Fellow Poundians:
 
I fear from Tim Romano's letter that some of us may be getting our
knowledge of Judaism from Pound--a very bad idea.
 
As regards interest and gentiles, the Hebrew Scriptures have hundreds of
laws, articulated in a variety of confusing ways (hence the secondary,
tertiary legal literature). For every rule that talks about charging
interest only to gentiles, there's one that says Jews are obligated to
treat gentiles better than fellow Jews.
 
As for alleged Jewish shame about coition, this seems to be some sort of
retroactive Pauline or Augustine influence.  Far from being considered a
bad thing, sex is part of man's side of the covenant--every observant Jew
knows that heterosexual intercourse in considered a mitzvah--especially on
the Sabbath!
 
I'm not blind to the restrictions in Jewish law on other kinds of sex
(homosexuality, onanism, etc.)--but I suspect that, as usual, Pound was
alot closer to the Jews on this issue that he was willing to admit.
 
By the way, I'd like to hear from Leon Surette more often on this list.
For now, I wonder how he compares his own view of Pound's "conversion" to
anti-semitism (apologies for the paraphrase) to that of Wendy Flory, who
dates it to 1935 and gives Ethiopia as the reason.
 
Jonathan Gill
Columbia University
 
 
 
On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Tim Romano wrote:
 
> Tim,
> I won't suggest any literature that addresses your basic incomprehension of
> the related hatreds. But hatred (racial, tribal, etc) does not seem
> unnatural to me -- it seems more the anthropological rule than the
> exception.  The Jews considered themselves the Chosen Race. African tribes
> massacre each other. Many Koreans despise whites. The Japanese consider
> themselves superior. Many whites consider blacks to be inferior. The ancient
> Saxons thought the dark-skinned Britons were an inferior race. Not a modern
> phenomenon by any means.  Genocide is nothing new. These feelings are
> perhaps instinctual.
>
> But I have not encountered anything that I would regard as racial or tribal
> hatred in Pound's writings, though I've yet to read the Agresti letters and
> am not very far into Pound's wartime radio broadcasts, and maybe there is
> evidence of this kind of hatred to be found in the things I haven't read
> yet. In one of his wartime broadcasts, Pound actually speaks out against the
> physical stereotyping of the Japanese in Zukor's animated cartoons.
>
> In what I have read of his, Pound's "anti-Semiticism" is
> culturally/economically based.  Deuteronomy permits the Jews when
> moneylending to charge interest to Gentiles only. Pound had great antipathy
> for Jewish monotheism and the shame in which it shrouds the human act of
> coition. There are things one might reasonably hate about Jewish culture
> which have nothing to do with racial or tribal hatred, or hatred of any
> individual human being who happens to have been raised as a Jew, just as one
> might despise the practice of female infanticide or female genital
> mutilation or the chopping off of the hands of petty thieves or the use of
> the flagellum.  Some cultures are more humane than others, if not more
> human.
>
> Tim Romano
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tim Bray <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, 18 Oct 1999 12:27 AM
> Subject: Anti-Semitism: getting started understanding it
>
>
> > As a well-read non-humanist in his 40s who has spent time in the third
> > world and seen tribal hate at work, the problem I have with all the
> holocaust
> > literature is that it fails to address my basic incomprehension as to how
> this
> > could have happened.  I.e. how intelligent well-educated people (eg EP,
> nuts
> > maybe, smart probably, well-educated definitely) can have thought such
> > silly things and done such evil things?  The tribal hate I've seen could
> not
> > survive in the absence of real immediate grievance (they killed my
> brother)
> > and the presence of a decent education (history and ethics are
> complicated).
> >
> > So, on the assumption that people who agonize over EP know something about
> > this subject, what would be a good recommendation for literature to
> address
> > this basic incomprehension? -T.
> >
> >
>