Ben Hur

Whether it was known or not during filming, whether The Academy knew it or not when bestowing the production with no less than eleven Oscars, and whether viewers and critics at the release and ever since knew it or not, the pivotal scene in Ben Hur,i the acme of Hollywood’s Jew-powered Golden Age, was when Judah Ben-Hurii prevented Quintus Arriusiii from committing seppuku after the ship under Quintus’ command was sunk by the marauding enemy and it seemed as though all was lost for the Roman naval fleet facing the Macedonian infidels. On a makeshift raft of sea battle debris, marooned, they watched the ship sink :

Quintus Arrius: Why did you save me?
Judah Ben-Hur: Why did you have me unchained? [they struggle briefly, Arrius is overpowered; he looks at the shackle on Judah’s ankle]

Quintus Arrius: What is your name, Forty-One?
Judah Ben-Hur: Judah Ben-Hur.

Quintus Arrius: Judah Ben-Hur. Let me die.
Judah Ben-Hur: We keep you alive to serve this ship. Row well, and live.iv

It’s quite the stereotypically Jewish moment really. Life is always worth living. Life is always worth preserving. Life is everything. To life! Not to health, do Jews toast one another, but to life. L’chaim!

~ To life, to life, l’chaim! L’chaim, l’chaim, to life! ~

L’chaim. Not sante. Not salud. Not to prosperity or benefit or joy or anything like that. But to life.v We don’t know why we toast to life. We don’t care why. This is an article of faith.vi That Jewish flesh is evidently – not theoretically and not “because reasons” – too weak to massacre its enemies, quite in spite of and very much contrary to what the bitches in the West Bank will tell you via their mouthpieces at the Red Cross, is widely known and hasn’t been otherwise for millennia, at least since the Maccabees.

Unfortunately for this approach, life isn’t always worth living and there is such a thing as an honourable death, particularly at one’s own hand after a military defeat. It’s a mark of honour, of dignity, and of a cultivated respect for winning.vii In fact, this stiff upper lip is the very opposite of Judaism (and by extension Christianity) with its absurd pretenses to the meek inheriting the Earth,viii a juxtaposition that’s ever so poetic given that Ben-Hur comes into direct contact with Jesus Christ just as the soi-disant Son of God is coming of age.

And yet, for all the enraging stupidity of Jewish frailty – what with its essentially feminine viewpointix that all life is worth infinity-plus-one dollars no matter how mutilated and mangled – it’s this exact sort of stupidity that breeds not only an infectious brand of optimism,x but one that also attracts the sine qua non clockwork cleansings that beat the statistically useless flesh of both oppressor and oppressed into a tighter form, one useable and productive. Far moreso than any allegiance to a single divinity or a single land, the enduring perseverance of the Jewish people – as well as the lion’s share of human flourishing everywhere west of the Near East these last six millennia – can be attributed to Jews acting as lightning rod for otherwise pent-up frustrations, angers, and the supreme burden that is man’s post-Fall conscience.

With this in mind, can it be any wonder that the Jews so staunchly defends the less fortunate ? It’s out of a loving place, really, those Untermenschen are hogging all the attention!!!1 If only we’d all return to business as usual (ie. Jew-hating par excellence), then all would be right with the world. That anyone would dare to tease, trash or trivialise amputees, n*ggars, lardos, wimminz, or midgets is a grotesque waste of time and everyone’s energy, not to mention an affront to the Jewish sensibility that The Chosen People should be the centre of the world’s attention ; specifically, that no one should be more hated (ie. admired and envied as per the overactive Jewish imagination) than the Jews.

Jews know that it’s only through their self-sacrifice that humankind thrives, as Quintus Arrius remarked to Judah Ben-Hur (aka forty-one), just before the men saved each other’s lives :

Your eyes are full of hate, forty-one. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.

So do us all a favour and covet thy neighbour, covet his wife, stack that cheddar, and hate, hate, hate.

Aaaaaaaamen.

___ ___ ___

  1. 1959, directed by William Wyler and produced by Sam Zimbalist, Sol C. Siegel, and Joseph Vogel.
  2. Played by Charlton Heston.
  3. Played by Jack Hawkins.
  4. In case you still haven’t seen the film, this is a sarcastic play on an earlier line that Quintus delivered to the slave rowers chained to their oars in the galleys beneath his warship, including Ben-Hur :

    Quintus Arrius: Now listen to me, all of you. You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live.

    Though you have to hate how it actually all works out for Quintis : he goes home to Rome the hero. All because he lived.

  5. Interestingly, Armenians, the proverbial Jews of the Caucasus, also toast to life. Coincidence ?
  6. At best, it’s draped in the entirely faux and entirely baseless shroud of “morality,” as if such a thing could ever me more than an ex post facto rationalisation for why you did or didn’t have the stomach, the resolve, or the constitution to act. See the end of slavery, the beginning of monogamy, etc. for historical examples.
  7. USGavin should be so honourable.
  8. Although the Hebrew word anav is better translated as “humble” rather than “meek,” that wouldn’t fit very well with the party line anymore than the more proper “young girl” would fit instead of the Egyptian mimicing “virgin.” The Sun God Ra was also born of a virgin, you know.
  9. Judaism is matrilineal after all.
  10. A +1 Confidence Amulet against the cruel reality of the world though Optimism is, plus-one is plus-one is plus-one.

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