The Culture of Deceit

From The Occidental Observer, August 1, 2009

Rabbi Levy Rosenbaum, human organs trafficker

For those conversant with the Bible, the twin themes of Jewish resource acquisition and deceit will be familiar. For example, in A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, Kevin MacDonald describes this:

The biblical stories of sojourning by the patriarchs among foreigners are very prominently featured in Genesis. Typically there is an emphasis on deception and exploitation of the host population, after which the Jews leave a despoiled host population, having increased their own wealth and reproductive success. Indeed, immediately after the creation story and the genealogy of Abraham, Genesis presents an account of Abraham’s sojourn in Egypt. Abraham goes to Egypt to escape a famine with his barren wife Sarah, and they agree to deceive the pharaoh into thinking that Sarah is his sister, so that the pharaoh takes her as a concubine. As a result of this transaction, Abraham receives great wealth . . . .

Far from being a unique story, it portrays a pattern. MacDonald concludes, “Like the others, the Egyptian sojourn begins with deception and ends with the Israelites obtaining great treasure and increasing their numbers.”

The most famous Biblical story of deceit is the story of Exodus. Joseph helps his relatives enter by telling them to deny being shepherds because the Egyptians dislike shepherds. The Israelites reside in Egypt and are successful: “And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt . . . and they got them possessions therein, and were fruitful, and multiplied exceedingly” (Gen. 47:27).

The Book of Esther is another fascinating tale of deceit in which Esther, a beautiful Jewish woman, insinuates herself into the inner court of a powerful king but keeps secret her Jewish identity. Eventually, she is able to both save her fellow Jews and have the king kill her enemy, Haman, and his ten sons. The Jews then kill 75,000 others with the approval of the king: “The Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and they did what they pleased to those who hated them” (Est. 9:5). Meanwhile, her cousin Mordecai assumes a prominent position in the royal court.

To this day, Jews celebrate these acts of deception and political murder as the holiday of Purim. This is an important indication that fraud and deception are part of the official ideology of Judaism.

In some ways it is sobering to think that some two thousand years after Esther and her cousin Mordecai used cunning to acquire great status and dispatch enemies, a similar pattern exists in the modern world. The most recent example is the arrest of 44 people, including several rabbis, in a money laundering and influence peddling scheme involving payoffs to public officials in New Jersey. Rather than marginal figures, the rabbis involved were highly respected pillars of the Syrian Jewish community — a traditionalist Jewish group that remains largely separate even from other Jewish groups. What’s fascinating is that Rabbi Israel Dwek, a founder of the New Jersey synagogue at the center of the scandal, renounced his own son, Solomon Dwek, because the son had cooperated with the FBI after being indicted on bank fraud charges. The father’s actions were entirely within the Talmudic Law of Moser — the prohibition of a Jew informing on another Jew. The father will therefore “sit Shiva” for his son — a ceremony observed when an immediate family member has died. . . . Read the rest of the article.