Englewood, NJ – Hitchens Clings to Prejudice to Slander Jews

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     Christopher HitchensEnglewood, NJ – This past Shabbat my family and I hosted Rabbi and Mrs. Nachman Holtzberg, parents of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, the head of Chabad in Mumbai, who was brutally murdered with his wife Rivkah. You’d think that a family that watched their son and daughter-in-law slaughtered on TV by Islamic terrorists would feel hatred and a desire for revenge. But what this saintly father asked of our many guests was simply their participation in rebuilding Chabad of Mumbai so that his son’s selfless work would continue.

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    What a shame Christopher Hitchens did not join us. It might have dissuaded him from penning yet another ignorant and slanderous article about the murderous intent of Orthodox Jews, published in the Chicago Sun-Times on March 26. To read Hitchens these days is to be transported to an alternate universe where religious Jews are often terrorists inspired by racist Jewish ideology that is fomented by their rabbis. Of course, those who live in the real world and who never read about Orthodox Jews setting off bombs in Bali and Baghdad might be a trifle confused by his regular rants against Judaism.

    You should be. Most of the time he is simply fabricating, like this famous quote taken from his 2007 book God Is Not Great. “Dr. Baruch Goldstein … killed 27 worshippers … While serving as a physician in the Israeli army he had announced that he would not treat non-Jewish patients, such as Israeli Arabs, especially on the Sabbath. As it happens, he was obeying rabbinic law in declining to do this, as many Israeli religious courts have confirmed.”

    For this particular blood libel against Jewish courts Hitchens relied on a well-known hoax perpetrated by writer Israel Shahak, which was exposed as a fraud more than 40 years ago by Lord Immanuel Jakobovitz, chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth. When I challenged Hitchens about his use of a well-known forgery, and when he could not cite a single other religious court to have ever ruled that a non-Jewish life could not be saved on the Sabbath, he wrote to me and agreed to amend the item in the next edition of his book. He did not.

    Now he is at it again, only this time he’s outdone himself. Hitchens argued that the religious settlers in Israel are preparing for a future where “Torah verses will also be found that make it permissible to murder secular Jews as well as Arabs” as they all coalesce together to make the West Bank into an apocalyptic Jewish theocracy.

    What makes Hitchens so sure that his vision of Jewish mass-murder is just around the corner? He cites three proofs. First, Baruch Goldstein, whom he cites yet again. Second, OC Chaplaincy Corps Brig.-Gen. Avichai Ronzki, who “said that the main reason for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath . . . is to avoid exposing Diaspora Jews to hatred.” And third, the story in Numbers 31 of how Moses commanded the Jews to slaughter the Midianites. Of the story, he writes, “The nationalist rabbis who prepare Israeli soldiers for the mission seem to think that this book might be the word of God, in which case the only misinterpretation would be the failure to take it literally.”

    The fact that Hitchens must consistently fall back on Goldstein proves the opposite of the point he is trying to make. Jewish religious terrorism is rare to nonexistent. More importantly, Goldstein has become a symbol to Jews everywhere of evil and is almost universally regarded as an abomination to the Jewish faith.

    By contrast, many of our Muslim brothers and sisters and many clerics have the tragic habit of elevating suicide bombers to the rank of religious martyrs. Any rabbi who was to praise a Jewish murderer would be fired from his post and banished from his community. The Torah is clear: “Thou may not murder” (Exodus 20) and “Thou shalt not take revenge” (Leviticus 19).

    Second, no biblical story of massacre, which is a tale and not a law, could ever be used to override the most central prohibition of the Ten Commandments and biblical morality. Murder is the single greatest offense against the Creator of all life, and no Jew would ever use a biblical narrative of war or slaughter as something to be emulated.

    In our time, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, both universally regarded as moral leaders and outstanding men, ordered the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants in World War II through the carpet-bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Tokyo. Harry Truman would take it further by ordering the atomic holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    How did men who are today regarded as righteous statesmen order such atrocities? They were of the opinion that only total war could end Nazi tyranny and Japanese imperial aggression. They did it in the name of saving life. Which is of course not to excuse their actions but rather to understand them in the context of the mitigating circumstances of the time. I do not know why Moses would have ordered any such slaughter even in the context of war. But I do know that the same Bible which relates the story also forbids even the thought of such bloodshed ever being repeated.

    Finally, the Talmud’s debate as to whether a non-Jewish life may be saved on the Sabbath took place at a time when the Jews were subject to brutal Roman oppression, and the non-Jews in question were cruel Roman centurions. Should we violate our religion to save the life of those who oppress us? It is remarkable that even then the rabbis of the Talmud answered in the affirmative, mipnei darkei hashalom — because of the ways of peace. But whereas Hitchens quotes a rabbi who translates this to mean “peace with our non-Jewish neighbors,” the Lubavitcher Rebbe explained it to mean “because all of Judaism is about love and peace.”

    How sad that Hitchens, a self-proclaimed truth-teller and child of George Orwell, has yet again ignored evidence clearly presented to him in pursuit of pre-existing prejudices.


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    15 Comments
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    He's Halachically Jewish
    He's Halachically Jewish
    14 years ago

    Hitchen’s mother is Jewish. Wikipedia.org confirms that his mother is Jewish, but that she is/was assimilated. Therefore, he’s halachically Jewish.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    “… Murder is the single greatest offense against the Creator of all life …”
    I have 2 questions:
    1) In Cheilek (Sanhedrin), it lists those people who have no share in Olam Haba.
    Have you noticed that the list contains those who were involved in Avoda Zara (and not R’tzicha)?
    2) The punishment for Avoda Zara is S’kilah; for R’tzicha it isn’t (i.e. less chamur). Also, there are “kulos” for entrapping a Meisis U’madiach (i.e. Machminin). These same kulos do not exist for any other aveirah (i.e. a proper hasraah is required.)

    I would hesitate to “rank” any mitzva or aveira as greater/lesser than any other, based upon Pirkei Ovos, but, since you have done this (“… murder is the greatest offense …”), please answer these questions.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    what heter is thwre to bend the halacha, what the heter to be mecallel shabbes for pikuach nefesh in the first place? now if you will know the answer, that answer does not give hater even for mecallel shabbos (simon 329)

    TO #3
    TO #3
    14 years ago

    How about Tinnuk Sh’nishbu an infant to a frieye jewish home, no chance of ever keeping Shabos or a Shoiteh. Versus an infant to a mother which is Einu Yehudi.

    PMO
    PMO
    14 years ago

    Christopher Hitchens was, at one time, one of the great observers of society in our time. He has sadly become just another phony who likes to say/write things to sell books or air time. You can add him to a loooong list of phonies like Anne Coulter, Al Franken, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.

    These evil people just like to hear themselves talk… no matter who they hurt. It is pornography for sick, racist individuals all over the world. While I believe in his right to write whatever he wants, we should be taking to the airwaves to denounce him and his book. He should be exposed for the miserable, lying piece of filth he has become.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    To #1 :

    Please do yourself and us a favor and cease your acceptance/reliance/commitment to wikipedia.org, a do-it-yourself, Internet “reference” source that anyone with any agenda can write and revise anonymously.

    Eitan
    Eitan
    14 years ago

    “A symbol to Jews everywhere of evil” and “abomination to the Jewish faith” is quite a terrible thing to say about someone who saved a heck of a lot of Jewish lives…

    Lawyer
    Lawyer
    14 years ago

    We should all protest and have him fired,for racist false and bigot remarks.

    Milhouse
    Milhouse
    14 years ago

    Boteach is lying here, and shame on him for hanging his lie on the Lubavitcher Rebbe. There is no question at all that if not for eivoh one may NOT be mechalel shabbos to save a person who isn’t metzuveh in shabbos. A person who can get away with not saving such a person, and chooses to do it anyway, is a MECHALEL SHABBOS. And that is a worse sin than murder.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Some of the comments here, such as those in number 12, clearly represent a chillul Hashem, and risk much by publishing their drivel in a website such as this which is accessible to the masses I have no special fondness for R’ Shmuley, but he is clearly countering what amounts to a modern-day blood libel. This is not the format for a lomdishe discussion of the concept of how to save idol worshippers and anti-Semites on the Sabbath. I personally heard a major rabbi tell a few doctors that an even bigger rabbi forbade him from ever giving a shiur on this topic, even for lomdus, due to concerns about how it might be misrepresented in the media.

    I again reiterate that posts such as number 12 are dangerous for Yidden and a public internet forum is not the place for such a discussion.