9/11 and Good Friday.

[richardf8]

The first time morgan1 and I ever set foot in Temple Israel was to see a talk by John Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword. After the presentation, which took place in the run-up to the Easter/Passover season, Morgan was buttonholed by an elderly man who had fled Poland in the wake of pogroms. Good Friday, for him, was the day the Christians would come out of the churches looking for Jews to beat up. And he had absorbed his share of beatings.

And so.

It is now 9/11.

I skim chipuni's friends list, because it is a rich and diverse bouquet, where so many viewpoints can be found, and I notice that someone has goatsed the muslimscommunity. There moderators act swiftly, but no sooner do they delete it than the same user posts an anti-Islamic Chick Tract rife with misinformation and fabrication regarding Islam. This is as close as you can get to mosque desecration on line. I wonder what we will see in the physical world as the day dawns.

The analogy is obvious. And it was the provincial and religious hatred that the Poles had for the Jews that built Auschwitz. A provincial and religious hatred not dissimilar than that which is growing bolder and bolder in the US.

If we allow such seeds to sprout, what vile fruit can we expect to harvest?

Comments

[richardf8]

The Jewish community has, over the centuries, had a certain wariness of others beaten into it, quite literally, over the centuries. The fear of unwittingly providing those who would seek to harm us with ammunition probably explains the reticence you encountered.

I've been watching the muslims community long enough to know that most of what is represented there is from the progressive side of Islam. I won't profess to know "a lot" about Jewish History, but I am willing to share what I do know, and point you to sources more authoritative than me.

[richardf8]

When fundamentalists seize the limelight, the center seems progressive.

Your grandmother's last name would be useful - some are more distinctively Jewish than others.

Germany was seeing a bit of a surge in religious anti-semitism at that time - "biographies" of Jesus were being written that implicated the Jews in his death, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion would be making its debut in Russia. A Jew may have converted to avoid persecution on those accounts, or simply to provide better professional opportunities for themselves and their children, as did the parents of Karl Marx.

If your hypothesis is correct then you do have a Jewish heritage you can lay claim to. Such heritage passes matrilineally in the eyes of Jewish Law (halakhah), so since it is your maternal grandmother we are discussing, your status would be the same as hers.

[richardf8]

Have you tried a genealogy forum?

http://genforum.genealogy.com/ortman/