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Anti-semitism. What Is It What Is Its Term Paper

¶ … anti-Semitism. What is it? What is its historical development? Why has it persisted until the present day? What has been the role of Christianity in the continuation of anti-Semitism? Michel Molloy's text Experiencing World Religions offers powerful testimony, over the course of its eighth chapter, as to the plurality and diversity of the Jewish tradition, from the ideological conflicts between the Pharisees and Sadducees in ancient Israel, to the differences in levels of adherence to the Mosaic commandments between Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews today. (Molloy, 2002) Perhaps the one unifying force for all Jews, over much of the modern age, has been the status of Judaism as a persecuted religion and the collective status of the Jews as a persecuted people.

Unlike other ethnic groups peoples, the Jewish people have often been persecuted for their religious beliefs alone, namely their refusal to accept the dominant religion of the home nation they resided in. Yet although Judaism is technically a religion, Jews are also often treated as a 'race,' for even people of Jewish origin who are atheists or converts...

(Telushkin, 1991) For instance, during the Holocaust, people were killed simply because they had a Jewish grandfather or grandmother.
According to Tracey Rich of the website Judaism 101, "Jews are clearly not a race. Race is a genetic distinction, and [unlike the term Jewish] refers to people with shared ancestry and shared genetic traits. You can't change your race; it's in your DNA. I could never become black or Asian no matter how much I might want to," but a gentile can convert to Judaism. In fact, it was the religious diversity and ferment of religious debate within Judaism that gave birth to Christianity as a separate religion, as opposed to a sect of Judaism. "The New Testament depiction of Jesus suggests that he was largely a law-abiding and highly nationalistic Jew, and a man with strong ethical concerns. Like many of Judaism's great rabbis, he saw love of neighbor as religion's central demand. Though many Christians are under the impression that he opposed Judaism's emphasis on law, in actuality he criticized anyone who advocated dropping it. 'Do not…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited

Fitzgerald, Michael. "Christ and Other Religions." Reprinted by permission of the author by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2001, at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/christetal.html

Molloy, Michael. Experiencing World Religions. Second Edition

New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.

Rich, Tracey. "Judaism 101: Who is a Jew?" Judaism 1001 website maintained 1996-2001. Accessed 27 Apr 2005.
http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm
Telushkin, Joseph. Jewish Literacy. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2001, at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/jesus.html
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