[Editor: We'll present this text to Dr. L. Levine, our Orthodox Jewish consultant, for a comment]
The question that was posed in our last column was “What did the Old Testament and the Talmud, both of which shape the existence of the Jews, say?!” This question is necessary to answer because of the alienation of Jews with or from the world. But another factor has also made answering this question necessary: the question of Jewish identity and its espousal of the logic of race and descent, and the tendency to regard Jews as God’s distinguished holy chosen people, which is followed by a claim of the purity of race and of ancestry. Another problem is that of isolation or seclusion, the story of a national homeland and the factors that led the Jews to look at the world through the lens of race, which put the rest of the world in the sphere of “the other.”
[Another important question is of] what is happening to the Jewish faith in terms of feelings of superiority or genius, both of which have contributed to the discrimination between Jews and non-Jews in Jewish society.
All these questions, and others that have shaped the relationship between Jews and the world throughout history, should be reviewed and their real reasons should be examined. And this examination should not be hindered by the alleged accusations of anti-Semitism. These accusations should not close the door in the face of research and discovery. These accusations did not stop the production, the realization and the shooting of the film “The Passion of the Christ.” This film shattered in two hours the endless efforts by the Jewish Zionists in America to suppress the showing of Christ’s suffering. Islam does not hold any person responsible for what his ancestors did, in the case of the Jews that also holds true. But the Jews’ insistence on linking themselves to a common ancestry made them fall into a trap: Since they are linked to their forefathers, thus they are responsible for what their forefathers did i.e. crucifying and torturing Christ. They try hard to deny their responsibility and render their forefathers innocent, but that did not work [editor: the problem is that many Christians have interpreted the Bible verse ‘his blood be on us, and on our children.’as a justification to persecute Jews. That is what Jews oppose to.].
Muslims who descended from the non-believer groups in Arabia, the Quraysh, did not try to deny or try to clear themselves of the responsibility of hurting prophet Muhammad. And that is because Islam does not look at race or ancestry.
And from here it is clear that the question of who caused suffering to Christ--the Jews--is caused by a problem that is in origin a “race” problem. Thus, it is important to look into Judaism as believed in by the Jews themselves and not Judaism as mentioned in the Qur’an [editor: correct!]. The Jewish holy book consists of the Pentateuch [the first five books of the Old Testament considered as a unit], historical books, poetical books and prophetical books. There are also vision books that were excluded from the Old Testament and they are called the Apocrypha [These include 14 books of the Old Testament that had been included in the Vulgate but omitted in Jewish and Protestant versions of the Bible]. The Talmud was written in the sixth century A.D. and became the first religious book of Jews. In the 13th century the Cabala book appeared [see link http://www.geocities.com/lucifer_gnosis/book_reviews/cabala.html], and others, all of which form the Jewish religious reference.
The Ten Commandments form the Jewish law. The commandments mention that one should not say false things as a witness, but only as a witness to actions that would benefit one’s relatives [“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”
(Exodus 20: 16)]. Even the mention of God in the commandments designates God as the God of Israel. Also, protection is only given to relatives and not to “the other.” Although Christianity shares the Old Testament with the Jewish faith, in its version of the commandments Christianity erased the condition of being a relative in order to be protected. Thus, Christianity paid attention to the mistakes of the commandments because those mistakes were based on an ethnic understanding that Christianity did not approve of. Islam also did not put ethnicity as a condition for Muslims to bear true witnesses, because doing right is a duty to God and does not depend on who you are doing right by.
The religious commandments have the deepest impact on people. It shapes their vision. That is why we have to examine this impact.
