Since October 7 the attack on Israel by Hamas has dominated the world stage. Though initial global reaction sympathized with the Israeli victims, it was not long before Western public sentiment had expressed a surprising level of moral support for the actions of Hamas, accompanied by open calls for the death of Jews.
Why the Jewish culture has been so hated and condemned throughout history has never been explained in a way that can withstand the test of time. To help broaden our discussions about the nature of Israel and Jewish traditions, our guest Irving Weisdorf – as a secular Jew himself – offers his own perspective and experience within the Jewish tradition.
With a traditional stress on education and hard work combined with an ethic of “being the best that you can be,” that philosophy goes a long way towards explaining why the Jewish culture is so successful. It may also help explain the real motivation behind anti-Semitism as being a “hatred of the good for being the good,” as described by Ayn Rand.
Whether this proves to be the explanation that is Just Right is something that can only be determined in an open forum of free discussion involving the nature of good and evil itself.
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4 Responses to “839 – Hatred of the good | Irving Weisdorf”
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My two older siblings joined the Bahai Faith back in the seventies and I was soon hearing stories about their fellows being persecuted in The Middle East.
I have heard similar, in particular a Baha’i women from Iran who moved to Sweden with her nominally Muslim husband told me about how life is made intolerable for people who openly profess any faith other than Islam in that country,
Interestingly enough, the only country in the Middle East where Baha’is are left in peace is….wait for it…Israel.
I am afraid you might have missed it, although the reasons you list are certainly part of the reasons behind Jew-hatred.
I refer you to the final chapter in the P.L. Edwarsson book There’s No Such Thing as a Palestinian, entitled “The Anatomy of Anti-Semitism”.
It is beyond hatred of the good for being good. It is the hatred of goodness for being.
It is unlikely people in North America can appreciate it at a visceral level, since it does not occur at the same level as in the European mentality. Anti-Semitism is a significant driving force behind the course of history. There nothing that Jews did that motivates anti-Semitism. Re-read that chapter.
Remember too that in Herzl’s der Judenstaat, Herzl imagined a Jewish state that would be totally at peace with its Arab neighbours, and that once all Jews returned home, that there would be no more reason for Jew-hatred.