Schadenfreude II - More on Anti-Semitism

Schadenfreude – Part II Parshat Balak

I always intuitively felt that the mindset or hashkafa of the Anti-Smite was predicated on Schadenfreude. It both surprised me and pleased me to find evidence for this in the previously posted web site:

http://www.answers.com/topic/schadenfreude

It surprised me to find that my intuitive guess re" Anti-Semitism had been documented about AH [Yimach Shmo] himseff. So I found my suspicion confirmed in one of History's most outstanding Anti-Semites. To wit:

In popular culture

• In his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer described Adolf Hitler's sense of humor as almost entirely based upon schadenfreude. Some examples were mean-spirited jokes played on ministers such as Joachim von Ribbentrop, many initiated by Hitler or his friends.
  

Now the connexion between Schadenfreude and Anti-Semitism seems to have a serious nexus in the most heinous anti-Semite since Haman. True, it could be chalked up to co-incidence, but I think this character flaw goes to the core of the mind-set of the typical Anti-Semite and dovetails well [see Schadenfreude I] with the characterization of Balak as:

• out to Curse Israel with Downfall
  rather
• than to Bless His Own Nation [Mo'ab] with Success.
  

It is fair to say that not all those who engage in Schadenfreude are or will become Anti-Semites. It is also possible to say that Anti-Semitism is further down the continuum of the Schadenfreude-oriented persona, or iow Schadenfreude is a typical - if not necessary - prerequisite or component of the prototypical Anti-Semite.

KT,
RRW