Advocating Incest

The issue of incest is a nagging one in the literary and cinematic production of Judaism. In Psychanalyse du judaïsme, we saw that “the Torah” offers many examples of incestuous relations.

Incest Is 'Officially' Forbidden

Of course, incest is forbidden among the Jewish people, as stipulated in the Torah, and the Talmud. Gerard Haddad explains this in his book entitled Les Sources talmudiques de la psychanalyse1[“{“The Talmudic Sources of Psychoanalysis”]—but not without ambiguity. For everything is ambiguous in Judaism, and it must be noted that Jews can find loopholes in biblical texts.
 

A Talmudic Giant

In his book Jewish Messianism, Gershom Scholem, a leading specialists in the Jewish Kabbalah, explains that Hassidic Jews too know how to interpret the law to their own advantage, and he reminds us that Jews belonging to the heretic Sabbatean sect adopted as a line of conduct the systematic violation of all prohibitions of the Torah--in particular those of incest, which they declared repealed.

Incest Is Considered A Birth Right

That which is given an ambiguous interpretation by Talmudic Jews is expressed more clearly by Hassidic Jews [Ed.--a major sect of Judaism emphasizing joy, dance and song over learning], and is quite explicit in Sabbatean Jews. We will refer here to our previous work. The American researcher of Jewish origin David Bakan confirms that such practices are common in Jewish communities. In his book entitled Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition, he ponders "the role of incest in Jewish history" in an attempt to understand "the repeated references made to it by Freud."
 

A Noted Author

David Bakan confirms that [incest is] common in Jewish communities. In his book entitled Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition, he ponders "the role of incest in Jewish history" in an attempt to understand "the repeated references made to it by Freud."
 

Did Shetls Led To Incestuous Relationships?

"Because of their endogamy,” writes Bakan, the problem of incest arose in a manner characteristic of the Jews, and the role of Hassidic mysticism, was partly to provide the means to cope with intense feelings of guilt associated with incestuous desires.

"The Jewish peoples, actually, especially in Eastern Europe, usually lived in small communities," so the choice there of a spouse was extremely limited, and it was of course forbidden to marry a goy. The traditional arrangement of marriages by elders of the Jewish community was due in part to the fact "that elders were holders of essential information on the degrees of kinship."
 

Restricted To The Pale Of The Settlement

Shtetl life in Old Poland and Russia; Jews were forbidden to leave their areas after a Jew killed Tsar Alexander II, who had fought ironically for their emancipation. Jews made money off selling liquor and lending money to peasants, then foreclosing on them.

We know also that Jewish people--Sephardic and Ashkenazi--married off their children at a very young age, as young as 12 or 13. "The custom of early marriages, writes David Bakan, “drew its justification, perhaps, not only from a realistic attitude concerning the sexual impulses that existed generally among Jews, but also from the need to overcome existing incestuous tendencies.”
 

The Fear Of Incest

"The incestuous temptations that are perhaps, as Freud suggests, universally prevalent, were particularly marked among Jews requiring therefore intense countermeasures and, as a consequence, an excessive sense of guilt."

The mores of Jews are undoubtedly quite remote from European customs. We have seen in Psychoanalysis of Judaism that the Talmud was very explicit on this subject. The reading of texts being tedious, let us merely keep in mind these extracts from the Treaty of the Sanhedrin, 55a-55b:
 

Novels Openly Discuss The Inner Feelings

"A little girl of three years and one day may be acquired in marriage by sexual intercourse in case of the death of her husband -- and if she has sex with the brother of her husband, she becomes his."

The issue of incest is, however, mentioned relatively seldom in the literary production of Judaism. We know that the Jewish people like to maintain their mystery and secretiveness -- and incest, in particular, is one of the secrets, if not "The secret" of Judaism.
 

Authors Delve Into All The Neurosises

Nevertheless, it appears here and there in anecdotal form in the works of some novelists. In the study devoted to Romain Gary in the Cahiers de l'Herne [Ed.--“Notebooks of Herne” a French literary magazine dedicated to unknown or ostracized yet deserving authors] we learn that his work reflects, in many places, the neuroses of Judaism:

"The incestuous fantasies unfold in all their ambivalence. With young women he encounters, Momo, [the hero of one of his novels], hesitates between amorous flirtation and the quest for maternal love. Under the guise of a universal love, Jean sleeps with a woman who could easily be his mother." Sexual ambiguity is also of course present: "The difference between the sexes becomes uncertain: Lola, born a man, chose a female identity and we no longer know if the aged Rosa is still a woman."(La Vie devant soi) [“Your Life Still Before You”]).
 

Even The Holocaust Greats Chime In

Observe also what Elie Wiesel writes in Talmudic Celebration [?] [the French version, from 1991, is entitled Célébration talmudique], when choosing an example at random to explain the Talmud:


Elie Wiesel. "Wiesel" in Yiddish means . . . . "weasel." He has been widely denounced as a fraud by other Jews -- but is still useful for snowjobs on goyeem. His Auschwitz memoir Night bizarrely never mentions gas chambers; it is so full of absurdities that it was eventually re-released as a novel - as fiction.!

 

A 2000 Year History Of Deviance

Elie Wiesel quotes in his book the case of Rabbi Elisha, who lived in the second century, at the time of Emperor Hadrian and the war [between Rome and] Judea. He is, says Wiesel, the "symbol of repudiation and treachery… He had pockets full of anti-Jewish pamphlets … Worse: he began to campaign for forced assimilation… He sympathized with the [Roman] occupier, and became a collaborator and finally an accomplice of the Roman army." The rabbi Elisha was akher; he represented the dark forces in the Jew, the forces of evil in man… He is first called Rabbi Elisha, then Elisha ben Abuya, then bin Abuya, and finally Akher. "What could be the origin of this unacceptable deviance?"

 

Forbidden Urges?

“The first assumption,” Wiesel wrote, “lays the blame—of course—on. . . his mother. Jewish mothers are always guilty of whatever happens to their cherished son. "And Wiesel expresses himself here, elliptically:

"As a good Jewish son, he loved his mother--a little too much."