Pollak: The Abuse of The Talmud by Antisemites to Attack Jews

One of the favored tactics of those who make a profession out of hating Jews is to attack the Talmud, a large compendium of Jewish law, and claim it promotes Jewish supremacy.

The Talmud (TAHL-mood) is a collection of Jewish laws, debates, commentaries, and mystical teachings. It was compiled around the year 500 A.D., and is based on centuries of oral tradition and jurisprudence. It is written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and is presented with commentaries that are centuries old themselves.

There are actually two versions of the Talmud, one compiled in Israel (the “Jerusalem Talmud”) and one compiled in Babylonia. The latter is considered authoritative because it is better organized. It includes dozens upon dozens of tractates; one popular edition is made up of 72 volumes.

The Talmud is not simply a statement or code of Jewish law. It is a recording of debates among rabbinic authorities about what the law is, or should be. Minority views, admirably, are preserved; often, the debates are left unresolved. It is often impossible to understand what Jewish law is on any particular issue simply by reading the Talmud; hence the need for the commentaries, which are often unavailable in translation.

If you study just one page per day — which many Jews do — it takes over seven years to complete.

In short, the Talmud cannot be summarized by a few quotes. Yet it has been used to attack Jews — through fabrication, distortion, or selective quotation — from the Middle Ages through Nazi Germany and until today.

In the midst of a now-infamous interview of Kanye West on the Alex Jones Show, this week, for example, guest host Nick Fuentes chimed in to attack the Jewish faith itself, citing what he claimed were Talmudic laws:

The other thing is that there is something baked into the cake in Judaism which affects how they’re brokering these kinds of contracts with entertainers like Ye. If you look at the Talmud, which is a real Jewish holy book or part of the holy book, there’s the written Torah, which is the Hebrew Bible, there’s the Oral Torah, which is written down as the Mishnah and then interpreted in the Talmud, and the Talmud it says that Jews have to treat Gentiles differently than they treat other Jews [sic]. There’s all kinds of examples of this. They say that if you accidentally, if a Jew indirectly kills a Gentile, there’s nothing even wrong with that, there’s nothing morally wrong with that. They say that for a Jew to have sex with Gentile is comparable to bestiality. They say that the semen of a Gentile is like that of horses. They also say that you can’t give a gift to a Gentile. A Jew is not permitted under the Talmud to give a gift to a Gentile. They’re not permitted to charge each other interest, but they’re encouraged to charge Gentiles interest.

West followed up by asking if Jewish law permitted pedophilia, and Fuentes replied, erroneously, that it did. (West then speculated, grotesquely, that Jews would allow themselves to molest the children of non-Jews.)

Fuentes, who kept mispronouncing the word “Talmud” (rhyming it with “mud”), made several false claims:

• There is nothing in the Talmud that says Jews have to treat Gentiles “differently” in general, though of course it would not make sense to impose Jewish law on those who do not accept the Jewish faith. Fuentes is implying that Jews are obligated to treat Gentiles worse than Jews, which is simply not the case. In fact, Jewish law stresses the ethical obligation to treat others with respect, including those who are not Jewish, and to respect the law of the land as if it were Jewish law. This principle is “Dina de’malkhuta dina,” or “the law of the land is your law.”
• The Talmud does not say there is “nothing wrong” with accidentally killing a Gentile. It should come as no surprise that under the law of accidental killing, where there is no intent to harm another person, the Talmud does not dwell on moral culpability, whether the victim is a Jew or a Gentile. But when it comes specifically to the accidental killing of a Gentile, the Talmud specifically says (Tractate Makkot 8b) that within a context in which Jews are inhabiting the Land of Israel, and Jewish laws apply to residents, the punishment for involuntary manslaughter — exile — is the same whether the victim is a Jew or not. The only exception is the case of a “resident alien” in the Land of Israel, whose accidental death does not result in exile — and who, similarly, cannot be exiled for the same action unless he or she accidentally kills another resident alien. This has to do with the fact that a resident alien has only accepted some of the laws, not because of some inferiority.
• Sex between Jews and Gentiles is not considered bestiality by the Talmud. It is discouraged, as are all sexual relations outside of marriage, but I cannot find a single source for what Fuentes is talking about. Gentiles are not even punished for illicit sex with Jews, since Jewish law does not apply to them. There is a prohibition against buying animals from idolators, who are suspected of committing bestiality as a matter of habit. But that was a law for a different era and obviously has nothing to do with the law of sex between consenting adults.
• The Talmud does not say that Gentile semen is like that of horses. The reference appears to be to a passage in the Old Testament, not the Talmud. Ezekiel 23:20 compares the sins of Jerusalem, metaphorically, to those of a prostitute who lusts after her abusers. “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.” This is a passage in both the Jewish and Christian Bible.
• The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 20a) does prohibit giving “free gifts” to Gentiles, though Jewish law does not prohibit giving gifts to non-Jews with whom one has a personal or professional relationship. The source for the law is a Biblical passage dealing with the disposition of land in Israel, and the treatment of the conquered peoples of ancient Israel; the concern appears to be that giving land or produce as a gift would weaken Jewish attachment to the land. The Talmud also is replete with stories of Jews giving gifts to non-Jews, including Caesar in Rome, so obviously the practice was permitted. Fuentes lacks that context.
• The Jewish laws of interest are complicated. It is forbidden to charge interest to Jews or Gentiles; nevertheless, Jewish law historically permitted charging interest to non-Jews out of necessity, in circumstances where Jews had no other legal way of making a living. The exception arose from conditions of persecution, not because Jews regard Gentiles as targets for exploitation. In some cases, Jewish law grudgingly condoned charging interest to a Gentile so that the Gentile could lend the money to a Jew, thereby charging the Jew interest (indirectly). A more detailed treatment of the subject is provided here.
• There is nothing in the Talmud that condones pedophilia. The Talmud does deal with the question of legal betrothal and marriage among those who would be considered minors. This is not uncommon among other premodern societies in which arranged marriages were the norm, and has nothing to do with condoning sexual abuse. Crucially, the Talmud devotes considerable attention to the question of consent.

I should note that I am not a rabbi or religious scholar; these insights come from my own learning as a layman.

The Talmud is immensely rich, enlightened, and complex. There are parts of it that are relevant to any time and place; there are other parts that emerge from specific historical contexts and are no longer relevant in any real way. Crucially, it embraces contradiction and contrary views.

Regardless, it ought to be clear that whenever one is told by an antisemite that something is “in the Talmud,” the claim should never be taken at face value.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.