The Jew calling the kettle black

May 28th 2008 – Hundreds of New Testaments have been set alight in a massive bond fire yesterday in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Deputy Mayor of the City, Uzi Aharon, admitted to orchestrating the gathering of as much ‘messianic propaganda’ as possible throughout the city yet denies he organized the burning of the Holy Books. Judaism does not, of course, follow the New Testament nor do they believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. They believe he was a prophet among others. Mr. Aharon stipulates that the ‘pile’ of propaganda he gathered was accidentally set on fire by a group of rebellious students; it was not planned. Needless to say, millions are outraged at this display of hatred and intolerance.

Firstly, the shock and outrage of Christians, evangelists and messianic Jews seems justified in a conservative and closed way where freedom of expression means staying at home and whispering things to yourself while listening to Fox News. Funny enough, my definition of freedom of expression obliges me to respect the closed-mindedness of these people and their vocal outrage. I will certainly not hatch the freedom of expression debate here therefore I will focus on the actions themselves. Furthermore, perhaps their shock comes from the fact that Jewish people seem as religiously, ethnically and ideologically prejudiced as any other nation. Israel is no longer (and has technically never been) a paragon of virtuous acceptance of all walks of life. They, also, have a radical fringe of society (which incidentally includes the Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv) which will not accept anyone else’s beliefs or differences and will intimidate them through violent expression.

I would need countless pages to demonstrate the thousands of examples, in Space and Time, of cultural intolerance so I will focus on the religious parallel of Martin Luther’s heretic Bible in the early XVIth century.

Following Luther’s publication and propagation of a written, German bible, the lay person who was not verses in Latin could now read the Scriptures. Furthermore, his Protestant interpretation of the Bible rejected the corrupt papal order, including the Vatican and thus the Book angered many Catholic monarchs of Europe as well as the web-like network of Catholicism present at the time. Notoriously in England, Thomas More organized public burnings of this Bible to warn heretics in a graphic manner of the consequences against believing in the wrong set of values. In a further twist of Irony, Martin Luther (the philanthropist and populist) did publish angry hate speeches against the European Jewry. He especially encouraged the burning of Synagogues and of all Jewish homes as well as the confiscation of their money and investments. Thankfully, it was the last example of hateful words and actions perpetrated against Jewish people by a German.

The original piece of topical news and the above historical parallel in Renaissance Europe interestingly boast the same hypocrisy. The Israeli national and local gouvernments have insisted on the difficult History their people have endured and the current prejudices exercised against them throughout the world. On the other hand, one of their elected officials organized a seizure and a possible burning of New Testaments (reminiscent of the novel Fahrenheit 451). 500 years ago, Martin Luther railed against the elitist and unfair papist monarchies who did not convey God’s message of love and guilt for all, equally. On the other hand, he encouraged the singling out and maiming of a particular religious group.

Oh well, most people will never do anything noteworthy with their life, we can hardly blame certain illustrious people for not practicing what they preach. At least they tried something and affected change; as long as they are not upheld as spotless epitomes of tolerance and acceptance, they simply remain people of interest and not people of veneration.

(Pictured: A seemingly smug Martin Luther - a Bible, burning)

End.