194 Comments

It's worth noting that the Catholic church was born of the very same Roman mentality that demonized Jews prior to it's embrace of Christianity. That's largely why Pilate was diminished as the authority by "washing his hands" to perpetuate the absurd idea that Jews had more power than Roman governors at that time. Rome had to clear themselves of any implication in order to, well, wash their own hands of the rivers of blood they'd spilled.

I'm a lapsed Catholic and even I know this to be the truth.

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Seriously, I thought it was that Pepe, He-Man Woman-hater sign.

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That's so interesting! Well as a non-observant Jew, I think we are the best two people to be discussing this!

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Excuse me, are you *trying* to murder my cat?

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I hope the bastards who did it meet an igneo-mineous end.

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What doesn't kill you makes you strong, or however the saying goes: life is what it is, and we always raised the kids not to feel sorry for themselves no matter what. But yeah, it wasn't a picnic for any of them, and my youngest was especially traumatized by it (she hadn't known what the word "kike" meant, and didn't realize at first it was a pejorative term, which the boys on the school bus found simply hilarious--that meant they got to call her "retard" as well as "kike").

That the kids dealt with it without telling us still breaks my heart: we only found out about it long after the fact, when they were all in college, and home for the long weekend at Thanksgiving. They started talking about one of the boys who had been sort of a ringleader, and it all came out.

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Well, you obviously have a lot of choot-spa!

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LOL sorry, just kidding, that’d be MESHUGGAH! Plus however you say that in Arabic.

The word you're looking for is "majnun."

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No disrespect taken, I just didn't want my neighbors to have an undeserved rep. Believe it or not, the Crossroads area (yep, it's really called that) is fairly reddish-purple. I know for a fact that we treat Teh Gheys pretty well for a town in Texas (one of my very good friends is one of those female Ghey Lezbionics you hear so much about here).

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In this situation, the Hebrew would be "dayenu"

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Arendt FTW

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I have heard the same said of Portuguese (my spelcheker says Penthouse) and Spanish.

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Two rats, for balance.

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Weeellll, there's more. The church was loaning money in the middle ages, but were charging about 200% interest, and of course, all profits went to the Church. European monarchs would allow Jews to settle in their lands and allow them to loan money at lower rates. The king or baron would charge the Jews exhorbitant fees for the privilege of residency, kidnap them and demand ransom, as well as confiscating property held as collateral. This way, the king raised money without directly taxing the peasants. The peasants blamed the Jews for their penury, and frequently attacked them. Once the king had completely impoverished his Jews, he would expell them, and the peasants would rejoice, having forgotten the cost of banking with the church.

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Weelllll, also we could read. So we got to read medical stuff that the locals couldn't. And on top of it, the 4th Lateran Council declared Arabic numerals to be of the debbil, so we were among the few people who could do math. But one of the main things about doctoring and lawyering, and accounting and crafting? They were portable. If you got driven out of one area, you could bring your skills.

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