Dear David f,

I agree with you - Shakespeare probably didn't
know any Jews. He was born 1564 and died 1616.
However we need to remember that in Shakespeare's
time, both the church and the state considered
moneylending at high interest a crime. Shylock
was thus a natural object of scorn. On the surface,
Shakespeare's views of Shylock reflected the
attitudes of the day. But as you point out - the
dramatist treated the moneylender as a very human
and even sympathetic person - by providing him
with an eloquent statement of how it feels to be
part of a harshly treated minority. "If you prick
us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not
laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you
wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

This balances Portia's speech beautifully:

"The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown
His scepter shows the force of temporal power
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself'
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice..."

The first followers of Christ were Jews and had their lives threatened by the Jewish Zealots. The Jew Saul of Tarsus was recognised for seizing Christ followeres and having them put to death on religious grounds. Saul (a Jewish name) after his conversion was identified as Paul (a Gentile name) on his missionary journeys into Gentile provinces.

His primary persecuters were probably among his former Jewish zealot friends; who finally took a case to Rome and had Paul tried and put to death on religious grounds. Paul was in his early life a cohort of or murderer of Christians - eg. Stephen. A read of Foxes Book of Martyrs identifies Christians as not retaliating against their persecuters as they wanted to die upholding the surrender attitude of their Lord - and allowed false accusation to be made against them.

Dear davidf ,

When you make statements such as;

“Hitler was a Christian who used the hate inspired by hundreds of centuries of Christian bigotry to order the Holocaust which was applied Christianity.”

You are not telling the whole story by any means. Part of the tale has to be that your lot bred like crazy in Eastern Europe especially in the Russian Pale of Settlement “whose Jewish population rose from 1.6 million in 1820 to 4 million in 1880 and some 5.6 million by 1910.” This was twice the rate of the rest of the world.

Marrying and having children early along with religious laws of hygiene played their parts in the size and survivability of Jewish families but still the numbers put serious downward pressure on living standards. The great migration of nearly a third of the Jews of the region between 1881 and 1914 to the west created dire problems even in established Jewish communities often because of cultural differences of the immigrants. In Britain by 1914 the newcomers had outnumbered the native Jews by five to one. In the US the Jewish population went from one million in 1900 to 2.3 million by 1914.

I suppose we should reflect on what issues would arise or be heighten if our 200,000 strong Lebanese community was bolstered by an extra one million immigrants with few English skills in a little over a decade. Throw in an economic meltdown and a far superior orator than Pauline and who knows what insanity our own country might be capable of.

Therefore davidf I am not seeking to downplay the role of Christianity in the Holocaust since I have used that line of argument myself. The planes that bombed the ghettos, the trucks that transported Jews to the camps, even the medals that hung around the necks of the bravest German soldiers, all advertised the cross.

Rather I am with respect making the point that you are in danger of directing the same stereotyping and sweeping generalisations toward Christianity that you would condemn them of directing at Jews.

Dear David f,
>>For some reason it is important to make myself understood to you.<<
I appreciate this. I am aware that the Catholic position is unacceptable to you. Without wanting to get into theological disputes - where, as I wrote before, I am anything but an expert - Christians, including Catholics, view Jews as their older brothers, the common “father“ being Judaism of the times before Jesus (or Paul, if you like).

Both the older and the younger brothers see themselves as their father’s sole heirs, as a natural continuation, (accomplishment if you like), of ancient Judaism. (Something similar to Catholics and Protestants who both see themselves as the natural continuation of pre-Reformation Christianity, not of each other. Bifurcations happen in cultural, not only biological, evolution.) This mutual exclusiveness of their positions can lead to theological conflicts (and worse) as in the past, or to a theological dialogue acknowledging and respecting the differences, including the basic one that Martin Buber expressed so eloquently.

I can hear and respect your sentiments, however I do not think calling an Archbishop (or a Chief Rabbi for that matter) bigoted just because he expressed and defended the other side‘s position, is very helpful for this dialogue that - let me repeat - should better be left to theologians from both sides.

csteele wrote: "Rather I am with respect making the point that you are in danger of directing the same stereotyping and sweeping generalisations toward Christianity that you would condemn them of directing at Jews."

He objected to my statement: “Hitler was a Christian who used the hate inspired by hundreds of centuries of Christian bigotry to order the Holocaust which was applied Christianity.”

To call the Holocaust 'applied Christianity' is inflammatory, and I apologise for it. It was unnecessary and a sweeping generalisation. The Nazis also wiped out the Gypsies whose religion had nothing to do with the Nazi genocide directed toward them. However, regarding Jews, the Nazis built on the existing Jew hatred promoted by Christianity.

The downward trend in living standards in eastern Europe was caused to a large extent by policies of the Russian government. I have been doing research into my family history. I think my great-grandfather was a farm boy as a child in southern Lithuania which was then part of czarist Russia. However, his father was driven off his farm by the Russian government which gave his land to freed serfs. Jews were not only expelled from their farms. They were also expelled from their villages leaving them homeless. The avowed czarist policy was to get rid of their Jewish population by "one-third converted to Russian Orthodoxy, one-third exterminated and one-third emigrating." The main impetus for the Jewish emigrations from 1881 to 1914 was not the birthrate but the pogroms orchestrated by the Russian government, the first in Kishinev in 1881 and the desperation of people robbed of a chance for a decent livelihood also by government action.

Csteele’s statement,‘your lot bred like crazy’, is a bit of inflammatory language. However, people living in poverty do have more children in the hope that some of them will survive and care for them in their old age. That is what is happening in the underdeveloped world today. It is still going on. Israelis are in general more prosperous than the Palestinians, and the Palestinians have a much higher birthrate.

Dear George,

You wrote: I can hear and respect your sentiments, however I do not think calling an Archbishop (or a Chief Rabbi for that matter) bigoted just because he expressed and defended the other side‘s position, is very helpful for this dialogue that - let me repeat - should better be left to theologians from both sides.

You have lost me here. I called Lustiger a bigot. I did not call him a bigot because he defended the Jewish position. He did not.

In Sydney Anglican Archbishop Jensen heads the Archdiocese. He has referred to non-Christian religions as 'tools of Satan.' Jensen is both a theologian and a cleric in an important ecclesiastical role. However, he is still a bigot.

The spiritual head of Shas Party in Israel, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, has called Palestinians 'snakes'. He is also a theologian and a bigot.

When someone makes a bigoted remark or expresses a bigoted attitude I really don't care if he is a theologian.