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There’s an old joke told about a cowboy and a Jewish
storekeeper in the Wild West. The cowboy (let’s call him Bill) was a frequent
customer at the store owned by the Jew (let’s call him Moishe). One night,
Bill went to a revival meeting and was “saved.” The next day he walked into
Moishe’s store, and asked him, “Moishe, are you a Jew?”
“Sure I am,” was the answer.
Bill grabbed the storekeeper and threw him headfirst out
the window. When Moishe came to, he picked the broken glass out of his beard,
brushed himself off and staggered back into the store. “What did you do that
for?” he asked his formerly friendly customer.
“You Jews killed Jesus!” shouted Bill.
“Even if we did,” Moishe said, “it happened hundreds
of years ago. What does that have to do with me?”
“I didn’t know about it until last night,” Bill
admitted, “and I just figured you was one of the ones what done it.”
Now, this scenario of a clueless “Born-Again” might
apply to Knicks player Charlie Ward, but not to Free Congress Foundation
president Paul Weyrich.
The same politically correct herd that had conniptions over
Johnny Hart’s “B.C.” comic strip went into a feeding frenzy over
Weyrich’s Easter sermon, “Indeed
He Is Risen,” in which it was alleged that Deacon Weyrich brought out
the old canard of the Jews as Christ-killers.
I have a sinking feeling that the loudest complaints were
made by people who never bothered to read Weyrich’s article, at least not all
the way through. Weyrich’s point, as I understand it, was to state that the
resurrection is the foundation of Christianity. If no resurrection took place,
the entire basis of Christianity is null and void, just as (l’havdil)
the revelation at Sinai is the foundation of Judaism. No Sinai, no Judaism; no
resurrection, no Christianity.
Weyrich’s purpose was to persuade Christians to accept
the doctrine of resurrection, not to lay blame on whatever party carried out the
step prior to the resurrection.
Not being a Christian, I have no interest in theological
dueling or hairsplitting over whether the trial of Jesus was conducted according
to halacha and who really bears the blame. There
are articles by Jewish theologians available for anyone who is curious
about such things. But Jews have no right to tell Christians what they should
and should not believe.
My point is that Weyrich’s remarks were taken totally out
of context.
With so many overt anti-Semites on the loose and openly
calling for the extermination of the Jews, why would anyone feel the need to go
on a witch hunt for secret anti-Semites behind every rock and tree except where
they really are? During the Inquisition and the Middle Ages, wild-eyed mobs
would swarm out of the churches following the Easter sermon, looking for Jews to
kill. Today we have wild-eyed mobs swarming out of the mosque on the Temple
Mount following the Friday sermon, all pumped up to kill Jews, which they in
fact have been doing with great regularity. But everybody is too busy being
horrified by Johnny Hart and Paul Weyrich and brain-dead basketball players to
point out, hey, look thataway! While in the meantime, Mrs. Suha Arafat (remember
her? Hillary kissed her after she said the “Jews are poisoning the wells”)
tells the press there never was a “peace process” and then proudly brags,
“I hate Israel.” And then she (Suha that is, not Hillary) complains that
left-wing Israeli women’s groups keep inviting her to their parties.
We have Mr. Peres, suffering from advanced dementia,
insisting that the Chief Thug Arafat is still a “peace partner,” and we have
the sociopathic Yossi Sarid telling Chief Thug Arafat that it’s perfectly OK
to keep murdering Jews (as long as they’re “settlers”) until Israel caves
in to his demands. And that champion of the Israeli fourth estate, Ha’aretz,
continues to insist that peace will be achieved once “the settlers” have
been liquidated.
All Paul Weyrich said was that two thousand years ago there
were some
Jews who turned another Jew over to their enemies to be killed.
Where would he get a crazy idea like that?
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