#supersessionism

Christmas is a Christian holiday. The fact that many celebrate it in an irreligious way (which is valid!) does not change its origins, connotations, symbolism, nor what it has historically meant for religious minorities.

The idea that Christmas is "secular" (read: neutral) is a product of Christian hegemony and the blindness of many in Christian countries to the permeation of Christianity as "default" culture.

When someone says they don't celebrate Christmas since it's a Christian holiday, it is not actually reassuring or helpful to say something along the lines of "oh well it's just a secular day of family & presents for everyone! So you can celebrate it too!"

I was talking with a religion professor at a large university in the [US]American South the other day. He's a friend of mine. He's a Christian. He teaches world religions to undergraduates. He said: “Most of my students, when they first enter my classroom, believe that the faith and practices of Jews today are what they have read about in the Old Testament in Sunday School.” ...

“Don't they wonder where the priests are, and the animal sacrifice?” ...

“They assume animal sacrifices are still going on,” he said. He was serious. “That's part of why they think Jews and synagogues are scary.”

I'm scared at how little we seem to know about each other in the twenty-first century. 

The most fundamental misunderstanding of Christians toward Jews today throughout the world is the view held, unfortunately, by a majority of us in the pews who think that Judaism equals what we read in the Old Testament. This misunderstanding is both pervasive and dangerous. The truth is, what we know as Judaism is only about as old as the Christian church. Judaism and Christianity are siblings. They both began about two thousand years ago. 

What we read about in the Old Testament—which we should, instead, refer to as the “Hebrew Bible,” to avoid marking it as the “out-of-date” kind of “old”—describes the beginnings and activities and teachings of ancient Israel, a people. 

Those people went into exile (forced to leave what we call the Holy Land) during what is called the Babylonian Captivity about six centuries before Christ. Nearly five centuries after they came back from this captivity, the Roman Empire came to rule Israel, and in the context of the Roman Empire both Judaism and Christianity were born.

@indecisiveavocado I feel like this was a slight subject change so I wanted to address it in its own reblog chain.

Mormons practice a universal form of baptism for the dead. It is one of the rituals performed in the Temples. By "universal" I mean that any names of any dead people they receive are submitted to the ritual.

They get proxies (Mormons who are worthy/able to enter the Temple) to enter a baptismal font and they do the exact same prayer for baptism of a living person, except for the part where they say "I baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ on behalf of [name], who is dead". I did this ritual once when I was a young teenager. You get dunked a bunch of times; I didn't count but it felt like about twenty. After that, they give you a blessing that's supposed to seal you into membership--again, giving it a bunch of times and each time substituting the name of a dead person.

Theologically, this practice does not make the dead person Mormon. The church teaches that people go to a "spirit prison" which is basically purgatory if they were not baptized. Once they are baptized by proxy, the dead person is given the option of accepting or rejecting the baptism. Rejection would mean being sent to "the outer darkness" entirely out of G-d's reach and if you persisted there, cessation of existence; acceptance sends you to one of several afterlives of varying positivity. When I was attending, hell wasn't really a thing and the ability of the dead person to consent was emphasized. That those dead folks were being coerced by cessation of existence was, naturally, not emphasized.

Jews were not specifically targeted for this practice; they do it for everybody. This is why Mormons are obsessed with genealogy. Trying to baptize all their dead family members who were not Mormon. However, once they run out of relatives, members frequently turn to public records to add individuals to the list of folks to be baptized, and that is where the problem arises. Not only are the dead incapable of consent, but their living relatives frequently also object, since the ritual is more or less necromancy with a lot of biblical language papered over it.

A lot of it is laziness on the part of the church leaders. People submit names and no one checks on them beforehand. They only started removing the names of Jews when they were caught doing it, which started happening in the 1990s IIRC. Jews who were listed in the records as having been baptized include Maimonides and Einstein. Anne Frank has been posthumously baptized NINE TIMES, most recently in 2012.

The church insists that baptizing dead Jews has ended but also insists it's impossible to stop people from submitting "inappropriate" names, which I think we all know is bogus. In the 2010s Jewish groups announced that they would stop trying to negotiate with the church since they broke every promise they made about it, and instead said they'd appeal to the court of public opinion.

There is a not-unfounded fear that at some point Jews who died in the Shoah will be declared to be Mormon victims of the Nazi regime in the future thanks to their baptism.

However, Mormons differ from Jehova's Witnesses in that, while some of their teachings regarding Israel and Zion were forbidden, the Mormons got along with the Nazis pretty well. Mormonism teaches its people to be subject to the government and they leaned WAY into that during the Third Reich. The Nazis also liked genealogy and gave records to the church so they could build family trees validating racial purity on the Nazis' behalf.

It wasn't all easy for them, but it was a far cry from other tiny religious groups' treatment in Germany, much less the Jews. Any Mormons who died by Nazi hands did so because they broke with the church's policy and objected to the treatment of Jews.

For whatever it's worth, the church does teach this part of its own history accurately. I heard it from the pulpit as a child as a shameful part of church history. Current educational materials on the church website confirm they still teach it. This is a rare moment where the Mormon church did not invent a story of persecution to excuse itself from incredibly shitty behavior. To claim Jews as Mormon victims of the Nazis would require them to first invent a story where Mormons were victims of the Nazis, which is possible, but not currently being done.

1. What are thoughts on interfaith solidarity/dialogue. I'm not saying you should "be more interfaith", just thoughts on the idea.

2. Any advice on how to be less antisemitic as a christian? I know there's learning to do on my part, but any important stuff to share?

3. What are your thoughts on christians saying Hebrew terms like hossana, hallelujah or even Hebrew names of the creator?

Judaism is ultimately only addressing Jews. We have some universalist passages in our scripture and we're not unconcerned with humanity as a whole, but gentiles don't need Judaism.

Christianity addresses all humanity and everyone needs it.

Similarly, the main point of Christianity for the Christian is salvation from sin (and Hell and death). It's highly individualistic on one hand (it is the individual, not humanity as a whole, that is saved), but at the same time it's addressing a universal problem.

The main point of Judaism for the Jew is... and we already have a problem. Judaism isn't for individual Jews; it's for the Jewish people. Its promise of redemption from exile (literal and metaphorical) is particularist on one hand (it's only relevant to Jews), but on the other it's not individualistic (the Jewish people as a whole will be redeemed from exile*).

*It actually gets a bit more complicated when we start talking about resurrection and the world-to-come, which sometimes is framed in more individualistic terms.

So if you try to do dual-covenant theology (for example), you're faced with a problem. The Jewish people's covenant with God isn't primarily about sin and the salvation it promises isn't primarily for the individual. Judaism does not promise the individual Jew that she will not be subjected to oblivion or eternal conscious torment because that isn't what the covenant is about.

Paul didn't have this problem because (imo) Paul didn't conceive of Christianity primarily in individualistic terms. Paul saw Christianity as grafting gentiles onto the olive tree of the Jewish people; gentiles now share in the collective redemption of the Jewish people.

"I just feel soooo uncomfy using our culturally appropriated Jewish symbols because anything Jewish makes me think of Israel 😭"

"The Jews stole Magen David from occultists"

In which: someone suggests their tutorial on appropriating closed Jewish practices in a Palestine-friendly way, with a bonus dose of historical revisionism!

"Passover is a celebration of genocide"

This is amidst all the posts about "Qabala" and "what is the gematria meaning of snjsidjwk"

ok. Yall really gonna treat Jewish mysticism as an all-you-can-eat buffet and then you're gonna be... like this about actual Jewish people...

Nazi bitches bitching about how the shit they stole from Judaism is still Jewish and instead getting rid of them they either get supersessionist and imply they’re going to make it the jews problem

intersting rare take of “all Judiasm is genocidal Zionist, deconvert or die bitch”. Haven’t seen that among new agers ever only anti theists