The Talmud Unmasked

The Talmud Unmasked
AuthorJustinas Pranaitis
Publication date
1892

The Talmud Unmasked (Latin: Christianus in Talmud Iudaeorum: sive, Rabbinicae doctrinae Christiani secreta. English: The Christian in the Jewish Talmud: Secret rabbinical teachings concerning Christians) is a book published in 1892 by Justinas Bonaventure Pranaitis (1861–1917), a Lithuanian Catholic priest. The book is a collection of purported quotations from the Talmud and Zohar that are claimed to demonstrate that Judaism despises non-Jews and promotes the murder or injury of non-Jews in some instances. Pranaitis drew on the earlier works of Jakob Ecker and August Rohling.[1]

Scholars classify "The Talmud Unmasked" as an antisemitic and anti-Talmudic work, comparable to "Der Talmud Jude" by Rohling (1871) and "The Traditions of the Jews" by Johann Eisenmenger (1700).[1][2][3] Modern authors agree that Pranaitis was not competent in Aramaic and the work contains mistranslations, plagiarism from those earlier works, and fabrications.

Contents

The Talmud Unmasked is a collection of purported quotes from the Talmud, the Zohar and other Jewish texts.[4]

Although he made use of Hebrew and Latin translations, Pranaitis knew little Hebrew and could not read Aramaic, the primary language of the Talmud, at all, so was not a credible translator. During the 1913 Beilis Affair trial, Pranaitis testified as an expert witness who claimed that Jews would require blood for Passover (i.e., the blood libel). He was made to look foolish by journalist and historian Benzion Katz [he], who devised a set of questions for defense attorneys to ask him on basic information about the Talmud. Katz phrased the question as though Baba Batra was a person, even though it is a Talmudic tractate that Pranaitis cites. Pranaitis did not know any of the information on the stand and answered that he didn't know without noticing the Baba Batra trick, showing he completely lacked the Talmudic expertise he claimed.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] According to Anthony Julius, the work contains much that is fabricated, plagiarized, and wrongly translated.[13] Stephen E. Atkins notes that in addition to mistranslation, many are taken out of context.[14] Edmund Levin observes that Pranaitis was exposed as a fraud, ignorant of Semitic languages, and that the book was plagiarized from other antisemitic works, even down to typographical errors.[15] Arthur Kurzweil notes it relies on earlier falsifications from Eisenmenger and others.[16] Ronald Modras and Ben-Zion Bokser note that he plagiarized Eisenmenger and Rohling as well.[17][18]

The book includes numerous quotations that are claimed to demonstrate that Jews do not regard non-Jews as human beings, that the Talmud contains blasphemies against Jesus and offensive passages about Christians, that Judaism despises non-Jews, and that the Talmud urges Jews to do a variety of harms to Christians, such as murder and theft, and teaches that each death of a Christian serves as a substitute for the Temple sacrifices, which would then hasten the arrival of the Jewish messiah.[1][19]

Use by apocalyptic cults

Jeffrey Kaplan describes how the book was used by cults to support apocalyptic theories, especially regarding the end-of-times.[4]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Levy, Richard (2005). Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO Ltd. p. 564. ISBN 978-1851094394. Pranaitis drew on the works of the German anti-Talmudists Jakob Ecker and August Rohling. […] Today, [The Talmud Unmasked] is still being distributed by extreme right-wing and clerical circles and can be accessed from a number of antisemitic websites.
  2. ^ Harris, Constance (2009). The Way Jews Lived: Five Hundred Years of Printed Words and Images. McFarland & Co. p. 255. ISBN 9780786434404.
  3. ^ Fiordo (1987). "The Keegstra Case: The Anti-Semitic Argument in Modern Day Alberta Schools". In van Eemeren, Frans H. (ed.). Argumentation: Analysis and Practices: Proceedings (Studies of Argumentation in Pragmaties and Discourse Analysis, Vol 3b). Foris Pubns USA. p. 299. ISBN 978-9067653206.
  4. ^ a b Kaplan, Jeffrey (1997). Radical religion in America : millenarian movements from the far right to the children of Noah. Internet Archive. Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press. pp. 119–120. ISBN 978-0-8156-2687-9.
  5. ^ Weinberg, Robert (1 January 2015). "Connecting The Dots: Jewish Mysticism, Ritual Murder, And The Trial Of Mendel Beilis". Word And Image In Russian History: Essays In Honor Of Gary Marker: 238–252.
  6. ^ Perry, Marvin; Schweitzer, Frederick M. (2002), Perry, Marvin; Schweitzer, Frederick M. (eds.), "Ritual Murderers", Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present, New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, pp. 43–72, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-38512-6_3, ISBN 978-1-349-38512-6, retrieved 1 January 2026{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  7. ^ Sirutavičius, Vladas; Staliūnas, Darius; Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė, Jurgita; Housden, Martyn; Strenga, Gustavs (1 January 2020). "Antisemitism in Lithuania in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century". The History of Jews in Lithuania: From the Middle Ages to the 1990s. Brill | Schöningh. doi:10.30965/9783657705757_016. ISBN 978-3-657-70575-7.
  8. ^ Afran, Bruce; Garber, Robert (2004). Jews on Trial. KTAV. pp. 87–88. ISBN 9780881258684.
  9. ^ Samuel, Maurice (1967). Blood Accusation. The Strange History of the Beiliss Case. London.
  10. ^ Beĭlis, Mendelʹ (1992). Scapegoat on Trial: The Story of Mendel Beilis : the Autobiography of Mendel Beilis, the Defendant in the Notorious 1912 Blood Libel in Kiev. CIS Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56062-166-9.
  11. ^ Leiman, Shnayer Z. (2009). "From the Pages of Tradition: BENZION KATZ: MRS. BABA BATHRA". Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought. 42 (4): 51–57. ISSN 0041-0608. JSTOR 23264183.
  12. ^ The Beilis Affair. American Jewish Committee. 1914.
  13. ^ Julius, Anthony (9 February 2012). Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England. Oxford University Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-19-960072-4.
  14. ^ Atkins, Stephen E. (30 April 2009). Holocaust Denial as an International Movement. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 979-8-216-09856-0.
  15. ^ Levin, Edmund (25 February 2014). A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 272. ISBN 978-0-8052-4299-7.
  16. ^ Kurzweil, Arthur (1 April 2025). The Talmud For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-394-33213-7.
  17. ^ Modras, Ronald (17 August 2005). The Catholic Church and Antisemitism. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-28617-0.
  18. ^ Bokser, Ben-Zion (1939). Talmudic forgeries: a case study in anti-Jewish propaganda (PDF). New York: Synagogue Council of America. Retrieved 1 January 2026.
  19. ^ Michael, Robert (2007). Dictionary of antisemitism from the earliest times to the present. Internet Archive. Lanham, Md. : The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-5862-6.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud_Unmasked