Just Because They're Jewish

Guest Reviewer: Shlomoh Sherman
Just Because They're Jewish by M. Hirsh Goldberg
$6.95, pb.
July 28, 1982
SPEAKING of Books

Hirsh Goldberg has written a companion work to his The Jewish Connection, which is not only interesting but easy to read:

The premise of Just Because They're Jewish, called by the author's "Goldberg's Law," is: "If anything can be misconstrued about the Jews, it will be ... and has been." This, he states, is due to what he labels "the Ignorance Factor." Ignorance about Jews and Judaism is so wide spread that any allegation made about them will be accepted. This is true, the author tell us, to the extent that the same people will often believe two allegations about Jews and Judaism which are completely contradictory.

Sadly, he informs us, Jews themselves are affected by the Ignorance Factor, which leads to stereotyping and distorted ideas concerning the Jewish people and their religion.

We read that in the west, over the centuries, the masses were inculcated by their leaders with animosity towards Jews to such an extent that when Christianity began to lose its influence in the nineteenth century, the religious basis for Jew-Hatred could easily be replaced by a racial basis.

We are further informed that misconceptions about Jews far outnumber misconceptions about other ethnic groups. Therefore, the author strongly urges, what is needed more at the present time than acceptance is understanding of Jews and Judaism

He examines the popular images of the Jew over the past two millennia as a horned, christivorous, bloodthirsty moneylender and world conspirator, and relates how this image laid the groundwork for the acceptance of the Holocaust by the civilized world. He adds that the Holocaust did not sufficiently shame or shock the world. As an example of this he cites the outbreak of pogroms in Poland in 1946, the preoccupation with so-called Jewish passivity during the war, the recent denial of the Holocaust as fact, and the recent fascination with the Nazi Era on the part of many people in the western world