Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Collaboration With Tyranny in Rabbinic Law, by David Daube. 1965. Oxford University Press, New York, Toronto

Rabbinic Law. Jews Turn Over Some of Their Own to an Enemy: A History

By way of introduction, historian Ewa Kurek pointed out that, during the German-made Holocaust, some Jewish leaders effectively decided which Jews will live and which will die. This happened when they selected some Jews to turn over to the Nazis in the belief that the Nazis would be placated. For bringing this unwelcome subject to light, Kurek was berated and delegitimized.

However, Kurek is absolutely right. In fact, Jews had been discussing such situations for nearly 2,000 years before the Nazis.

TURNING OVER SOME JEWS TO AN ENEMY: HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS

These considerations go back at least to about 100 A. D. Author Daube describes the rabbinic discourse as follows:

“If a company of Jews, it is laid down, walking on the road is threatened by heathens who say, ‘Give us one of you that we may kill him, otherwise we shall kill you all’, they must rather all be killed. However, if the demand is for a named individual like Sheba son of Bichri, then, in order to avoid wholesale slaughter, he should be surrendered.” (pp. 18-19).

“At a guess, we would date the first part–gangsters demand a man for lynching: the answer must be No whatever the consequences–towards the end of the first century A. D. or the opening of the second, when there were in Palestine constant troubles, sometimes amounting to undeclared war, between the Jews and gentiles or certain classes of gentiles. And the second part–the governing power demands a particular person: the salvation of the community takes precedence–after the failure of Bar Kochba’s revolt, during the Hadrianic persecution, which was systematic and centrally directed.” (p. 26).

“A proviso was accordingly added to the old ruling. Whereas a claim ‘Give us one of you or we shall kill all’–a claim for any odd person–must be rejected now as before, an individualized claim such as that for Sheba son of Bichri, if rejection would spell collective death, must be obeyed.” (p. 35).

“During the Hadrianic persecutions those Rabbis who advocated extradition surely conceived of it as a duty. They tried to ensure the preservation of Jewry–which object would have been endangered had a group been allowed to refuse. Moreover, the introduction of surrender as optional would have thrown back the problem on to the group in jeopardy. This, at that time, would have been both cruel and likely to prove highly divisive; quite apart from complications bound to arise, such as the majority or a city resolving to stand by the person wanted while a minority did not like the idea at all. Nevertheless, once the terror subsided, there grew up a tendency to construe the handing over of a named man not as something that must be done or even should be done, but as something the law tolerated–a concession.” (p. 96).

APPLICABILITY TO THE NAZI ERA

After-the-fact reflections on these matters presupposed that the Jews knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do. They did not. In general, Jews believed that the Nazis would kill some Jews and then leave the remaining Jews alone. After all, that is all how all the past persecutions of Jews had worked. So, we are still left with the situation of Jews deciding which Jews will live and which Jews will die.

Even though the rabbinic teachings later turned out to be of limited applicability to the Holocaust itself, this only became evident much later. Even then, there were some obvious parallels. Daube comments, “We must remember that the framers of these laws did not reckon with a policy of organized total extermination. They hoped to save a remnant of their persecuted nation and were prepared to pay a high price for it–though there were limits. If we must have parallels from Nazi times, it would be the murders, in the first years, of, for instance, Jewish journalists, pacifists or communists particularly obnoxious to the regime, rather than Auschwitz.” (p. 22).

[Notice the small “c” for Communist, moreover written at a time when this term was almost universally capitalized. Is this a downplaying of Communism?]

IN THE END, PLACATING THE ENEMY HAS ALWAYS BEEN VAGUE AND UNENFORCIBLE

Daube writes, “It may be asked whether non-surrender contrary to the law was punishable. Say the oppressor claims as specific offender on pain of communal extinction and the leaders of the group decline. The group is wiped out. One of the leaders miraculously survives. The Rabbinic sources are silent. We have even less to go by than in the case of unwarranted yielding. Our feeling is that no this-worldly sanction was envisioned.” (p. 98).

(Parenthetically, notice this Jewish author’s use of the BC, AD convention instead of the more modern, post-Christian BCE, ACE. What does this tell us about the anti-Christian state of today’s academia?)

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For more on how Dr. Kurek was right about the Jewish leadership turning over some Jews in order to satisfy the Nazis, see, for example:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/judenrat-big-help-to-germans-arendt-macdonald/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/judenrat-opposed-jewish-flight-and-fight-cholawsky/