Academic literature on the topic 'Guilt (Jewish law)'

‘We did not go into the streets when our Jewish friends were led away; we did not scream until we too were destroyed … We are guilty of being alive.’Karl Jaspers The Question of German Guilt, p 66The following scene as recounted by the English writer James Stern occurred in a German town one week after Germany's unconditional surrender in May 1945. A crowd is gathered around a series of photographs which though initially seeming to depict garbage instead reveal dead human bodies. Each photograph has a heading ‘WHO IS GUILTY?’. The spectators are silent, appearing hypnotised, and eventually retreat one by one. The placards are later replaced with clearer photographs and placards proclaiming ‘THIS TOWNISGUILTY! YOUARE GUILTY!’.

During the “Third Reich,” the majority of German gynecologists and obstetricians did not hesitate to put themselves at the service of those in power. In 1933, many gynecologists initially only focused on the fact that the biopolitical objectives of the National Socialists matched their own long-standing demands for population policy measures and the early detection and prevention of cancer. In addition, cooperating with the Nazis promised the political advancement of the profession, personal advantages, and the honorary title of <i>Volksgesundheitsführer</i> (national health leaders). As a result, gynecologists exchanged resources with the regime and thus contributed significantly to the implementation of the criminal racial policies of the Nazis. At the congresses of the <i>Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gynäkologie</i> (German Society of Gynecology) “non-Aryan” members, mostly of Jewish descent, were excluded, the law on forced sterilization of 1933 (<i>Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses</i>/Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases) was scientifically legitimized, its implementation was propagated, and relevant surgical techniques were discussed with regard to their “certainty of success.” In the course of these forced sterilizations, existing pregnancies were also terminated and the victims were misused for illegal scientific examinations or experiments. Drawing upon racial and utilitarian considerations, gynecologists did not even shy away from carrying out late abortions on forced laborers from the East during the Second World War, which were strictly prohibited even under the laws of the time. Some gynecologists carried out cruel experiments on humans in concentration camps, which primarily served their own careers and the biopolitical goals of those in power. The few times gynecologists did protest or resist was when the very interests of their profession seemed threatened, as in the dispute over home births and the rights of midwives. Social gynecological initiatives from the Weimar Republic, which were mainly supported and carried out by gynecologists persecuted for their Jewish descent since 1933, were either converted into National Socialist “education programs” or simply came to an end due to the exclusion of their initiators. German gynecologists had hoped for a large-scale promotion of the early detection of malignant diseases of the uterus and breasts, to which they had already made important contributions since the beginning of the 20th century. But even though the fight against cancer was allegedly one of the priorities of the Nazis, no comprehensive measures were taken. Still, a few locally limited initiatives to this end proved to be successful until well into the Second World War. In addition, German gynecologists established the modern concept of prenatal care and continued to advance endocrinological research and sterility therapy. After the end of the Nazi dictatorship, the historical guilt piled up during this period was suppressed and denied for decades. Its revision and processing only began in the 1990s.

On 16 December 2009, the UK Supreme Court held a state-funded Jewish school to be guilty of discrimination based on ethnic origin in the way it operated its admissions policies. The Jewish Free School (JFS), one of the top-performing schools in the country, refused a place to a thirteen year old boy, M., because it did not consider him Jewish. It is a fundamental tenet of traditional Judaism that to be Jewish one must be born of Jewish mother or to a woman who converted into Judaism prior to his/her birth. M.'s father was Jewish by birth, but his mother, who was originally an Italian Catholic, had converted to Judaism with the criteria set by a non-orthodox branch of Judaism. The School's admissions standards only recognized orthodox criteria for conversion as valid, hence deeming neither M. nor his mother to be Jewish.

El artículo, de género testimonial, se refiere al renacimiento de la vida judía en Alemania, las relaciones entre judíos y no judíos en dicho país, y el renacimiento de la enseñanza de la cultura judía a nivel universitario.

The trial against Karlsruhe criminal police Secretary Adolf Rube, held in 1949, was the first trial in Germany, during which Nazi atrocities committed on the territory of Belarus were considered. By the example of this process, the paper attempts to identify the specifics of West Germany courts’ consideration of criminal cases related to the commission of Holocaust crimes in Eastern Europe. German law excluded the possibility of punishing Nazi criminals for genocide, crimes against peace and humanity. Guided by the norms of the German Criminal Code of 1871, German justice considered each case of murder of Jews during the years of national socialism as a separate crime, caused by personal motives. Based on this, A. Rube was punished not for participating in the state-organized, bureaucratically planned genocide of the Jewish people, but for committing separate, unrelated murders. The defendant, who was accused of killing 436 Jews in the Minsk ghetto, was found guilty of unlawfully depriving 27 people of their lives and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, in 1962 he was amnestied and was released. By presenting the Holocaust as a mosaic of individual, unrelated criminal acts, German justice maintained the illusion that "normal" Germans "knew nothing" about the mass extermination of Jews, that the Holocaust was solely the product of the Hitler’s actions, his fanatical entourage, and individual "pathological sadists," "sex maniacs," and "upstarts" such as A. Rube, who sought to assert themselves at the expense of Jewish victims.

AbstractThe research in this article aims to explain that theologically, the crucifixion of Christ as a symbol of the violence of the Jews hide behind the Roman law, and confronted with the condition of present-day Indonesia.To explain the violence that comes from Matthew 26: 1-5 as a basis for the discussions were enriched by a number of violence-related references.The results showed that violence as the imposition of the will to achieve the goals, whether individuals, groups and institutions.Violence tangible crucifixion of Jesus was hiding behind the guise of religious Jews, laden with engineering, which is the real Jesus was not guilty of what is charged to him.The Roman government represented Pilate dare not uphold justice, it can be called that trial and the verdict against Jesus is gray as a result of a compromise and government conspiracy with the leader of the majority religion, the Jewish religion.Violence in Indonesia, including violence against women, children and political violence as a sign of not respecting others.Lodging in the political violence, often triggered by the politicization of religion as a vehicle to achieve the goal by mobilizing the number of people that fanaticism and radicalism.Any violence is not in accordance with the will of God who loves the whole humanKeywords: Cross of Christ And Violence of Jewish People

Uncle JankielThe idea of Jewish self-hatred has been present in the humanities since the 1930s. The research on this subject has usually focused on Western Europe, especially German-speaking countries. The paper analyses Jewish self-hatred using examples from contemporary official discourse in Poland. Sander Gilman’s approach to Jewish self-hatred (1986) is used to interpret the examples. It seems that it is the alleged communism of the Jewish Poles which causes them being perceived as alien and different. If one condemns their communism, one can feel entitled to be a member of the Polish community; for the condemners, the communism appears “objective” and corresponding to their world-view. In fact, it seems to be more of a ritual act of subordination, yet another cover term to define Jewish guilt and their alienness. Previously, other issues performed this function: “Talmudicness”, ritual murder, host desecration, taking over the printed media, Bolshevism, capitalism, etc. Wuj JankielPojęcie żydowskiej samonienawiści funkcjonuje w humanistyce od lat trzydziestych XX wieku. Studia tego zjawiska dotyczyły zazwyczaj Europy zachodniej, a najbardziej terenów niemieckojęzycznych. Celem autorki jest wprowadzenie zjawiska żydowskiej samonienawiści na współczesnych polskich przykładach, w kontekście polskiej kultury aprobowanego, oficjalnego dyskursu. Odwołując się do psychoanalitycznego rozumienia terminu, jakie w swojej książce Jewish Self-Hatred rozwinął Sander Gilman, autorka twierdzi, że często we współczesnej ocenie osób, które publicznie identyfikują się jako Żydzi, tym, co dziś stanowi różnicę (difference) decydującą o obcości tego, co żydowskie (wobec tego co polskie), elementem, który stanowi „skazę”, jest „komunizm” Żydów. Potępianie go jest gestem, który pozwala na poczucie przynależności do wspólnoty polskiej. Potępiającym wydaje się on uzasadniony, „obiektywny” i zgodny z ich widzeniem świata. Jednak jest raczej rytualnym gestem podporządkowania, a egzorcyzmowany „komunizm” przodków jest tylko elementem historycznie wymiennym, kolejnym pseudonimem definiującym winę (jak talmudyczność, mord rytualny, męczenie hostii, opanowanie prasy, bolszewizm, kapitalizm etc., etc.) i nazywającym obcość.

The figures of both Moses and Muhammad stand in the United States Supreme Court, included among the great lawgivers of history depicted in two friezes along the North and South walls of the Courtroom. Moses, who is seen carrying the Ten Commandments, is honored as the “prophet, lawgiver, and judge of the Israelites,” with the Supreme Court's tourist information sheet explaining that “Mosaic Law” is “based on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.” Muhammad is described as the “Prophet of Islam” and carries both a sword and the Qur'an, the “primary source of Islamic law.”Yet the parallel depictions of these two prophets in the U.S. Supreme Court belie the very different respect that the laws they are associated with have received in the U.S. judicial system. Jewish law or legal principles are generally cited by courts with approval, often to add perceived moral and ethical authority to a court's decision. For example, in the U.S. Supreme Court's well-known Miranda v. Arizona decision, the Court declared that the privilege against self-incrimination was an ancient right, with analogues that could be found in the Bible, quoting the great medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides for support: “To sum up the matter, the principle that no man is to be declared guilty on his own admission is a divine decree.”

The spanish government has issued a new law offering spanish nationality to sephardic jews around the world fulfilling some characteristics. This legal movement tries to undo the decree of expulsion of spanish jews in 1492. It has been received with a surprising lack of any significant debate (for or against the law) in Spain. The presentation explores this topic, addressing the emotional reactions towards this in spanish population using materials form a focus group qualitative study and also touches upon the identity problems exposed by the new law and the mechanisms of denial, guilt, reparation, displacement, reactive formation, etc. accompanying the whole process. Events in the distant past, often of a traumatic quality may contribute intensely to the construction of national identity. The healing of old wounds, if possible, might shake our large group structure and lead us to confront a complex reality and to a creative process of new identity formation. A deeper exploration of this situation might also help us to understand better the complex identity problems in many large groups around the world today, linked sometimes to group violence and war and to a general movement towards nationalist and isolationist political choices.

The 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica has generally been interpreted as a struggle between the post-emancipation Black peasantry and the white colonial government, which led to a violent confrontation, military suppression, and the demise of the Jamaican House of Assembly in favor of direct Crown Colony rule. Yet, the archival record shows other more complex currents that were also at play, including multi-racial, cross-class alliances, and strong conflicts over local politics, corruption, and labor rights. This article focuses on a little noted aspect of the events of 1865: the arrest for sedition of Sidney Lindo Levien, a Jewish newspaper publisher of The County Union. Levien advocated for the poor, foreigners, and women; joined the Underhill Meetings supporting the political rights of the vast majority of people emancipated from slavery; and was arrested under martial law during the rebellion and later found guilty of sedition, serving nearly 7 months in prison of a 1 year sentence before being pardoned. Drawing on his own writings, photographs, family genealogy, and Levien’s hitherto unknown “Chronicle of 1865,” I argue that his story opens new questions about the relation between Jews and Baptists, Black and “Coloured,” Asian and Maroon, and varied elite and non-elite “White” populations in Jamaica, taking us beyond the typical Black-vs-white framing of the Morant Bay Rebellion toward a more multi-sided emphasis on cross-racial protest and multi-denominational resistance within the imperial global economy. Both dominant “White” colonial histories and subsequent Jamaican “Black” national histories have erased the more diverse actors and cross-cutting interests that shaped the events of 1865, which only come into view through a multi-ethnic history of global mobilities and shifting identities, which I refer to as a critical cosmopolitan perspective.

This chapter examines the courtroom as incubator of two sorts of histories in contested cases of Holocaust ‘collaboration’: the micro-history of what happened—who did what to whom and why?—and the macro-history of what to remember and celebrate (and collaterally what to banish and exile). This chapter takes up two judicial proceedings. First, the libel charges criminally brought by the State of Israel on behalf of Rudolf Kastnerin 1954-1955 against Malchiel Gruenwald, an independent journalist who had accused Kastner of ‘collaborating’ with the Nazis. Second, the trial of Julius Siegel which was held in Israel in 1953 under legislation the Knesset enacted to criminally charge suspected Jewish collaborators who had emigrated to Israel following the Holocaust. In both cases, trials and judgments were awkward, ornery, staccato, and gnarly. When it comes to micro-histories, formal criminal proceedings narrated a reductive story about collaboration that lacked finesse and suppleness. These very same formal trials were however somewhat effective in manufacturing the macrohistorical content of collective memory by elevating heroism and sacrifice while banishing compromise, negotiation, and survivalism.

This chapter looks at Dan Porat's important book, Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors as Nazi Collaborators (2019). The focus of Porat's book is the so-called kapo trials that were conducted in Israel between 1951 and 1972. Many of the defendants were not alleged former kapos in Nazi concentration camps but rather former Judenrat (Jewish Council) members and Jewish policemen in ghettos. The legislative authority for the kapo trials derived from the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law promulgated by the Knesset in 1950. This is the law on the basis of which Adolf Eichmann was tried and convicted in Jerusalem in 1961. But, as Porat points out, when the Knesset debated and then passed the legislation, first and foremost in legislators' minds were survivors in Israel who were suspected of cooperation with the Nazis. Unlike the proceedings in Jewish honor courts, which resorted to deontological criteria — that is, whether the accused had a duty to refrain from lending a hand to the Nazis' persecution and murder of other Jews — the Israeli trials, conducted under state authority, were bound by the rules of criminal law to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused.

This chapter investigates the law of idolatry, highlighting the tension between biblical and rabbinic attitudes towards gentile idolatry. The Bible consistently forbids idolatrous actions for Israelites while distinctly not excluding such behavior among gentiles. As gentiles are not participants in the Sinai covenant, they cannot be guilty of idolatry, even if their cult is consistently scorned in the Bible. Contrary to the biblical permission of pagan idolatry, the rabbis forbade anyone, Jew or gentile, to practice idolatry. According to one rabbinic line of thinking, all gentiles are idolaters, while another distinguished between contemporary and ancient idolatry. In either case, a radical innovation was introduced: idolatry was to be removed everywhere. For medieval Jewish thinkers, idolatry was believing that something finite was in fact infinite, and worthy of worship.