Re: But Christian attitudes towards Jews are themselves complex and contradictory: Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew, and yet, traditionally, His teachings supersede those of Judaism. Jesus lived amongst Jews, His message was shaped by Jews yet He was rejected by Jews and, it has been widely believed, died at the behest of Jews. So, for many Christians, Jews are both the people of God and the people who rejected God, and are objects of both great veneration and great loathing. This ambivalence is reflected in the secular world too where Jews are widely admired for their history and traditions and for their creativity and success yet are also held in some suspicion and dislike for their exclusivity and supposed feelings of 'specialness'.
On America's Dirty Little Secret --or the Jesus Freaks' Anti-Judaism:
...ancient animosity toward Jews, Fredrickson states, is often misunderstood. "Anti-Judaism was endemic to Christianity from the beginning," he writes, while adding that since Christianity's founders "were themselves Jews, it would have been difficult for early Christians to claim that there was something inherently defective about Jewish blood or ancestry."
On the contrary, St. Augustine and other early church fathers held "conversion of the Jews" to be "a Christian duty." That meant "the great hereditary sin" was not indelible difference: "Anti-Judaism became anti-Semitism whenever it turned into a consuming hatred that made getting rid of Jews seem preferable to trying to convert them, and anti-Semitism became racism when the belief took hold that Jews were intrinsically and organically evil rather than merely having false beliefs... . "
Excerpted from:
philly.com |
