THE TALMUD

Several times, during our European history, the Jewish Talmud has been burned. It happened by orders of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain and Italy. It also happened during the Nazi-regime, starting in 1933. And even in our times, this book is called deceptive, evil and even satanic. What is the Talmud and why did the Church, Fascism and National-Socialism, ban and burn this book, as if it is the source of all evil? Can a book have this effect?

The Talmud has. Some explanation: The first five books of the Old Testament are called the “Torah”. They were delivered by God to Moses. This happened at mount Sinai. These 5 books are fundamental to the Jews. And the “Torah” is called an “Ocean of Light” and a simple human being cannot understand and comprehend the real and hidden meanings of it. A Jew needs the “Talmud” to obtain enlightenment, so to say. The book contains the compressed knowledge and wisdom of all the rabbi's, who commented and explained the “Torah”. Being a religious people, Jews start to study the “Talmud” early in life and it never stops. Children are instructed to move their upper body and read the texts out loud.

There are two kinds of Talmud. The “Jerusalem”-edition and the “Babylon-edition”. The Jews felt the Roman repression and decided to write down their oral history. The “Babylon-edition” is dominant and decisive over its counterpart. The rabbi's in Babylon developed certain methods of “questioning”. Discussion and asking questions was a central educational concept. In due course this debate was dominated by logical arguments “ad absurdum”. A Polish rabbi said. “Who has questions, I have so many answers.”

The Jews have a formidable educational system. Learning and further study (religious studies too) are rewarded and stimulated, up until this moment. At this moment a commuter-train to New York is transformed into a “Talmud”-school and young executives spend an hour a day on reading the “Talmud”. The movement and recitation motivates and inspires them, so they say.

Parts of the book are controversial. Bizarre statements about sexuality, adultery and child-marriage are part of the tradition too.

So is the whole concept of the “goj”, the non-Jews. The “Talmud” says that “goj” are inferior to Jews. They should not be treated equal and a statement of a “goj” has no value in a Jewish court. There has to be done some serious rethinking there too.

But don't be surprised to see so many Jewish lawyers, writers, scientists, psychoanalysts and movie producers. They had to study very hard, during their youth and are motivated to succeed.

I just learned about the Talmud recently and was surprised to see its effect as an educational tool. But it is a one-sided tool and worldview. First, this is completely male dominated document. Two thousand years of male chauvinism, written down by rabbi's, who all look, act and think the same. This leads to the same one-sided ness we find in the Catholic Church. You cannot neglect 50% of our human interaction. This leads to conclusions that Mary Magdalen was a whore, active among the carpenters in the Holy Land.

The search for logical explanations eventually leads to rationality and materialism. Both have lead to the “modern scientific method” and because man don't care about the cleaning up afterwards (that's a woman's task), they undertake dangerous experiments, like searching for the "God-particle" at CERN or a “winnable” atomic war in the Middle -East.