On the day marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht, I brought a quote from something Michi had said, referring to the behavior of part of the Haredi public during the coronavirus period.

The quote was this:

*”If we were in nineteenth-century Russia or Ukraine, in my opinion massacres and pogroms would have broken out here. Suddenly I’m beginning to understand how that happened then (and I don’t entirely understand how it isn’t happening today).”*

I did not claim that Michi was justifying the pogroms that happened then in Eastern Europe, but as someone who understands (Michi of course understands) why they happened, I asked him whether he also understands and thinks that in Western Europe too—for example on Kristallnacht—the Jews also behaved in some problematic way or another. And therefore, on an intellectual level, one could also understand the Germans in the Kristallnacht events.

– I was not a troll.
– I did not come to make any declaration.
– The question was carefully formulated.

It is legitimate to ask about Michi’s understandings and thoughts in order to understand his line of thinking (and perhaps also understand his inner world), especially when the whole basis is a direct quote from his own words.

And what was the result?

Of course, the question was deleted.

So this time too, will Michi delete it, or will I get a direct answer about his understanding of what happened in Western Europe as well?

That was already a long time ago, and I don’t remember the details. But reading this now, there really is no question here, and it’s complete trolling that was deleted justifiably.

Why are you answering like that, Michi?
Why call it trolling?

After all, it’s known that in twentieth-century Germany there were Haredi Jews too, admittedly not as many as in Eastern Europe,
but maybe on Kristallnacht Haredim were harmed too (quite a few synagogues were burned, that’s for sure).

So just as you wrote clearly that you understand (without justifying) the gentiles who carried out pogroms in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, I wanted to know whether you also apply that to the pogrom in the twentieth century carried out in Western Europe.
Do you also understand the Germans here, who did this because of improper behavior by the Jews/Haredim?

Now, I understand that maybe it’s unpleasant to read what I’m writing, and maybe unpleasant to answer, but again, the question is being asked in complete seriousness. Also, it is entirely based on things that you wrote.

So it’s nice that this time you chose not to delete the question, but maybe it’s also possible to provide an answer to my question—do you think one can understand pogroms in Western Europe in the twentieth century as well?

It’s trolling because the question is trollish. What are you trying to achieve with this question? To know what I think about German Jewry? To prove that I’m wrong in my claim about today’s Haredim? As for the latter, it is in no way relevant as far as I can see, and as for the former, I don’t see why it matters.
As for your unimportant question: I don’t know the behavior of German Jews or Western European Jews of that time, especially since we’re not dealing with one place and one time, so it’s impossible to give a general answer. Therefore I can’t say anything clear about it.

I hope it is now clear why all of this is mere trolling. Unimportant and irrelevant questions are characteristic of trolls, especially when they are trying through them to express protest over a previous statement of mine (as you apparently wanted to do here). If you want to protest, then please express the protest as such (it seems to me you already did that) and don’t waste time and babble with irrelevant questions. And especially don’t keep insisting again and again after I told you things that are as clear as an egg to any one-day student.
I answer in this style because it’s hard for me to believe you don’t understand this on your own. As the saying goes: answer a troll according to his foolishness.

I conclude that the behavior of Eastern European Jews in the nineteenth century, you do know.
I am working from the assumption that you wrote that sentence in the article completely seriously and thoughtfully.

So I will wait patiently for good sources about the behavior of Eastern European Jews in the nineteenth century.

If so, I’ll answer. The truth is that essentially there wasn’t that much difference (at least in the eyes of the Nazis) between the Haredim and the assimilated Jews there in Germany. I saw documentation at the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz showing that the Nazis displayed (as part of their propaganda) a picture of a clean-shaven assimilated Jew with round glasses and no kippah, and next to it a picture of him with a beard and hat (and with the same glasses), as if to say that every Jew is really a Haredi in disguise. And the truth is that in essence that’s correct. The essence is people without a nation who only want to get by in their lives at the expense of the nation among whom they live. The Haredim with their separatist way and their tricking of the German nobleman (who in himself is a wild beast in civilized disguise and an animal—and all the more so for the Ukrainians and Poles, who really were savages), and the assimilated Jews (who today are parallel to Democratic Jews in the U.S. and to most of today’s leftists in this country, for whom nationhood is a dirty word and who are drawn after the fashions of other Western peoples), who care about nothing except their own private advancement and who occupy key positions in the economy (because of their talent, and sometimes because of their cunning and deceit) at the expense of the members of the nation among whom they live.

This is really the usual struggle between the smart weak nerd and the stupid bully. The bully is a savage. But the nerd too lacks backbone and is unable to look the bully in the eye and fight him directly (like a man); instead he is forced to use his brains for tricks and evasions. And for that the bully hates him and torments him.

Here please forgive me for a little Torah-portion thought, but it is a true one and therefore worth saying. In fact, this is a kind of struggle between Jacob and Esau. Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel were supposed to bring forth the more advanced state of the Jews—not Jacob, who tricks Esau and slips away from Laban, but Israel, who struggles with Esau’s angel and overcomes him. Well, in light of the left on the one hand and hardalism on the other hand, apparently that enterprise succeeded only very partially.

In any case, this seems to me to explain hatred of the Jews everywhere—even in Western Europe.

Ehud, my dear. Your question is completely trollish. Because in the pogroms of Kristallnacht and the like, during the Nazis’ rise to power, the declared aim was to remove the Jews from Germany and/or destroy them. This would later expand to the destruction or removal of the Jews from all of Europe
(depending on the historians’ dispute as to exactly when the final decision to exterminate the Jews was made) on an *ethnic basis*. And the Nazis never claimed, not even as a cover, that the behavior was based on anything other than ethnicity (of course there were excuses that the Jews were parasites, stealing jobs, and promoting communism—but there was also an explicit statement that the action applied to every ethnic Jew wherever he was, and that it was not something dependent on specific behavior by the Jewish communities). In contrast to the pogroms in Ukraine and Russia, where at least declaratively it was said that the pogroms stemmed from certain conduct by the Jewish communities (whether blood libels or anything else; and the pogroms were sometimes popular mob actions and not through the authorities, and sometimes both; and in any case they were not pogroms that were part of a plan to destroy all the Jews in the world). Therefore it is clear why in the first case Michi’s statement is entirely unrelated, whereas regarding the cases of Ukraine and Russia his statement can be logically reasonable in a certain sense (even if it is outrageous and not logical at all, and it outraged me too at the time—but one can express protest even without ridiculous historical comparisons).

Outraged*

Rational,
By the way, even if you prove that all the exterminations in Western Europe were really for genuine ethnic reasons (and not just outwardly), in my opinion that still doesn’t show even a bit of logic in what Michi said.

I’m not going to philosophize with you about it. Let’s make life easier.

How do you explain the logic of Michi’s view regarding the Hep-Hep riots (which came long before Nazi rule), and also other riots that took place in Western Europe long before Nazi rule?

To Rational,

What you say is nonsense. What does it mean, a pogrom on an ethnic background? Why didn’t they like that people? What was bad about it in their eyes? It was because of their behavior that the Nazis detested. They did not distinguish between one community and another because they generalized to a behavior that in their eyes was Jewish (this was not just cleansing; it was actual hatred of something that was bad in their eyes). And if you say they wanted purity of German blood, then I am sure that if the Jews had seemed to them a chosen and noble people, they themselves would have wanted to be Jews.

Ehud,
You’re welcome to ask Michi what he thinks about the Hep-Hep riots, or about other riots in Western Europe and Germany that preceded the Nazis’ rise to power by centuries, and whether in his opinion those too can be attributed to primitive, arrogant, and egotistical behavior. Personally, I don’t really think there was a strong connection between the behavior of the Jewish communities and the pogroms and murders by the local communities. And back then too, in his post, I wrote that in my opinion it was an outrageous statement. Even if the Jews in those countries behaved toward the gentile communities with arrogance and contempt (and it is very plausible that in some cases that was so), I don’t think that is why the riots broke out. Rather, as I wrote then, in my opinion the reasons were stereotypical, primitive Christian antisemitism that was deeply rooted in violent and barbaric populations. What I am saying is that the comparison to pogroms carried out by the German regime is anarchic. There, the authorities’ goal, as is known, was to incite the pogroms on the basis of hatred and an ideology that all Jewish genes are contaminated. And this was not a classic blood libel, or a hatred where one could somehow logically understand the link Michi might have made to arrogant, contemptuous, parasitic behavior (which, again, as stated, I do not agree with, but I can understand its logic, in my opinion).

Dear Emmanuel,

Nazi hatred, in my humble opinion—and one can argue about this historically too—was indeed a unique thing, a strong ideological blaze of ethnic hatred, because as you wrote, they did not distinguish between one community and another, nor between Jews who had completely converted. They even included in that hatred half- and quarter-Jews who had no connection whatsoever to the Jewish people or the Jewish communities. It was far beyond stereotypes and classic hatred of Jews by Christians / other gentile peoples.

With God’s help, 23 Kislev 5781

To the honorable young man, our master Rabbi … the questioner in earnest, whose building was truly pushed aside—may his peace increase beyond number,

I too would like to come with a question before your honor: all right, you call yourself ‘nonsense,’ but what did your grandfather do wrong that you call him ‘great nonsense’?

And regarding deletion of questions, I would like to express what appears to me in my humble opinion.

The responsa section is intended first and foremost for students who see the site owner as their teacher and rabbi, and who are interested in receiving his guidance in matters of Jewish law and worldview. To those who wait eagerly for his answer—the Rabbi responds even in the small hours of the night, after an exhausting day of giving lectures, knowing that the questioner’s eyes are awaiting his rabbi’s answer.

For someone who wants to argue with and criticize the site owner—the opportunity is given in the ‘comments’ on his words, and so, for example, your excellent claim concerning the site owner’s words that he understands the pogroms, etc., words that were said in a moment of anger in one of the posts on Haredim and coronavirus—could and should be written as a comment on the Rabbi’s words in that post.

As a young man with time on your hands, free of the burden of studies and livelihood, you have all the time in the world; happy are you and it is good for you. But it is fitting that you take into account a busy man who, besides the burden of Torah, family, and livelihood, has taken upon himself to be a guide for the perplexed to hundreds and thousands thirsting to hear his opinion.

Even someone to whom the site owner’s answers do not appeal can appreciate his dedication in giving an answer to his questioners. The minimum one can give a host is to leave the ‘questions and answers’ channel for those who are really asking like a student to his rabbi. Criticism and debate should be left in the realm of ‘comments,’ and in this you should follow the ways of your father’s father, who in the manner of Eastern Jews certainly upheld proper conduct.

With blessing, Yaron Tzemach Fishel-Plankton

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The responsa section is intended…

With God’s help, 23 Kislev 5781

To Emmanuel—many greetings,

The Nazis’ hatred of Jews stemmed from their hatred of Judaism, which in their opinion had ‘contaminated’ the West with the virus of ‘morality.’ A virus transmitted to Europe by the sacred writings of Judaism, which called for the values of justice, kindness, and peace, and which through pangs of conscience weakened the ‘blond beast,’ which aspires to set violent instinct free.

From this was derived the hatred of the Jews, who besides being bearers of Judaism, which bequeathed to the world ‘slave morality,’ also embodied in their way of life the complete opposite of the ‘blond beast,’ being diligent and faithful, seekers of knowledge and ready for effort—traits that brought them success both in business and in academia and politics, far beyond their share in the population.

Jews were devoted to their work, to their community, to their family, and to the state in which they lived, and did not waste their time in beer cellars and houses of debauchery. Their success aroused the jealousy of those drunk on sensuality and force. Indeed, the Jews, even if they did not keep the tradition of their ancestors in observing the commandments, did preserve the characteristic Jewish traits: literacy and diligence, devotion and loyalty—and for that the ‘blond beasts’ could not forgive them.

With blessing, Yaron Tzemach Fishel-Plankton

To the writer above,
Many thanks. But I have no problem with criticism; it’s just that in the responsa section there need to be questions, not declarations. If there is a critical question, that is perfectly fine. There is no necessity whatsoever that the questioner relate to me as his rabbi and accept my words. On the contrary, I very much recommend that nobody relate to me that way.

So for the benefit of “Rational,” let’s update the question for Michi—

Why, in Michi’s opinion, did pogroms and riots break out over the years in Western Europe, beyond riots that were based on “hatred of Jewish genes”?

Does Michi understand that there too the Jews behaved in a way that was “socially improper,” something that caused the gentiles in those Western European countries to become enraged?

To Y.Tz.,

As I mentioned, the Nazis as well as the rest of the gentiles are human beasts (even today. The overwhelming majority of human beings are more human-like, ape-like, than truly human. As far as I’m concerned, Rabbi Kook is a human being in the fullest sense). But the Jews, more than they spread morality (they didn’t exactly spread it—the Christians did that, and they themselves are moralizers), spread the virus of “moralism.” The morality of the Diaspora Jews really was a morality of slaves (that is, manipulation by weak people without morality over strong people without morality, which in itself is not problematic—“by stratagems you shall wage war”—except that it is false and counterfeit), and in that sense I justify the hatred (not the actions) of the Nazis. Not only understand it—justify it. I also hate moralism and self-righteousness. First of all, those blonds (the Germans), in themselves, were a cultured, diligent, and productive people, as our own eyes see today, and not people busy with drinking and debauchery. You are confusing them with the Eastern Europeans. The German Diaspora Jews were indeed diligent and knowledge-seeking, but I would dispute their willingness to exert effort (I doubt whether efforts to evade taxes through creative accounting count as effort). Those Jews were ambitious, but they also lacked solidarity with their people (with the community yes, but not with the people), and certainly not with the peoples among whom they lived. So spare me the talk of loyalty. It is no wonder that the main antisemitism in America comes דווקא from blacks and Hispanics, who are themselves immigrants and perceive the Jews as getting rich and advancing at the expense of others.