Defending Jesus and Judaism

By Alan Caruba

As a book reviewer I receive countless requests to read books and, when I received one regarding “Kosher Jesus” by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, I was intrigued by the title. In addition to fathering nine children, the rabbi has written 27 books, is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and the profile on his website is filled with achievements and encomiums

I was, quite frankly, floored by his book. As a longtime informal student of world religions, I found his comparisons between the biblical and historical Jesus impressive. As word of this book gets out, I suspect he will be contested by Christians because he meticulously reclaims the historical Jesus as quintessentially Jewish without a hint of the Christology that was applied to his life following his death at the hands of the Romans.

With some irony, it is another rabbi, Immanuel Schochet, who recently issued a letter banning anyone from reading “Kosher Jesus”, calling it heretical. Rabbi Boteach replied saying that “America is not Iran and rabbis in the American Jewish community are not the Revolutionary Guard.” Well said!

Debuting officially on February 1st, I suspect Rabbi Boteach is going to come in for a world of disputation from elements of both the Jewish and Christian communities. Their problem will be that Rabbi Boteach is a serious student of the Torah, the Talmud (rabbinical analysis and commentary on the Torah), and the New Testament.

His book is testament (no pun intended) to his central assertion that Jesus was a charismatic rabbi, a Jew preaching exclusively to Jews at a time when Israel was seeking to throw off the occupation of the greatest pagan power of his era, the Roman Empire. Indeed, their rebellion would culminate in the destruction of the Second Temple and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews in 70 CE.

Rabbi Boteach dissects the gospels, all written well after the death of Jesus, and the writings of Saul of Tarsus, saying in effect, that Christianity wrongly asserts that the Covenant and laws of Judaism had been replaced by a religion based entirely on faith in the belief that Jesus died for the sins of the world and accepting him as a personal savior removes one’s personal responsibility to live a holy life, a righteous life, and one that accepts the Torah as God’s word and law.

Among Jewish and Christian martyrs who died for their faith, Rabbi Boteach places Jesus as the best known Jew in the world. He condemns the New Testament for seeking accommodation with the Roman Empire, composed of idol-worshipping pagans, by turning the historical Jesus into an enemy of Judaism and thereby letting loose two thousand years of anti-Semitism.

The rabbi is not seeking to convert Christians to Judaism and notes several times that Judaism does not proselytize. “Theologically, Christians and Jews think differently about the nature of the world.” Instead, he seeks to restore Jesus “to his authentic Jewish roots” to “allow a new era of Jewish-Christian reapproachement to begin.” Indeed, in the wake of the Holocaust and the reestablishment of the nation of Israel, it is clear this change has been occurring.

In a time of resurgent Islamism, Rabbi Boteach rightly says that “Jews and Christians have so much in common, we must unite behind our democratic values, defend the embattled State of Israel, and participate in a unified front against those who have vowed to defeat us.”

Amen to that!

“Kosher Jesus” will not be an easy book for Christians to read because it rebuts much of what the New Testament has to say about Jesus. It eviscerates the claims of the gospel writers and of Paul, an apostle who never knew the Jesus he promoted as part-god, part-human, a distinctly pagan belief. The Romans routinely believed their emperors were gods. The Greek pantheon of gods had distinctly human characteristics and failings.

“Restoring his Jewish identity makes (Jesus) available to us as a flesh-and-blood hero who fought for what is right, in place of a celestial icon utterly detached from human experience”, says Rabbi Boteach.

The perfection attributed to Jesus, the rabbi notes, is comparable to that attributed to the Buddha and, in the Hindu faith, to Krishna. Humanity longs for such perfection, but Judaism believes that we achieve righteousness in our struggle to do the right thing, by our acts, not by faith alone. Jews know it is human to fail and that is why God offers redemption. Indeed, the word “Israel” means “he who wrestles with God.”

I recommend “Kosher Jesus” to anyone who wrestles with God, who wrestles with their human imperfections, and who strives to live a righteous life.

Editor’s note: One can read Caruba’s monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction at http://www.bookviews.com./

© Alan Caruba, 2012

America's Empire of Trust

By Alan Caruba

Though most Americans are unaware of it, the rest of the world is taking an active interest in the sometimes heated debate we are having regarding the alleged healthcare “reform” that is, in fact, yet another effort to push the nation further into the same socialist tentacles that have been embraced elsewhere.

Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in America doesn’t stay in America. As the world’s sole superpower, the man we select to be our president becomes the de facto president of the world insofar as his decisions reach into dusty villages in Afghanistan, affect global stock and commodity markets, and can determine the success or failure of movements toward freedom everywhere.

There would be no “Pax Americana” if we were seen to abandon our allies.

The similarities between the Roman Empire and the young American Empire are examined in an excellent book by Thomas F. Madden, “Empires of Trust.”

When I was born in the late 1930s America was a resolutely isolationist nation. We didn’t want to get involved in European wars. We had gotten into World War I because our ships were attacked by German submarines. When it was over, we pulled out our troops.

Not so for World War II, yet another conflict we resisted joining until the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the end of that war, we left troops in Europe to fend off the threat of the Soviet Union. We left troops in Japan to occupy it until democracy could be introduced to replace the emperor. In both cases, we spent billions to rebuild these shattered nations.

American troops are still in Europe and still in Japan. Though asked to withdraw from Iraq, a contingent of American troops will remain there long into the future and it is likely too that they shall be in Afghanistan as well. Americans were twice forced to invade Iraq; initially to force them out of Kuwait and, after 9/11, to remove Saddam Hussein, a threat to the entire region, but most particularly to Saudi Arabia, a major source of oil to the West.

While America always invades as part of a “coalition”, that is a charade because no other nation has the military strength and power to swiftly bring an offending nation to heel. It is not the conquest that is difficult. It is the clean up afterwards.

In point of fact, America maintains military units all over the world and they are there by invitation. Another element of America’s Empire of Trust is that the wars in which we have engaged since the end of World War II have all been in distant places. That pattern began with the Korean conflict in the 1950s. That was followed by the distress when America took over the conflict in Vietnam from France.

After initial enthusiasm for revenge following 9/11, our current participation in the Iraq and Afghan conflicts in Iraq has long since cooled. Americans, as did the citizens of Rome, do not like extended military engagements.

There are any number of similarities between the citizens of Rome who sought their own security by slowly having to conquer neighboring enemies in Italy, subdue the Carthaginian threat from North Africa, and disturbances in Greece.

The growth of the Roman Empire took place over centuries, but the reluctant Romans did not seek conquest; only peace for themselves. They did this by turning conquered enemies into friends and, since they were so successful in war, they were continually entreated to extend their protection further and further from Rome. The result was an Empire of Trust.

The Romans created the first republic in which power resided in its citizens. The American republic was, in many ways, patterned after the Roman republic, but the Founders also sought to avoid the errors of Rome, dividing power within government and ensuring that our military’s allegiance was to the Constitution, not a particular leader. Our wars must be approved by congressional resolutions.

Even in Rome there were early predictions that their empire would end. By 146 BC the Romans were the most powerful nation of those bordering the Mediterranean from Spain to Egypt and they would remain so for some sixteen centuries.

Most Americans draw their “knowledge” of ancient Rome from Hollywood films, but the scenes of decadence and apparent tyranny are wrong in many ways. A pious people, the famed decline in morality and the necessity to subdue religious chaos in the Middle East actually occurred by the time the empire had largely converted to Christianity as the state religion. They occurred late in its long history of having imposed the “Pax Romana” on the known world. The last elements of the empire would disappear in 1453.

A world at peace was always the Roman goal and, following World War II, it has been America’s goal. However, as Madden points out, “War—not peace—is the normal state of affairs in human history.” What is called peace “is an intermission, a time to prepare for more war.”

America was forced to enter two wars in Europe in the last century because, as Madden, notes, “The countries and leaders of Europe waged nearly constant warfare for more than fifteen centuries.”

This is why, too, that American soldiers and marines, assisted by troops contributed by a relatively few and greatly reluctant allies, are now fighting a “hot” war in Afghanistan after a lengthy engagement in an Iraq. Americans do not like long wars, but Madden bluntly says that “Americans need to accept that the War on Terror is going to be a long one.

Liberals always claim that “war never solves anything”, but history demonstrates that war always solves something. We have a United States of America because we fought a long, bloody Civil War. We are not subject to the dictates of a Nazi Germany in control of Europe or an Empire of Japan controlling Asia because we fought and won World War II. Our proxy wars weakened the former Soviet Union.

Former President Bush was right when, in 2002, he said, “We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign nonproliferation treaties, and then systematically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long…we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.”

That is the definition of “Pax Americana” and it is the mission of the American Empire.

How Empires Die

By Alan Caruba

I recently read an interesting book by Christopher Kelly, “The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and The Fall of Rome.” Our popular image of Attila is that of a barbaric pagan, but Priscus of Panium set off to meet Attila in 449 AD and, as Kelly relates, “Attila turned out to be surprisingly civilized and a dangerously shrewd player of international politics.”

It’s always a good idea to review one’s assumptions about the world in which one lives, such as the current politically correct view that Islam is “a religion of peace” and that the barbarity of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Arab groups is an anomaly, the result of their incorrect interpretation of the Koran. Their interpretation, however, is quite accurate and the Koran is a call to arms and battle plan for the conquest of the world.

From America’s earliest years, it has had to deal with marauding Arabs and in modern times we have put our troops in harm’s way in the Middle East in Beirut in the 1980s and to drive Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait in August 1990.

Following 9/11 we returned in 2001 to drive Al Qaeda and the Taliban out of Afghanistan. They took refuge in the frontier provinces of Pakistan and have since returned to the killing fields of our choosing…if killing one’s sworn enemies can be called a choice.

On March 20, 2003, the Second Gulf War was launched against Iraq and we are now beginning to withdraw troops from Iraq’s cities. A large contingent of U.S. military will remain in Iraq. At the same time, there has been a buildup of troops in Afghanistan. Historically, no empire has ever successfully conquered or subdued the Afghani tribes and, in modern times, the most recent effort brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is generally agreed that the real threat to Mideast stability is Iran and that the shakiest nation in the region is Pakistan.

History teaches us that the emperors of the Roman Empire had to make choices about where they too would place their troops throughout the vast expanse under their control; it surrounded the Mediterranean which they called Mare Nostrum, our sea.

At the end of his book, Kelly asks “What makes great empires endure or collapse? How do governments defend their actions? What causes the breakup of a leviathan superstate? When is it right to go to war, or purchase peace, or pay off an enemy? These are issues of enduring importance.”

When an empire gets too large for its military and financial resources to maintain, it becomes highly vulnerable. An empire, too, depends on its alliances. When they go bad, the empire—any empire—is in trouble.

The Roman Empire fell for many reasons, but chief among them was the relentless arithmetic of demography, the movement of populations of people.

The Romans regarded the Goths and Vandals as “barbarians”, but the Goth tribes were people who were just as challenged by the Huns as the Romans and they were on the move to find more land for their growing population. In doing so, they crossed the Danube to trespass on Roman lands in France, in Spain, and down into Northern Africa.

By contrast, “the Huns seemingly offered no moral or religious justification, however thin or unconvincing. They sought neither to find a new homeland on Roman territory nor to glorify themselves as heroic freedom fighters warring down a harsh imperial regime.”

“The Huns appear more brutal precisely because they had no known motive for their raids beyond the acquisition of booty and captives.” This last observation is particularly important because the rise of Islam can be traced directly to the same purpose. It was, however, masked by Mohammed’s promise of paradise for anyone who fell in battle and servitude for those conquered.

Here’s where the similarities between America and the ancient Romans get really interesting. At the same time the nation engages Islamic terrorism, our national sovereignty—the integrity of our borders—is being challenged as not just thousands, but millions have invaded to take up residence among us. This repeats the pattern that brought down the Roman Empire.

Having forsaken universal conscription, the U.S. depends on an all-voluntary military to project our power. The Romans, toward the end, often allied with the Goths to fight the Huns and, on occasion, allied with the Huns as well. With the exception of the British, Canadians and Australians, our military allies are mostly for show.

Not only is our financial stability at risk, but since the 1960s, the level of decadence in our society has risen, reflected in popular culture and media. Our primary and secondary educational system has become an abject failure.

Recently, while in Russia, President Obama said, “The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground.”

This ignores the entire history of civilization. It is criminally naïve. The future, just as in the past, will belong to whoever has the greatest military with the financial power and the willingness to use it.

Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

And as John Adams warned, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”