Debunking "Talmud" Antisemitic Lies
A few months ago, I tasked myself with researching this infamous "Talmud" booklet that kept cropping up online all the time, especially in antisemitic circles. The subject has been brought up a few times in OtherBarak's Discord server as well.
Whenever someone asks a question about it, I simply give them the pre-written PDF instead of explaining everything from scratch. Like the PDF, the goal of this article is to act as a reliable information capsule which can be shared online and across social media, and to debunk the blood libel associated with the book, propagated most often in Nazi, Neo-Nazi, Propally (Islamist), and Alt-Right groups, as far as I can tell. Notable examples include propagandist Candace Owens, who accused Jewish activist Ben Shapiro of reading the Talmud, and "knowing what 'this Talmud' contains."
According to them, en bref, the "Talmud" is a dogmatic text which, supposedly, all Jews follow down to the last letter, and it allegedly contains "morally reprehensible" teachings about vitriol, hatred, and crime justification. Per their words, it "undeniably proves" that Judaism is inherently a malicious religion seeking to impose itself onto others.
I will cite the finished PDF on the subject, and provide additional details where I believe they are necessary.
The Talmud Schism (The Library vs. The Caricature)
The Truth: Ben Shapiro and actual Jews refer to a 1,500-year-old Library of Legal Debate. It is the ultimate anti-dogma book because it documents disagreement as a sacred act.
The Fabrication: Candace Owens and other "Useful Idiots" refer to a 19th-century German Hate-Fiction authored by the fraud August Rohling. This version is a "semantic trap" that mistranslates theoretical civil law into commands for criminal behavior.
The Link: This propaganda didn't stay in Germany; it was industrially translated and exported by the Nazis and later adopted by Soviet and Islamist regimes. This explains why an American influencer, a Russian bot, and a Qatari news outlet all use the exact same talking points.
Like the quote above states, the Talmud is a Medieval library of rabbinical legal debates. It is nothing but a collection of various thoughts written down by Jewish rabbis during the Middle Ages. Similarly to other such books, the goal is not indoctrination, but to archive historical texts about the various debates people used to have at the time.
Recorded debates are, by definition, not religious texts, and should not be treated as such. They are thoughts, and readers can interpret them however they want. As I have mentioned before online, most Jews have never even read it, and those who have read it do not necessarily subscribe to its contents.
The most important point to make is that the original, untranslated Talmud does not even contain the supposed "morally reprehensible" teachings that so many people clutch their pearls about. The parties responsible for this particular antisemitic blood libel are primarily propagandists from Nazi Germany, i.e. fraudster August Rohling writing a deeply mistranslated version called "Der Talmudjude" in German, later adopted by Hitler and his Nazi followers to commit genocide against Jews last century.
Soviet Russia & Islamist regimes are not innocent either because of their joint effort to eradicate Jews, which has led to the production of the propaganda book known as "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion" among many other atrocities across the 20th and 21st century.
The Slavery Equation
Below is the definitive debunking using basic arithmetic – the one thing antisemites fear most.
The Ownership Ratio: ~98.5% Christian European vs. ~1.5% Jewish.
The Demographic Test: Those 1.5% of traders represent only 0.12% of the Western Jewish merchant class and a staggering 0.012% of the global Jewish population.
The Conclusion: Claiming "Jews ran the slave trade" is like claiming a man with one penny "runs the global economy." It is a mathematical hallucination.
Part of the propaganda surrounding the infamous Talmud is the alleged "significant participation" of Jews in historical slave trades. However, reputable sources I have linked in the PDF, and will link down below as well, have cited real historical data, confirming that roughly 98.5% of slave owners were Christian European, and only about 1.5% were Jewish. And those 1.5% of Jews represent only 0.12% of the Western Jewish merchant class alone, and a mere 0.012% of the global Jewish population.
Following basic arithmetical logic, the conclusion is that 99.988% of Jews never had any sort of participation in slave trade. The antisemitic claim becomes mathematically laughable when you do the calculations. You cannot condemn an entire group of people for the actions of a few isolated individuals. It's a complete slap in the face of justice, and incredibly racist.
To provide a different analogy for the sake of argument, this is like positing that one or two Spanish criminals makes all Spaniards criminals, even if 99.9% of Spaniards don't engage in criminal activity, ever.
Does the Talmud actually contain the nefarious things Rohling claimed?
No.
The Reality: The Talmud discusses theoretical legal scenarios from 1500+ years ago (e.g., property laws, damages, interactions with pagans in ancient Babylon).
The Lie: Rohling (and modern antisemites) take a line discussing, for example, "Is a Jew liable if their ox gores* a pagan's ox?" and rewrite it to claim: "The Talmud commands Jews to steal from non-Jews."
The Verdict: The specific accusations (ritual murder, commanding theft, killing Christians) are fabrications. They do not exist in the text.
* Vocabulary | v. gores (inf. to gore) - pierce or stab a person or other animal with a horn or tusk.
Propagandists often use a manipulative tactic where they purposefully omit the context of this scenario. First, the fact this question is nothing more than a theoretical legal debate is completely gone in their rhetoric. Secondly, regardless of what the original text even explores, crucial data is completely removed or even rewritten to support a fabricated conclusion - that the Talmud encourages Jews to steal from non-Jews.
In terms of logic, several logical fallacies work in tandem to construct this narrative. The Strawman Fallacy is the primary driver, where a non-existing statement is being criticized by antisemites. The debate seeks to argue whether a Jew would be liable if their ox killed a pagan's ox. The strawman, which represents the false caricature of this question, posits that Jews justify and endorse theft from non-Jews.
The second logical fallacy at work is Uncharitable Interpretation. In debating, there is a principle where one must assume the most charitable interpretation of the argument or statement their opponent is making. Jumping to the conclusion that Jews encourage theft, when the original question was about a hypothetical scenario where an animal belonging to a Jew kills another animal belonging to a pagan, is textbook uncharitable interpretation. The worst assumption is made for the sake of confirming antisemitic biases.
Not to mention that some of the accusations are straight-up lies. There is nothing about ritual murder, commanding theft, nor killing Christians in the original Talmud. This is pure disinformation.
Why are English and Arabic speakers quoting a 19th-century German book?
They aren't reading the original German. They are reading the propagated translations.
The Pipeline: Rohling’s lies in "Der Talmudjude" were adopted by the Nazis. The Nazis poured resources into translating these lies into Arabic (to ally with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem against the British/Jews) and English (via fascist sympathizers).
The "Protocols" Connection: Rohling's specific lies were woven into "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (a Russian forgery). The Protocols is a bestseller in the Arab world and widely available in English.
The Verdict: They are quoting the ideas of Rohling which were laundered through Nazi and Islamist propaganda networks into their native languages.
This is the simplest one to explain. The events outlined in the quote above are quite literally what led to the Red-Green-Brown alliance - the unholy alliance between Communists, Islamists, and National Socialists (Nazis).
"Der Talmudjude" was already full of libel. Add even more mistranslations into Arabic and English, two of the most spoken languages in the entire world, and you have concocted a complete recipe for disaster.
This is exactly why you are seeing propally death cultists in the same room as Communists, Islamists, and Nazis. The most ironic part is that all of these disgusting ideologies oppose each other rather violently. Mosab Hassan Yousef, known as The Green Prince, described it as a "very ugly orgy," and I believe that this summarizes our current geopolitical climate rather astutely.
Antisemites will grab onto anything that validates their particular agenda. The truth is completely different. The Talmud? Nothing more than a debate archive, just like all other historical archives. "Der Talmudjude"? A twisted and mistranslated version which acted as fuel for Nazi antisemitism. "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"? A Russian forgery available in Arabic and English which propagates antisemitic lies all over the world.
It is quite the convoluted endeavor, but none of these malicious actors accounted for people like us who care about the real data.
Citations
Black Jewish Alliance (2021): Debunking the Myth of Jewish Involvement in the Slave Trade. [Link]
Joseph Phelan (2023): The Jewish ‘monopoly’ of the slave trade in the early Middle Ages: the origins of an enduring historical motif, Patterns of Prejudice, 57:3, 161-174, DOI: 10.1080/0031322X.2023.2287871 [Link] [Link]
The Jerusalem Post (2025): Candace Owens urges audience read antisemitic book, asserts Jews controlled slave trade. [Link]
Bernard Lewis, Commentary Magazine (1986): The Arab World Discovers Anti-Semitism. [Link]
Jeffrey Herf, Central European History (2009): Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims during World War II and the Holocaust: Old Themes, New Archival Findings, 42(4), 709-736. [Link]
Sufian M'Barki
serious politics analysis journalism antisemitism
Loading witnesses...