The Oldest Hate

As a student of, and teacher of, Western Civilization, I can't help but notice certain patterns and trends.  And, having spent years thinking and reading about this overarching edifice, this incredible gift to humanity, I often ask myself what sin, what flaw, is apparently impossible to shake from the corpus of this remarkable achievement? 

The most constant negative feature of Western Civilization is anti-Semitism.  No matter what leaps we make in philosophy, or medicine, or technology, or human rights, Jew-hatred has never been shaken.  It clings to our civilization.  And it's not a harmless barnacle on the hull of our ship; it's a cancer within our collective body.

I don't think "=" means what you think it does.

Jews have always been targeted for persecution, exile, and genocide, from the times of the Pharaohs to the times of the iPhone. 

After a Roman Emperor exiled the Jews from Israel, he re-named that land "Palestine", as a way to mock the Jews by renaming their homeland after their historic rivals, the Philistines.

During the Black Plague in Europe 700 years ago, many European Christians blamed the epidemic on the Jews.  Massacred ensued.  Spoiler alert:  the Bubonic Plague was not a biological weapon of the Jews.

During the Crusades, Christian armies slaughtered Jews as they journeyed through Europe towards the Holy Land.  Because, you know, soldiers need target practice.

There is a myth about anti-Semitism, which holds that this pathology was invented by, and died with, this guy:

Hitler did not invent anti-Semitism; he tapped into a timeless current of Western Civilization.  And the hatred of Jews did not die with Hitler.  Hitler would have been very happy about this.

So, what explains this?  Post World War II anti-semitism falls into one of two larger camps; hatred for Israel, and generalized envy.  Theological anti-Semitism used to be a very powerful third strain (Jews as the "Christ-killers"), but as the West has become less religious, that type of Jew-hatred has faded.

So, hatred for Israel.  There are 55 Muslim-majority countries.  There is 1 Jewish-majority country.  There are more than 1 billion Muslims on Earth.  There are fewer than 20 million Jews.  There are well over 50 Muslims for every Jew worldwide.

But the position of nearly all governments of Muslim-majority countries is that the Jews are an intolerable, criminal, aggressive, expansionist threat to Muslims.

Above is a map of Muslim-majority areas in Africa and Asia.  Can you spot the Jewish behemoth on the map?  Zoom in.  Israel is narrower than the state of Rhode Island.  It's half desert.  And there's no oil.

The United Nations Human Right Commission levies nearly 50% of its complaints against Israel.  Coincidence?  The Human Rights Commission is presumably concerned with Human Rights, but how many countries on this map allow freedom of religion?  gay marriage?  universal suffrage? trial by jury?  One. Starts with I.  And it's not Iran.  Or Iraq.

"Trust me, this totally makes sense."

Ironically, the freest, safest place for Muslims on this map is.....Israel.  In Israel, Muslims have civil rights.  They can say what they want.  They can marry whom they want.  They can vote, and run for office.  In Israel.  Nowhere else on this map.

So, surely it's coincidence that the only Jewish-majority state on Earth is considered to be intolerable by dozens of other nations.

Now for generalized envy.  Jews are ridiculously successful, especially considering their very small numbers and their minority status everywhere on Earth except for Israel.

Jews comprise 2/10 of 1 percent of the global population.  But Jews have won more than 20% of all Nobel prizes.

He must have STOLEN his brain from someone!!

It is an objective fact that Jews, proportionately, DOMINATE finance, medicine, film, media, and a whole bunch of other things.  This is not a slander; this is a complement.  But, taking this fact into account, one is left with two possible explanations.

1)  Jews must be doing something right.  Maybe we could learn from them.  Maybe we could emulate their devotion to education, to family, and to tradition.  Maybe the fact that they're still here and still thriving should be an inspirational tale to ALL people.

2)  Or......they stole it.  Their success is evidence of their wickedness.  Their survival is evidence of their soul-less cunning.  The very fact that they defend themselves is evidence that they are insidious and violent by nature.

This is an important fault-line.  The fact that the most persecuted group in the history of the world is not only still in existence, but is the most successful group in the history of the very world that's been trying for millenia to destroy it, is a remarkable thing. 

Do we stand in awe of that?  Or do we devolve into that timeless cycle of paranoid, conspiratorial envy which has perennialy weakened and discredited our effort to overcome our worst impulses?

Our Lady

Any person who appreciates civilization was surely devastated, disoriented, and profoundly confused by the images of Notre Dame being engulfed in flames.  How could this happen?  Was it arson?  Did Hitler come back from the dead? 

The fire appears, at this point, to have been accidental.  Thank God.  The only thing more dangerous than incompetence is malice.  This tragedy appears to have been precipitated by the former.

This building, which I was blessed to visit 3 times, is an exemplar of so many things.  Here is a breakdown of why Notre Dame matters, in no particular order of importance.

1)  It is obviously an iconic symbol of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church has come under fire lately, and for good reason.  The rage directed at the Catholic Church for the child rape scandal is not only entirely justified; it is actually far too little and far too late.

But the Catholic Church is 2000 years old.  What else have they done?  Built Western Civilization.  Even if one is not Catholic, none of us can deny that, without the Catholic Church, we would not have the civilization that we do, this incredibly fragile jewel that we have inherited out of either blind luck or active grace.

The oldest universities in our civilization were built by Catholics.  The greatest charitable organizations are run by Catholics.  The best hospitals, specifically those explicitly charged with treating the most vulnerable of us, are funded by Catholics.  Catholics have exponentially increased the childhood cancer survival rate.

 
There are certain things we can all agree on.  Keeping kids alive is one of them.

The Catholic Church is rightly condemned for its many sins, but it is also irrationally deprived of the monumental credit it is due for building, and saving, the civilization which most of us take for granted.

2)  Notre Dame is a symbol of the super-organic nature of humanity.

Again, whether you are religious or not, humans are, at their best, super-organic.  Without getting into theology or metaphysics, we can all agree that humans are super-organic in the sense that, even when their organic existence ends, parts of them survive.

So what about us is super-organic?  What survives this "crude matter", to quote Yoda?  Out words, which can be written down; the ink does not disappear when we die.  Out works:  what we have built, or repaired, or painted, does not disappear when we die.

Here is the super-organic nature of Notre Dame: it took 100 years to build.  The people who started the construction knew, by definition, that they would die long before it was completed.  So why did they do the work if they would never see the result?

But that's the whole point.  The generations of people who built Notre Dame were doing what we all, hopefully, are doing in incremental ways every day; we are on this Earth to make things marginally better, to add something, no matter how small, to honor and advance our ancestors' work, and to set an example for our children.

It's not about seeing the cathedral finished; it's about, inch by inch, ensuring that the cathedral will be finished someday, even if you are long dead when it happens.

That's faith.  That's civilization,  And that's something that must be honored and revered, or else the entire human journey will be reduced to Netflix and chill.