Monthly Archives: November 2018

Satan didn’t arise from Hell fully formed. The concept of an ultimate Evil One was apparently borrowed from the Persians and continued to evolve throughout antiquity

When Jews believed in multiple gods, there was no difficulty in explaining why bad things happen to good men. A vast array of spirits, demons, evil gods and things that go bump in the night could be blamed for their misfortune. But once God was elevated to supreme and then the only god, the problem became vexing: Was God unfair? With help from the Persians, Jews came up with an answer: Satan.

First Temple Period (700-586 B.C.E.): Satan the lawyer

In the early books of the Bible, which were written roughly in the First Temple period, there is no Prince of Darkness, just demons called se’irim. Some had names, such as Belial and Azazel, but none reigned supreme.

We do find the word satan in these early biblical books, but they do not refer to a demon. Rather, “satan” is just a proper noun denoting an adversary in a martial or judicial setting. For example, a foreign king opposing the king of Israel was said to be a satan:

“And the Lord stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite” (1 Kings 11:14).

Clearly, the Bible does not have the Prince of Darkness in mind here, but rather a man of flesh and bone.

It is true that the Bible also refers to supernatural beings as being satans. For instance, in the story of Balaam in the Book of Numbers, God becomes angry and sends an “angel of the Lord” to stand “in the way for an adversary against him [Balaam]” (Numbers 22:22). In this case too, we are not talking about Satan with a capital S, rather just an unnamed messenger of God doing the Lord’s bidding, as an adversary.

Early Second Temple Period (530-450 B.C.E.): Devil the Bob

By the time the Book of Job was conceived, apparently in the early Second Temple period around 2,500 years ago, we can see a slight movement towards the development of Satan as an evil being. But he still isn’t Satan with a capital S. The book itself is an essay on the problem of evil, probably written in response to the destruction of Judah and the Temple.

Job, we are told, is “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil,” yet he faces terrible calamities. Why?

Job’s troubles are attributed to the work of ha-satan, that is, “the adversary,” and not, as the English translations insist, Satan with capital S. The word satan in Job could not be a name: in the Hebrew original it is always preceded by “ha,” which is equivalent to the English word “the” (this would be equivalent to saying “the Bob”). Thus satan in Job is “adversary,” just as it was in the earlier books of the Bible.

Yet the Book of Job does not refer to just any adversary but to “the adversary.”

“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and the satan came also among them” (Job 1:6).

“The adversary” is a member of God’s heavenly council, who says he had just returned “from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” God asks him what he thinks of Job, but being a kind of prosecutor, the satan says that Job is only being good because he is being rewarded for it. He convinces God to test Job’s piety with a deluge of disasters.

A similar image of ha-satan, the satan as heavenly prosecutor, can be found in the Book of Zechariah (3:1-10), which is also believed to date from the early Second Temple period. In it, where Joshua the high priest is put on trial and accused by “the adversary.” The Lord acting as judge rebukes him and sides with the “Angel of the Lord” who acts as the priest’s defense attorney.

Late Second Temple Period (450 B.C.E.-70 C.E.): My name isn’t Legion, it’s Mastema

The one and only time we find Satan used as a proper name in the Bible is in the Book of Chronicles. He appears in revisions of the books of Samuel and Kings, the Book of Chronicles, probably dating to the late 4th or early 3rd centuries B.C.E.

When rewriting the story of King David calling a census in 2 Samuel 24:1, where it says ““And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah,” the Chronicler switches out the Lord for Satan:

“And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1).

He is no longer ha-satan, the adversary, but Satan.

This is roughly the point at which the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, and the noun satan was translated into the Greek word diábolos, which means “one who slanders, accuses.” The Greek word eventually made its way into English as “devil”.

This is also roughly the same period that the Book of the Watchers and the Book of Enoch were written. While these books were not incorporated into the Hebrew Bible, they were popular at the time – over 2,000 years ago, and reflect the views of at least some Jews in the late Second Temple period, including those living in Qumran who painstakingly made many copies of these books.

These deuterocanonical books contain a horde of evil demons and they have a leader, the chief evil spirit, but he is not called Satan. In the Book of the Watchers, he is called Mastema. That name is almost certainly etymologically related to the noun satan.

But in the Book of Enoch, this figure is called Samyaza, which might mean “(he) saw my name.”

In addition, Hebrew literature from this period also refers to demonic figures named Belial and Samael. All these names refer to the same basic idea, a chief demon, who opposes God and heads a group of fallen angels who spread evil throughout the world.

Where did Jews of this period get the idea that there is a chief demon responsible for all that is evil?

At one level, inventing a chief demon was a logical evolution of the conception of God that took shape in this period. If God is all-powerful and utterly good, how could bad things happen? He couldn’t be responsible, so some other being must be to blame, a kind of anti-God perhaps.

But Jews apparently didn’t come up with this idea on their own. They seem to have picked it up from their Persian overloads, who ruled over the entire Middle East from 539 to 330 B.C.E. The Persian religion Zoroastrianism envisioned the universe as a battle ground between to opposing supreme gods Ahura Mazda, the “wise lord,” and Angra Mainyu, the destructive spirit.”

After the Temple (After 70 C.E.): Evil Superman

In the year 70 C.E., Roman soldiers commanded by Vespasian destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple, to punish the Jews for (unsuccessfully) rebelling.

The period after the destruction of the Temple  was a critical one  in the formation of both Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.

The books of the Christian Bible abound with references to Satan, as he was imagined in Judaism in the late Second Temple period. For example the Gospel of Mark says of Jesus:

“And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him” (1:13).

Within Christianity, Satan evolved into the Antichrist, God’s antithesis, who is behind all that is evil. He is the master of Hell, as everyone knows from popular culture.

Not so in rabbinic Judaism, at least not at first. Rabbinic literature of the Tannaic period (70-250 C.E.), namely the Mishnah and the Tosefta, hardly ever refers to Satan. It seems as if the rabbis rejected the full-blown image of the devil as he appears in the Book of the Watchers and the Book of Enoch, books they did not admit into the canon.

But this retreat in the Evil One’s status was temporary. Come the Amoraic period (250-450 C.E.) Satan reemerged in Jewish literature – the Talmud, and more prominently in the Midrashic literature, where he is blamed for pretty much every nastiness that took place in the Bible, from David sinning with the married Bathsheba to the Binding of Isaac (i.e., for sacrifice).

In the Jewish literature of the rabbis, Satan is portrayed as a singular being who lures men into sin, and as prosecutor in the divine tribunal, trying to convince God to mete out harsh penalties. He is said to been a powerful angel, able to fly and assume the shape of men, women and animals.

This devil was often called Ashmedai or Asmodeus, a name deriving from a Zoroastrian evil demon, or Samael, a demonic entity also mentioned in the gnostic literature found in Nag Hammadi (a collection of early Christian and gnostic texts discovered near the Egyptian town of the same name in 1945.) In the Talmud he is conflated with the Angel of Death and the Evil Inclination.

Still, despite Satan appearing quite frequently in the Talmud and Midrashic literature, mainstream medieval rabbis did not dwell on him, or discuss methods of combating his malevolence. This would become the domain of Kabbalistic literature, especially the Zohar, written in 13th century Spain.

The Zohar expands on the character of Satan, which it calls Samael. It provides him with a wife, the evil spirit Lilith, and a set of demons which do his bidding.

Obviously, this worldview required different methods of fighting Satan, Lilith and their minions. This was achieved chiefly by reciting spells and sporting amulets.

The view of Satan and his demons as actual beings was criticized by more rationalist streams of Judaism and most prominently by Maimonides, the sage who lived in the 12th century. Over time, as Judaism advanced to the modern period, this rationalist view prevailed and Satan and his minions were interpreted, at least in mainstream Judaism, in more metaphoric ways: they emblemize the evil inclinations which man carries within him, and cause him to stray from the path set for him by God.

by Mitchell Bard

Storefronts of Jewish-owned businesses damaged during the Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” in Berlin, Germany, on Nov. 10, 1938. Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Over the course of 48 hours on November 9-10, 1938 — now known as Kristallnacht — 96 Jews were killed, 1,300 synagogues and 7,500 businesses were destroyed, and 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. And now, almost exactly 80 years later, even Jews in America are not safe.

Today, Jews are looking to our president for words of solace and condemnation of not only antisemitism in general, but the hate mongers on the left and right who traffic in conspiracy theories and threaten Jews with violence. Many Jews believe that President Trump has failed them, and that they are more vulnerable today than in recent memory.

President Franklin Roosevelt also failed the Jews. Though viewed as an icon by many Jews, and defended by apologists, his inaction as well as the deleterious actions of his administration condemned countless Jews to death.

In his book, The Abandonment of the Jews, David Wyman documents how the US government failed to save European Jewry. He concludes with a quotation from the Committee for a Jewish Army:

Imagine that the British people and the American nation had millions of residents in Europe. … Let us imagine that Hitler would start a process of annihilation and would slaughter not two million Englishmen or Americans, not hundreds of thousands, but, let us say, only tens of thousands. … It is clear that the governments of Great Britain [and] the United States would certainly find ways and means to act instantly and to act effectively.

The assumption was understandable, but incorrect. Tens of thousands of Americans were in peril, but their government did not act instantly or effectively. Consequently, many suffered, and some died.

American Jews were subject to the same antisemitic regulations and dangers as any other Jews who came under the control of the Nazis. Americans were killed in concentration camps, though the total is unknown. Non-Jews did not face the same peril; however, thousands were sent to internment camps.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives could have been saved had the United States government taken action to rescue people claiming American citizenship. Often, it did just the opposite, creating obstacles that impeded Americans from obtaining the necessary documents to escape from the Nazis.

In 1939, more than 80,000 American citizens were believed to be living abroad. That year, the State Department established a little-known “Special Division” for handling matters related to the whereabouts and welfare of Americans abroad, including civilian internees and POWs, evidence that the United States anticipated the problems that would later arise.

The State Department’s initial position was that every effort should be made to get Americans out of Europe, but that no money should be spent paying citizens’ expenses to return home. On November 25, 1939, Assistant Secretary of State George Messersmith wrote that Americans in danger zones were given the opportunity to return home, but for business or private reasons, many did not do so. State Department officials held that citizens who chose to live abroad without any apparent intention of returning to the United States could not expect their government to feel any obligation to protect them.

An even deeper prejudice lay behind this viewpoint: the belief that citizens returning from abroad would become “welfare” cases. “Their real status,” Messersmith wrote, “does not differ very much from that of the many thousands of unfortunate persons deserving of our sympathy, and having no claim to American citizenship, who would desire to come to this country in order to escape from danger zones or for other reasons and who seek immigration visas and passport visas to that end.”

The State Department was not sympathetic to Americans who were caught in the Nazi net. Although it acknowledged the US obligation “to facilitate in every way possible the return” of US nationals during an emergency “from places where danger may exist,” State also maintained that Americans who failed to take advantage of the opportunity for repatriation did so knowing the risks involved.

The State Department sent five ships in 1939 and four more in 1940 to bring United States citizens home from the European war zone, and the ships returned with space available. “It therefore seems safe to draw the conclusion,” a Special Division policy paper written four years later says, “that those United States nationals who remained in threatened areas did so, for the most part, voluntarily, and with full realization of the occupational risks they were taking.”

No one could imagine in 1939 or 1940 what would happen to Jews later. Nevertheless, US officials took the position that Americans who, in their eyes, literally missed the boat were on their own. This view was to have tragic consequences.

By the summer of 1941, it was extremely difficult for Americans in the occupied territories to travel and communicate; they needed special permits to leave, and those were rarely given.

A few months earlier, Breckinridge Long, the head of the Special Division, told Roosevelt that consuls had been instructed to be “as liberal as the law allows” and expedite action, but because of reports of Nazi agents pretending to be refugees, “it has been considered essential in the national interest to scrutinize all applications carefully.” In another letter to the president, Long said he was proposing new regulations for travel to and from the United States for all persons, including US citizens, because the laxity of the current law allowed subversives to enter the United States.

Sound familiar?

Besides fear of Nazi sympathizers infiltrating the US, the State Department adopted the policy that it could not save any one group if it could not save everyone. “If we once open our doors to one class of refugee,” Special Division’s James Keeley wrote in December 1942 in reference to Jews, “we must expect on the basis of our experience in extending relief in occupied territories, that all other sufferers from Nazi (including Japanese) oppression (the Belgians, Dutch, Poles, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Norwegians, Czechs, Chinese, et cetera) will likewise wish to avail themselves of our hospitality. … Even the most optimistic dispenser of largess could scarcely expect us to become an unrestricted haven of refuge for all suffering peoples.”

Once again, sound familiar?

Another official, Joseph Green, suggested that the Passport Division provide a list of passports issued in Europe during 1941, as well as a list of Americans whose passports were validated in 1940 or 1941 for continued stay in Europe, so the Department could check for Americans in Europe who might be entitled to repatriation. Long argued that it was impracticable to search lists of thousands of passports. Moreover, he said that Americans in Germany awaiting repatriation “ought to be examined and only those we want should be accepted” (emphasis original).

Once the decision was made not to further aid Americans, the State Department was forced to cover up its failure to act out of fear of public reaction. Green admitted, for example, that “if the Axis propaganda mill should give publicity to the proposed ill treatment of American citizens of Jewish race in Slovakia there may be considerable criticism of the Department by Jewish circles in the United States.” This is perhaps the clearest statement that the State Department was aware of the seriousness of the plight of Jews in Eastern Europe, was sensitive to public opinion, and still was unwilling to act.

It wasn’t only European Jews that died on Roosevelt’s watch; an unknown number of Americans did as well.

Mitchell Bard is author of 48 Hours of Kristallnacht: Night of Destruction/Dawn of the Holocaust – An Oral History and Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitler’s Camps.

As taken from, https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/11/01/eighty-years-after-kristallnacht-the-murder-of-jews-continues/?utm_content=blog1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source=internal/