#yoshke

On the road, parting is almost always clean cut. Friendships and other relationships are just a papercut away to snapping. With a swift slash of a bus ticket or a boarding pass, it’s gone. Not like in “real life.”

Remember your seatmate on one of your elective classes back in college? Or the friendly guy you always spend lunch breaks with during your first job? Some of your closest friends years ago but you barely see nowadays, remember them? When you “parted,” you probably still saw each other again. Frequently within the first months. Occasionally in the next few. And then rarely a year later.

In the stationary world, bonds are not broken; they just fade away. It’s like the lingering feeling when you watch a film so good that you still could not move a muscle even after the closing credits rolled. It’s like having a song stuck in your head and then replaced by another subconsciously. You don’t realize it until years later when you hear that song again on the bus on the way home. By a random stroke of fate, it comes poking itself into your head again: that movie you once loved so much, that song you once couldn’t stop listening to… that friend you were once so very close to.

They didn’t vanish in an instant; they faded away. No cuts, only fade-to-black. It’s slow. Barely noticeable.

Remember when your math teacher would always instruct you to find X? The X keeps changing value depending on the many factors around it — whom you are with, where you are, where you’re headed. Some friends have moved on to another direction — another school, another job, another country. Some walk past you. Some you leave behind. Before you know it, you’re wandering, wondering where they are now, how they are now, and why you didn’t notice them go. Sure, there are those in our lives who are always there, the constant in the equation.

When I began studying Yiddish more than a dozen years ago, the other students in class had no problem choosing appropriate names to use during our conversation sessions. David became Dovid; Rebecca became Rivka; Isaac became Itsik. There is no obvious Yiddish equivalent of Peter, so I became Pesach. Once a common Jewish name, it is also the Hebrew word for the holiday that starts later this week.

I never admitted why I felt drawn to the name. Not only am I not a Jew, I’m the son of former Christian clergy. I grew up in a post-Vatican II, liberal Catholic milieu that liked to believe the Church had shrugged off enough of its long history of anti-Semitism to begin talking about Jesus as a rabbi. In my house, we had no problem thinking about the Last Supper as a Seder. To be a Catholic named for Passover made perfect sense to me, especially during a week like this one, when the Jewish and Christian feasts coincide.

Yet the more I learned the Yiddish view of Jewish-Christian history, the more I came to realize that the easy pluralism of related rituals might be naïve. It may even obscure more meaningful connections.

A Dangerous Season

Far from an opportunity to meditate upon the Jewishness of Jesus, the overlap of Holy Week and Passover has historically been for Jews the most dangerous time of the year, when Christians fresh from their Passion Plays menaced the people they called “Christ killers.” According to the ancient blood libel, Jews were not only the murderers of the messiah; at Passover they turned knives on Christian children, bleeding them to make matzah and wine.

In Yiddish, Jews reacted to the stories wafting out of Holy Week churches with a mixture of fear and derision. The Christian savior was regularly referred to by playful nicknames like Yoizel, Getzel, and most creatively Yoshke Pandre. The layers of meaning in this last name are astonishing: Using the diminutive suffix “–ke,” Yoshke translates as “Little Joe,” tweaking Jesus’ non-biological relationship to the credulous husband of Mary. Pandre, meanwhile, is Yiddish for “panther,” a reference to the allegations dating to the second century that the father of Jesus was neither God, nor Joseph the carpenter, but a plundering Roman soldier called Pantera (Latin for “panther”). This nickname was further elaborated by taking the first part of Pandre as the honorific Pan (“Sir”), then adding a letter to the second syllable to form drek (“excrement”), applying to Jesus Christ a name roughly equivalent to a vulgarized version of Joe the Plumber: Yoshke Pan Drek.

When I first learned this history of interfaith name calling, I was working as a collector of Yiddish books, and had frequent contact with the last generation for whom the most uniquely Jewish of languages was a mother tongue. A Catholic moving through a Yiddish-speaking world, I was relieved to discover how much less theological differences seemed to matter than they once did. Visiting elderly Jews in Brooklyn, Co-op City, or the New Jersey suburbs, I was usually invited to stay a while, maybe long enough to meet a visiting granddaughter. Yes, I knew a little Yiddish, but there seemed a shared language no matter what words we used. It was a language not of theology but culture; not ritual but experience.

In my time as a Jewish book collector, I came in contact with Jewish images of my French Canadian grandparents who settled uneasily in a new country, desperate to spare their children the stigma of their foreign tongue. I also met Jewish versions of my Irish immigrant grandmother who came to this country at age 21 and died with a brogue thick as stew 75 years later. In both the Catholic environment I came from and the Jewish one in which I worked, I saw the creators of distinctly urban American cultures, men and women with the Old World still in their bones, facing the challenges of keeping ancient traditions alive.

“If You Live in Butte, Montana…”

Despite the well-meaning efforts of Christians in search of their Jewish roots, the fact that Jesus was a Jew, and that the Last Supper was a Seder, has little to do with what American Catholics and American Jews truly have in common, which is far more than our fraught religious histories would suggest. Is it possible that the saga of immigration and assimilation shared by Jews and Catholics in the twentieth century is more meaningful to contemporary religious identities than the millenia of conflicting traditions that came before? 

As that great sociologist of religion Lenny Bruce once said, “Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York you’re Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish even if you are Jewish.”

During a week of religious collision that once meant trouble, it is hopeful that the names Catholics and Jews once called each other may soon be as forgotten as Yoshke Pan Drek. In the meantime, even a goy a called Pesach can be pleased to live at time when holy days intersect without bloodshed, in a place where rituals inform but do not define us.

http://religiondispatches.org/call-me-pesach/

Tags

christian easter jesus jewish lenny bruce passover yiddish

Um Papa sem férias e com oposição

http://www.dn.pt/opiniao/opiniao-dn/anselmo-borges/interior/um-papa-sem-ferias-e-com-oposicao-5369891.html

Desde que foi eleito, Francisco não fez férias. Não será por isso que o conhecido colunista do The New York Times David Brooks escreveu que "provavelmente precisamos de alguém do estilo do Papa Francisco na política". O que se passa é que Francisco sabe que tem uma missão urgente para a Igreja e para o mundo e realiza-a com convicção, humildade e inteligência, tendo-se tornado, de facto, um líder moral planetário.

No tempo que poderia ser de férias, esteve na Polónia, para a celebração da Jornada Mundial da Juventude, com a presença de quase dois milhões de jovens, a quem deixou uma mensagem de despedida, pedindo-lhes "memória, coragem e semear para o futuro". E aquela sua peregrinação solitária e silenciosa em Auschwitz foi um grito para toda a humanidade: "Ali, compreendi mais do que nunca o valor da memória, como advertência e responsabilidade para hoje e amanhã, para que a semente do ódio não cresça na história."

E continuou no anúncio e prática da mensagem cristã. "Temos muitas coisas, mas não podemos levá-las connosco. Recordar que a mortalha não tem bolsos." Denuncia a "casta" eclesiástica: "Há um profundo desprezo pelo povo santo de Deus. Já não são pastores, mas capatazes"; "a Igreja não precisa de burocratas, mas de pastores que cuidam e não maltratam". E visitou 20 mulheres que tinham sido libertadas da exploração sexual. Fará o possível para visitar as zonas de Itália afectadas pelo terramoto.

Não esquece a urgência da paz. Aí está a sua influência para o acordo de paz na Colômbia. Que "é inaceitável que tanta gente indefesa, especialmente tantas crianças, tenham de pagar o preço do conflito sírio". Recebeu com "dor e horror" a notícia da degola do padre francês por terroristas: "violência absurda". "O tráfico de seres humanos, de órgãos, o trabalho forçado e a prostituição são crimes contra a humanidade."

O seu empenho na renovação das estruturas da Igreja não esmorece. Nomeou uma comissão paritária para estudar a possibilidade da ordenação de mulheres como diaconisas. Quem está atento sabe que é pouco, mas poderá ser um ponto de partida para a concretização da plena igualdade de direitos de homens e mulheres na Igreja. Possivelmente, no próximo Sínodo dos Bispos, um dos temas será a ordenação como presbíteros de homens casados, o que lentamente levará ao termo da lei do celibato obrigatório. Provavelmente em Novembro haverá novo consistório para a criação de 13 novos cardeais eleitores, sendo seu critério a concretização da universalidade da Igreja, que se chama católica mas que continua eurocentrada. Nesta linha, poderia aparecer um cardeal russo e outro chinês. Note-se que o cardeal P. Parolin, secretário de Estado do Vaticano, acaba de anunciar que "há muitas esperanças para um novo ciclo" nas relações bilaterais entre o Vaticano e Pequim, "não só em benefício dos católicos da terra de Confúcio, mas para todo o país, uma das grandes civilizações do planeta". Incluindo "relações diplomáticas, se Deus quiser".

Outro campo que ocupa a atenção permanente de Francisco são o diálogo ecuménico inter-cristão e o diálogo inter-religioso. Celebrando-se no próximo ano o quinto centenário da Reforma, pronunciou-se em termos raramente ouvidos sobre Lutero: "Creio que as intuições de Martinho Lutero não eram equivocadas: era um reformador. Talvez alguns métodos não tenham sido os adequados, mas pensando naquele tempo vemos que a Igreja não era realmente um modelo a imitar: havia corrupção na Igreja, espírito mundano, apego ao dinheiro e ao poder. Por isso protestou. Aliás, era inteligente e deu um passo avante, justificando porque é que fazia isso. E hoje, luteranos e católicos, protestantes e todos, estamos de acordo sobre a doutrina da justificação: quanto a este ponto tão importante, ele não estava equivocado". Assim, estará na Suécia no dia 31 de Outubro próximo, para participar na celebração da Federação Luterana Mundial para comemorar os 500 anos da Reforma. Penso que não é de excluir, no próximo ano, o grande gesto que seria o de levantar a excomunhão a Lutero. Antes, no dia 20 de Setembro, estará com o patriarca ortodoxo Bartolomeu e 400 líderes religiosos de várias confissões em Assis, no trigésimo aniversário do primeiro encontro inter-religioso, com João Paulo II. "Sede de paz. Religiões e culturas em diálogo", é o lema da iniciativa inter-religiosa.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tripe

What is the Jewish belief of the messiah?

“In future time, the King Mashiach [1] will arise and renew the Davidic dynasty, restoring it to its initial sovereignty. He will rebuild the [Beis Ha]Mikdash and gather in the dispersed remnant of Israel. Then, in his days, all the statutes will be reinstituted as in former times. We will offer sacrifices and observe the Sabbatical and Jubilee years according to all their particulars set forth in the   Torah. 

… If a king will arise from the House of David who delves deeply into the study of the Torah and, like David his ancestor, observes its mitzvos as prescribed by the Written Law and the Oral Law; if he will compel all of Israel to walk in [the way of the Torah] and repair the breaches [in its observance]; and if he will fight the wars of G-d; - we may, with assurance, consider him Mashiach. If he succeeds in the above, builds the [Beis Ha]Mikdash on its site, and gathers in the dispersed remnant of Israel, he is definitely the Mashiach. [5] He will then perfect the entire world, [motivating all the nations] to serve G-d together, as it is written [Zephaniah, 3:9], “I will make the peoples pure of speech so that they will all call upon the Name of G-d and serve Him with one purpose." 

Source: Mishneh Torah, hilchot Melachim chapter 11.

You can read more here (source: Chabad).

Why wasn’t Jesus? 

See above. He didn’t fulfill the prophecies.

How I can information about this topic?

The Jewish Response to Missionaries (Jews for Judaism)