In the last week I have encountered once anti-semitism and once fear of and confusion about different types of Jewish folk and their clothing in people who might have been able to know better as they were both teachers
In the first case,someone told me she didn’t like Zionists,ok.That is alright.We can choose our view.Did she mean she didn’t like them or their political beliefs though?
Then she said she used to drive into Manchester on a Saturday and used to see Jews,the men in their black hats etc, and she didn’t like them,was afraid thought she was inside her car,So in her mind she connected Zionism and Hasidic Jews.But quite a number of very religious orthodox Jews are not Zionists at all.
I can understand that in terms of humans and .animals are afraid of strangers….. but she jumped so quickly from one to the other it would be easy to begin to treat them differently.
After we talked about it she then changed and said she thought it was brave of them to wear those clothes.It was the dress of folk in Russia a t the time of savage pogroms
When I see the weird outfits that many folk go into town in I’d prefer a man who wore a black suit.Similarly many Muslim women look more elegant in their modest clothing.We are happy to see youngsters revealing their vulvas and butts to the world in their tight leggings and cropped tops… no doubt folk of other faiths might see them as demons.Ad I’d have to tell them they were prejudiced…
In the second case I was talking to a former Catholic who no longer believes nor goes to church.For some reason we got talking about Jews and she said very angrily
I”t was perfectly and completely obvious from the Bible that Jesus was the Messiah and they just would not accept him”
.I refrained from asking why she had rejected him in that case.But I did say that the Hebrew Bible was edited into our Old Testament by Christian writers to enhance those parts which pointed to the arrival of a Messiah.And that Jesus was him.
It’s not pure prejudice,it’s ignorance of the origins of Christianity as it is when people say,An eye for an eye is very savage
Excuse me, but when that was said it was 2,500 years ago and it was a big advance on killing people for an offence.It meant justice was best served by making the punishment fir the crime,as it were.Not killing people for lesser offences
Most people don’t have a chance or a place in which to talk about such things and so I don’t blame them completely but this ex Christian atheist attacking Jews for rejecting Christ struck me as very odd.I imagine she’s recalling what she leatned in her Catholic school 50 years ago and has never thought about it or read about it since…
So she’s not really an atheist at all,is she? Or mind is full of unthoughtout assumptions still at a childish level
I’d have thought it more rational to praise the Jewish religion for producing such people as Jesus,Moses,Jeremiah and …………………The psalms etc
My main ambition in early life was to become Daniel in the lion’s den but my gender and other factors have not allowed it so far.I am very disappointed.
