Dr. Martin Speaks on the Jewish Role in the Slave Trade
Introduction by Michael A. Hoffman II
Dr. Martin’s thesis is that there is an anti-black invective which runs through the sacred rabbinic literature of Judaism. That is not to say that it runs through the literature of the bible because there is a distinction between the Hebrew literature and the rabbinic literature. There have been, since Dr. Martin’s speech, two major texts which have been issued by Judaic scholars.
Jonathan Schorsch is Professor at Columbia University and is the author of the book “Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World.”
The most notorious anti-black racist in Judaism happens to be Judaism’s most influential and revered sage, Moses Maimonides, who taught in his book “Guide of the Perplexed,” that blacks are subhuman.
Schorsch has written 546 pages on the relationship of Jews and Blacks. One would think he would be able to explicate Maimonides’ teaching about black people at length since it forms the heart of Judaism’s attitude towards Blacks. Since Maimonides is indefensible, Schorsch dares not. Hence, like any propagandist, the Columbia University Professor buries the inconvenient Maimonides in his footnotes where we find the offending statement quoted in small type with no comment or exegesis of any kind — as if it were the doctrine of some long ago forgotten village rabbi instead of the major Halakic authority in Judaism. Neither can he bring himself to quote the Talmudic and Midrashic accounts of the curse on Ham which form the canonical Judaic understanding of black people. By shying away from a confrontation with these texts, he does little to dispel the critique of Tony Martin and others. Professor Martin quotes these anti-black rabbinic teachings you are about to see. How can Schorsch claim to debunk the Martin’s of the world when he can’t even bring himself to confront the problem’s sacred Judaic texts?
The Talmud’s creators, first of all, were lawyers. Let’s observe lawyer Schorsch in action. In his book on page 139 he says:
“Seeing a Jewish curse of Ham behind every English notion of Black accursedness will not do. If one looks carefully, the explicit citation of Jewish authors remains extremely rare in early modern writings. Some of course did indeed cite Jewish authorities. Overall, the curse of Ham seems to comprise a case of intra-Christian discursive influence. The Jewish having bible being claimed as a Christian text already long before the mediaeval period, early modern Christian authorities continued to make use of it as a component of the Christian canon.”
Well, nice try Professor. The fact is the Israelite bible was misappropriated by the Rabbis, not the Christians, the latter being its rightful heirs. Furthermore, Schorsch misleads readers into thinking that it is the biblical teaching about blacks that is the pivot of anti-black racism in the west when he knows very well that the anti-black rabbinic dogma is diametrically opposed to the Old Testament. Therefore, citing the Old Testament in a racial context as the curse of Ham’s “intra-Christian discursive influence” is nothing more than a lawyer’s trick with a fifty dollar phrase.
The mendacious chutzpah represented here is truly audacious. Such a gambit can only be sustained before an audience that is almost totally ignorant of the relevant foundational rabbinic texts.
The curse of Ham, as taught by the Rabbis, is what Avraham Melamed rightly terms, “the locus classicus” of Judaism’s historic antipathy toward black people and the exegetical source of its racist teaching from the Amorim of Babylonia to Moses Maimonides.
The dogma that the black is a slave by nature is rabbinic in origin. Canaan is identified as a black man and blacks as in inferior people, only in the Gemara, which is to say the latter part of the Talmud, the Midrash and later writings of the rabbis. This invective, this racism, is not anywhere in the bible concerning the black race.
The rabbinic account of the malediction against Ham stipulates that his son Canaan, and all Canaan’s offspring, are to fated to suffer perpetual slavery and black skin without the chance of their condition being ameliorated. It is this anti-Old Testament, Rabbinic gloss that influenced those fifteenth century Renaissance humanists who had crossed over into the forbidden territory of the Talmud, the Midrash and the Kabbalah as part of a supposedly enlightened act. It is an irony of history that as a result of this supposedly progressive development, the abominable view of blacks as a perpetual race of slaves became entrenched among the western liberal intelligentsia for at least the next three hundred years.
Here is what Schorsch writes in his book Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World: “Few Jewish thinkers understood Ham’s curse to initiate his or her progeny’s blackness.”
That is an out and out prevarication. The classic rabbinic texts hold that the punishment visited upon Ham was the transformation of his son Canaan, and all Canaan’s progeny, into blacks. Rabbi Hiyya said, “Ham and the dog copulated on the arc. Therefore Ham came forth dark skinned.” That is the canonical rabbinic teaching of Orthodox Judaism and Schorsch’s book covers this up and yet it has become the paradigmatic text for those in University and College level training in this subject to refer to when they are seeking out information on this subject. And there is a second book which has come along to supplement Schorsch’s work. This book is by David Goldenberg, the author of “The Curse of Ham.”
This has received more lavish encomiums than Schorsch’s. Both of these have formed the ultimate bulwark against the research and scholarship of Dr. Tony Martin. However of course Martin is ever allowed or invited to debate these two supposed authorities on this subject for obvious reasons. Now, Goldenberg’s thesis is just as outrageous as Schorsch’s, and just as dissembling. He claims that among Jewish writers in the Christian west, we begin to see a curse of Ham mentioned in the same time that Christian writers mention him. He cites on obscure text: Moses Arragel’s Fifteenth Century Castillian Commentary to the Bible. There is no mention of Maimonides or his text “The Guide of the Perplexed” in David Goldenberg’s supposedly exhaustive, encyclopedic study of the Judaic relationship entitled “The Curse of Ham.”
With that background I present to you Professor Tony Martin’s “The Judaic Role in the Black Slave Trade.”
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