Collective Guilt: A Theology of the Jewish Culture as Continuous Deicide

OR Staff Introduction: This article is about Judaism as a religion and certain aspects of the culture to which it has given rise. Writers examine religious cultures all the time, sometimes coming to quite negative conclusions about them and their influence. Right now online, you can read articles debating the true origins of the Quran (and if Muhammad even existed), whether the Roman Catholic priesthood is a gay subculture, whether Russian Orthodoxy is a tool of government political control, whether American Evangelicalism is an antisocial cult. Every religion and religious culture is seemingly fair game for examination. Except for Judaism, which is off limits. Any critical appraisal (no matter how mild) of any aspects of Judaism and/or Jewish culture gets immediately labeled as antisemitism. At this point, even criticism of individual Jews (politicians included) is increasingly considered taboo.

Such as situation cannot continue. As a group, Jews exert enormous cultural, political, and financial influence over the United States. This influence has been used to drive fundamental changes in our society. There is a principle in Jewish culture called “Tikkun Olam” (repairing the world) which encourages Jews to change the world for what they perceive as for the better. A short video from the World Jewish Congress on Twitter provides examples. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink is Jewish. His investment fund controls over 10 trillion dollars. In this 2017 video, he was very explicit about using his investment capital to force companies to adopt an ESG agenda. Many more examples can be given of powerful followers of Judaism (whether religious devotees or simply shaped by it culturally) who see themselves as entitled to, perhaps even obligated to, fundamentally “repair” Western culture.  As a result, we have every right to honestly examine and appraise both Judaism and Jewish culture. The author of this article would like you to know that this essay may be republished freely without permission.


And all the people answered and said: “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” This imprecation upon the Jews continues until the present day. The Lord’s blood will not be removed from them. This is why it says through Isaiah: “If you wash your hands before me, I will not listen; for your hands are full of blood.” The Jews have left the best heritage to their children, saying: “His blood be upon us and upon our children.”

–St. Jerome, Commentary on Matthew

But these Jews are gathering choruses of effeminates and a great rubbish heap of harlots; they drag into the synagogue the whole theater, actors and all. For there is no difference between the theater and the synagogue. […] They live for their bellies, they gape for the things of this world, their condition is no better than that of pigs or goats because of their wanton ways and excessive gluttony. They know but one thing: to fill their bellies and be drunk, to get all cut and bruised, to be hurt and wounded while fighting for their favorite charioteers.

–St. John Chrysostom, First Sermon Against the Synagogues

Or should Jerusalem not have been subdued, nor the temple laid waste, after the horrible insanity of the Jews against the Lord? Could these things have occurred justly in some other way, and not through the hands of the Romans, to whom the Jews, the enemies of their own life, betrayed our Lord? Therefore, there is a time when the evils of war are also approved justly for those who deserve them.

–St. Basil the Great, Homily Explaining that God Is Not the Cause of Evil

Whoever does not worship the Crucified is to be anathema and ranked with the God-slaughterers.

–St. Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 101.5

And under this [Daniel 7:24] was signified none other than Antichrist, who is also himself to raise the kingdom of the Jews.

–St. Hippolytus of Rome, Treatise on Christ and Antichrist

The Jews will rejoice and give honor to the reign of the antichrist more than anyone else. And he, under pretense of preference, and being industrious with them, will designate for them all a place and the temple.

–St. Ephriam the Syrian, quoted from Fr. Andrew Anderson

So now, since the true Christ is to come a second time, the adversary, taking advantage of the expectation of the simple, and especially of them of the circumcision, brings in a certain man who is a wizard, and most expert in the beguiling craftiness of sorceries and enchantments; who shall seize upon the power of the Roman empire, and shall falsely style himself Christ; by this name of Christ deceiving the Jews, who are looking for the Anointed, and seducing those of the Gentiles by his magical illusions. […] At first indeed he will put on a shew of mildness, (as though he were a learned and discreet person,) and of soberness and benevolence: and having by the signs and lying wonders of his magical deceit, beguiled the Jews, as though he were the expected Christ, he shall afterwards characterize himself by all kinds of excesses of cruelty and lawlessness, so as to outdo all unrighteous and ungodly men who have gone before him; displaying against all men, but especially against us Christians, a spirit murderous and ruthless, merciless and crafty.

–St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Fifteenth Catechetical Lecture

The watchmen were thus instructed by the lawless: Conceal the rising of Christ, and take money, and say that, whilst ye were asleep, the Dead One was stolen from the grave. Who ever saw, who hath heard at any time of a dead being stolen, more especially anointed, yet naked, and with the things appertaining to burial being left behind in the grave? Do not be deceived, O ye Jews, study the prophetic sayings and learn that He is truly the Redeemer of the world and All-powerful.

–Octoechos, Great Vespers, Fifth Tone

Let no one in the priestly order nor any layman eat the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar intercourse with them, nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor bathe with them; but if anyone shall take in hand to do so, if he is a cleric, let him be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off.

–Council in Trullo, Canon XI

For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.

–1 Thessalonians 2.14-16

I don’t care. Good! I hope the Jews did kill Christ. I’d do it again! I’d f*****g do it again in a second.

–Sarah Silverman, Jesus is Magic (2005)

The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don’t believe in authoritarianism. Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged. … I believe in me. I’m God. Screw God. God is your need to believe in some super being. I am the super being. I am your God, admit it. We’re random. We’re the flea on the butt of the dog.

–Al Goldstein, founder of Screw magazine and pornography pioneer

It was, indeed, not until I re-entered Germany that I understood about hate, a hate that was more than desirable: justified. It escapes us, disappears as the events that engendered it have disappeared. A Jewish poet in an extermination camp prayed: “O God, give me the strength to hate.” …  Yet today, even having been deserted by my hate during that fleeting visit to Germany, I cry out with all my heart against forgiveness, against forgetting, against silence. Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate — healthy, virile hate — for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead.

–Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Legends in Our Time, chapter 12 “Appointment with Hate”

Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel. … Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.

–Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, whose funeral in 2013 was thought to be the largest gathering of Jews since the second temple

The clear tradition of the Church is that the Jews hold collective guilt for the death of Jesus and will bring about the Antichrist as their preferred Messiah. But what are we to make of this? Can there be such a thing as collective or ancestral guilt? If Jesus and the apostles were all Jews, then do they also bear this guilt? What about our Orthodox Christian brothers with Jewish ancestry?

An important principle in the New Testament is that ancestry is based on faith. In Galatians and Romans, St. Paul lays out clearly that “that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” [Galatians 3.7] and that “he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.” [Romans 3.28-29].

But this principle is inverted for the unrighteous. Jesus tells the Jews, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” [John 8.44] Likewise, St. John writes, “In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.” [1 John 3.10]

Consider also that many Arab and Greek Christians likely have an Abrahamic ancestor. There were eleven more sons beyond Judah, plus Jacob’s daughter Dinah, plus Esau and his children. And for Abraham himself, he had Ishmael and then six other children from his second wife Keturah. The descendants of Abraham are far more than merely the descendants of Judah. There is also evidence that the Ashkenazi Jews have little or no ancient Jewish ancestry, although this is inconclusive, and academia would never admit it if it were true. [Introductory links here and here.]

After the spread of the early Church, the Jews and other Abrahamites who believed in the Gospel were absorbed into the gentiles and lost their Abrahamic identity. So in a very real sense, the children of Abraham and Jacob by the flesh did enter into the new covenant, and the promise was not merely spiritual.

It is the Jews (and Samaritans) who rejected Jesus that retained their identity. After the destruction of the temple, only the Pharisaical sect was strong enough to survive. All the Jews who have come down to us today are part of this Pharisaical tradition that killed Jesus. There are religious and atheistic Jews, Orthodox and Reformed Jews, libertarian and socialist Jews. But all of these are Pharisees. When Jesus was criticizing their man-made traditions [Mark 7.1-16], these traditions were the beginnings of the Talmud. Jews do not follow the Old Testament or the Mosaic law – they follow the Talmud and other later rabbinical writings. Many Jews do not even know that the prophets exist. Jewish culture is inseparable from the tradition of the rabbinical commentaries, because it is this rabbinical community that has given them their cultural heritage. This is a basic anthropological fact that should not be controversial.

That is to say, the problem is not Jewish genetics. The problem is Jewish culture. The specifics of Jewish culture and its subversiveness have been dealt with enough elsewhere that I will not go into detail here. I would recommend these articles by Roosh as an introduction: here, here and here. They even brag in their own publications about this cultural subversion:

“Jews were among leaders and rank-and-file activists in all the great movements of the past century — labor, civil rights and civil liberties, feminism, environmentalism, gay rights and the crusade against militarism – that have made America a more humane, democratic and inclusive country.”

The Bolshevik Revolution was largely a Jewish movement and had almost universal Jewish support. Jews make up almost every important position in Biden’s cabinet, and Zelensky is a Jew. Presently the Ukrainian government is about to outlaw the canonical Orthodox Church. That is to say, the same religious group of people, who slaughtered priests and dynamited churches a hundred years ago, are doing the same thing again and in the same geographic place. These are not “Nazis” or “Nationalists”. It is the murderers of God who are beating priests in the streets and passing legislation to put an end to the liturgy by force. They are doing exactly what St. Paul warned the Thessalonians of – forbidding the Gospel, being contrary to all men, and filling up their sins to the fullness of God’s wrath. [1 Thessalonians 2.14-16]


But how can they still be murderers of God? That was 2,000 years ago! How can we blame modern Jews for what a tiny fraction of their ancestors did?

The Church is the Body of Christ, and we have been promised the same persecutions that Jesus went through. “The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” [John 15.20] In their attempts to destroy the Church, the Jews continue to murder God. This is most obvious in Europe. In the EU, and especially the UK, it is effectively illegal to be a Christian. The 20th century communist persecutions are well-known enough that there is no need to rehash them here. The Jews also welcomed and collaborated with the Mohammedan invaders of Spain and Eastern Rome, for which they still feel nostalgia. But in America it is more difficult to destroy the Church outright, so they subvert it with homosexuality, divorce and the secularization of Christmas.

Nearly every mid-century Christmas song was written by a Jew. They took our holy day about the Incarnation and made it into something mercantile and nostalgic about snow and Santa. They redefined our holiday for us, although we ourselves really bear the blame for accepting it. Christmas, as we understand it, is a Jewish invention. By erasing the Incarnation from Christmas, they abort the infant Jesus and sell us cheap glittery merchandise made by Chinese slaves. And every year we lap up their slop like a dog and pray for it to snow.

Jewish culture is offended by you, as you are the Image of Christ. Most Jews realize that Jesus was the Messiah, and it drives them to insanity with jealousy to see the gentiles enjoying all the blessings they were promised. This is what Pilate meant by calling Jesus “the King of the Jews,” and his ridicule of the Jews is most strongly felt in Mark 10.9-12:

“But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews? For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy. But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him.”

Pilate was saying, “You Jews have been talking about this Messiah for centuries. If this man is not him, who possibly could be? How is this man not your promised king?” And they responded, “We have no king but Caesar.” [John 19.15] That is to say, “We do not want the covenant. We do not want the promises. If this man is the promised one of the covenant, then we would rather be pagans than submit to Him.”

And so God gave them what they asked for. You can have the world, or you have God, but you cannot have both. The Jews chose the world. What else could “We have no king but Caesar” mean? “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” [James 4.4]

All of this is to say that the Jews do not bear collective guilt merely because their ancestors murdered God in the distant past. They bear the guilt of deicide because they are still persecuting the Church. They are still murdering the Body of Christ. They are still rejecting the faith of Abraham and the covenant. They are still slandering Jesus and staging show trials in the media. They are still teaching the rabbinical tradition and ignoring the Law and the Prophets. They are still forbidding the Gospel and being contrary to all men. They are subverting all decency and normality to build the religion of the Antichrist, who St. Paul tells us will reign from the third temple in Jerusalem. [2 Thessalonians 2.4] Everything the Jewish culture pushes – feminism, equality, pornography, homosexuality, pharmacology, gun control, mass immigration, global warming cult, electoral subversion, COVID, the military industrial complex – prepares the way for the Antichrist, whom they will accept uncritically.

The Antichrist will be a Jewish homosexual, as Daniel 11.37-38 tells us, “He shall regard neither the God of his fathers nor the desire of women, nor regard any god; for he shall exalt himself above them all. But in their place he shall honor a god of fortresses; and a god which his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and pleasant things.” We see here that this will be a very mercantile, consumerist religion that is invented for its own sake. Although this passage about the King of the North most directly applies to Antiochus Epiphanes, St. Jerome explains that it is a prototype of the Antichrist as the expected Jewish Messiah:

“But those of our persuasion believe all these things are spoken prophetically of the Antichrist who is to arise in the end time. … It is he who is destined to arise from a small nation, that is, from the Jewish people, and he shall be so lowly and despised that kingly honor will not be granted him. But by means of intrigue and deception he shall secure the government, and by him shall the arms of the fighting nation of Rome be overcome and broken. He is to effect this result by pretending to be the prince of the covenant, that is, of the law and testament of God. And he shall enter into the richest of cities and shall do what his fathers never did, nor his fathers’ fathers. For none of the Jews except the antichrist has ever ruled over the whole world. And he shall form a design against the firmest resolves of the saints and shall do everything [he wishes] for a time, for as long as God’s will shall have permitted him to do these things.” [Commentary on Daniel, verse 11.24]

The Orthodox doctrine of the Antichrist as the Jewish false Messiah is most fully explained in brief in St. John Damascene’s Exposition 4.26, which is the unquestionable golden standard of Orthodox Christian dogma.

Jesus tells us, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” [John 5.43] Does that not demonstrate that the Jews rejected the Father and the covenant? Jesus tells us himself that they would rather have any deceiver or scam artist if it means rejecting Jesus. And the Antichrist surely will be the greatest conman in human history.

If Jesus is the way, the life and the truth, then the rejection of Jesus will only lead to chaos, death and falsehood. And this is what the Jews and all post-Christian secularists push. The rejection of Christ never leads to a more ethical, peaceful world. It leads to modern medicine and endless wars. Anyone who consciously rejects Christ will suffer the same depravity of Jewish culture and the same ultimate damnation. The fate of the Jew is the fate of everyone who does not crucify himself and follow Christ unconditionally.

But this collective Jewish guilt can be as easily expunged as any other sin. All it takes is sincere repentance. Historically there are the Catholic saints, John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila, who were from converso families. St. Jerome had many converso friends, particularly St. Epiphanios of Salamis. St Romanos the Melodist was an ethnic Jew. In our own time, and in our own American Orthodox Church, we have Brother Nathaniel and Fr. James Bernstein, among many other less famous but equally inspiring stories. There is also a very good interview on Jay Dyer with an ethnic Jew who became an Orthodox Christian. One of my close Orthodox Christian mentors, a lay leader in the OCA Diocese of the South, is 1/16 Jewish. While you may disagree with many things that some of these people say, no one can deny their sincere commitment, particularly those who are first-generation Christians.

It is easy for a Greek to be Greek Orthodox.  It involves some sacrifice for an Anglo to convert. But for a Jew, converting is rejecting his family, social infrastructure and ethnic heritage for the sake of salvation. This is a complete renunciation. The conversos scorned the world, abandoning everything for the sake of Christ. Who cannot admire their dedication? What greater crown could one receive at the final judgment? Are the true conversos not living martyrs?

St. Paul tells us in Romans 11 that “all Israel shall be saved” and that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” What this specifically means, we do not know. But it is clear in the last days that there will be a return to the covenant for many Jews. In the last century there was a great increase in conversos, although these were a very small portion of Jewry, and very few of them became Orthodox Christians. So there is hope. Not all Jews will accept the Antichrist. Some will turn to the true Christ in the last days and finally break the curses of their ancestors.

And God has certainly not forgotten them. Why did God allow the Holocaust? To bring the Jews to repentance! God did not send Hitler, but in his love God allowed for the Holocaust to teach the Jews to not focus on worldly things, to understand that all their power and wealth could be instantly stolen from them. And God sent his Christians to hide the Jews, risking their own lives with no personal benefit from the purity of selfless Christian charity. Does this not demonstrate God’s provision for his ancient people? And yet the Jews responded with even greater hatred against Europeans and Christians, pouring out their wrath on the Germans for slaughtering them, while forgetting the Germans who saved them and suffered with them. The heroes and villains of Nazi Germany are conflated into a singular German menace that must be excised like a cancer.

Likewise, many Jews seemingly have no gratitude for the American and British soldiers who liberated them. They actively work to destroy our countries to punish us for the sins of other nations. They believe that mass immigration and diversity are the keys to weakening White Christian America so that a Holocaust can never happen again. Even though it was White Christian America that fought against the Nazis and allowed Jews to immigrate here.

This ingratitude and scorn are closely related to what Jesus meant by the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. When God works His providence and love, one is unable to recognize it and responds with even more hatred. If you do not recognize the Spirit when He acts in your life, and if you consider Him to be something malicious, then there is no possibility of repentance. [Mark 3.30]

So there is very little hope for the mass repentance of the Jews, I think. If something as catastrophic as the Holocaust could not cure them of their carnality and worldliness, then I do not think anything can. But it shows that God still has faith in the Jews, regardless of their own faithlessness. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.” [2 Timothy 2.13]

Finally, the Jews’ hatred of Christ and his Church is itself a testimony of Christ. That they have such a burning hatred for Christians shows their jealousy. They do not share this hatred for Mohammedans and Buddhists. They do not blaspheme Shiva and Zeus. Even in their rejection of Christ, they continue confessing his relevance and the existential pain they feel over Him. And so in a very real sense, the Jews remain the special people set apart by the ancient covenant. The Jehovah of the Old Testament and his manifestation as the Son of God is imprinted on their souls, and they bear witness to him through their continuous deicide.

— Augustine (Austin) Martin

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