THE ELECTIONS

            Despite the fact that a majority of Americans indicate that they distrust and dislike Congress, and that they object to the obstructionist tactics of Republicans in Congress, polls say that they are likely to give control of Congress to the Republicans this year. Why? I would think that people would become so disgusted with Republican obstruction that they would vote Democratic so that Congress could finally do something about the nation’s problems.

            First and most important is the economy. Under President Obama and the Democrats the economy has been lifted out of the worst recession in modern times and is well on its way to a boom. One of the factors in the improvement of the economy has been the bond-buying program carried out by the Federal Reserve. In the past few years the Fed has bought over $4.5 trillion worth of bonds. The bond-buying program helped reduce long-term interest rates and stimulated bank-lending and other aspects of the economy. The Dayton Daily News reported that Doug Handler, chief economist at HIS Global Insight, has asserted that the greatest impact of the bond-buying program “was instilling confidence in consumers and the business community that Fed officials were determined to do everything they could to stimulate growth.”

            Most people do not realize that the Republicans opposed the Fed’s bond-buying program and opposed much else of the Obama Administration’s efforts to stimulate the economy. Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader in the Senate, made it clear that the main Republican effort these past six years was to unseat President Obama, not to help improve the economy. He led the effort to block virtually all of the President’s programs to get the economy moving. As a result, Americans continued to suffer long after the actual recession was over. Now that the economy is recovering without Republican help, they want to take-over Congress and deal with the economic issues about which they were so wrong.

            Somehow, Republican leaders have succeeded in getting many people to dislike President Obama. One issue that they have seized upon is the Affordable Care Act (ACA). I admit that I do not understand their opposition to this law. Under it millions of people who did not have health insurance are now covered. By expanding Medicaid, the law makes it possible for poor people to have something which many consider a natural right. The law does not drive the nation into bankruptcy. It is financed by revenue provided for in the law and that revenue could actually lead to a governmental surplus.

Many other aspects of the ACA help people other than the poor, for example: it allows young people to remain covered under their parent’s insurance until age 26; it prohibits health insurance companies from denying coverage on account of pre-existing conditions; it provides for the elimination of the “Doughnut Hole”--That is the period during which seniors have to pay the full cost of their prescriptions; it eliminates co-payments for preventative services and exempts preventative services from deductibles under the Medicare program. It does many other things that benefit both the poor and the middle class. Yet, for some reason, Republican lies have succeeded in making the law unpopular.

            I think I understand some of the dynamics of Republican anger against President Obama and the Democrats. Let’s face it, Republicans despise and resent poor people, especially Black people. They feel that these people are a cause of too much crime in America and a drain on the public purse due to welfare programs and other programs that help the poor. They also resent Black demands for justice, particularly in cases such as those involving O.J. Simpson, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown. They hate President Obama because they believe that as a Black man he will give-in to all of the demands of African Americans and empty the federal coffers to help them out.

            With all of these things in mind, people who vote Republican will ignore the actions of Republican Congressmen in obstructing legislation that would benefit all Americans, will ignore the improving economy, will ignore the benefits of the ACA to everybody, and will vote their prejudices.

            

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

People have often told me that I should not just sit around reading books. I should get out. My former wife used to criticize me for not having any outside activities. She said that I needed to get a life. I told her that I had a life of the mind. She would stare at me in mute incomprehension. My brother told me that I needed to join some outside organization. I asked, “should I become a member of the Kiwanis Club?”

When you immerse yourself in books, you go through a door into a different world. It not only gives a kind of pleasure, it gives a life. I cannot say that reading has brought me great happiness. By chemistry and disposition I am a less than cheerful person. I would like to be happier, but I would not give up reading to gain that end. Perhaps reading has deepened my melancholy. Profound research into the absence of God and the meaninglessness of life has not cheered my soul. But knowledge is its own reward.

Stanley Fish, a college professor, literary critic, and columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column on the question of whether the humanities do anything to help humanity. His conclusion was—“No.” He said: “To the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’ the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said ….diminishes the object of its supposed praise.”

I agree.

I have spent much of my life reading. It has given me knowledge of literature, history, philosophy, theology, psychology, art, science, and other fields of learning. I do not have a brilliant mind. What I have that the average person does not have is a passion for learning. Since I graduated from college I have never stopped reading books. I am not a fast reader, but I am a constant reader. I am an autodidact, a self-educated person. I spent most of my high school years studying the parabolas of girls’ chests and most of my college education studying the trajectories of basketballs. When I graduated, I realized that I did not know very much. For some reason, I wanted to learn, so that is when I started reading in earnest.

Many years ago I wanted to understand the reason why civilizations, nations, and cultures developed the way they did. I decided to read history and other subjects in the humanities. I read many multi-volume books on the history of civilization. After a lifetime of reading, I still do not have the answers. But I do have some ideas, and I can converse about them. I have tried to learn about subjects beyond literature, history, philosophy, and theology; subjects like music, art, and science. I have only a layman’s knowledge of these fields, but I probably know more than most people. As I’ve gotten older I find that I love listening to beautiful classical music. I also love reading books about art and looking up artists’ works on the computer.

I discovered early in my marriage that my wife did not appreciate it if I went into the bedroom in the evening and started reading. She wanted me to watch television with her. This bothered me and probably contributed to the eventual downfall of our marriage. I looked upon the watching of television as a waste of time. We sat and stared blankly at the screen without engaging in any conversation. The material on television was pathetic. I hated watching, but felt that it was the only way to appease my wife. Now that I am older, I like looking at some of the shows on television. But I still read a lot.

When children came along, they wanted their daddy to play with them. I loved playing with my children but it was impossible to read after coming home from work. In addition, my work was demanding and I often did not get home until later. By the time I got home I would be tired, too tired to read.

I started getting up very early in the morning. I discovered that if I arose around 5:30 a.m. I would be able to read for several hours without interference. Moreover, I would be awake and alert. I could read and understand the more difficult books without developing that sleepiness that accompanies most attempts to read recondite material.

Each morning I would get up and go make coffee. I would sit and luxuriate over the coffee while I began reading some book of history, philosophy, theology, literature or such. Sometimes I could not understand a word of what I was reading, but I did not give up. I would read and reread pages until I began to comprehend what the writer was saying. As I read more and more books, I understood more and more.

Sometimes I would be struck by what I was reading. Some writer would connect with my mind so deeply that chills would run down my spine. I have had the same experience with music and art.  When I first saw Velazquez’s painting, the “Water Seller of Seville,” I was deeply moved and tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t comprehend the genius it must have taken to paint such a masterpiece! I have had the same experience when hearing some pieces of music. I was almost moved to tears when I first heard the slow movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. 

I would have liked to have had a consistently happy life. But I realize that for some people, like me, happiness consists of fleeting moments when we are somehow introduced to something sublime. Sometimes it is just a beautiful day, or beautiful scenery, or magnificent music, or wonderful art, or a glorious poem, or a penetrating thought. It is through such things that I have experienced much of the happiness in my life.

FERGUSON AND THE RACIAL DIVIDE

            One of the tragic results of the incidents in Ferguson Missouri is that more of the White People of America have turned against African Americans. I am not speaking only of right-wing people who never liked Blacks.  I’m talking about all whites, including White liberals who always thought of themselves as civil rights advocates.

            Black people might say that white liberals never really supported them, and that they never needed the support of white liberals. But they would be very wrong. In a nation where white people are a majority of the population, and where whites represent an overwhelming majority of the political and business power structure, African Americans simply cannot progress and succeed if the white people are hostile to them.

            White liberals have spent many decades fighting for civil rights. Many white liberals went South during the civil rights struggles where they were freedom riders, and where they conducted voter registration drives and other activities in support of civil rights. Now, after the O.J. Simpson case, the Trayvon Martin case, and the Michael Brown fiasco, a large proportion of the white liberals are alienated and disgusted. I would wager that today Blacks have very few friends left among white liberals. I believe that this is a real tragedy for African Americans.

            It is not the dispute about the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown that have alienated the white people. It is the subsequent rioting and looting. White people cannot understand how Blacks can protest the Brown shooting by rioting and looting. It is very upsetting for people who have spent their lives fighting for the rights of Blacks to see them turn this protest into an ugly circus.

            The decline in white liberal support for African American aspirations began with the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1994-1995. Whites had greatly admired Simpson for his heroics on the football field and his humorous movie rolls. Nevertheless, when they heard the evidence for Simpson’s murder of his wife and her lover, they were convinced that he was guilty. Whites were astonished to find that Black people did not share this view. Virtually all African Americans wanted Simpson to be acquitted and, despite all of the evidence, insisted that Simpson was innocent. Moreover, even high level Black commentators joined in the collective Black denial of Simpson’s guilt. When Simpson was acquitted by a largely Black jury, the media showed Blacks at an elite collage cheering. Whites had never realized how different Black attitudes were from those of white people.

            Nevertheless, by 2008 the Simpson case had been virtually forgotten and many whites were able to vote for Barack Obama for president. Then came the Trayvon Martin case. When a community watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, shot Martin, whites saw this as a legitimate use of self-defense against a young man who had attacked the Zimmerman. African Americans had a totally different view. They were incensed that a white man would profile and follow a Black youth walking through a private community. Blacks believed that regardless of whether or not Zimmerman shot Martin in self –defense, he should be convicted of murder on account of his racial profiling. Again, as in the O.J. Simpson case, the Black view was adopted by all of the Black commentators. Whites were very disturbed by the fact that Blacks saw something so differently from them.

            The final straw was the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson Missouri. Whites had no shared opinion about the circumstances of Brown’s death, but were horrified that Black people engaged in rioting and looting of stores. Police put forth an explanation of the shooting which Blacks refused to accept. Some people who claimed to be witnesses said that there was no justification for the killing. Whites were alarmed to see that Black people would loot stores in their own community to express their outrage at the killing. Whites pointed out that they never rioted or looted in any similar circumstances.

            Now, as a result of Whites’ disillusion there is a greater racial divide in America than there has been in a long time. Ultimately, this will hurt the fortunes of African Americans. They will find it harder to get jobs, harder to earn money, harder to get into good collages, and harder to get along with the whites who represent the power structure. The disparities that now place Blacks at the bottom of the social scale will be exacerbated and extended.

ISRAEL AND HAMAS

             It is disheartening to hear of large crowds of people demonstrating in Washington against Israel on account of its incursion into Gaza in search of the rockets and tunnels of the Hamas terrorists. One also hears of much larger and more vociferous mobs demonstrating in European cities against Israel. While such demonstrations may have a humanitarian component—concern for the lost lives of Palestinians, particularly children--there is also a large element of anti-Semitism.  As various American writers have shown, the Israeli invasion was a justified response to multiple rocket attacks by Hamas and the building of tunnels by Hamas under the border between Israel and Gaza.

            Joe Klein, in Time Magazine, put his finger on the problem: “Hamas, which was in an existential jam this spring, needed a new strategy. It had lost its prime ally in the region when the Egyptian army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood.  (Hamas is the official Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.) It also alienated another of its supporters, Iran, when it sided with the Brotherhood against Bashar Assad in Syria. Opposition within Gaza to Hamas’ corruption and misrule was also on the rise. What to do? Provoke Israel. It had worked in the past.”

It is useful to understand that the war between Israel and Hamas is not simply a war between two competing religions or political ideologies. It is a war between civilization and darkness. There are many in the world who would paint Hamas as a group of devout Muslims who provide extensive social programs for their people. This portrait ignores the fact that Hamas represents the vanguard of a form of nasty fascism.

The recent hostilities were started by Hamas when it began raining rockets on Israel without provocation. What was Israel supposed to do? Sit by and complain without doing anything? Israel is not that kind of country. They did what the U.S. would do if Mexico started bombarding our cities with explosives. They retaliated.

Hamas is the extreme branch of Fatah. Unlike the Fatah movement on the West Bank, Hamas refuses to negotiate a permanent peace with Israel or to recognize the right of Israel to exist. The United States has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Israel is not just another Middle Eastern country. It is the one true democracy in the Middle East and the one country that reflects the kind of freedom and culture embraced by America. This is why it is hated so much by the most radical and uncivilized Muslim people of the region. Although it is a haven for Jews the world over, Israel is an open society in which more than half of the population is non-religious. There are large numbers of Muslims and Christians living in Israel with complete freedom of religion. Many Americans have gone to live in Israel.

Some people believe that Israel has no right to exist because it has set itself up as a Jewish state and occupied what was formerly a Muslim land under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. I’m sorry, but I think that the case of Israel is special. It is not just that the Jews of Europe needed a place to live after the Holocaust, but that the vast history of pogroms, hatred, and discrimination of Jews left them with no option but to set-up a state where they could live in peace and defend themselves from their enemies. There may be some discrimination against Muslems in Israel, but Israel has created a democracy—yes, a messy and contentious democracy—in the middle of a land ruled by angry and violent people.

The Israelis, many of whom are descended from European, Russian, and Polish Jews who were almost completely exterminated in the Nazi holocaust, have created a powerful military with the vow “Never Again!” They have also created a thriving economy in the midst of the wasteland that Muslim nations have allowed to develop in the deserts of the Middle East despite the existence of oil. They have preserved and expanded the great European culture from which they are descended.

The strong culture of Israel should be contrasted with that of the Islamic world. As George Will once wrote, the Middle East “festers with forces that menace elevated societies everywhere.” I believe that the root cause of radical Muslims’ hatred of Israel is Muslims’ lack of self-confidence. Israel was able to take land in the desert and make it bloom. Many Middle Eastern Muslims see Israel as a Western colony in Arabia and look upon it as a thumb in their eyes.

Some Muslims turned to fanatic religion as an answer to their feelings of inferiority. This is a common historical fact. People of lower economic, social, and intellectual classes envy and resent the more fortunate people of the world. They need to believe that they are among the elect few who practice the correct religion and that however lucky other people may seem, those others are condemned to religious error on earth and to hell upon death. Fanatic forms of Islam, such as Khomeini’s Shi’a revolution, the Salafism of the Moslem Brotherhood, the worldwide jihad of Osama bin Laden, and the fanaticism of the Iraqi ISIS fighters, is the answer for such Muslims.

The U.S. should not presume to dictate to the Israelis what they should do in the face of rockets falling on Israeli cities. It is important that any truce and settlement of the dispute between Israel and Hamas include protection of Israel and restriction of Hamas’ ability to attack Israel.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POVERTY, IGNORANCE, AND RELIGION

        The Science Channel recently aired a controversial and surprising new television program entitled Through the Wormhole. It is a discussion of current scientific issues with the actor, Morgan Freeman, as its host. In one episode entitled “Did we invent God or did God invent us?” Freeman explores the question of whether the concept of God is purely a product of our brains. As part of the discussion, Freeman tells about the ideas of a University of Texas psychologist named Jennifer Whitson. Through experiment, Whitson illustrates how people who feel that they have no control over their lives and surroundings are more likely to look for explanations in something mystical. On the other hand, people who feel well in control of their lives are less likely to believe in mystical or  spiritual beings controlling their destinies.

            One of Whitson’s experiments involved having people try to solve random problems. There were no right or wrong answers to the problems, but Whitson designed the experiment so that some people would feel that they were solving all of the problems while others were made to feel that they were failing to solve any of the problems. As a final part of the experiment she gave each of the people a picture of random static noise such as appears on a television screen. There were no pictures in the static, but the people who had been made to feel that they had failed to solve any of the problems, and who were discouraged with the feeling that they had no control, regularly claimed that they saw a picture of something in the static. Those who thought they had done well with the problems and felt in control said that they did not see anything in the static.

            The conclusion drawn by Whitson was that people tend to look to mystical and spiritual things for help when they feel that they have no control. People who feel totally in control are far less likely to adopt spiritual and mystical explanations. Morgan Freeman said that this might explain why the most religious and superstitious people in the world are in the poor and ignorant populations.

            Poor and ignorant people seem to be far more religious and superstitious than rich and educated people. Religion is basically a form of encouragement, support, and reinforcement. It is a crutch for people who feel they have no control over the world and need something to back them up. Poor and ignorant people want to believe that this is not all there is to life. They want to believe that there is a life after death that is much better than this one and is the best of all possible worlds.

            According to Gallup polls, there is a direct relationship between poverty and the religiosity of countries around the world. In the world's poorest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes of $2,000 or lower -- the median percentage of people who say religion is important in their daily lives is 95%. In contrast, the median for the richest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes higher than $25,000 -- is 47%.

Highly educated people tend to be less religious than people with little education. A poll of those distinguished scientists who are members of The National Academy of Sciences disclosed that 93% are atheists or agnostics.

            The anthropologist Scott Atran says: “In Britain and the United States, the highest measures of religious commitment and the most radical forms of religious affiliation (Pentecostal, Baptist, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists etc.) are registered among the most marginal or underprivileged social groups, especially minorities and persons at the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole.”

            When you look at it from the point of view of very poor people the world over, belief in God has a rational basis. We are all born with a natural inclination to assume that everything in the world should make sense. Very poor people cannot accept that their lives of want, hunger, crime, infirmity, discrimination, and disrespect, are all there is or will ever be for them. They believe that life should be fair, and that there must be something to balance their hardships.  If you wander in the worst ghettos of American cities, or the teeming, indigent barrios of Latin American cities, or the fetid warrens of India’s slums, you will find people with nothing in the way of material goods, but a great deal of hope for a better life after death.

They need to believe that somehow in the afterlife God will level the playing field and that they are not condemned for all eternity to being poor, backward, inferior, or ignorant. They need to believe that in eternal life there will be no aristocrats and peasants, no intellectuals and simple minds. The poor of America need to believe that in the afterlife they will have everything they want and will get as much respect as if they were millionaires. The poor of the arid deserts of Arabia need to believe that in the afterlife there will be cool rivers flowing through green pastures with plentiful flowers and fruit.

            Religion is not nearly as important to middle and upper class Americans as it is for the poor. For many of the comfortable and educated, there is considerable doubt and lax adherence to required church-going expectations. I have known many middle class people who say that they believe in God but who go to church only once or twice a year. I have found that of those middle and upper class people who are deeply religious, many tend to be less educated or intelligent than others. The more educated and intelligent one is, the more such a person has a curious mind. People with great curiosity tend to be more skeptical. People with great skepticism are more likely to be atheists.

PUTIN AND UKRAINE

      It was distressing and scary to see Russian military forces move into and take-over the Crimea in southern Ukraine. It is even more distressing and depressing to see American conservatives blaming our president for these dangerous events and showing admiration for Vladimir Putin, the man behind this aggression.

            Anyone who has read history will be aware that World War I was started with the same kind of occurrences as are happening now in Ukraine. Back then, the assassination of a Grand Duke, followed by a series of demands, confrontations, and clashes, led to greatest bloodletting the world had ever known. World War II was preceded by Hitler’s claims that he needed to invade neighboring countries in order to protect the German populations therein. Putin has made similar claims about the Crimea, and has hinted that he feels the same about other areas in nations surrounding Russia.

I believe that what happened before World Wars I and II could happen in Ukraine. If the Russian army were to move into eastern Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Army were to confront the Russian invaders, and if European nations were to come to the aid of Ukraine, and the United States was to fulfill its treaty obligations with NATO, we could be in a bloody world of trouble—all caused by the insecurities of Vladimir Putin. Contrary to the image he likes to project, I believe that Putin is a terribly insecure man.

            Let’s not forget that Putin is a former KGB officer. After the fall of the Soviet Union he was in charge of the Federal Security Service which was the successor to the KGB and which retained many of the old KGB thugs. He has said that the fall of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Putin has never denounced the police state that existed under Communism. The Soviet Union may have been powerful, but it existed on the basis of a harsh, ruthless, violent tyranny that denied its people most of the freedoms we experience in the United States and confronted the United States and Europe with brutal hostility. Putin may not want a return of Soviet Communism, but he would surely like to reestablish Russian homogeny over the states that were formerly part of the USSR.

Under Putin’s dictatorial rule the democratic freedoms that arose in Russia after the fall of Communism have gradually eroded, and opposition groups have come in for serious attacks. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter who was critical of the Putin regime, was murdered outside her Moscow apartment. In the U.K., Alexander Litvinenko, a noted Putin critic, was poisoned with a lethal dose of polonium 210. The chess master, Gary Kasparov, was thrown into jail for campaigning for justice and civil rights. Other opponents of Putin have incurred similar attacks.  The Russian media has seen its freedoms of speech and the press eliminated.

            Putin has made it clear that he desires to restore the influence and power of the Soviet Union. In 2008, when the President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, sent troops into the rebellious Georgian republic of South Ossetia , Putin sent tank units of the Russian Army into Georgia and crushed the Georgian forces. Putin has succeeded in intimidating Russia’s former republics, and dissuaded them from becoming members of NATO.

            In July 2007, Putin suspended Russian observance of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). This treaty established limits on key categories of conventional military equipment in Europe and mandated the destruction of excess weaponry. It restricted Russian freedom to expand its military might.

            Perhaps those conservatives who seem to admire Putin so much should consider whether they want a return of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons. Putin has enlarged the Russian armed forces. We could easily return to a Cold War status.

            It used to be a rule between the major political parties in America that whatever domestic disagreements we had, we came together as a nation on foreign policy. The reason for this was obvious. Internal disputes over foreign policy make a nation appear confused and weak. When dealing with other nations, especially potential enemies, we should speak with one voice. For some reason, conservatives have depicted President Obama’s efforts to bring-about peace in the world as weakness. They show admiration for a macho thug like Putin. They ignore the likelihood that the reason for Putin’s tough-guy stand, and for his international defiance and aggression, are insecurities about himself and his country.

            President Obama is obviously not a weak man. He is a decent man who has no need to prove his masculinity. He shows his deep strength and humanity by working for peace and understanding. I wish that his conservative critics had the courage to do the same.

THE HOLOCAUST

 Today is the last day of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks. Lately, I have been reading spy novels about World War II Germany and I have been thinking a lot about the mammoth slaughter of the Jews during the Holocaust. Thinking about the Holocaust always makes me very emotional. I do not know why. I am not Jewish, but the very thought of this atrocity moves me deeply. As a gentile, the Holocaust has always presented a serious problem for me. How could a modern, culturally rich, Christian nation, carry-out such a monstrous act of evil? With all of the crimes of man, including the genocides committed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and other places, and the atrocities committed in every war, I still see the Holocaust as a horror unmatched in the history of human evil. It should never be compared to other acts of evil.

Emil L. Fackenheim, in his book, To Mend the World, said: “To link Auschwitz with Hiroshima is not to deepen or widen one’s concern with humanity and its future. It is to evade the import of Auschwitz and Hiroshima alike.” The same can be said of all of the other cataclysms suffered by humanity. Each is a separate occurrence of evil.

The history of the Jews, beginning with the conquest of Israel and banishment of Jews by the Romans, is one long sorrowful testament to man’s inhumanity. The Nazis did not invent the genocide of the Jews. They merely took it to new depths of horrendous magnitude. Over the centuries before the Holocaust the Jews experienced many genocides and pogroms. Around the time when Columbus was sailing to America, the rulers of Spain were expelling all of the Jews from their realm. Many reasons are given for this massive persecution, but no explanation can begin to justify such evil.

One frequently hears people compare things to the Holocaust. The right-wing anti-abortionists like to say that abortion is the same as the Holocaust. Such unthinking speech is morally abhorrent. How can any person compare the elimination of a microscopic, not-yet-conscious, not-yet-thinking, not-yet-feeling unborn embryo to the deliberate murder of grown, thinking, feeling human beings? At Auschwitz and other camps, the Nazis starved millions of Jews. They raped the women, shot families in front of huge ditches, tortured millions, and, ultimately, gassed the remainder. They used to save time and trouble by throwing live babies and small children into the ovens without gassing them first. If you cannot identify the distinction between that and abortion, you are morally numb.

The excuse given by the Christian Nazis and Fascists for persecution of the Jews was usually that they were: “Christ Killers.” It is a revoltingly stupid claim. Jesus of Nazareth was killed by the Romans, yet nobody has ever wanted to exterminate the Italians. Even if it had been the Jews who killed Jesus (himself a Jew), why blame it on Jewish descendants living thousands of years later?

According to the Bible, Jesus had brothers and sisters. We must assume that many of the descendants of these brothers and sisters were Jews, and that millions of Twentieth Century Jews in Europe had the blood of Jesus’ family in them. The Christians who marched Jews into the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other camps were actually murdering the descendants of Joseph, Mary, and the family of Jesus.

As a gentile, I am able to find something valuable in the teaching of the great Jewish philosopher, Emile Fackenheim. He said “To grasp the Holocaust whole-of-horror is not to comprehend or transcend it, but rather, to say no to it, or resist it.” Fackenheim said that 613 commandments were given on Mt. Sinai. He offered a 614^th commandment. In effect, he said that if we forget, or minimize, or diminish the importance of the Holocaust, if gentiles engage in anti-Semitism, if Jews give-up their beliefs and culture because of the Holocaust, they will be letting Hitler gain a form of victory. He said that we must not let Hitler win.

I may not share the beliefs of religious Jews, but by dedicating my life to tolerance and brotherhood, I can join in the crusade to defeat Hitler and his progeny.