The move closely follows the publication of a hasidic textbook claiming Jews should hate all gentiles.
An image from the December 2011 Der Blitz. The sign in Hebrew reads "Goy Shel Shabbat," which means "Shabbos goy," a gentile who will do labor for a Jew on the Jewish Sabbath that is forbidden for the Jew to do himself. The story is about an Arab who works as a "Shabbos goy."
Originally published at 3:40 pm Sunday 12-4-2011
Exclusive: Hasidic Magazine Blots Out Faces Of Gentiles
The move closely follows the publication of a hasidic textbook claiming Jews should hate all gentiles
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Are gentiles evil? Are Jews forbidden to look at their faces?
Last week, FailedMessiah.com exclusively reported that a Skvere hasidic rabbi based in New Square, New York had recently published Yalkut Shaiylos u'Teshuvos, a book of questions asked by young Skvere yeshiva students and the answers to those questions given by Skvere rabbis. The book carries the endorsement of several prominent Skvere hasidic rabbis, including the Skvere Rebbe himself.
The book says that Jews are required to hate all gentiles, and it explains that gentiles don't do any real good, and that their presence in the world pollutes it.
The book also notes that Jews should not focus on the faces of gentiles:
…[O]ne is not to concentrate on the face of a gentile. As the [author of the book] Arvei Nahal writes on the Talmudic passage, “it is forbidden to look upon the face of an evildoer,” because the other side [the devil, the sitra achra] cloaks himself in the guise of an evildoer and it is a danger to look at him. This passage refers to a Jew who has, God forbid, become an evildoer. Certainly, beyond any doubt, a gentile whose whole nature is essentially evil, looking at his appearance is defiling.
In the Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh [the Abridged Code of Jewish Law] it states that if one sees beautiful creatures, even a gentile, one makes a blessing [to thank God for creating that beautiful animal or person]. The Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh [the Abridged Code of jewish Law] adds this is only if one caught a casual glimpse, however concentrating on a gentile is forbidden. [This qualification is missing from the standard English language translation of the Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh but it appears in the Hebrew original.]
Once, in middle of the night, [the author of the book] the Arugot Haboshem sent a messenger to his son, [the author of the book] the Vayagid Yaakov, requesting he should immediately come over. He quickly came running and [the author of the book] the Arugot Haboshem looked at him [for a moment] and told him he can now leave. He only called upon him since a gentile doctor was there earlier and he didn’t want that the last thing he sees before he sleeps to be a gentile, so he called him only to take a look at him [i.e., the author of the Arugot Haboshem had his son come to visit late at night but dismissed him after looking at him for a brief moment, telling his son that a gentile had been in the house and that he did not want to go to sleep with a gentile being the last human being he had seen that day, so he called his son and had him run over to be looked at].…
Now a hasidic monthly magazine, Der Blitz, based in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York and distributed in haredi neighborhoods throughout the city, in upstate New York and in Lakewood, New Jersey, has begun blotting out the faces of non-Jews in the photographs it publishes.
Here are a few examples from the December issue. First are the pictures themselves. They're followed by larger scans of the pictures and text so you can see them in context:
Related Post: Exclusive – Hate All Non-Jews, Skvere Rabbis Say.