The Hon. Min Louis Farrakhan dealt extensively with the Jewish origins of the Curse of Ham (or "Hamitic Myth") in his 2004 address entitled "Synagogue of Satan." We must understand that the very beginnings of racism and white supremacy are tied to this ingenious Jewish tall tale which has created so much mischief and caused the shedding of so much blood. It can be shown to be at the root in the justification of the slave trade and the displacement and murder of the American Indians. It was used to attack the Civil Rights Movement, to undermine abolitionism, to buttress the proslavery Confederacy, and was used as the instrument of control in Jim Crow.
This memorandum is the result of a cursory analysis of the state of academic discourse relating to the so-called Curse of Ham or Hamitic Myth. Please note that the arguments on this issue are detailed and voluminous and so our presentation here is, of necessity, an overview.
Discussion
The Hamitic Myth is derived from the Biblical story of Noah. Taken
alone as presented in Genesis 9:21-27, the characters are without
a racial or geographical identity. It is the later interpretation
of this race/religion/nation-neutral parable which assigned the
curse specifically to the Black race such that by 1460 the institution
of slavery would be universally believed to be the lot of the
Africans.
Jewish Origins
Evidence we have provided below locates
the origin of these racist elaborations with the Jewish Babylonian
Talmud. Dr. Harold Brackman
is the strongest proponent of this theme but one finds a morass
of argumentation centering around authenticity of sources, accuracy
of translations, the use of pun, allegory, literalism, paucity
of documentation, "ambiguities and complexities" of
midrashic texts, etc., etc. Others appear to be positioning themselves
for the impending firestorm over the claim that the Myth "played
a relatively minor role" in slavery.
But even the most vociferous of the defenders of rabbinical honor,
like David M. Goldenberg (in Cornel West's book), admit that the
Talmudic rabbis had a "preference" for light skin and
that their stories "see dark skin as a form of divine punishment".
One author believes that the motive of the Talmudic rabbis in
promoting their version of the Curse was to justify the ancient
Hebrew enslavement of the Canaanites. What is not in dispute,
however, is the ready acceptance of this racist construct by nearly
every religious philosophy, culture and tradition on earth to
justify their mistreatment of the Black race.
The Hamitic Myth itself has also taken on at least one other form
in relation to Blackness (other versions have made Ham into a
white man). Once Europeans saw evidence of the great African civilizations,
they hastened to reinterpret the Hamitic Myth to suggest that
the Hamites were in fact Europeans [!] who went into Africa bringing
this civilization with them. This version of the Myth satisfied
their academic needs--and was used when necessary by Jewish academics
like C.G. Seligman among others. But, for the most part, their
economic, social, religious, and political needs were met in the
global promotion of the original rabbinical version.
Some argue that the Talmudic story is so miniscule--amounting
to just a few sentences within a voluminous written tradition--that
there is no way to claim it as the birthplace of Western racism
and slavery. We would suggest that the story was quickly amplified
in concert with the growing Jewish interest in the slave
trade. At one time slavery was a profitable enterprise and all
races were deemed fit for the role. We suspect that Africans soon
became the worker of choice (just as the early American colonists
found Blacks to be physically superior), and adjusted their supply
to fit this demand. Rabbis, who as charities also benefited from
the trade, willingly altered their racial interpretation of the
Ham story to fit this economic imperative. Soon we find legendary
Jewish scholars like Moses Maimonides, a man who The Encyclopedia
of the Jewish Religion refers to as "the symbol of the
pure and orthodox faith," spewing racist themes in his Guide
to the Perplexed:
"[T]he Negroes found in the remote South, and those who resemble them from among them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like that of irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes. For they have the external shape and lineaments of a man and a faculty of discernment that is superior to that of the apes."
Ideas were spread in those times the same
way spices, rum and pork were spread--by way of the international
merchants. The Jews monopolized this commerce, and these same
Jewish merchant/travelers in the 12th century were denigrating
the "sons of Ham" in their writings about the Africans.
In the American South, the Jewish peddler was held in high esteem
and eagerly anticipated by his rural, slaveholding customers for
the goods and news, and for his Biblical ruminations. I suspect
that this--multiplied by many centuries and many peddlers and
many nations--is how a tiny Talmudic kernel can be made the universal
creed.
General Uses
The Hamitic Myth has been liberally applied
whenever historical circumstances required the aggressive re-assertion
of white supremacy. It can be shown to be at the root in the justification
of the slave trade and the displacement and murder of the American
Indians. It was used to attack the Civil Rights Movement, to undermine
abolitionism, to buttress the proslavery Confederacy, and was
used as the instrument of control in Jim Crow.
Many people have adopted the mantle of "Chosen People"
via the Hamitic Myth including the Puritans, the Jews, the Boers,
the Afrikaners, and the Nazis, among many others. Even the Cherokees
used it to justify their enslavement of the African (interestingly,
it was "mixed-blood" Cherokees who engaged in this practice,
just as it was mulatto "Blacks" who held African slaves).
Southern Christians then used the same Hamitic Myth to justify
the extermination of the Cherokees. Christians further employed
the "Chosen People" myth of the slaveholding ancient
Hebrews to justify their own slaveholding. Whites have even gone
so far as to say that the snake in the Garden of Eden was the
Black Man.
The slave trade to the Islamic world put the Myth to full use,
and Islamic clerics expounded on the curse of Blackness (Brackman
also reveals [p. 96] that many of the "camel-riding"
slave traders were Jewish). Colonial missionaries like Cotton
Mather of Massachusetts adopted the Myth as did the Boers of South
Africa. It was roared from hundreds of American pulpits--North
and South. Belgian colonizers appropriated it when they installed
Tutsi overlords over former Hutu kingdoms, leading to the horrifying
violence in Rawanda and Burundi. It is also said to be the basis
of the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. The founder of Mormons, Joseph
Smith, and high official Brigham Young both used the Myth to condemn
the Back man and exclude his participation in their cult. The
Jehovah's Witnesses readily printed it as fact in the Watchtower.
In various translations of the rabbinical texts, we find themes
of bestiality, sodomy, castration, homosexuality, drunkenness,
and promiscuity, all applied to the vary nature of Ham and by
extension to the race he presumably fathered. The rabbi's deviant
sexual elaborations may have played a role in the feverish and
overtly sexual violence against Blacks in the form of rapes and
lynchings.
Though there is a direct linkage to the Hamitic Myth in many historical
circumstances, not all belief in Black inferiority is directly
traceable to the Myth. The presidents of Harvard, Princeton, and
Wm. & Mary, Samuel Morse (the inventor of Morse Code), Thomas
Jefferson, and even most of the white abolitionists expressed
their belief in Black inferiority but they used other non-Biblical
justifications, including history, anthropology, phrenology, chemistry,
etc. It is difficult to say if the pervasiveness of the Hamitic
Myth affected their "scientific" theorizing.
In 1550, Spain suspended its crusade of world conquest until the
justification for these wars could be established. By connecting
the native peoples with Africans, the Hamitic Myth could be extended
globally, serving the "godly" aims of the conquerors.
Black Acceptance
While not accepting its "natural slave"
premise, Edward Wilmot Blyden accepted the African as a Hamite
but tried to use the terminology to Black advantage. Others, like
the poetess Phillis Wheatley, wrote of her color being a "diabolic
dye." Slave Jupiter Hammond imbibed fully the crudest of
the Myth's racist glosses. He admonished the Blacks who, improperly,
think of freedom: "It may seem hard for us if we think
our masters wrong in holding us slaves to obey in all things,
but who of us dare dispute with God! He has commanded us to obey,
and we ought to do it cheerfully and freely....for my own part
I do not wish to be free; for many of us who are grown up slaves
have always had masters to take care of themselves; and it may
be for our own comfort to remain as we are."
Many other instances can be found of acceptance of the Myth as
God's will and wisdom by Blacks and their slavery-fashioned clerics.
Bible Verses Used as Justification of Slavery
1 Chron. 18:11; 2 Sam. 20:23 (foreign mercenaries)
Josh. 9:21-27; Num. 31:26-47 (hewers of wood...)
2 Kings 5:20-27 (only other Biblical curse with skin change--to white)
Jesus had Canaanite blood; 1 of the 12 Apostles was a Canaanite (Mat 10:4)
Gen 17:13; Lev 25:24, 42-6 (condone slavery; 2 types of slavery)
Exod 20:10, 17 (protects slaves)
Matt 8:5-13 (accepts slavery)
Eph 6:5-9; Col 3:22-4:1; I Tim 6:3-4 (Paul approves slavery)
References (These references to the above discussion are authors of material collected and available at the His Res Dept. Please e-mail for specific requests: admin@blacksandjews.com)
SOURCES DISCUSSING the JEWISH HAMITIC MYTH
Harold Brackman
Dr. Harold Brackman is a hired critic of the Nation of Islam and Hon. Louis Farrakhan. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California in 1977 on the basis of a dissertation he wrote entitled "The Ebb and Flow of Conflict: The History of Black-Jewish Relations Through 1900." It is unpublished but available through University Microfilms International Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Brackman's 632-page dissertation discusses the Jewish invention of the profoundly racist Hamitic Myth. Brackman wrote:
"There is no denying that the [Jewish] Babylonian Talmud was the first source to read a Negrophobic content into the episode by stressing Canaan's fraternal connection with Cush."
The Jewish scholars, he said, advanced two explanations for Ham and his children being turned black. According to Brackman, "The more important version of the myth, however, ingeniously ties in the origins of blackness -- and of other, real and imagined Negroid traits -- with Noah's Curse itself. According to it, Ham is told by his outraged father that, because you have abused me in the darkness of the night, your children shall be born black and ugly; because you have twisted your head to cause me embarrassment, they shall have kinky hair and red eyes; because your lips jested at my exposure, theirs shall swell; and because you neglected my nakedness, they shall go naked with their shamefully elongated male members exposed for all to see."
When Brackman's astounding admission was published in The Jewish
Onslaught: Despatches from the Wellesley Battlefront, by Wellesley
professor Tony Martin, Brackman
recoiled and actually pulled his "refutation" pamphlet
off the market. Even Jews were embarrassed by the Brackman harangue.
Lenni Brenner, author of Jews in America Today, titled his review
of Brackman's booklet in the Amsterdam News, "Harold Brackman
believes in recycling garbage," and opened with this: "There
are some books so bad that I have to apologize for reviewing them.
[Brackman's book] is one of them."
Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews (pages 168-170)
When Noah awoke from his wine and became sober, he pronounced
a curse upon Ham in the person of his youngest son Canaan. To
Ham himself he could do no harm, for God had conferred a blessing
upon Noah and his three sons as they departed from the ark. Therefore
he put the curse upon the last-born son of the son that had prevented
him from begetting a younger son than the three he had.
The descendants of Ham through Canaan therefore have red eyes,
because Ham looked upon the nakedness of his father; they have
misshapen lips, because Ham spoke with his lips to his brothers
about the unseemly condition of his father; they have twisted
curly hair, because Ham turned and twisted his head round to see
the nakedness of his father; and they go about naked, because
Ham did not cover the nakedness of his father. Thus he was requited,
for it is the way of God to mete out punishment measure for measure.
Canaan had to suffer vicariously for his
father's sin. Yet some of the punishment was inflicted upon him
on his own account, for it had been Canaan who had drawn the attention
of Ham to Noah's revolting condition. Ham, it appears, was but
the worthy father of such a son. The last will and testament of
Canaan addressed to his children read as follows: "Speak
not the truth; hold not yourselves aloof from theft; lead a dissolute
life; hate your master with an exceeding great hate; and love
one another."
As Ham was made to suffer requital for his irreverence, so Shem
and Japheth received a reward for the filial, deferential way
in which they took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders,
and walking backward, with averted faces, covered the nakedness
of their father. Naked the descendants of Ham, the Egyptians and
Ethiopians, were led away captive and into exile by the king of
Assyria, while the descendants of Shem, the Assyrians, even when
the angel of the Lord burnt them in the camp, were not exposed,
their garments remained upon their corpses unsinged. And in time
to come, when Gog shall suffer his defeat, God will provide both
shrouds and a place of burial for him and all his multitude, the
posterity of Japheth
Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black:
American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (1968), pages
17-19:
The logical complement to the question of the Negro's change in
color was whether the European by removing to a torrid climate
would become darker or even black. Something of a consensus on
this point emerged in the seventeenth century, since understandably
Englishmen did not relish the prospect of turning into Negroes
by prolonged residence in their expanding tropical empire. By
the eighteenth century it was generally understood that European
complexions would be darkened by tropical sun and weather, but
that a return to cooler climates would restore the original color;
even European children born in hot climates would be thoroughly
white at first.
There was an alternative to these naturalistic explanations of
the Negro's blackness. Some writers felt that God's curse on Ham
(Cham), or upon his son Canaan, and all their descendants was
entirely sufficient to account for the color of Negroes. This
could be an appealing explanation, especially for men like George
Best who wished to stress the "natural infection" of
blackness and for those who hoped to incorporate the Negro's complexion
securely within the accepted history of mankind. The original
story in Genesis 9 and 10 was that after the Flood, Ham had looked
upon his father's nakedness as Noah lay drunk in his tent, but
the other two sons, Shem and Japheth, had covered their father
without looking upon him; when Noah awoke he cursed Canaan, son
of Ham, saying that he would be a "servant of servants"
unto his brothers. Given this text, the question becomes why a
tale which logically implied slavery but absolutely nothing about
skin color should have become an autonomous and popular explanation
of the Negro's blackness. Probably, over the very long run, this
development was owing partly to the ancient association of heat
with sensuality and with the fact that some Ethiopians had been
enslaved by Europeans since ancient times.
What is more arresting, there did exist a specific textual basis
for utilizing the curse as an explanation for blackness -- but
it was a specifically Jewish rather than a Christian one. The
writings of the great church fathers such as St. Jerome and St.
Augustine referred to the curse in connection with slavery but
not with Negroes. They casually accepted the assumption that Africans
were descended from one or several of Ham's four sons, an assumption
which became universal in Christendom despite the obscurity of
its origins. They were probably aware, moreover, that the term
Ham originally connoted both "dark" and "hot,"
yet they failed to seize this obvious opportunity to help explain
the Negro's complexion. In contrast the approximately contemporaneous
Talmudic and Midrashic sources contained such suggestions as that
"Ham was smitten in his skin," that Noah told Ham "your
seed will be ugly and dark-skinned," and that Ham was father
"of Canaan who brought curses into the world, of Canaan who
was cursed, of Canaan who darkened the faces of mankind,"
of Canaan "the notorious world-darkener."
While it probably is not possible to trace a direct line of influence,
it seems very likely that these observations affected some Christian
writers during the late Medieval and Renaissance years of reviving
Christian interest in Jewish writings. It is suggestive that the
first Christian utilizations of this theme came during the sixteenth
century -- the first great century of overseas exploration. As
should become clear in this chapter, there was reason for restless
Englishmen to lay hold of a hand-me-down curse which had been
expounded originally by a people who had themselves restlessly
sought a land of freedom.
When the story of Ham's curse did become relatively common in
the seventeenth century it was utilized almost entirely as an
explanation of color rather than as justification for Negro slavery
and as such it was probably denied more often than affirmed. Sir
Thomas Browne, the first Englishman to discuss the Negro's color
in great detail, ruled out Ham's curse as well as simple climatic
causation after explaining that these two explanations were the
only ones "generally received." Yet Peter Heylyn was
letting Ham's curse into court just when Browne was tossing it
out: in three successive editions of his grandiose Microcosmus
he ignored the story in 1621, called a slightly altered version
of it a "foolish tale" in 1627, and repeated his denial
in 1666 but at the last moment conceded that "possibly enough
the Curse of God on Cham and on his posterity (though for some
cause unknown to us) hath an influence on it."
The extraordinary persistence of this idea in the face of centuries
of incessant refutation was probably sustained by a feeling that
blackness could scarcely be anything but a curse and by the common
need to confirm the facts of nature by specific reference to Scripture.
In contrast to the climatic theory, God's curse provided a satisfying
purposiveness which the sun's scorching heat could not match until
the eighteenth century. The difficulty with the story of Ham's
indiscretion was that extraordinarily strenuous exegesis was required
in order to bring it to bear on the Negro's black skin. Faced
with difficulties in both the climatic and Scriptural explanation,
some seekers after truth threw up their hands in great humility
and accounted blackness in the African another manifestation of
God's omnipotent providence. This was Peter Heylyn's solution
(at least in 1627).
Slavery in Mosaic Law (The
Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. One, 202-05)
"Both biblical and rabbinic law permitted Jews to own slaves
in all ages wherever slavery was in general practice....[L]iving
in a society where slavery was an established institution, the
Jews could hardly be expected to eliminate it."1
The holy laws of Judaism have never prohibited slavery or prevented
all of its associated crimes and abuses. Black Africans
were made brutally aware of this fact as their relationship with
Jews developed. According to Jewish law, a Jew who buys
an adult "heathen" male slave must have him circumcised.
If the slave refuses after a year of attempts, the Jew must sell
the slave to a "heathen." In order to keep an
uncircumcised slave, the slave must agree to obey the seven commandments
of the descendants of Noah.2 New World Jews, however, made
no attempt to convert their slaves to Judaism.3 In addition
to slavery, Jewish law permitted the exploitation and oppression
of the Gentile. For example, according to Rabbi Ishmael,
paraphrased by Rabbi Henry Cohen in his book Justice, Justice:
[A] Jew was legally bound to restore a lost article he had found
only if its owner were Jewish, but not if the article had belonged
to a Gentile. Other kinds of talmudic "discrimination"
against the non-Jew included: He could not serve as an agent for
a Jew in a legal transaction; he could not buy cattle from a Jew;
he could be charged an exorbitant price (termed: ona'ah or over-reaching),
while a Jew could not be so charged....The early mishnaic law
forbidding Jews to sell cattle to non-Jews was considered no longer
binding, since such a ruling would, under new conditions, entail
an economic loss for the Jew....For example, in the Sefer Chasidim,
a book of rules written by a Rav Judah for the pietists of the
twelfth century, a Jew, who was commanded to desecrate the Sabbath
to save the life of a fellow-Jew, was prohibited from committing
even a minor violation of the Sabbath to save the life of a Gentile!4
Jewish slave dealing in the American frontier was in direct conflict
with the writings in Deuteronomy which insists that he who "is
escaped from his master unto thee shall dwell with thee [and]
thou shalt not oppress him."5 But it is also the Old
Testament which offered the holy justification for oppression
on purely racial grounds. It suggested that "Ham was
smitten in his skin" and it was Noah who told Ham that his
"seed will be ugly and dark skinned."6 It was
this mis-interpretation of the scripture which the New World Jews
chose to embrace. Even though slavery -- more accurately
described as an apprenticeship system -- was Biblically permitted,
the brutality of the system practiced by the European Jew upon
the African was unprecedented. Dr. Feingold has found that
among the ancient Hebrews, Biblical slavery
was of a precapitalist variety and had virtually no commerce connected
with it. Unlike the situation in the plantation South, it
did not shape the pastoral economy of ancient Israel which in
any case found little use for masses of slaves. Rather than
being considered an animated tool, as he was in the South, the
slave in ancient Israel was merely a member of society in dependent
status. He was entitled to the full protection of the laws
of the community.7
Philip Birnbaum stated plainly in his work, A Book of Jewish Concepts,
that there is no evidence that slave markets ever existed in Israel.
"Kidnapping a man or selling him as a slave was a capital
offense. A fugitive slave law, which once permitted in America
the act of tracking runaway slaves by bloodhounds, would have
been unthinkable in ancient Israel, where the relationship between
master and slave was often cordial. The slave sometimes inherited
the property of his master (Genesis 15:2-3) and was sometimes
admitted into the family as a son-in-law (I Chronicles 2:34-35)."8
According to a statement in the Talmud, the rabbinical interpretation
of the law of God, the Hebrew slave was to be regarded as his
master's equal.
· "You should not eat
white bread, and he black bread; you should not drink old wine,
and he new wine; you should not sleep on a featherbed, and he
on straw. Hence, it has been declared that whoever acquires
a Hebrew slave acquires a master."
· "A son or pupil
may, but a Hebrew slave may not wash his master's feet or help
him put on his shoes..."
· "Though the Torah
permits us to impose hard work on a Canaanite (non-Jewish) slave,
piety and wisdom command us to be kind and just" (Yad, Avadim
9:8). "Freed slaves were considered proselytes, converts
to Judaism, in every respect."9
· "'Mercy is the mark
of piety,' says the Shulchan Aruch, quoting the language of far
earlier authorities, 'and no man may load his slave with a grievous
yoke. No non-Jewish slave may be oppressed; he must receive
a portion from every dainty that his master eats; he must be degraded
neither by word nor act; he must not be bullied nor scornfully
entreated; but must be addressed gently, and his reply heard with
courtesy.'"10
The practice of Judaism did, at times, include the assistance
of the Black slaves. In seventeenth-century Mexico, the
Jews had a curious religious ritual: "A Negro was dressed
in a red suit and went through the streets playing a tambourine.
This was the signal to congregate for a special community meeting
or for prayer."11
The brutality of slavery with the participation of the Jewish
people shows that whatever humane guidance that Judaism provided
was thoroughly ignored.
Notes
1 Cohen, Justice, p. 49.
2 Reznikoff and Engelman, The Jews of Charleston, pp. 77-8;
Sharfman, Jews on the Frontier, p. 190. By contrast, Jacob
R. Marcus claims in Studies in American Jewish History (Cincinnati:
Hebrew Union College Press, 1969), p. 129, that "Among the
'twenty-five duties' is the prohibition against enslaving a fellow
creature for life without his 'full approbation.'"
3 MCAJ2, p. 963; There are records of "Jewish mulattoes"
(discussed previously)--the offspring of the rape of Black slave
women by Jewish men--who set up their own Jewish communities.
They were, however, shunned by the White Jewish community.
4 Cohen, Justice, pp. 50-1.
5 Cohen, Justice, p. 49.
6 Feingold, Zion, p. 86.
7 Feingold, Zion, p. 87.
8 Philip Birnbaum, A Book of Jewish Concepts (New York: Hebrew
Publishing Company, 1975), p. 453.
9 Birnbaum, p. 453.
10 Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Age (New York: Atheneum,
1969), p. 101.
11 Liebman, The Jews in New Spain, p. 254.