Regardless of whether Jesus condemned usury or not, I think Grim has stumbled across an important distinction here. Were (and, perhaps, are) Jews the victims of massacres, pogroms and discrimination because they were 'Christ Killers' or because they were 'Shylocks'?

Certainly in most accounts of the causes of the Holocaust, the Shylock explanation is accepted. A look at the anti-Jewish propaganda that existed at the time shows Shylock types, rather than Jews killing Christ. Thus I would say that the hatred of Jews was, as is often asserted, based more on their apparent prosperity while the rest of Germany floundered than on their religion and history.

As for earlier attacks, I am sure both factors had their part in motivating the attackers. The thing is, the European Jews have always been 'different' but visible. Arabs, Mongols, Huns, Turks, Moors - they have always been 'over there'. Jews have always been part of society but still detached, making them useful scapegoats whenever something goes wrong.

Dear David f,
>>distinction that I don't find important when you differentiate anti-semitism from anti-Judaism<<
I think that somehow relates to your position that you explained in another thread: Although e.g. a German who converts to Islam is still a German, a Jew who becomes an atheist is still a Jew, if the Jew becomes baptised he/she looses his/her Jewish ethnicity whatever else he/she might claim.

>>The Catholic Church signed a concordat with Hitler. The Christian churches in Germany with few exceptions supported the Nazis.<<
Again, true only to a point: The Concordat was signed in 1930 and in spite of that in 1940 Einstein felt compelled to write in the TIMES: “I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."

You certainly are more familiar than I with the situation in Lithuania of 1940-1944, and I am afraid your shocking story is not an isolated case. I knew only a few Australian Lithuanians, political refugees, anti-Communists, who remembered the Soviet occupation (when hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians perished or were deported to Siberia). They blamed the Jews for collaboration with the Soviet oppressors.

I do not have personal experience of this but it could partly explains why some Lithuanian Christians partook - passively, but sometimes also actively - in Nazi atrocities. So without wanting to doubt your story, I would find it more typical that such an unworthy priest would see the Jews being “called to account” not for the “killing of Christ” but for their (alleged) collaboration with the Soviet occupiers; not that this would exonerate the priest.

There are Christians who blame Jews for all sorts of things and there are Jews who blame Christians for all sorts of things. And there are those, like myself, who think there is more that (religious) Jews and Christians have in common than what separates them.

Dear George,

You wrote citing me: Although e.g. a German who converts to Islam is still a German, a Jew who becomes an atheist is still a Jew, if the Jew becomes baptised he/she looses his/her Jewish ethnicity whatever else he/she might claim.

We were discussing Lustiger when I wrote it. It depends on who is doing the defining. To me he would no longer be a Jew. To Hitler he still would be a Jew.

Most Jews in Eishyshok were at odds with the Soviet occupiers. Most of the local communists who had fled to Russia before the Soviet occupation and wanted to come back were denied on the basis that they should consider all Russia as their homeland not merely Eishyshok so they were sent to Siberia. This saved their lives. Rabbi Szymen Rozowski was thrown out of his house as were the more affluent Jews. This outraged the Jews who were mostly religious. Some of the well-to-do were deported to Siberia so their lives were also saved.

You also wrote: “. And there are those, like myself, who think there is more that (religious) Jews and Christians have in common than what separates them.”

I agree and disagree with you. Religious Jews and Christians have more in common in the patterns of their lives. However, they are more likely to be personally at odds since the belief systems conflict. Christianity centres on Jesus. To a religious Jew to centre a religion on a man or man-like figure is simply blasphemy. Religious Jews regard that as a denial of monotheism.

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Non-religious Jews and Christians might agree on that. A neighbour who said that might offend religious people.

Paul O’Shea in “A Cross too Heavy: Eugenio Pacelli” condemns the pope for his silence, but recognises at the same time there was nothing in his experience, education or personality that equipped him to cope with the Nazi reality.

david f
Real stories!
When I went to primary school, the religious teacher, said us that every sunday we have to go to church (compulsary) and asked us to buy special clothes for the church.
My mother bought for me clothes but the cheap one as we was poor!
When the teacher saw my clothes she was very angry and pul with power my shirt and cut it in two pieces!
I returned home crying. It was my first contact with the Cristian world!
The priest of my vilage was my father's friend, they like to drink RAKI, a Greek alkohol and eat sublaki.
On the last Friday before the eastern no one made sublaki or eat meat. The priest and my father brought meat at my home and asked my mother, to make sublaki for them!
My mother was a religious person,her father and grandfather was priests and good humans and she did not like to make sublaki but my father pressed her!
As you understand my father and the priest was not religious persons.. I hated the priest as on sundays he call us not to eat meat and he ate at my home!

During the Junta in Greece, the Greek church had a special unit to hund and punish students who was not very religious persons. The clerics of this unit had the power to enter in exam centres, rooms and zero the tests of non religious students, They zero my exams for Greek universities.
8-9 years before the Greek church asked Greeks to sign a petition and press the government to write the religious on IDs! They wanted to know who is not Greek orthodox and discriminate against them, including non orthodox cristians. In Greece it is extremely difficult to build a catholic church and near imposible to biuld a mosque! According to Greek law they can build only if the Greek bishop give his permision!
As you can understand I am the most religious person in the world!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

Dear Antonios,

There was a Greek fellow in Brisbane who went to work in Sydney. When he came home to visit his mother kept after him to go to church with her, but he didn't want to go. Finally after much prodding he agreed to go. When they got to church he stopped in front of an icon and said in a loud voice, "Can't remember the name, but the face is familiar." After that she let him stay home.

I knew a Greek fellow who was the cultural attache in the London Greek Embassy. He regarded the adoption of Christianity as a great blow to Greek culture.

I like the Greek habit of giving children names like Socrates, Helen, Aristotle and other names predating Christianity, They did not erase the connection with the past as a lot of cultures did when they adopted a new religion. I talked with a Greek priest here in Brisbane about customs in classical Greece. He really seemed to know a lot about it.

I am under the impression that the Orthodox Church was a rallying point for Greeks when the country was under Turkish occupation.

I visited Greece and climbed some of the mountains. I was impressed by the fact there were small shrines in places of great beauty as though the religion included appreciation of nature. I also considered the simplicity of the graves and headstones in Greek cemeteries far more tasteful than the elaborate carvings in Italian cemeteries.

I thought putting a religious designation on IDs was partly a consideration of religious identity as tied up with national identity and not just to discriminate.

At least there is civil marriage in Greece. People cannot get married in Israel unless a clergyman approves.

As far as I am concerned I object to ethnic nationalism and favour separation of religion and state. I prefer the model of the United States in that regard where it is illegal for government money to aid religious schools and the word, God, or any reference to a particular religion is not in the US Constitution.

Philo,

Genetically, what is your understanding regards origins of the Jewish race? Syriac, Cannanite, other? Is it a race that has been persecuted or a caste? Six thousand years isn't long in biology.

O.