Average Jew Better Off Than Average Pole Miller

Rejoice O Youth: Rational Approaches to God’s Existence and the Torah’s Divine Origin, by Avigdor Miller. 2010

Poland’s Jews Long Better Off Than Poles. Don’t Blame Catholicism for the Long History of Jewish Anti-Assimilation. Talmud and GOYIM. Cardinal Hlond Correct on Jewish Atheism

This work gets into considerable detail, and covers many subjects (review based on the original 1962 edition). Rabbi Avigdor Miller’s work is presented in the following question-and-answer format: The question is asked by in inquirer (Y, or Youth), and answered by this rabbi (S, or sage).

LET US STOP AWFULIZING THE SITUATION OF THE JEWS IN POLAND

Although Rabbi Miller frequently discusses Jewish injustices at the hands of gentiles, he also puts it in the proper perspective of relative Jewish privilege. He comments, (quote) Amid these conditions, our people were never enslaved into serfdom; and, despised as they were, they always retained a form of freedom and dignity, which was below aristocracy but high above serfdom. In every land of their exile, Jews lived with higher economic standards than the majority of the native inhabitants. Very frequently, they had gentile servants, whereas a Jew was almost never reduced to being a servant. (unquote). (p. 145).

DO NOT BLAME CATHOLICISM: WHY POLAND’S JEWS WOULD NOT ASSIMILATE

Throughout this work, the author is strongly anti-assimilationist. He thinks that Jews have harmed themselves by copying the ways of the goyim. However, his stance illuminates many features of the assimilation process.

We are often told that Jewish assimilation had to await the emergence of the modern secular state and the Enlightenment principles of equality, citizenship, and unambiguous separation of church and state. We thus hear the exculpation that Poland’s Jews did not want to assimilate because of the uncongenial Catholic-majoritarian atmosphere.

In contrast, Rabbi Avigdor Miller attributed the unwillingness of Poland’s Jews to assimilate to economic self-interest, along with an elitist, if not condescending, attitude towards Poles. The rabbi comments, (quote) When the Jews in Spain began to use that wealthy land as a means of mingling with the Arabs and Spaniards, G-d’s plan caused them to be expelled to lands of lesser culture, such as Turkey and Poland, with whom our people had no incentive to assimilate. Among these nations, G-d permitted the Jews to live in relative peace for centuries; for there was no danger that they would imitate the ways of the poor and backward populace. But those of our people who dwelt among the Germans, French, and English were tempted to mingle with them; for their higher living standards created a lure. You see how our nation adopted the German language, but not Polish or Turkish. (unquote). (pp. 276-277).

WHO IS MORALLY SUPERIOR–JEWS OR CHRISTIANS?

In 1936, Polish Cardinal August Hlond spoke of Jews being a bad moral influence on Poles, and has been endlessly criticized for doing so. Hlond was referring primarily to secularized Jews, which Rabbi Miller condemned also (See the section on the Holocaust). Even so, this attitude was hardly unusual. Throughout history, Christians and Jews have each thought of the other as governed by base instincts. Rabbi Miller lists various objectionable acts that he thinks were rare among pre-modern Jews, but common among non-Jews. This includes “gentile” vices such as drunkenness, violence, homosexuality, dueling, boxing, hunting, philandering, cruelty to children, etc. (pp. 150-on). The Talmud also appears to convey a sense of the moral superiority of Jews, as discussed next.

THE TALMUD ON JEWS AND THE GOYIM

What is the relationship, if any, between alleged Jewish elitism, and the Talmud? Although this book is not about the Talmud, it does touch on this question.

(Quote) Y. [Youth] This is perhaps the reason why “The gentile who keeps the Sabbath is deserving of death” (Sanhedrin 58B), for the true freedom and leisure which the Sabbath affords is beneficial only to Israel, who utilize it for the pursuit of holiness. The gentile uses his leisure to bring himself into harm, which he could avoid by being busy… [Sage] …it is a trespassing on holy ground when other nations celebrate the Sabbath by observing the thirty-nine prohibitions. But it is indeed true that leisure is harmful for them… (unquote). (pp. 267-268).

Let us analyze the foregoing Talmudic teaching. If the point is solely the absolute sanctity of the Sabbath, why is there such a strong gentile-belittling theme? What message does the sweeping assertion, that holiness is foreign to the goyim, send? Why insinuate, in quasi-racist fashion, that the goyim need to be kept busy so that they will be prevented from doing evil? What would the average Jewish reader reasonably conclude?

“It is all about interpretation,” we are told. Rabbi Miller unambiguously believes that, notwithstanding the gentile righteousness that comes from obeying the Noahide Laws (p. 136), the goyim are inferior ethically to Jews. This owes not only to God’s special blessings to the Jews, and the sanctification that comes from having and obeying the Torah, but also as something that is INNATE to Jews. He comments, (quote) Y [Youth]. So you say that, both by heredity and by the Torah influence, Jews are far superior to the nations of the world in qualities of character. S [Sage]. There is no doubt about that, as one can plainly see even by superficial observation. But you do not realize how vast is the difference between Israel and the nations. (unquote). (p. 136).

Now consider the irony of Rabbi Miller’s statements. If the Talmud does not teach that the goyim are innately ethically inferior to Jews, then Rabbi Miller was disobeying the very Talmud that he so extolled!

We are told that the condemnations of idolaters, in the Talmud, do not apply to Christians, at least to modern Christians. However, Rabbi Avigdor Miller identifies Christians as idolaters. (p. 4). Evidently, either the Talmudic statements about idolaters do apply to Christians, or Rabbi Miller has not been obeying the Talmud.

HOLOCAUST: GOD PUNISHES THE JEWS

This subject usually comes up when a few Christians, who had believed that the Holocaust was God’s punishment for Jewish sins, are condemned. However, some Jews, including Rabbi Avigdor Miller, believed likewise (of course, within the framework of Jewish theology).

The inferred divine punishment of German Jews was ironic. Germany’s Jews, so willing to submerge their Jewishness to “become Germans”, now were forced to confront and display their Jewishness in such garish and humiliating ways (Nuremberg Laws, wearing the Star, German citizens undergoing searches for traces of Jewish ancestry a century back, etc.) (p. 147, 349-351). Germany’s Jews, so enamored with German culture and German ways, now were forced to experience the true German character. (p. 350). The German crime of the Holocaust made Germans a nation of murderers (p. 155), and the destruction experienced by the Jews was unprecedented in history. (p. 144, 349).

The mechanics of the Holocaust was itself a form of punishment. (pp. 349-351). The synagogues of Reform Judaism had been spiritually destroyed, and now became physically destroyed by the Nazis. Jewish parents did not teach their children religion, and now saw their children murdered. Jewish women had departed from the virtues of chaste dress and behavior, and now were marched naked to their deaths in the gas chambers. And so on.

Polish Cardinal August Hlond, who has been endlessly condemned for his 1936 statement on “Jews as freethinkers”, was not alone in this thinking. Rabbi Miller also alluded to this, and went much further than Hlond. Rabbi Miller suggested that atheism is worse than idolatry (p. 6), and asserted that Polish Jews were punished, through the Holocaust, for their apostasy and self-atheization. Thus, he wrote, (quote) The Polish Jewry, which had a greater number of loyal Jews, were given two decades more after World War I. But on the upsurge of the greatest defection from the Torah in history, which was expressed in Poland by materialism, virulent anti-Torah nationalism, and Bundism (radical anti-religious socialism), G-d’s plan finally relieved them of all Free Will and sent Hitler’s demons to end the existence of these communities before they deteriorated entirely. (unquote). (p. 279).

Many commentators misunderstand the collective nature of Divine punishment, asking, for instance, why God would punish a religious Jew alongside an atheist Jew for the apostasy of the latter. Miller clarifies this, (quote) When the destroyer is let loose, he does not discriminate between the righteous and the sinners (Mechilta, Shmos 12:22). (unquote). (p. 263).

What about the Torah-rejecting Jews in nations, such as the USA, that escaped the Nazi scourge? It was an example of postponed judgment–a form of divine mercy. (p. 279).

SPECIAL CREATION AND THE AFTERLIFE

Rabbi Avigdor Miller believes in Creation ex nihilo–that God created everything out of nothing. (p. 137, 222, 289). Obviously, creation ex nihilo is not a “Christian interpretation” of Genesis 1. Rabbi Miller shares many of the beliefs of Christian creationists, such as a literal six-day creation (p. 12), the creation of the earth with a built-in appearance of age (p. 23), Flood geology (p. 25), and the pernicious nature of evolutionary theory, which reduces man to an animal, and encourages immorality. (pp. 6-9). Finally, Rabbi Miller believes that the higher critical theories of the Bible were an end in themselves. They were intended as an attack upon Jews through the demeaning of their Scriptures. (p. 5).

Unlike those authors who suggest that Judaism is vague on the Afterlife, Rabbi Miller does not, and he devotes considerable detail to this subject. (pp. 70-72). He also provides support for the premise that the human soul, after death, communes with God. (p. 71). This is similar to what most Christians believe, and it refutes the argument of the Seventh Day Adventists, who think of the independently functioning human soul as un-Scriptural, and allegedly taken from Greek philosophy.