Posts by amiable

8

Jehovah's Witnesses, Anti-Semitism and the Third Reich

by Lady Lee in

somebody asked this question but i don't know where that was so..... i found this document that i saved from a website when i first started researching.

i had the link saved to the bottom of the page but it seems that it is no longer on the net.

i am only posting the beginning of the document that responds to whether rutherford was anti-semetic before 1933. .

amiable

greendawn,

Where is the information about the lodges sending letters to Switzerland? That should be interesting, too.

BTW, I noticed in the 2004 quotes that Pellechia of the Watchtower recommended Jim Penton's book. I thought that was too interesting to pass up so I made a new post about it.

4

Watchtower Recommends Jim Penton's Apostate Book!

by amiable in

i just came across a conversation from 2004 on another forum between a jewish student (i think) and a jw.

he mentioned another quote about henry ford but didn't read it or tell me where it was.

mr. pellechia called them unfortunate words.

amiable

I just came across a conversation from 2004 on another forum between a Jewish student (I think) and a JW. Lady Lee made a post about Jim Penton's book on JWs and the Third Reich. I was pulling quotes from this conversation and noticed something that struck me as very odd but didn't seem to faze the JW.

Here's the source:

http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/message_list.asp?pageID=1&discussionID=387390&messages_per_page=54

First here's the JW in the 19th post:

----------------

Btw, don't forget that our headquarters is also very helpful and knowledgable, would you like to call and talk to someone there? I can provide the general phone number if you wish and once you explain to the operator what you want they can direct you. Let me know.

-----------------

Here's part of the response that I find amazing. It says that Mr. Pellechia from the Watchtower called the student researcher and recommended the book by M. James Penton and another one by Hans Hesse:

-----------------

You mentioned the headquarters. I called them today a few times and left some messages. I called both numbers 718-560-5000 and 5600. I thought I wouldn't get anywhere because the message implies that I might not get a call back unless I'm media and it's urgent. But when lunch was over, I was contacted by Mr. Pellechia. He gave me his direct phone number and his email address. We spoke for about an hour.

My questions were:

1. When did the JW drop their interest in Zionism?

He thought it was the late 20's or the early 30's. He wasn't sure. He told me about "Comfort for the Jews" written in 1925. I asked him about "Light" written around 1930. He didn't know if it was related.

2. I asked him if Henry Ford and any known relationship to the Watchtower.

He said he didn't know of one, but when I told him what I had so far about Armageddon in terms of "labor and capital" and the "Zionism and Armageddon" references, he thought he wouldn't be too surprised if I just might find one. He thought the information on Henry Ford's relationship with the peace ship, League of Nations, Armistice, anti-war, vegetarianism, and Adventists was interesting. We talked for a long time about it. He did some searches in a database and read me a quote from the Golden Age magazine. It said that:

"Henry Ford thinks that if 100 men of the world's largest munitions dealers would stop making them that we would have a warless world. We think that Henry Ford should get hold of Rutherford's book, Vindication."

He mentioned another quote about Henry Ford but didn't read it or tell me where it was.

3. I asked him about the quotes from the 1934 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses. Mr. Pellechia called them unfortunate words. He said that it was true that "these unfortunate words were said by Mr. Rutherford." He also agreed that there was a separate letter to Hitler. I told him I only have seen it only in German, and my German is not very good. I asked him about an official translation to English, if there was such a reference available. I asked him about any official explanation of the words about the Jews. He answered like there was nothing official. He mentioned that Awake magazine in the mid-90s said something about it. I asked him again and he wasn't more specific than mid-90s. He said there was also a book that just came out about JWs and Hitler by a professor in Canada, M. James Penton. "Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics Under Persecution" He said he wasn't sure how complimentary it would be. It's not published by the Watchtower. He said there was a book edited by Hans Hesse a few years ago that includes references to interviews, papers and lectures: "Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses During the Nazi Regime: 1933-1945".

I just ordered both of these on Amazon.

--------------

That's one book I figured the Watchtower would never "sell".

8

Jehovah's Witnesses, Anti-Semitism and the Third Reich

by Lady Lee in

somebody asked this question but i don't know where that was so..... i found this document that i saved from a website when i first started researching.

i had the link saved to the bottom of the page but it seems that it is no longer on the net.

i am only posting the beginning of the document that responds to whether rutherford was anti-semetic before 1933. .

amiable

I found an interesting conversation between some JWs and a student who wanted information on Zionism. He thought JWs were Zionists. Here are some interesting quotes. I don't know if the facts are right. I don't even know if the links still work. He talks about Henry Ford as if Henry Ford was a Zionist, too. I don't know if his history is any good, but if he's right, Henry Ford sounds a lot like some of Rutherford's quotes.

The original dialogue is here:
http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/message_list.asp?pageID=1&discussionID=387390&messages_per_page=54

These are the quotes:

Thank you cuso for your offer. The 1940's is the latest decade I care about for this project.

I'm hoping that someone can comment on ideas I am getting so far from reading Mr. Rutherford.

It looks like the Jehovah's Witness religion lost interest in Zionism by 1930. I think in the 1930s JW started to exactly match the position that the Seventh Day Adventist religion had already held since before 1900.

For examples of the Seventh Day Advent position see: http://www.vinsoft.net/gamaliel/download/vol15no1.pdf

I am thinking that Pastor Russell had been a Zionist for purely religious reasons but Mr. Rutherford had a bigger interest for political reasons, yes?

I am curious about Mr. Rutherford's politics. From what I read he is promoting a neutral position. Here is a problem. I am thinking of neutrality as not especially for or against a political policy. But Mr. Rutherford is strong against many policies. I haven't had the time to make out a consistent pattern of his politics. It might have changed over time.

At least I can tell that Mr. Rutherford is usually against big business, and always against Catholics, and usually more favorable to labor than capitalists. He is always against imperialism especially America and Britain. He wanted Britain out of Palestine. So did most Jews. Many Adventist and others saw the USA and Britain as the new Israel which replaced Zionism. But Mr. Rutherford disagreed. It looks like Zionism disappeared from JW because Mr. Rutherford started to explain that good Israel was only found in the JW church and bad Israel only in the other churches and nations.

I am most troubled by how Mr. Rutherford made his last pro-Zionist writing in 1925 and yet showed a change of attitude toward Jews after 1926. After the second release of Mein Kampf in 1926 many Germans also changed their tune about Zionism just as quickly.

I don't mean that Rutherford was influenced by Hitler's book, but it looks like he knows about it. He sounds like he was really influenced by Henry Ford, who began with anti-Zionism as early as 1920. I've traced a lot of Henry Ford's beliefs already.

Before 1926 many religions didn't believe in Zionism for Bible prophecy but still liked the idea as a social justice for fairness to Jews like an extension of the social gospel. The social gospel was represented by many religions, Adventist too, like Jane Addams, founder of Hull House in Chicago, or the Kellogg's Sanitorium, for health and social work of the Seventh Day Adventists in Battle Creek, Michigan by the Kelloggs. The Kelloggs visited Jane Addams' to model the Adventist place and Henry Ford (Detroit) visited both of them, spending a lot of time with the Kelloggs. In 1915 Henry Ford, Paul Kellogg (another Michigan Kellogg) and Jane Addams formed the main part of a delegation to Europe to try reaching a World War I armistice as early as 1916 (Peace Boat). They were all anti-war. Henry Ford started to think the Jews were responsible for WW I based on his contacts starting on the Peace Boat.

Can anyone tell me if Mr. Rutherford who is also anti-war ever collaborated with people like Henry Ford? Some of what Mr. Rutherford writes sounds like he had already read Henry Ford around 1926. I speak of course, especially about Mr. Ford's book "The International Jew" which he started in the early 1920's. It is claimed (in Neil Baldwin's book on Ford) that this book was on the tables of Nazi headquarters in Munich as early as 1922 with pictures of Henry Ford on office walls.

-----

I found Henry Ford's book on a site that is faulted for being anti-Semitic, so I didn't want to just make a link. But I have the book and the quotes are accurate.

"as the representative of Communism in the United States one Charles Recht, a Jew, a lawyer by profession, who maintained an office in New York. This office was the rendezvous of all the Jewish labor union leaders in the city"
"New York is the laboratory in which the emissaries of revolution learn their lesson, and their knowledge is daily increased by the counsel and experience of traveling delegates straight out of Russia."
"and they are Jewish groups. Russia is not more Jewish controlled than France; Germany tried in vain to loosen the grip of Judah from her throat. So it is in America."
"The Jews have captured American trade union movements as completely as if they had stormed them with the bayonet."
"The two divisions of Jewish wealth and political power are - first, German Jewish, represented by the Schiffs, the Speyers, the Warburgs, the Kahns, the Lewisohns and the Guggenheims. These play the game with the aid of the financial resources of the non-Jews. The other division is composed of the Russian and Polish Jews who monopolize the lower ranks of trade and industry. Between them their grip and influence is absolute."
"Yet the International Jew of America cannot be absolved from bearing sole responsibility for it. Russian Bolshevism came out of the East Side of New York where it was fostered by the encouragement - the religious, moral and financial encouragement - of Jewish leaders."
"Will Jewish Zionism Bring Armageddon?"
***************************************

"When the British Army passed into Jerusalem in the memorable capture of the city in 1917" .... "Zionism is the best advertised of all present Jewish activities and has exerted a greater influence upon world: events than the average man realizes. In its more romantic aspects it makes an appeal to Christians as well as to Jews, because there are certain prophecies which are held to concern the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. When this return takes place, certain great events are scheduled to ensue.
Because of this admixture of the "religious" sentiment, it is sometimes difficult for a certain class of people to scrutinize modern Political Zionism. They have been too well propagandized into believing that political Zionism and the "return" promised by the prophets are the same thing.
Zionism is challenging the attention of the world today because it is creating a situation out of which many believe the next war will come."
"To adopt a phraseology familiar to students of prophecy, it is believed by many students of world affairs that Armageddon will be the direct result of what is now beginning to be manifested in Palestine."
"People sometimes ask why Jewry, which is capitalistic, should favor Bolshevism, which is the announced enemy of capital".It is an interesting question. Why should a New York Jewish financier".
The Jews who are receiving the freedom of our cities today in their various aspects as "German" and "British" scientists are Eastern Jews. They have come to a contest with the Jews of America on the question of Money. The Jews of America have smothered some very ugly charges. The Jews of the East, more recently of Germany or England, are not likely to be browbeaten by the moneybags of Jewish New York."
-----

Mr. Henry Ford perfectly describes Mr. Rutherford's prediction of Armageddon. They both say the belief is about labor and capital. I didn't go back far enough to see if this was also something that Pastor Russell believed. If it is then maybe it was Henry Ford that was influenced by Pastor Russell or someone else who believed the same thing.

But I have never seen anyone except Henry Ford and Mr. Rutherford say that Armageddon is about labor and capital.

Also there are some quotes that might be from Mr. Rutherford that I must get more information about. They remind me even more of Mr. Henry Ford and his Michigan newspaper campaign about Jews. It looks like there is a controversy about whether some quotations from Mr. Rutherford are true. It looks like they are true but that the JW understands them different from others. I need the JW side if someone can point me to a reference.

The quote is from a website. It is supposed to be from a JW book:

"The greatest and most oppressive empire on earth is the Anglo-American empire. By that is meant the British Empire, of which the United States of America forms a part. It has been the commercial Jews of the British-American Empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a means of exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many nations. This fact particularly applies to the cities of London and New York, the stronghold of Big Business. This fact is so manifest in America that there is a proverb concerning the city of New York which says: The Jews own it, the Irish Catholics rule it, and the Americans pay the bills." [from the 1934 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses printed in 1933]

Also there is a letter that was supposed to be sent to Hitler that must have been in German. Someone translated parts of it like this:

"the purely religious and apolitical goals and objectives of the Bible Students [JW] ... are in complete harmony with the similar goals of the National [Nazi] Government of the German Reich."
Apparently this gives the JWs the exact same problem that Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir gave the Zionists for several years up until 1941. Shamir had said the exact same thing when trying to form an alliance with the Nazis. It is an embarrassment for Jews that Shamir didn't stop with the idea of an alliance against a common enemy like Britain but went so far as to offer a state in complete harmony with the non-religious political goals of the Nazis. I am amazed at the similarity.

Although it turns out to be well documented in the case of Shamir, it still sounds like some anti-JW propaganda to say that Mr. Rutherford said the same thing. Is there a JW translation and explanation of these documents?

Also, I have some questions about the proverb that Mr. Rutherford quotes: "The Jews own it, the Irish Catholics rule it, and the Americans pay the bills."
I have heard that proverb in about 4 different ways, but never quite like that. I'll find some information on it for a post.

----

I did some web searches to survey the expression:

The Jews own it, the Irish Catholics rule it, and the Americans pay the bills.

I've heard it from my grandfather, but only as it appears in the first two entries below.

Here is how it is worded in the book "New-York" by Paul Morand a Frenchman. It was published in 1930 about his visits in the 1920's:

"the Jews own New York, the Irish run it, and the Negroes enjoy it."
At this web site: http://www.city-journal.org/dev/html/3_4_ideas-how_certain.html an author in 1993 comments on the phrase and says it was a "contemporary bromide".

The 1925, in a Harlem publication, it was written the same way exactly in The "Survey Graphic" Harlem Number (March 1925):

"The Jews own New York, the Irish run it and the Negroes enjoy it."
It was understood by that writer to mean something positive about New York. That New York had not developed the prejudices that Negroes experienced in other places, and therefore they could really enjoy New York.

The Autobiography of Dastur Dhalla (1875-1956)
The Saga of a Soul in 1946 quotes from the early 1900's period: "Of a big city like New York it was said: "The Jews own New York and the Irish run New York". But the book immediately goes on to discuss prejudice against Catholics and Negroes, similar to the life story below:

http://www.incommunion.org/mhf.htm quotes it like this:

"Jews own New York, the Irish run New York, and the Christians live in New York."
That was the from the early memories of a Christian Methodist woman born in 1912 in New York to a family who says its only prejudice was against Catholics. There is a special mention that even members from the south were not prejudiced against Negroes.

It's odd that a site of Yiddish words and phrases has this entry:

"My favorite town in all the world, Savannah, GA, is just a short distance from where I live. There is an old saying about Savannah: "The Irish run it, the Jews own it, and the Protestants enjoy it!"
A review of Steve Monroe's novel "'57, Chicago" says: it's a fast-moving, iconography-heavy piece of pulp sports fiction best summed up by a central character's simplistic but colorful proclamation "Chicago: The Jews own it, the Micks run it, and the n[egroes] live in it." The book works through a veritable checklist of racial epithets and stereotypes.

This is a more recent version on in a pro-Irish context:

The irish built, the Jews own it, and the Italians run it.:

The book Confessions of Shanty Irishman refers similarly to San Francisco.

I've seen many more examples, most with three parts where two parts are nearly always Jews and Irish and the third are usually African-Americans and sometimes Italians or another exception. Most cases seemed to be about Irish running in the sense of doing the day-to-day running around work like policing, building, labor. But Mr. Rutherford is the only case I could find where Irish was replaced by Irish Catholics and it might change the sense to the idea that Catholics are running New York politically and that Rutherford thinks of this as bad.

I wonder if Mr. Rutherford knew that Adolph Hitler had close ties to Catholics.

----

You are right, I would not think the JWs could make any alliance with Hitler. It was Yitzhak Shamir that tried to form an alliance with Hitler. Mr. Shamir became the Prime Minister of Israel. It is embarrassing that a Jew and Zionist would do that. But it was worse that Shamir would state his support and agreement for the ideologies of the Nazis. Mr. Shamir knew the Nazi position toward Jews. He said that the support of Israel would help erase some of the bad reputation Nazis had in Germany and Europe. And the attacks against Jews by Nazis were already well known in the 1930s. Shamir kept trying to work with Nazis until 1941.

Mr. Rutherford must have also known Hitler's position against the Jews and against the British. Hitler already spoke of how much better it would be to without Britain and how much better it would be to *gas* Jews by the thousands in his book Mein Kampf in 1925 and 1926. Mr. Rutherford says he knows that:

"the present government of Germany has declared emphatically against Big Business oppressors."
Was it Mr. Rutherford's own idea that it was the Jews who were the real oppressors behind Big Business, or did he already know that Hitler would agree with that? Was Mr. Rutherford teaching Hitler something new when he said this?

"It has been the commercial Jews of the British-American empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a means of exploiting and oppressing"
I can't see any other reason for Mr. Rutherford to distance his religion from the British and the Jews. If this was all he said I am already having trouble to say Mr. Rutherford was neutral. But Mr. Rutherford said more. I don't understand this kind of neutrality.

Mr Rutherford said that he was imprisoned for supporting Germany and fighting against Britain and America. The translation of Mr. Rutherford's words that I have is:

"The Brooklyn administration of the Watch Tower Society is and in the past has been outstandingly friendly to Germany. For this reason the president of the Society and seven members of its Board of Directors in the United States were sentenced to 80 years imprisonment."
I don't know where Mr. Rutherford showed that he was outstandingly friendly to Germany before. That would have been before the Sedition Act of 1918 it sounds like. Did he say why he was more friendly to Germany than he was to other nations? It does not sound neutral?

Mr. Rutherford also said that his Watchtower and Bible magazines were the only magazines in the entire United States that refused to publish war propaganda against Germany. This to me says that Mr. Rutherford knows the same thing that many nations know. It sounds like he knows that support can also hide behind neutrality.

----

25

Sorry to do this!!!!!!!!!!

by REALNESS in

the following e-mail was sent to the admin to post for me since my account had been deleted.

it has not been posted, so i have registered just for this one post.

let me say i am not trying to cause disruption to the board and i do not wish this to be seen as a personal attack on anyone, but i also dont want to be known as another jw that posts and runs with his tail behind his legs that i have no doubt already been labled.

amiable

I'm against chasing away trolls or even trying to define trolls. I wish we had more, in fact. Sorry about the treatment.

Don't tell us the anagram yet, I want to guess. It's only 1am. I'll give myself til 2am EST.

Amiable

32

Have any JWs ever been on this site for a serious religious debate?

by amiable in

jw
friends

have there been any takers or requesters of such a thing?

are there other sites where this has happened?

amiable

joy2bfree,

Thanks for the welcome, btw.

jst2laws was an elder for over 30 years, exbethelite, was being used for CA and DA parts, on appeal committees etc, and he came here for "debates". Ask Farkel, he remembers him back then!

That's the kind of thing I would've liked to see. But how do you know that's really who jst2laws was? Not asking for names or anything, but does anyone here claim to have known him personally? Does Farkel remember debating him here or remember him as a JW? I'll look up some of their old posts.

I agree with others that Molhie is no JW, and if he is, he's not really serious about it.

Maybe it would happen if a debate was advertised on this forum for a month, and ex-JWs on here agreed on a spokesperson, and more JWs had time to learn about it. Perhaps an audience could be drummed up for it, flyers printed , the owner of the site could run ads for it up where those books are advertised. Can a thread have only two people allowed to post? Yet everyone else can still see it?

amiable

32

Have any JWs ever been on this site for a serious religious debate?

by amiable in

jw
friends

have there been any takers or requesters of such a thing?

are there other sites where this has happened?

amiable

I was just throwing out ideas to try to make it seem more fair. If both sides think it's fair, it's more likely to last a little bit longer. That's where I think the fun would be.

I don't believe I said which side I was on. I'd like to stay neutral in case there we do need a debate scorer, moderator, mediator or whatever you want to call it. But maybe you're right. We don't need it, "we're all grownups, here."

I kind of had my doubts that Molhie (sorry about my previous spellings) would even come back. I can't even tell if he's/she's serious. By throwing a lot of "stuff" at him, I mean facts and questions and insults and comments and pictures. But from his other thread comments #16, #17 etc, I don't even know if he's a JW. I think the JWs should look for a serious champion, like a David to meet Goliath, or a Goliath to meet David.

The way I see it, JWs could say "we should always be ready to give an answer to those who ask about the hope within us", or say we "stay away from fruitless debates." There would be scriptural grounds for both positions. But if a non-serious JW offers to debate and makes JWs look silly (in a "practice" round), then I'd hope another more serious contender would step up and we could all watch the fun.

amiable

32

Have any JWs ever been on this site for a serious religious debate?

by amiable in

jw
friends

have there been any takers or requesters of such a thing?

are there other sites where this has happened?

amiable

Well, I see that people seem willing, anyway.

Looking up some of older posts that were referenced, I think that it doesn't look like a fair format. I get the impression that mohlie in this case will be outnumbered and the multitude will trounce with a bunch of stuff that he doesn't have time to answer, and then declare a victory.

For a real debate in this format you'd need new ground rules, as was suggested. You need to probably pit only two spokesman at a time and all help and supporting material brought out by others can be used by the debaters (or ignored) as they wish. (But all the extra posts are not actually part of the debate.) There should also be a mediator who scores the answers for how well they meet rules of rational thought or possible Biblical support. Finding an unbiased mediator could be a bigger problem here.

There should also be a commitment to the seriousness of the debate. No name-calling, attacking the person, etc. And a time limit. Perhaps it wasn't fair of springing this on mohlie. He might have felt he was the only one here at the time representing his beliefs. Also, it looks like some of these arguments become pro and anti-Bible instead of pro and anti-JW. I like the ground rules that were recommended.

Maybe mohlie wants a practice round to see how it goes. But the ex-JW side should decide which question goes out first, and then mohlie could decide which question goes out next. People who just want to join in and say how stupid anyone is who believes in a differing viewpoint should stay out.

I'm not suggesting this is the thread or even the forum, but maybe it would be a good idea to attract more JW firepower here, too. Seems a bit unbalanced at the moment. Maybe that's just natural for the Internet?

amiable

32

Have any JWs ever been on this site for a serious religious debate?

by amiable in

jw
friends

have there been any takers or requesters of such a thing?

are there other sites where this has happened?

amiable

Have there been any takers or requesters of such a thing? Are there other sites where this has happened?

Amiable

64

Let's Say Some POSITIVE Things About The Organization Or Being a JW

by minimus in

jw
friends

since we're accused by some of being so negative about jehovah's witnesses, let's start a thread regarding some positive things about being a witness or believing in the organization.

amiable

I haven't been around here long enough to know. But I was wondering. Wouldn't it be fun? Have there been any takers or requesters of such a thing? Are there other sites where this has happened?

Amiable

14

IT WAS SOOOOO COLD! that...

by calamityjane in

it was so cold up here in canada land.

our temperature this morning was - 45 degrees c.. so i'm on my way to work, warmed the truck up for at least 10 minutes, made a stop at walmart, (i love it they're open for shopping at 7:30 a.m.) and i continue on to work.

i get stuck behind this old guy and his wife at a red light.

amiable

And here we are complaining in NYC that the high temp today will only be -8C. I'm embarrassed. Here's hopin' Canada warms up soon.

amiable