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Jason Pitzl-Waters on Apr 21st 2007 at 2:29 pm Uncategorized

Pagans, Jews, Neoconservatives

Neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard reviews a posthumous collection of essays by Jewish sociographer and neoconservative Milton Himmelfarb (who passed away at the beginning of 2006). The collection, edited by his sister Gertrude Himmelfarb (wife of Irving Kristol an architect of the neoconservative movement, and mother to Bill Kristol an editor of The Weekly Standard), looks at relations between Christians and Jews and raises alarms over the rise of “paganism”.

“Although Jews and Gentiles is a book of essays, compiled posthumously, it has a theme: the rise of paganism in our times, and the fundamental, irreconcilable antagonism between paganism and Judaism. We must carefully distinguish (the author writes) between paganism and mere atheism. Paganism is a positive system of beliefs … For Himmelfarb, paganism is the characteristic religion of today’s elite–and it stands for promiscuity, misery, and death. He traces the taste for paganism to Enlightenment philo sophes such as Diderot, to their 20th-century academic admirers, and to the psychotic sixties, when nature-worship and sexual promiscuity began to seem positively good and Christianity (and Judaism even more, to the extent anyone ever thought about it) began to seem evil.”

Standard writer David Gelernter praises Himmelfarb’s “casual annihilation” of the notion that there is anything “admirable” about ancient pagan societies (from ancient Rome to India), and uncritically swallows the “Hitler was a pagan” meme so popular amongst certain apologists for the moral superiority of monotheism.

“Himmelfarb is careful to note that only paganism, and never Christianity, could have sponsored the Holocaust: “If one sentence could summarize Church law and practice over many centuries, it is this: the Jews are allowed to live, but not too well.” This sentence is worth a couple of academic monographs and a journal paper all by itself … The author compresses a shattering load of truth into three sentences: ‘The obedience of Himmler and the SS was to Hitler, not to anti-Semitism. . . . Hitler made the Holocaust because he wanted to make it. . . . Hitler was ex-Christian and anti-Christian.’”

Statements like these seem to point at a troubling revisionism, a glossing over of Christianity’s sins towards Judaism by finding a common enemy (paganism). Despite these issues (or perhaps because of them) The Weekly Standard frames Himmelfard as some sort of reincarnation of essayist and critic Samuel Johnson (who famously wrote that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”). But in these crude smear-pieces depicting “pagan” societies as evil and without a moral compass aren’t we paving a road that will eventually lead to more religious intolerance and violence? Creating a common enemy is a tactic that often backfires. Everyone, including neoconservatives, should step lightly before endorsing such a course towards deepening an alliance between conservative Christians and Jews.

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4 responses so far

  • cuupsres

    Gelenter does have something to worry about and the article’s emphasis on support for Israel is really telling. Right wing Christian support for Israel ( mysteriously tied up with the Book of Revelation http://zmagsite.zmag.org/oct2002/berkowitz1002.htm) could become less decisive were paganism in the US to grow (even more than it already has). While we’re never likely to be a majority, our influence could gradually spell the end of support for the government of someone else’s holy land. So Gelenter and Himmelfarb fulminate using the language of the Religious Right (promiscuity, misery, death) to keep their allies whipped up. Pathetic, but then again the influence of Judaism is declining in the US from declinging numbers and the rise of Islam – whose followers have no special feeling about bringing about the Second Coming.

  • Bill Baar

    I like classical paganism but CUUPSRES just made Gelenter’s case.I think I’ll just stick with the Iraqi Communist Party for now instead of these opiates.

  • cuupsres

    Gelenter was not making his case overtly, but covertly, clothed in the usual RR prattle. So, I don’t think I’m doing him any favors by suggesting an overt motive that the majority of Americans might be repulsed by.

  • Chas S. Clifton

    The “paganism” of Himmelfarb is the “paganism” of someone like Camille Paglia: display of the body, love of worldly success, and so on.It is not capital-P Paganism as most of your readers understand, so many contemporary Pagans may feel baffled by the criticism.Here is an interesting interview with Paglia by Ron “Crunchy Con” Dreher, by the way: “Camille Paglia, Defender of the West.”I remain concerned about the compulsive denigration of the West and the reductiveness so many leading academics in the humanities have toward their own tradition,” she tells me. “They reduce it all to the lowest common denominator of racism, imperialism, sexism and homophobia. That’s an extremely small-minded way of looking at culture and a betrayal of the career mission of these educators, whose job is to educate students in our culture.”