CHAZALIC INDIGESTION -- REALLY, I HAD NO IDEA WHAT ELSE TO CALL THIS POST!

The Godol Hador has an interesting posting here:
http://godolhador.blogspot.com/#115134043716276584
["Is Orthodox Judaism bad for you?"]


One of the questions he poses is how to justify the seemingly unethical parts of Orthodoxy to a non-Orthodox person?

And by extension, how do you justify the statements in the Talmud which are derogatory of Goyim?


I'm afraid that both of these questions presume that there is a simple justification for each of those problems. So of course the Godol Hador says that it is impossible.

Which is true.

But also, wrong.


Here's paragraph five of his post:

5. Unethical Teachings in the Talmud & Elsewhere
The anti-semites (and some skeptics) make a big deal about many seemingly unethical comments in the Talmud, which are derogatory about goyim or whatever. Mostly they probably have a point, though I think they overstate it. Nowadays we have all these PC answers (e.g. Sheloh asani goy is not derogatory but merely reflects our happiness at being given extra responsibility or some such fluff) but the statements remain, and of course nobody OJ is going to say Chazal were a bit racist. Even the Rambam calls negroes less than human in the Moreh, and basically says that stupid people can be killed.


Permit me to discuss.

"The anti-semites (and some skeptics) make a big deal about many seemingly unethical comments in the Talmud, which are derogatory about goyim or whatever. "

-----Those unethical or derogatory statements are taken out of context, and presented on their own. The anti-semites do not ever quote the ethical statements, or even give any indication that they have read more than that which they wanted to find in the Talmud (and many of them simply lift the data from other anti-semites directly, and add their own commentary).

The pro-goyim statements are never quoted. The statements which contradict the anti-goyim statements are never quoted. The openminded and outrageously liberal statements are never quoted.

In the same way that one can take statements in the Talmud to prove that Jews are racist bigots, one can take statements in the Talmud to prove the exact opposite.

The Talmud is not a coherent document, but a collection of discourses. The methodology is reasonably coherent, the discourse veers all over the map. And clearly includes much spleen.

I think I can probably find proof in the Talmud that acid indigestion was a major influence on talmudic thought. They should've had Pepso Bishmol.



"Mostly they probably have a point, though I think they overstate it. Nowadays we have all these PC answers (e.g. Sheloh asani goy is not derogatory but merely reflects our happiness at being given extra responsibility or some such fluff) ..."

-----The correct answer to 'shelo asani goy' is 'she asani goy'. A goy should not be grateful for having been created? Obviously a goy cannot say 'shelo asani goy'! Should a goy say nothing?



" ...but the statements remain, and of course nobody OJ is going to say Chazal were a bit racist. Even the Rambam calls negroes less than human in the Moreh, and basically says that stupid people can be killed."

-----And the Rambam reflects his time and place. Certainly a physician to the sultan did not live 'separate from the nations'; more to the point, he was drenched in the nations (and their attitudes). He was, in fact, a very Arabian gentleman.

The Ba'al ha Tanya says goyish souls are animalistic and evil - I too have irrational preconceptions and biases about Russians and Ukrainians.
We are coloured by our environment.

Our environment is, for many of us today, a much more complex place than people a century or more ago knew. Chazal, Maimonides, and Der Alter were indeed racists, by our standards. Not by theirs, and they had NO reason to know better - arguably, every reason to NOT know better.

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AFTERTHOUGHT: Why is it that some folks believe that a cursory whack-through of the Talmud is enough to prove their preconceptions about the beast? It isn't that the Talmud is even particularly difficult, just that there is an awful lot of it. The combination of Mishna, Gemara, commentaries, and cross-referencing, taken together, is sufficiently massive that much more reading is required than the typical light readers are capable of (especially as the brain needs to be kicked into gear for this). And there is more to Talmud than just Talmud - there is also everything since the Talmud - that too is Talmud.