It was only one century ago that many would have been shocked to hear the phrase ‘Jesus was a Jew’, as it simply wasn’t something that ordinary churches enjoyed teaching. While a few premodern Christians (including the infamous Protestant pioneer Martin Luther, who responded with a massive wall of text after Jews kept telling him ‘nah, I’m good’) were aware of this knowledge, evidently nobody was really in the habit of emphasizing it either — quite the opposite of the current situation, where the phrase ‘Jesus was a Jew’ has become a cliché.

Since many churches considered anti‐Judaism part of their job, it made sense that they would have wanted to keep quiet about J.C.’s Jewish background, as it would have inevitably raised all sorts of awkward questions, e.g. ‘If Jesus was Jewish, why don’t we all convert to Judaism?’ However, since some Christians feel guilty about nearly two millennia of violent Christian anti‐Judaism, including the Shoah, and many other Christians want to show their support for Zionism, the teaching that J.C. was Jewish has switched from being an arcane detail to basic knowledge.

Now, certainly not all who repeat this trivia are directing it to Jews. In fact, a decade ago I usually saw it directed at blatantly antisemitic Christians, though I doubt that it was always persuasive (as one ‘political pastor’ painfully learned in 1939). This counterargument is also a little irksome in its own way, as J.C.’s Jewish background should not be the only, or even the main, reason why somebody should respect contemporary Jewish people. The paradox of Jews inspiring two overwhelmingly gentile faiths does fascinate me, but Jewish people have worth aside from that.

In any case, if you have been lurking Jewish communities for a while then you have likely noticed that when Jews mention this phrase, they tend to mention it unhappily. It isn’t just that the phrase has become cliché and pedantic, but mainly because the intentions behind it are almost always misguided. At best, telling Jews that J.C. was Jewish is only a quite minor, woefully inadequate way of expressing solidarity. At worst, it is an evasive rhetorical trick, basically the Christian equivalent to saying ‘I’m not racist, I have a black friend!’ or ‘I’m part Cherokee!’, hence why somebody deemed the phrase antisemitic. I find both of those authors harsh, personally, so this is my attempt at putting it more gently if anybody finds their tones too off‐putting.

While it delights me to see Christians who are sincerely interested in demonstrating solidarity with Jewish people, I suspect that all Jews would agree (for once) if I said that reminding others of J.C.’s Jewish background isn’t enough. Maybe better than nothing, but it still isn’t enough. How, then, should one go about it? Click here for my suggestions, zero of which involve supporting an antidemocratic régime! Evangelicals, take note! And if you want to discuss Christianity’s Jewish roots in a way that actually sounds sophisticated and interesting, Torah Praxis after 70 C.E.: Reading Matthew and Luke–Acts as Jewish Texts is arguably the way to get serious about understanding them. See? Christianity’s Jewish origins don’t have to sound like boring trivia!

If you tell a Jewish person that J.C. was a Jew, the politest response that you’ll get is simply ‘good for him’. Few people want to bluntly tell you ‘I don’t care’, let alone patiently and respectfully explain to a stranger why they find this knowledge irrelevant, so this my contribution for anybody who needed help. Hopefully I articulated this well!

https://apnews.com/article/israel-christians-taxes-church-palestinians-ac106bb1d49dd3d0d96613af53d4fcf7

[An address by Monsignor Ivan Illich to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968.

In his usual biting and sometimes sarcastic style, Illich goes to the heart of the deep dangers of paternalism inherent in any voluntary service activity, but especially in any international service "mission." Parts of the speech are outdated and must be viewed in the historical context of 1968 when it was delivered, but the entire speech is retained for the full impact of his point and at Ivan Illich's request.]

In the conversations which I have had today, I was impressed by two things, and I want to state them before I launch into my prepared talk.

I was impressed by your insight that the motivation of U.S. volunteers overseas springs mostly from very alienated feelings and concepts. I was equally impressed, by what I interpret as a step forward among would-be volunteers like you: openness to the idea that the only thing you can legitimately volunteer for in Latin America might be voluntary powerlessness, voluntary presence as receivers, as such, as hopefully beloved or adopted ones without any way of returning the gift.

I was equally impressed by the hypocrisy of most of you: by the hypocrisy of the atmosphere prevailing here. I say this as a brother speaking to brothers and sisters. I say it against many resistances within me; but it must be said. Your very insight, your very openness to evaluations of past programs make you hypocrites because you - or at least most of you - have decided to spend this next summer in Mexico, and therefore, you are unwilling to go far enough in your reappraisal of your program. You close your eyes because you want to go ahead and could not do so if you looked at some facts.

It is quite possible that this hypocrisy is unconscious in most of you. Intellectually, you are ready to see that the motivations which could legitimate volunteer action overseas in 1963 cannot be invoked for the same action in 1968. "Mission-vacations" among poor Mexicans were "the thing" to do for well-off U.S. students earlier in this decade: sentimental concern for newly-discovered. poverty south of the border combined with total blindness to much worse poverty at home justified such benevolent excursions. Intellectual insight into the difficulties of fruitful volunteer action had not sobered the spirit of Peace Corps Papal-and-Self-Styled Volunteers.

Today, the existence of organizations like yours is offensive to Mexico. I wanted to make this statement in order to explain why I feel sick about it all and in order to make you aware that good intentions have not much to do with what we are discussing here. To hell with good intentions. This is a theological statement. You will not help anybody by your good intentions. There is an Irish saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; this sums up the same theological insight.

The very frustration which participation in CIASP programs might mean for you, could lead you to new awareness: the awareness that even North Americans can receive the gift of hospitality without the slightest ability to pay for it; the awareness that for some gifts one cannot even say "thank you."

Now to my prepared statement.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

For the past six years I have become known for my increasing opposition to the presence of any and all North American "dogooders" in Latin America. I am sure you know of my present efforts to obtain the voluntary withdrawal of all North American volunteer armies from Latin America - missionaries, Peace Corps members and groups like yours, a "division" organized for the benevolent invasion of Mexico. You were aware of these things when you invited me - of all people - to be the main speaker at your annual convention. This is amazing! I can only conclude that your invitation means one of at least three things:

Some among you might have reached the conclusion that CIASP should either dissolve altogether, or take the promotion of voluntary aid to the Mexican poor out of its institutional purpose. Therefore you might have invited me here to help others reach this same decision.

You might also have invited me because you want to learn how to deal with people who think the way I do - how to dispute them successfully. It has now become quite common to invite Black Power spokesmen to address Lions Clubs. A "dove" must always be included in a public dispute organized to increase U.S. belligerence.

And finally, you might have invited me here hoping that you would be able to agree with most of what I say, and then go ahead in good faith and work this summer in Mexican villages. This last possibility is only open to those who do not listen, or who cannot understand me.

I did not come here to argue. I am here to tell you, if possible to convince you, and hopefully, to stop you, from pretentiously imposing yourselves on Mexicans.

I do have deep faith in the enormous good will of the U.S. volunteer. However, his good faith can usually be explained only by an abysmal lack of intuitive delicacy. By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class "American Way of Life," since that is really the only life you know. A group like this could not have developed unless a mood in the United States had supported it - the belief that any true American must share God's blessings with his poorer fellow men. The idea that every American has something to give, and at all times may, can and should give it, explains why it occurred to students that they could help Mexican peasants "develop" by spending a few months in their villages.

Of course, this surprising conviction was supported by members of a missionary order, who would have no reason to exist unless they had the same conviction - except a much stronger one. It is now high time to cure yourselves of this. You, like the values you carry, are the products of an American society of achievers and consumers, with its two-party system, its universal schooling, and its family-car affluence. You are ultimately-consciously or unconsciously - "salesmen" for a delusive ballet in the ideas of democracy, equal opportunity and free enterprise among people who haven't the possibility of profiting from these.

Next to money and guns, the third largest North American export is the U.S. idealist, who turns up in every theater of the world: the teacher, the volunteer, the missionary, the community organizer, the economic developer, and the vacationing do-gooders. Ideally, these people define their role as service. Actually, they frequently wind up alleviating the damage done by money and weapons, or "seducing" the "underdeveloped" to the benefits of the world of affluence and achievement. Perhaps this is the moment to instead bring home to the people of the U.S. the knowledge that the way of life they have chosen simply is not alive enough to be shared.

By now it should be evident to all America that the U.S. is engaged in a tremendous struggle to survive. The U.S. cannot survive if the rest of the world is not convinced that here we have Heaven-on-Earth. The survival of the U.S. depends on the acceptance by all so-called "free" men that the U.S. middle class has "made it." The U.S. way of life has become a religion which must be accepted by all those who do not want to die by the sword - or napalm. All over the globe the U.S. is fighting to protect and develop at least a minority who consume what the U.S. majority can afford. Such is the purpose of the Alliance for Progress of the middle-classes which the U.S. signed with Latin America some years ago. But increasingly this commercial alliance must be protected by weapons which allow the minority who can "make it" to protect their acquisitions and achievements.

But weapons are not enough to permit minority rule. The marginal masses become rambunctious unless they are given a "Creed," or belief which explains the status quo. This task is given to the U.S. volunteer - whether he be a member of CLASP or a worker in the so-called "Pacification Programs" in Viet Nam.

The United States is currently engaged in a three-front struggle to affirm its ideals of acquisitive and achievement-oriented "Democracy." I say "three" fronts, because three great areas of the world are challenging the validity of a political and social system which makes the rich ever richer, and the poor increasingly marginal to that system.

In Asia, the U.S. is threatened by an established power -China. The U.S. opposes China with three weapons: the tiny Asian elites who could not have it any better than in an alliance with the United States; a huge war machine to stop the Chinese from "taking over" as it is usually put in this country, and; forcible re-education of the so-called "Pacified" peoples. All three of these efforts seem to be failing.

In Chicago, poverty funds, the police force and preachers seem to be no more successful in their efforts to check the unwillingness of the black community to wait for graceful integration into the system.

And finally, in Latin America the Alliance for Progress has been quite successful in increasing the number of people who could not be better off - meaning the tiny, middle-class elites - and has created ideal conditions for military dictatorships. The dictators were formerly at the service of the plantation owners, but now they protect the new industrial complexes. And finally, you come to help the underdog accept his destiny within this process!

All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder. At best, you can try to convince Mexican girls that they should marry a young man who is self-made, rich, a consumer, and as disrespectful of tradition as one of you. At worst, in your "community development" spirit you might create just enough problems to get someone shot after your vacation ends_ and you rush back to your middleclass neighborhoods where your friends make jokes about "spits" and "w*tbacks."

You start on your task without any training. Even the Peace Corps spends around $10,000 on each corps member to help him adapt to his new environment and to guard him against culture shock. How odd that nobody ever thought about spending money to educate poor Mexicans in order to prevent them from the culture shock of meeting you?

In fact, you cannot even meet the majority which you pretend to serve in Latin America - even if you could speak their language, which most of you cannot. You can only dialogue with those like you - Latin American imitations of the North American middle class. There is no way for you to really meet with the underprivileged, since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on.

Let me explain this statement, and also let me explain why most Latin Americans with whom you might be able to communicate would disagree with me.

Suppose you went to a U.S. ghetto this summer and tried to help the poor there "help themselves." Very soon you would be either spit upon or laughed at. People offended by your pretentiousness would hit or spit. People who understand that your own bad consciences push you to this gesture would laugh condescendingly. Soon you would be made aware of your irrelevance among the poor, of your status as middle-class college students on a summer assignment. You would be roundly rejected, no matter if your skin is white-as most of your faces here are-or brown or black, as a few exceptions who got in here somehow.

Your reports about your work in Mexico, which you so kindly sent me, exude self-complacency. Your reports on past summers prove that you are not even capable of understanding that your dogooding in a Mexican village is even less relevant than it would be in a U.S. ghetto. Not only is there a gulf between what you have and what others have which is much greater than the one existing between you and the poor in your own country, but there is also a gulf between what you feel and what the Mexican people feel that is incomparably greater. This gulf is so great that in a Mexican village you, as White Americans (or cultural white Americans) can imagine yourselves exactly the way a white preacher saw himself when he offered his life preaching to the black slaves on a plantation in Alabama. The fact that you live in huts and eat tortillas for a few weeks renders your well-intentioned group only a bit more picturesque.

The only people with whom you can hope to communicate with are some members of the middle class. And here please remember that I said "some" -by which I mean a tiny elite in Latin America.

You come from a country which industrialized early and which succeeded in incorporating the great majority of its citizens into the middle classes. It is no social distinction in the U.S. to have graduated from the second year of college. Indeed, most Americans now do. Anybody in this country who did not finish high school is considered underprivileged.

In Latin America the situation is quite different: 75% of all people drop out of school before they reach the sixth grade. Thus, people who have finished high school are members of a tiny minority. Then, a minority of that minority goes on for university training. It is only among these people that you will find your educational equals.

At the same time, a middle class in the United States is the majority. In Mexico, it is a tiny elite. Seven years ago your country began and financed a so-called "Alliance for Progress." This was an "Alliance" for the "Progress" of the middle class elites. Now. it is among the members of this middle class that you will find a few people who are willing to send their time with you_ And they are overwhelmingly those "nice kids" who would also like to soothe their troubled consciences by "doing something nice for the promotion of the poor Indians." Of course, when you and your middleclass Mexican counterparts meet, you will be told that you are doing something valuable, that you are "sacrificing" to help others.

And it will be the foreign priest who will especially confirm your self-image for you. After all, his livelihood and sense of purpose depends on his firm belief in a year-round mission which is of the same type as your summer vacation-mission.

There exists the argument that some returned volunteers have gained insight into the damage they have done to others - and thus become more mature people. Yet it is less frequently stated that most of them are ridiculously proud of their "summer sacrifices." Perhaps there is also something to the argument that young men should be promiscuous for awhile in order to find out that sexual love is most beautiful in a monogamous relationship. Or that the best way to leave LSD alone is to try it for awhile -or even that the best way of understanding that your help in the ghetto is neither needed nor wanted is to try, and fail. I do not agree with this argument. The damage which volunteers do willy-nilly is too high a price for the belated insight that they shouldn't have been volunteers in the first place.

If you have any sense of responsibility at all, stay with your riots here at home. Work for the coming elections: You will know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to communicate with those to whom you speak. And you will know when you fail. If you insist on working with the poor, if this is your vocation, then at least work among the poor who can tell you to go to hell. It is incredibly unfair for you to impose yourselves on a village where you are so linguistically deaf and dumb that you don't even understand what you are doing, or what people think of you. And it is profoundly damaging to yourselves when you define something that you want to do as "good," a "sacrifice" and "help."

I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.

I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/25/europe/carlo-acutis-mother-sainthood-pope-francis-intl/index.html

He has a police badge bumper sticker and like 4 Scottish rites Freemason bumper stickers lol

Link here if you want ro subject yourself to the crankery of protestants and "catholics" that are protestants in denial

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2402275

I'm reading Levy's The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1-11 and thought I'd share this screenshot. Really well written and researched book. Levy cites the midrash (fn77) from:

Pirqe Rebbe Eliezer, 24. [Heb], editio princeps, Constantinople, 1514. folio 16b. Digitized Copy, Hebrew Union College, Klau Library, in the Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer Manuscript Database.

Jesus: "You did WHAT in my name?!? Why would you torture gay ppl, wtf is wrong with you?!?! Why do you treat poor people so terrible, did you read my book at all?!"

"Oh my dad! Look at how much you've polluted Fathers planet, he is going to be so pissed. What do you mean prosperity gospel? That's not what that means!!! Me-Christ, you people are the devil!"

Graph in discussion

Just need to do some more lgbtq+ education and these losers will finally make it to the starting line of being "alright"

Many familiar with the subject of Jewish life under premodern European Christendom frequently summarize it as an unending dystopia: Christian society not only impoverished Judaists in dilapidated ghetti but also figuratively and literally demonized, humiliated, tormented, expelled, and massacred Judaists.

That persecution certainly should not be overlooked, but it is also true that many premodern Christians (mostly lower‐class ones) befriended, assisted, defended, and cohabited with Judaists. These instances demonstrate that Jewish life under Christendom did not have to be dystopian.

Quoting Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, pages 68–9:

There is recent physical evidence (or what insiders sometimes call realia) suggesting that the Christian and Jewish communities remained closely linked—intertwined, even—until far later than is consistent with claims about the early and absolute break between church and synagogue. The realia are both archaeological and documentary.

Eric Meyers (1983, 1988) reported that a wealth of archaeological findings in Italy (especially in Rome and Venosa) show that “Jewish and Christian burials reflect an interdependent and closely related community of Jews and Christians in which clear marks of demarcation were blurred until the third and fourth centuries C.E.” (1988:73–74).

Shifting to data from Palestine, Meyers noted excavations in Capernaum (on the shores of the Sea of Galilee) that reveal “a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish–Christian house church on opposite sides of the street. […] Following the strata and the structures, both communities apparently lived in harmony until the seventh century C.E.” (1988:76). Finally, Meyers suggested that only when a triumphant Christianity began, late in the fourth century, to pour money into Palestine for church building and shrines was there any serious rupture with Jews.

Roger Bagnall reported a surviving papyrus (P.Oxy. 44) from the year 400 wherein a man “explicitly described as a Jew” leased a ground‐floor room and a basement storage room in a house from two Christian sisters described as apotactic monastics:

The rent is in line with other lease payments for parts of the city known from the period, and the whole transaction is distinguished by its routineness. All the same, the sight of two Christian nuns letting out two rooms in their house to a Jewish man has much to say about not only the flexibility of the monastic life but also the ordinariness of [Christian–Jewish] relationships. (1993: 277–278 )

These data may strike social scientists as thin, but they seem far less ambiguous and far more reliable than the evidence with which students of antiquity must usually work.

Markus Bockmuehl’s “Friendship between Jews and Christians in Antiquity” in Looking In, Looking Out: Jews and Non‐Jews in Mutual Contemplation, pages 308–9:

Chrysostom’s ill‐mannered rant eloquently attests the strength of what he rejects the widespread pattern of friendly social and religious relations between two remarkably interconnected communities. Christians kept feasts and fasts in the synagogues for the great autumn festivals of Rosh Ha‐Shanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot (Adv. Jud. 1.1.5), as well as Passover (3.3.6, 3.6.7; 4.4.4–5.4).⁵² A woman was required by a fellow Christian to seal a business transaction by an apparently superior oath in the synagogue (1.3.4).

Chrysostom’s concern at the widely intertwined lives of Christians and Jews was equally shared by church authorities in Asia Minor, including in Phrygia. The influential Council of Laodicea (c.363) sought to ban Christians from Sabbath‐keeping (Canon 29), celebrating festivals of the Jews or accepting gifts from them on such occasions (37), or indeed from eating their unleavened bread (38).⁵³

Meanwhile, by the late fourth century, Christians had long tended and perhaps appropriated the cult of the Maccabean martyrs, somewhat curiously translated to Antioch.⁵⁴

Despite Chrysostom’s best efforts, Antioch clearly showed very little inclination to effect a definitive “parting of the ways,” even while Christianity gained political and cultural ascendancy during the fourth century.

Chrysostom’s own teacher Libanius of Antioch (314–393), a prominent rhetorician and friend of the Emperor Julian, fostered networks of acquaintance with both Jews and Christians and numbered several future church fathers among his students. He corresponded with Priscianus the Governor of Palestine on behalf of the Jewish community and expressed to the Jewish Patriarch (probably Gamaliel V) his distress at recent harassment of the Jewish people.⁵⁵

In such relationships with both intertwined communities, this public intellectual attached great importance “to friendship […], to the rule of law and justice, and to divinely inspired human community as the essential foundation for human welfare.”⁵⁶

Joshua Trachtenberg’s The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism, pages 159–161:

It is a striking consideration, in this regard, that despite the virulent anti‐Jewish campaign of the early Church, relations between Jews and Christians were not materially embittered. Indeed, the period between the break‐up of the Roman Empire and the Crusades—roughly the sixth to the eleventh centuries—was comparatively favorable for the Jews.

Their unhappy experience in Visigothic Spain after its conversion from Arianism to Catholicism and the wave of expulsions during the seventh century were the result of official antagonism rather than of any strongly felt popular resentment. In general it may be said that social and economic relations remained good. Some Christians continued for a long time to observe their feasts and festivals on the Jewish dates and together with Jews.

The constantly reiterated fulminations of Church authorities against close social and religious intercourse between the two groups (“It comes to such a pass that uneducated Christians say that Jews preach better to them than our priests,” complained Agobard ¹), against eating and drinking and living with Jews, testify to their unimpaired and cordial intimacy. Even the clergy had to be forbidden from time to time to be friendly with Jews.

Reporting his amicable discussions with Rabbi Simeon Hasid of Treves, Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster in the eleventh century, says: “He often used to come to me as a friend both for business and to see me […] and as often as we came together we would soon get talking in a friendly spirit about the Scriptures and our faith.” ² In the tenth and eleventh centuries we hear of Jews receiving gifts from Gentile friends on Jewish holidays, of Jew leaving the keys to their homes with Christian neighbors before departing on a journey.

In Champagne, where Jews engaged extensively in viticulture and wine making, they freely employed Gentiles in their vineyards, and the rabbis set aside the ancient ritual prohibition against the use of this wine on the ground that Christians are not idolaters. Christians took service in Jewish homes as nurses and domestics, and Jewish traders dealt in ecclesiastical articles. Business relations were markedly free and close, and there are many instances of commercial partnerships between adherents of the two faiths.

Nor did the sporadic dissemination of anti‐Jewish propaganda by clerical preachment disturb these generally amicable relations sufficiently to arouse a sense of insecurity and alienness on the part of the Jew. The Jews of France, for instance, called the French language “our language,” and some eminent scholars of this period bore French names, e.g., Judah HaKohen, who was known as Léontin, and Joseph, known as Bonfils.

The use of French names was even more marked in England, where Norman French was the vernacular of the Jews no less than of the aristocracy; and a similar process of cultural adaptation prevailed throughout Central and Southern Europe. These are assuredly tokens of a cultural and social affinity which could not have flourished in an atmosphere of unrelieved suspicion and hostility.³

It will not do to idealize this situation; the distinction between the earlier and the later medieval periods, so far as the popular attitude toward the Jew is concerned, must not be overly formalized. Even in the earlier period, of course, there were signs pointing toward the later attitude, but they multiplied very slowly at first and gathered momentum only in the twelfth and the succeeding centuries, until the slowly changing picture was wholly transformed by that unmitigated hatred of the Jew which we have come to characterize as medieval.

Christopher Tuckwood’s From Real Friend to Imagined Foe: The Medieval Roots of Anti‐Semitism as a Precondition for the Holocaust:

Other sources confirm that it was common at the time for Christians and Jews to dine together on kosher food, discuss religious ideas, and for Christians to adopt Jewish customs such as resting on Saturday and celebrating Jewish holidays while neglecting their own. Such practices likely even extended to the imperial court, and clerical alarm is thus not surprising.¹²

Katherine Aron‐Beller’s Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators: The History of an Allegation, 400–1700, pages 106–107:

When the anonymous Christian author of the 1286 Majorca disputation addressed the Christian practice of using images and crosses in churches, the Christian interlocutor Inghetto Contardo, having been accused of idolatry by his Jewish opponent, put forward an unusual argument.⁷ He rejected the accusation by suggesting that if there was a [humanitarian] need, he would destroy an image himself:

We do not venerate idols and images but we venerate the God of heaven, the Father, and His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. […] And indeed I say to you that if I had a wooden cross or image, and I had nothing with which to heat water for my Christian brother, or my Jewish friend were they to fall sick, I would put the cross and the image in the fire and burn them.

Robert Chazan’s “Philosemitic Tendencies in Medieval Western Christendom” in Philosemitism in History, pages 47–8:

Jewish sources recurrently mention pleas on the part of friendly Christians to Jews, urging the latter to convert in order to save themselves. These pleas do not seem to have been inspired by genuine missionizing ardor. Rather, they seem to reflect the simple desire of Christians to save Jewish neighbors at all costs.

The story of the Jews of Regensburg is told elliptically in the Solomon bar Simson Narrative: The burghers of Regensburg “pressed them [the Jews of the town] against their will and brought them into a certain river. They made the evil sign in the water — the cross — and baptized them all simultaneously in that river.”³² The fact that the Jews of Regensburg are reported to have returned almost immediately to Judaism reinforces the sense of an act performed by well‐intentioned burghers in order to save endangered Jewish neighbors.

Curious and intriguing evidence of warm Christian–Jewish relations is available from more peaceful circumstances as well. Joseph Shatzmiller has studied in depth an unusual court record from fourteenth‐century Marseilles.³³ There, a Jewish moneylender named Bondavid was accused of attempting to collect a debt twice and chose to defend his reputation in court.

During the protracted deliberations, Bondavid brought on his behalf a set of Christian witnesses, who testified to his exceptional character and generosity. Human relations are always reciprocal. The testimony offered by the Christian witnesses attests to Bondavid’s warmth and generosity toward Christians in need. In return, the Christian witnesses to his largesse took the trouble to make court appearances and to praise Bondavid’s character lavishly.

Daniel Jütte’s Interfaith Encounters between Jews and Christians in the Early Modern Period and Beyond: Toward a Framework:

For instance, there is the well‐known case of the humanist and Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), who became the target of a campaign spearheaded by the Dominicans, at least in part because of his close relationships with Jewish scholars.²²

Another example is the famous eighteenth‐century court Jew Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (“Jud Süß”), whose surviving letters to the Duke of Württemberg reveal a degree of intimacy that can be called friendship. Indeed, Oppenheimer even used the second‐person address “Du” in those letters—an extremely rare privilege reserved mainly for fellow sovereigns and immediate family members.²³

One can, of course, object that these cases were exceptional because they involved two unrepresentative protagonists, a scholar and a court Jew. To counter this argument, it is necessary to examine the dimension of everyday life. This does not imply an irenic concept of daily life—indeed, prejudice and hatred were a common feature of premodern social life in all strata of society.

On the other hand, recent studies on hatred as a social institution in premodern Europe show that except in times of crisis, everyday Jewish–Christian relations were quite the opposite of what one might expect. Daniel Lord Smail has convincingly shown that in late medieval Marseilles, “Jew–Christian confrontations were relatively infrequent.”

By contrast, cases of “intracommunity confrontations among Jews” were far more frequent, given the small size of the Jewish community.²⁴ In light of this, consigning minorities such as Jews to an “otherly status” in premodern society is debatable.²⁵

Katherine Aron‐Beller’s Christians in Jewish Houses: The Testimony of the Inquisition in the Duchy of Modena in the 17th Century:

When the nineteen‐year‐old Giuseppe Melli was prosecuted by the inquisitors in 1623 for holding a double wedding of poor Jews in his father Emilio’s house in Finale Emilia in 1620, he admitted to allowing Christians to take part in the singing and dancing.¹⁷ The inquisitorial vicar Don Baldassarre Passerini interrogated over twenty Christians, who were reprimanded for socializing and dancing with Jewish women.¹⁸

When Giuseppe was asked whether it was normal practice for Christians and Jews of the town to mingle together, he replied in the affirmative.¹⁹ When he listed some of the Christians who participated, the inquisitorial vicar Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza was shocked that his list included some of the most prominent local Christian noblemen.²⁰

In fact, certain Christian witnesses testified that the whole of the town had come, many out of curiosity so that they might enter the home of a prominent Jew.²¹ Others noted that they had attended because the Jews were their friends.²²

[…]

In 1680, the situation was even more scandalous when it appeared that fraternization between Jews and Christians included members of the clergy. The inquisitorial vicar in Finale Emilia, Fra Girolamo Moretti, was denounced to the Holy Office by Father Provincial of the Conventual Franciscans of Bologna, for participating in social gatherings with Jews and even for eating unleavened bread during the Jewish festival of Passover.²⁸

One Jewish witness, Elia Benedetto Castelfranco, was able to confirm that the vicar had sat with him a few years earlier in his sukkah: the temporary abode (booth) which Jews build as an attachment to their home during the festival of Tabernacles.²⁹ These gatherings of Christians in the homes of Jews seem to have nurtured knowledge of Jewish practices and also personal friendships and genuine trust.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

The enmity between many premodern Christians and Judaists cannot be deduced as some sort of natural and inevitable byproduct of Christian teaching. Rather, it was a political decision: whether it eliminating (potential) economic competition, seizing others’ property or distracting ordinary people from their real problems (typically the upper classes), those who reduce the cause to the Christian justification only put the cart before the horse.

May your presence be a blessing to Jews, as theirs is to you.

‭Proverbs 30:10 NLT‬ [10] Never slander a worker to the employer, or the person will curse you, and you will pay for it.

https://bible.com/bible/116/pro.30.10.NLT

Ecce Homo, which translates to "Behold the Man," refers to a scene from the Bible where Jesus Christ is presented before the Jewish populace. This episode occured after Christ was whipped, crowned with thorns, and mocked, culminating in the Crucifixion. The renowned Italian artist Antonio Ciseri explored this subject, treating it as a historical occurrence.

This large artwork was created over a span of nearly two decades, from 1871 to 1891. Commissioned by the Italian government, it is Ciseri's most monumental religious creation and was unveiled in his studio shortly after his passing, earning widespread praise for its radiant light and the masterful rendering of translucent whites. Ciseri adopts a factual, scientific perspective in depicting the moment Pontius Pilate, from a palace balcony, presents Christ and Barabbas to the assembled crowd for judgment. The governor's wife is the only character whose face is visible, sharing a private moment with her maid, seemingly conveying her belief in Christ's innocence through a whisper. The inclusion of Roman soldiers and various elements like historical clothing and architectural features imbues the painting with a genuine historical ambiance.

P.S. Christians all around the world are now celebrating the week leading to Easter. Here's a glimpse on how artists portrayed the Holy Week in art!