Pogroms Jews Against Jews Fishman

East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914, by William J. Fishman. 2005

Seldom-Told Jew on Jew Pogroms: Atheist Jews and Religious Jews Fight It Out. Double Standards: If Poles Did Such Acts To Jews, We Would Not Hear the End of It!

The usage of the term pogrom, in customary reference to a GOY doing violence to a Jew, obscures the fact that Jews frequently did violence to each other. For this reason, I expand the term pogrom to include Jew on Jew violence. This book is about the emergence of Jewish radicalism among the Jewish immigrants in the East End of London in the late 19th century, and features examples of Jew on Jew pogroms. I focus on a few examples of this.

THE JEWISH ESTABLISHMENT AGAINST JEWISH RADICALS

Author William J. Fishman writes, “Violence erupted spasmodically as Jewish establishment interests attempted to subvert radical groups. In 1904, gangs of thugs (SCHLOGERS) were hired to break up Anarchist and Social Democrat meetings.” (p. 259).

JEWS AS FREETHINKERS IN PERSPECTIVE

By way of introduction, the subject of Jewish atheism usually comes up, in accordance with the standard blame-Poles narrative, when Polish Cardinal August Hlond is routinely condemned for his 1936 pastoral letter, in which he spoke of Jews as freethinkers and vanguards of Bolshevism. As we shall below, not only was Cardinal Hlond correct, but he was referring to something that was already well established before 1936.

MILITANT JEWISH ATHEISTS PROVOKE RELIGIOUS JEWS, AND THE RELIGIOUS JEWS ARE PROVOKED TO VIOLENCE

On Yom Kippur, bands of Jewish radicals would surround synagogues and mock the Jewish religion, as by openly eating TREYF food. The consequences of such provocations are not hard to deduce. Fishman comments, “J. L. Fine was a regular observer of the tragi-comedy of young politicals who, flaunting their contempt for tradition, marched in column to the Spitalfields Great Synagogue (MACHZIKEI HA DATH) in Brick Lane, smoking or brandishing ham sandwiches as gestures of defiance and rejection of their creed. The service over, angry worshippers, sometimes in full regalia, swept out and attacked the scoffers with any weapon they could seize, while the local people gazed dumbfounded at the antics of the crazy foreigners…In 1904, the annual affair provoked a full-scale riot in Spitalfields.” (p. 259).

Author Fishman discusses several other examples of Jew on Jew violence (pp. 260-261). When one of them led to a trial, the irony of Jew on Jew pogroms was not lost on the court. Fishman comments, “…the bench commented that it was deplorable ‘that a class of persons who for centuries had been distinguished as the victims of the fiercest persecutions should, when in the one free country of the world, turn upon those who disagreed with them on religious points, their own co-religionists, and stone and persecute them.’” (p. 261). Good point.

For other examples of Yom Kippur violence between atheist Jews and religious Jews, see BAD RABBI, by Portnoy, and read my review:

PHONY INDIGNATION IN ACTION

The reader is now asked to imagine a group of Polish Catholics surrounding a synagogue, while eating pork, on Yom Kippur, in order to mock the Jews. We would not hear the end of it in the press! Everyone would be told for the umpteenth time that Poles are a horribly primitive, intolerant people, and that they drink (what else?) anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk. Polish leaders would be enjoined to make endless apologies for, and condemnations of, the act.