Marlaud
07-06-2004, 09:50 AM
The perplexing problem of what to do about the savage anti-black
pronouncements of the rabbi hailed as one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of all time has been a difficult one for his acolytes. When in doubt the usual policy has been to falsify his texts, bowdlerizing an sanitizing them.
The first English-language translation of Maimonides' famous Guide of the Perplexed was completed in 1881 by M Friedlander, PhD. A second edition was prepared in 1904. A Rev. H. Goolancz is credited with translating some parts of the first twenty five chapters. However, our concern here is with the remaining 29 chapters translated by Friedlander himself; specifically chapter 51.
Before commencing our scrutiny it should be noted that Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed has become a classic among Gentile Judeophiles who pride themselves on their humanist and progressive credentials.
Largely thanks to the Friedlander translation, which was published for popular consumption in an inexpensive, mass market printing (Friendlander called it a "cheap edition"), it has entered the Wester cannon as a paradigm of lofty rabbinical philosophy, on par with Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas as worthy of study, application, and emulation by those seeking genuine enlightenment.
The Jewish translator Dr Friedlander and his backers knew that in
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed there were racist Talmudic teachings about black people, e.g. that they are a sub-human species, above simian but below human.
Here is how Friedlander translated the problem passage in his popular
version intended for the masses:
"The people who are abroad are all those that have no religion, neither one based on speculation nor one received by tradition ... Such are the extreme Turks that wander about in the North, the Ku****es who live in the South, and those in our country who are like there. I consider these as irrational beings, and not as human beings, they are below mankind, but above monkeys, since they have the form and shape of man and a mental faculty above that
of a monkey."
But this is what Maimonides actually wrote, as published in a translation intended mainly for scholars:
"Those who are outside the city are all human individuals who have no
doctrinal belief, neither one based on speculation nor one that accepts the authority of tradition: such individual as the furthermost Turks found in the remote North, the Negroes found in the remote South, and those who resemble them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes. For they have the external shape and linaments of a man and a faculty of
discernment that is superior to that of the apes."
It would be difficult to assess the degree of oppression which this
Talmudic passage, as codified by Maimonides, as well as another Talmudic passage which we shall examine, has created for the black race.
Moreover, the process of dissimulation through the substitution of code words (Kush for Negro here, and Kush for goy in the Soncino edition of the Talmud) is a feature of numerous texts of the religion of Judaism.
The most famous source of anti-Negro bigotry in the West, often mistakenly attributed to the Bible, centers on the story of Ham and Noah's cursing of Canaan.
The Biblical curse of enslavement in Genesis 9 has no specific racial
identification and contains no anti-black bigotry. Jewish scholar Harold Brackman in his 1977 PhD dissertation indicates that the source of the racial taint attached to Ham and his son Canann and their descendants is the Talmud, not the Bible:
"There is no denying that the Babylonian Talmud was the first source to read a Negrophobic content into the episode ... The Talmudic glosses of the episode added the stigma of blackness to the fate of enslavement that Noah predicted for Ham's progeny."
Christians who pay the Talmud no heed will not espouse its erroneous
identification of the African race with Bible sanctioned enslavement. But Christians who over the centuries have conceded some authority to
the "Talmudic glosses" which "added the stigma of blackness" to the
account in Genesis 9, will-- as in so many other instance where the Talmud is heeded -- fall into a pit of bigotry and falsehood having no scriptual basis.
Brackman quotes the Talmud's version of Genesis 9:
"Ham is told by his outraged father that, because you have abused me in the darkness of the night, your children shall be born black and ugly; because you have twisted you head to cause me embarassment, they shall have kinky hair and red eyes; because your lips jested at my expense, theirs shall swell."
From "Judaism's Strange Gods" by Michael Hoffman.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0970378408/
pronouncements of the rabbi hailed as one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of all time has been a difficult one for his acolytes. When in doubt the usual policy has been to falsify his texts, bowdlerizing an sanitizing them.
The first English-language translation of Maimonides' famous Guide of the Perplexed was completed in 1881 by M Friedlander, PhD. A second edition was prepared in 1904. A Rev. H. Goolancz is credited with translating some parts of the first twenty five chapters. However, our concern here is with the remaining 29 chapters translated by Friedlander himself; specifically chapter 51.
Before commencing our scrutiny it should be noted that Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed has become a classic among Gentile Judeophiles who pride themselves on their humanist and progressive credentials.
Largely thanks to the Friedlander translation, which was published for popular consumption in an inexpensive, mass market printing (Friendlander called it a "cheap edition"), it has entered the Wester cannon as a paradigm of lofty rabbinical philosophy, on par with Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas as worthy of study, application, and emulation by those seeking genuine enlightenment.
The Jewish translator Dr Friedlander and his backers knew that in
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed there were racist Talmudic teachings about black people, e.g. that they are a sub-human species, above simian but below human.
Here is how Friedlander translated the problem passage in his popular
version intended for the masses:
"The people who are abroad are all those that have no religion, neither one based on speculation nor one received by tradition ... Such are the extreme Turks that wander about in the North, the Ku****es who live in the South, and those in our country who are like there. I consider these as irrational beings, and not as human beings, they are below mankind, but above monkeys, since they have the form and shape of man and a mental faculty above that
of a monkey."
But this is what Maimonides actually wrote, as published in a translation intended mainly for scholars:
"Those who are outside the city are all human individuals who have no
doctrinal belief, neither one based on speculation nor one that accepts the authority of tradition: such individual as the furthermost Turks found in the remote North, the Negroes found in the remote South, and those who resemble them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes. For they have the external shape and linaments of a man and a faculty of
discernment that is superior to that of the apes."
It would be difficult to assess the degree of oppression which this
Talmudic passage, as codified by Maimonides, as well as another Talmudic passage which we shall examine, has created for the black race.
Moreover, the process of dissimulation through the substitution of code words (Kush for Negro here, and Kush for goy in the Soncino edition of the Talmud) is a feature of numerous texts of the religion of Judaism.
The most famous source of anti-Negro bigotry in the West, often mistakenly attributed to the Bible, centers on the story of Ham and Noah's cursing of Canaan.
The Biblical curse of enslavement in Genesis 9 has no specific racial
identification and contains no anti-black bigotry. Jewish scholar Harold Brackman in his 1977 PhD dissertation indicates that the source of the racial taint attached to Ham and his son Canann and their descendants is the Talmud, not the Bible:
"There is no denying that the Babylonian Talmud was the first source to read a Negrophobic content into the episode ... The Talmudic glosses of the episode added the stigma of blackness to the fate of enslavement that Noah predicted for Ham's progeny."
Christians who pay the Talmud no heed will not espouse its erroneous
identification of the African race with Bible sanctioned enslavement. But Christians who over the centuries have conceded some authority to
the "Talmudic glosses" which "added the stigma of blackness" to the
account in Genesis 9, will-- as in so many other instance where the Talmud is heeded -- fall into a pit of bigotry and falsehood having no scriptual basis.
Brackman quotes the Talmud's version of Genesis 9:
"Ham is told by his outraged father that, because you have abused me in the darkness of the night, your children shall be born black and ugly; because you have twisted you head to cause me embarassment, they shall have kinky hair and red eyes; because your lips jested at my expense, theirs shall swell."
From "Judaism's Strange Gods" by Michael Hoffman.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0970378408/