'Blood Libel' and Sarah Palin: Christian Conservatives' Infatuation with Judaism

I strongly suggest you check Sarah Palin 10 minute U-tube speech for yourself before you attack her, and see Schmuely Boteach's column in the Wall Street Journal. It is extraordinarily clear.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703583404576079823067585318.html

Palin was right: there was a gross libel characterizing her as at fault for the acts of an evil mad man. Unfair blame of the right and Palin for the deaths in Tucson was a blood libel. Once she defended herself she was then attacked for inserting herself in the story. In a manner of gross sexism, she is a accused of being too stupid to understand what the phrase meant. That's crazy... check out what Schmuley Boteach had to say in the Wall Street Opinion Journal.

By SHMULEY BOTEACH

The term "blood libel"—which Sarah Palin invoked this week to describe the suggestions by journalists and politicians that conservative figures like herself are responsible for last weekend's shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz.—is fraught with perilous meaning in Jewish history.

The term connotes the earliest accusations that Jews killed Jesus and enthusiastically embraced responsibility for his murder, telling Pontius Pilate, "His blood be upon us and our children" (Matthew 27:25). Thus was born the legend of Jewish bloodlust and of Hebrew ritual use of Christian blood for sacramental purposes. The term was later used more specifically to describe accusations against Jews—primarily in Europe—of sacrificing kidnapped Christian children to use their blood in the baking of Passover matzos.

The Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth is generally credited with having popularized the blood libel in his "Life of the Martyr William from Norwich," written in 1173 about a young boy who was found stabbed to death. Thomas quoted a servant woman who said she witnessed Jews lacerating the boy's head with thorns, crucifying him, and piercing his side. While William was canonized, the Jews of Norwich fared less well. On Feb. 6, 1190, they were all found slaughtered in their homes, save those who escaped to the local tower and committed mass suicide.

Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.

The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel.

Jews did not kill Jesus. As the Roman historian Tacitus makes clear, he was murdered by Pontius Pilate, whose reign of terror in ancient Judea was so excessive, even by Roman standards, that (according to the Roman-Jewish chronicler Josephus) Rome recalled him in the year 36 due to his sadistic practices. King Herod Agrippa I, writing to the Emperor Caligula, noted Pilate's "acts of violence, plunderings . . . and continual murder of persons untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending, endless, and unbelievable cruelties, gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity."

Murder is humanity's most severe sin, and it is trivialized when an innocent party is accused of the crime—especially when that party is a collective too numerous to be defended individually. If Jews have learned anything in their long history, it is that a false indictment of murder against any group threatens every group. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Indeed, the belief that the concept of blood libel applies only to Jews is itself a form of reverse discrimination that should be dismissed.

Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder, as the Hebrew Bible condemns accusations of collective guilt against Jew and non-Jew alike. "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him" (Ezekiel 18).

How unfortunate that some have chosen to compound a national tragedy by politicizing the murder of six innocent lives and the attempted assassination of a congresswoman.

To be sure, America should embrace civil political discourse for its own sake, and no political faction should engage in demonizing rhetoric. But promoting this high principle by simultaneously violating it and engaging in a blood libel against innocent parties is both irresponsible and immoral.

Rabbi Boteach is the author of "Honoring the Child Spirit: Inspiration and Learning from Our Children" (Vanguard, 2011). He will shortly publish a book on the Jewishness of Jesus and his murder at Roman hands.

what a crock, blood libel should be applied to the ship Liberty....check it out on google...that is blood libel where Ireal planes attacked an American warship reapetedly with a hube American Flag on it's sides killing 42 American sailors...where is the disgust and inidnancy in the news over that. Sara is an All Americdan woman, I have heard her speak and would vote for her today.

I find it rather strange since Alan Dershowitz a Professor of Law, Harvard University has a very different interpretation of "Blood Libel" Atty. Dershowitz is known nation wide for his knowledge...Yet attacks are lingering against Palin...
It is also very odd Mr Dershowitz comments have gone ignored by those casting a
different slant...Dershowitz is also Jewish, and a Lawyer...strange!

Israel is the homeland of all born again christians and all should emigrate to become citizens of Israel.

what amazes me is how the media jumps on Sarah palin and blames her for just about everything. When she defended herself, she was again jumped on for her comments. I don't get it, Obama is so incompetent and gets a free ride and Palin is very competent and gets bullied constantly. I admire her grit.

Ms. Palin comments that the crime "stands on it's own." But no act of this type does. One commentator likened the toxic atmosphere in America to a flu epidemic. It has an effect on everyone, but some people have stronger immune systems than others. People with very strong "antibodies" can resist being infected, others will feel an unexplained malaise, some will sicken and some will die.

The tenor of recent debate and dialogue on a number of subjects has filled our environment with viral antipathy. Can we be at all surprised that some among us are unable to withstand the effects?

I echo President Obama's call to inoculate ourselves and each other with as potent a dose of empathy as we can. He's right: only we can ultimately control how we treat each other. "A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love. ...If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men." — Abdu'l-Baha Abbas

I was very disappointed in Palin, not just over her anti-Jewish quote. The shooter was obviously mentally ill. The way she said "evil" suggested he was possessed by the devil or some supernatural force. Suggesting that the mentally ill are "evil" does nothing to help prevent future tragedies like this, nor does absolving everyone but the "evil one" do anything to prevent re-occurrences of the tragedy. It is the preaching of helplessness--we can't do anything to prevent things like this, the people, the society, had nothing to do with it--rather than the empowering view that we can change things to make the world a safer place and prevent these tragedies--and these tragedies ARE preventable. The problem is the focus on "blame" and finger pointing--I'm not to blame, they're not to blame, only he's to blame, only the mysterious forces of evil are to blame--and NOT focusing, as we should, on exactly what transpired and what could have been done to prevent it. While ultimate responsibility may lie with the shooter, ultimate responsibility also lies with us to try to determine what lead to this tragedy, how we can identify mental illness, and, yes, how can we tone down the rhetoric so that the mentally ill aren't motivated into actions like this. And, no, her superstitious belief that there's a mysterious force of "evil" that inhabit people's bodies and causes them to take wrongful actions, is not going to help prevent such actions.

Take a look around, not just at Sarah. Republicans everywhere have played with fird and encouraged violence in the political realm, where it doesn't belong. Giffords asked Sarah to take down the sniper targets and she flat out refused. Gifford's political opponant, the Republican who ran against her and lost, actually held events for voters to fire rounds from an M16 at a "target." Is that normal politics? No, it's thuggery.

Remember when the media laughed when Ann Coulter said a politican should be "fragged?" (killed). A lot of other Republicans said similar things various times. The Republican Party has been feeding their flock little cues like this for a few years now, even before the Republican Tea Party. They don't know how to win elections, they only know how to destroy their enemies. And now they've destroyed a few Arizona families, inadvertently.