The very loud Jewish outrage over the portrayal of an ultra-Orthodox family refusing a transplant from a non-Jew is hollow when so many Orthodox Jews hold racist attitudes towards gentiles and refuse to donate organs to them
ed note– ‘chock full of goodies’ as we like to say here.
First, please take a look at the following screenshots, the first one coming from the Jewish Daily Forward, considered the most influential Jewish publication in America–
And the 2nd one from the website of the ADL, which, after AIPAC, is the most powerful Jewish group operating in America today–
2 openly and OVERTLY Judaic organizations dedicated to furthering OVERTLY and singularly-Jewish ’causes’ and yet both seeming to take completely contradictory positions on a singular issue, in this case, Jewish control of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Now, one of them has to be telling the truth, and in this case, it is the Forward. Yes, the organized forces of anti-Gentilism, OFAG for short, do indeed maintain control over the Fed as much as they maintain control over the media, Congress and other institutions of American power, yet more ‘canards’ which the ADL says do not exist.
So why the ‘disagreement’ here?
Well, very simply, because it is an old, tried-and-true ‘protocol’ of psychological warfare ops that in breaking down the collective mental capacity of a people soon-to-be-conquered, the first thing to do is to deprive them of actionable ‘intelligence’ as to what is going on in their world so that they cannot organize mentally, socially, or politically with each other against their enemies and thus defend themselves from what is headed their way.
In other words, an application of the motto of Israel’s assassination service Mossad that ‘by way of deception, we shall make war’.
Now, in the case involving our unesteemed Hebrish writer opining in Haaretz about the ‘ugly truth’ concerning the ‘anti-Shemitic’ program on NBC portraying Orthodox Jews in a negative, racist light and the manner by which the OFAG (including ADL) strongarmed that network into removing the episode from otherwise curious Gentile eyes, before anyone engages in the typically-stupid business of mindless fawning over this ‘Jew of conscience’ revealing that indeed the anti-Gentilism portrayed in the NBC episode is an accurate depiction of what goes on, keep in mind that he suffers from this same elitist, Judaic and racist mindset as well, even if only to a somewhat diminished degree, to wit–
‘Antigentilism is not as pernicious as antisemitism, but in the field of organ donation it costs human life.’
Translated–anti-Semitism is WORSE than anti-Gentilism, but the reason that anti-Gentilism is a problem in this situation is that it is ‘bad for business’ viz organ transplants, which indeed is his ‘business’, and were it not ‘bad for business’ and were he not mal-affected by it, chances are he wouldn’t be as ‘frank’ as he is in this little exercise.
And again, as we like to point out regularly on this humble little informational endeavor, it is not a ‘Talmud’ thing driving all of this, despite what certain individuals claiming various degrees of expert-cy maintain, but rather as the natural and inescapable outgrowth of the narcissistic, self-worshiping beating heart of the beast of Judaism itself, the Torah, to wit–
‘For you are a holy people unto the LORD thy God and He has chosen you to be a special people above all others upon the face of the earth…’–Book of Deuteronomy
Robby Berman for Haaretz
NBC recently removed an episode of the TV series “Nurses” because it portrayed an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family as racist and misogynistic.
The family is portrayed as refusing to accept a bone transplant for their son out of fear that it might come from a woman, a ‘goy’ or, in particular, an Arab: The father says they won’t accept a “dead goyim leg from anyone. An Arab, a woman.”
NBC pulled the episode after powerful Jewish groups decried the episode as antisemitic, defaming ultra-Orthodox Jews by presenting them as racist in terms of their views on organ donation.
Sadly, there is enough truth in the representation in “Nurses” that Orthodox Jews should be upset not by how they are portrayed on TV, but how their fellow Jews behave in real life, and I say this from my own personal experience.
For the last 19 years, I have been the director of an Orthodox Jewish organ donor society whose mission is to encourage Jews to donate organs to the general public. I have succeeded in convincing 341 rabbis to sign organ donor cards, agreeing to donate their organs to anybody in need of a transplant regardless of religion and gender. Over the past two decades I have traveled to Jewish communities in 17 countries delivering 909 lectures to more than 53,000 Jews about halakhic (Jewish law-compliant) support for organ donation.
Many of the ultra-Orthodox people I have met do indeed hold racist attitudes towards gentiles and consequently refuse to donate organs to them. Unlike in the TV show, however, the racism is not so much in the form of not agreeing to receive organs from gentiles (although I have encountered that as well) but rather in not agreeing to donate organs to gentiles.
While I found this phenomenon mainly in the ultra-Orthodox community, it exists to a limited degree amongst Modern Orthodox Jews as well. Unfortunately, this attitude is not just found among their rank and file, but among their leaders.
Ultra-Orthodox rabbis from England to Australia, Brooklyn to Bnei Brak, have told me they refuse to donate organs because, among other reasons, they are afraid the organs would go to a gentile. The not-so-subtle racism, in spite of the story-line in “Nurses,” comes mainly in the form of taking organs. Ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to donate organs are happy to receive them from gentiles. In fact they prefer it.
The London Beth Din, for example, ruled in 2009 that a brain-dead beating-heart cadaver is a living human being, and thus it forbade the Jewish community from becoming organ donors because it would be akin to killing themselves.
While this is an understandable reason not to donate organs, the moral problem is that the London Beth Din allows Jews who are in need of a transplant to accept organs from ‘other people’ who in the Beth Din’s eyes are just as alive.
In other words, for the London Beth Din it’s OK to shorten the life of a gentile but not that of a Jew. For the sake of moral consistency, if it believes a brain-dead beating-heart cadaver is a living human being, it should forbid Jews from donating organs and from receiving organs. But it doesn’t.
Similarly, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, who until his death in 1995 considered the most prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Israel, openly wrote in a religious responsa that Jews should travel abroad for organ transplants because the likelihood is that the organ will be coming from – in his perspective – a living gentile, and not a living Jew.
A Chabad rabbi I met in Australia, who touts himself as a bio-ethicist, told me he is fine with Jews taking organs from gentiles but prohibits Jews from donating to them because the Tanya, Chabad’s key religious text, states that gentiles have only animal souls, not human souls. A Modern Orthodox rabbi from New York City with a degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University was surprised that I’m an advocate for organ donation and asked me how I “get around the issue that the organs might go to a goy.”
Antigentilism is a thing in the Orthodox Jewish community, and the community needs to confront it. How big of a problem it is I have no idea, but I have seen enough anecdotal evidence to make me queasy. Antigentilism is not as pernicious as antisemitism, but in the field of organ donation it costs human life.
Antigentilism is the Haredi elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about for fear that it will fuel the flames of rising antisemitism. So instead of coping with it, Jews end up shooting the messenger instead of listening to the merits of the message.
Instead of protesting NBC, Orthodox Jews of all stripes should be protesting rabbis who prohibit organ donation to the general public.
If Jews want to deprive antisemites fodder for their antisemitism, they should demand from their community rabbi to stand from the pulpit this coming Shabbat morning and clearly express support for organ donation from Jew to gentile. And if the rabbi refuses to do so they should fire him. Synagogue search committees should ask potential rabbis what their stance is on organ donation and what is their attitude towards non-Jews before hiring them.
Saving human life – all human life – is of paramount importance in Judaism and if anti-gentilism is getting in the way it should be rooted out. The Orthodox Jewish community, like all communities, has a problem with racism. The question is: What is the community itself willing to do about it?
Robby Berman is the founder and director of the Halachic Organ Donor Society whose mission is to save lives by increasing organ donation from Jews to the general public.
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