"My son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah (Old Testament)."

Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby, in Judaism on Trial, quotes Rabbi Yehiel ben Joseph:

"Further, without the Talmud, we would not be able to understand passages in the Bible...God has handed this authority to the sages and tradition is a necessity as well as scripture. The Sages also made enactments of their own...anyone who does not study the Talmud cannot understand Scripture."

The Talmud (and not the Scriptures) is the legal/canonical text which obligates those who follow the Jewish religion. It is from the Talmud that laws, regulations, and world views are drawn. In practice, the everyday life of the modern religious person is drawn and influenced by the Talmud.

Second century Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, one of Judaism’s very greatest rabbis and a creator of Kabbalah, sanctioned pedophilia -- permitting molestation of baby girls even younger than three! He proclaimed,

“A proselyte who is under the age of three years and a day is permitted to marry a priest.” [1]

Subsequent rabbis refer to ben Yohai’s endorsement of pedophilia as "halakah," or binding Jewish law. [2]

Has Rabbi ben Yohai, child rape advocate, been disowned by modern Jews? Hardly. Today, in ben Yohai’s hometown of Meron, Israel, tens of thousands of orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews gather annually for days and nights of singing and dancing in his memory.

References to pedophilia abound in the Talmud. They occupy considerable sections of Treatises Kethuboth and Yebamoth and are enthusiastically endorsed by the Talmud’s definitive legal work, Treatise Sanhedrin.

The Pharisees Endorsed Child Sex

The rabbis of the Talmud are notorious for their legal hairsplitting, and quibbling debates. But they share rare agreement about their right to molest three year old girls. In contrast to many hotly debated issues, hardly a hint of dissent rises against the prevailing opinion (expressed in many clear passages) that pedophilia is not only normal but scriptural as well! It’s as if the rabbis have found an exalted truth whose majesty silences debate.

Because the Talmudic authorities who sanction pedophilia are so renowned, and because pedophilia as “halakah” is so explicitly emphasized, not even the translators of the Soncino edition of the Talmud (1936) dared insert a footnote suggesting the slightest criticism. They only comment: “Marriage, of course, was then at a far earlier age than now.” [3]

In fact, footnote 5 to Sanhedrin 60b rejects the right of a Talmudic rabbi to disagree with ben Yohai's endorsement of pedophilia:

"How could they [the rabbis], contrary to the opinion of R. Simeon ben Yohai, which has scriptural support, forbid the marriage of the young proselyte?" [4]

Out of Babylon

It was in Babylon after the exile under Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC that Judaism's leading sages probably began to indulge in pedophilia. Babylon was the staggeringly immoral capitol of the ancient world. For 1600 years, the world’s largest population of Jews flourished within it.

As an example of their evil, Babylonian priests said a man's religious duty included regular sex with temple prostitutes. Bestiality was widely tolerated. So Babylonians hardly cared whether a rabbi married a three year old girl.

But with expulsion of the Jews in the 11th century AD, mostly to western Christian lands, Gentile tolerance of Jewish pedophilia abruptly ended.

Still, a shocking contradiction lingers: If Jews want to revere the transcendent wisdom and moral guidance of the Pharisees and their Talmud, they must accept the right of their greatest ancient sages to violate children. To this hour, no synod of Judaism has repudiated their vile practice.

Sex with a “Minor” Permitted

What exactly did these sages say?

The Pharisees justified child rape by explaining that a boy of nine years was not a “man” Thus they exempted him from YEHOVAH God’s Mosaic Law:

“You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination” (Leviticus. 18:22)

One passage in the Talmud gives permission for a woman who molested her young son to marry a high priest. It concludes,

“All agree that the (sexual) connection of a boy aged nine years and a day is a real connection; whilst that of one less than eight years is not." [5]

Because a boy under 9 is sexually immature, he can't "throw guilt" on the active offender, morally or legally. [6]

"…the intercourse of a small boy is not regarded as a sexual act." [7]

The Talmud also says,

"A male aged nine years and a day who cohabits with his deceased brother's wife acquires her (as wife)." [8]

Clearly, the Talmud teaches that a woman is permitted to marry and have sex with a nine year old boy.

Sex at Three Years and One Day

In contrast to Simeon ben Yohai's dictum that sex with a little girl is permitted under the age of three years, the general teaching of the Talmud is that the rabbi must wait until a day after her third birthday. She could be taken in marriage simply by the act of rape.

[The Talmud says such three year and a day old girls are] "...fit for cohabitation...But all women children, that have not known man by lying with him, it must be concluded that Scripture speaks of one who is fit for cohabitation" (Footnote to Yebamoth 60b).

The example of Phineas, a priest, himself marrying an underage virgin of three years is considered by the Talmud as proof that such infants are "fit for cohabitation."

The Talmud teaches that an adult woman’s molestation of a nine year old boy is "not a sexual act" and cannot "throw guilt" upon her because the little boy is not truly a "man.” [9] But they use opposite logic to sanction rape of little girls aged three years and one day: Such infants they count as “women," sexually mature and fully responsible to comply with the requirements of marriage.

The Talmud footnotes 3 and 4 to Sanhedrin 55a clearly tell us when the rabbis considered a boy and girl sexually mature and thus ready for marriage. "At nine years a male attains sexual matureness…The sexual matureness of woman is reached at the age of three."

No Rights for Child Victims

The Pharisees were hardly ignorant of the trauma felt by molested children. To complicate redress, the Talmud says a rape victim must wait until she was of age before there would be any possibility of restitution. She must prove that she lived and would live as a devoted Jewess, and she must protest the loss of her virginity on the very hour she comes of age. “As soon as she was of age one hour and did not protest she cannot protest any more.” [10]

The Talmud defends these strict measures as necessary to forestall the possibility of a Gentile child bride rebelling against Judaism and spending the damages awarded to her as a heathen -- an unthinkable blasphemy! But the rights of the little girl were really of no great consequence, for,

"When a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl it is nothing, for when the girl is less than this (three years and a day) it is as if one put the finger into the eye."

The footnote says that as “tears come to the eye again and again, so does virginity come back to the little girl under three years.” [11]

In most cases, the Talmud affirms the innocence of male and female victims of pedophilia. Defenders of the Talmud claim this proves the Talmud's amazing moral advancement and benevolence toward children; they say it contrasts favorably with "primitive" societies where the child would have been stoned along with the adult perpetrator.

Actually, the rabbis, from self-protection, were intent on proving the innocence of both parties involved in pedophilia: the child, but more importantly, the pedophile. They stripped a little boy of his right to "throw guilt" on his assailant and demanded complicity in sex from a little girl. By thus providing no significant moral or legal recourse for the child, the Talmud clearly reveals whose side it is on: the raping rabbi.

Pedophilia Widespread

Child rape was practiced in the highest circles of Judaism. This is illustrated from Yebamoth. 60b:

"There was a certain town in the land of Israel the legitimacy of whose inhabitants was disputed, and Rabbi sent R. Romanos who conducted an inquiry and found in it the daughter of a proselyte who was under the age of three years and one day, and Rabbi declared her eligible to live with a priest."

The footnote says that she was “married to a priest” and the rabbi simply permitted her to live with her husband, thus upholding “halakah” as well as the dictum of Simeon ben Yohai,

“A proselyte who is under the age of three years and one day is permitted to marry a priest.” [12]

These child brides were expected to submit willingly to sex. Yebamoth 12b confirms that under eleven years and one day a little girl is not permitted to use a contraceptive but “must carry on her marital intercourse in the usual manner.”

In Sanhedrin 76b a blessing is given to the man who marries off his children before they reach the age of puberty, with a contrasting curse on anyone who waits longer. In fact, failure to have married off one’s daughter by the time she is 12-1/2, the Talmud says, is as bad as one who “returns a lost article to a Cuthean” (Gentile) -- a deed for which “the Lord will not spare him.” [13] This passage says:

“… it is meritorious to marry off one’s children whilst minors.”

The mind reels at the damage to the untold numbers of girls who were sexually abused within Judaism during the heyday of pedophilia. Such child abuse, definitely practiced in the second century, continued, at least in Babylon, for another 900 years.

A Fascination with Sex

Perusing the Talmud, one is overwhelmed with the recurrent preoccupation with sex, especially by the most eminent rabbis. Dozens of illustrations could be presented to illustrate the delight of the Pharisees to discuss sex and quibble over its minutest details.

The rabbis endorsing child sex undoubtedly practiced what they preached. Yet to this hour, their words are revered. Simeon ben Yohai is honored by Orthodox Jews as one of the very greatest sages and spiritual lights the world has ever known. A member of the earliest "Tannaim," rabbis most influential in creating the Talmud, he carries more authority to observant Jews than Moses.

Today, the Talmud’s outspoken pedophiles and child-rape advocates would doubtlessly spend hard time in prison for child molestation.

The Oedipus complex was the invention of Sigmund Freud!

Freud originally discovered, in the treatments partially conducted under hypnosis, that all his Jewish patients, both male and female, had been abused children and recounted their histories in the language of symptoms. After reporting his discovery in Jewish psychiatric circles, he found himself completely shunned because none of his fellow Jewish psychiatrists was prepared to share the findings with him. Freud could not bear the isolation for long. A few months later, in 1897, he described his patients’ reports on sexual abuse as sheer fantasies attributable to their instinctual wishes.

Freud’s father was a pedophile! In a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, he wrote:

“Unfortunately, my own father was one of these perverts and is responsible for the hysteria of my brother (all of whose symptoms are identifications) and those of several younger sisters. The frequency of this circumstance often makes me wonder.”

Fliess’s son, Robert Fliess exposed his own father as being another pedophile who had sexually abused him when he was a child.