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Charedi Rabbis Rush To
Disavow Anti-Gentile Book
By Allan Nadler
Forward (USA)
12-24-03



Leaders of the country's most prominent ultra-Orthodox yeshiva are scrambling to distance themselves from a book by one of their disciples, which argues that gentiles are "completely evil" and Jews constitute a separate, genetically superior species.
 
Written by Rabbi Saadya Grama - an alumnus of Beth Medrash Govoha, the renowned yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J. - the self-published book attempts to employ classical Jewish sources in defense of a race-based theory of Jewish supremacy.
 
Grama's book, published in Hebrew under the title "Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut," includes flowery endorsements from the most revered religious scholars at the renowned Lakewood yeshiva, including the institution's foremost religious leader, or rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler.
 
In his book, Grama writes: "The difference between the people of Israel and the nations of the world is an essential one. The Jew by his source and in his very essence is entirely good. The goy, by his source and in his very essence is completely evil. This is not simply a matter of religious distinction, but rather of two completely different species."
 
Among other things, Grama argues: The differences between Jews and gentiles are not religious, historical, cultural or political. They are, rather, racial, genetic and scientifically unalterable. The one group is at its very root and by natural constitution "totally evil" while the other is "totally good." ; Jewish successes in the world are completely contingent upon the failure of all other peoples. Only when the gentiles face total catastrophe do the Jews experience good fortune.
 
Grama's full-blown racialist theories appear to break new ground, building on a handful of hints of national and racial chauvinism occasionally found in the writings of a few earlier rabbinic figures, but combining them into a racialist doctrine with no precedent in rabbinic literature.
 
To be sure, a minority stream exists in the rabbinic tradition - from the 11th- and 12th-century Hebrew romantic poet Yehuda Halevy to the 18th century chasidic sage Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev - which sees the differences between Jew and gentile as innate, rather than merely religious.
 
Perhaps the most extreme version of this view is found in the central text of Chabad chasidism, Tanya, whose author, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, Chabad's founder, maintained that Jewish and gentile souls are fundamentally different, the former "divine" and the latter "animalistic." That viewpoint has gained ground in recent decades, particularly among charedi thinkers.
 
Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, who is considered one of the leading ideologues of the Israeli Chabad movement, has written and spoken widely on the superiority of Jews and was briefly imprisoned in Israel for racial incitement.
 
Yated Ne'eman, an Orthodox weekly in upstate New York that is affiliated with one of Israel's main charedi dailies, has published essays on the question of whether medical research can be understood to apply to Jews given the innate physiological differences between Jews and gentiles.
 
 
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