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In this episode of Hebrew Voices #198 - Nehemia on "Grotto in the Tar Pit": Part 2, Nehemia rejoins the Grotto in the Tar Pit podcast to discuss medieval equivalents of Hamas's October 7th Massacre and how examining the Vatican secret archives leads to the discovery of fragments from lost Hebrew manuscripts.

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: One of the Old Catholics, meaning who wasn’t of Jewish descent, he gets all excited and he shouts for joy, and he says, “The crucifix at the front of the church has just shined a light on us. This is a great miracle. Jesus is answering our prayer.” And one of the, what they call the New Christians, Nuevos Cristianos, who was born a Jew and raised a Jew and sprinkled with water, forced to convert to Catholicism, he says, “That’s just the way the sun is reflecting off the silver crucifix. That’s not a miracle.” And the Old Catholics spend the next few days massacring the Jews throughout Lisbon.

Here’s the crazy thing; why does the Catholic Church have the authority to burn people at the stake? Because, like, we have this idea of the separation of church and state. Sort of, we do, right? We’ll say, well, “Google isn’t the same as the government.” But it has more power than many governments. If Twitter can ban a head of state, and I’m not talking about the United States… There’s African countries where the head of state was banned by Twitter. Imagine that. You’re a country of like 10 or 20 million people, and this corporation, which has a higher annual revenue, higher annual profit than your GDP, bans your head of state. What are you supposed to do?

So, that’s pretty much the state of the Catholic Church, if you’re going back… certainly 500 years ago, and to some extent into some regions much later than that, where you have this non-government entity which has more power than the government itself. And so, imagine now you’re the king of Portugal in 1497, and you had opened up the door to the Jews, and you promised, “I’ll never do to the Jews what the Spanish did.” And the Catholic Church comes to you and says, “Well, how would you like to burn in hell forever? We’ll excommunicate you if you don’t do what we say.” “Okay, well, I don’t really believe that necessarily, but if you excommunicate me, my cousin’s going to slit my throat and claim that he’s king. That’s what’s really going to happen. Some relative of mine who has a claim to the throne is going to murder me in my sleep, probably with the help of my confessor, who I’ve trusted my whole life. So, I better do what the Catholic Church says.”

It’s a parallel to… they call this unpersoning, where one of these tech oligarchs will put you under what’s effectively excommunication. “Okay, maybe I don’t care that I’ve been banned from Twitter.” Really? Try operating in the 21st century without a bank account. See how that goes.

Sergio: Yeah.

Nehemia: Without the ability to have a bank account.

Sergio: That’s the next step.

Nehemia: Well, what do you mean, the next step? They’re already doing it now. They’re literally already doing it now.

Sergio: Yeah. Like they did with the truckers in Canada when they… Yeah, and they shut down their GoFundMe and took all the funds out of it.

Nehemia: Right. That’s insane.

Sergio: Yeah.

Nehemia: Well, no. And GoFundMe can say, “We’re a private company. We’re allowed to do that.” Really? So, let’s say I have a bank… which I don’t, but let’s say I had a bank, and somebody comes in in the United States and says, “I want to open up a bank account. And by the way, I’m an African American.” “Oh, we don’t allow African Americans to have bank accounts.” Well, they’ll be immediately shut down. And the argument is that you’re open to the public. You have to be open to any reasonable… Now, somebody’s coming in and trying to scam you, that’s a different thing. They’re saying my name is… whatever. If somebody is committing fraud, that’s a different thing. But if somebody comes in with legitimate papers and they’re an upstanding citizen, and they’re not trying to commit a crime, and you say, “I’m not going to allow you to have a bank account in my bank because I don’t like your politics.” Well, that’s what the Catholic Church was doing 500 years ago, and they had the ability to burn people at the stake.

Sergio: Wow.

Nehemia: Thankfully, the tech oligarchs don’t currently have that ability, but they can unperson you in a way. There’s this beautiful exchange between Nachmanides, who’s also known as Rabbi Moses Ben Nachman, sometimes confused with Maimonides, who is Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon. They had different…

Sergio: Now you just confused me!

Nehemia: So, one’s father’s name