For J*ws, “Rome” is not an ancient empire, but rather an idea – an ideology and way of life – that is the very antithesis to what the Jews envision as a world order. Without Rome, J**ism would fall apart because it now has no enemy; no “evil empire” through which to frame it's own, often corrupt, actions as so-called resistance.
Remember last year when asking the question “how often do you think about ancient Rome” was for some reason going around on social media?
Well I’m sure the answer varies quite a lot, but in a poorly educated nation like the United States, I’m sure it’s “not a lot” (and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if some people said “what’s ancient Rome?”)
But something interesting I’ve learned from my research into “the J**ish Question” is that, for them (the religious ones, anyway) the answer is more like “every day…for the last two thousand years.”
Watching videos of rabbis preaching, or reading rabbinical texts, you’ll see that they mention Rome VERY frequently, and they do it with a kind of obsessiveness.
It can be very unusual to hear this if you don’t understand their mindset and worldview – and most importantly, how Judaism largely has developed in opposition and contrast to Rome, and all things Roman.
For Jews, “Rome” is not an ancient empire, but rather an idea – an ideology and way of life – that is the very antithesis to what the Jews envision as a world order.
As you’ll see, though ancient Rome has long since fallen, Jewish rabbis believe that the “spirit” of Rome has evolved, from one era and empire to the next, for the last two millennia: after the Roman empire came the Byzantine (a powerful Christian empire that was harshly anti-Jewish), then the Holy Roman Empire, then various Christian kingdoms and nation-states in Europe, then the Anglo-American Establishment, and finally, the United States – the modern apex of civilizations descended from Roman Empire.
That is why, though Rome officially fell as an empire nearly 1500 years ago, they bring it up constantly – because to them, Rome is and always has been a living ideological construct, through which they frame themselves as it’s eternal rival.
After I discovered this connection, both in video clips of rabbis and in historical J**wish rabbinical literature, I started to notice it more and more. It really became clear when I read a book by a J**ish political revolutionary named Moses Hess.
Hess – known as “The Communist Rabbi” – wrote one of the first major calls to the European J**ish community to rally in support of the then-newly developed Zionist ideology. The name of the book: Rome and Jerusalem.
(In today’s newsletter, my Person Profile will be on Hess; if you’ve seen the documentary “Europa: the Last Battle,” he is mentioned at the very beginning, with a quote from his book.)
Something very important to understand in order to “decode” what the rabbis, the spiritual leaders of J**aism, mean when they say “Rome.” They are not talking about an ancient, fallen empire – they are talking about the West, and it’s predominantly white Christian population, in general.
“Rome” is a concept; a way of life. In contrast lies Israel, and it’s people, who are cast as anathema to Western worldview and ideology in every conceivable way.
While there are mentions of Rome as the implacable enemy of the J**s that can be found all over the J**ish holy texts, I found a nicely written scholarly article that explains this relationship in detail.
Published in French in 2016, in a journal called Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, the article is called The Use of Rabbinic Traditions about Rome in the Babylonian Talmud.
It is a detailed account of how J**ish rabbis viewed Rome throughout history, and how they still constantly frame their own struggle against the West as one of eternal rivalry and a zero-sum game.
The intro is worth reproducing (in truncated form):
“The article claims that the Talmud of Babylonia uses ancient traditions about Rome in order to create a fantasized world-system in which Rome and Israel function as two complementary and eternal rivals…they sustained the symbolic power of the Roman empire, even though they lived outside of it. Rome became for them a mirror image of Israel, which, in turn, became a “spiritual” Empire, protected by the highest King – God.”
As you can see, they essentially need “Rome” to persist through the ages because they need an enemy. J*daism, when you really drill down into it, is a hyper-exclusive, racist, classist, and deeply hateful belief system – but in order to stay that way, it needs an eternal enemy to function, or it loses its purpose.
Naiweld explains part of what constitutes an empire, in the non-traditional sense in which J**s have applied it throughout history:
“…besides being or having an economic, political, and military power, an empire also constitutes a symbolic one; in other words, it exists in the minds of the people, whether they live inside it, or in countries and regions where its influence can be felt.”
He goes on to explain how J**ish rabbis, especially in exile between the 3rd and 6th centuries, developed much of the J**ish faith in the context of being eternally oppressed by the might and power of Rome; and how, in response, J**ism became to a large extent an ideology that existed in perpetual spiritual revolt against the pagan (and later, Christian) empire.
As a result, the mindset of always being oppressed and persecuted, of always being in exile and “outsiders,” and of being constantly in a state of revolt against their Western rulers became fundamental to the “new” J**ish faith – especially after all this was codified in the Talmud.
As Naiweld puts it succinctly,
“..the image of Rome created in the second and third centuries by Palestinian rabbis had an enormous influence on the nascent rabbinic movement in Babylonia. The Babylonian rabbis used it in order to define not only themselves, but also the amorphous and politically and geographically dispersed entity that was Israel. The acceptance of the Babylonian Talmud as the defining religious corpus of the Jewish people guaranteed that even after the fall of Rome, its symbolic power would continue to design the experience of the Jews.”
Naiweld does not delve into what that “J**ish experience” was; but as I have shown based on other sources, it did involve being ejected from city-states, nations, and empires from Great Britain to Yemen over a thousand times in two millennia.
There is no possible way that was all coincidence! Rather, it is the result of a fanatical belief system that perceives itself to be constantly persecuted, oppressed, and at war on every front – including spiritually – and which must fight back on every front, relentlessly, and for all of time, because it is on a mission from God.
For all the tragedy of forced conversions, ejections, confinement to ghettos, and even pogroms that has befallen the J**ish people for over 2000 years, none of it has been for no reason.
It is a pattern because the root cause, the J**ish faith, has always been racist, supremacist, and fanatical, but these elements became particularly concentrated after the Talmud was compiled between the 6th and 8th centuries, and then becomes the NEW religious book of the J**s.
After a lengthy and detailed analysis of many examples of this unique “spiritual warfare” that J**s have been engaging in against their idea of “Rome” for many centuries, Naiweld closes with comments about what makes the empire of “Israel” so different from the Roman one:
“Israel, as it is presented here, is an “empire” bounded and protected by no other king than God. His protection, of course, cannot be compared to the one offered by an emperor in flesh and blood.”
He goes on:
“The geographical and architectural emptiness of the story gives the impression that only the two entities – Rome and Israel – exist in the world: one can choose to join either the kingdom that is led by the mortal king, or the one that is protected by God…in other words, Rome became a crucial element in the discourse of Babylonian rabbinic circles precisely because it contributed to articulating their identity.”
The bottom line: J**s (the rabbi class, in particular) have maintained such an obsession with Rome for so long because they need the idea of Rome to exist in order for them to exist in opposition to it.
Without Rome, J**ism would fall apart because it now has no enemy, no great oppressor or transgressor, and no “evil empire” through which to frame their own actions - often morally repugnant ones - as “resistance.”
Thus, after Rome fell, they simply applied the idea of Rome to various entities that followed, culminating in our own empire today: the United States. To many J**ish rabbis, the United States is Rome; and as a result, the U.S. must fall, in order to realize the prophecies they have been poring over for over 2000 years.
That, of course does not bode well for us – especially since, for the most part, they are indeed in control of this country (and they know it.)
(If you’d like to read this article in its entirety, you can do so here; be advised that it is quite wordy and academically dry, however it does share some great information and insight.)
-Cato