[net.religion.jewish] Jewish-non-Jewish "Marriage"

martillo@ihuxt.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo) (03/25/84)

I received this long and well-written letter from Evelyn C. Leeper.  I am
replying to it because she raises several interesting issues and because
she is halakically Jewish.  If she were not halakically Jewish, I probably
would not reply.  I am not a hakam (Torah-sage), and I would be conceited
even to call myself a darshan (preacher who can tell morally edifying
stories).  If there is any reader of net.religion.jewish who is learned
and feels my analysis is not in harmony with Judaism, I invite him to
reply, and I believe Miss Leeper would welcome his comment.


>I quote your article from the net (to which I am unable to post) in full
>	to be sure you know what I am talking about (numbers refer to
>	comments below):
>
>>    Many reviews  of  Costa-Gavras'  new movie, Hanna K., have  ignored
>>    the  fundamental offensiveness of this film.  Hanna K., My Michael,
>>    The Lover and several other recent films and  books  represent  the
>>    rebirth   or persistence of an old and popular genre of antisemitic
>1>   pornography.  In this  pornography,  a  dashing  non-Jew  typically
>>    rapes  or  seduces  a  Jewish woman. The sexual conquest has always
>>    been a metaphor for the subjugation or annihilation of  the  Jewish
>>    people.  Usually,  there is an implication that the Jewish woman is
>>    atoning for some sin (e.g. deicide)  committed  against  non-Jewish
>>    people.
>>    
>>    Arab Jews (like my family) find the story  of  Hanna  K.  offensive
>>    because  Arab  Muslims  are historical oppressors of Jews just like
>2>   Germans, Poles or Rumanians. Jews have no reason  at  all  to  feel
>>    guilty  about  the  treatment  of  Arab  Muslims in Israel. Just as
>>    the archetypical Black-hating Southern Red-Neck is supposed (unlike
>>    the  ordinary southern  white laborer) never to have seen any crime 
>3>   in raping black women, Arab Muslims have  considered  raping Jewish
>>    women  perfectly permissible behavior.  The black  community  would
>>    find  extremely offensive  a movie in which a Black female attorney 
>4>   had an affair with a Red-Neck  client suspected of taking part in a
>>    lynching.
>>    
>5>   A  truly daring  and original theme  for  a  book  or  movie  would  
>>    have  described  an  Arab women who rejected Islamic fanaticism and 
>>    bigotry  and  who showed her disgust at Islamic culture by taking a 
>>    Jewish lover at risk to her own life.
>>    
>
>I have not seen HANNAH K, but my comments are based on the implications
>	of your article.  If I am wrong in my interpretation, please let
>	me know (-> lznv!ecl).
>
>1) I do not consider a dashing non-Jew seducing a Jewish woman pornography.
>	(If I did, I'd have a hell of a lot of problems dealing with my
>	parents, since my father is Puerto Rican and my mother Jewish--
>	though I do not think that 'seduction' was really involved.)
>	But comment 4 indicates that it isn't even a rape or seduction
>	question, but a question of any kind of sex.
>
>2) The idea that since group A has been oppressing group B, it's all right
>	for group B to oppress group A when they get the chance is bullshit.
>	As they say in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, an eye for an eye and a tooth
>	for a tooth will leave the whole world blind and toothless.  One
>	of the basic tenets of Judaism is justice ("only three things is
>	required of thee: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
>	with thy God." --Hosea ?:?).  NOT revenge, but justice, and always
>	tempered with mercy.  To herd current-day Germans into concentration
>	camps because of some misguided idea of an eye for an eye would be
>	vehemently condemned, yet you seem to be saying that any mis-treatment
>	of current-day Arab Muslims is justified because of past wrongs
>	committed by some Arab Muslims.
>
>3) A sweeping generalization if ever I saw one!  If I were an Arab Muslim,
>	I would be outraged.  I'm not, and I'm still outraged.
>
>4) See 1.
>
>5) Maybe so, but that would be a different movie.  It is not quite fair to
>	ask the filmmaker to make the movie you wanted--though I am guilty
>	of this myself in my criticism of books that I have read (as in
>	recent discussion in net.sf-lovers re FRIDAY).
>
>I see implied in your article a justification of revenge that I think
>	exacerbates rather than ameliorates the problems that Jews
>	(or any 'oppressed' minority) face.  If you think my complaints
>	are in some way justified (or need rebuttal), please feel free
>	to post them (with your comments) to the net.
>
>Evelyn C. Leeper
>lznv!ecl
>hocse!lznv!ecl
>ihnp4!lznv!ecl


1)	English speakers are probably less aware of this genre of
	pornography than other Europeans.  Jews have just been far less
	numerous in Western than in Central or Eastern Europe.  The
	Merchant of Venice fits into this category although it is also
	high quality literature.  This play is (I remember) based on an
	Italian work much less sympathetic to Jews and which emphasizes
	much more the titillating aspects of seducing a Jewish woman.  The
	most recent work dealing with this genre of pornography is Gregor
	von Rezzori's ,,Memoiren eines Antisemiten'' which is partially a
	retrospective reflection on this type of literature.
	
	The Jews in Europe had many similarities to the blacks in the
	United States of America.  Any decent work on European
	anti-Semitic literature will describe how Jewish men were supposed
	to lust after the bodies of decent Christian girls, and how Jewish
	girls, as non-Christians incapable of true morality, were dynamite
	sexually.  Jewish women were dark and mysterious.  Until 
	recent times,  European Jews maintained many oriental customs. 
	Women did not eat with their male relatives, and Jewish women
	rarely travelled unaccompanied by their husbands or fathers or
	brothers.  The combination of suspected wantonness and
	inapproachability was a constant source of speculation in low
	European literature and folk traditions.  I was raised in a Ladino
	(Judeo-Spanish) speaking household and understand Castillian and
	Italian.  To describe oneself as a Judio or Giudio in these
	languages is like announcing one has crabs.  Current polite usage
	is Israelita or ebreo.  Judia and Giudia still carry the hint of
	sexual promiscuity.
	
	From the standpoint of Jewish Law, Miss Leeper does have problems.
	Jewish Law forbids a Jewish woman to sleep with a
	non-Jewish man.  (A non-Jewish man who converts to Judaism is
	Jewish, and a Jewish woman may sleep with him if all requirements
	of ritual purity have been fulfilled.)  Jewish women are not
	forbidden non-Jewish men because there are no kind, decent or
	good non-Jews.  Many such non-Jews exist.  But the Jewish people
	has a purpose.  When the Jewish people accepted the Torah, they
	became partners in completing the universe.  Jews
	complete the universe by observing the commandments of the Torah. 
	By performing any commandment, holiness is brought into the
	Universe.  
	
	Ashkenazim in particular affirm this purpose by	wearing a small
	poncho as an undergarment. This poncho is incomplete until tassels
	are added to each corner.  These tassels have a series of knots
	which can be shown to represent the 613 commandments of the Torah
	which Jewish men observe.  Only a fully functioning Jewish
	community can work on completing the universe. 
	This requirement for a community is obvious because several of the
	commandments can only be carried out by men or by women or by
	priests or by priestly attendants or by ordinary Jews exclusively.
	Thus Jews must build functioning Jewish communities.  
	
	Since God ordained the
	basic ground rules of the Jewish community,  Jewish sages have
	spent most of the past 3000 years developing the best possible
	social structure around the obligation of service to God.  Most of
	the Jewish sages were social engineers of the highest order.  They
	had to be because for a large part of the last 2300 years non-Jews
	have been working hard to destroy Jewish society.  In general, 
	Jewish society differed from the surrounding non-Jewish society in
	that crime was lower, literacy was higher, Jews were more
	productive, there was less wife-beating, Jews cared for their
	children better, and families were much stabler.  All these
	features were required to bring more holiness into the world.
	
	Obviously, since a non-Jew does not have the obligation of
	bringing holiness into the world and since a non-Jew is unlikely
	to have the necessary understanding of Jewish social structures to
	function in the society or to bring up his children as
	Torah-observant Jews, sexual intercourse with non-Jews is as
	worthless as bestiality, and Jewish law considers a Jewish woman
	who sleeps with non-Jews to be a whore.  However, no stigma exists
	for the child of such a woman unless the mother is a bat cohen or
	bat lewi.
	
	Christian non-Jews consider Jesus to have fulfilled the Torah,
	which consequently need no longer be observed. Jewish observance
	of the Torah is an explicit rejection of Jesus. Since Jewish
	sexual exclusiveness is intimately bound up with observing the
	Torah, Christians have in particular objected to Jewish sexual
	exclusiveness, sometimes have viewed seducing or raping Jewish
	women a religious duty, and sometimes have considered Jewish
	sexual exclusiveness evidence of disloyalty to the state.

	In the past, some Polish noblemen and Mussolini called for
	extensive campaigns of intermarriage to eliminate their Jewish
	populations. Napoleon explicitly demanded the Paris Sanhedrin
	accept Jewish-non-Jewish marriages as valid.  Napoleon as a
	representative of modern European nationalism wanted to
	exterminate all examples of local particularism. When a minority
	freely intermarries with a majority, the disappearance of that
	minority is guaranteed.  The disappearance of a culture as
	beautiful as Eastern European Jewish culture (and I have admitted
	contempt) depresses me.
	
	I doubt that Miss Leeper observes Jewish Law and I would attribute
	her lack of observance to her parents intermarriage.  Please
	correct me if I am wrong.
	
	I have some particular difficulties with Hispanics messing with
	Jewish girls.  My father's family are Spanish Jews.  The Spanish
	did the Jews far worse than Hitler for far longer.  Marie Syrkin
	mentions in "The State of the Jews" (I remember)  that the
	Mexicans were still boiling suspected Jews in oil in 1905.  We do
	not like the thought of a Jewish child being raised as a member of
	Latino culture which seems to tolerate this barbarism.
	
2)	Miss Leeper like many people who wrote to me misinterpreted my
	statement.  I said, "Jews have no reason  at  all  to  feel guilty
	about  the  treatment  of  Arab  Muslims in Israel. I said nothing
	about mistreatment.  I am not interested in revenge.  Despite some
	recent nonsense from the Pope, Rabbinic Judaism has never
	interpreted "an eye for an eye literally."  Monetary compensation
	would be nice.
	
	I would be extremely unhappy, and my family
	would probably take up arms against the government of the State of
	Israel if the State of Israel mistreated Arab
	Muslims under Israeli control just as Arab Muslims mistreated
	Arab Jews.
	
	Israeli Arab Muslims are guaranteed as much physical safety as
	Israeli Jews.  Their property is as secure.  They have a slightly
	limited freedom of expression.  They have freedom of movement. 
	They may leave Israel if they wish (even with their property). 
	These rights are far more  than Arab Jews ever got from Arab
	Muslims. 
	
	If Yemenite Jews and Southern-Blacks under Jim Crow could have
	been exchanged 100 years ago, in such a friendly environment
	Yemenite Jews would own the South today, and there would be no
	Blacks today in Yemen.
	
	Arab Muslims inside and outside Israel are unhappy.  But their
	unhappiness is more psychological.  I have read a large part of
	the Arab Nationalist writings and Israeli Arab Muslim complaints. 
	Arab Muslims would prefer to be conquerors oppressing fearful
	Jews.  (Raymonda Tawil [not an Arab Muslim but an Arab Muslim
	brown-noser] makes some revealing statements in the last chapter
	of "My Home, My Prison.")
	
	I can understand this feeling but hardly sympathize.  In
	any case, Arab Muslims give no consideration to Jewish bodies
	(about three weeks ago the pregnant wife [a Syrian citizen] of the
	head of the Jewish community of Haleb in Syria was raped and
	hacked to death by agents of the Syrian government).  I am hardly
	going to give any consideration to damaged Arab psyches.
	
	As for the quote from Hosea (?), I could not find it.  The
	septuagint probably differs from the masoretic text.  If you
	learned Hebrew, you could probably pinpoint it more easily for me.
	Many such quotes exist in the Bible and are often used as a
	justification for cardiac Judaism. God requires all
	people to be decent human beings.  Since all Jews are people,
	this requirement is an important part of Judaism
	but can hardly be considered a substitute for the whole.
	
	A typical example:
	
	A non-Jew came to Hillel and asked him to teach him the Torah
	while standing on one leg.  Hillel stated the negative version of
	the golden rule and told him everything else was commentary that
	required study. 
	
	This really means:
	
	All born Jews are supported by the three
	patriarchs who are analogous to a three-legged stool, the
	most stable configuration.  This non-Jew was converting to
	Judaism.  A non-Jew only has one patriarch, Abraham, for support. 
	The non-Jew wanted to know how to gain enough understanding of the
	Torah to be a good Jew.  Hillel told him to concentrate on
	Abraham's particular characteristic, rahamin (mercy, kindness) and
	this characteristic would be a key to the understanding of the
	Torah as Abraham understood it.
	
	As for showing mercy to an enemy, Jews must only give
	unconditional mercy to Jewish enemies.  Non-Jews may receive mercy
	under particular circumstances discussed in the Talmud and later
	works.  Sometimes giving mercy is a sin. Shaul and his family lost
	the kingship because Shaul showed mercy to an ancestor of Haman.
	
	In the case of modern day Israeli Arab Muslims, a certain amount
	of suppression is legitimate.  Arab Muslims are required by
	religious law to subjugate, humiliate and degrade Jews.  Arab
	Muslims have humiliated and degraded Arab Jews for most of the
	last 1300 years. Arab Muslims continue to persecute, humiliate or
	degrade Arab Jews and other non-Muslims in Arab Muslim states. 
	Arab Muslim political leaders frequently affirm that they will
	destroy Israel and at least return Israeli Jews to the state of
	humiliation and degradation in which Arab Jews lived under Arab
	Muslim governments before there was a State of Israel.  There are
	unfortunately many more Arab Muslims than Jews.
	
3)	Merely because a generalization is sweeping does not make it
	untrue.  I have usually found making generalizations about
	groups unpopular with leftist orthodoxy is permissible while
	making generalizations about popular groups is 
	forbidden.  Such a rule of course makes it impossible to say
	anything negative about Arab Muslim society because there are
	always exceptions.  Of course my family has some dear Muslim
	friends.  Still, I can  talk about Arabs in general (just the way
	history books and newspapers talk about Germans murdering Jews in
	WWII or European colonialism).  I base my judgement on what the
	society tolerates. I can determine what the society tolerates. 
	Since the society sets up the legal system,  the legal system
	indicates what the society considers permissible behavior.
	
	When I was a student at college, I researched this
	question.  No Muslim court anywhere in any Muslim country has
	ever convicted a Muslim of raping a Jewish woman.  Non-Muslim
	women are assumed to be whores under Islamic law and get what they
	deserve.  There are many books on Sharia` in English and a few are
	honest enough to mention this ruling.
	
	In many areas historically and in Southern Libya (where my
	mother's family originates), in Yemen, and in parts of Iran there
	was a systematic kidnapping and rape of young Jewish girls.
	
	There is a Qur'anic verse that more or less states:
	
	There is no compulsion in religion.
	
	This verse does not mean what it seems to mean.  One must consult
	the Muslim equivalents of Rashi to find the meaning.
	
	It means:
	
	A person's natural religion is Islam.  Only because of respect for
	one's parents is one a non-Muslim.  If a child's father dies
	before he becomes mature (13), raising him as a non-Muslim is
	compulsion.  He (but more often she) must be taken away from her
	family and be raised as a Muslim.  Arab Muslims prefer to have
	girls married shortly before the onset of menses.  The Muslim who
	takes the girl of course pays no bride price to her father.  The
	absence of bride-price was a strong economic pressure for this
	type of kidnapping-rape.  Goitein in his writings describes the
	Yemenite situation.  Lately, Egyptian Copts have been complaining
	about this or a similar practice.
	
	While not all Islamic governments enforced this ruling, and while
	those, that did, have not always enforced the ruling, this
	ruling has always existed as a particular nasty and terrible
	threat.
	
	Islam has such practices and policies because Islam is a
	strong-proselytizing religion.  The core of any strong
	proselytizing religion is hatred.  If someone proselytizes me, he
	says, "I hate your religion, I hate your culture, you must adopt
	my religion and my culture."  Islamic ideology assumes all
	non-Muslim minorities will be exterminated through assimilation. 
	Physical, sexual (all conquerors have demanded sexual access to a
	conquered people's women), and psychological degradation are
	supposed to hasten this program of extermination.
	
	The program does work.  More Assyrian Christians (a neo-Aramaic
	speaking monophysite group) live in Chicago than in Iraq (their
	homeland).  I once heard a lecture by an Iraqi Jewish women after
	she got out of Iraq in the late 1970's.  She stated -- I never
	knew freedom. Now if I were given the choice between living in an
	Arab country and walking into the ocean and drowning, I'd walk --
	(free translation).
	
	Since you are Jewish, you could emigrate to Syria and join the
	Jewish community.  Your opinion after living there for a year
	(probably more) would be interesting.
	
	Arab Muslims owe the Jews.  Yet, Costa-Gavras feels we Jews owe
	Arab Muslims and simultaneously reminds us of one most
	unpleasant form of Arab Muslim oppression.
	
4)	I asked some of the Blacks in my department about this sentiment. 
	They told me such a hypothetical movie would be offensive.
	One said it would be offensive and more interesting than the
	current movie fare.  Several suggested I should have said:

		Just as Southern Red-Necks never saw any crime in raping
		black women, Arab Muslims have  considered  raping Jewish
		women  perfectly permissible behavior.  The black 
		community  would find  extremely offensive  a movie in
		which a Black female attorney  had an affair with a
		Red-Neck  client suspected of taking part in a lynching.
		
	If Miss Leeper asks any of her black acquaintances, I would be
	interested in their opinion.
	
	The second version is closer to my original.  I changed the
	phraseology because I scanned the news files and found one usage
	of "Southern Red-Neck" which resulted in a some mindless flames
	about American Indians.
	
5)	I have to concede this point.  But I would like to see some 
	understanding from the left (Costa-Gavras is a European Leftist)
	of Jewish sensibilities just as the Left has been demanding Jews
	understand Arab sensibilities.
	
Unfortunately, I have probably offended Miss Leeper, but I prefer not to
prevaricate.  All that I have said about Miss Leeper's mother's halakic
status exists in freely available translation.

donn@sdchema.UUCP (03/26/84)

I hate to sound like I got stuck on a picky detail after reading a long
and interesting article.  But the question really stuck in my mind.

Do (some) Jews really consider marriage with Gentiles to be
'bestiality'? The article only mentioned marriage between a Jewish
woman and a Gentile man -- does the same contempt apply to a marriage
between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman?

A curious atheist,

Donn Seeley    UCSD Chemistry Dept.       ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn