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Which Is Scarier: An All-Powerful Deity or A Jewish Mother?

April 2 2015

Most people, writes Rick Paulas, are familiar with the emotion of guilt, but certain religions—most notably Judaism and Catholicism—are associated in the popular imagination with specific kinds of guilt. After an informal survey, Paulas concludes that Jewish and Catholic guilt are fundamentally different:

The Catholic version of guilt comes from a more ethereal “on-high” place: a judgmental and all-seeing Higher Power. The penalty for not following the instructions of this being? Only eternal damnation. That’s high-pressure stuff, but [this] shouldn’t imply that Jewish guilt is somehow weaker. [The latter] comes from a more tangible place, from your friends and family, from your community. The penalty for not following those instructions? Being ostracized.

The weight of both are tremendous. The unanswerable question—unanswerable, seeing as Jews can’t pretend to be Catholics, and vice-versa—is which is more threatening: an all-powerful deity or your mom? How about if you happen to be one of those lucky few who get to experience . . . both?

“The Jewish side is, ‘You could do better,’ and the Catholic side is, ‘You’re a lost cause,’” says Katherine Spiers, who is ethnically Jewish but was raised Catholic. “I just always feel like I’m [messing] up absolutely everything.”

Read more at Pacific Standard

More about: Catholicism, Family, Judaism, Original Sin, Religion & Holidays

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic