"Dishonouring Christian religious symbols is an old religious duty in Judaism. Spitting on the cross, and especially on the Crucifix, and spitting when a Jew passes a church, have been obligatory from around AD 200 for pious Jews. In the past, when the danger of anti-Semitic hostility was a real one, the pious Jews were commanded by their rabbis either to spit so that the reason for doing so would be unknown, or to spit onto their chests, not actually on the cross or openly before the church. The increasing strength of the Jewish state has caused these customs to become more open again but there should be no mistake: The spitting on the cross for converts from Christianity to Judaism , organized in Kibbutz Sa'ad and financed by the Israeli government is a an act of traditional Jewish piety. It does not cease to be barbaric, horrifying and wicked because of this! On the contrary, it is worse because it is so traditional, and much more dangerous as well, just as the renewed anti-Semitism of the Nazis was dangerous because, in part, it played on the traditional anti-Semitic past.
This barbarous attitude of contempt and hate for Christian religious symbols has grown in Israel. In the 1950s Israel issued a series of stamps representing pictures of Israeli cities. In the picture of Nazareth, there was a church and on its top a cross - almost invisible, perhaps the size of a millimeter. Nevertheless, the religious parties, supported by many on the Zionist "left" made a scandal and the stamps were quickly withdrawn and replaced by an almost identical series from which the microscopic cross was withdrawn."
Professor Shahak then goes on to say that the fear and dislike of the
Christian cross is so deep and irrational that pious Jews even object to
the international "plus" sign used in arithmetic, for it is a
cross, and it may
". . . influence little children to convert to Christianity. Another "explanation" holds; it would then be difficult to "educate" them to spit on the cross, if they become used to it in their arithmetic exercises. Until the early 1970s two different sets of arithmetic books were used in Israel. . . . In the early '70's the religious fanatics "converted" the Labour Party to the great danger of the cross in arithmetic, and from that time, in all Hebrew elementary schools (and now many high schools as well) the international plus sign has been forbidden."
We here in the United States know next to nothing about these attitudes
and practices, and it would help to know them to counter-balance what is
spiritually happening to us. For instance, I have for years and years done
Sunday morning programs in Unitarian churches and have always felt comfortable
doing them. Having come from an extremely fundamentalist and rigid religious
background, I found the Unitarian services to be respectful and non-intrusive
of people with a non-traditional and often odd spirituality. Lately, however,
you see the Star of David in practically all of these churches, and the
proselytizing in favor of "tolerance" for Judaism is practically
non-stop and definitely at the expense of Christianity, a religion treated
with disdain and contempt.
Until I saw this essay by Shahak, I always wrote this new slant off as liberal
zealotry for which the Unitarians are known; now I am not so sure.
Writes Shahak:
". . . in recent years, anti-Christian feelings are literally exploding in Israel (and among Israel-worshipping Jews in Diaspora too) together with the increase of the Jewish fanaticism in all other areas too.
The real enemies of truth here, as in many other aspects of the Israel reality, are the socialists, "liberals", "radicals", etc. in the USA. Imagine the reaction of the US Liberals, and of such papers as "The Nation" and "New York Review of Books", not to speak of the "New York Times" if in any state whatsoever, the government financed spitting on a Star of David?
But when here in Israel, the government finances the spitting on a cross, they are and will continue to be, quite silent. More than this, they help to finance it. United States taxpayers, who are of course mostly Christians, are finacing at least half the Israeli budget, one way or another, and therfore the spitting on the cross too."
More and more, this ideological struggle shapes up as the mythical wrestling
of the Dark with the Light, doesn't it - or, to put it in the Nietzsche
vein, of Man poised midway between the Animal and God, with Choice the only
road sign? Wrote Nietzsche:
"Had Prometheus first to fancy that he had stolen the light, and that he did penance for the theft - in order to discover finally that he had created the light in that he had longed for the light. . .?"
All this will make a true Believer yet out of this frank agnostic.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest."
(English Proverb)