The Antichrist (14 page)

They were not chosen only because – as we know – the redeemer of the world came from their womb, but also because
they brought forth the only Son of Man of whom it is
not
arrogant to be proud. And they humbled themselves and even did penance for what was falsely deemed their arrogance by the fact that it was they themselves who crucified the fruit of their womb.

They knew that a crown had been given to them, but they trampled it with their feet.

They not only bore the Saviour; they also denied Him. They really were the chosen people of God. They were doubly chosen but not simply because they hardened their hearts and did not admit that the Son of God was the redeemer of the world.

The Jews were doubly chosen because they both brought Him forth
and
denied Him. They, the Jews, were chosen to bring forth the Saviour and through their denial make him into a Saviour. Through their virtue as through their sin have they prepared for the redemption of the world.

Of their own free will they took the burden of sin on to themselves, as sometimes a father will do who does not wish to share in the fame of his son.

Therefore, whoever believes in Jesus Christ but hates, or even has low esteem, for the Jews, his earthly womb, is the brother of the Antichrist.

The heathens still honour all the places where their saints and prophets revealed themselves in their human weakness.

The false Christians, however, despise or hate or esteem lightly the womb of the Saviour – the Jews.

For the Jews are the earthly womb of Jesus Christ.

Whoever thinks little of the Jews, thinks little also of Jesus Christ.

He who is a Christian esteems the Jews.

He who hates them or thinks poorly of them is not a Christian and mocks God Himself.

For since the Jews were chosen to bring about the earthly death of Jesus Christ, through it they confirmed the covenant of God with Abraham, the covenant with which the redemption of this world began.

And if God chose the Jews not only to bring forth Jesus Christ but also to deny Him, it was because God Himself struck the Children of Israel with blindness.

And He himself may continue to strike them. He alone. Vengeance is His, and His also is the object of His vengeance.

Whoever attempts to take their own vengeance on the Jews in the name of God as His representative on earth is presumptuous and commits a mortal sin.

And whoever, in consideration of the fact that he is baptized and the Jews are not, tries to take vengeance against the Jews when, in fact, vengeance belongs only to God, is a twofold sinner. For he appropriates for himself, through the grace of his baptism, the authority to execute vengeance. He reveals the fact that the heathen yet lives within him, the heathen who does not deserve the grace of baptism.

He who hates the Jews is a heathen and not a Christian.

He who can hate at all, whomsoever may be the object of his hatred, is a heathen and not a Christian. And he who believes that he is a Christian solely because he is not a Jew is twice and even thrice a heathen. Cast him out of the community of Christians!

If the Church does not cast him out then God Himself will cast him out.

The Jews whom I saw in the villages and small towns of Eastern Europe are no different in character or nature from other people.

That is to say, I saw in them no special characteristics other than that which we already know, namely that the sexual organs of the male Jews are circumcised.

I saw Jewish farmers and Jewish craftsmen, Jewish traders, Jewish soldiers, Jewish artists, Jewish poor and rich, Jewish nobles and Jewish commoners, satiated Jews and hungry Jews, destitute and wealthy Jews.

And I saw other men around who were not Jews, and they said: ‘The poor, the rich, the satiated and the hungry, the soldiers and the artists, the traders and the craftsmen – they are all Jews. They don't believe in Jesus Christ.'

‘They don't believe in Jesus Christ,' I said to them, ‘but
you
are even worse, for
you
believe in a
false
Jesus Christ
who is made in your image.

‘You are unjust.

‘You thus have an unjust Jesus Christ. You thirst for vengeance and blood. Therefore you have made for yourselves a vengeful and bloodthirsty Jesus Christ. You have been baptized, but you aren't Christians. It is true that you have received the grace of baptism. It will, however, only become reality after your death. So long as you live on earth you act like heathens. For I see with my own eyes that the unbaptized Jews work, get hungry, earn money and lie or tell the truth as you yourselves do. They love and they hate; they conceive and give birth; they make music and pursue many other arts; there are shoemakers and tailors among them just as there are among you.'

‘But they are more clever than we,' said the people.

‘Even if they were more clever than you,' said I, ‘that would indicate not only that you envy their intelligence – and envy is a sin – but also that you cultivate their intelligence through oppression.

‘Your envy is so immense that you not only gratify yourselves by feeding it with the already existing objects of your envy but you are zealous to supply it constantly with new nourishment!

‘Perhaps (but you've never tried it) the Jews would be more
thick-headed than you are if you gave them the opportunity to be just as foolish as you and yet live as you do.

‘Since, however, you treat them unjustly and even oppress them, you develop their intelligence and thus also the object of your envy.

‘You are possessed by the Antichrist.'

Thus I spoke to the people.

But they replied: ‘How is it that we are possessed by the Antichrist when we are fighting the Antichrist among the Jews; among the Jews, where he alone still feels that he fits in and is at home?'

I said to them: ‘The Antichrist is at home not among the Jews but among you. And not only
among
you, but
in each and every one of you.
You yourselves are the Antichrist. It isn't just that you hate someone; you make the objects of your hatred worse than they were so that you may hate them still more.

‘I see no difference between you and the Jews who live among you unless it be that it was from the womb of the Jews that the Saviour was born.

‘And were it so that I knew you envy the Jews because they were the Saviour's womb, I would consider it a good excuse.

‘But it is not so.

‘You envy the Jews because they earn earthly goods. This is the truth.

‘You wanted all the earthly goods for yourselves. The Antichrist is among you and in you.'

I continued to go among the Jewish people, and all that I saw confirmed my conviction that there were good and bad
among them, just as their faith delineated holy days and ordinary days.

And in a small town I witnessed one of their holy days, the highest of them all, the Day of Propitiation, or Atonement, which they call Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur, however, is a day not of Propitiation but of Atonement, a solemn day, the twenty-four hours that contain twenty-four years of penance.

It commences on the previous day at four o'clock in the afternoon. In a town where the majority of the residents are Jews this greatest of all holidays is felt like an oppressive storm when one finds oneself on the high seas in a frail boat.

The lanes were suddenly dark because the candles in all the windows were blown out, and the shops were closed hurriedly and with timid haste but at the same time with such an indescribable finality that one believed they would not be reopened until Judgement Day.

It was an all-encompassing absence from everything worldly, from business, from joy, from nature, from the streets and the family, from friends and acquaintances. Men who two hours earlier had been going about their daily business with their accustomed expressions hurried as though transformed through the streets towards the temple, wearing heavy black silk or the dreadful white of their shrouds, with white socks and loose slippers, heads bent forward, their prayer shawls under their arms. The profound silence, in what was usually an almost orientally noisy town, seemed to be increased a hundred times and weighed heavily even upon the normally animated children.

All the fathers blessed their children. All the women wept in front of silver candlesticks. All friends embraced each other. All enemies begged one another for forgiveness. A choir of angels sang
out to Judgement Day. Soon Jehovah opened the formidable book in which the sins, punishments and fates of the year are laid down. Lights burned for all the dead; others burned for all the living. The dead were separated from this world and the living from the hereafter by only a single step.

The great prayers began. The great fast had already begun one hour before. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of candles burning in a row and one behind another, bent over and mingled flames as they melted together. From a thousand windows erupted shouted prayers to be interrupted by nearly silent, low other-worldly melodies that seemed to echo the singing of Heaven.

People stood shoulder to shoulder in all the synagogues. Some threw themselves upon the ground, rose after a long period, sat down on stone tiles or footstools, crouched for a time and then sprang up suddenly, shook their upper bodies and ran continually to and fro in the small chamber. Whole houses, ecstatic outposts of prayer, were full of white shrouds, of the living who were no longer here, of the dead who were now alive. Not a drop of water crossed those dry lips to refresh those throats that were crying out so great a lamentation – not into this world but, rather, into the heavenly world. It was dreadful to think that no one would eat or drink, either on this day or the next. They had all become ghosts, with the characteristics of ghosts. Every small shopkeeper was a superman, as today he desired to reach God. They all stretched their hands outwards to grasp at the tip of His vestment. All, without distinction; the rich were as poor as the truly destitute, for none could eat. They were all sinners, and all were praying. A frenzy gripped them, and they swayed, they rested and whispered, they beat their breasts, they sang, they shouted out, they wept; heavy tears ran down their venerable beards, hunger was forgotten amid the grief of the soul and the eternity of the melodies heard by the enraptured ear.

I asked the people who lived in the area and hated the Jews or held them in low esteem whether they had noticed the Jews' God-fearing and devout nature.

And one of the righteous of whom I enquired, who was himself a Jew, said: ‘Do not believe the wicked people around us who wish to destroy us, but neither should you believe the liars and the wicked among us. There are hypocrites in our midst – and people become not better but worse when they are haunted by hatred and misfortune. Many fear God's punishment, and that is why they pray. And others would like to entice God to give them some reward, and so they pray. Some cling to life and fear that in the coming year they will be struck from the Book of Life, and they fear death, so therefore they pray. And I know some who, as soon as the sound of the shofar becomes audible, signalling the end of the Day of Atonement, hurry to their full tables more avidly than they had hurried one day earlier to the set tables of God. For they are human and require food and drink. But there are others who hasten even more rapidly to their evil occupations and wicked thoughts, more rapidly than to their full tables. They do so because they believe that with a day of fasting and atonement they have pacified God, so that He will, so to speak, close an eye to their damnable deeds. Thus it was among the ancient Jews, our fore-fathers, that there were some who believed that with a little sheep or little lamb they could buy the right to sin. They didn't want to appease God but, praised be His name, they wanted to bribe Him. Such people are even more cursed than those who would deny Him, for they create a god in their own image and the qualities they assign him are not human but diabolical. And this is the greatest of sins – to worship God so that He may be more lenient towards injustice. May He protect us from that!

‘But vanity and arrogance are also at home among our people.

I was at one time led by various misfortunes to celebrate our Day of Atonement in a distant city in the west of Europe. And, as the Jews of that town recognized me as a man of pious reputation, they requested that I lead them in a few prayers – so I did this. They prayed in a large and beautiful hall, the walls of which were adorned with all kinds of paintings and statues. And since our faith prevents us from making pictures and statues – for it is written that man shall make no images beside that of the invisible God, praised be His name in all eternity! – I asked how these adornments came to be in a synagogue.

‘So they told me that this hall wasn't actually a house of prayer but had only been rented for the High Holy Day. For the Jews in this big western city didn't pray each day or each Sabbath, as do our Jews, but only on the High Holy Days. It wasn't worthwhile for them to pay the cost of having their own synagogue. “Certainly,” I said, “certainly. For one can worship the Lord everywhere – and every place where He is invoked is a holy place. But He should be called upon every day – and one should spare no expense when a house is needed in which to give him praise.”

‘“In our country,” said the other, “the people are different. Business, you see, business takes up a great deal of our time. And one must earn money! Alas, if only there were no such thing as money!” said the man, sighing and raising his eyes Heavenwards, as if pleading with God to abolish money.

‘“If there were no such thing as money,” I said, “you would invent it.”

‘“No!” he cried, “May the Lord protect us from such a thought!”

‘I left him standing and continued to pray.

‘In the evening, when the shofar had been blown and the people were heading home, I saw in front of the entrance two large
and gaudy placards, and there was a desk beside the door. Behind the desk I saw a pretty, made-up cashier girl selling tickets. And many of my co-believers, with whom I had been praying, approached the girl and purchased tickets for themselves. They said they were just going to have something to eat and would return shortly. And so it was. They went to the inns, where they ate and drank, and then returned. In the room where three hours earlier they had been praying and fasting, yes, in the very same seats, they enjoyed the spectacle of shadows rushing and scurrying hither and thither across the screen. And the man with whom I had just spoken invited me to be a guest in his house the next day, so I went there and saw that his house was that of a rich man. I saw that God had granted him prosperity – and I respected him for it. Then I asked him about his business. At that point he smiled and said: “I own the large theatre in which you prayed yesterday. I am first to buy the top films in the world. There are more than fifteen hundred seats in my theatre. The hall is well ventilated. In the summer it is kept cool, for I have a cold room under the floor and about a hundred ventilators. On the High Holy Days I rent the theatre for divine worship. And I wouldn't even accept payment but would lease it for nothing, if only money didn't exist!”