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http://www.freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/van_hyning.html
The reason I'm linking this is because of the disturbing accusation I just read in a book called A Historical Study of the Religious Development of Shinto by Genchi Kato:
- Again in the Talmud, a Jewish Holy Book, it is written follows [sic]: "Just as men are superior to any other animal, Jews are superior to any other people. Those who are not Jews are probably in the inferior position of animals such as dogs and horses."
This book was translated by another Japanese man, edited by fourteen Japanese professors, and published by the Japanese National Commission for Unesco--it never met the eyes of a European editor. Japanese people lived two oceans away from the bulk of anti-Semitic violence so I'm not surprised that some of them don't understand the absurdity of statements like these, but Unesco? Seriously??
The real source of this seems to come from this anti-Semitic tract.
Expanded refutation
- "One of the basic doctrines of the Talmud is that all non-Talmudists rank as non-humans, that they are not like men, but beasts. (Kerithuth, 6b, p. 78)".
- Even the numbering system is a fabrication. 6b means page 6, side 2. Consequently, page 78 can have no relationship to 6b. This claim is based upon a particular dialogue in which reference is made specifically to heathens in a fashion comparable to that of many Christian preachers who today still thunder away with the doctrine that only those who accept Jesus Christ will be "saved." Obviously no sane person with a semblance of decency would condemn present-day Jews for the dialogue of some individual religious philosophers 1700 years ago.
This seems to be a convoluted way to explain the citation, so I went and pulled out the copy of the Talmud on the other side of the floor. (It's nice to write articles for this site on the first floor of an empty library.) The citation is actually Kerithoth/Keritot 6b, "On the Oil of Anointing". The rabbi who's writing has a problem that older rabbis used to say the Oil of Anointing is okay to be accidentally spilled on cattle, vessels, heathens, or the dead, because Exodus 30:32 says "Upon the flesh of man/adam it shall not be poured." Hmm, heathens? There isn't any real logical justification for that, so the rabbi says that adam here only means Jews. He then goes on to show that maybe the other uses of adam in the Torah mean Jews only. He doesn't equate non-Jews to cattle. Also, I think he might be overreaching a little.