From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
     Eighteenth-century writer and philosopher Denis Diderot said the   
   Jews were taught by the Talmud "to steal the goods of Christians, to   
   regard them as savage beasts, to push them in a precipice, to kill   
   them with impunity and to utter every morning the most horrible   
   imprecations against them."38 The mutual animosity required that they   
   be held apart from the public at large "This people should be kept   
   separate from others,"   
      
      Also writing in the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was ap-   
   palled by the crude partisan theology of the Old Testament. Speaking   
   to the ancient Jews he said, "[You] paint us a God, angry, jealous,   
   vengeful, partial, hating men, a God of war and battles. Your God   
   is not ours. He who begins by selecting a chosen people, and proscrib-   
   ing the rest of mankind, is not our common father" (1769).42 Such men   
   were "the vilest of peoples"; one is aghast at "the baseness of this   
   people, incapable of any virtue," a race that constituted "the vilest   
   people perhaps who existed."   
      
      Working about the same time as Rousseau, Baron d'Holbach, a ma-   
   jor figure of the French Enlightenment, unleashed a blistering attack   
   on the Jews and their religion. In his Ecce Homo of 1770 he made the   
   following observations:   
   [When] we cast our eyes over the history of the Jews,  we are   
   forced to acknowledge, that this people were at all times the   
   blindest, the most stupid, the most credulous, the most supersti-   
   tious, and the silliest that ever appeared on the earth.  [By Mo-   
   saic Law,] the people of God were kept in a profound ignorance;   
   in an abject superstition; in an unsocial and savage aversion for   
   the rest of mankind; in an inveterate hatred of other forms of   
   worship [T]he Jewish people distinguished themselves only by   
   massacres, unjust wars, cruelties, usurpations, and infamies.44   
      
      But the preeminent French critic was surely Voltaire. Throughout   
   his long career he castigated the Jews at every opportunity. Voltaire   
   employed all the charges of his fellow countrymen, and more. As ear-   
   ly as 1722 he wrote of "the facility which the Jews have for being ad-   
   mitted and expelled everywhere" (Letter to Dubois).50 They have no   
   loyalty but to themselves, and to riches: "a Jew belongs to no land   
   other than the one where he makes money; can he not just as easily   
   betray the king for the emperor as the emperor for the king?"   
      
   In short, we find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people,   
   who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most de-   
   testable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every   
   people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Still, we ought   
   not to burn them.51   
      
   The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred   
   against all nations, and revolts against all masters; always super-   
   stitious, always greedy for the good of others, always barba-   
   rous-cringing in misfortune, and insolent in prosperity.53   
   And the fundamental reason? "Money was the object of their conduct   
   at all times."   
      
   "[T]hese circumcised Jews [are] the greatest scoundrels   
   who have ever sullied the face of the globe" (1773).59   
      
      But it was one particular warning by Voltaire that weighs heavily   
   upon us today. In 1771 he wrote: "[The Jews] are, all of them, born   
   with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and   
   Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit   
   surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the   
   human race."61   
      
      Finally, we cannot leave the French without hearing briefly from   
   Napoleon. A pragmatic leader, Napoleon sought to resolve the Jewish   
   problem by fully integrating them into Christian society-in effect,   
   making them disappear as a people. This, he thought, would mitigate   
   the damage that had been historically caused by the 'accursed race':   
   I do not intend to rescue that race, which seem to have been the   
   only one excluded from redemption, from the curse with which   
   it is smitten, but I would like to put it in a position where it is   
   unable to propagate the evil.62   
      
   But in his less charitable moments, Napoleon was more blunt: "The   
   Jews are an objectionable people, chicken-hearted and cruel.  They   
   are caterpillars, grasshoppers, who ravage the countryside."   
      
   The German tradition of Jewish criticism began with Martin Luther in   
   the 16th century, but then took a back seat to the French for more   
   than two centuries. It reemerged in the late 1700s with two of the   
   greatest names in German philosophy, Kant and Hegel.   
      
    Judaism is found to exclude from its communion the entire human race,   
   on the ground that it was a special people chosen by God for Himself-   
   [an exclusiveness] which showed enmity toward all other peo-   
   ples and which, therefore, evoked the enmity of all.64   
      
   The best solution, he thought, was for Judaism to die a quiet death   
   and to adopt the moral teachings of Christianity.   
      
    They do not seek any civil honor, but rather wish to compensate their   
   loss by profitably outwitting the very people among whom they find   
   protection, and even to make profit from their own kind. It can-   
   not be otherwise with a whole nation of merchants, who are   
   nonproductive members of society (for example, the Jews in Po-   
   land). Their condition, sanctioned by ancient precepts and recognized   
   even by us, cannot be altered by us without serious consequenc-   
   es, even though they have made the saying "buyer beware" the   
   supreme principle of morality in their dealings with us.   
      
      Around the same time, near the turn of the 19th century, other Ger-   
   man philosophers were compelled by social conditions to comment.   
   Johann Fichte was concerned primarily about the political ramifica-   
   tions of a growing Jewish subculture within German society.   
      
   Throughout almost all the countries of Europe there is spreading   
   a mighty hostile state that is at perpetual war with all other   
   states, and in many of them imposes fearful burdens on the citi-   
   zens: it is the Jews. I do not think, as I hope to show subsequent-   
   ly, that this state is fearful-not because it forms a separate and   
   solidly united state but because this state is founded on the ha-   
   tred of the whole human race.  In a state where the absolute   
   monarch cannot take from me my paternal hut and where I can   
   defend my rights against the all-powerful minister, the first Jew   
   who likes can plunder me with impunity. This you see and can-   
   not deny, and you utter sugary words of tolerance and of the   
   rights of man and civil rights, all the time wounding in us the   
   primary rights of man.  Do you not remember the state within   
   the State? Does the thought not occur to you that if you give to   
   the Jews, who are citizens of a state more solid and more power-   
   ful than any of yours, civil rights in your states, they will utterly   
   crush the remainder of your citizens?81   
      
      
   Herder then comments on "the intolerant spirit of the Jew-   
   ish religion," citing its more notable characteristics as "pride,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)