Explore the diversity of black-, white-, jewish- and arab ethno-centrism.
Below are some of the ethnocentric and supremacist passages found in the Talmud
Moed Kattan 17a. If a Jew is tempted to do evil he should go to a city where he is not known and do the evil there.
Sanhedrin 58b. If a heathen (Gentile) hits a Jew, the Gentile must be killed. Hitting a Jew is the same as hitting God.
Sanhedrin 57a. A Jew need not pay a Gentile ("Cuthean") the wages owed him for work.
Baba Kamma 37b. "If an ox of an Israelite gores an ox of a Canaanite there is no liability; but if an ox of a Canaanite gores an ox of an Israelite ... the payment is to be in full."
Baba Mezia 24a. If a Jew finds an object lost by a Gentile ("heathen") it does not have to be returned.
Sanhedrin 76a. God will not spare a Jew who "marries his daughter to an old man or takes a wife for his infant son or returns a lost article to a Cuthean ... "
Sanhedrin 57a. When a Jew murders a Gentile ("Cuthean"), there will be no death penalty. What a Jew steals from a Gentile he may keep.
Baba Kamma 37b. Gentiles are outside the protection of the law and God has "exposed their money to Israel."
Baba Kamma 113a. Jews may use lies ("subterfuges") to circumvent a Gentile.
Yebamoth 98a. All Gentile children are animals.
Abodah Zarah 36b. Gentile girls are in a state of niddah (filth) from birth.
Abodah Zarah 22a-22b. Gentiles prefer sex with cows.
The Talmud also contains anti-christian statements such as:
Sanhedrin 106a. Says Jesus' mother was a whore: "She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters."
A passage from Sanhedrin 106 gloats over the early age at which Jesus died: "Hast thou heard how old Balaam (Jesus) was? - He replied: It is not actually stated but since it is written, Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days it follows that he was thirty-three or thirty-four years old."
Sanhedrin 43a. Says Jesus was executed because he practiced sorcery.
Gittin 57a. Says Jesus ( see footnote #4) is being boiled in "hot excrement."
Sanhedrin 43a. Jesus deserved execution: "On the eve of the Passover, Yeshu was hanged...Do you suppose that he was one for whom a defense could be made? Was he not a Mesith (enticer)?"
Rosh Hashanah 17a. Christians ("minim") and others who reject the Talmud will go to hell and be punished there for all generations (see footnote #11 for the definition of minim).
Sanhedrin 90a. Those who read the New Testament ("uncanonical books,") will have no portion in the world to come.
Shabbath 116a (p. 569). Jews must destroy the books of the Christians, i.e. the New Testament.
The Laws Against the Non-Jews
Israel Shahak has also sought to explain these racist and ethno-centric aspects of orthodox judaism in his book Jewish History Jewish Religion - The Weight of Three Thousand Years - The Following are excerpts from Chapter 5: The Laws Against Non-Jews pp. 64-76 (Complete book embedded below, see footnotes of chapter 5 for sources )
Murder
“Jewish religious courts and secular authorities are commanded to punish, even beyond the limits of the ordinary administration of justice, anyone guilty of murdering a Jew. A Jew who indirectly causes the death of another Jew is, however, only guilty of what talmudic law calls a sin against the 'laws of Heaven', to be punished by God rather than by man.
When the victim is a Gentile, the position is quite different. A Jew who murders a Gentile is guilty only of a sin against the laws of Heaven, not punishable by a court.(1) To cause indirectly the death of a Gentile is no sin at all.” (2)
“A Gentile murderer who happens to be under Jewish jurisdiction must be executed whether the victim was Jewish or not. However, if the victim was Gentile and the murderer converts to Judaism, he is not punished. “..
Saving life
Maimonides explains:"As for Gentiles with whom we are not at war ... their death must not be caused, but it is forbidden to save them if they are at the point of death; if, for example, one of them is seen falling into the sea, he should not be rescued,for it is written: 'neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy fellow' -but [a Gentile] is not thy fellow."
In particular, a Jewish doctor must not treat a Gentile patient. Maimonides -himself an illustrious physician - is quite explicit on this; in another passage herepeats the distinction between 'thy fellow' and a Gentile, and concludes: 'and fromthis learn ye, that it is forbidden to heal a Gentile even for payment...'However, the refusal of a Jew - particularly a Jewish doctor - to save the life of aGentile may, if it becomes known, antagonize powerful Gentiles and so put Jews indanger. Where such danger exists, the obligation to avert it supersedes the ban onhelping the Gentile. Thus Maimonides continues: ' ... but if you fear him or hishostility, cure him for payment, though you are forbidden to do so without payment.'
The whole doctrine - the ban on saving a Gentile's life or healing him, and thesuspension of this ban in cases where there is fear of hostility - is repeated (virtually verbatim) by other major authorities, including the 14th century arba´ah Turim and Karo's Beyt Yosef and Shulhan 'Arukh.Beyt Yosef adds, quoting Maimonides:'And it is permissible to try out a drug on a heathen, if this serves a purpose'; and thisis repeated also by the famous R. Moses Isserles.
Sexual Offenses
The Halakhah presumes all Gentiles to be utterly promiscuous and the verse 'whose flesh is as the flesh of asses,and whose issue [of semen] is like the issue of horses' is applied to them. Whether a Gentile woman is married or not makes no difference, since as far as Jews are concerned the very concept of matrimony does not apply to Gentiles ('There is no matrimony for a heathen'). Therefore, the concept of adultery also does not apply to intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman; rather, the Talmud equates such intercourse to the sin of bestiality. (For the same reason, Gentiles are generally presumed not to have certain paternity.)
According to the Talmudic Encyclopedia: 'He who has carnal knowledge of the wife of a Gentile is not liable to the death penalty, for it is written: "thy fellow's wife" rather than the alien's wife; and even the precept that a man "shall cleave unto his wife" which is addressed to the Gentiles does not apply to a Jew, just there is no matrimony for a heathen; and although a married Gentile woman is forbidden to the Gentiles, in any case a Jew is exempted.'This does not imply that sexual intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman is permitted - quite the contrary. But the main punishment is inflicted on the Gentile woman; she must be executed, even if she was raped by the Jew: 'If a Jew has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she be a child of three or an adult, whether married or unmarried, and even if he is a minor aged only nine years and one day - because he had willful coitus with her, she must be killed, as is the case with a beast, because through her a Jew got into trouble' The Jew, however, must be flogged,and if he is a Kohen (member of the priestly tribe) he must receive double the number of lashes, because he has committed a double offense: a Kohen must not have intercourse with a prostitute, and all Gentile women are presumed to be prostitutes.
Status
According to the Halakhah, Jews must not (if they can help it) allow a Gentile to be appointed to any position of authority, however small, over Jews. (The two stock examples are commander over ten soldiers in the Jewish army' and 'super intendent of an irrigation ditch'.) Significantly, this particular rule applies also to converts to Judaism and to their descendants (through the female line) for ten generations or 'solong as the descent is known'.Gentiles are presumed to be congenital liars, and are disqualified from testifyingin a rabbinical court. In this respect their position is, in theory, the same as that of Jewish women, slaves and minors; but in practice it is actually worse. A Jewish woman is nowadays admitted as a witness to certain matters of fact, when the rabbinical court 'believes' her; a Gentile – never...
Money and Property
(1) Gifts.
The Talmud bluntly forbids giving a gift to a Gentile. However,classical rabbinical authorities bent this rule because it is customary among businessmen to give gifts to business contacts. It was therefore laid down that a Jew may give a gift to a Gentile acquaintance, since this is regarded not as a true gift but as a sort of investment, for which some return is expected. Gifts to 'unfamiliar Gentiles' remain forbidden. A broadly similar rule applies to almsgiving. Giving alms to a Jewish beggar is an important religious duty. Alms to Gentile beggars are merely permitted for the sake of peace. However there are numerous rabbinical warnings against allowing the Gentile poor to become 'accustomed' to receiving alms from Jews, so that it should be possible to withhold such alms without arousing undue hostility.
(2) Taking of interest.
Anti-Gentile discrimination in this matter has become largely theoretical, in view of the dispensation (explained in Chapter 3) which in effect allows interest to be exacted even from a Jewish borrower. However, it is still the case that granting an interest-free loan to a Jew is recommended as an act of charity, but from a Gentile borrower it is mandatory to exact interest. In fact, many -though not all - rabbinical authorities, including Maimonides, consider it mandatory to exact as much usury as possible on a loan to a Gentile.
(3) Lost property.
If a Jew finds property whose probable owner is Jewish,the finder is strictly enjoined to make a positive effort to return his find by advertising it publicly. In contrast, the Talmud and all the early rabbinical authorities not only allow a Jewish finder to appropriate an article lost by a Gentile, but actually forbid him or her to return it. In more recent times, when laws were passed inmost countries making it mandatory to return lost articles, the rabbinical authorities instructed Jews to do what these laws say, as an act of civil obedience to the state - but not as a religious duty, that is without making a positive effort to discover theowner if it is not probable that he is Jewish.
(4) Deception in business.
It is a grave sin to practice any kind of deception whatsoever against a Jew. Against a Gentile it is only forbidden to practice direct deception. Indirect deception is allowed, unless it is likely to cause hostility towards Jews or insult to the Jewish religion. The paradigmatic example is mistaken calculation of the price during purchase. If a Jew makes a mistake unfavorable to himself, it is one's religious duty to correct him. If a Gentile is spotted making such a mistake, one need not let him know about it, but say 'I rely on your calculation', so as to forestall his hostility in case he subsequently discovers his own mistake.
(5) Fraud.
It is forbidden to defraud a Jew by selling or buying at an unreasonable price. However, 'Fraud does not apply to Gentiles, for it is written: "Do not defraud each man his brother"; but a Gentile who defrauds a Jew should be compelled to make good the fraud, but should not be punished more severely than a Jew [in a similar case].'
(6) Theft and robbery.
Stealing (without violence) is absolutely forbidden - as the Shulhan 'Arukh so nicely puts it: 'even from a Gentile'.Robbery (with violence) is strictly forbidden if the victim is Jewish. However, robbery of a Gentile by a Jew is not forbidden outright but only under certain circumstances such as 'when the Gentiles are not under our rule', but is permitted 'when they are under our rule'. Rabbinical authorities differ among themselves as to the precise details of the circumstances under which a Jew may rob a Gentile, but the whole debate is concerned only with the relative power of Jews and Gentiles rather than with universal considerations of justice and humanity.
Israel Shahak - Jewish History Jewish Religion - The Weight of Three Thousand Years
A crucial investigation into these aspects of judaism was made by Johann Andreas Eisenmenger in Entdecktes Judenthum - first published in 1700, then banned and confiscated by the roman empire only to be published outside the empire a decade later in Königsberg. This huge volume which took Eisenmenger 19 years to collect and translate is available for german readers in its entirety (part I and Part 2 - facsimile 450MB each). The shortened Stekelin-translation is embedded below
