Jewish Interpretations of Hams Curse

Although the story in Genesis is actually about Canaan, and although the Torah assigns no racial characteristics or rankings to Ham, early Jewish writers turned the focus of their attention from Canaan to Ham and interpreted the Biblical narrative in a racial way. The Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 108b states: "Our Rabbis taught: Three copulated in the ark, and they were all punishedthe dog, the raven, and Ham. The dog was doomed to be tied, the raven expectorates [his seed into his mate's mouth], and Ham was smitten in his skin." {Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 108b} The nature of Ham's "smitten" skin is unexplained, but later commentaries described this as a darkening of skin. A later note to the text states that the "smitten" skin referred to the blackness of descendants, and a later comment by rabbis in the Bereshit Rabbah asserts that Ham himself emerged from the ark black-skinned. The Zohar (a book central to Kabbalah) states that Ham's son Canaan "darkened the faces of mankind". The episode of Moses marrying a Kushite woman has been construed by some as evidence against this interpretation of 'darkening.' When Aaron and his sister Miriam question this marriage God punishes Miriam with a skin disease that makes her skin 'like snow' [Num.12:10] (with the sense of 'flaky' rather than 'white'). Rashi, the medieval Jewish commentator on Torah, explains the harshness of the curse: "Some say Cham saw his father naked and either sodomized or castrated him. His thought was "Perhaps my father's drunkenness will lead to intercourse with our mother and I will have to share the inheritance of the world with another brother! I will prevent this by taking his manhood from him! When Noah awoke, and he realized what Cham had done, he said, "Because you prevented me from having a fourth son, your fourth son, Canaan, shall forever be a slave to his brothers, who showed respect to me!" Another notable medieval Jewish commentator on Torah, Abraham ibn Ezra, disagrees with Rashi: "And the meaning of '[Cursed be Canaan, he will be a slave] unto his brothers' is to Cush, Egypt, and Put [only], for they are his father's [other] sons. And there are those who say that the Cushim [black skinned people] are slaves because Noah cursed Ham [the father of Cush], but they forget that the first king after the flood [Nimrod] was a descendant of Cush, and so it is written, 'And the beginning of his kingdom was Babylonia.'"[Gen.10:10] I.e. since Nimrod was descended from Cush, and Nimrod was king, this proves the Cushites, i.e. black skinned people, cannot be under Canaan's curse of slavery. Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 108b: Our Rabbis taught: Three copulated in the ark, and they were all punished the dog, the raven, and Ham. The dog was doomed to be tied, the raven expectorates [his seed into his mate's mouth]. and Ham was smitten in his skin. (I.e., from him descended Cush (the negro) who is black-skinned). http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_108.html#PARTb Bereshit Rabbah: The sexes of both man and the lower animals were meant to be separated in the ark during the deluge. This is clear from the way in which they entered the ark: first Noah and his three sons went in, and then their wives separately (Gen. vii. 7). But when they came out of the ark after the flood, God commanded

Noah, "Go out of the ark, thou and thy wife, thy sons and their wives" (Gen. viii. 16), thus putting the sexes together again. Ham among the human beings, and the dog among the lower animals, disregarded this injunction and did not separate from the opposite sex in the ark. The dog received a certain punishment, and Ham became a black man; just as when a man has the audacity to coin the king's currency in the king's own palace his face is blackened as a punishment and his issue is declared counterfeit. [The following two passages do not relate to Hams Curse, rather they illustrate the Talmudic view of slaves and coloured people]. When the Jews returned from Babylon, their wives had become brown, and almost black, during the years of captivity, and a large number of men divorced their wives. The divorced women probably married black men, which would, to some extent, account for the existence of black Jews. Slaves do not, as a rule, bring blessings on their master's house, but Joseph's master's house was blessed because of Joseph. Slaves are not remarkable for being scrupulous, but Joseph gathered in the silver in Egypt for his king. Slaves are not distinguished for their chastity and modesty, but Joseph would not listen to a sinful suggestion. Potiphar showed the subtlety for which the Egyptians were famous where their own interest was concerned. He boasted to his friends that as a rule a white man has a Cushite, a colored man, for his slave, whilst he, a Cushite, contrived to obtain a youth of the white race for a slave. Hence it became a saying in Egypt, "The slaves sold (i.e., the Ishmaelites who sold Joseph); the slave bought (alluding to Potiphar, Pharaoh's servant); and the freeman has become the slave of both." http://www.sacredtexts.com/jud/mhl/mhl05.htm Moses Maimonides Views on Coloured People The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion refers to Moses Maimonides as "the symbol of the pure and orthodox faith." His Guide to the Perplexed is considered the greatest work of Jewish religious philosophy, but his view of Blacks was Hitlerian: "[T]he Negroes found in the remote South, and those who resemble them from among them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like that of irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes. For they have the external shape and lineaments of a man and a faculty of discernment that is superior to that of the apes." Those who are incapable of attaining to supreme religious values include the black coloured people and those who resemble them in their climates. Their nature is like the mute animals. Their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey. (Maimonides, Guide To The Perplexed, Translation from the Hebrew Version)

Dr. Tony Martin Speaks on the Jewish Role in the Slave Trade

Dr. Martins thesis is that there is an anti-black invective which runs through the sacred rabbinic literature of Judaism. That is not to say that it runs through the literature of the bible because there is a distinction between the Hebrew literature and the rabbinic literature. There have been, since Dr. Martins speech, two major texts which have been issued by Judaic scholars. Jonathan Schorsch is Professor at Columbia University and is the author of the book Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World. The most notorious anti-black racist in Judaism happens to be Judaisms most influential and revered sage, Moses Maimonides, who taught in his book Guide of the Perplexed, that blacks are subhuman. Schorsch has written 546 pages on the relationship of Jews and Blacks. One would think he would be able to explicate Maimonides teaching about black people at length since it forms the heart of Judaisms attitude towards Blacks. Since Maimonides is indefensible, Schorsch dares not. Hence, like any propagandist, the Columbia University Professor buries the inconvenient Maimonides in his footnotes where we find the offending statement quoted in small type with no comment or exegesis of any kind as if it were the doctrine of some long ago forgotten village rabbi instead of the major Halakic authority in Judaism. Neither can he bring himself to quote the Talmudic and Midrashic accounts of the curse on Ham which form the canonical Judaic understanding of black people. By shying away from a confrontation with these texts, he does little to dispel the critique of Tony Martin and others. Professor Martin quotes these anti-black rabbinic teachings you are about to see. How can Schorsch claim to debunk the Martins of the world when he cant even bring himself to confront the problems sacred Judaic texts? The Talmuds creators, first of all, were lawyers. Lets observe lawyer Schorsch in action. In his book on page 139 he says: Seeing a Jewish curse of Ham behind every English notion of Black accursedness will not do. If one looks carefully, the explicit citation of Jewish authors remains extremely rare in early modern writings. Some of course did indeed cite Jewish authorities. Overall, the curse of Ham seems to comprise a case of intra-Christian discursive influence. The Jewish having bible being claimed as a Christian text already long before the mediaeval period, early modern Christian authorities continued to make use of it as a component of the Christian canon. Well, nice try Professor. The fact is the Israelite bible was misappropriated by the Rabbis, not the Christians, the latter being its rightful heirs. Furthermore, Schorsch misleads readers into thinking that it is the biblical teaching about blacks that is the pivot of anti-black racism in the west when he knows very well that the anti-black rabbinic dogma is diametrically opposed to the Old Testament. Therefore, citing the Old Testament in a racial context as the curse of Hams intra-Christian discursive influence is nothing more than a lawyers trick with a fifty dollar phrase. The mendacious chutzpah represented here is truly audacious. Such a gambit can only be sustained before an audience that is almost totally ignorant of the relevant foundational rabbinic texts. The curse of Ham, as taught by the Rabbis, is what Avraham Melamed rightly terms, the locus classicus of Judaisms historic antipathy toward black people and the exegetical source of its racist teaching from the Amorim of Babylonia to Moses Maimonides.

The dogma that the black is a slave by nature is rabbinic in origin. Canaan is identified as a black man and blacks as in inferior people, only in the Gemara, which is to say the latter part of the Talmud, the Midrash and later writings of the rabbis. This invective, this racism, is not anywhere in the bible concerning the black race. The rabbinic account of the malediction against Ham stipulates that his son Canaan, and all Canaans offspring, are to fated to suffer perpetual slavery and black skin without the chance of their condition being ameliorated. It is this anti-Old Testament, Rabbinic gloss that influenced those fifteenth century Renaissance humanists who had crossed over into the forbidden territory of the Talmud, the Midrash and the Kabbalah as part of a supposedly enlightened act. It is an irony of history that as a result of this supposedly progressive development, the abominable view of blacks as a perpetual race of slaves became entrenched among the western liberal intelligentsia for at least the next three hundred years. Here is what Schorsch writes in his book Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World: Few Jewish thinkers understood Hams curse to initiate his or her progenys blackness. That is an out and out prevarication. The classic rabbinic texts hold that the punishment visited upon Ham was the transformation of his son Canaan, and all Canaans progeny, into blacks. Rabbi Hiyya said, Ham and the dog copulated on the arc. Therefore Ham came forth dark skinned. That is the canonical rabbinic teaching of Orthodox Judaism and Schorschs book covers this up and yet it has become the paradigmatic text for those in University and College level training in this subject to refer to when they are seeking out information on this subject. And there is a second book which has come along to supplement Schorschs work. This book is by David Goldenberg, the author of The Curse of Ham. This has received more lavish encomiums than Schorschs. Both of these have formed the ultimate bulwark against the research and scholarship of Dr. Tony Martin. However of course Martin is ever allowed or invited to debate these two supposed authorities on this subject for obvious reasons. Now, Goldenbergs thesis is just as outrageous as Schorschs, and just as dissembling. He claims that among Jewish writers in the Christian west, we begin to see a curse of Ham mentioned in the same time that Christian writers mention him. He cites on obscure text: Moses Arragels Fifteenth Century Castillian Commentary to the Bible. There is no mention of Maimonides or his text The Guide of the Perplexed in David Goldenbergs supposedly exhaustive, encyclopedic study of the Judaic relationship entitled The Curse of Ham. With that background I present to you Professor Tony Martins The Judaic Role in the Black Slave Trade. [This particular video by Dr. Martin is the only video within YouTube/Google put on the BN-W site that is regularly removed. Many posters have uploaded this video in full or in portions (as this one is) but it is LITERALLY removed by someone, individuals, or a group that doesn't want this information known. So take the time to listen to these videos while they're available.] http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dr+tony+martin&aq=0&aql=f&oq=dr+tony+m