- How Jewish was Yoshke?
- The Gentile Holiday Lights
- A Seasonal Gem from Rav Avigdor Miller
- Rav Avigdor Miller on New Years 2000 (Y2K)—He speaks about that day in general, not Y2K.
- 'Tis the Season of Creepy Customs...Tra-la-la-la!
Plus this Q&A, where the questioner asks Rav Miller how the early life of the founder of the Church religion affected the development of that religion? What effect did the founder's early experiences have on the rest of his life?
Answer:
Well, briefly, we’ll just say that he was born under suspicious circumstances.
Now that’s what they say – it’s not what I say.
And naturally he labored under a severe disability, a severe social disability. Because even among gentiles a man of doubtful parentage is not a privileged person. To have Hashem for a father doesn’t get you much anywhere in this world.
Oh, but he claims that he’s descended from King David.
That’s a little contradiction there. Because Hakodosh Boruch Hu is not of the house of David.
Either way, because of this disability he became very embittered.
Now he never succeeded in anything. He wasn’t married. That’s not a coincidence by the way; because he couldn’t be married. A mamzer is not permitted to marry a Jew and that’s why he wasn’t married.
He attempted to learn Torah, but he didn’t make it. He remained a very mediocre person in Torah and that we know because we see from his utterances a number of gross errors that even a medium ben Torah would never commit.
Now as a result of this, he was, as I said before, very embittered. But he was endowed with one ability. And that was a tremendous ambition that today, had he been psychoanalyzed, it would have been called megalomania. Now when a man has a tremendous ambition but he has no abilities, the result is a terrible bitterness.
Like our poor friend – I won’t mention his name – who is now in Eretz Yisroel. He thought he would be welcomed by the whole people with open arms but he failed even to get one seat in the Knesses; so he’s very embittered, nebach.
So Oso Ha’ish turned his bitterness upon those who did make it.
Now who were the ones who were successful among the Jewish people? Who were the ones who were admired by the whole nation?
The Sages, the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the darlings of the people. The entire nation worshiped their deeds and their words. But because Oso Ha’ish failed to become prominent, so he turned his guns on them.
And that’s why the entire New Testament from beginning to end is one long tirade against the Tana’im. There isn’t another book in the world that has so much bitterness against the Sages of Israel like the New Testament. And that’s the reason — because he failed to make it.
And that’s the secret to the beginning of that religion. It was founded in frustration and bitterness and that caused the hostility that resulted in the loss of so many Jewish lives in history.
TAPE # 47