Wishing You a Nonsense Free Springtime Festival - My Latest for Haaretz

Last week slimy Brexit cheerleader and nasty little UKIP troll Nigel Farage trolled us once again, this time claiming (incorrectly) that Cadbury had removed 'Easter' from its Egg Hunt promotion. If it wasn't bad enough stirring up outrage with his fabrications (remind you of someone?) Farage had to drag us into it, tweeting "...we must defend our Judeo-Christian culture and that means Easter."

What the fuck you mean by 'our' culture you racist little toad?

Ugh.

Turns out Farage has been selling this 'Judeo-Christian culture' bullshit for a while. In 2014, for example, he was on TV calling for 'extreme measures' to stop homegrown non-white terrorists. Makes you wonder what kind of 'extreme' solution Farage had for homegrown white terrorists like the killer of Jo Cox, Thomas Meir... Oh wait, he has none.

Anyway... plenty of Jews took umbrage at Farage's fantasy about Judeo-Christian culture, especially British culture. I mean, where does herding all your Jews into a tower and lighting it on fire fit into this picture?

Genug shoyn with this Judeo-Christian nonsense. My latest at Haaretz is about the uses and abuses of this imagined affinity between Jews and Christians. Did you know a pastor who 'laid hands' on the President will be hosting a Messianic seder? Did you know the President's pastor (prosperity preacher, Paula White) claims Passover as part of her "spiritual heritage"? These pastors lurve them some Passover, but why isn't the love returned by Jews?

For Jews in Eastern Europe, rather than being seen as a “supernatural, miraculous season” (as Paula White fondly describes the time of Passover) Easter was a time of dread. Violence against Jews often peaked around religious holidays. The infamous Kishinev pogrom of 1903 started on Easter Sunday amid ‘fake news’ of the day that two Christian children had been murdered to provide blood for Jewish matzah. In Yiddish, Pentecost, the seventh week after Easter, was known as ‘di grine khoge’, the (non-Jewish) holiday of terror.  

Pastor White can imagine herself into the Exodus narrative, celebrate as many seders as she wants, and for all I know, write new, pro-Trump (kholile) verses of Chad Gadya. She can do this because, not to put too fine a point on it, Passover has never been a symbol of mortal terror for her or her followers.

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(p.s. In these days of shrinking independent media many news sites, like Haaretz, put their content behind paywalls. I hope you'll think about supporting Haaretz so it can keep publishing terrific journalism and the occasional op-ed by yours truly)