Today, more than 60 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is not just a fact of history, it is a current event.

The advent of the Jewish nation began with one man, Abraham the Ivri, in the seventeenth century B.C.E. Abraham suffered both persecution and exile because of his spiritual convictions and lifestyle. The king at the time was the powerful Nimrod, a self-proclaimed deity.

Because of Abraham's ideas and behavior, he was summoned before Nimrod. According to the Midrash, fear gripped the king, for more and more of his people were attracted to Abraham's heretical teachings. The king's power and influence were threatened. Therefore, in order to estrange Abraham from his intimidating philosophy and behavior, he was cast into prison; and in order to uproot any remaining rebelliousness, he was denied food and drink. When these strategies failed, Abraham was condemned to death.

Nimrod's plans proved unsuccessful, but the vicissitudes of Abraham's life would become the prototypic path on which his descendents, over the next 3,700 years, would tread.

The Egyptian Sojourn

Due to the great famine, Jacob and his family journeyed from the land of Canaan to Egypt at the urgings of his son. Initially, Pharaoh quite graciously granted to Jacob and his sons the best of Egypt, the fertile land of Goshen, to dwell in as free men. In Egypt, Jacob's family grew by leaps and bounds.

The Midrash relates that the Hebrews became ardent cosmopolitans and that their presence was conspicuous at the great cultural events of the day. According to the historian Josephus, the industrious and successful nature of the Hebrew people made them the envy of Egypt. Likewise, according to the Midrash, their remarkable rate of increase, coupled with feats of heroism, placed them in a highly visible and prominent position.

Pharaoh was then struck by a seeming paranoia - a common theme throughout Jewish history - "lest they multiply and endanger the land." His solution: "Let us deal wisely with them." But to the dismay of Egypt, the Jewish people began to increase in proportion to the oppression. The Egyptian plan to uproot the Hebrews' stubborn national identity via slavery proved unsuccessful.

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Egypt then implemented its second stage of attack: not simply slavery but backbreaking, bone-crushing labor. This second stage of attack was also unsuccessful, and consequently Pharaoh decreed the murder of all male Hebrew infants at birth.

When the Hebrew midwives refused to carry out Pharaoh's command, he decreed that every newborn male be cast into the river.

Persian Persecution

As in Egypt, the Jews' refusal to totally assimilate infuriated the ruling power in Persia. When attempts to break the Jewish spirit by estranging them from their traditions proved unsuccessful, the only recourse for these despots was total annihilation. But the Jewish people continued to persevere in their already ancient traditions and in their relationship to the land promised them forever by God. In contrast, the Persian empire was eventually dissolved along with its indigenous type of religion and form of government.

Ancient Greece

For 150 years Greek civilization and Jewish culture were able to coexist, but with the advent of Antiochus Epiphanes (175 B.C.E.) the relationship became badly strained. Antiochus believed himself divine, and ordered all peoples under his rule to erect statues of him in their temples and prostrate themselves before his image. He imposed Grecian culture and would not tolerate Jewish distinctiveness.

He eventually decreed that Judaism be completely abolished. He called for cessation of the service in the Temple, and in its place set up pagan temples throughout the country. He commanded that the Temple be converted into a pagan house of worship. The observance of the Sabbath and festivals, Jewish dietary laws and circumcision were all forcefully prohibited.

All copies of the Bible were to be burned, and anyone found possessing them would be executed. Even to profess one's Jewishness was punishable by death.

Yet Antiochus, like his predecessors, was unsuccessful in uprooting the Jewish spirit. Matityahu the Hasmonean, with his five sons, led a group of militarily undisciplined zealots against the vastly superior Greek-Syrian army and miraculously prevailed.

Ancient Rome

The years between 60 B.C.E and 70 C.E. proved a perilous period in Jewish history. The Romans were unrelenting in their efforts to subjugate the Jewish people. This set the stage for fierce battles between the two nations in which literally hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered, and reached its climax in the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.).

The tortures inflicted upon the Jews to compel them to transgress their tradition reached an apex of barbarity. Not content with these brutalities, the Romans sought out families said to be descended from the House of David in order to eradicate any hope for the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom.

The great Roman empire eventually faded from history, and its indigenous and conquered populations adopted, or were forced to adopt, new political leadership, foreign ideologies, novel individual and group mores, and new religions. Ironically, however, its defeated opponent, the Jewish people, continued as a distinct civilization.

Another remarkable phenomenon was that the Land of Israel, after being devastated by Rome, was to remain a wasteland for the next eighteen hundred years, never to become a sovereign or even autonomous political entity until the creation of the modern Jewish State of Israel in 1948.

Christian Animus

The next epoch of overt anti-Jewish hostility, which lasted for at least 1,500 years, is probably the most unfortunate and paradoxical - unfortunate because the non-Jewish world never had a chance to objectively observe and understand Jewish tradition; paradoxical because the group carrying out this oppression was an offspring of Judaism itself, and when all auxiliary manifestations (which came about only afterward) are removed, is not too distinct from other deviant Jewish sects throughout history.

Whereas other Jewish sects disappeared, however, Christianity became a non-Jewish religion.

Historically, only in the second and third centuries - when Christianity began severing itself completely from Judaism - did harsh intolerance of Judaism and the Jewish people commence. The early Church Fathers, while trying to consolidate Christianity and formulate an official dogma, viewed the Judaizing influence as too intimidating. This was especially true while a dynamic Jewish people, following its own traditions, continued to exist. To sever the Jewish tradition from Christianity would uproot Christianity, but to accord it legitimacy would shed doubt on the Church's role as the "new Israel."

A logical alternative was to claim that the Church had replaced the old Israel because of the latter's grievous sins, particularly the abomination of deicide. Accordingly, only through conversion could Jews redeem themselves in this world and the next. In effect, it was Christianity's disassociation from its mother religion, Judaism, that supplied the rationalization for the ensuing discrimination, persecution and massacres suffered by Jews at the hands of Christians.

Muslim Antecedents

Islam was the second major religion to spring forth from Judaism, but unlike Christianity, its founder was not a Jew and it was not originally a Jewish sect. No group could have validated Muhammad's claims as could the Jews, and no group could have so seriously undermined the new creed as could the Jewish nation. The consequences of the Jews' rejection of Islam were inevitable: Muhammad turned against them. His hostile reactions were then recorded in the Koran, granting Muslims, throughout history, divinely based antipathy toward Jews.

Islam's guiding principle concerning the treatment of Jews was that Islam dominates and is not to be dominated. Once non-Muslims forfeited their civil liberties, they were allowed some degree of freedom. When, however, Jews would receive equal status in "Muslim territory" and, needless to say, when they would forge their own independent state, the Jewish presence would no longer be tolerated.

Present-Day Hostility

The Western world today may like to believe that public slander against Jews is no longer a serious threat. Nevertheless, a preponderance of propaganda has, in fact, been in vogue for at least the last forty years. But this time the allegations are not directed against a vulnerable minority group, and this time the group is not characterized as attempting to undermine society. Today the allegations are directed against the Jews of Israel, who are portrayed by Arab-Muslim propagandists and their supporters as subduing and attempting to eradicate an entire nation.

Historically speaking, however, the Palestinian refugee plight cannot be the source of the conflict, and the claim that the Arabs have initiated four wars with Israel on behalf of the refugees is historical nonsense. Only after the Six-Day War in 1967 did Arab leaders shift from outraged proclamations calling for the total destruction of Israel to sympathetic rhetoric on behalf of their "Palestinian brethren."

Arab anti-Israel rhetoric has led the world to believe that the Palestinian plight is the primary problem, and in its wake granted legitimacy to Arab terrorism toward both Israel and Jews everywhere.

Distinctively Jewish

Since World War II there have been many English works delineating anti-Jewish occurrences, but these books do little more than describe the many unfortunate details. The descriptions presented in most such works depict mankind's depravity but fail miserably in describing the uniqueness of anti-Jewish activity. Their universal message of group bigotry, via the Jewish experience, is deemed most important. Accordingly, Jews are depicted as qualitatively replaceable by other persecuted and discriminated-against groups such as blacks, women, native Americans, etc. The authors' focus on anti-Jewish hostility is only due to the intensity and extensiveness of persecution Jews have endured.

Thus, according to most authors, anti-Jewish activity appears no different, in kind, from other forms of group hostility, and lessons to be learned are not and never intended to be specifically Jewish but rather universal in scope and application. It is this intention of admonishing the world (via the Jewish experience) that has precluded the analysis of anything distinctively Jewish.

My new book, The Anti-Jewish Phenomenon: A Historical Torah Analysis (Feldheim), traces incidents of anti-Semitism from the age of the prophets through contemporary times. Through historical and scientific investigation I demonstrate that by a return to Jewish tradition, true security, prosperity and extended peace can be achieved.

While other writers present a sad commentary on society, my analysis describes the anti-Jewish experience as an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. Where other writers derive universal lessons from Jewish history - which they hope will benefit other persecuted minority groups - my book derives Jewish lessons that can serve universal ends.

The Assimilationists' Proposition

According to assimilationists, Jews should completely integrate within the larger general society. If only the Jew would relinquish his distinctive Jewish identity, they say, he would free himself and posterity from further oppression.

There is, however, a paradoxical historical phenomenon that mitigates against the above solution: the inconsistent policies toward Jews on the part of non-Jewish national and international powers. This inconsistency is not mentioned in most, if any, analyses of anti-Jewish history.

As we've discussed, anti-Jewish powers throughout history have fervently attempted to assimilate the Jews into their respective empires and have, most often, been met by intransigence. But during the various periods of history when large Jewish populations were visibly in the process of relinquishing their Jewish identity (late medieval Spain, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia, twentieth-century Germany), inexplicably, in those very lands where total assimilation seemed to be a foregone conclusion, the Jewish people were met with extreme and unnatural hostility and persecution.

Moreover, the antipathy toward Jews during those times of mass assimilation was aimed primarily at assimilated Jews. While all Jews - assimilated and non-assimilated - suffered, the primary focus of rage and hostility appeared to be the Jew who so attempted to identify with his non-Jewish compatriot. The importance of this historical phenomenon rests in its being such a resounding argument against the claim that Jewish suffering is a direct consequence of Jewish separatism.

Ironically, the very forces that so feverishly tried to assimilate Jews were now the chief antagonists obstructing the rapid assimilation process and creating a division between Jew and non-Jew which even Jewish separatism, in its most extreme form, could not parallel.

This relationship between the Jewish people's collective behavior and subsequent oppression - or conversely prosperity and security - is seen throughout Jewish history.

The Real Focus

Hostility toward the Jewish nation appears not to be against the Jews per se, but against their unnatural connectedness to the foundations of their faith. Jewish nationalism was usually the first to be attacked. When this failed, the Jewish spirit was assailed via book burning and prohibitions against teaching or observing Jewish law. And as the Jewish entity inexplicably remained (more or less) intact, physical persecution and total annihilation became the logical and "final solution."

Anti-Jewish powers throughout history have seemed intent not necessarily on annihilating Jews but on eradicating the relationship Jews represent. In essence, their hostility has focused against a Power that transcends the temporal and constantly calls into question their own declared supremacy and imagined immortality.

In short, their attack appears to be against God Himself.

Rabbi Benzion Allswang, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who teaches Jewish history at Fasman Yeshiva (Hebrew Theological College) in Skokie, Illinois. This essay is adapted from his new book "The Anti-Jewish Phenomenon," available at Judaica bookstores and at www.feldheim.com for online purchase.

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Christianity did not break away from Judaism.
Date 12:07, 07-17, 08

It was a pagan greek egyptian astrological allegory (Dec25, virgin birth, resurrection this is all pagan astrological allegory) that had nothing to do with Judaism, the gospel writers just used Jewish texts (poorly) to match and give substance to the vision they wanted to create, the factual basis is all a lie, their god never lived just a myth, a legend, a story, why give credit where it is even not warranted.