Tuesday 20 October 2009

the Barcelona Disputation

no, me neither. Here's Harry's Place on the subject. Blimey. What with that and Bob Dylan releasing a Christmas album - well, we live in strange times.

2 comments:

dreamingspire said...

Quite simple, really: religious sects are stupid when they fight each other. Christianity came out of Jewry, don't forget, by simply stating to the Jews a different way, but proselytising always upsets. Live and let live.
As for modern Israel, it isn't religion that drives its ruthless expansionism.

Anonymous said...

A significant proportion of British Jews are descended from the Marranos (Spanish for swine) - Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in the fifteenth century, while maintaining their Judaism at home in secret, until they managed to move to Holland.

British Jews are also descended from the survivors of the Crusades, Eastern European pogroms and the Holocaust, all initiated by those Christians who wanted to wipe out Jews and Judaism.

Many of us have encountered missionaries, as well as anti-Zionists, at university, not to mention the out and out racists, all deeply upsetting to most Jews. Jews are well aware of those who seek to kill them with kindness as they are of those who seek to kill them with hate.

Both the missionaries and anti-Zionists find easy prey in ignorant Jews, with emotional problems, on the fringes of the Jewish community, particularly by pretending to be authentic Jews. Hence the singers (Bob Dylan and Helen Shapiro) attracted by the former, and the actors (Stephen Fry and Miriam Margolyes) by the latter.

The Jewish attitude to the Messiah is that the coming of the (fully human) Messiah will bring about the end of warfare, peace will be supreme, and all mankind will worship the true God. Without wishing to offend Christians, Jews feel that Jesus does not fit the bill.

Far more numerous and successful are the missionary Chasidic sects within Judaism, who preach that the Messiah (one of their own Rabbis) is imminent. They influence many of the West Bank settlers. Most Jews and Israelis, however, also reject these sects, which are the religious equivalent of the Trotskyists.

Missionaries undermine the excellent work that is being done in Inter-Faith and other groups, where people of all faiths, and all communities, seek to live together in harmony, without abandoning their own beliefs.