The recent attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh opened some old wounds in the Jewish community. Can the specter of ancient prejudices ever go away? Jews have never been openly persecuted in the United States but there was a time in the 50’s when Jews were not allowed within the upper echelon of society. The ACLU (Anti-Defamation League), a century-old advocacy group for Jews and other people targeted by discrimination, found that 2017 saw a nearly 60 percent surge in reported anti-Semitic incidents in the United States—which came on top of a 35 percent increase the year before. Throughout the millennia, Jews have made efforts to assimilate in whatever country they have lived in. Today there are Jews all around the world. They are black, white, brown, and there are even blond hair blue-eyed Jews, but wherever they are persecuted, it is not because of the color of their skin, but because of their appurtenance to the Jewish community. Even Christian-Jews who remain culturally Jewish, are sometimes prejudiced from the general Christian community as has recently happened to me in Estacada OR, the town where I live. The irony is that a Christian Jew is often also rejected by the Jewish community, as I have also experienced. Since it is therefore not a question of skin color nor of cultural groups, what is it then that causes these ancient prejudices to resurge? Is it one’s personal philosophical worldview? Is it pride or a penchant towards hatred? Is it an extension of nationalism or patriotism? Is it Religion? I am a God-believing and God-fearing man. I have learned from History that religion has the power to make us love the “unlovely” but also to make us hate those different from us. I am not saying that religion is bad, but I am saying that when one’s religion or theology translates into prejudices against certain people groups who differ from his, it is a testament to how little of God that person owns. If God is God, He is the God of all human beings made in His image and those of us who claim to represent Him need to do a better job at it. It is sad that today, we cannot promise that crimes related to religious-hatred will not happen again. May we ponder on these things during our celebration of Thanksgiving, a time when the survival of a small community came thanks to a people different than them, who accepted and helped them. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/statistics-on-religious-hate-crimes
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