Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 17, 2022

I. INTRODUCTION

Christians have traditionally interpreted the famous passage "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesars; and to God, the things that are Gods," to mean that Jesus endorsed paying taxes. This view was first expounded by St. Justin Martyr in Chapter XVII of his First Apology, who wrote,

And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavor to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him; for at that time some came to Him and asked Him, if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and He answered, u2018Tell Me, whose image does the coin bear?' And they said, u2018Caesar's.'

The passage appears to be important and well-known to the early Christian community. The Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke recount this "Tribute Episode" nearly verbatim. Even Saying 100 of non-canonical Gospel of Thomas and Fragment 2 Recto of the Egerton Gospel record the scene, albeit with some variations from the Canon.

But by His enigmatic response, did Jesus really mean for His followers to provide financial support (willingly or unwillingly) to Tiberius Caesar a man, who, in his personal life, was a pedophile, a sexual deviant, and a murderer and who, as emperor, claimed to be a god and oppressed and enslaved millions of people, including Jesus' own? The answer, of course, is: the traditional, pro-tax interpretation of the Tribute Episode is simply wrong. Jesus never meant for His answer to be interpreted as an endorsement of Caesar's tribute or any taxes.

This essay examines four dimensions of the Tribute Episode: the historical setting of the Episode; the rhetorical structure of the Episode itself; the context of the scene within the Gospels; and finally, how the Catholic Church, Herself, has understood the Tribute Episode. These dimensions point to one conclusion: the Tribute Episode does not stand for the proposition that it is morally obligatory to pay taxes.

The objective of this piece is not to provide a complete exegesis on the Tribute Episode. Rather, it is simply to show that the traditional, pro-tax interpretation of the Tribute Episode is utterly untenable. The passage unequivocally does not stand for the proposition that Jesus thought it was morally obligatory to pay taxes.

II. THE HISTORICAL SETTING: THE UNDERCURRENT OF TAX REVOLT

In 6 A.D., Roman occupiers of Palestine imposed a census tax on the Jewish people. The tribute was not well-received, and by 17 A.D., Tacitus reports in Book II.42 of the Annals, "The provinces, too, of Syria and Judaea, exhausted by their burdens, implored a reduction of tribute." A tax-revolt, led by Judas the Galilean, soon ensued. Judas the Galilean taught that "taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery," and he and his followers had "an inviolable attachment to liberty," recognizing God, alone, as king and ruler of Israel. The Romans brutally combated the uprising for decades. Two of Judas' sons were crucified in 46 A.D., and a third was an early leader of the 66 A.D. Jewish revolt. Thus, payment of the tribute conveniently encapsulated the deeper philosophical, political, and theological issue: Either God and His divine laws were supreme, or the Roman emperor and his pagan laws were supreme.

This undercurrent of tax-revolt flowed throughout Judaea during Jesus' ministry. All three synoptic Gospels place the episode immediately after Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem in which throngs of people proclaimed Him king, as St. Matthew states, "And when he entered Jerusalem the whole city was shaken and asked, u2018Who is this?' And the crowds replied, u2018This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee." All three agree that this scene takes place near the celebration of the Passover, one of the holiest of Jewish feast days. Passover commemorates God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and also celebrates the divine restoration of the Israelites to the land of Israel, land then-occupied by the Romans. Jewish pilgrims from throughout Judaea would have been streaming into Jerusalem to fulfill their periodic religious duties at the temple.

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Because of the mass of pilgrims, the Roman procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, had also temporarily taken up residence in Jerusalem along with a multitude of troops so as to suppress any religious violence. In her work, Pontius Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man, Ann Wroe described Pilate as the emperor's chief soldier, chief magistrate, head of the judicial system, and above all, the chief tax collector. In Book XXXVIII of On the Embassy to Gaius, Philo has depicted Pilate as "cruel," "exceedingly angry," and "a man of most ferocious passions," who had a "habit of insulting people" and murdering them "untried and uncondemned" with the "most grievous inhumanity." Just a few years prior to Jesus' ministry, the image of Caesar nearly precipitated an insurrection in Jerusalem when Pilate, by cover of night, surreptitiously erected effigies of the emperor on the fortress Antonia, adjoining the Jewish Temple; Jewish law forbade both the creation of graven images and their introduction into holy city of Jerusalem. Pilate averted a bloodbath only by removing the images.

In short, Jerusalem would have been a hot-bed of political and religious fervor, and it is against this background that the Tribute Episode unfolded.

III. THE RHETORICAL STRUCTURE OF THE TRIBUTE EPISODE

[15] Then the Pharisees going, consulted among themselves how to insnare him in his speech. [16] And they sent to him their disciples with the Herodians, saying: Master, we know that thou art a true speaker and teachest the way of God in truth. Neither carest thou for any man: for thou dost not regard the person of men. [17] Tell us therefore what dost thou think? Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? [18] But Jesus knowing their wickedness, said: Why do you tempt me, ye hypocrites? [19] Show me the coin of the tribute. And they offered him a penny [literally, in Latin, "denarium," a denarius]. [20] And Jesus saith to them: Whose image and inscription is this? [21] They say to him: Caesars. Then he saith to them: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesars; and to God, the things that are Gods. [22] And hearing this, they wondered and, leaving him, went their ways. Matt 22:1522 (Douay-Rheims translation).

A. THE QUESTION

All three synoptic Gospels open the scene with a plot to trap Jesus. The questioners begin with, what is in their minds, false flattery "Master [or Teacher or Rabbi] we know that you are a true speaker and teach the way of God in truth." As David Owen-Ball forcefully argues in his 1993 article, "Rabbinic Rhetoric and the Tribute Passage," this opening statement is also a challenge to Jesus' rabbinic authority; it is a halakhic question a question on a point of religious law. The Pharisees believed that they, alone, were the authoritative interpreters of Jewish law. By appealing to Jesus' authority to interpret God's law, the questioners accomplish two goals: (1) they force Jesus to answer the question; if Jesus refuses, He will lose credibility as a Rabbi with the very people who just proclaimed Him a King; and (2) they force Jesus to base this answer in Scripture. Thus, they are testing His scriptural knowledge and hoping to discredit Him if He cannot escape a prima facie intractable interrogatory. As Owen-Ball states, "The gospel writers thus describe a scene in which Jesus' questioners have boxed him in. He is tempted to assume, illegitimately, the authority of a Rabbi, while at the same time he is constrained to answer according to the dictates of the Torah."

The questioners then pose their malevolently brilliant question: "Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" That is, is it licit under the Torah to pay taxes to the Romans? At some point, Jesus must have led His questioners to believe that He opposed the tribute; otherwise His questioners would not have posed the question in the first instance. As John Howard Yoder argues in his book, The Politics of Jesus: vicit Agnus noster, "It is hard to see how the denarius question could have been thought by those who put it to be a serious trap, unless Jesus' repudiation of the Roman occupation were taken for granted, so that he could be expected to give an answer which would enable them to denounce him."

If Jesus says that it is lawful to pay the tribute, He would have been seen as a collaborator with the Roman occupiers and would alienate the people who had just proclaimed Him a king. If Jesus says that the tribute is illegitimate, He risked being branded a political criminal and incurring the wrath of Rome. With either answer, someone would have been likely to kill Him.

Jesus immediately recognizes the trap. He exposes the hostility and the hypocrisy of His interrogators and recognizes that His questioners are daring Him to enter the temporal fray of Judeo-Roman politics.

B. THE COIN

Instead of jumping into the political discussion, though, Jesus curiously requests to see the coin of the tribute. It is not necessary that Jesus possess the coin to answer their question. He could certainly respond without seeing the coin. That He requests to see the coin suggests that there is something meaningful about the coin itself.

In the Tribute Episode, the questioners produce a denarius. The denarius was approximately 1/10 of a troy ounce (at that time about 3.9 grams) of silver and roughly worth a day's wages for a common laborer. The denarius was a remarkably stable currency; Roman emperors did not begin debasing it with any vigor until Nero. The denarius in question would have been issued by the Emperor Tiberius, whose reign coincided with Jesus' ministry. Where Augustus issued hundreds of denarii, Ethelbert Stauffer, in his masterful, Christ and the Caesars, reports that Tiberius issued only three, and of those three, two are relatively rare, and the third is quite common. Tiberius preferred this third and issued it from his personal mint for twenty years. The denarius was truly the emperor's property: he used it to pay his soldiers, officials, and suppliers; it bore the imperial seal; it differed from the copper coins issued by the Roman Senate, and it was also the coin with which subjected peoples, in theory, were required to pay the tribute. Tiberius even made it a capital crime to carry any coin stamped with his image into a bathroom or a brothel. In short, the denarius was a tangible representation of the emperor's power, wealth, deification, and subjugation.

Tiberius' denarii were minted at Lugdunum, modern-day Lyons, in Gaul. Thus, J. Spencer Kennard, in a well-crafted, but out-of-print book entitled Render to God, argues that the denarius' circulation in Judaea was likely scarce. The only people to transact routinely with the denarius in Judaea would have been soldiers, Roman officials, and Jewish leaders in collaboration with Rome. Thus, it is noteworthy that Jesus, Himself, does not possess the coin. The questioners' quickness to produce the coin at Jesus' request implies that they routinely used it, taking advantage of Roman financial largess, whereas Jesus did not. Moreover, the Tribute Episode takes place in the Temple, and by producing the coin, the questioners reveal their religious hypocrisy they bring a potentially profane item, the coin of a pagan, into the sacred space of the Temple.

Finally, both Stauffer and Kennard make the magnificent point that coins of the ancient world were the major instrument of imperial propaganda, promoting agendas and promulgating the deeds of their issuers, in particular the apotheosis of the emperor. As Kennard puts it, "For indoctrinating the peoples of the empire with the deity of the emperor, coins excelled all other media. They went everywhere and were handled by everyone. Their subtle symbolism pervaded every home." While Tiberius' propaganda engine was not as prolific as Augustus' machine, all of Tiberius' denarii pronounced his divinity or his debt to the deified Augustus.

C. THE COUNTER-QUESTION AND ITS ANSWER

After seeing the coin, Jesus then poses a counter-question, "Whose image and inscription is this?" It is again noteworthy that this counter-question and its answer are not necessary to answer the original question of whether it is licit to pay tribute to Caesar. That Jesus asks the counter-question suggests that it and its answer are significant.

(1) Why Is The Counter-Question Important?

The counter-question is significant for two reasons.

First, Owen-Ball argues that the counter-question follows a pattern of formal rhetoric common in first century rabbinic literature in which (1) an outsider poses a hostile question to a rabbi; (2) the rabbi responds with a counter-question; (3) by answering the counter-question, the outsider's position becomes vulnerable to attack; and (4) the rabbi then uses the answer to the counter-question to refute the hostile question. Jesus' use of this rhetorical form is one way to establish His authority as a rabbi, not unlike a modern lawyer who uses a formal, legal rhetoric in the courtroom. Moreover, the point of the rhetorical exchange is ultimately to refute the hostile question.

Second, because the hostile question was a direct challenge to Jesus' authority as a rabbi on a point of law, His interrogators would have expected a counter-question grounded in scripture, in particular, based upon the Torah. Two words, "image" and "inscription," in the counter-question harkens to two central provisions in the Torah, the First (Second) Commandment and the Shema. These provide the scriptural basis for this question of law.

God Prohibits False Images. The First (Second) Commandment prohibits worship of anyone or anything but God, and it also forbids crafting any image of a false god for adoration, "I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness [image] of any thing." God demands the exclusive allegiance of His people. Jesus' use of the word, "image," in the counter-question reminds His questioners of the First (Second) Commandment's requirement to venerate God first and its concomitant prohibition against creating images of false gods.

The Shema Demands The Worship Of God Alone. Jesus' use of the word "inscription" alludes to the Shema. The Shema is a Jewish prayer based upon Deuteronomy 6:49, 11:1321 and Numbers 15:3741 and is the most important prayer a pious Jew can say. It commences with the words, "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad," which can be translated, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God the Lord alone." This opening line stresses Israel's worship of God to the exclusion of all other gods. The Shema then commands a person to love God with his whole heart, whole soul, and whole strength. The Shema further requires worshipers to keep the words of the Shema in their hearts, to instruct their children in them, to bind them on their hands and foreheads, and to inscribe them conspicuously on their doorposts and on the gates to their cities. Observant Jews take literally the command to bind the words upon their arms and foreheads and wear tefillin, little leather cases which contain parchment on which are inscribed certain passages from the Torah. Words of the Shema were to be metaphorically inscribed in the hearts, minds, and souls of pious Jews and physically inscribed on parchment in tefillin, on doorposts, and on city gates. St. Matthew and St. Mark both recount Jesus quoting the Shema in the same chapter just a few verses after the Tribute Episode. This proximity further reinforces the reference to the Shema in the Tribute Episode. Finally, it is noteworthy that when Satan tempts Jesus by offering Him all the kingdoms of the [Roman] world in exchange for His worship, Jesus rebukes Satan by quoting the Shema. In short, Jesus means to call attention to the Shema by using the word "inscription" in the counter-question as His appeal to scriptural authority for His response.

(2) Why Is The Answer To The Counter-Question Important?

The answer to the counter-question is significant for two reasons.

First, while the verbal answer to the counter-question of whose image and inscription the coin bears is a feeble, "Caesar's," the actual image and inscription is much more revealing. The front of the denarius shows a profiled bust of Tiberius crowned with the laurels of victory and divinity. Even a modern viewer would immediately recognize that the person depicted on the coin is a Roman emperor. Circumscribed around Tiberius is an abbreviation, "TI CAESAR DIVI AUG F AUGUSTUS," which stands for "Tiberius Caesar Divi August Fili Augustus," which, in turn, translates, "Tiberius Caesar, Worshipful Son of the God, Augustus."

On the obverse sits the Roman goddess of peace, Pax, and circumscribed around her is the abbreviation, "Pontif Maxim," which stands for "Pontifex Maximus," which, in turn, means, "High Priest."

The coin of the Tribute Episode is a fine specimen of Roman propaganda. It imposes the cult of emperor worship and asserts Caesar's sovereignty upon all who transact with it.

In the most richly ironic passage in the entire Bible, all three synoptic Gospels depict the Son of God and the High Priest of Peace, newly-proclaimed by His people to be a King, holding the tiny silver coin of a king who claims to be the son of a god and the high priest of Roman peace.

The second reason the answer is significant is that in following the pattern of rabbinic rhetoric, the answer exposes the hostile questioners' position to attack. It is again noteworthy that the interrogators' answer to Jesus' counter-question about the coin's image and inscription bears little relevance to their original question as to whether it is licit to pay the tribute. Jesus could certainly answer their original question without their answer to His counter-question. But the rhetorical function of the answer to the counter-question is to demonstrate the vulnerability of the opponent's position and use that answer to refute the opponent's original, hostile question.

D. REFUTING BY RENDERING UNTO GOD

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In the Tribute Episode, it is only after Jesus' counter-question is asked and answered does He respond to the original question. Jesus tells His interrogators, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's." This response begs the question of what is licitly God's and what is licitly Caesar's.

In the Hebrew tradition, everything rightfully belonged to God. By using the words, "image and inscription," Jesus has already reminded His interrogators that God was owed exclusive allegiance and total love and worship. Similarly, everything economically belonged to God as well. For example, the physical land of Israel was God's, as He instructed in Leviticus 25:23, "The land [of Israel] shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is mine, and you [the Israelites] are but aliens who have become my tenants." In addition, the Jewish people were to dedicate the firstfruits, that first portion of any harvest and the first-born of any animal, to God. By giving God the firstfruits, the Jewish people acknowledged that all good things came from God and that all things, in turn, belonged to God. God even declares, "Mine is the silver and mine the gold."

The emperor, on the other hand, also claimed that all people and things in the empire rightfully belonged to Rome. The denarius notified everyone who transacted with it that the emperor demanded exclusive allegiance and, at least, the pretense of worship Tiberius claimed to be the worshipful son of a god. Roman occupiers served as a constant reminder that the land of Israel belonged to Rome. Roman tribute, paid with Roman currency, impressed upon the populace that the economic life depended on the emperor. The emperor's bread and circuses maintained political order. The propaganda on the coin even attributed peace and tranquility to the emperor.

With one straightforward counter-question, Jesus skillfully points out that the claims of God and Caesar are mutually exclusive. If one's faith is in God, then God is owed everything; Caesar's claims are necessarily illegitimate, and he is therefore owed nothing. If, on the other hand, one's faith is in Caesar, God's claims are illegitimate, and Caesar is owed, at the very least, the coin which bears his image.

Jesus' counter-question simply invites His listeners to choose allegiances. Remarkably, He has escaped the trap through a clever rhetorical gambit; He has authoritatively refuted His opponents' hostile question by basing His answer in scripture, and yet, He never overtly answers the question originally posed to Him. No wonder that St. Matthew ends the Tribute Episode this way: "When they heard this they were amazed, and leaving him they went away."

IV. THE CONTEXT IN THE GOSPELS: A TRADITION OF SUBTLE SEDITION

Subtle sedition refers to scenes throughout the Gospels which were not overtly treasonous and would not have directly threatened Roman authorities, but which delivered political messages that first century Jewish audiences would have immediately recognized. The Gospels are replete with instances of subtle sedition. Pointing these out is not to argue that Jesus saw Himself as a political king. Jesus makes it explicit in John 18:36 that He is not a political Messiah. Rather, in the context of subtle sedition, no one can interpret the Tribute Episode as Jesus' support of taxation. To the contrary, one can only understand the Tribute Episode as Jesus' opposition to the illicit Roman taxes.

In addition to the Tribute Episode, three other scenes from the Gospels serve as examples of subtle sedition: (1) Jesus' temptation in the desert; (2) Jesus walking on water; and (3) Jesus curing the Gerasene demoniac.

A. EMPERORS OF BREAD AND CIRCUSES

Around 200 A.D., the Roman satirist Juvenal lamented that the Roman emperors, masters of the known world, tenuously maintained political power by way of "panem et circenses," or "bread and circuses," a reference to the ancient practice of pandering to Roman citizens by providing free wheat and costly circus spectacles. Caesar Augustus, for example, boasted of feeding more than 100,000 men from his personal granary. He also bragged of putting on tremendous exhibitions:

Three times I gave shows of gladiators under my name and five times under the name of my sons and grandsons; in these shows about 10,000 men fought. * * * Twenty-six times, under my name or that of my sons and grandsons, I gave the people hunts of African beasts in the circus, in the open, or in the amphitheater; in them about 3,500 beasts were killed. I gave the people a spectacle of a naval battle, in the place across the Tiber where the grove of the Caesars is now, with the ground excavated in length 1,800 feet, in width 1,200, in which thirty beaked ships, biremes or triremes, but many smaller, fought among themselves; in these ships about 3,000 men fought in addition to the rowers.

By the time of Jesus and the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the Roman grain dole routinely fed 200,000 people.

At the beginning of Jesus' ministry, the Spirit led Him into the desert "to be tempted by the devil." The devil challenged Him with three tests. First, he dared Jesus to turn stones into bread. Second, the devil took Jesus to the highest point on the temple in Jerusalem and tempted Him to cast Himself down to force the angels into a spectacular, miraculous rescue. Finally, for the last temptation, "the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, u2018All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.'"

The devil dared Jesus to be a king of bread and circuses and offered Him dominion over the whole earthly world. These temptations are an instantly recognizable reference to the power of the Roman emperors. Jesus forcefully rejects this power. Jesus' rejection illustrates that the things of God and the things of Rome/the world/the devil are mutually exclusive. Jesus' allegiance was to the things of God, and His rebuff of the metaphorical power of Rome is an example of subtle sedition.

B. TREADING UPON THE EMPEROR'S SEAS

At the beginning of Chapter 6 in St. John's Gospel, Jesus performs a miracle and feeds 5,000 people from five loaves of bread; He then refuses to be crowned a king of bread and circuses. Immediately thereafter, St. John recounts the episode of Jesus walking on a body of water in the middle of a storm. That body of water was the Sea of Galilee, which, St. John reminds his readers, was also known as the Sea of Tiberias. Around 25 A.D., Herod Antipas built a pagan city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee and named it in honor of the Roman emperor, Tiberius. By Jesus' time, the city had become so important that the Sea of Galilee came to be called the "Sea of Tiberias." Thus, not only does Jesus refuse to be coronated a Roman king of bread and circuses, but He literally treads upon the emperor's seas, showing that even the emperor's waters have no dominion over Him. Treading on the emperor's seas is an additional instance of subtle sedition.

C. A LEGION OF DEMONS

St. Mark details Jesus' encounter with the Gerasene demoniac in another example of subtle sedition. The territory of the Gerasenes was pagan territory, and this particular demoniac was exceptionally strong and frightening. In attempting to exorcise the demon, Jesus asked its name. The demon replied, "Legion is my name. There are many of us." Jesus then expels the demons and casts them into a herd of swine. The herd immediately drive themselves into the sea. First century readers would have been well-acquainted with the name, "Legion." At that time, an imperial legion was roughly 6,000 soldiers. Thus, the demon "Legion," an agent of the devil, was a thinly-veiled reference to the Roman occupiers of Judaea. Swine were considered unclean animals under Jewish law. The symbol of the Roman Legion which occupied Jerusalem was a boar. The first century audience would have easily grasped the symbolism of Jesus' casting the demon Legion into the herd of unclean swine, and the herd driving itself into the sea. Thus, the healing of the Gerasene demoniac is another example of subtle sedition.

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D. TRIBUTE AS SUBTLE SEDITION

In the Tribute Episode, Jesus' response is subtly seditious. The first-century audience would have immediately apprehended what it meant to render unto God the things that are God's. They would have known that the things of God and Caesar were mutually exclusive. No Jewish listener would have mistaken Jesus' response as an endorsement of paying Caesar's taxes. To the contrary, His audience would have understood that Jesus thought the tribute was illicit. Indeed, opposition to the tribute was one of the charges the authorities levied at His trial, "They brought charges against him, saying, u2018We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and maintains that he is the Messiah, a king.'" To the Roman audience, however, the pronouncement of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's sounds benign, almost supportive. It is, however, one of many vignettes of covert political protest contained in the Gospels. In short, the Tribute Episode is a subtle form of sedition. When viewed in this context, no one can say that the Episode supports the payment of taxes.

V. WHAT DOES THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SAY?

The Catholic Church considers Herself the authoritative interpreter of Sacred Scripture. The 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition, and the Church's Magisterium."

The 1994 Catechism instructs the faithful that it is morally obligatory to pay one's taxes for the common good. (What the definition of the "common good" is may be left for a different debate.) The 1994 Catechism also quotes and cites the Tribute Episode. But the 1994 Catechism does NOT use the Tribute Episode to support the proposition that it is morally obligatory to pay taxes. Instead, the 1994 Catechism refers the Tribute Episode only to justify acts of civil disobedience. It quotes St. Matthew's version to teach that a Christian must refuse to obey political authority when that political authority makes a demand contrary to the demands of the moral order, the fundamental rights of persons, or the teachings of the Gospel. Similarly, the 1994 Catechism also cites to St. Mark's version to instruct that a person "should not submit his personal freedom in an absolute manner to any earthly power, but only to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Caesar is not u2018the Lord.'" Thus, according to the 1994 Catechism, the Tribute Episode stands for the proposition that a Christian owes his allegiance to God and to the things of God alone. If the Tribute Episode unequivocally supported the proposition that it is morally obligatory to pay taxes, the 1994 Catechism would not hesitate to cite to it for that position. That the 1994 Catechism does not interpret the Tribute Episode as a justification for the payment of taxes suggests that such an interpretation is not an authoritative reading of the passage. In short, even the Catholic Church does not understand the Tribute Episode to mean that Jesus endorsed paying Caesar's taxes.

V. CONCLUSION

St. John's Gospel recounts the scene of a woman caught in adultery, brought before Jesus by the Pharisees so that they might "test" Him "so that they could have some charge to bring against Him." When asked, "u2018Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say,'" Jesus appears trapped by only two answers: the strict, legally-correct answer of the Pharisees, or the mercifully-right, morally-correct, but technically-illegal answer undermining Jesus' authority as a Rabbi. Notably, Jesus never does overtly respond to the question posed to Him; instead of answering, "Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger." When pressed by His inquisitors, He finally answers, "u2018Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,'" and, of course, the shamed Pharisees all leave one by one. Jesus then refuses to condemn the woman.

The scene of the woman caught in adultery and the Tribute Episode are similar. In both, Jesus is faced with a hostile question challenging His credibility as a Rabbi. In each, the hostile question has two answers: one answer which the audience knows is morally correct, but politically incorrect, and the other answer which the audience knows is wrong, but politically correct. In the scene of the woman caught in adultery, no one roots for Jesus to say, "Stone her!" Everyone wants to see Jesus extend the woman mercy. Likewise, in the Tribute Episode, no one hopes Jesus answers, "Pay tribute to the pagan, Roman oppressors!" The Tribute Episode, like the scene of the woman caught in adultery, has a "right" answer it is not licit to pay the tribute. But Jesus cannot give this "right" answer without running afoul of the Roman government. Instead, in both Gospel accounts, Jesus gives a quick-witted, but ultimately ambiguous, response which exposes the hypocrisy of His interrogators rather than overtly answers the underlying question posed by them. Nevertheless, in each instance, the audience can infer the right answer embedded in Jesus' response.

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Posted By admin on February 17, 2022

Judaism and Capitalism: Friends or Enemies? The Lou Church Memorial Lecture in Religion and Economics, presented at the 2012 Austrian Scholars Conference

The subject Judaism and Capitalism needs to be addressed in two related but separate parts. In one of these, the question up for discussion is, what is the relation between Judaism, taken as a body of religious doctrine, and capitalism? In the other, the issue that confronts us is, what is the relation between Jews, taken as a particular ethnic group, and capitalism? Obviously, the two questions are related. One way of identifying at least some Jews is as those who practice the Jewish religion. Certainly, many of those ethnically Jewish are estranged from their ancestral faith; nevertheless, that there exists a connection between the two parts of our topic is clear. I propose to consider both of these parts in the remarks that follow.

I shall take the capitalism in our title as not requiring an extended venture in definition or analysis. By it I intend nothing controversial. I mean the economic system in place over much of the world since the Industrial Revolution, characterized for the most part by private ownership of the means of production.[1]

Theories that endeavor to connect Judaism and capitalism often, though not invariably, spring from distaste for one or both of the paired terms. This was notoriously the case in Karl Marxs famous essayOn the Jewish Question, written in 1844.In this early work, Marx said that capitalism was Jewish, in that both were egoistic. In his important book,Capitalism and the Jews, Jerry Muller says: Were Jews egoistic, as [Bruno] Bauer had charged? Certainly, Marx answered. But in bourgeois society,everyonewas egoistic. Marx embraces all of the traditional negative characterizations of the Jew repeated by Bauer, and for good measure adds a few of his own. But he does so in order to stigmatize market activity as such. For Marxs strategy is to endorse every negative characterization of market activity that Christians associated with Jews, but to insist that those qualities have now come to characterize society as a whole, very much including Christians.[2]

Marxs argument is a simple one. Capitalism is based on the pursuit of profit. Each person is supposed to act to secure his self-interest. This makes universal the trader-ethics characteristic since the Middle Ages of Jewish peddlers and moneylenders. Marx of course did not advance this view as a purely theoretical account. He deplored this sort of society; in it, human beings lived alienated both from one another and their own essence.

Marx expresses his argument in unmistakable terms. Criticizing the right of private property in the French Constitution of 1793, he says: The right of man to private property is, therefore, the right to enjoy ones property and to dispose of it at ones discretion without regard to other men, independently of society, the right of self-interest. This individual liberty and its application form the basis of civil society. It makes everyone see in other men not the realization of his own freedom, but thebarrierto it.

It is precisely the attitude toward others described here that, according to Marx, constitutes the essence of Judaism. What is the secular basis of Judaism?Practicalneed,self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew?Huckstering.What is his worldly God?Money. (Emphasis in original)[3]

How are we to evaluate Marxs argument? It suffers from two main problems. First, Marx fails to establish a connection between selfish, egoistic behavior and the Jewish religion. Why is egoistic behavior distinctively Jewish? It is no doubt true that Judaism looks favorably on a persons pursuit of his own interests. In the famous saying of Rabbi Hillel in the first chapter of theEthics of our Fathers, If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

But an approval of self-interest by no means signifies a selfish disregard for the well-being of others. One need only recall the continuation of Hillels saying, If I am only for myself, what am I?

One could easily amass other citations on the role of regard for others and charity in Judaism, but one more must here suffice. Jewish sources often view the principal sin of Sodom, the city that God destroyed by fire and brimstone, as lack of charity. As Rabbi Meir Tamari notes in his authoritative exposition of Jewish law regarding economics, The Mishnah [first part of the Talmud] defined one who said . . . Whats yours is mine and whats mine is mine as an evil man. He who says, Whats yours is yours and whats mine is yours is a righteous person. But Whats yours is yours and whats mine is mine some say that is the mark of Sodom.[4]

A defender of Marx might reply by recalling a distinction made earlier. At the outset, I distinguished the claim that Judaism as a body of doctrine is related to capitalism from the claim that Jews as a group are so related. Has the objection just raised to Marxs account ignored this distinction? Perhaps Marx is not best taken as making a point about Jewish religious doctrine. Rather, is he not claiming that the behavior found in the economic activities of certain Jews, namely the traders and moneylenders, best expresses the essence of capitalism?[5]

If this is what Marx had in mind, it is no more satisfactory than the earlier version of his claim. What is supposed to be specifically Jewish about either selling or lending money? Marx nowhere informs us.

A more deep-seated failing besets Marxs account of Judaism and capitalism. Marx characterizes both capitalism and Judaism as based on self-interest, practical need, selling, and money. Surely it would be difficult to find throughout recorded history many large-scale and complex societies in which these features did not play a prominent role. Contrary to Marx, neither self-interest nor the pursuit of money is distinctively either capitalist or Jewish.

In seeking to exorcise self-interest as a feature of the human condition Marx is beguiled by a fantasy in which human beings abandon all antagonisms. Murray Rothbard has aptly noted the influence of this fantasy: To Marx, anydifferencesbetween men, and, therefore, any specialization in the division of labor, is a contradiction, and the communist goal is to replace that contradiction with harmony among all. This means that to the Marxist any individual differences, any diversity among men, are contradictions to be stamped out and replaced by the uniformity of the anthill.[6]

Jerry Muller has insightfully drawn attention to the importance of Marxs essay; but in one respect he goes too far. Muller says, For On the Question of the Jews contains, in embryo, most of the subsequent themes of Marxs critique of capitalism. If Marx had one big idea, it was that capitalism was the rule of money itself the expression of greed. The rule of capital was fundamentally immoral because it deprived the vast majority in a capitalist society of their humanity, requiring labor that enriched a few capitalists while impoverishing the workers physically and spiritually.[7]

Muller here fundamentally misconceives Marxism. Marx inDas Kapitalhad principally in mind a scientific critique of capitalism, based primarily on the labor theory of value. The book contains fierce moral invective directed against capitalism, some of which make references to Jewish themes; this is rhetoric rather than the core of the book. (One such reference to a Jewish theme, incidentally, occurs in the famous passage of Chapter 24 ofDas Kapital, Accumulate, accumulate, that is Moses and the prophets. The Jewish reference here is not only the obvious one, i.e., the mention of Moses. The entire expression Moses and the prophets refers to two of the three divisions in the Jewish arrangement of the books of the Bible: Marx is saying that for the capitalists, accumulation is the Bible.) The crucial point that Marx intended his project as science rather than ethics was made long ago by Werner Sombart, whom we shall be discussing later.[8]

Before turning from Marx on capitalism and the Jews, I allow myself one conjecture. Marx said that the essence of capitalism was egoism. Could awareness of this claim have influenced the young Ayn Rand, who after all grew up in Soviet Russia, where the writings of Marx were abundantly available in Russian translation? I ask because she of course also thought that capitalism was in essence egoism, though she embraced exactly what repelled Marx and ignored his identification of Judaism with capitalism.

What lesson should we draw from the failure of Marxs attempt to link Judaism with capitalism? Should we abandon altogether all inquiries along the same lines as fundamentally misguided? Such a course was urged by Ludwig von Mises. He remarks inSocialism, Today the Islamic and Jewish religions are dead. They offer their adherents nothing more than a ritual. They know how to prescribe prayers and fasts, certain foods, circumcision and the rest; but that is all. They offer nothing to the mind. Completely despiritualized, all they teach and preach are legal forms and external rule. They lock their follower into a cage of traditional usages, in which he is often hardly able to breathe; but for his inner soul they have no message. They suppress the soul, instead of elevating it and saving it. For many centuries in Islam, for nearly two thousand years in Jewry, there have been no new religious movements. Today the religion of the Jews is just as it was when the Talmud was drawn up.

I do not think that Misess remarks by themselves settle the questions at issue, even if one accepts Misess highly dubious characterization of Judaism as pure ritual, devoid of appeal to the mind. Misess comments do not exclude the possibility that legal regulations of the kind Mises describes in such unflattering terms influenced the development of capitalism, either by their content or by the qualities of mind and character that people who adhered to the rituals tended to develop. But these are no more than possibilities: whether these regulations in fact had such effects is another question

Let us turn then to another attempt to connect Judaism and capitalism, and this one the most significant of all, Werner SombartsThe Jews and Modern Capitalism, which appeared in 1911. Sombart conforms to the pattern mentioned earlier that those who ascribe to the Jews primary responsibility to capitalism tend to be hostile to both Judaism and capitalism.

In Sombarts case this is hardly surprising. Sombart began his academic career as a convinced Marxist. Though he veered to the right, he remained a socialist to the end, albeit of a peculiar kind. Like Marx, he stressed Jewish involvement in trade as the essence of capitalism: The Jews with their trader-ethic had succeeded in transforming the more static values of the Middle Ages. The broad outlines of this theory will already be familiar from our discussion of Marxs essay; but Sombart developed the position with enormously greater learning in the Jewish sources and in Jewish history. Sombart himself says that Marx, in his essay, looked deep into the Jewish soul. After mentioning two other writers, he says, What has been said about the Jewish spirit since these men (all Jews!) wrote is either a repetition of what they said or a distortion of the truth.[9]

His favorable reference to Marxs essay should be sufficient to suggest that Sombart was an unfriendly critic of Judaism, but Milton Friedman dissents. He writes, Sombarts book. . . has had in general a highly unfavorable reception. . .and, indeed, something of an aura of anti-Semitism has come to be attributed to it. . .there is nothing in the book itself to justify any charge of anti-Semitism though there certainly is in Sombarts writing and behavior several decades later, indeed, if anything I interpret the book as philo-Semitic[10]Friedman has I suggest been deceived by his own strong approval for the behavior and attitudes that Sombart depicts. Sombart was not praising the Jews, e.g., when he ascribed to them the traders mentality.

The great strength of his book is that he goes beyond the generalities to be found in Marxs essay and offers specific evidence from Jewish religious sources and history. He points out, e.g., that though a Jew is forbidden to lend money at interest to another Jew, he is permitted, and according to some opinions required, to do so to non-Jews. Jewish law sees nothing intrinsically wrong with lending at interest: the ban on taking interest from fellow Jews stems from the bonds that ought to link fellow believers. The prohibition on taking interest from a fellow Jew is more than a negative requirement. It is a positive duty to lend money without interest to Jews in need, and free loan societies have long been part of the Jewish community.

Sombart expresses the point about taking interest from non-Jews in typically colorful language:

Now think of the position in which the pious Jew and the pious Christian respectively found themselves in the period in which money-lending first became a need in Europe, and which eventually gave birth to capitalism. The good Christian who had been addicted to usury was filled with remorse as he lay a-dying, ready at the eleventh-hour to cast from him the ill-gotten gains which scorched his soul. And the good Jew? In the evening of his days, he gazed upon his well-filled caskets and coffers, overflowing with sequins of which he had relieved the miserable Christians or Mohammedans. It was a sight which warmed his heart, for every penny was like a sacrifice which he had brought to his Heavenly Father.[11]

Sombart does not see the law regarding interest as standing alone. To the contrary, he maintains that Judaism is a religion of calculative rationality, peculiarly suited to success under capitalism:

The kinship between Judaism and capitalism is further illustrated by the legally regulated relationship I had almost said the business-like connection, except that the term has a disagreeable connotation between God and Israel. . .The contract usually sets forth that man is rewarded for duties performed and punished for duties neglected. . .Two consequences must of necessity follow: first, a constant weighing up of the loss and gain which any action needs must bring, and secondly, a complicated scheme of bookkeeping, as it were, for each individual person.[12]

Sombart makes clear his evaluation of Judaism and capitalism, in a passage that evidently escaped Milton Friedmans attention:

In all its reasoning it [the Jewish religion] appeals to us as a creation of the intellect, a thing of thought and purpose projected into the world of organisms. . .destined to destroy and to conquer Natures realm and to reign itself in her stead. Just so does capitalism appear on the scene; like the Jewish religion, an alien element in the midst of the natural, created world; like it, too, something schemed and planned in the midst of teeming life.[13]

What is one to make of all this? The main problem with Sombarts thesis is obvious. Though he is right that calculative rationality is integral to capitalism, this disposition is by no means peculiar to Jews. If so, capitalism cannot be considered Jewish in essence, though Sombart may well be right that certain traits of mind equipped Jews to prosper under capitalism. Sombart could hardly ignore this point; only a few years before his own book, Max Weber had issued his famousThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In that book, Weber ascribed some of the same traits that Sombart thought especially Jewish to the Puritans.

It cannot be said that Sombarts way of coping with this objection is entirely satisfactory. He writes, I [Sombart] have already mentioned that Max Webers study of the importance of Protestantism for the capitalistic system was the impetus that sent me to consider the importance of the Jew. . .PuritanismisJudaism.[14]

Sombart rightly stressed the importance for capitalism of lending money at interest, but allowing this practice is hardly peculiar to Judaism. In his greatAn Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Rothbard remarks: Calvins main contribution to the usury question was in having the courage to dump the prohibition altogether. . . To Calvin, then, usury is perfectly licit, provided it is not charged in loans to the poor, who would be hurt by such payment. Rothbard continues about a later Calvinist, The honor of putting the final boot to the usury prohibition belongs to. . . Claudius Salmasius,. . .who finished off this embarrassing remnant of the mountainous errors of the past. In short, Salmasius pointed out that money-lending was a business like any other, and like other businesses was entitled to charge a market price. . .Salmasius also had the courage to point out that there were no valid arguments against usury, either by divine or natural law.[15]No doubt Sombart would respond by declaring Calvin and Salmasius to be Jews.

We have so far considered, and found largely wanting, attempts to connect Judaism with capitalism. But we have also to examine the views of those who find a Jewish impetus behind opposition to capitalism. Especially at the beginning of the twentieth century, a common view held that the Bolshevik Revolution was largely a Jewish enterprise.

Winston Churchill wrote in 1920, There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders.

Churchill by no means thought that all Jews were Bolsheviks. To the contrary, he contrasted the internationalist Jews behind world revolution with nationalist Jews, e.g., Zionists. The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and the Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people.[16]

Churchill was but one of many writers of his time with similar views. As he notes in his article, he had read Nesta Webster, a once famous popular historian who studied conspiracy theories of revolution in, among other books,The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy; World Revolution;andSecret Societies and Subversive Movements.(Contrary to general belief, incidentally, she did not endorse the authenticity of theProtocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.) She was probably the foremost source for the view that communism was Jewish.

Backers of the theory, like Churchill, appealed to the fact that Jews occupied a high number of positions in the Bolshevik government. The Irish priest Father Denis Fahey published a pamphlet,The Rulers of Russia, containing long lists of Bolsheviks with Jewish-sounding names. In Germany, the Nazi writer Alfred Rosenberg sometimes read out such lists over the radio, leading to the joke that he thought that everybody named Rosenberg was Jewish except him. In recent years, the German writer Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein has devoted a long book to the topic,Jewish Bolshevism: Myth and Reality [Der juedische Bolshewismus: Mythos und Realitt][17]

Before we turn to evaluate this theory, it should be noted that it is possible, however unlikely it may seem, for someone to hold this view together with the position we have earlier examined. That is, it is possible to hold Jews responsible both for capitalism and communism, its foremost antagonist. This is more than a bare possibility: Hitler, for one, believed precisely this.

The main failing of the view that connects Judaism and communism is a simple one. It confuses two questions: why, looking at the historical circumstances that led to the Russian Revolution, were many Jews attracted to revolution; and, is there anything intrinsic to Judaism that leads to support of communism?

The first question is readily answered when one recalls the long history of anti-Jewish measures taken by the Tsarist Russian government in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A similar appeal to particular circumstances would I think explain such other instances of Jewish support for socialist revolutionary groups as the historical record discloses. Absent the existence of special circumstances, there is no marked Jewish support for the overthrow of capitalism. Jerry Muller is right when he says: Milton Friedmans contention that Jews vilified capitalism while profiting from it is highly distorted. To the extent that Jews identified themselves with socialism, it was largely a phenomenon of eastern European Jews and their immediate descendents in the years from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s.[18]And even if one is inclined to think the association between Jews and communism greater than Muller allows, it is clear that any such affinity has its limits. Even during the period when Jewish radicalism was at its height, most Jews were not communists, and most communists were not Jews. It would be difficult to consider the Chinese communist movement an instance of Jewish Bolshevism.

To show a close intellectual connection between Judaism and communism would require some derivation of communist ideas from Jewish religious doctrines, and that is not in the offing. True enough, radicals have appealed to Jewish texts to support their views. Michael Walzer has traced the role of theExodusnarrative on revolutionary thought: I [Walzer] have found the Exodus almost everywhere, often in unexpected places. It is central to the communist theology or antitheology of Ernst Bloch. . . It is the subject of a book, calledMosesin Red,by Lincoln Steffens, published in 1926; a detailed account of Israels political struggles in the wilderness and a defense of Leninist politics.[19]Others have found in the Jewish prophets an inspiration for socialist schemes for reform of the world. A once famous book of the 1920s,A Religion of Truth, Justice, and Peace, by Isidor Singer, the editor of theJewish Encyclopedia, argued that the world leadership of the social justice movement [is] offered to the Jew.[20]Singer based his argument on an appeal to the words of Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and other prophets.[21]

Walzer and Singer to the contrary notwithstanding, the claim that Judaism teaches socialism or communism as a general political program cannot succeed. The basic reason such an attempt must fail is the same one that dooms the theories that link Judaism and capitalism. The religious precepts of Judaism are meant to apply only to Jews: they do not constitute an ethical system that prescribes a best social order for all of humanity.

As Meir Tamari says, For centuries, Jews enjoyed autonomy in many countries and maintained rabbinic codes of law which regulated and governed their economic activity, thereby preserving its specifically Jewish characteristics. The Bible and the homiletical literature established an ethical and moral framework within which Jewish communities operated. . . I conclude, then, that although Mises radically underrated the intellectual merits of the Jewish sources, he was not far from the truth in thinking that are no direct connections to be drawn between Judaism and capitalism.[22]

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As Americans continue trying to understand how the government failed to stop the 9/11 hijack conspiracy, important clues can be garnered from examining the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993. This bombing the most economically destructive terrorist attack ever to occur in the United States up to that time was partly the result of mind-numbing federal incompetence.

On November 5, 1990, Rabbi Meir Kahane was giving an anti-Arab speech at a New York hotel. Kahane, founder of the radical Jewish Defense League (JDL), vigorously advocated forcible expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. Israels parliament, the Knesset, banned Kahanes political party for inciting racism and endangering security.

At the end of his speech on that November 1990 night, El Sayyid Nosair, a 36-year-old Egyptian immigrant, walked up to Kahane, pulled out a .357, and fatally shot him in the neck. Nosair was part of a cabal of Muslims filled with intense hatred toward Israel and the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak. When police searched his residence, they carried off 47 boxes of documents, paramilitary manuals, maps, and diagrams of buildings (including the World Trade Center). But, as a 2002 congressional report on federal failures before 9/11 noted in September 2002,

The NYPD and the District Attorneys office resisted attempts to label the Kahane assassination a conspiracy despite the apparent links to a broader network of radicals. Instead, these organizations reportedly wanted the appearance of speedy justice and a quick resolution to a volatile situation. By arresting Nosair, they felt they had accomplished both.

The trial of lone gunman Nosair, beginning in late 1991, was marked by rioting outside the courthouse, death threats against the judge and lawyers, calls for blood revenge against the defendant and cries of Death to Jews! from his Moslem supporters. A small band of Muslims paced the sidewalks each day in front of the court, denouncing Israel, the United States, and the supposed persecution of Nosair. As a July 4, 1993, Los Angeles Times article, headlined N.Y. Trial in Rabbis Death Planted an Explosive Seed observed,

Out of those loud demonstrations of contempt for the U.S. judicial system would emerge what authorities now say was a clandestine cell of terrorists who conspired to set off the World Trade Center bomb blast, plotted an unparalleled wave of attacks on U.S. landmarks and political figures and shattered Americas image of invulnerability to terrorism.

The FBI placed an informant named Emad Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian military officer, in the midst of the Muslim protesters. Salem insinuated himself and became the bodyguard for Sheik Abdul Rahman, a radical Muslim cleric. The sheik had been heavily subsidized by the U.S. government while in Pakistan in the late 1980s helping to inspire Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Though the evidence that Nosair killed Kahane was stark, the jury found him not guilty on the murder charge but guilty of a firearms charge that is, possessing the murder weapon. After the trial, Salem continued his work as an FBI informant, receiving $500 a week, plus expenses.

Shortly after Nosair was convicted, Salem began meeting regularly with other members of the group of hard-line Muslims who coalesced during the Kahane trial. In mid 1992, Salem repeatedly warned the FBI that the Muslim group was planning to carry off a catastrophic bombing in New York City. FBI supervisors were convinced he was concocting tall tales and fired him.

The first World Trade Center bombing

On February 26, 1993, a 1,200-pound bomb in a van exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. This was the most destructive terrorist attack carried out on U.S. soil up to that time, killing six people, injuring more than a thousand, and causing half a billion dollars in damage. If the van had been parked a few feet closer to one of the pillars, it could have collapsed an entire tower of the Trade Center, killing tens of thousands.

The case was quickly cracked when Mohammad Salameh, one of the bombers, repeatedly went to the Ryder rental office in Jersey City and demanded that Ryder refund his $400 deposit for the van, which he claimed had been stolen. Law-enforcement agents had already determined from fragments at the World Trade Center that the van was the bomb delivery device. After Salameh was arrested, the FBI quickly snared other plotters. Time noted that the FBI looked supremely capable in speedily rounding up suspects in the World Trade Center bombing. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy later bragged to a New York jury that the first World Trade Center attack was one of the FBIs finest hours: To the rest of the world out there, the explosion in all its tragedy was actually a high-water mark for the FBI.

Shortly after the bombing, the New York Times reported that FBI agents had been monitoring two mosques in the New York City area, as well as Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, though

federal guidelines had limited their ability to tail them or conduct other close surveillance. Nothing suggesting the purchase of explosives or the assembling of a bomb was detected, the officials said. Even close surveillance might not have picked up a surreptitious act, they said.

A few months after the attack, FBI director William Sessions declared,

Based on what was known to us at the time, we have no reason to believe we could have prevented the bombing of the World Trade Center.

The FBI initially appeared to have a strong case, buttressed largely by evidence provided by informant Emad Salem. In July 1993, the media learned that Salem had been inside the conspiracy a year before the attack.

Secret tape recordings

After the bombing, the FBI quickly rehired Salem and promised to pay him a million dollars to develop evidence of additional terrorist plots. Because Salem did not trust the government to pay up, he secretly recorded his conversations with FBI agents. In August, as the case was heading for trial, news leaked that Salem had made tapes of more than a hundred hours of his conversations with FBI agents and handlers. The tape transcripts were not helpful to the prosecution.

In a call to an FBI agent shortly after the bombing, Salem complained,

We was start already building the bomb, which is went off in the World Trade Center. It was built, uh, uh, uh, supervising, supervision from the Bureau [FBI] and the DA [district attorney] and we was all informed about it. And we know that the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant. What a wonderful great case. And then he [the FBI supervisor] put his head in the sand and said, oh no, no, no thats not true, he is a son of a bitch, okay.

After the bombing, Salem anguished to one FBI agent, You were informed. Everything is ready. The day and the time. Boom. Lock them up and thats that. Thats why I feel so bad. On another tape, Salem asked an FBI agent, Do you deny your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center? The agent did not deny Salems charge. Shortly after the bombing FBI agent Nancy Floyd confided to Salem that her supervisors had botched the case:

I felt that the people on the squad, that they didnt have a clue of how to operate things. That the supervisors didnt know what was going on. That they hadnt taken the time to learn the history.

It was never clear to what extent Salem instigated the bombing, as opposed to simply reporting on the plot to his FBI controllers.

Before the bombing, he offered to do a switcheroo on the bombers, substituting a harmless powder for the deadly explosives and thereby preventing any potential catastrophe. The FBI spurned his offer. The New York Times October 28, 1993, article with this revelation was headlined, Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast. Salem complained to one FBI agent that an FBI supervisor requested to make me to testify [in public] and if he didnt push for that, well be going building the bomb with a phony powder and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But we didnt do that.

The FBI was also embarrassed by the contents of the 47 boxes it had seized from Nosair and left in storage for more than two years. The boxes were ignored in part because no one at the New York FBI office spoke or read Arabic. One note discovered in the boxes declared, We had to thoroughly demoralize the enemies of God. This is to be done by means of destroying and blowing up the towers that constitute the pillars of their civilization, such as the tourist attractions theyre so proud of and the high buildings theyre so proud of. One law enforcement official told the Los Angeles Times in 1993 that the material described major conspiracies and provided a road map to the bombing of the World Trade Center and the subsequent plot.

The FBI received far more credit for solving the first World Trade Center bombing than it received blame for the fact that its informant may have helped cause the bombing. In the wake of the FBIs debacle, there were no oversight hearings or investigations by Congress to find out where the feds went wrong. Instead, the FBI was riding high on the laurels of its new director, Louis Freeh, and was still collecting praise on Capitol Hill for its decisive solution to the Branch Davidian problem at Waco.

Despite the fact that Muslim terrorists came within a few feet of killing thousands of Americans, federal agencies subsequently failed to take seriously the risk of more such attacks. The 2002 congressional report into pre-9/11 failures observed,

The first attack on the World Trade Center was an unambiguous indication that a new form of terrorism motivated by religious fanaticism and seeking mass casualties was emerging and focused on America. However, the strategic implications of this shift in lethality do not appear to have been fully recognized.

Because the FBI was not held responsible for its failures in the first World Trade Center bombing, the agencys incompetence actually mushroomed in the following years. As a result, the Bureau was inept at analyzing and pursuing terrorist threats at home. But at least the FBI got plenty of budget increases and new agents in the years between the first and second World Trade Center bombings.

October 12, 2004

James Bovard [send him mail] is the author of The Bush Betrayal and Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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May 26, 2020 Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan has responded to a German Rabbi, Jehoschua Ahrens, who called theVigan Appealconcerning the corona crisis and its dangers for constitutional liberties a shock, adding that he is glad that the German bishops have distanced themselves from it.

The Italian prelate defended issuing the May 7 appeal, stating: I think it is the duty of each one of us to express our concerns about a situation that, taking advantage of the Covid crisis, goes far beyond reasonable safety measures, imposing on entire nations the deprivation of constitutional freedoms.

Archbishop Vigan warned that recent German history has much to teach about the rise of a hellish dictatorship that few opposed and spoke out against at the time it was happening.

Obedience to Authority...Milgram, StanleyBest Price: $2.21Buy New $9.34(as of 06:19 UTC - Details)There was a time when, with the obedience of the masses, a hellish dictatorship committed a very serious crime, making itself responsible for the deportation and death of millions of innocent people, only because of their faith and line of descent, he said.

Even then the mainstream media praised those in power and remained silent about their crimes; even then doctors and scientists lent their work to a delusional plan of domination; even then those who dared to raise their voices were accused of conspiracy theories. One had to wait until the end of the Second World War to discover with horror the truth about which many had hitherto remained silent, he added.

The Archbishop warned that those who today delegitimize the Appeal as an expression of conspiracy theories do not realize the real dangers to which the entire human family is exposed.

But I am certain that both Catholics and all men of good will and among them I think I can include the children of Abraham have at heart the greater glory of God, the respect for the dignity of individuals, and the freedoms of peoples, he said.

Rabbi Ahrens criticism of Vigans Appeal wasreported on May 20by Katholisch.de, the German bishops official news website. The Rabbis original words first appeared in the newspaperJdische Allgemeine.

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Originally published in The Libertarian Forum, October 1982.

All other news, all other concerns, fade into insignificance beside the enormous horror of the massacre in Beirut. All humanity is outraged at the wanton slaughter of hundreds of men (mainly elderly), women, and children in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The days of the massacre September 16 to 18shall truly live in infamy.

There is one ray of hope in this bloodbath: the world-wide outrage demonstrates that mankinds sensibilities havenot, as some have feared, been blunted by the butcheries of the twentieth century or by watching repeated carnage on television. Mankind is still capable of reacting to evident atrocities that are wreaked upon other human beings: be they thousands of miles away or members of a different or even alien religion, culture, or ethnic group. When hundreds of manifest innocents are brutally and systematically slaughtered, all of us who are still fully human cry out in profound protest.

The outrage and protest must be compounded of several elements. First, of course, we must mourn for the poor downtrodden people of Lebanon, especially the Palestinians, who were driven out in 1948 to a reluctant exile [amazon asin=B00AJBLGV2&template=*lrc ad (right)]from their homes and land. We must mourn for the slaughtered and their remaining families. And for the hundreds of thousands in Lebanon and in Beirut who have been killed, wounded, bombed out, and rendered homeless wanderers by the aggression of the State of Israel.

But mourning and compassion are not enough. As in any mass murder, the responsibility and the guilt for the crime must be pinpointed. For the sake of justice and to try to make sure that such a holocaustfor holocaust it has beenmay never happen again.

Who, then, is guilty? On the most immediate and direct level, of course, the uniformed thugs and murderers who committed the slaughter. They consist of two groups of Christian Lebanese, working their will on innocent Muslims: the Christian Lebanese Forces of Major Saad Haddad, and the Christian Phalange, headed by the Gemayel family, now installed in the presidency of Lebanon.

But equally responsible, equally guilty, are the aiders and abettors, the string-pullers, the masters of West Beirut where the slaughter took place: the State of Israel. When the PLO was evacuated from West Beirut, to the fanfare of an international accord and international armed force supervision, the State of Israel saw its way clear to the conquest of Muslim West Beirut. Its protectors gone, the international forces cleared out, the poor huddled people of West Beirut had to put up with the conquest of the Israeli aggressors, who marched in on September 16. It was the deliberate decision of the Israeli government to usher the Phalange and the Lebanese forces into camps, to have them, in Israels words, purify the camps and rid them of PLO members who might be lurking thereinmasquerading, no doubt as babies and children. Israeli tanks guarded the perimeter of Sabra and Shatila to permit the Christians unlimited control of the camps, and Israeli army observation posts on rooftops supervised the scene less than 100 yards from the slaughter.

On Friday, on the scene, Reuters correspondent Paul Eedle spoke to an Israeli colonel who explained about the operation: it was designed to purify the area without the direct participation of the Israeli army. This policy is of course all too reminiscent of the Nazi policy on the Eastern front, when the German soldiers stood by and benignly allowed the Ukrainian and other non-German SS to massacre Jews and other natives of Russia.

Also on Friday, it is particularly edifying to know that the Phalangists came to Israeli positions on the perimeter of the camps to relax, eat and drink, read and listen to music, and in general rest up before returning to butcher the few people still remaining. A Phalangist officer, a gold crucifix dangling from his neck, later told a reporter that there was still shooting going on in the camps, otherwise what would I be doing here?[amazon asin=B003NSC5XQ&template=*lrc ad (right)]

Writing from the scene of the crime in evident horror,New York Timesreporter, Thomas L. Friedman (Sept. 20) wrote that from the Israeli observation posts it would not have been difficult to ascertain the slaughter not only by sight but from the sounds of gunfire and the screams coining from the camp. In addition to providing some provisions for the Christian militiamen, the Israelis had tanks stationed on the hilltop, apparently to provide cover for them if the militiamen encountered fiercer resistance than had been anticipated.

We know now that by Thursday night the Israeli army and government knew about the massacre, and that yet they didabsolutely nothingfor 36 hours, until Saturday morning, when, the bloodbath completed, they gently waved the Christian murderers out of the camps. All was secured.

As a grisly finale to Israels blood crime, even after the world outrage, the Israeli army turned over a huge number of capturedweapons to the Lebanese Forcesthe Haddad army which Israel has trained and armed for seven years, which has held and occupied the southern Lebanese border for many months on behalf of Israel, and who, as theNew York Timesput it, are virtually integrated into the Israeli army and operate entirely under its command.

One of the most heartening aspects of the response to the massacre has been the firestorm of protest within Israel itself, even from the ordinarily pro-Begin press. Thus, Eitan Haber, military correspondent of the ordinarily pro-BeginYediot Ahronot, wrote in shock:

Government ministers and senior commanders already knew during the hours of Thursday night and Friday morning that a terrible massacre was taking place in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and despite the fact that they knew this for sure, they did not lift a finger and did nothing to prevent the massacre until Saturday morning. For 36 additional hours, the Phalangists continued to run rampant in the refugee camps and to kill anyone who fell in their path.

An editor of the Beginite daily paper,Maariv, appearing on ABC-TVNightline, was evidently shaken and pinned full responsibility for the holocaust on the Begin government, and clearly called for its resignation.[amazon asin=1500264784&template=*lrc ad (right)]

Unfortunately, the response of American Jews was not nearly as outraged as that from Israel itself. It is well known that the lockstep and knee-jerk support by American Jews for any and all acts of the State of Israel is scarcely replicated within Israel itself. But even here the ranks were broken or at the very least confused. Even William Safire, always ardent in support of Israel, attacked its blundera strong word coming from Safire. Only the professional Jews, head of the leading Jewish organizations in America, continued to alibi and excuse. For a few days, they fell back on the view that we cant judge until we know the facts, but even this lame alibi fell apart when Begin arrogantly refused any impartial judicial inquiry and pushed his view through the Knesset. Among the American Jewish leaders only Rabbi Balfour Brickner and the highly intelligent Professor Arthur Hertzbergwho have always been unafraid to speak their mindlashed into the responsibility of the state of Israel.

An illuminating scene occurred on ABCsNightline, when Rabbi Schindler and Howard Squadron, two top professional American Jews, were asked their views of the Israeli action. It was squirmsville. One particularly sharp question was asked byNightline: How is it that American Jewish protest has been so muted compared to that within Israel itself? Rabbi Schindlers response was one for the books. In essence he said: Within Israel there are political parties which can be critical of the governments action. But our role as American Jews is to support the State of Israelregardless of its specific actions. A chilling admission indeed!

And so American Jewish leaders consider it their role to support the State of Israel come hell or high water. How many deaths would it take? How many murders? How much slaughter of the innocent? Are thereany conceivable actsthat would turn off the American Jewish leadership, that would cause these people to stop their eternal apologetics for the State of Israel? Any actsat all?

After this statement of his role, the rather startledNightlineinterviewer asked Rabbi Schindler, but what about support forright and wrong? Doesnt that count? Having marched to the edge of the abyss and perhaps revealed too much, Rabbi Schindler rallied, and muttered something about of course, were interested in right and wrong; but we can only judge after we know the facts. Since Begin had just vetoed a fact-finding board of inquiry, this line fell pretty flat.

In American politics, the magic attraction of the State of Israel has at last lost some of its power. Even Scoop Jackson, even Senator Alan Cranston (D., Calif.) have become critical of Israel. The leading all-out supporter of Israel in the Reagan CabinetAl Haighas been booted out, perhaps partially on that issue. But these are only small, fitful steps toward de-Israelizing American foreign policy.[amazon asin=130068240X&template=*lrc ad (right)]

One bizarre aspect of this affair has been the American perceptionat least until the massacreof the Gemayel family and its Phalange. It has now been revealed that the Israeli intelligence servicesnotoriously savvy peoplehad warned Begin and Defense Minister Sharon in advance that the Phalangists were likely to commit a massacre if the camps were turned over to them. To say that these warnings were ignored by Begin, Sharon & Co. is putting matters very, very kindly.

Well, what are the Gemayels and the Phalange like? Perhaps it is best to contrast reality with the Alice-in-Wonderland comments of the Reagan Administration upon the assassination of Phalangist leader and near-president of Lebanon Bashir Gemayel on September 15. A tragedy for Lebanese democracy, opined the Reagan Administration, while Ronnie himself spoke of Bashir as a brilliant, rising young democratic politician. The U.S. and Israel both spoke of their hope that Bashir could impose a strong, centralized government to unify anarchic Lebanon.

Since the Massacre, we should now have a better idea of the sort of unity that the Gemayels propose to bring to Lebanon: the unity of the charnel house and the cemetery. Perhaps the name of the political and military organization known as the Phalange should give a clue. For Bashirs father, Pierre, founded the Phalange after an enthusiastic visit to Hitlers Germany. The Phalange (named after Francos Falange) are fascists, pure and simple, in goals and in method.

But let us concentrate on the rising young politician and see if we should shed any tears for Bashir. Bashir is distinguished from other leading Lebanese politicians in that he is himself a mass murderer. I mean personally. The Gemayels had two sets of powerful rivals among the fascistic Maronite Christian community. Pro-Western and Pro-Israeli a little less fanatically than the Phalange, these were the followers of elderly ex-Presidents Camille Chamoun and Suleiman Franjieh.

Here is the way that young democrat, Begin and Reagans Man in Beirut, dealt with dissent within the Maronite community. Five years ago, the then 29-year-old Bashir Gemayel led a commando raid on Franjiehs mountain stronghold in northern Lebanon. Bashir made Franjiehs oldest son Tony watch while he and his gang tortured and killed Tonys wife and two-year-old daughter. Bashir then murdered Tony and 29 followers, calling the [amazon asin=1933550279&template=*lrc ad (right)]massacre a social revolt against feudalism. Two years later, Bashir took care of the Chamouns. In May, 1980, Bashir and his men, in a lightning strike, massacred 450 of Chamouns followers at a beach resort near the city of Junei. Over 250 were murdered on the beach or while swimming. The wife and daughter of Camille Chamouns son Dany were both raped. Less than a month later, Bashir and his men invaded Chamouns headquarters in east Beirut, and savagely killed over 500 of Chamouns followers as well as bystanders. Many of the victims were castrated by Bashirs thugs, and one captured Chamounite was blown apart with a stick of dynamite shoved down his throat.

Who assassinated Bashir? It could almost have been anyone in Lebanon.

The fascist savagery and the willingness to be a catspaw of Israel may be partly explained by demographic factors. Lebanese political rule is set by quota system, in which dominance including the Presidencyis assured the Maronite Christian community. Unfortunately, the census on which the quotas are based is that of the early 1930s, when the Christians were a majority in Lebanon. The early 1930s census still rules, even though it is now conceded by everyone that Muslims are about 55% of the Lebanese population, to the Christian 45%. This means that freezing Maronite Christian rule over a majority of Muslimsthe Begin-and-Reagan solution to the Lebanese problemin addition to being profoundly immoral, in the long run will not work. The Muslims are out-producing the Christians in future population, no matter how many Muslim babies the Phalangists are proposing to kill.

Unfortunately, no matter the anguish and the outcry within Israel, there is little hope that the Israeli opposition will be able to do much to correct the fundamental problem. For while individual voices are raised on the massacre,politicallythere is almost no opposition to the fundamental Zionist axiom within Israel. The chief opposition Labor Party, the Founding Fathers and Mothers of Israel, paved the way for Begin in their commitment to the Zionist ideal and to the consequent expulsion of 1 million Palestinian Arabs from their homes and their lands. Only a few minor parties in Israel, such as those of Uri Davis and Shulamith Aloni, can be considered to have broken with the Zionist paradigm, and these are only on the fringe of Israeli politics.

The fundamental problem, the Zionist paradigm, is simply this: The establishment of the State of Israel was accomplished by the expropriation of the Palestinians from the overwhelming bulk of the land of the original 1948 Israel. Over a million Palestinian Arabs fled outside the borders of Israel, and the remaining Arabs have been systematically treated as second-class citizens, kept down by the fact that only Jews are allowed to own land within[amazon asin=146793481X&template=*lrc ad (right)] Israel that once falls into Jewish hands. (And more is doing so all the time.) In 1967, Israel aggressed against and conquered the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights of Syria, which it is in the process of annexing. Palestinian Arabs in the occupied territories are, again, treated as second-class citizens, and Zionist settlements are planted amongst them.

Israel and its American apologists are wont to blame everything on the dread bogeyman, the PLO, and to excuse all Israeli crimes as necessary to defend the security of the Israeli state from PLO terrorism. And yet it is conveniently forgotten that there was no PLO at all until after the shame of the 1967 war, when the Palestinians realized that they had to stop relying on the faithless Arab states and could only try themselves to win back their homes and their possessions. Since there was no PLO terror until 1968, how come that Israel aggressed against and terrorized the Palestinian Arabs for two decades previously?

The answer lies in the Zionist paradigm. Zionism was a nineteenth-century creation of European (notMiddle Eastern) Jews, and was sold to Great Britain as a conscious colonial settlerstate, a junior partner to British imperialism in the Middle East. After World War I, when the British and French dismembered the Ottoman Empire, they betrayed their promises to give the Arabs their independence, and they established mandates or puppet states across the Middle East. We are still living with the legacy of that final outcropping of British imperialism.

How did the early Zionists sell their scheme to Western public opinion? The favorite Zionist slogan of the day rings peculiarly hollow now: A land without people [Palestine] for a people without land [the Jews]. A land without people; thereare noPalestinian Arabs, the Zionists assured everyone, and so a million and a half people, many of them productive farmers, citrus growers, businessmen,people who made the desert bloom firstwere at a strokewritten out of existence. And before the PLO launched its fight-back, Israeli leaders stoutly continued to deny reality, Golda Meir repeatedly maintaining that there are no Palestinians. Say it often enough and maybe they go away. Maybe.

Libertarians are opposed to every State. But the State of Israel is uniquely pernicious, because its entire existence rests and continues to rest on a massive expropriation of property and expulsion from the land. Libertarians in the United States often complain about the radical libertarian adherence to land reform, i.e. the giving back of stolen land to the victims. In the case of expropriations centuries ago, who gets what is often fuzzy, and conservative libertarians can raise an important point. But in the case of Palestine, the victims and their childrenthe true owners of the landare right there, beyond the borders, in refugee camps, in hovels, dreaming about a return to their own. There is nothing fuzzy here. Justice will only be served, and true peace in the devastated area will only come, when a miracle happens and Israel allows the Palestinians to stream back in and repossess their rightful property. Until then, so long as the Palestinians continue to live and no matter how far back they are pushed, they will always be there, and they will continue to press for their dream of justice. No matter how many square miles and how many cities Israel conquers (shall it be Damascus next?), the Palestinians will be there, in addition to all the other Arab refugees newly created by the Israeli policy of blood and iron. But allowing justice, allowing the return of the expropriated, would mean that Israel would have to give up its exclusivist Zionist ideal. For recognizing Palestinians as human beings with full human rights is the negation of Zionism; it is the recognition that the land was never empty.

A just Israeli state (insofar asanystate can be just), then, would necessarily be a de-Zionized state, and this no Israeli political party in the foreseeable future would have the slightest desire to do. And so the slaughter and the horror will go on.

The Best of Murray N. Rothbard

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Is there a game on? Consider: What youre seeing may not be what you think youre seeing. If an orderly transition to the next administration meant what you think it means, Nancy Pelosi would not be shrieking for an insta-super-quickie impeachment. By the way, what would that look like as a procedural matter? Think: Chinese fire drill.

The New York Timesspanties are on fire, declaring a national emergency. Headline this morning:Democrats Demand Trumps Removal. Funny they didnt feel this exercised when Antifa attacked congressmen and senators on the streets of Washington last summer, leaving the presidents acceptance speech at the White House. Twitter and Facebook are busy throwing overboard anybody who dares to challenge thenarrativetheyve helped to craft. Somethings up now and its making them even more hysterical than usual.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called for Vice President Mike Pence to immediately initiate the removal of President Donald Trump, declaring him a seditious threat to the country who cant be trusted to finish even the last two weeks of his term. Politico

H World Shopping Men T...Buy New $50.98(as of 04:07 UTC - Details)Consider also: you and I are in that fabled fog of war, and that fog is going to hang around in the days ahead. You may see strange shapes moving around in that fog, and thats about it. Eventually, the fog will lift and the battlefield will not look the same as it did a week ago. So, its hard to see right now, but I hear a lot and Ill just report what I hear for what its worth. I cant prove any of this is true right now. A lot of it may seem crazy, fantastical. What with the pitch of news media mind-fuckery weve been living under, there have probably never been stranger days in our America.

The game is a deadly one because there is so much at stake: careers, reputations, fortunes, lives, the climax of four years of seditiousGotcha. The Resistance threw everything it could at the Golden Golem of Greatness. It discommoded him in his duties, and wasted the nations precious time in a gathering crisis of civilization, but nothing stuck to him: RussiaGate, impeachment, not even Covid-19. The November 3rdelection was the final play. Ever find, in a game of chess, that youve unwittingly blundered into checkmate?

Who, exactly, invaded the Capitol building on Wednesday when that mass of Trump supporters swarmed up the hallowed hill? Some Antifas and BLMs were on the scene for sure, probably in the vanguard, probably the ones smashing the windows to break in. But somebody else went in there, too, and rounded up a whole bunch of congressional laptops, including several in Speaker Nancy Pelosis office, foolishly left behind when members were evacuated in a panic.

Perhaps youve heard ofthe Italian job. A story circulating on the web from one Maria Zack, founder of a fair election monitoring org calledNations in Action, says that the election ballot fraud operation was run out of Italy through a set of that countrys communication satellites by a CIA team working with former Italian government officials, and one of Italys defense contractors. The story claims that former president Barack Obama was directly involved and that the operation was financed with dollars skimmed from the billions of dollars transferred to Iran under the terms of Mr. Obamas No Nukes deal. Affidavits and depositions are filed. The UKs MI6 may be involved, as they were in the RussiaGate shenanigans. Is this just another mind-fuck? Maybe. I guess well have to stand by and find out. You can do that, cant you? In the fog of the moment?PatchOps I Identify As...Buy New $9.99(as of 04:07 UTC - Details)

Did congress knowingly certify a fraudulent election? That will be a tantalizing question in the days ahead. Another rumor in the fog says that Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe delivered a report on foreign interference in the election to members of congress following the conclusion early Thursday morning of their electoral college business. Was that the match that setResistancepanties on fire? Mr. Ratcliffe has been missing-in-action for more than a week. His report was originally scheduled for delivery to the president November 18. It was postponed and everybody forgot about it, especially the news media.

Lets also just step back for a moment and ask: why did so many flag-waving MAGAs turn out Wednesday on the Mall in Washington DC? Answer: because they have been served one shit sandwich after another for four years by the Democratic Party and their captive news media, and the latest one featured vote tabulations getting erased in real time at ten-plus thousand vote increments right before their eyes on the flatscreen in the wee hours of November 4. And after that, and other balloting monkeyshines, the response from their government was a mere yawn. Total institutional failure. The ballot fraud that so many witnessed was never aired or adjudicated in a proper legal forum, and they were good and goddam pissed about it.

Wantdo Mens Wat...Check Amazon for Pricing.Mr. Trump is rumored to be at an air force base in Texas, having vamoosed the White House as being unsafe for him. Is he cornered by his antagonists or does he have a planned operation underway? Who knows (not me)? He certainly had enough time to plan it, and the king-post in the whole deal may have been that he had to exhaust all the ritual avenues in disputing the election fraud before he could launch a counter-coup. If his adversaries intend to run the 25thAmendment on him, he will have to act quickly.

The president didnt appear panicked in the speech released on Thursday, in which he promised thatorderly transition to the next administration, certainly not panicked in the inflamed manner of Nancy Pelosi. In the mythology of my people, the Golem was a giant fashioned out of clay by a rabbi seeking desperately to protect his village from a pogrom. I didnt dub Mr. Trump the Golden Golem of Greatness for nothing. For the moment all is fog and noise.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The Best of James Howard Kunstler

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New York Jewish Week via JTA Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, who made headlines when he was abruptly fired from his position at Manhattans swanky Park East Synagogue, has officially launched a new congregation.

In a sermon Goldschmidt gave this past Shabbat, which he also posted to Medium on Tuesday, the rabbi announced that the name of his new congregation which hes starting with his wife, journalist Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt will be Altneu, a portmanteau of the Yiddish words for old and new.

The truth is, this is the closest I will ever get to feeling what it means to give birth to a child, he wrote.

The Goldschmidts started the congregation informally in the fall of 2021, shortly after the 34-year-old rabbi was unceremoniously dismissed from his post as assistant rabbi at Park East, a venerable Modern Orthodox congregation, in October, after a decade working there.

The firing followed what one well-placed Park East congregant described as an attempted coup by Goldschmidt, itself the result of simmering tensions between Goldschmidt and the synagogues senior rabbi, Arthur Schneier, 91. Goldschmidt denied the accusation.

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Goldschmidts supporters in turn said he was a talented rabbi who was popular with younger members, as the New York Jewish Week reported at the time. Some 70 members signed a petition saying they were shocked and disheartened by his firing.

Shortly after the brouhaha broke, the Goldschmidts began hosting Shabbat services in the neighborhood. In November, the New York Jewish Week reported that over 80 people RSVPed to an invitation to attend Shabbat services, some of them members of Park East. Chitzik-Goldschmidt said there ended up being over 200 in attendance that weekend. On a recent Shabbat, they welcomed Dr. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

According to the shuls new website, the congregation meets on Shabbat Friday evenings and Saturday mornings at unique venues on the Upper East Side. Photos and videos posted online by the couple show the Explorers Club, a five-story mansion at 46 East 70th St., which Goldschmidt also mentions by name in his Medium post.

In a tweet Wednesday announcing the new venture, the rabbi and his spouse are seen entering wrought-iron gates, waving the viewer inside. Shehecheyanu, he writes, referring to the blessing commonly used when doing something for the first time. Welcome to the Altneu. On the old and the new. The dreams and the conditions of a 21st century Diaspora synagogue.

I feel like it is a tremendous opportunity to start a new synagogue in Manhattan; its not something that happens too often, Goldschmidt told The New York Jewish Week. Its given me an opportunity to rethink many things that were taken for granted. We now have an ability to figure out what format will work best for the next century.

For example, Goldschmidt said he plans to have community members introduce the Torah portion each week in a sermon a job traditionally assigned to the rabbi in order to allow his congregants to connect and learn with both the text and their community in a more personal manner.

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, President and Founder of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation and Senior Rabbi of Park East Synagogue, speaks at a tribute hosted by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in honor of his 90th birthday and six decades of leadership on behalf of religious freedom and human rights, March 12, 2020, at the United Nations in New York. (Diane Bondareff/AP Images for Appeal of Conscience Foundation)

The name, as Goldschmidt explained in his article, is a homage to the historic Altneuschul in Prague, the oldest operating synagogue in Europe. The congregations mission, he wrote, is to renew and reinvigorate its Judaism while still building on and learning from traditions and ways of life in the past.

The name also has a Hebrew meaning: al-tenai, which means on condition. [T]he synagogue will only thrive on the conditions of kindness, respect, and unity, among other values, he writes.

In an Instagram caption announcing the name, Chizhik-Goldschmidt described the diversity of people attending the new congregation.

Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt (center) teaches a class earlier this year leading up to the High Holidays. (Screenshot from LinkedIn via JTA)

I saw a Hasidish Jew from Williamsburg sitting near a Broadway actor; a young investigative journalist next to a group of long-time Upper East Side ladies; Jews who never went to shul before regularly next to Haredi Jerusalemites next to a beautiful young couple (Mexican-Persian & Russian) celebrating their wedding, she wrote.

In the last several years, weve had time to really think deeply about what communities need more of especially in urban areas like Manhattan, that have unique needs and unique voices, Chizhik-Goldschmidt told The New York Jewish Week. Were taking the learnings of the years weve accumulated and trying to put them into practice here.

Goldschmidt is the son of Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the chief rabbi of Moscow, and has studied at prestigious yeshivas in Israel and the United States. He does not have a university degree, which defenders of his firing said was a reason that he was not in line to succeed Schneier as Park Easts senior rabbi.

At Park East, Rabbi Goldschmidt focused on outreach to the Upper East Sides overlapping communities of young families and Russian-speaking Jews.

At Altneu, he plans to continue outreach towards young Jews in the formative periods of their life. Thousands and thousands of young, talented Jews from all over the world pass by [New York] a year, five years, 10 or 15, he said. But these are usually the years where they get their first job, where they choose who they marry, have a kid, and choose schools. Even as theyre passing through the Big Apple, if we could catch people and impact their lives and be a home for them, I think itd be a great accomplishment.

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RABBI JEFFREY ABRAHAMFebruary 17, 2022

Parshat Ki Tissa opens with the admonition, This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay (30:13) Gods command was for every male from 20 to 60, rich or poor, to be counted by their half-shekel contribution to the upkeep of the Tent of Meeting (Ohel Moed) and to raise the spiritual level of the contributors.

Our foremost commentator, Rashi, tells us that this was to effectuate a census and that God showed Moses a coin that had an image of fire on it to actually accomplish the enumeration. Rashi teaches: [The Holy One] showed [Moses] a coin of fire whose weight was a half-shekel and said, Like this they shall give.

Why did God show Moses a coin of fire? Why not show him a regular coin?This is the question.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) explains that money and fire share qualities. Fire is one of the most indispensable elements known to man when used properly. When used improperly, it has the potential to destroy. The same is true for money. Wealth carries great danger if it falls into the wrong hands and, if misused, could lead to destruction.

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Moses was shown a coin of fire to emphasize that both fire and money carry incredible powers for good or for evil. When used properly, they bring great well-being to the world. In the wrong hands, they can cause pain, destruction and death.

We can take several teachings from the seemingly straightforward and short admonition. Each of us, rich or poor, is equal before God. The close of this short admonition is the reference to atonement. Addressing that aspect, the Kotzker Rebbe (1787-1859) reminds us with a flourish: If one seeks atonement by giving, the good deed should be done with fire and passion.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham serves Congregation Bnai Amoona and is a member of the St. Louis Rabbinical and Cantorial Association, which coordinates the dvar Torah for the Jewish Light.

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Synagogue service times: Week of February 18 | Synagogues - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By admin on February 17, 2022

SOUTH BEND In what would be the first large-scale upgradeto a South Bend Housing Authority property in years, a plan has been developed to demolish both the Rabbi Shulman and Monroe Circle apartment complexes and build new public housing at the site.

Though demolition efforts still have to clear procedural hurdles and the process will require relocation for tenants, officials laud it as profound opportunity coming about because ofan influx of federalfunding and the organization's new leadership.

Weve got a lot of work ahead of us, said the Housing Authority's executive director, Catherine Lamberg. We have a monumental past reputation to overcome.

The news comes after years offinancial mismanagementand neglect of the 800 units the Housing Authority runs that house some 1,900 people in the city.

Federal inspectors in 2020 found hundreds of violations that included exposed electrical wiring, missing smoke detectors and sprinklers, bed-bug infestations and roaches. In fact, all Housing Authority properties failed their inspections in 2020. Then, agas leak at the Rabbi Shulman building in late 2020 forced more than 100 tenants to move out.

The authoritys former director,Tonya Robinson, and four other ex-employees or contractors were indicted last year on charges of defrauding the federal governmentout of millions of dollars.

The money, court records say, went to the "personal use and benefit" of the defendants including at least $1 million lost at local casinos.The money stemmed from requests to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for work on authority-run properties, according to court records.

Though tenants and their advocates generally welcome the plan to raze the two complexes and build anew, some told The Tribune they're leery about the relocation process and wonder what can be done to help residents in the interim.

Both the Monroe Circle and Rabbi Shulman apartments sit on a nine-acre plot just west of Four Winds Field. The six-story Rabbi Shulman building has 127mostly single-bedroomunits, while the Monroe Circle townhomes house a mix of 91 two- and three-bedroom units splayed out over the majority of the lot.

South Bend: From fire hazards to roaches: South Bend Housing Authority sites are among Indiana's worst

The Rabbi Shulman building became an urgent priority for the housing authority in 2020, when gas leaks caused the buildings 112 residentsto move out, with some hiccups.

While doing studies to determine the best course of action for Rabbi Shulman and the Monroe townhomes,the Housing Authority found that both complexes are obsolete and that it would be cheaper to demolish the properties and rebuild new units, rather than renovate.

We pretty much found Monroe Circle is equally as troubled, physically, as Rabbi Shulman, Lamberg said. It can make a significant difference in this community and this area to couple those two together for redevelopment.

Demolition and relocation efforts are at least months away, as the timeline and scope of the project are still being worked out,Lamberg says.

Before demolition can begin, the Housing Authority needs approval from HUD, which will take at least two months. In the meantime, the authority is partnering with developers McCormack, Baron and Salazar to determine what to build in place of the old units.

We know redevelopment is going to occur. What it will be is undetermined at this point, Lamberg said.

Lambergs current goal is to build back 300 units while maintaining the green spaces the Monroe Circle apartments currently have, though meetings with developers should flesh out specifics.

McCormack, Baron and Salazar did not return a message requesting an interview.

For residents andadvocates, the need to tear down the Monroe Circle buildings is apparent.

Shaque' Boyd has lived in the complex for four years and has had problems with cockroaches and mice over the past 18 months. With her fourth child on the way, Boyd said she's looking to moveout long before renovations get underway.

"I shouldn't have to live like this, especially in public housing," she said, adding that a teardown of the units should have already happened.

Rodney Gadson, president of the South Bend Tenant Association, feels relocating another set of low-income tenants is far from ideal, noting a series of issues that popped up while he worked with residents moving out of Rabbi Shulman.

Indiana: Former South Bend Housing Authority director and 4 others indicted on fraud charges

Gadson agreed with Boyd that the conditions at Monroe Circle have been bad for years and questioned whether theauthorityis taking enough immediate steps to help residents.

I understand your long-term goal that you want to tear down the buildings and rebuild them and get affordable housing, Gadson said. But what wasnt said was what are you doing in the immediate term?

South Bend Mayor James Mueller, lamented the years of neglect by past Housing Authority administrations, but said he supports Lambergs vision for new units on the lot.

Obviously relocating, we take that seriously, but that cant be the reason not to have these new units come online, Mueller said.

Lamberg said residents have been informed they will likely need to move at some point in the future and added that any Monroe Circle tenants who wish to return to the new units once they arecompleted will be able to do so.

As of December, 71 of Monroe Circles 91 units were occupied and Lamberg said there are enough vacant units at other Housing Authority properties to accommodate Monroe Circle tenants if they choose that option. The authority plans to provide rent vouchers for residents who choose to go elsewhere.

Relocation is not a day exercise, its not a one-size-fits-all, everybody goes here type of thing, Lamberg said.

Though the total cost of the project wont be determined for some time, officials will be looking at a number of financing options for the construction, including tax credits, federal grants and American Recovery Plan funds.

Well look far and wide. Well look high and low. Well put together a funding structure to accommodate the replacement of these developments, Lamberg said.

Officials willbe closely watching to see if President Joe Bidens Build Back Better infrastructure bill passes Congress, as it would create more funding for housing projects.

Mueller also said the city will consider offering the Housing Authority a portion of its federal stimulusmoney.

I would say that we want to see the project succeed and well keep working with the Housing Authority to find the right balance and work to get the funding streams necessary to make things happen, Mueller said.

In order to accommodate the expected construction, the authoritys board formed a nonprofit organization, South Bend Affordable Housing Corp last year. Lamberg said creating a nonprofit is a common practice when undertaking construction projects because Housing Authorities are not allowed to take on debt.

Meanwhile, Henry Turner, aMonroe Circle resident for more than a decade, said that while a move might be difficult for some, it's the best thing for tenantsgiven problems with lead poisoning and the quality of the water in the units.

"This is an excellent, great idea," Turner said. "They can get rid of some of the buildings with lead paint. It'll be healthier for the kids."

Email Marek Mazurek at mmazurek@sbtinfo.com. Follow him on Twitter:@marek_mazurek

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South Bend Housing Authority plans to tear down 2 long-troubled sites, build new housing - South Bend Tribune

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