Is This Why the Jews Are Disliked by Other Religions?

[Christina Marie]

Is This Why the Jews Are Disliked by Other Religions?
Mehul Kamdar
December 10, 2005

A personal observation of Jews and South Asians in Chicago

It was when my wife and I started looking at buying a condominium in Chicago that an Indian friend gave us this advice, “Buy one in a Jewish neighbourhood. You won’t have to worry about law and order there.”

We already knew this, our apartment in a predominantly Hassidic neighbourhood was a place where you could sit on the patch of grass outside on a Saturday afternoon in the summer to watch whole families go to the synagogues together. I would occasionally walk my little dog outside and some of the children would come up asking if they could pet him, something that I happily agreed to let them do. They would look at my dark skin, long hair and Asian features and wonder who I was, as would their parents from their cautious looks from some distance away, but I guess I soon became known as a harmless local eccentric until I ended up sick and in need of treatment.

My wife had booked me with a Polish doctor who was my primary physician and it was a chore to even meet the woman until I sent her Physicians Group an e-mail telling them that I was considering a legal option against them - a trick that I learned from an article in The New York Times. After this, I received, on average, three calls a day until I found my treatment underway. And then, I needed to get my eyesight checked because of my condition and the doctor I chose was Jewish.

It was a completely different experience. After a quick glance at my insurance card, the doctor’s secretary ushered me into his clinic room which was in a small nondescript building on Devon Avenue. I explained my problem and during the course of the examination, I got talking to him. His family had friends in Israel who were Cochin Jews from India. And We talked about them, the Bene Israel and the new converts from the Indian North East, the Bnei Menashe. The hour long examination was punctuated with very interesting conversation about India, Indian history, and, when he learned about my secular activities, about religious fundamentalism. It was a vastly different experience from my primary physician to say the least.

Devon Avenue is an unusual street in Chicago - with mostly Jewish families in the streets in the South of it and Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi families living in the streets to its North. There are a smattering of Arab families in the area including Palestinians and Moroccans whom I would occasionally speak to in French. The street itself is lined with Russian pharmacies and medical and surgical equipment stores, kosher bakeries, halal meat shops and Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurants alongside the phone card shops and travel agencies that are typical of South Asian localities anywhere in the west. The difference between where we lived and the north side off Devon was something that we saw on more than one occasion - sub continental children would throw egg shells and other projectiles at buses and get rounded up by the police on practically every occasion we went shopping for Indian spices or groceries.

On more than one occasion, I saw trouble in a city parking lot on Devon - the only parking lot there which stands very near a mosque - with fist fights between West and South Asian youth. And, restaurants where my wife and I would eat always had someone or the other ask us whether we were Indian or Pakistanis - we could speak both North and South Indian languages and they were always curious about where we came from. We would leave them guessing by asking them where they thought we hailed from. Contrast this, again, to a kosher bakery that I buy my bread from - the first time we were there, the girls seemed surprised to see us shop in the store until I told them about my years in Russia and how I liked their Rye Bread with meat. They didn’t seem to believe me until I once read a Russian language newspaper that they offered free to customers in my halting Russian and my memories of the Cyrillic script from more than ten years before. There haven’t been any questions since.

It was obvious that there were no gangs among the Jewish children unlike among the West and South Asians, or, indeed, among the other communities in other parts of Chicago. I have been told that the more affluent Jewish localities further north of us like Lincolnwood and Skokie have problems with drugs, though there are no gangs, again, among Jewish youth. And there was something that intrigued me further - the free Chicago Reader that we would pick up every Friday always carried advertisements on “converting to Judaism” or “learning about Judaism” for Gentiles who were dating Jews. This was amid nearly daily reports from across the Atlantic about “honour” killings among virtually every South Asian community in Europe and, who knows how many more in South Asia itself.

To the Jews, killing their own children for dating someone from another community was not something to think about. And, for the different West and South Asian communities in Europe and South Asia, “honour” seemed to lie in killing mostly girls who dated outside their clan. It is a difference that stands out quite starkly and something that seems to me, to indicate the very different approaches that the Jews seem to take to life, at least as far as their own children are concerned compared to “the rest of us.” And this community feeling among them seems to extend to other Jews as well - I remember the late Yasser Arafat’s statement on Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination where he expressed astonishment that a Jew had killed another Jew.

Is this, perhaps, the reason why non Jews dislike Jews? The stability of Jewish families and their strong community feeling, their success in business and in different professions in whatever country they live in, their skepticism as far as religion and dogma is concerned, including their own religion? This is not to belittle the Palestinian problem which is something completely beyond the scope of this personal experience piece - the reference is to the dislike for Jews that seems to be endemic among non Jews, in a country where there is no conflict between the Jewish people and them, and where Israel is a distant land. It does seem like a “sour grapes” kind of feeling. The non Jews need to introspect, to work as hard as the Jews and to grow up.


Footnote: I was brought up to believe that India was the only country in the world that did not have a history of Anti-Semitism. I have been corrected by Tamil writer K A Francis who tells me that this was true prior to the Portuguese presence in India. Apparently, the Portuguese brought with them the intense Anti-Semitism of their Catholic faith.

http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?a ... el=gulberg

[bayarearep]

maybe i'm an idiot
but i didn't understand that article at all

whatever

[Christina Marie]

It was a little vague...but I think the mans point was something like do other religions/peoples/ethinticities hate Jews because they do not engage in killing their own. As in comparison to maybe...a white kid who offs his own family or a black kid who does a drive by and brings upon his family retaliation..possibly the murder of one of the original shooters family members. Like I said, the "point" to his story was vague and I am only making an educated guess based upon the info the article gave and issues it touched on.

[AcmeWhiteBread]

Its one of the 7 deadly sins. Its called envy. They are crafty, smart and you cant beat them/////////

[Sentenza]

It was a little vague...but I think the mans point was something like do other religions/peoples/ethinticities hate Jews because they do not engage in killing their own. As in comparison to maybe...a white kid who offs his own family or a black kid who does a drive by and brings upon his family retaliation..possibly the murder of one of the original shooters family members. Like I said, the "point" to his story was vague and I am only making an educated guess based upon the info the article gave and issues it touched on.

They do engage in killing their own. Just because they dont do it now, doesnt mean they never did.
Right now they are surrounded by enemies, so they better stick together or theyll die.
The reason why people hate Jews is because the bible accused them of killing Jesus, which also is not true cause the Romans are responsible for it.
Its like someone in the US gets executed and you blame lets say, the Amish for it.
This hatred has been cultivated over the centuries until people forgot why they hated jews, invented all kinds of lies about them to justify their hatred (they are greedy, look strange, poison our wells etc.) and the whole thing ended in the holocaust. Well it did not end, but reahced its peak...
Sorry, had to get this off my chest

[Christina Marie]

I am not saying you are wrong ^. I was just trying to take a guess at what the man who wrote the articles point was. Got any ideas???

[Sentenza]

I am not saying you are wrong ^. I was just trying to take a guess at what the man who wrote the articles point was. Got any ideas???

Yea i know, i was just kind of responding to the supposed message of the article...

[Christina Marie]

I am not saying you are wrong ^. I was just trying to take a guess at what the man who wrote the articles point was. Got any ideas???

Yea i know, i was just kind of responding to the supposed message of the article...

LMAO!! It is reallllly vague is'nt it?? I wonder if he even knew what his point was.

[bayarearep]

and jews are human
all humans certain groups of their own as lower

in Isreal, there was a mini-civil war basically, between the Saphardic Hebrews and Ashkenazi Jews...
The Ashkenzi's stuck all of my people in this area right next to the Palestinians so we would be hit my the mortars first!!!
then the Safards rose up...

saphardim translates to "spanish jew" basically, but at that time, Spain controlled the mediteranian and north africa...so any jew from these regions is Saphardic

most say it's the original Hebrew, as we look more Arabic then Eastern European

[Christina Marie]

I don't know about how much I look like a Jew, I never really gave it much thought. I am Russian and German Jew. Next time I look in the mirror, I will be checking it out....lol.

[3Harmonies]

^^^ So why did you family decide to convert to Christianity? I think some Jews have a Mongolian admixture, not all but some. They look like Sami people or sometimes look more like the Hebrew (Middle-Eastern). Then again there are some that just look plain white. Jeff Goldblum probably doesnt fit into the stereo-typical Jewish-American look. Alot of people say he look Indian I like that piano chick, Vanessa Carlton.. she got a unique look..

[Christina Marie]

On my moms/fathers side (Russian) when he and his parents came to Canada from Russia they converted to Christianity. I do not know exactly why they made that choice. I have been raised non-denominational Christian. My dads side converted at some point a few generations after the first settlers came from Germany, they resided in PA (much of that side of my family still does).

[Old Shatterhand]

It is important to remember that the original Christian movement was comprised almost solely of Jews.

And many people of Jewish descent are Christians by choice today. Some have integrated into mainstream Christian movements while others prefer to identify with organizations such as Jews for Jesus http://www.jewsforjesus.org/ and other such Messanic organizations. These organizations tend to get a lot of heat by both Judiasts and some Christians though.

[Tre]

I think my first introduction to anti-Semitism was hearing the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Hymietown remark when I was growing up. I didn't understand what the remark meant and being young and impressionable I thought, "Damn we suppose to hate the Jews too? What the hell they do to us?" Growing up in a Christian household the argument that hatred for the Jews was because they killed Jesus never made much sense to me since Jesus was a Jew. Also I never considered Jews a highly visible people. By this I mean most Jews I have encountered I would not have known they were Jewish if they had not told me.

You are right that ‘Jews for Jesus’ is highly controversial. I’ve had Jews tell me that ‘Jews for Jesus’ doesn't exist because if they are for Jesus then they can’t be REAL Jews.

[Old Shatterhand]

Christianity's roots go back into Jewish history long before the birth of Jesus Christ. It was Jesus of Nazareth, however, who attacked established Judaism even as he fulfilled Judiasm's ancient prophecies concerning the Messiah. After his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate; a Roman official, Jesus' teachings spread throughout the Mediterranean area.

An apostle named Paul was especially influential. He stressed God's gift of salvation for all men and thus led in Christianity's emergence from Palestine to its position as a universal religion.

Jesus was a Jew. He came from a Jewish family, he studied the Jewish law, he observed the Jewish religion. Any serious study of his life makes this clear. An unprejudiced reading of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John reveals Jesus' plans for a company of followers to carry on his work. For two years he worked with a faithful band of disciples; he taught them about life in what he called "the kingdom of God"; and he introduced them to the "new covenant" that bound them together in forgiveness and love. Then he paid the ultimate price as the "lamb of God who takes on the sins of the world" and ascended to the "right hand of the Father."

A good understandable introduction to church history is entitled "Church History in Plain Language." You can order it on Amazon.

Now, of course, there is a big difference between an authentic Christian of Jewish descent who has integrated with mainstream Christianity and an orthodox Jew who has rejected Christianity. Let me say it again, there is a BIG difference in the worldviews and belief systems of authentic Christians of Jewish descent who have integrated with mainstream Christianity and Christians of all races and orthodox Jews who have rejected Christianity. Their worldviews and beliefs are miles apart. You do find many groups, like Jews for Jesus, who fulfill a role as evangelist to Jews of all persuasions including orthodox and even to non Jews.