The-Ave.US

Can Jewish History Say Anything About What is Happening in North Korea?

parts of my essay originated from a wonderful essay posted in the Jerusalem Post by Berel Wein

It is important to understand the horrible long term consequences such a contemporary fight can have.    The story of Joseph’s rise in Egypt after being sold as a slave, whether literally true or not, is consistent with the deep roots of antisemtism fostered by Manetho’s hatred of the “Hyksos” .. Semitic rulers of Egypt.  If the story in the Torah is correct, the hatred of these brothers reverberates till today.

The conflict between Ishmael and his brothers, again perhaps mythic, is cited by Muslims today in justification of the hatred that enclouds the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  In Islam itself, the recent passage of the holy days of Ashura .. where Shi’a Muslims whip themselves with chains .. commemorates the defeat and execution of Hussein, the last descendent of the Prophet’s family to claim leadership of the Muslims.

Christianity has an equally awesome “brotherly” conflict in its deep origins.  Josephus, the first autobiographer, describes terrible, bloody fights between the Zealots, the Pharisees, and ordinary Jews who just wanted to live in peace under the Romans.  As he tells the story, the Roman tactics were to set one group of Jews vs. the others.  The eagerness of mutually antagonistic  Jews to fulfill the Roman goals was especially true of the Zealots, the radicals who wanted ot over throw the Romans’ endorsed high priesthood of the Temple.

What is missing from Josephus’ account is a mention of the role of the early Christians although it seems clear that Jesus himself was a Zealot, it is not clear which side his few followers took.  My guess is that Josephus did not mention the Christians because there were too few of them to matter in 70 AD.  It is more interesting that the Christian bible says so little about this period of wars amongst the Jews .. ,perhaps because the Christians were concerned with not offending their Roman rulers.

Josephus’ failure to mention the Jesus followers is doubly strange because Josephus himself was the Jewish governor of Galilee where most of the Christians lived. He ultimately, like most Jews, gave into Roman rule … a was the case of Jesus’ followers as in “Give unto Caesar what is Caesars, and God what is God’s”?   Jesus’ words in the Roman Bible must have been censored heavily since any direct mention of Roman crimes is missing.

Still the family feud had profpund consequences for the Christians.  After the Council of Nicea, having  become the Roman Church, Christianity needed to deny its role .. or the role of the early followers of Jesus .. in the resistance to Rome. B uilding on the system created not by Jesus but by Paul and his conflict with Jesus’ brother James, the Church literally declared a belief in the existence of Jesus brothers as a heresy and crucified believers for that crime.  For the next 1800 years the Church slaughtered millions of Jews as well as Christians who placed blame on the Romans or denied Jesus’s likely role in opposition to Roman rule,

Judaism’s own schisms reflect similar, if less bloody,  stories of family feuds and sibling rivalry.  The Karaite movement claims ties to the Roman supported priesthood that ceased to exist with the destruction of Jerusalem’s Temple.  In the 8th century a  bitter family feud between Anan and his brother, over becoming the exilarch for Jewish Babylonia led to the Karaite movement. Anan declared to the caliph that his faith of Karaism was the true Jewish religion. different from rabbinic Judaism with its false belief in oral tradition and the debates of the Talmud.  During WWII, the Karaites sought and received exemption from the Nazi classification of Jews, an exemption that has since won the remaining Karaites the anathema of the rest of the Jewish community.  Today, the remaining Karaites are few and those who still follow thyis tradtion are castigated by the Jewish community,

Similar conflicts between Jews are the subject of rabbinic tales.  The great Rebbe of Sanz, Rabbi Chaim Halberstam, engaged in a strong disagreement with his son, who later was known as the Shinover rebbe. Rabbi Chaim forbade his son from crossing the threshold of his house. The son nevertheless persisted in visiting his father, but in obedience to his father’s wishes, never crossed the threshold of the house, but rather entered and exited through one of the windows of the house. Perhaps this is why my own grandfather, being tols that my father refused to attend cheder, through my Dad through a window?

In another example, the son of Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin of Salant became a noted mathematics professor at the University of St. Petersburg in the 19th century, and no longer followed a Jewishly observant way of life. Some of the leading Jews of the time  placed a congratulatory advertisement in one of the Hebrew newspapers of the time. It blessed Rabbi Yisrael, celebrating  his son’s appointment to the college faculty. Rabbi Yisrael then placed his own advertisement in the next issue of that paper, stating that he had no nachas whatsoever from his son because of the latter’s forsaking Jewish life and practice.

Back in Korea, it is too early to know where Kim’s Borgia=like family struggle for the papacy of North Korea will lead. The analogy to the Borgias is frightening in an  essay that includes Jewish conflicts.  It was Pope Alexander the VI who .. perhaps because he was a hidden Jew* .. welcomed Spanish and Portuguese Jews to live in Rome while also issuing the edict that legalized Spain to enslave Native Americans and Africans.

The intense hatreds developed in the name of family can have terrible consequences.

*  Alexander may even be my own distant relatives since he, like my own family, came form Valencia..