Page 60 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

all, since up to our times orthodox Judaism has set the death penalty
on apostasy - even in 1870 it was attempted in Russia to carry this
out on a man who had converted to Christianity who was still alive
called Elieser Baffin, who had been brought back with force from
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abroad where he had converted". One who knows Russia will
find nothing extraordinary in this, in Poland and Galicia it is worse;
that the spirit is the same in Germany we saw earlier.
The already cited W. Rubens says: "According to the
Schulchan Aruch. Art.223 of the second volume, it is made a duty
to the Israelites to kill through force or cunning another Israelite
who defies religious observances (for example, smokes on the
Sabbath) ..." "Certainly, if state laws did not protect the insolent
Sabbath smoker, he would in many places have been exposed to the
greatest insults, as I could adduce through my own experience.
The orthodox Jew is even today as fanatic against intractable
racial comrades (the Mainz order) as the zealot who stuck his knife
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into Spinoza. Nowadays Jewish chauvinism has indeed carried
the art of historical falsification so far that it attributes the fanatic
procedure of the rabbinical college of Amsterdam to the influence
of Christians and maintains with the greatest impudence that Judaism
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has always had freedom of learning as its principle.
The Breslau order has a more chameleon-like character. It
can adapt itself to the demands of the times, it even flirts with radical
sciences but does not relinquish an iota of certain ceremonial rules,
but seeks to support them with rational bases even if these are so
brittle and frail that a secondary school student can blow them
down". 94
Even here it must still be emphasised that nothing is changed
in the situation if the Jew renounces the Talmud as a religious book,
for the unchanging national character then continues to represent in
other fields a dogmatic view that is just as unchangeable. We see it
today in the public life, for example, in the doctrine of the Socialist
world-view. I do not wish to speak of the economic measures and

91
Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Vol.1, p. 422.
92
[See above p. 31.]
93
Arts section of the Frankfurter Zeitung.
94
Op.cit., p.28,4.
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