The Case of Sarah Cohen

As I have remarked on several occasions before: I have a long-standing interest in what may be called 'jewish conversion' literature. Or put in simpler terms: accounts written by jews or about jews who have converted to non-jewish faiths from Judaism. This interest stems largely from the fact that conversion literature is a central piece of evidence for the importance of viewing the jews in anti-Semitic rather than simply anti-Zionist or anti-Judaic terms.

The point is simple enough in that if a jew still retains loyalty to the jewish people in spite of having actively chosen to follow a different religious system. Then it tells us that jewishness has to go beyond confessing a belief in the tenets of Judaism and also beyond jewish nationalism (i.e., the various forms of Zionism) as if an individual remains in his or her mind a jew after disregarding the tenets of Judaism and rejecting jewish nationalism then they cannot be taken to be the definitive border of jewishness.

The contrast with non-jews is simple enough to make in that if you or me as a gentiles dear reader wished to convert to say Buddhism then we would describe ourselves as Buddhists would we not? We wouldn't say that we were Buddhist Christians or Christian Buddhists now, would we? Similarly a person born into and brought up in the Islamic faith who decides that they believe there is no god (atheism) does not  become an Islamic Atheist or a Muslim Atheist: now do they?

However when a jew converts to another religion they become a Jewish Muslim, a Jewish Christian or a Buddhist jew which suggests to us in terms of self-description 'Jew' or 'Jewish' does not signify the belief in a particular religious creed or necessarily an affinity with jewish nationalism, but rather is a description of national origin. In other words 'Jew' or 'Jewish' is actually equivalent not to a religious confession like Christianity or Buddhism, but rather a nation like being of German, Russian, Brazilian or Japanese origin.

After all we can have a German Christian, a Japanese Buddhist or a Brazilian Muslim, but we can't have a Christian Muslim or a Buddhist Hindu can we?

Now if we come back to 'jewish conversion' literature we can easily see how intellectually powerful it can be for us as the jews concerned have - in affirming their jewishness over and above their new religious confession - given us tangible evidence that loyalty to their jewishness and their self-description as thus transcends their religious or even their political beliefs. This makes their jewishness their defining aspect not their religious creed, which means in effect that a jewish convert to say Christianity or a jewish atheist who believes in the tenets of Marxism-Leninism still fundamentally identifies themselves as being jewish.

This is important precisely because in doing so it necessarily creates a system of dual loyalty among the jews as on the one hand they profess to be loyal to their religious and/or political creed, but at the same time they show loyalty to their jewish origins by suggesting that they are a nation in and of themselves. What this means is that the long-standing anti-jewish argument of dual loyalty - most famously brought out in the Dreyfus Affair in France - and the more current variant of jewish dual loyalty to both their host country and Israel plus a separate argument as to whether or not the jews can meaningfully integrate into a host country at all outside of actually mating with its inhabitants.

One such case which nicely demonstrates the permanence of the jewish question as well as their separation from the rest of the population is that of Sarah Cohen. (1) Sarah Cohen - an otherwise unremarkable jewess from London - started out as a post-World War II baby being born in May 1946 to a father who she claims was a 'Holocaust Survivor'. (2)

Her father Thomas Cohen was supposedly captured in North Africa in 1942 and in spite of being named Cohen it seems the Germans were so dim as to have taken some time to work out that he was jewish. When they did he was allegedly shipped off to Auschwitz by the Germans and we are told while there he himself witnessed the alleged homicidal gassings of the jews. Apparently Private Cohen only survived because another inmate 'knew' about the gassings and told him to claim he was cobbler, which façade he managed to keep up till the Soviet army turned up.

This is of course highly suspect as if Cohen had in fact 'witnessed' the gassings then he would have been of signal importance to the orthodox Holocaust scholars given that while they are not short on alleged eyewitnesses: they are very short on credible ones who don't contradict each other on just about every point of fact.

However, it does nicely indicate - as it is given a small chapter with the pejorative name 'The Nazi Menace’ - that Cohen feels her jewish identity very strongly in spite of having been a Christian for some fifty odd years at the time she came to write her autobiography such as it is.  Indeed, she recounts a story of when a local Baptist minister - a Mr. McNicol - realised that she was jewish and told her that she was especially 'fortunate' to come from such 'distinguished' stock. (3)

There is no reason for Cohen to include that particular anecdote at that point in time other than to reinforce the point that her jewish origins make her special or 'chosen' among Christians or put another way jewish Christians are somehow superior to non-jewish Christians.

We can further see this in Cohen's rather off-hand comment that her spiritual life - as a jew converted to Christianity - was based on fullness of Christianity rather than those of the gentile Christians around who she attacks for not doing things because they believed them to be immoral, but because other Christians would not approve. (4) She tells us in effect that jews are taught to live the fullness of their religion while Christians are not so therefore as a jew she is helping 'teach' the Christians how to practice Christianity properly.

This is also demonstrated rather nicely when Cohen attacks Roman Catholics - as well as other gentile Christians - for not taking sin seriously enough and suggests that the jewish attitude to sin is actually the correct one that once again she - as a jewess - has to teach the gentiles. (5) This belief that gentile Christians don't really know what Christianity is, but Cohen - as a jewish Christian - does is also evident when she somewhat carelessly implies that Christians who contradict her particular doctrinal beliefs have a tendency to have psychotic episodes or need mental help in some form. (6)

This isn't particularly helped by the belief that Cohen espouses - and presumably still does - that all her footsteps are guided directly by God (7) and this concomitantly means she is a kind of pseudo-prophet of God's will or at the very least her footsteps and actions are predestined to some mysterious purpose by God (a-la Calvin's theological ideas). It doesn't also help that Cohen allegedly was the subject of a minor medical miracle apparently caused by prayer, (8) but then jews have always been in the miracle business haven't they?

The irony is of course that Cohen puts her biological jewishness in the words of others. She has a Mr. Harper - owner of a Christian bookshop in Rotherham - say that she is a member of 'God's Chosen Race' and that she doesn't stop being jewish by converting to Christianity. (9) Cohen naturally narrates herself denying this but this is obviously a bit of fictional narrative that has been inserted by Cohen to put forth the uncomfortable idea - for gentile Christians anyway - that jewishness is biological and independent of religious confession.

Had this been a real conversion we might have expected some rather different wording on Mr. Harper's part in relation to Cohen having 'fortunate' heritage (like Mr. McNicol) or some such as opposed to couching it in very specifically jewish terminology (i.e., a descendent of the ancient Israelites would be a more orthodox and common way of putting it for a Christian as opposed to implying - as Cohen's text does - that jews are still the masters of the universe as opposed to being part of the multitude chosen by God now).

It is clear from Cohen's narrative that she ardently associates herself with being jewish in terms of national origin (she not once describes herself as British or English only as jewish for example) and Christianity to her is merely an extension of her jewishness into her confession of faith. Cohen approaches her Christianity first and foremost as a jewess and as the recipient of a special personal revelation based on that heritage, (10) because to her Christianity is simply her ancestral Judaism where the long-awaited Messiah has come and told the jews to become Christians so as to repair the world in the name of Yahweh (i.e., the concept of Tikkun Olam in Judaism).

Cohen is then an ideal example of what I have argued in that jews will naturally look at any religious or political ideology through a uniquely jewish perception and consciously or unconsciously seek to modify that religious or political ideology into reflecting their own egoistic ethnic priorities as jews.

This then means that the epistemological break in early Christianity between its early jewish followers and its early gentile followers is replicated when a jew converts to Christianity not only because a jew understands Christianity differently than a gentile, but also because a jew will seek to turn Christianity into Judaism because that is what a jew naturally understands Christianity to be.

The crux of the issue is that jews are loyal only to themselves and should be viewed as the eternal outsider: the kind of individual you may let join in with a group activity, but won't tolerate any nuisance from because of the potential disruptive influence.

If you let the town drunkard run the town then one wonders why we can be surprised that purchasing alcohol becomes cheap and easy?

References

(1) She tells her story in Sarah Cohen, 2008, 'Costly Roots', 1^st Edition, Crossbridge: Martley

(2) Ibid., pp. 20-21

(3) Ibid., p. 9

(4) Ibid., p. 41

(5) Ibid., p. 30

(6) Ibid., p. 51

(7) Ibid., p. 62

(8) Ibid., pp. 73-74

(9) Ibid., p. 67

(10) Related by another jew on Ibid., pp. 123-124