The rise of anti-semitism in the "New Age"

Curious painting, I'm sorry I do not know the artist. For me it represents Judaisim's history since the death of Christ. Well not really from then; the first Christians were Jews. Later on in history it all began, ebbing and flowing, until it embedded in the gentile unconscious - the determination to kill the so-called "Christ killers" - if not kill, then to marginalize and persecute.

Mel Gibson's outburst pretty much betrayed the perennial prejuduice laying dormant in many Christians, especially the very traditionalist, fundamentalist, Eastern European descendant element in Catholicism. (Although it's alive and flourishing amongst Hispanic and and Irish cultures as well.) When Dukakis was running for President of the U.S. I was talking to a Dominican nun, answering her question, "Who will you vote for?" I said I was thinking about Dukakis and she said, "You know his wife is a Jewess, don't you?" She was an older Irish immigrant and out of respect I never said what I was thinking, which would have been, "What difference does that make?"

Why are Jews so mistrusted? They possess a culture, a "sticking together" not unlike Italians, Mexicans, or the clannish Irish. What's the deal? They are not all rich, does anyone think for a minute Gibson's arresting officer was rich - on a policeman's salary yet? (It turned out he was Jewish.)

In our Store I have been told we are "Jews" because our prices are high, which they are not! (I'm going to write about "spiritual gluttony" in one of my upcoming posts - just because a person over-spends doesn't mean we are too expensive.) However there has to be a mark-up in retail; it pays for shipping fees, import fees, employee's salaries and benefits, not to mention electricity and equipment and the insurance needed to run a business.

Amongst conservative, traditionalist Catholics, let me tell you, there is an anti-semitic vein. A comment I received on another post said that this person did not "hate the Jewish people" but she said she hated the Jewish religion - how she made that distinction I'll never know, it contradicts the teaching of the Catholic Church. (See "Dominus Jesu".) I might better accept hating the secular nation of Israel for inflicting such damge upon innocent civilians in Lebanon, but never hating the Jewish people or their religion, especially since Christ came to fulfill the tenets of their faith and create the new Israel in the Church. As a Christian, the only thing one may hate is sin.

Disturbed when a contemplative nun began telling me about the Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, (those Jewish Masonic bankers, rooted in the myth traced back to the bogus "Protocols of Zion") she also told me that the Jews themselves were responsible for the Holocaust. Scandalized, I asked a very knowledgeable priest about it and he said she was correct - in part, because the Jews controlled the entertainment industry and the good Germans were scandalized at the perversion and decadent culture they were feeding them. In that sense, he felt they brought it upon themselves. I was taken aback.

Because there has been a disproportionate number of people of Jewish extraction calling the shots in media today does that warrant mass extermination? It just does not make sense to me. Everyone blames the Jews.

I think because of the war between Israel and Hezbollah there is a new , re-cycled ant-semitism emerging, that I am branding, "New Age Anti-Semitism". It's more prevalent than you think. In Rome neo-Fascists have been spray painting swastikas on Jewish businesses - that stuff spreads.

Gerald, from The Cafeteria is Closed has some good stuff related to this topic - thank you Gerald for your excellent blog.

I don't really think it's about Mel anymore.

(An autobiographical note: Before my conversion I investigated Judaism, convinced it was the true faith. In my studies I became aware of how Christianity was the actual fullfilment of the law and the prophets - which I understood in Jesus Christ. It has been said by some relatives that we have Jewish blood, I thrilled to that thought. I left my pursuit of Judaism,which helped me value my Christian roots, peripheral as my Judaic studies may have been, I eventually came home to the Roman Catholic Church. I can never understand how Christians cannot understand that they are grafted onto the family tree of Judaism, co-heirs with Christ. Do they never read the epistles of St. Paul?)