.’ …Paul uses faith here not as the equivalent of faith in Christ but as a designation of the proper response to God’s righteousness, whether for Israel in the Torah or for Gentiles in Christ.  (pp. 125f., citing Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, pp. 261f.)

Boguslawski himself hedges Gager’s outlook in as “the extreme form of this position,” but he really gives no other way that the “ongoing role of Israel in salvation history,” preserving their “dignities” and so forth, could take place.  He is not exactly proposing a faith in faith: there is specific content to the faith that is essential in each case. A little bit of reflection should have instructed him that such a position is impossible, however.

i. The idea that faith in the sense of fidelity and trust toward Jehovah would be compatible with contemptuous loathing and hatred when confronted with Jehovah incarnate is simply untenable. “Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.” (John 8:42). “Every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already.” (I John 4:3)

ii. Gal. 3:21, “If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” If salvation could have been through the law, then it would have been. It could not; and so it wasn’t. Nothing could be more clearly taught in the book of Galatians.

iii. Bare election apart from propitiation is a mohammedan, not biblical concept. A jew that rests in being “elect” but with no expiatory content, is resting on an illusion. That the sacrificial system is everything in the Torah, and yet has been snatched from him in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 should fill a jew with immortal terror. Instead, we find pride and arrogance — attitudes quite incompatible with saving faith as presented in either OT or NT.

iv. The author does not grapple with the fact that jews since their corporate rejection of Messiah are not a people of the Torah, but a people of the Talmud, of the Kaballah, of atheism, or indeed of whatever of man’s religious fevers each should choose. Only Christianity is excluded in fact, unless it should be explicit polytheism as well. Honest jews like Wex admit this candidly when their hair is down.  What does the Kaballah have to do with Abraham, or the books of Moses?

v. A difficulty that flows immediately from (iv) is whether blood or faith is the essence of “being a jew.” Can a gentile find God by converting to judaism without Christ? If so, why the gospel at all? and if not, where does this scheme put, for example, the Khazars and their descendants?

9. The Talmud controversy of the thirteenth century is glossed over in a rather superficial way (pp. 25-28). Indeed, on p. 128 it is identified as “anti-Judaism.”  Strictly speaking, this is true, but justifiably so. The newly-discovered Talmud was “full of blasphemies — claiming, among other things, that Christ was being cooked in boiling excrement in hell and that he was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier and a whore named Mary.” (E. Michael Jones, Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, p. 118). But the impression left by Boguslawski, in contrast, is that the Talmud controversy was born of Christian bigotry.

This book is, however, suggestive of themes that call for further pondering. While it does seem as though our Lord dealt a one-punch knockout assertion of supersessionism in Matt 21:43 (“The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof”), all would be clear except for Romans 11. One problem is the relation between collective and individual. That a subset of individuals within the collective are the intended object of the promises seems clear enough: but then why does Paul see a necessity to include “all Israel” eschatologically? And even if a substantial number of jews come to God through Christ at some future time, how is that any kind of consolation to jews today? Obviously, it is not. But it makes us reflect on what the genius of Paul’s thought progression is. Is it that the promises not only apply to a mere subset of the collective, but are also generation-hopping? Where does that place the subjective appropriation of election? How is covenantal inter-generational continuity preserved through such a gap? In my opinion, the “final solution” to these riddles has not yet been presented.

As far as supersessionism per se, a couple points can be made. It is not really necessary to model the church as superseding Israel, because it is not necessary to put Israel on such a pedestal to begin with. The nation of Israel only comprises about a fourth of the chronological history of the OT, but the succession of the people of God, the “sons of God,” is a steady one from Adam to the present.  So part of the answer may be that there has always been just one “church” in all ages. Israel itself was a late stage of it.  It is no more and no less accurate to speak of the church superseding Israel as to say that Israel superseded the patriarchs. The New Testament is not the only “surprising development” in redemptive history. Israel itself was a surprising development in its time.

But perhaps we should try to drill a little deeper. There is after all a finality in the revelation of Christ, who commissioned his apostles to found his church. It does seem like the church makes the curtain fall for Israel, not only in its apostasy, but because the finality of Christ ends the Israel story as type. We need to reflect anew on the whole of redemptive history. Why was not the Seed born immediately to Eve? Why did a lot of history, but not all history have to pass? In any case, given that passage of time, the Seed had to be born in some branch of genetic humanity, and in that branch the oracles of God were appropriately embedded — though believed by only a small remnant. What most Christians think of as “Israel” is an ideal type of humanity as it should be when redeemed; empirical Israel was something else. It is as if Israel was a story within a story, with its own beginning, middle, and end. Empirical Israel itself narrows down, like the line from Seth to Noah had, through the apostasies, the exiles, finally down to one tribe, then down to a remnant of that one tribe, and finally to a single man, Jesus Christ. The redemptive arc of history begins and ends with a single man. Not the story of all humanity, but the story for all humanity. Humanity as ideal Israel widens, while empirical Israel narrows and completes his story in the rejected Messiah, then vanishes, except as a horror exhibit for humanity. Empirical remnant Israel then makes more sense as the exploitative, greedy, seditious, sexually debased, vulgar, blasphemous, self-absorbed people such as we observe today — indeed, it could turn out that the husk left over from the “story within the story” turns out to be the very most debased of all the nations, to remind humanity of its natural state, and of God’s favor shown toward fallen humanity — really fallen, fallen indeed, utterly depraved. Pride is excluded, for every gentile can truly say when observing jews, “but for the grace of God, there go I.” Likewise, the jew might begin his reflection by thinking, “I am no better than those Canaanites that Jehovah required to be exterminated for their sins.” The jews become both reminder of the typological story, and exemplar of humanity in its worst depravity. That the “kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6) so quickly became the kingdom of usurers, tricksters, and pornographers can serve as a warning to Christians; a reminder that “sanctification” that is not based on union with God through Christ will always prove to be a sham. Election should never be pondered except from the standpoint of humility.

Steven C. Boguslawski. Thomas Aquinas on the Jews (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2008). Lib. of Cong. BM535.B648 (2008)

The lack of publicly-accessible debate and cross-examination puts us at a disadvantage: perhaps Miss Edmonds is herself a disinformation agent. But there is enough that fits with what we have already been able to figure out about the forces behind the scenes, that it has the ring of truth. On the assumption that her story is true, it adds another important puzzle piece to figuring out the composition of our regime. One thread is espionage and corruption of the legislature. The other thread is drug running into Britain and the US. Each thread involves agents of two foreign powers: Turks, as well as… well, guess. The time of the crimes goes back to the period before and after the 9-11.

Here, I summarize some of the names and themes, as the narrative can be a bit dizzying without a guide. Then, go here to read the interview, using the list as a crib sheet.

Turkish crime syndicate

Mehmet Eymür — head of Turkish paramilitary group for their intelligence service. Activities in England, Germany, Italy, and Balkans. Turkey transferred him to US to prevent him testifying; he now lives in McLean. The criminal activities are not specified, but by connecting dots apparently includes drug-running.

Abdullah Catli — central figure in the Turkey-Europe scandal; 1989 most wanted by Interpol; moved to Chicago, where he continued activities until 1996.

Sabri Sayari — Turkish spy in Washington, DC

Espionage

Unless specified, identifications refer to the time of the ring, not necessarily today. For example, Lantos is now deceased.

Marc Jew Grossman — Undersecretary of State (#3 highest position); had been ambassador to Turkey 1994-7. Picked up numerous Turkish and Israeli contacts while there.

Douglas Goy Dickerson — Air Force Major, worked for Grossman in Turkey

Tom Jew Lantos — Congressman from California

Alan Jew Makovsky — Lantos assistant, worked for AIPAC (now works for Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, a pro-Israel think tank)

Richard Jew Perle  – assistant Secretary of Defense (Reagan administration); Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, 1987 to 2004

Douglas Jew Feith — Under Secretary of Defense for Policy 2001-5

Paul Jew Wolfowitz — Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank.

Brent Goy Scowcroft — former National Security Advisor. Client of Turkey. Worked out the plan to attack Iraq, then later opposed it when Turkey’s conditions were not met by Bush administration.

Richard Goy Armitage — Deputy Secretary of State (#2 position)

Dennis Goy Hastert — former House Speaker, now agent of Turkey

Bob Goy Livingston — Rep (R) Louisiana (now, a lobbyist)

Dan Goy Burton — Rep (R) Indiana

Jan Jewess Schakowsky — Rep’ette (D) Illinois

We already knew this, but further documentation: the war against Iraq was already discussed months before the 9-11, including getting the necessary clearances from Turkey.

The big picture is clear: Israel has opened up Turkey as a surrogate player in the game of espionage against the US. This gives them sources that are not directly traceable to the usual Israeli suspects, along with a little plausible denial. Plus, a whole new network of professors and grad students at American universities with access to secret information. Plus, additional sources can be recruited that might have scruples about giving secrets to Israel but might regard Turkey as more benign. Or: since the Khazars were a Turkish tribe, it may just be that blood is thicker than water?

But what do the goy Americans that wink and nod and curl their greedy little fingers around a wad of bills have to say for themselves? What do we say about them? More importantly: what are we going to do about them?

The core group interviewed consists of childhood buddies Walter Hess, now a fellow film-maker, Louis Kampf, now an activist and MIT professor, and Max Frankel, now in charge of the editorial page at the NY Times; relatives – notably his father Bert and Aunt Annie; and others in concentric rings of closeness – the rabbi’s widow Sary Lieber, Mrs. Krakow from down the hall, Walter’s mother Mrs. Moletta Hess, and the imperious Ilse Marcus. Editor Hans Steinitz and Yonkers housewife Edith Eisenmann fill out the cast.

(* Throughout, I use the present-tense “now” from the perspective of the film – I have not tracked these people down to the real present. In parentheses are the approximate time into the film, in hours:minutes.)

Most of these jews regarded themselves as Germans, and draw a sharp us-them distinction between themselves and jews from Poland or Russia. They claim to be descended from jews that followed the Roman legions up the Rhine, and stayed. There are signs of Aryan admixture: the rabbi’s widow has blue eyes, and several of them lack the characteristic “jewish whine” in their tone of voice. The claim that they thought of themselves as “Germans of a different religion” has surface (though deceptive) plausibility. Indeed Kampf’s father would have joined Hitler’s army (1:57) and Frankel confesses he would have marched with the Hitler Youth if only they would have had him (35, 2:03).

Not only did they think of themselves as Germans, they believed they were so regarded. The title comes from Bert Kirchheimer’s remark that the Germans felt bad about the new regime “because we were so beloved.” Mrs. Hess continues to correspond with her German friends from back home right up to the present (1:46) (as does Mrs. Krakow also [1:57]) and blames the problems that did occur not on something Germanic but on “the human.”

The German jews looked down their noses at the Polish jews, who, they claim, were tricky in business, dishonest, and they cheated — “not like us.” In 1938 the Polish jews in Germany began to be sent back, getting dumped in fields in Poland. Mrs. Lieber says that the attitude of the German jews was to “let them go back” (31). Frankel’s family was “first generation German” and was sent back. They walked back to Germany — so desperate were jews to get to and stay in Germany then — but were threatened with concentration camp if they came back again. (Later his mother with classic chutzpah stormed into the Gestapo office and demanded, and got, exit visas to America.) Kampf adds that the German jews blamed Polish jews for Nazi hostility toward jews, and on the ship to America there was a virtual ongoing war between the German jews and “Ostjuden” (34).

Thus, when Hitler started to make noises, many assumed it was a transient difficulty that would soon fix itself. Yet they did start to move out, and “by 1950″ – an odd year to anchor the statistic on, as if the emigration continued blithely along during and after the war – “more than 20,000 jews had settled in Washington Heights, setting up thirteen synagogues.”

The theme of ethnic and even infra-ethnic resentments is explored. Frankel admits that in New York, he was reviled even by other jews who had been there twenty years longer. “Why don’t you go back where you came from?” they asked (1:09). Frankel wonders if the “hysterical, grieving, deep pessimism” of earlier waves of East European jewry is due to their peasant stock, or perhaps something more deeply cultural in the Russian soul (1:11). Some of the jews in the film tut-tut the arrogance of new immigrants, including Russian jews, while others defend them.

A basic leftist orientation is presumed with these jews. A simplistic “Nazis=capitalists,” “good people=socialists” is taken for granted. Hitler “used the concentration camps to destroy the socialist, communist and trade union opposition, which had the support of the majority.” (49) Uh… right.

Interesting facts come to light to prove that Hitler’s intent was not the genocide of jews, but their removal from Germany.
•    Jewish men could “buy” their freedom from concentration camps for the pledge to leave Germany (40)
•    In 1936 jews could leave with all their money, while Germans could only take 10 Reichsmark with them if they left (29). (Later, the restriction to 10 was evidently extended to jews as well.)
•    Mr. Hess (already deceased at the time of the documentary) spent time in Dachau, after which he took the family on a cruise ship vacation, riding first class (51).
•    As mentioned above, the Polish jews that had emigrated to Germany were “dumped” into Poland, and were often desperate to get back into Germany.

The strident Mrs. Marcuse (1:40) shares the view of the narrator (1:44) that Germany deserved to be bombed into rubble. The indignities that justify that conclusion are sprinkled throughout the film and I list them here:

1. 1936 Nuremberg law said they could not call themselves German any more
2. kosher slaughter was banned (21)
3. stores were boycotted
4. German nurses could not work on jewish men
5. some of Walter’s classmates threw dirt clods at him
6. Frau Schumacher at one point stopped inviting Walter to the annual Easter-egg hunt (59)
7. in general, the Germans made Walter hate himself (58)
8. the Germans threw the jews out of a pool in Mannheim, and as a result, one of the girls was afraid to swim for the rest of her life (24)
9. Mrs. Eisenmann says, for punishment for misbehavior in one of the camps, women’s heads were shaved funny
10. Mr. Hess at one point was made to enter his place of work through the rear door (28)
11. in one camp, Mrs. Marcuse had to use a pail as latrine (1:19)
12. in another camp, underground editor Steinitz had to use a typewriter with a broken A-key (1:18)

I will limit my commentary on this list to just the first four items. (1) Not being able to call oneself “German” is a reasonable thing applied to a tribe that refuses to assimilate, that is, a tribe that is in fact not German as to tribal identity. (2) Kosher slaughter should in fact be banned from any civilized country, and those that continue to perform it should be exiled or executed. This is deliberate cruelty to animals that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up: more will need to be said about this in the future. (3) As I showed elsewhere, boycotting minority-owned stores is actually entirely reasonable if in effect that minority is boycotting the stores of the majority — whether they are doing so as intentional program or by natural ethnic loyalty. (4) is just common sense.

Finally, I mark those items in the film that can serve as evidence that can be gleaned on the question of the “holocaust.”

1. A couple of the interviewees mention how many of their “family” were lost to the holocaust. Mrs. Krakow “lost more than twenty.” (Exactly how many; can we get some names and places?) Bert Kirchheimer says, “they always told me 46 people from my family were murdered… Of course, I counted them, a long time ago” (11). There is something a bit flippant about this statement. “They” always told him. He counted, but a long time ago – don’t ask for specific details now. Above all, if 46 people can be identified as “my family,” then “family” is a very extended family indeed. (Extend the concept sufficiently, and most Germans can probably say they “lost 46 people” in the war, too.) Names and dates and places, please.

2. Steinitz admits that the German camps were not extermination camps (1:17). This is a relief to hear: many Americans are still unaware of this fact due to the post-war propaganda. It is an amazing coincidence that all the “death camps” turn out to have been in regions “liberated” by the Red Army.

3. The narrator makes the preposterous statement, “Exterminations were carried on up to the last day [of the war]” (1:37). Meanwhile, the real Germans in Auschwitz were nursing Elie Wiesel back to health, and asking him if he wanted to be left behind to be rescued by the arriving liberators, the Red Army. Wiesel opted to return to Germany with his captors.

4. The grating Mrs. Marcuse reviles a young soldier that did not know of the existence of the nearby concentration camp – by which she must have meant “death camp.” She says “he should have been killed.” (1:43) Of course the liberating soldier would have known about the camps as such. Apparently, he had not yet discovered that they were actually death camps. Any eye-witness that does not support the story should be killed, Mrs. Marcuse evidently thinks.

5. In general, we still don’t get the names of individuals executed at named dates and places. The closest we get is Edith Eisenmann who claims to have found a letter indicating that her father was told that mother had been sent to a gas chamber. (1:39). But this is still hearsay three-times removed.

Twice, something rather odd is said in reference to gas chambers:

6. Mrs. Marcuse says that the SS women threatened that saboteurs would be “sent to the gas chambers” if it happened again (1:34). It did happen again, but instead of being sent there, the girls responsible were executed in the sight of their shifts to make an example. So, was “send to the gas chambers” a vacuous threat, like Scarlet threatening Prissy to “sell her south”? or is Mrs. Marcuse filling out the drama based on what she heard later?

7. Similarly, consider the statements by Mrs. Eisenmann that when her family arrived at Auschwitz, she was directed to the one side, the others to the other side. (But her father was a baker, presumably a healthy man in the prime of life. Why would he be rejected for work and a young girl kept?) Later, people in the camp said “see that? that’s the gas chamber” and most odd of all, consider this: “they told us when the gas was turned on” (1:29).

Apparently Mrs. Eisenmann heard the stories later about “gas chambers,” and she assumed that they would work like the gas oven in her kitchen. No one ever told her, or it did not sink in, that the “gas chamber” was supposed to work by Zyklon-B tablets being dropped through a slot in the roof; not by “the gas being turned on”!

The film could have had a half-hour edited out without loss, but nevertheless I recommend a couple viewings (HIx 2). It opens up new vistas on the German situation in the 1930s and the intra-tribal hostilities within jewry. Especially, it drives home unmistakably what the real German goal vis-à-vis jews was in the 30′s and it clearly was not extermination. Finally, several odd statements give further matter to ponder regarding the “holocaust” question.

The subject is an analysis of the sociological constituting of our world, with a focus on the medium of communication. The world and our consciousness of it have changed by virtue of the technological changes making mass-communication possible. As an entry into thinking about this, consider the difference between watching a movie and “reading the book.” Even if the story conveyed is identical, reflection shows there are significant differences in what has taken place in having the story “communicated.” The movie presents images created by someone else; reading involves creation of images by the reader himself. In the movie, real time marches forward inexorably as the viewer sits passively; in reading, it is under the control of the reader — one pauses to reflect;  one sets the book down to be continued later. Likewise, the fictional time-pacing within the movie is determined by the editor; in the book, it is at least partly determined by the imagination of the reader, not the invisible editor.

This aspect of the analysis — the “media ecology” proper — fits in nicely with the agrarian critique of modernity. There are analogies, for example, with transportation. Acquiring a horse meant that a round trip to the county seat might could be done in a single day rather than requiring an overnight. But the car allows sons to leave for a job in a distant city, never to come back. Once-bustling towns are now ghost towns, the only jobs left being the strip of fast-food joints along the interstate exit. Technology has brought a qualitative, not merely quantitative change to our way of living. We need to rethink whether the Amish have a true and valid insight, and not always write them off as having “stopped technology” at a merely arbitrary point.

A second major aspect of the subject Reynolds discusses is the study of mass communication by academics on the one hand, and by manipulators on the other. In turn, the latter category includes mass-marketing on the one hand, and political manipulation on the other. More on this below.

With the stage set, Reynolds is able to use the insights obtained to launch a strong attack on the methods of the church-growth movement, showing the inadvertent evils attendant upon the very fact that modern multi-media is used, in contrast to the methods of worship described in Scripture.

The Regulative Principle of Worship as defined by the Westminster Confession specifies that certain elements of worship are required by Scripture, elements not specified are forbidden, and a third category, “circumstances,” is subject to wisdom.  Reynolds argues (303-305) that the result of his analysis is that modern multi-media cannot be put into that third, “neutral” category, and thus we should regard them as forbidden.

In evaluating the work, I proceed chiastically. The commitment to the Regulative Principle is encouraging coming from a bright star like Rev. Reynolds, who is a scintillating conversationalist and a preacher that is at once engaging and searching, combining the best of Francis Schaeffer’s broad cultural concerns with a stronger attachment to the vantillian critical method. I had the pleasure of “hanging out” with him a number of times during my sojourn in New Hampshire in 1996. Those of our readers that reside anywhere near Manchester, New Hampshire should visit Amoskeag church and become a member there if not already a member of a true church somewhere else.

Reynolds’ work on the Regulative Principle in connection with media ecology sheds new light on elements of our form of worship that at first glance may appear to be dusty relics of a bygone century. For example, though the focus of his study is the preaching of the word, a new insight is also gained into the “genius” if you will of the reading of the Word (381-3) as a distinct element of worship, the performance of which moreover is restricted by our standards to the pastor in his executive function as an agent of the holy catholic church manifested in presbytery. A naturalistic approach might suggest that an age of universal literacy and Bible dissemination might render that element superfluous, requiring instead that members read the word privately and dispense with the public reading. Not so, Reynolds’ research shows. There is a mode of receiving the word of God which is instantiated in that element indispensably. This book makes an important contribution in the area of worship theory.

Unfortunately, the evaluation of the secular role of mass-media falls a bit short due to the dots that are not connected. The threads are already confusing because the distinction between study of media as such must be combined with study of the deliberate use thereof to manipulate the masses toward an end hidden from those being manipulated. And this involves both the practitioner — the actual creator of propaganda — and the theoretician — who performs studies with human guinea pigs to determine the most effective methods. We need to take note of the fact that the names of the movers and shakers of the theory and practice of the manipulation of the masses using technologies both new and old look like an attendance list at the Convention of Hebrew Congregations.

We can begin the story with the massive, national full-court press that was put in place by the Chosen Tribe in 1913-15 to exonerate rapist-sodomite-murderer Leo Frank, just because he was a jew. Though newspapers – a medium invented in the 17th century — were at the heart of this campaign, their coordinated use for manipulating public opinion probably never reached such focused intensity before the Frank case.   The mass-media campaign was led by Adolph Jew Ochs, publisher of the New York Times (though the murder took place in Atlanta). In addition to carefully-orchestrated press releases let out simultaneously by all the jew-controlled newspapers across the country, the services of Albert Jew Lasker (son-in-law of Sears and Roebuck chairman Julius Jew Rosenwald) were put into service. Lasker was an expert at national media “campaigns” to establish brand name recognition such as Quaker Oats and Budweiser Beer. Lasker came up with the slogan “the truth is on the march” which became, as if by magic, the rallying cry by the national media to get Frank off the hook. Likewise, allegations of Atlanta mobs chanting phrases like “Kill the jew or we’ll kill you” were simply made up out of whole cloth, without any factual basis. Newspapers that stood with the legal system against Frank were boycotted. William Randolph Hearst succumbed to the pressure and became a shabbes goy for the campaign, along with others hired for the purpose. Financing came from a variety of sources, especially from Jacob Jew Schiff, notable later as a major financier of the Russian Revolution. The goy detective William Burns was paid a pretty penny to “get to the bottom of the case,” arriving in town with lots of media fanfare to that effect, while in reality, his job was to spread walking-around money to bribe witnesses to recant their testimony. In the end, the men of Atlanta prevailed, and such was the jewish rage at one of their own being executed, that the so-called Anti-Defamation League was founded.

Reynolds missed this story, but the strands involving armchair academics and wartime “social researchers” he does pick up on are also part of the story, albeit less dramatic. It is a story that starts before the Frank incident with Karl Jew Marx and Sigmund Jew Freud. In the decade leading up to WW2, the story continues with studies of the effectiveness of radio in influencing public opinion and elections. Paul Jew Lazarsfeld invented the “focus group” and questionnaires to evaluate audience responses. “The Kate Smith War Bond drive, promoted by CBS in 1943, demonstrated the power of feigned personal concern in identifying with and manipulating a mass audience” (91).  Kurt Jew Lewin was one of the founders of social psychology. “The one who controls the flow of information through a medium (‘channel’) dictates the shape and content of messages” (93). His disciple Leon Jew Festinger continued the social research. The story is peppered also with wry neo-con pop critics like Neil Jew Postman, Allan Jew Bloom and Joshua Jew Meyrowitz as well as explicitly destructive critics like Jacques Jew Derrida and Stanley Jew Fish. In between was the “Frankfurter School” consisting of men like Herbert Jew Marcuse who wrote arcane books making leftism appealing to young shickse and Theodore Jew Adorno who worked on rhetorically preempting Aryan push-back by creating and propagating the theory of the “authoritarian personality.”  I am passing over various rabbit-trails like Shannon’s channel measure of information, which is properly an electrical engineering concept.

The jewish exploitation — and to large extent creation — of mass-manipulation by psychological study and marketing practice evidently has two main goals: personal or tribal enrichment, and neutralization of Christian civilization as a way to reduce the chance of harmful reaction by the goyish masses. It involved, in addition to the takeover of university sociology departments and creation of new ones, tireless agitation in favor of massive third-world immigration and the elimination of every trace of Christianity from public schools and the public square, as one can read about by surfing around on the ADL’s own website (click the story decade by decade and marvel).

Of course, goyim also have their place in the story — some, that were in the wrong place at the wrong time (esp. WW2); some, of the “usual culprits” of the City of Man, that provided financing, most notably the Rockefeller empire (136); others, like Reynolds’ personal hero Marshall McLuhan, were properly critical.

But how did Reynolds miss the main thread of the story? Partly, it is because of his acceptance of the odious judeo-christian myth (77, 137) popularized by Francis Schaeffer. As a result, jews are repeatedly not distinguished from “Germans” (73, 79) or “Europeans” (69). Partly, it perhaps must be attributed to the very success of the mass-media manipulation that is the subject of the book!

In fairness, the “media ecology” and its relation to worship is the strength and the main purpose of the book: the rest could have been excised without loss to the thesis, and perhaps should be in a subsequent edition.

Nonetheless, the story of the manipulators is important in its own right, and I hope many of our people will get this book as an introductory survey, and then do further research to connect more of the dots. To know that one is being manipulated, and understand even a little about how, is already an antidote to its poisonous effect. Eliminating the parasites can follow when enough people wake up and get wise.

Greg Reynolds, The Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Preaching in the Electronic Age (Eugene: Wipf and Stock) 2001.

Okay, movies are the stuff of dreams, right? So forgive me my dream. For the seven people in America that still haven’t seen this great film, let me hasten to explain that the above summary is pretty accurate, except for the changes you would expect when you realize that Hollywood was controlled by the same trans-national tribe that pulled off the Russian Revolution. Thus, hero- and villain-nation are interchanged; replace “Chernov” with “Major Strasser” of the German Reich, and you have the story. (In the event, of course, things panned out the opposite of what I hopefully indicated above. The Soviets triumphed, enslaving East Europe for a half century, decimating the church, and bringing about more than 100 million unjust deaths, according to Solzhenitsyn. And we “allies” — our hands our bloody with that outcome as well!)

Despite the propaganda at its base, only Godfather can contend with this film to be named the greatest of all time. The elements that propel its greatness are the choice of actors (right down to the bit parts), the tremendous dynamic of the romantic triangle, the waste-free dialogue, and not least, the music, especially the engaging jazz piano — now tender, now raucous — faked by Dooley Wilson.

The crisp dialogue is particularly effective with Bogart to pull it off.  Examples:

• Excuse me gentlemen, your business is politics, mine’s running a saloon.
• I came for the waters. (Waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.) I was misinformed.
• (After a gun is pulled on him) go ahead and shoot; you’d be doing me a favor.
• (Yogi-Berra-like: Capt. Renault is) just like any other man, only more so.

Claude Rains as the French pragmatist prefect of police adds humor with lines like “How extravagant you are throwing away women like that. Some day they may be scarce” (15:50) and “round up the usual suspects.”

Little hints of a bygone era can be noted in passing.

• Ilsa asks for the “boy” at the piano (27:30) — he was a “boy” of 47 — and there is an asymmetry of who uses first-name, and who uses “Mister” and “Miss.”  Yet I have never heard leftist film critics demand that such a bigoted film be boycotted: I guess a few put-downs are okay if done in service to the Chosen.
• Another is the confident power of the female. Rather than being so quick to gush “I love you, too,” modern women would do well to study the oldies. Lazlo:  “I love you very much, Ilsa.”  She, laughing: “Your secret will be safe with me.” (59:50) Again, Lazlo: “I love you very much, my dear.” Ilsa: “Yes; yes, I know.” (1:17:30). Sixty years of feminism have weakened, not strengthened the power of women, at least in the realm of love.

Many serious critics suggest that the film is nothing but schlock, clichés. It has drawn the attention of no less a luminary than semiologist Umberto Eco, who suggests “Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology… When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.” But if these are clichés, maybe the question needs to be inverted — why do certain themes lend themselves to becoming clichés? Is it not the very deepest sinews of life that are most in danger of being trivialized? There are few clichés dealing with personal hygiene, or the need for sleep.

More seriously, the film is laced with dishonesties. The pickpocket explains, “This is the customary round-up spot for refugees, liberals, and of course beautiful girls…” (Thus in one line the meme is planted that conservatives are the persecutors of liberals amongst whom are the beautiful people.)  One of the great scenes — Laszlo striking up La Marseillaise while the Germans are singing Wacht am Rhein — was cribbed right out of Grand Illusion.  There are vicious anti-German slanders, like Carl’s “I have already given him the best [table], knowing he is German and would take it anyway.” Renault: “I told my men to be especially destructive. You know how that impresses Germans.” The producers, who, despite their genetic chutzpah, perhaps felt they were nibbling at the outer limit of credibility, balance those slurs a bit by including among the refugees  a jovial German couple (or at least, German-speaking): “Sweetness, what watch?” “Ten watch.” “Such much?” Thus, the movie is not completely dishonest at the secondary level: you can only push so far. Major Strasser (played by the same Conrad Veidt that did the zombie in Caligari) chuckles amiably when Rick identifies his nationality as “drunkard,” bows graciously to “Mademoiselle Lund,” and follows strict protocol in the police office; whereas my “Major Chernov” would have cut to the chase with a simple bullet to the head. In other words, the jewish-bolshevik way of doing business, if imputed directly to the Germans, would have failed the credibility test for anyone that has actually met a German; so they are shown as relatively decent, sentimental, and law-bound like us, but insinuated to be monsters.

Despite the tapestry of tricks and the fundamental lie the story is based on, this film must still rank as a great, and I give it a BIx 10. We can perhaps gain a perspective, that truths at one level can be conveyed even by arrant lies at another. Of course, it is also just plain fun to watch, and without a dull moment. At the end of the day, that is the main thing for entertainment, no?

The cloak-and-dagger of the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” charge against Iraq is treated, but the major premise is left untouched, namely: suppose (contrary to fact) that Saddam Hussein did have “WMD’s”. So what? Many countries “have WMD’s,” most notably the USA; and what WMD’s Iraq ever did have were supplied by the US. This is yet another example of the importance of unpacking both the major and minor premises that usually lie buried and disguised in modern political rhetoric. Mastering this skill is the single most important thing needed to unmask the designs of our rulers, who have put the minds of our people into a virtual stupor through the endless sports and media broadcasts.

The biggest lacuna of the movie, however, is the elephant in the living room that is completely ignored: the jewish influence in all this. The buddhist jew  Oliver Stone acts as though there were no neo-cons shilling for a foreign policy devoted to Israel forever: Wolfowitz is present but largely silent; AIPAC is absent; the chattering Kristol and Krauthammer and cronies are completely absent.  As if W’s regime was actually all about oil! He supplies “documentation” that oil was the motive in a file included on the DVD, but a scan of this documentation shows that it does not support his thesis at all: it is simply other journalists making the same allegation, or arguments for why oil should be a concern.

It is thus the double switcheroo. Jews coerce America into a war against jews’ enemies. The right wing falls into line, and by making war the only non-negotiable in debate, is neutralized on every issue except war. Then, other jews “expose” the lies and injustice involved in the war, leading to a regime change in which the jewish communists take over the domestic control (while continuing the wars as well).

The genius of the hebishkeitsreich over the last 30 years has been in polarizing Americans between the Republican Party — shill for jewish foreign-policy goals, and the Democratic Party — shill for jewish domestic communism.  We fight over whether to favor the one or the other, and completely miss how both sides serve the interests of our traditional tribal enemies. The nattering heads get us into heated arguments as to whether Iraq has WMD’s, and after a while it seems beyond debate that, at least if they do, we are justified in attacking them.  At length, we are justified in attacking even if, as Major Strassor said, “the reasons are a little vague.”  So it is that the “rulers behind the throne” trick us. You would think conservatives would finally learn. One would have thought good Catholic boy and neo-con pawn, former Penna. Senator Santorum would have learned from his defeat in the anti-war backlash. But no. He has not. Has anyone, once the deal with Mephistopheles is made?

All of this is not to mention the 9-11 itself, which is taken at face value throughout the film. I see the fingerprint of Mossad, with US acquiescence, etched clearly on the events of 9-11. Jew Stone, who in any context not favorable to jews sees a conspiracy behind every bush,  apparently sees nothing odd about 19 skinny Arab boys that overpowered strong US pilots at close quarters, killed them — not one attack going amiss –, gained control of the airliners, and then held their wrists steady while plowing their vehicles headlong into obstacles. Try doing that on your bicycle, at slow speed. Then, imagine that this is your first time on a bike.

The sinister Cheney is well-played by Richard Jew Dreyfus — another bit of chutzpah if there ever was one! Laura (Elizabeth Banks) comes across as quite a babe. The ever-venerable James Cromwell does HW and the unflappable Scott Glenn does Donald Rumsfeld.  Josh Brolin does a nice job in the title role.

Not surprisingly, my sympathy for the W was actually increased by the movie. If you fill in the lines between the dots according to reality rather than Stone’s propaganda, the W actually starts to look less like a tyrant and more a hapless ignorant dupe.  He comes across as a man whose weaknesses were played like a fiddle as he was washed away to sea by forces that he may have been completely unaware of.  This movie is meant to be a post-mortem, but it may actually, willy-nilly, be an instrument of W’s rehabilitation.

Kikenbrüder Coen

Just as with Woody Allen in his late-period Deconstructing Harry, the true character of the writer/director Coen-brother team is becoming crystal clear. As jews consolidate their hegemony over every aspect of American life, they gain the confidence of self-revelation. Here is an implausible story of impossible characters that are obviously written for the actors (rather than actors being sought to fulfill a pre-existing literary role). In the HBO kikencomedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, actors appear under their own names: the final barrier between fiction and reality is broken down, the guild of actors becoming an end in itself, a world unto itself, as if they were the real world and the audience the corp of pretenders. (And that’s exactly what we have become!) It aims at complete role-reversal, in service to the even more ultimate end of confusion and mockery. Clownish faces for whom nothing is sacred. Brad Pitt appears here as a motiveless and soulless misfit, with no credibility beyond the chuckles one would get from classmates in improv class responding to the mincing and jerking of a spontaneous shtick of narcissism. So too the twitchy mannerisms of Frances McDormand: obviously these are actors that love each other — if the dialectic of mutual- and self-admiration can be called love — and are having quite a fun time watching each other act silly.  Their faces become leering masks of abandoned humanity for whom everything is a joke. Nothing whatsoever matters. Betrayal of the secrets of one’s country is funny, frolicsome; even the “enemy” agent (Olek Krupa) gets quite a chuckle out of it. (And if we can smile at the antics of a woman trying to betray her country in exchange for cosmetic surgery, a fortiori we should be able to wink at jews that betray our country for love of Israel. ) Loveless, nay passionless copulation, for which the frozen face of nude Frances serves as an apt eternal symbol. A sex machine too obscene to describe is meant to add to the hilarity halfway through.  Our Savior’s name is dragged repeatedly through the mud with the F-word.

Jewish fucking kikes! People that create sewage like this, that at once blasphemes God and degrades humanity, are worthy only of nooses and gas chambers. But in our society, they become wealthy.

The anti-theonomists used to taunt that we would re-establish execution for blasphemy. That was supposed to be a prima facie reductio of the theonomic position, as if the mere concept is self-refuting. And many theonomists showed their deep capitulation to the current age by rushing to argue that theonomy does not mean executing blasphemers. But a film like this makes it intuitively clear that if there is one crime that should be punished by the sword of the state, just one, it is blasphemy. That is the fulcrum upon which the entire safety of the nation pivots. Let it be that the technicality of the theonomic thesis is wrong. But these nation-wreckers have got to go. Let the petty ax-murderers go free, in comparison. Christian antinomians, if they express any concern at all, think they can “love” them into the kingdom; and they keep their silent and impotent “loving” going while their nation is destroyed by predators, the people degraded and demoralized, the name of their God made poison, and finally the image of their own bodies being carted off to disappear made funny as well.

These same conservative antinomians think they find the refuge of fellow-spirits in the right wing of the kikenpresse held down, for example, by Michael Medved. Medved gushes about the “goofy plot,” its “cast working at the top of its form,” characters that are “surprisingly believable” and “almost endearing” in a plot that is “intriguing and sometimes hilarious.” The blasphemy matter does not even register in Medved’s mind. Our Christian conservatives bob their heads solemnly at Medved’s nattering chatter, thinking they are part of a broad coalition that will someday, somehow prevail to incrementally “restore standards.”

No. The kikenblasphemy will end when full-metal jacket meets skull, when the word goes out, “spread your blasphemy and sleep with the fishes.”

The antinomian conservatives are commonly flag-waving hawks when it comes to meeting physical enemies by force. There was no talk of “loving the Japanese” into submission, nor any other real or imagined physical foe since then. But for some reason, they think the termites that will wreck the spirit of their nation from inside the borders can be loved into the kingdom.

Execution for blasphemy is actually an inescapable concept. The fact that these destroyers mock our Savior’s name with impunity while Ernst Zundel is seized by US agents and exported to prison for blasphemy against the Holy Myth of the Chosen People indicates what is happening. Soon, Bible-faithful preachers will also be thrown into prison, and those that kill them not prosecuted. (But many that think they are faithful are actually fully reprocessed and platonically reconstructed dupes of the new kikentheocracy. I know this by bitter personal experience.)

As Steve Schlissel pointed out with brilliant insight, the name and honor of a society’s god is always unmockable. Our deposed God, the only God that is, is mocked, and professing Christians chuckle right along.

In the first chapter, “Religious Dimensions of Law” Berman tries to read from human history a consistent bond between religion and law by discerning four elements exemplified by both at all times: ritual, tradition, authority, and universality. “In every society these four elements, as I shall try to show, symbolize man’s effort to reach out to a truth beyond himself.” (25) The apparent falsifiers of both western secular and Soviet law systems (the book was published in 1974) is defeated by an ad hominem exposure of the inconsistency of the one, and claiming that Stalin “had to reintroduce into Soviet law elements which would make his people believe in its inherent rightness” (29). He points out however that law cannot be restored to its august place by manipulating society via those four elements (40). Instead, the two institutions are “dialectically interdependent dimensions.” (46)

In the second chapter, “The Influence of Christianity on the Development of Western Law,” Berman gives a sweeping summary of 2,000 years of legal developments in connection with the history of the church. The initial persecution under the Romans set the stage, Berman claims, for the eventual principle of freedom of conscience. The Bible-based laws of Alfred (890), the struggles of the church vis a vis emperor culminating in the Papal Revolution of Hildebrand, the codification of the canon law in 1140, and the “method of analysis and synthesis” of the scholastics are listed. Berman suggests that the Lutheran reformation led to a secularized vision of the state, but also induced developments in the areas of property, contract, and testament. (65) The calvinistic movement led to the ideas of the “consent of the governed” and “social compact.” The age of Revolutions, followed by liberal democracy and then socialism, kept much of the “values” of Christianity even while rejecting the kernel. He argues that law is organic, non-political, and not entirely rational. (74)

The third chapter, “Law as a Dimension of Religion” proposes that just as religion lies at the heart of law, so religion to be renewed must not be antinomian. He discusses several forms of antinomianism. A “law vs love” thesis is a false dilemma. Likewise, “law vs faith” and “law vs grace.”

The fourth and final chapter “Beyond Law, Beyond Religion,” is a sudden shift in theme to the idea of time and renewal. The popular metaphor of death and redemption is utilized to advocate society “dying” to itself and entering into a new age of synthesis.

Repeatedly, Berman counters antinomian tendencies in modern society with the reductio that some kind of system of rules is necessary for a community — even a commune — to sustain and propagate itself. In this way, he thinks he has proven that a law system is an inescapable concept (e.g. 78-79).

However, these examples fail to draw the needed distinction between what I will call “traffic-flow stipulations” and the law of God. There is enough confusion on this point that a whole post should be dedicated to discussing it. For now, however, it just needs to be observed that a system of stipulations that we drive on the right side of the road, stop at red lights, and proceed no faster than 45 miles per hour are prudent and wise to expedite traffic, given that there are cars and roads; but they have nothing to do with the law of God. Driving in such a way as to preserve the life of your neighbor does have to do with the law of God, and the latter will entail some degree of conformity with the former. But they should never be confused. And the pragmatic need for the former does not show that the latter is involved, contra Berman. So much for his slick reductio of antinomianism.

The most serious problem with the book, however, is that, while seeing the need for transcendence to validate a legal system, Berman’s vision of “faith” and “religion” amounts to making them interchangeable coinage; they are relative and contingent by the very way that he sets the problem up. His model negates transcendence, thus leading to a direct contradiction. It is the difference between saying, “You should not steal, because God said, ‘thou shalt not steal’,” vs saying, “we need to regard stealing as wrong, therefore we should adopt the saying, ‘God said [thou shalt not steal]‘.” The extra level of indirection betrays the bad faith.

The problem was already evident in Berman suggesting that religion is “man’s effort to reach out to a truth beyond himself.” If that’s all it is, then worrying about whether our legal system can sustain itself is the least of our worries.

If you don’t recognize God’s voice, it will do no good for someone to say, “to renew ourselves, we should recognize the voice of God.” This is pelagianism, but more than pelagianism: it makes God an object of manipulation, necessary to secure a just and orderly society. As if God exists for that purpose. Worse yet, a god of your choosing.

The Christian view of law is that God has spoken and thus we must obey. Moreover, as Creator he also speaks directly to every man, via General Revelation, so that there is a point of contact with all men when proclaiming the moral law, upon which the civil law should rest. Thus, civil society is possible even before all men have become Christians. The severely recalcitrant will be ruled by mere fear of consequence; and they will be ruled for their own benefit and that of the rest of society. But most citizens will voluntarily accede to a law system that approximates the divine law, consenting in view of an implanted sense of justice, and restrained from the full consequence of their own evil by common grace.

But for Berman, “religion” is an abstraction that can be instantiated by Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, paganism. It should be obvious that only an unbeliever can think this way. One might just as well add the Rotary Club to the list of religions if that’s what is involved.

It is thus not surprising that his concluding chapter is essentially an ode and manifesto to New Age “integration.” His conservatism is merely standing athwart the slide into the void yelling, “but affirm that your values are really ultimate.”

While Berman is formally respectful toward Christianity, his coupling of the judaica to it as if twin brothers with equal claims to knowing God is quite galling. Here are some examples:

“The influence of religion on Western law during the past two thousand years, including the influence not only of traditional Judaism and Christian …” (14).

What? The only “influence” of Judaism until the mid-1600s was to cause Christians to look away in horror from it. And really, it is only since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s that the judaica has had a serious influence on American law, though surely the Tribe has influenced the waging of wars and the machinations of princes eager to get access to money in the preceding centuries. But law is something else.

He has to say, “the pews of our churches and synagogues…” (21); though jews are something like 2% of the population.

“Christian historiography carried over from Judaism, …” (51). Oy vey! Name the jewish precursor to Augustine.

Constantly, “in both Judaism and Christianity” (15), “originated in Christianity and Judaism” (71), “for both Judaism and Christianity” (82), “a basic, if neglected, concept of both Judaism and Christianity” (102).

Judaism is an anti-Christ denial of, not complement to Christianity, as we have explained again and again. Judaism is a man-made religion from the “Second Temple” period based on an explicit rejection of Moses and the prophets, unless Jesus Christ is a liar. You cannot have it both ways. Christians will wake up from this dream-inducing lotus plant of judaic submission when they stop fearing man and fear God more.

But so keen is Berman on the blurring of this distinction that he actually suggests the Hebrews were Indo-European (119)!

Berman was of judaic descent, and evidently became more self-conscious about that heritage toward the end of his life. I do not know if he converted formally to Christianity or not; the lack of genuine insight into notions like justification and repentance unto life would make me question that.

A final criticism is that the book does not address the more fundamental question of the question of origin of right. The civil magistrate is personal, not carved in stone. The locus of authority once established, he can then tweak and modify the form the law is to take, and a “history of law” emerges. But who is the civil magistrate, and by what succession was it derived? That may end up being the more interesting question. As a member of the law guild, Berman undoubtedly did not want to push the question of law and religion into that realm, for it might have cast some doubts on the legitimacy of the guild itself.

Harold J. Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion (Nashville: Abingdon, 1974)
BL65.L33 B47 1974

I prefer chutzpah because there is something fundamentally jewish about it.

Examples of Chutzpah

The first example comes from fiction. In Perelandra, C.S. Lewis describes a scene on the planet Venus where the protagonist, in the midst of conversation with Venus’ Eve, is confronted by a demon-possessed scientist.

“May I ask you, Dr. Ransom, what is the meaning of this?”

In all the circumstances it would have been reasonable to expect that Weston would be much more taken aback at Ransom’s presence than Ransom could be at his. But if he were, he showed no sign of it, and Ransom could hardly help admiring the massive egoism which enabled this man in the very moment of his arrival on an unknown world to stand there unmoved in all his authoritative vulgarity, his arms akimbo, his face scowling, and his feet planted solidly on that unearthly soil as if he had been standing with his back to the fire in his own study.

The next example comes from the political arena. Rather than telling you about it, watch this video. Here is the salient question and answer:

Reporter: “Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?”

White House mouth piece: “In our opinion, no.”

A third example comes from comedian Chris Rock:

“Nigger live next door to you break into your house [and steal your new flat screen television], come over the next day and say, ‘I heard you got robbed.’”

(You can find all of Chris Rock’s shtick here. But caution; nigger language.)

A fourth example is from an old joke. A young man is on trial for murdering both his parents and pleads for mercy because he is an orphan.

But for the paradigmatic case of chutzpah, we must of course look to a jew. This is from an article in the JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency).

“Michel Friedman — a journalist, attorney and former leader in the German Jewish community — wanted to interview far-rightist Horst Mahler about his roots as a founding member of the left-extremist Red Army Faction for the trendy magazine.

“Mahler, 71, who famously underwent a transformation to the extreme right, reportedly greeted Friedman with ‘Heil Hitler’ and, during the course of the two-hour interview, denied the Holocaust occurred and called Hitler the savior of ‘not only the German people.’

“The interview, in German, is currently online and in the printed version of Germany’s Vanity Fair. After the interview, Friedman filed suit as a private individual against Mahler because of his ‘incendiary’ remarks.”

In other words, a Jewish reporter asks and is granted an interview with a man known for his pro-Nazi views and then turns around and sues him when the man expresses his pro-Nazi views.

Defining Chutzpah

I know I am posturing, you know I am posturing, I know you know I am posturing and you know that I know that you know that I am posturing. Chutzpah is a way to exert power. Now that this is settled, what are you going to do about it?

A World without Chutzpah

In a world inhabited by young males there will always be the audacious. In a world with children there will always be cheek (and the parents response should be cheek for cheek). Indeed, in Christendom there were plenty of examples of cheek, audacity and even gall. But rarely did it descend to the level of real chutzpah. There is something peculiarly jewy about chutzpah. This is a theme that will need to be explored further.

For me, it tries too hard to be funny and hardly ever is. Only once, near the end, in a twist that I won’t spoil, did they trick a good laugh out of me.

However, I recommend it as an introduction to the hebishkeitsreich. This movie — every actor, every line, every gesture, every accent – the talking with mouth full, the gruff rudeness, the ceaseless kvetching, the disparaging, looking-down-nose attitude to others, the gleam in the eye whenever money is mentioned, the pseudonyms, the nepotism, and above all, the casual, perpetual, incurable blasphemy — and all in the context of self-conscious humor, making light of everything — is, quite simply, as hebish as it gets. For beginners at decoding the jew, start by reading this introduction, then rent and watch this movie.

The old men are played by George Burns (né Nathan Birnbaum) and Walter Matthau. F. Murray Abraham of later Amadeus fame plays the mechanic under the car.