Anti-Semitism

Dear Readers,

I just read this article,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1180599/Neo-Nazis-attack-concentration-camp-survivors-memorial-service-345-000-dead.html

and also this article,

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1242029498309&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

and I’ve been thinking about the Jews, and anti-Semitism, and other stuff like that.

I’m amazed that there are still Holocaust deniers around. I’m saddened to think that some Holocaust deniers and Jew-haters, like the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are in positions of political power. Did you hear about the anti-Israel speech he gave at a United Nations conference on racism recently? A lot of people walked out of the room when Ahmadinejad gave that speech. He basically said that Israel ought to be wiped off the map, and he’s said things like that before. That story is here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSLJ34980320090420

Let’s see, who else is an anti-Semite? Adolf Hitler, for sure. He characterized the Jews as genetically inferior greedy bankers who were keeping the rest of Germany in poverty. And Hitler was largely responsible for the death of six million Jews.

Some Jews are upset at the Pope for not apologizing enough for the Holocaust, and also because the Pope recently supported a Palestinian state. (I guess Pope Benedict supports the two state solution, which is a proposal to stop the fighting between the Arabs/Palestinians and the Jews/Israelis by establishing two new states. It’s a segregation solution rather than an integration solution.) Plus Pope Benedict being born in Germany doesn’t help his relationship with the Jewish community, even though he was not a concentration camp prison guard or a member of the SS, but he was a member of the Hitler Youth- it was required for a German boy, I think, to be a member of the Hitler youth.

Um… you know what? I’m really uneducated about the conflict that’s been going on over there around Israel. I guess they are fighting over land. I suppose in some ways it doesn’t matter what side of the argument I’m on. It’s not like I’m going to go over there and fight for one side or the other.

But for some reason, I’m on Israel’s side. I’d like to see Hamas, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and other groups like that go away and leave Israel alone. Like I said, I really don’t know much about the history of the conflict. I’ve heard some stuff about it on the news, but I support Israel I guess because, generally speaking, I like Jews more than I like Muslims. Doesn’t that sound horrible? But I guess it’s true. Readers, before you judge me, I’m sure you have biases like that within you that you are scared to articulate, even to yourself.

Again, I don’t know much about the whole Israel-Palestine conflict that’s been going on forever, and I’m sure that I’m oversimplifying the situation, but here’s what former LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie says about Jews on page 393 of Mormon Doctrine, “Christ was a Jew, and he taught that 'salvation is of the Jews' (John 4:22) meaning that through that chosen race had come the prophets, the priesthood, and the Redeemer himself. Our present Bible, for instance, has come to us by way of the Jews. (2 Nephi 29)”

I feel such compassion for the Jews. They’ve been through so much. The pogroms. The Holocaust. They’ve yearned for Zion. They’ve yearned for a peaceful holy land where they can build another temple, but for political reasons, they haven’t been able to secure their holy land.

I doubt there’s a religion/ethnicity that has been persecuted and derided as much as the Jews have.

I also enjoy learning about Jewish culture. And Jews have been the kings of Hollywood and Broadway… just think of Mel Brooks and Adam Sandler and Woody Allen and Bette Midler and so many other Jews in the entertainment industry… but I like Muslims, too. I know I’ve said some bad things about them sometimes on Telemoonfa Time, but just like I understand that all Jews aren’t Christ-killers, I understand that all Muslims aren’t World Trade Center destroyers.

I hope I never discriminate against anybody on the basis of religion in the case of hiring somebody or treating them politely or anything. But at the same time, we shouldn’t be blind to religion. Religion is a characteristic, unlike race, class, gender, ethnicity, that one picks. (Sort of. Some people think you can pick your gender. And in America, the ideal is that you can pick your class. And Michael Jackson sort of picked his race, ha ha ha. And sometimes religion isn’t chosen; it’s forced upon people.) A person’s religion says a lot about them. That’s why I like to know what religion people are.

Hmmm… who else doesn’t like Jews? Mel Gibson! I remember when his movie The Passion of the Christ was released. There were a lot of Jews protesting the movie, saying that the movie had anti-Semite stuff in it. I remember I was on my LDS mission when that movie came out, and lots of people were talking about it. One kind of strange thing that came from the movie is that it reinvigorated the argument of who's guilty for the killing of Jesus Christ.

The Bible makes the answer pretty clear- it was the Jews. But it wasn’t all the Jews. It was just a few bad ones. And it wasn’t any Jews alive today. It was a few bad Jews who lived around 2000 years ago. But because Christ is considered to be a God by about 2 billion people, it’s still a hot topic. I wonder if Mel Gibson and other people, maybe Pope Benedict, still harbor a grudge against the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren of the Jews, because their ancestors killed Christ.

And just to make it clear, the Jews did kill Christ. The way I read the account of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, the Jews were more culpable for Christ’s death than the Romans were. Sure, the Roman soldiers were the ones who actually pounded nails into Christ’s hands and feet and hung him up on the cross, but the Jews brought Christ to the Roman executioners. First of all, it was Judas, a Jew, who betrayed Christ. Judas turned him in to the Jewish authorities for thirty pieces of silver. And then we read in Matthew 26:59-60, “Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none.” Even though they hated Jesus and wanted him dead, the Jews couldn’t find any way for his execution to be legally justified. After all, Jesus didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t rob anybody or hurt anybody or steal anything or break any laws at all. All he did was preach doctrine that destroyed the Jew’s priestcraft. (Not to mention that Jesus gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, food to the hungry, and atoned for the sins of the world. Why would anybody want to kill somebody who did so much good for the world?)

I wonder why the Jews didn’t just murder Christ themselves. Why did they go through the farce of a trial when they could have hired an assassin or taken Jesus out into the wilderness and killed him, like a mob would have done? I think the Jews went through the proper channels (Maybe I should say the improper channels) because they wanted Christ’s death to look official. The wicked Jews wanted to operate under a cloak of political decency. They wanted to appear socially respectable. They didn’t want to appear to be thugs, even though that’s what they were.

Eventually some people, Jews, claimed that Jesus blasphemed, and they decided that Jesus ought to be put to death for being a heretic. But of course my opinion is that Jesus was innocent. And even if he was breaking away from corrupt Jewish traditions and doctrines, so what? Why couldn’t they let him preach the way he wanted to preach? Didn’t they believe in freedom of speech? Why couldn’t the Jews just leave him alone? Why couldn’t Judas Iscariot have simply left Jesus and left the Twelve Apostles and put in a polite letter of resignation? He could have led a quiet life as a fisherman or a farmer, somewhere far away. But no, like many apostates, Judas thirsted for Jesus’ blood.

Once the corrupt Jews come up with blasphemy as a reason for putting Jesus to death, Jesus gets put into the hands of Pilate, a Roman governor who seems to sympathize for Jesus. I think that Pilate thought that Jesus was not only innocent, but that Christ was a good man. Also, Pilate’s wife has a bad dream about killing Jesus, and she tries to persuade him to let him go, but Pilate doesn’t listen to his wife. I think Pilate was thinking that Jesus’ case was a Jewish affair, and if the Jews really wanted to kill Christ on trumped-up charges, well, he would let the Jews kill Christ, and then Pilate could get back to business as usual. Pilate would have rather not ordered Jesus to be killed, but Matthew 27:24 says, “When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the [Jewish] multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.”

Remember though that Pilate could have stopped Jesus’ death. Pilate had the power to throw out the trial and set Jesus free. Even though he washed his hands, he’s not completely innocent.

And here’s the important part, in Matthew 27: 25 “Then answered all the people, and said, His [Christ’s] blood be on us, and on our children.”

Are the Jews still being persecuted today because of the sins of their ancient ancestors? Possibly.

God sometimes punishes children for the sins of the parents. Exodus 20: 5 says, “I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”

My problem with that is, Jesus was crucified around 33 AD, and now it’s 2009. More than three or four generations have passed since Jesus’ death. If a generation is approximately 25 years long, then that means there have been about 80 generations since the Jews killed Jesus. Why is God still taking revenge on those people?

Well, it’s hard to determine what God is responsible for and what he’s not responsible for. And according to God’s plan, there must be sin and bad stuff in this mortal life. Matthew 18:7 says, “Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” and 2 Nephi 2:11 says, “For it must needs be, that thee is an opposition in all things.” God gives people free agency, and allows people to make poor choices- poor choices like hating Jews.

Sometimes it's not very useful to say that one specific group (one specific religion, race, nationality, etc.) are responsible for some travesty. For example, it’s not really accurate to say something like, “the Germans killed six million Jews.” Because it was really only a few specific Germans that killed six million Jews. There were plenty of German dissenters, like Claus Von Stauffenberg who hated what the Nazis were doing. (Go see Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise. It’s really good.)

It’s also misleading and a little unfair to say something like, “Catholics and Muslims convert people by the sword.” Even though many Catholics and Muslims did use violent force when converting people, they don’t do it anymore, and a lot of great Catholics and Muslims are peace-lovers, good neighbors, and just swell people.

It’s also misleading and over simplistic to say, “The American pilgrims killed the Native Americans.” You get what I mean.

So that’s my problem with saying, “the Jews killed Christ,” and then letting the conversation end there. The way the Jews rejected the Savior is only a small part of the picture of Judaism. Yet there do seem to be some people who want to characterize a religion, a race, a political party, or some other group by pointing out over and over again that they are guilty of some horrible crime. For example, I remember when I saw the play Catholic School Girls at NAU, there was a scene set in a classroom where one of the Catholic school girls said that she had read in an encyclopedia in a public library that Jesus was a Jew. She asked her nun teacher, “Was Jesus a Jew?” and the nun teacher got really mad and said, “Of course not! Jesus was Catholic! The Jews killed Jesus, and that’s all you need to know about them.” And then the nun beat her with a ruler or something.

My advice is, don’t be mad at modern day Jews because some of their ancestors killed Christ. Don’t be mad at all Jews because some of them (like Bernie Madoff) are swindlers. I think we should be forgiving and trusting and treat everybody decently.

So... anti-semitism still abounds, and the Israeli-Palistinian conflict still rages, and that's lame. But a lot of this was prophesied in 1 Nephi 19:13 and 14:

13. And as for those who are at Jerusalem, saith the prophet, they shall be scourged by all people, because they crucify the God of Israel, and turn their hearts aside, rejecting signs and wonders, and the power and glory of the God of Israel. 14. And because they turn their hearts aside, saith the prophet, and have despised the Holy One of Israel, they shall wander in the flesh, and perish, and become a hiss and a byword, and be hated among all nations.

But the next verse says:

15. Nevertheless, when that day cometh, saith the prophet, that they no more turn aside their hearts against the Holy One of Israel, then will he remember the covenants which he made to their fathers.

So there is hope!

In closing, may I remind you of the wise words of Rodney King: Why can’t we all just get along?

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa