I do not speak Yiddish but I have a number of friends and acquaintances who do and they tell me that half the words and expressions in that language are meant to put down someone. All those people I know speak several languages themselves and they assure me that Yiddish is like no other because it is the language of insult par excellence; and as such it stands alone among all the other languages.
I take these people at their word if only because they all agree on this one issue which has been an unusual occurrence in my experience with them. However, every one of them has a different historical version as to why Yiddish was invented in the first place and how it came to be this insulting. And so, when I venture into this part of the discussion, I do so cautiously and I urge the reader to do the same; and maybe do research of their own as well.
I mean to discuss the non-binding resolutions that the Congress of the United States passes from time to time in conjunction with what I have learned about the Yiddish phenomenon. I do so because I see in these resolutions the influence of the language and I hear in them an echo of the Yiddish culture given that the resolutions are a form of insult and considering who is behind them. Indeed, the resolutions are usually initiated by a Jewish member of the Congress or they are brought about by some lobby operating on behalf of Israel or another Jewish cause.
An insult is a moral hurt you inflict on someone who is beyond your immediate ability to injure physically. Thus, to insult someone is to declare that you wish you could injure the target of the insult but that you are unable to do so at this time. And so the question poses itself: why insult someone at all if it seems to be a useless exercise?
Well, you do it because you hope to scare the target of the insult enough so that they bow to your demand. The response you hope to elicit from them will be one motivated by the fear that you may one day develop the wherewithal to inflict a more serious injury on them. In short, the insult serves as a warning or even a threat you send in the direction of your target.
And this is exactly what the Congressional non-binding resolutions hope to accomplish. They are meant to insult other countries so as to warn them or threaten them. When the Congress passes resolutions on behalf of the Jewish, the Zionists or the Israeli causes, it puts the World on notice that America does not have the wherewithal to hurt everyone it wishes to hurt on behalf of the aforementioned parties but watch out because America may someday garner the political will and the means to hurt the countries that refuse to bow to Israel and to the Jews on whose behalf these resolutions are passed.
You do not need a Ph.D. in political science to see that this is a poor way to do politics. In fact, two big mistakes jump at you when you see this manner of conducting international diplomacy.
First, you announce your desire and your intent to hurt someone physically, an act that will make them suspicious of every move you will make from here on. And second, you actually hurt them verbally which will make them angry enough to want to hurt you even before you garner the will and the means to tackle them first.
And because what does not kill them makes them stronger, your action will create enemies who will grow stronger with time. The result will be that by the time you develop the means to go against them in a more serious way they will have developed the backbone and the means to stand up to you more robustly and more resolutely.
So why does the Zionist lobby ask the US Congress to pass such resolutions in the first place? The answer lies in the understanding of a culture that existed thousands of years ago and that is being revived for reasons that baffle the mind and cry out for an explanation.
But here is one tentative explanation. When you look at the pivotal moments in the narrative of the Old Testament, you find them to be marked by personalities who refused to bow to someone. This is how the stories of Joseph, Moses, Esther and many others were constructed, recounted over the ages and passed on down the generations.
In the culture of Biblical Judaism bowing to someone meant submitting to that one. It also meant giving up enough of your rights to turn your human condition into one of servitude. This is what happened to those who found themselves without the means to feed themselves because of one reason or another and to those who got involved in a war and lost.
We must remember that slavery as we define it today did not exist in the ancient world. What existed was a form of servitude that may be compared to today’s domesticity and that carried a time limit after which the “domestic” was released from his or her obligation to resume a free life, even acquire domestics of their own.
A few centuries later Rabbinical Judaism replaced Biblical Judaism and the setting shifted from the Middle East to Europe. Full fledged slavery as we define it today was then practiced in Europe, and bowing to someone meant that you were a slave to that one, owned by them as would be an animal or a piece of furniture. To be in this situation was dreaded by the Jews, as indeed it was by everyone else.
Those were the reasons why it entered into the Judaic culture that to have money and to win wars meant to be a free person. The opposite of that, to be poor or to loose a war meant to be a domestic or a slave, or to have the potential to become one. And so the Jew went through life flaunting the wealth he has and bragging about war victories that may have been real or may have been imagined. In this way, the Jew demonstrated that he was a free person and if persuasive enough, even the descendant of free lineage.
The saying that was passed down the generations was this: accumulate wealth when you can and pile up war victories where you can. But if you cannot start a hot war against your neighbor or win it when you do, unleash a verbal war against him in a language he does not understand but one that carries a threatening tone. Put the neighbor down with your tongue as if it were the fight of your life using every insult you know and every one you invent on the spot.
This is how and why Yiddish was born according to my friends and the research that I did. Whether or not it is true, partially true or totally false, there is no denying that the trouble with this approach to modern life and to international diplomacy is that it drags America into the darkness of the Stone Age.
Seeing that the approach was beginning to cause a backlash against the handling by the Administration and the Congress of the issues relating to Jewish and Israeli interests, the Zionist lobby came up with a response. It called the approach the courage to be modern.
This is meant to hide the fact that when the Americans commit themselves to insulting someone, they close the door to any sort of give and take. They, in effect, tell the world they only see things one way; the Jewish-Israeli way. The signal that the Americans send to the world is this: “It is the Jewish way or the highway. You do as they say or you deal with America's might. You are either with Israel or against her. Love Israel or get off the Planet.”
When this happens, negotiations and compromises are difficult to formulate. The feeling is created that the American hegemon is trying to dictate to the world; also the deep seated suspicion that the hegemon is manipulated by the Zionist Lobby whose aim is to turn the clock back 4000 years to a Biblical era that no miracle can bring back to life.
This is not the courage to be modern; it is the cowardice to run away from the reality of the situation.