The Symbolism of Murder in the Jewish Religious Holidays

It is a little known fact about Judaism that many over half of its religious holidays celebrate either human sacrifice or the mass murder of gentiles. It speaks to the staggering scale of the cognitive dissonance that surrounds Judaism that this obvious and easy-to-check fact (as well as the well-known caste basis on which non-Reform Judaism rests) seems to have missed most modern commentators by.

For the sake of making the reading public more aware of this fact I have summarized the murderous basis of Judaism's religious festivals (with the exception of the glorified fertility/harvest festivals of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, Tu Bishvat and Shavu'ot as well as the celebration of the selection of Israel as the 'chosen' of Yahweh: Simchat Torah [none of which are very important in terms of ritual observance or meaning in Judaism]) below:

Rosh Hashanah

(Yom Terah)

This is the two-day festival that celebrates the beginning of the new year according to the jewish calendar.

An integral part of the festivities is the blowing of the Shofar, usually a ram's horn, which is sounded one hundred times: one of the verses that this symbolises in the Torah is Numbers 10:9, which calls the jews to war against anyone who opposes them with the direct implication that, as per the commandments in the Torah relating to the Canaanites and Amalekites, the jews are to exterminate their opponents mercilessly as those who oppose the jews are, as Maimonides tells us in his 'Mishneh Torah', the embodiment of the spirit of Amalek and their King Agag.

In addition to this murderous narrative: the blowing of the Shofar is usually believed to symbolize the commitment of Abraham in his willingness to offer his son Isaac as a burnt human sacrifice to Yahweh on Mount Moriah.

Yom Kippur

(Day of Atonement)

This is the holiest day in the jewish religious calendar and is a celebration of animal sacrifice in atonement for the sins of the Israelites. Its central object is to absolve the jews of sin via the medium of animal sacrifices and pray for the swift return of burnt offerings in a rebuilt Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

During the services the infamous Kol Nidre (lit. 'All Vows') prayer is said, which absolves jews of all promises and oaths made to non-jews (although this does not apply to oaths made to fellow jews) and allows them to be ritually and legally absolved of any ties to those considered as unclean in Judaism (i.e., non-jews).

Whilst just before Yom Kippur the 'sin offering' of a cockerel is made by the jewish individual swinging said cockerel round their head for several minutes while it is still alive before then proceeding to slit its throat and then pray as its lifeblood spurts out. This is a ritual called Kapparot. The cockerel is held to be vessel by which all the individual jew's sins are transferred and then absolved by the killing of the same.

The cockerel itself is held to be a symbolic sacrifice of a human male because the Hebrew word for 'man' ('geber') is the same as the word for 'cockerel'. It has been suggested, most notably by von Leers, that this 'sin offering' is the basis for historical reports of groups of highly religious jews committing ritual murders in and around the time of Yom Kippur.

Chanukkah

(Festival of Lights)

This is the best-known of all jewish religious holidays (often referred to as the jewish version of Christmas) but what is not widely-known is that it represents the rededication of the second Temple of Solomon following the mass murder of Greeks, Syrians and non-jewish Palestinians by jewish religious terrorists in the Maccabean revolt as well as the forced mass circumcision of boys and men and the subsequent failure of the (Greek) Seleucid Empire to quash the revolt successfully due to the untimely death of the Seleucid king: Antiochus IV.

Purim

Of all the murder-related symbolism of jewish religious festivals: the association of Purim with mass murder is the best known. The Purim festival, as related in the book of Esther, is celebrated to honour Mordechai and Esther who contrived to trick the Persian King Ahasuerus first into having ministers Bigsan and Teresh hanged for a supposed 'plot' to commit regicide.

Then King Ahasuerus honours Mordechai for 'exposing' the ministerial 'plot', takes Esther to be his mistress (not realising she is a jewess and annoying his loyal wife, Vashti, in the process) and appoints a courtier called Haman to be his new chief minister. Haman convinces King Ahasuerus of a, probably very real, conspiracy of the jews (especially Mordechai) against him and receives the permission of the king to cleanse Persia of the jews once and for all.

Mordechai and Esther come to hear of this and after a bit of fasting and prayer: they both go to a feast held by Haman inviting the king to attend in the process. During the feast Mordechai deliberately provokes Haman by not showing him even the most basic forms of politeness, which causes Haman to secretly order that Mordechai is to be hanged that very night.

Esther, ready for this, plies the king with sweet words and her sexual charms while reminding him of the service done to him by Mordechai in 'exposing' the ministerial 'plot' of Bigsan and Teresh, while also revealing that she is herself is jewish and that unless Ahasuerus does something then she will be killed along with the rest of the jews.

Ahasuerus in a height of sexual passion allows Esther and Mordechai to write their own royal decree that will save the jews (as the other decree cannot be rescinded in time), which is that Haman, his sons and all the enemies of the jews throughout Persia should be exterminated by the jews. This Ahasuerus duly signs into law and the jews (apparently prepared beforehand) immediately begin rampaging across Persia mass-murdering some 75,000 'enemies of the jewish people' in a day, while Mordechai and Esther gleefully watch as Haman and his ten sons are hanged from the gallows that they had prepared for the jews.

Mordechai then becomes King Ahasuerus' chief minister and ordains that the day this occurred shall forever be observed as a day of joy and remembrance among the jews. This day became the annual jewish religious festival of Purim.

On this day observant jews are commanded to get drunk, are told about how their ancestors 'righteously' mass-murdered non-jews and eat special pastries (Hamantashen) that represent the body parts of Haman. It is also around and on the festival Purim that jews have frequently attacked non-jewish religious processions and services (this is particularly so in Christian countries because Purim and Easter are often in close proximity to one another): this is also a common occurrence in modern Israel.

A common form of such attack is to steal the consecrated wafers from Christian churches and desecrate them: another is to urinate and/or defecate on Christian religious symbols such as crosses and crucifixes. In one notorious incident, for example, a jewish merchant purchased a statue of the Virgin Mary and placed it in the cesspit of his outhouse: directly under the hole so that every time he urinated or defecated he would do so on the Virgin Mary.

There are also suggestions by some scholars, notably Elliot Horowitz, that violent anti-gentile acts committed by jews in and around Purim are related to some of the historical reports the ritual murder of non-jews by jews.

Pesach

(Passover)

Pesach, is, like Chanukkah, one of the best-known of the jewish religious holidays and given its well-known Biblical basis it is surprising that many people do not connect the fact that it celebrates the 'passing over of the angel of death' to kill the first-born of the non-jewish families resident in Egypt so that Pharaoh would 'set the jews free'.

In other words: the jews on Pesach are celebrating the fact that Yahweh murdered tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent non-jewish children, because of the decisions of their ruler.

In memory of this mass-murder of non-jews: each observant jewish family sacrifices a prize lamb or kid on the eve of Passover so that they re-enact the slaughtering of the lambs and kids whose blood was daubed on the doors/door posts of jewish dwellings to inform the angel of death that those living within were jews not non-jews.

Sefirat HaOmer

(Counting the Omer)

This is the verbal counting of the 49 days between the festivals of Pesach and Shavu'ot: it is generally a time of mourning during which jews are forbidden to have haircuts. However on the 33rd day of the counting (Lag B'Omer) the jews celebrate a massacre of non-jews that was committed by them during their attempt at world conquest that was the Bar Kochba revolt in 132 A.D. (more on that below).

Tisha B'Av

This is a fast day in Judaism that is for the remembrance of the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem: it is also the day on which jews remember their failed international conspiracy to rise up throughout the Roman Empire (which resulted in large numbers of non-jewish deaths as far abroad as Libya, Egypt, Turkey and Cyprus [there is also some evidence that the jews were to also revolt in Rome at the same time]). Led by their 'messiah' Simon bar Kochba, who was endorsed by the main jewish religious leader of that time Rabbi Akiva (the author of the Zohar according to various jewish legends), they attempted to fulfil the 'prophecy' of the 'new Elijah' and engage in world conquest aided by the hand of Yahweh.

Tisha B'Av especially remembers the 100,000 jews that the Romans killed in 132 A.D. because of this failure to successfully kill enough non-jews to facilitate this program of world conquest.