Page 59 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

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At the end of the 17 century a Jewish wandering preacher
Nehemiah Haja Hajim obtained great esteem among all Jews and
was able to obtain many pious people as followers. But soon his
intentions were made clear, which were to prove that even Judaism
taught of a triune god. When word of this got round, there was an
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uprising from all quarters against this "malicious lie". Nehemiah
was bitterly persecuted; he preferred not to suffer like Acosta but
fled to the East, where the curse of excommunication of the Jewish
community was flung at him, the result of the bitter war that had
begun against the "heresy".
When Pinchas stabbed a Hebrew smoking on the Sabbath,
he was publicly praised for that and received a hereditary priesthood.
Abraham Geiger reports the following case from 1848: "Then a
man in Jerusalem forced a proselyte, who had already allowed
himself to be circumcised but, suffering from the consequences of
this operation could not yet take the proselyte's bath, to work on
the Sabbath and pressed him so long until he actually complained
in writing.
This aroused the displeasure of other Talmudists there who
considered such a procedure as unseemly and had also not heard of
such a thing earlier in similar cases. Except that the man proved
that he was in his own right a Talmudist. One converting to Judaism
who, even circumcised, had not yet taken the proselyte's bath is not
yet a Jew and, according to Sanhedrin 58b, a non-Jew who has
celebrated a day in the manner of the Sabbath (and this may be on
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any day whatsoever of the week) has forfeited his life". When, in
the first half of the 19 th century, Rabbi Drach converted to
Catholicism he drew upon himself the anger of the entire French
Jewry. His children were taken from him, he himself threatened
several times with death. Such a philo-Jewish scholar as Bernhard
Stade writes about the commandment in Deut 17:2-17 to stone
apostates in relation to our times: "There can be no doubt about it at
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Vogelstein-Rieger, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, [1895-1897] II, p.277. [Both
Hermann Vogelstein (1 870-1942) and Paul Rieger (1 870-1 939) were liberal German
rabbis opposed to the Zionist movement]
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Nachgelassene Schriften, IT, p.283. [Abraham Geiger (1 81 0-1 874) was a German
rabbi who helped found the Reform Judaism movement.]
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