Cynical or Gullible?

Think of a spectrum line anchored at one end by the word Cynical and at the other by the word Gullible. Tend too much to one extreme and you won’t be able to form healthy relationships, be they personal, business, or communal. Tilt too much to the other end and you risk losing your time, money, even possibly, your freedom and life. What’s a person to do?

Finding the middle road sounds like a good idea but doing so is more difficult. After the lies of the past years including academic and journalistic transgressions as well as political and financial abuse, trust is a battered commodity. Ironically, those betrayals lead many to swallow outlandish conspiracy schemes without hesitation.

This week, my husband and I are introducing our podcast series, “Is It Time for Jews to Leave America”. The first interview to run will be with Dan Burmawi, a Jordanian-born Moslem who converted to Christianity and now lives in the West. I have been reading his posts for a few months and I accept that he, along with others who have left the Moslem world such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, know more than I do about Islam.

While most comments on his site are supportive, one reader took Mr. Burmawi’s piece replacing places where the word Muslim appeared with the word Jewish. He also added words of his own. Here is part of what he wrote:

‘Let me correct your Muslim bashing.
[In the following he substitutes the word Jewish wherever the word Muslim or Islamic appeared]
In Jewish societies, deception is excused, even celebrated especially when used against non Jews. Lying is seen as a tool for survival and advantage.
When Jews arrive in high trust western societies they don’t see a system to protect, they see a system to exploit.
They take advantage of your honesty, openess and your kindness.
[He continues]
Jews are only concerned about getting caught in their nefarious activities, not whether their activities are moral or just because Jews don’t consider others as equal. To Jews, non Jews are ,’goyim”, or cattle. And can be justifiable treated as such.
The only qualm Jews have about cheating, stealing, murdering a non Jew is getting caught.
To Jews, all non Jews are cattle to be exploited as desired.’

Jamie

I saw no reason to give attention to that comment by replying. Within a few days of that, however, the following comment was posted on the Rabbi Daniel Lapin website in response to this week’s Ask the Rabbi: Is It Time to Protest or Time to Repent?

‘President Donald Trump accurately represents your values which has resulted in forever wars, climbing national debt, deportation of immigrants, anti-science bias, and hatred for the LBGTQ community. Be my guest leave the USA return to Israel. Your Muslim neighbors may soon eliminate you in the middle east. I say – good riddance. China is moving forward. The USA which your money is governing is regressing. God Bless’

Mert. M.

Now, Mert has been a long-time reader of ours. So, I don’t want to simply ignore him. I read into his words a great deal of pain and hurt. His anger is largely directed at President Trump, though I don’t know what he’s referencing in some of his items, such as ‘hatred for the LBGTQ community’. He is repeating some canards such as Jewish money running America (if only) and anti-science bias. And wishing good riddance to Jews is rather extreme.

Does he have a loved one in the military for whom he fears? Has something happened in his life that is leading him to such anger? Is he following commentators like Tucker Carlson and believing what they say? I don’t know.

I do know that Jamie and Mert represent many, many people. Their hatred and passion illustrate the impetus behind our series. But I also know that while people may read some of what they say as distasteful, they don’t know how to counter it. I’m often in that position when it comes to things I read about but am not intimately familiar with. I suspect something is wrong, but I would be hard-pressed to drill down to exactly what it is.

So, I am going to use this Musing to respond to at least two of the accusations Jamie made. The first is, in itself, not a big deal, but it is an example of how an attack based on falsehood gets embedded in people’s minds. I refer to his explanation of the Hebrew word ‘goy.’ This matters because it is a trending word.

The word ‘goy’ does not mean cattle as Jamie claims. Goy means nation and can be seen in Genesis 25:23 when God tells Rebecca that there are two nations in her womb —Jacob and Esau. There are clearly not two cattle in her womb. The word ‘goy’ means nation and is used for any nation in the world including the Jewish nation.

Whoever is priming Jamie is confusing the word ‘goy’ with the word ‘behaimah,’ which does reference cattle, among other animals. That word is sometimes used today by Hebrew or Yiddish speakers to refer derogatorily to hooligans. It is an equal-opportunity word employed with no regard to the religion or lack thereof of the miscreants. There are Jewish and non-Jewish behaimos (the plural).

However, Jamie’s willingness to expound his views on a language he clearly doesn’t know, isn’t altogether off the charts. As Jews were persecuted in various countries, the word ‘goy’ in some circles was used to refer to non-Jews in a pejorative manner. That contempt was earned in many countries and times. If you were a victim of a pogrom or the like, that is understandable. It was not so earned in the United States and my husband and I along with many other Jews condemn all who employ that term in a negative rather than literal sense. We discussed the gratitude American Jews owe this country with Batya Ungar-Sargon in a subsequent interview in the series we are presenting.

Jamie’s charge that Jews exploit anyone not Jewish also deserves comment. It isn’t true — but it does need countering. Here is my PSA for today.

There is absolutely no permission in Judaism to lie, steal, or otherwise harm someone because they are of a different, or no, faith. However, there are laws demanding favoring a fellow Jew as a member of one’s family. We all treat family members in a different manner from how we treat other people. We relate to those with whom we have something in common more personally than to those outside whatever circles we inhabit. Someone who lost a loved one to diabetes may well donate to diabetes research and not to heart health research. This does not mean he hates people with heart disease or actively cheats them; it means that he feels a tug towards those suffering with diabetes.

I receive charity requests by email and snail mail on a regular basis. Sometimes they are directed to me, sometimes, as when a hurricane or earthquake strikes, they are broadly announced. A few years ago, my high school alumni newsletter informed me that a student much younger than me and whom I didn’t know, had two children with a devastating disease. There was a request for help in paying for a medical trial of a promising procedure. I participated. The connection of their mother having gone to the same school made these little ones part of ‘my group.’ In exactly this way, Jews are supposed to look out for each other. Not by harming others, but by taking an extra step, going above and beyond the norm for each other. Presenting this behavior as exploiting and harming anyone who isn’t a ‘member of the family’ is ignorant and, in today’s climate, dangerous.

As to whether the accusations that Dan Burmawi makes against Islam are based in truth or not, I invite you to listen to our discussion with him next week as well as to those interviews that follow. Do your own research and be neither cynical nor gullible.

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