Muslims, Jews petition to remove statue of St. Louis’ crusader namesake
St. Louis is named after King Louis IX, the only French King to be canonized by the Catholic Church, who is considered by the church to be a model Christian monarch.
King Louis IX was also a notorious antisemite. He oversaw one of the infamous medieval disputations, in which rabbis were forced to debate with Christians the merits of Judaism, and the subsequent burning of 12,000 copies of the Talmud in 1243. He required Jews to wear badges so they can be easily identified, and he outlawed banking, which led to the expulsion of many Jews from France and the confiscation of their property.
The funds that Louis IX confiscated went towards his two crusades, in 1248 and 1270, to fight Islamic kingdoms for control over the Land of Israel.
Louis IX is honored with the entire city of St. Louis being named after him, as well as a statue in Forest Park, the city's major park, atop Art Hill overlooking the city. Umar Lee and Moji Sidiqi, of Muslims for a Greater St. Louis, together with Israeli-American restauranteur Ben Poremba want to change that and have launched a petition.
"For those unfamiliar with King Louis IX,” the petition calling to change St. Louis’ name reads, “he was a rabid antisemite who spearheaded many persecutions against the Jewish people. Centuries later, Nazi Germany gained inspiration and ideas from Louis IX as they embarked on a campaign of murderous genocide against the Jewish people. Louis IX was also vehemently Islamophobic and led a murderous crusade against Muslims which ultimately cost him his life.”
Having read E. Michael Jones "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit", an historical overview of Jewish involvement in revolutionary movements, I thought I'd look back at what he had to say about this notorious and rabid antisemite. Before I do, I'd like to say that in this post, I'm only addressing the Jewish and not the Muslim complaints. It's made clear in the article that the Muslim involvement came as a consequence of Jewish activism. To quote:The petition calls the city’s name “outright disrespect” to its Jewish and Muslim communities.
Lee told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that he became aware of the statue’s history when Rabbi Hershey Novack of the Chabad on Campus at St. Louis' Washington University held a Tisha B'Av gathering by the Louis IX statue to remember the atrocities he wrought on Jews of France.As mentioned earlier, Lee is a member of Muslims for a Greater St. Louis. It's not surprising to see that Chabad-Lubavitch is busy stirring up trouble. So what did King Louis IX get up to concerning the Jews of France? Here is an excerpt from E. Michael Jones' book:
It took a while for the Church to digest what it had learned about the Talmud, but Pope Gregory's letter to the bishop of Paris indicated "the attack on the Talmud heralded a change in the Church's basic attitude toward Judaism." Three years later, Bishop Eudes's legantine commission reported that the Talmud was "full of innumerable errors, abuses, blasphemies and wickedness such as arouse shame in those that speak of them and horrify the hearer."
The books were so horrifying that they "cannot be tolerated in the name of God without injury to the Christian Faith."'74 In a letter to St. Louis IX, King of France, in May 1244, Innocent IV, Gregory's successor, drew certain conclusions. "The wicked perfidy of the Jews," he said, "does not properly heed the fact that Christian piety received them and patiently allows them to live in Christendom through pity only. Instead, it commits such grave sins that are stupefying to those who hear of them and horrible to those who tell of them.'' The Talmud's blasphemies and its injunctions about defrauding the unsuspecting goyim threatened the conditions under which Jews were tolerated. They called for rethinking the whole social compact.
Upset by the harm that it was doing, St. Louis called a conference on the Talmud. In June 1240, Nicholas Donin had an extended debate with Rabbi Yehiel ben Joseph of Paris under royal auspices and presided over by the queen mother, Blanche of Castile. One Jewish commentator claims "the entire event epitomized the declining status of Jews in that century and their transformation in Christian minds into little more than embodiments of blasphemous doctrine.''
The rabbi was dumbfounded that he had to defend Jewish esoteric writings in a hostile environment. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Rabbi Yehiel, lacking any precedent for conducting a disputation of this sort, didn't know how to respond. When asked whether it were true that the Talmud claimed "Jesus was condemned to an eternity in hell, immersed in 'boiling excrement'" and Mary, his mother, was a whore, the Rabbi could only respond, yes, those passages were in the Talmud, but they did not refer to "that" Jesus or "that" Mary. "
Not every Louis born in France is the king of France," Yehiel maintained, giving new meaning to the term "chutzpah." "Has it not happened," he continued, "that two men were born in the same city, had the same name, and died in the same manner? There are many such cases.'' One Jewish historian referred to Rabbi Yehiel's denial as the birth of Jewish humor.
It was only in the 13th century, when Jewish rabbis who had converted to Christianity spread the word, that the Catholic Church came to know about the hateful contents of the Talmud. Naturally, the Catholic hierarchy was upset and so the burning of the Talmud has to be seen in that light. Of course, there's no mention of this historical context nor of the Talmudic content that caused such offence to the Catholic Church.A Christian account of the debate, however, failed to see the humor in his statement. "Concerning this Jesus, he confessed that he was born out of adultery and that he is punished in hell in boiling excrement and that he lived at the time of Titus." But Rabbi Yehiel said, "this Jesus is different from our Jesus. However, he is unable to say who he was, whence it is clear that he lied."
Chabad-Lubavitch, the organisation to which Rabbi Hershey Novack belongs, is unapologetic in its belief that Jews are superior to the rest of humanity (referred to as goyim) and that the highest purpose in life that a goy can aspire to is to serve the Jews. A belief in Jewish Supremicism is central. It's ironic that a member of Chabad-Lubavitch should be criticising Louis IX when this organisation wholeheartedly embraces the spirit of the Talmud and its utter disdain for the goyim. Then again its members have no shame. Their self-professed goal is to rule the world by any means possible and fomenting social unrest is a key tactic.
