What Happened to the Truth?

Before we dive in, I want you to go get something from your surplus junk drawer. You know the drawer: where you keep that ten-year-old bottle of penicillin that was a ten-day supply that you *must finish* and yet you keep the few capsules you didn’t take for the possible self-diagnosed strep throat that doesn’t warrant a doctor’s visit and a full round of antibiotics but those few pills in the back of the drawer? 

So I want you to go to that drawer, move the rusty scissors and the key that no one knows what it opens so you better keep it, and take out your little vial of blood you’re saving to drink next Passover. You know the one: from little Christian babies that you murdered in some horrific satanic way, nailed onto a cross and collected the blood as it dripped down to save for your Passover festivities.

Go ahead. I’ll wait. 

What the heck???? Don’t be ridiculous! Everyone knows Jews don’t kill Christian babies for their blood on Passover! We’re drinking that nasty Manischewitz stuff, or the sweet Jovin if you have a properly elevated table.  

But wait, if official leaders say that Jews drink baby’s blood then maybe it’s true? Too jaded to believe politicians? What if a very very rich and famous singer with several million followers confirmed Jews drink baby blood? What if they wear a PIN to show the blood-drinking? What if they wear the pin and carry a flag AND have a catchy chant? I know what will convince you the truth of this little lie: I’ll have a JEW agree with the lie, and then it’s most definitely proof that Jews are drinking baby blood and sacrificing little Christian babies. (Or at least it’s done by the “other” Jews, the ones who dress, talk and look different than you- they must be the blood drinkers!) So of course Jews drink baby blood for ritual sacrifice. Yet…

Before the world was assisted by celebrity social media accounts doing the “thinking” for you, the world had another inconvenience to overcome in the whole Jews-drink-blood myth: Jews don’t just not drink baby’s blood, Jews go out of their way to not consume any blood at all, ever. Up until very recent days, all Jews kept the laws of kashrut, not just the gemara-toting old men with long black coats, everyone. It was just what Jews did.

So let’s look at blood and the laws of kosher for a second. Here’s a quick primary on applicable laws of kashrut: 

Despite popular misconception, kosher is not about a Rabbi coming and blessing the food. First you need a kosher animal; in short the animal has to have cloven hooves and chew from the cud (or have fins and scales if it swims, feathers for flying vegetarians, etc…). The animal has to be healthy. At the time of death, the animal must not be in fear, and death has to be super quick and virtually painless. Despite what PETA “activists” would have you believe, the laws of Jewish eating put animal well-being at the very top of the priorities.

Now, because Jews do not consume any blood the following has to happen:

1. The blood of the animal is let immediately following death.

2. Certain parts of the animal can not be eaten if blood can not be removed (like the back leg of a lamb unless you have a specialist).

3. The animal has to be salted to remove any remaining blood. Ever wonder why the big flaky salt that chefs love so much is called “kosher salt”? The big flakes cover the piece of meat and draw out any remaining blood which is then fully drained and washed before any kosher eater (which used to be all Jews) will cook that meat. 

Not only do Jews not eat or drink blood, Jews are obsessed with not intaking blood in any form. Unlike the Incas who, as recently as 500 years ago, were throwing human sacrifices into the fiery pits of Peru, Jews have never ever supported human ritual slaughter. Jews were the very first people to not sacrifice humans. I am not going to try to convince you, dear reader, that we do not kill children to drink their blood or throw women into fiery volcanic pits- you can google it if you’d like. And yet….

Millions and millions of Jews have been murdered, tortured, dismembered and- yes - burned alive from the power of a lie called Blood Libels. 

This particular little lie was first recorded in 1144 in Norwich, England. England was already five years into “The Anarchy,” the civil war in which Stephen, King of England, had been locked up by his cousin Matilda who wanted the crown. Then he was free. Then he was nearly dying. Then, well, as you can imagine chaos and bloodshed reigned; England was a hotbed of torture, burnings, massacre and overall war pandemonium. And as in any war, the everyday people suffered the most; people were dying and sick and hungry and the masses of people were itching for someone to blame.

In the middle of this mayhem sat the little town of Norwich. It was Easter week. Everyone was prepping for the big holiday weekend. 12-year-old William was a tanning apprentice, but money was tight and he was rented out for extra work to a local Jewish family. Then on Easter Sunday his uncle was walking through the woods and what did he find? According to his story, he found his dead nephew lying in the woods covered with all kinds of strange marks on his head, arms and torso. The uncle likely thought about all the chants and flags and other catchy propaganda of the recent Crusaders and said,

“Good Christians could not possibly kill a child like that so it must be the Jews. Why, they must have murdered that poor boy to drink his blood! Resist! Divest!” (Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself, of course he didn’t call for divestments yet….)

The little lie of the bloodthirsty Jews took a few years to gain momentum. But then a young priest, Thomas of Monmouth, came to town. Encouraged by the Bishop, Father Thomas was looking to get first big break on the upward journey of church politics. What he needed was something big that was just his own discovery. What he needed was to discover a saint!

And *poof* little Billy of Norwich became a martyr.

Thomas didn’t bother with facts or proof or eyewitnesses, he had an inkwell and an excellent imagination. With little effort the ambitious priest found a helpful servant. The servant was easily reminded that she must have seen something fishy through the thinly boarded walls. And then, as Thomas was working on his masterpiece he hit real paydirt. Along came a (former/self-hating) Jew, Jonathan Glazer. Oh I mean Theobald of Cambridge. Theo confirmed that the murder of little Billy of Norwich was just another human sacrifice that Jews did all the time. The priest tied the whole story in with tales of the host and sacrament, and instead this was Passover blood wine and, well you get the jist. Thomas penned a best seller! And thus authored the first Blood Libel in recorded history.

But certainly not the last.

By 1168 the Benedictine monks had found a good business in creating saints out of dead boys who must surely have been killed by bloodthirsty Jews. This time the child martyr was Harold of Gloucester found face down floating in the river. This sealed the pattern and within three years in Blois France, Count Thibault wanted to deflect rumors about his infidelity with a Jewish woman so handily burned 30 local Jews for killing Christian babies (though no bodies or missing babies were ever identified).

This tool became super handy for rulers everywhere. In 1182 King Phillip II of France needed cash to rebuild Paris. So he invented charges against the Jews with the handy death of a 12-old-boy from Pontoise, expelled the Jewish community and used their “forfeited” money to rebuild Paris. And thus blood libel became good economic policy.

And then the blood libel lie was also found to be convenient public health policy. By the time of a world-wide pandemic, the Black Death, in the middle of the 14th century, the world was completely comfortable blaming the Jews for poisoning the wells and killing for blood cocktails.

And in a movement that has stood the tests of time, political and religious leadership promoted and supported these lies either directly or with complicit silence. In 1475 in Trent, Italy, a 2-year-old boy named Simon disappeared around Easter. His dad said it must have been the Jews. That made sense to the neighbors. So they arrested the entire Jewish community, tortured them, burned them at the stake and granted official Simon sainthood, which was supported by the Church for over 500 years until the pope said “oopsy” and removed the sainthood in 1965.

Do not let yourself think it’s only the Catholic church though. Never one to be dissuaded from a good story, up and coming German theologian Martin Luther published his findings in 1543 in his little book “On the Jews and Their Lies” In this treatise, a foundational publication of the Reformation movement that created Protestant Christianity, Luther said “burn baby burn…”

Once the Jewish synagogues, schools and homes had been set on fire and their money and property confiscated, Luther said the options for the Jewish problem were only forced labor or permanent expulsion. But this was all a shame he said, because really “we are at fault in not slaying them.” The preacher explained, not only do the Jews think they’re better and mock Christianity, but they kidnap Christian children, torture them, and you know…. that whole Passover blood sacrifice thing….

While people never seem to agree across national borders or across different languages or different religions - Jew hatred knows no borders. By the 17th century, these blood libels had become common across eastern Europe, made their way to Poland, then picked up steam by the Russian empire. Pogroms of the Russian empire hit their stride in 1911 when reports came out of the murder of a little Christian boy which broke out on -you guessed it!- Easter Sunday.

But do not for a second think the Christian community kept this bounty to themselves. As early as just two years after the first reported blood libel, in 1146, the Almohad Caliphate massacred 100,000 Jew in Fez, Morocco and 120,000 Jews in Marrakesh.

And it kept gaining momentum. On February 5, 1840, Father Thomas, an Italian monk and his Muslim servant, Ibrahim Amrah, disappeared in Damascus, Syria which was momentarily ruled by Muhammad Ali, the viceroy of Ottoman Egypt. The story is kind of boring at this point- it involved lots of torture to the Jewish community, pillaging by mobs, rape, burnings y’know… the Muslim Arabs had learned well. And like the foundational texts of Lutheranism and Catholicism, so too the Muslim leadership got the writing bug and included Jew Hatred as a tenet in religious texts.

And so the Muslim Arabs kept going with what worked.

Fast forward to modern day when Palestinian leaders have taken the blood libel ball and run with it. In October 2000 and then again in March 2001, Dr Mahmoud Al-Saeed Al-Kurdi, published in the mainstream Arab newspaper Al Akhbar a reference to this now ancient blood libel, “The murder of Father Thom(as) and his servant, which took place in the Jewish Quarter of Damascus in 1840,came to mind when I saw the horrible Al-Aqsa massacres,” (conflict at the Temple mount).

Dr. Al-Kurdi thought readers may be bored with his presentation of his version of the blood libel lie, so a year later he provided audiences with a tele-drama on the topic of blood thirsty murderous Jews of Damascus. This was made into a television series “Al-Shatat” which started airing on Jordanian TV during Ramadan 2003.

In 2014 a Hamas spokesman told a Lebanese television station, “We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzo. This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence.” A fact. The lie is now a fact.

This lie that is now being screamed by Ivy League faculty and students and stamped as official by their administrations.

The songs may be a bit catchier, but it’s the same old tired story again and again.

I am not going to try to convince you that Jews do not drink baby blood or ritually kill people for any holiday. I am also not going to try to convince you that in some underground bunker somewhere there are not tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian children being held captive in Israel. I am not going to give you statistics about why it is just ridiculous to think that there is some mass graveyard of countless Palestinian children who have been systematically murdered at the hands of Jews on their goal of genocide. And yet….

The world seems full of otherwise seemingly intelligent students and faculty and other “thought leaders” who are convinced that Jews are a blood-drinking, war mongering, genocidal bunch of lunatics.

But what keeps me up is thinking about the Jews who are full of such self-loathing or misdirected empathy that they also believe today’s blood libel. I am heartbroken thinking about the Jewish students who have fallen for the lies or just fallen in love with the chants and catered encampments. They are ripping out their parents hearts, annihilating their future and setting themselves up for the most lonely a human being can ever be:

Surrounded only by people who hate them.

Because it has never been about ritual slaughter for holiday blood. It has never been about Gaza or Palestinian babies or about resistance, colonialism or oppression, definitely not ever about justice or compassion or love. It’s plain old everyday Jew Hatred.

But why? Why oh why? Jews must kill little babies for the blood, at least a few must be in the blood drinking business. It must be the ones with the long beards and funny clothes, or those African Jews (they can’t be real right, I mean their skin is black!). If it wasn’t true it would not have stood the test of time.

Or would it?

So why oh why then did a little lie survive hundreds and hundreds of years?

It works.

That’s it. I’m sorry if you want something deeper than that, but it has worked and it continues to work to this day.

There are so many reasons why it has worked to blame the Jews throughout history I’ll just hit on a few:

1. They’re always there, around but not really a part of things. Forget the Energizer Bunny, it’s like historical whac-a-mole: one empire squashes them and they pop up on another continent. There are never enough of them to make a majority or even a significant minority; they just refuse to disappear. They look different, they talk different, they eat different, they’re, well, odd. It’s like the national Breakfast Club.

   
   It’s not that the Jews have been the only scapegoats, it’s just that they’re still there to target. Other strange groups who were blamed and massacred actually became all the way dead or gone quickly or over time: witches, heretical Christians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Inca…just everyone runs out of historical runway and is no more. But not those strange-looking, strange-sounding, strange-acting Jews…
   
   ”Aha!” you say. It’s because they look and sound and eat different. Because they do not drink blood like other nations is exactly why those nations accuse and find the Jews guilty-punishable-by-death for eating and drinking blood….We’ll assimilate! We’ll look and eat and dress like them, depending on where we’re living at the moment.

   
   Only, of course that didn’t work: look at 1930s Germany during the age of the Enlightened Jew, or dare I say 2020s America when a tiny fraction of the Jewish population keeps the ancient Torah laws (though they certainly still do!) Either will show you that looking the part of the everyday non-Jew doesn’t work either. Why? Because Jews are different. That’s just fact. Thousands of years ago, while wandering around the desert as homeless vagrants the Jewish people were offered a set of laws on how to live differently and they took it.

2. It’s a good peace-keeping strategy: From neighborhoods to empires, the rulers need to give the populace a release valve. Famine, war, pandemic, recessions, unemployment, too much rain, not enough rain…you name it, humanity generally has something to kvetch about. And there has been a timeless human characteristic among the weak and the lazy of feeling like other people have more, are getting over on you, making you a fool, reaping the rewards, keeping the bounty to themselves… that someone else is to blame. (Again, to the protestors who think their victimhood is new or original, it is most definitely not.)

   So imagine what happens when you have mobs of angry proletariats armed with pitchforks. This is the fear that has kept slave holders and country dukes and kings and dictators alike for all of time. What would happen if the masses actually rose up in anger and blamed the leader for their pain and suffering? Ask the Romanovs, t’aint pretty. So the best way to avoid your own death and destruction is to allow the angry masses to take out all of their pent-up frustration and hunger and rage on someone. A scapegoat. And who better than the most reliable tiny group of weirdos in the world the Jews?

3. It just makes economic sense. Taxes are one form of revenue- during a bad time lords and Presidents can find a way to wring out a little more tax. But instead of getting a percentage, rulers learned simple math early on: some of the people’s income and things or ALL of their money and stuff. Every single blood libel leaves empty houses and full bank accounts for the taking. Just imagine the empty street one day, cleared of pesty Jewish residents, and all their stuff. It’s a veritable windfall. And a reliable one at that.

Maybe I’ve convinced you about Europe, you were already pretty on board about radical Islam, but America, it would never happen here. It could never happen here, we just need to restore order, remind everyone of their sanity, and get back to America the Great Business-as-Usual (with added fancy hats and slogans), the empire to end all empires, the golden medina!

So let me tell you about another Blood Libel. The blood libel of Massena in 1928. Are you searching Spain or Greece? Could it be closer to home, Massena, Brazil for example?

Massena, New York. The same great state of Columbia University if you’re looking for a plot thread. So imagine for a second, I know it will be a stretch, but try:

It’s the United States of America. There is a hot and contentious presidential election going on between a Protestant Republican Midwest traditional candidate (Herbert Hoover) and a Democratic candidate who was the Catholic son of mixed immigrants (Al Smith whose family was part Irish and part Italian.) During that time there had been massive new immigration, bringing in vagrants or “others” from all kinds of crazy countries and bizarre faiths and some of them (namely Jews) were advising the Democrats. (Refer to other writings of mine talking about the Jewish roles in American communism and then civil rights and the DNC.)

So little 4-year-old Barbara Griffiths wandered into the woods surrounding the industrial working town of Massena and disappeared on September 22, 1928. Hundreds showed up to scour the woods. The next day she was found, unscathed!

However, her being not-dead with all her blood intact did nothing to quash the certainty that the town locals, police, firefighters and mayor had by morning that Barbie had been abducted by blood thirsty Jews for ritual slaughter.

But they found her alive and unharmed? A lie doesn’t continue in the face of absolute evidence. Right?

Or does it?

Let’s talk about the Hamas Ministry of Health. Before we talk about hospitals that are not hospitals but terrorist headquarters..Before we talk about using hospital parking lots to launch failed missiles… Before we talk about math or physics and how both disciplines provide unequivocal proof that the claims made by the Hamas Ministry of Health are factually impossible…. First let’s discuss the blatant foundational lie upon which all others on this issue grow:

“The Hamas Health Ministry says”……twenty bajillion innocent Palestinian children have been killed by the savage Israeli government.

So let’s break it down.

• Hamas = brutal killers, sadistic rapists, tunnel terrorists of the most pathetic kind who keep their own people in poverty and hunger while living off of billions of dollars of stolen and donated money. That’s Hamas.

• Ministry of Health = this would mean that there is organized governmental support for the health and wellbeing of the population that Hamas rules. In actuality the aid comes into Gaza and Hamas steals it from their own people. So if Hamas is not concerned with food and water, how can they be concerned with health? And moreover, they use their hospitals as terrorist headquarters. Seriously?

• Hamas lies. Hamas has lied for years and years about everything, but suddenly their death reports are accurate? Everything else is a lie, but the innocent children death toll, that’s not a lie!?!?

And yet, early in this conflict Western papers at least put xxx (insert magical number of the day) innocent Palestinians dead per the Hamas Health Ministry. (They can’t even keep the name straight- ministry of health? Health ministry? No clear name because it’s a piece of fiction…)

But now, far more dangerously, the numbers are just presented as fact by the NY Times and elsewhere.

“Aha!” say you. The really new-new problem is the media. If it wasn’t for the news media and social media of today, these little lies would go away. Of course, however, Jew hatred by seemingly reputable Western publications is not at all new either.

If you think the New York Times has a bee in its bonnet for Jews (don’t get me started on the many years campaign to end Jewish private education) they’re like a high school paper compared to the circulation of the Dearborn Independent, Henry Ford’s personal newspaper. Under the carmaker’s personal direction, the Independent ran 91 issues in the 1920s of the evilness of the Jewish influence. The tropes (you already know them- Jews control the banks and the world yadda yadda) were so wildly popular that they were published in a four set series of books called “The International Jew” which then was translated into 16 languages including 6 editions in Germany that are still publicly available.

Not to be outdone, young aspiring Adolf Hitler mixed some of Ford’s material into his own bizarre autobiographical manifesto in a little book called “Mein Kampf” Fast forward 100 years and the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf is one of the most widely found items by the IDF in the homes of innocent Gaza families, next to their guns and, per the same testimonies, hard core pornography in nearly every home.

So what now?

To my Jewish friends: if you’ll be killed for being a Jew, how about trying out living as a Jew?

I don’t mean this flippantly. I’m not speaking from some underlying judgment or a feeling of moral superiority. I’m saying this in real and absolute love.

The world harbors a deep and unrequited hatred for Jews. And yet, the Jews refuse to hate the world. It’s not a two-way animosity. It’s not based on facts. While education has its place, there is no amount of “hasbara” (translated as “explaining to defend oneself”) that will change their minds. Not all people hate. Just enough to muffle the cries of the lovers. The world has and will continue to support a baseless hatred for Jews because it’s useful. But that isn’t what has threatened the survival of the Jews.

Remember, we lost the first and second temples to one fatal flaw:

שנאת חנם Baseless hatred. Jew to Jew. Baseless. Hatred.

There is nothing and no one that has ever inflicted upon the Jewish people anything close to the pain and suffering we have brought upon each other.

So step one to live as a Jew: love other Jews.

Remove the “the” before any individual or group of Jews. “The” Charedim, “The” Ultra Orthodox, “The” Reform, “The” LGBTQ Jew, “The” Chassidim, “The” Cultural Jews, “The” Israelis, “The” Israeli Leaders, “The” Sephardim, “The” Ashkenazim, “The” Syrians…. it goes on and on and on. Drop the “The” and then drop all the name-calling and finger-pointing and other-isming.

Love other Jews.

Think before you speak or type. Listen to your heart. We are outnumbered. We are alone surrounded by people who hate us. Many people want us dead and gone. From the River to the Sea. It’s not a euphemism. Knowing why or not knowing why, depending on a lie or just not caring to bother to explain- turn on your news. You do not need me to confirm what you know to be true.

But truth, real truth is at the heart of it all.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד׃

Hear Oh Israel- listen oh you stubborn stubborn Jewish people: The Lord is our God and the Lord is one.

We don’t throw humans into fires to ward off the angry tempers of gods. There is only one God. We brought this truth of monotheism into this world and with it a set of laws of morality given to us from the one God who loves us completely.

בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד

Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever. We are the servants of that kingdom. We do not bow to other gods, we do not make idols out of social media stars, we do not serve the changing winds of politics or platforms. So what are we meant to do?

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ

Love God, who loves you, with all your heart with all your being, with all your mind, through all your days when you wake up and when you go to sleep. Take this and teach your children.

Have something that matters, really matters, to teach your children.

The wandering Jews, going from country to country, expelled from place to place, followed mercilessly through all time by lies that have zero basis in fact… hunted, burned, violated. Virtually anyone with a smart phone knows. We Jews are obsessed with truth. And I have to tell you, the world does not share our obsession.

So find truth and hold on.

If you’ve gone to that junk drawer and you found the outdated medicine and that key that doesn’t unlock anything but you haven’t been able to find a vial of truth, let me help you out:

You are loved.

Now go act like it.