Catholics the world over have just completed a series of liturgical readings from the Gospel of John, and Gospel readings at Sunday Mass now come from Mark. But the Gospel of John is disturbing in its language, with its frequent reference to “the Jews.” From the foreword to The Gospel According to John, The New American Catholic Bible:^[1]© Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1970. This has been the Bible I’ve had and used since the 1970s, purchased sometime between 1976 and 1978, and is the one pictured at the top of this … Continue reading

The polemic between the synagogue and the church^[2]At the time. John is believed to be the last of the Gospels written, with editing into its final form being completed between 90 and 100 AD. influenced Johannine language toward harshness especially by reason of the hostility toward Jesus manifested by the authorities — Pharisees and Sadducees — who are referred to frequently as “the Jews”.

Yes, I wince at some of the readings from John, even though I know the real meanings of the language used.

I attribute a significant amount of anti-Semitism among Christians to just such language, and I hate that. Jews are our religious forebears, and the hostility of some, hopefully few, Christians toward Jews is simply wrong. Sadly, the tradition of anti-Semitism seems to be festering again. From The Times of Israel:

In newly revealed texts, Columbia deans discuss Jewish student ‘privilege’ and ‘$$$$’

US House panel probing antisemitism at universities publishes exchange between administrators who called Hillel official a ‘problem’ during May event on campus

by Luke Tress | Wednesday, July 3, 2024

New York Jewish Week via JTA — Columbia University administrators said Jewish students occupied a “place of privilege,” called a Hillel official a “problem” and wrote “Amazing what $$$$ can do,” during a panel on Jewish campus life in May, newly released text messages showed.

Columbia had already suspended three of the four administrators involved after photos of some of the texts were first published last month. Now, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is investigating antisemitism at Columbia and other campuses, has obtained and released the full text message exchanges.

While elements of the text messages have been previously reported, the full exchanges show the university officials downplaying students’ concerns about antisemitism, bashing the head of the school’s Hillel and suggesting that Jewish students received attention because of money.

The conversations were conducted while the administrators were attending a May 31 panel discussion titled “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present, and Future.”

“Comes from such a place of privilege,” wrote Susan Chang-Kim, the university’s vice dean and chief administrative officer. “Hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft Center,” Columbia’s Jewish student center, where Hillel is housed.

There’s more at the original, which does not appear to be behind a paywall, but it’s mostly a fairly disgusting recitation of typical anti-Semitic tropes about Jews having money, and being “privileged.”

Well, yeah, they do have money. Not only do American Jews have a cultural ethos of working hard to be successful, but if you can afford to go to Columbia, guesstimated cost of attendance 2024-25 academic year $93,417, yeah, you must be one of the kids of those successful families. Supposedly, if your family’s income is less than $150,000 a year, you’ll be granted financial aid, but let’s tell the truth here: as an Ivy League university, Columbia is among the hoitiest and toitiest of America’s colleges.

So, who is Susan Chang-Kim? The university lists her as being “Vice Dean and Chief Administrative Officer,” with her baccalaureate degree from the University of Maryland, 1993, and a Masters from Teachers College, Columbia’s graduate school of education, 2005. One would think that a woman in her early fifties, who was (supposedly) educated at as prestigious a place as Columbia, would have more f(ornicating) sense than to be sending anti-Semitic text messages to Cristen Kromm, a dean of undergraduate student life, during a public meeting and presentation, in which this could happen:

An audience member sitting behind one of the deans took photos of the administrators’ texts and first shared them last month with the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet that has reported aggressively about the incident and its fallout.

Yup, Miss Chang-Kim is stupid! Educated, but nevertheless stupid.

The university suspended Chang-Kim, Kromm and (Matthew) Patashnick (an associate vice dean for student and family support) last month after the texts came to light.

Stupid is as stupid does, but there’s more to this than just plain stupidity. These people were comfortable enough in their anti-Semitism to know other people who dislike Jews, and comfortable enough to send text messages to each other about it in a public forum. They were assuming that they were surrounded by like-minded people who would neither mind nor care what they were doing, and inattentive enough to the forum in which they were participating to simply dismiss the concerns of others presenting the problems Columbia University, their employer, faces.

That, to me, is the most damning part of the whole sorry episode. Yes, three bad people have been suspended, which is a good thing, but they also seem to have believed that there was little or no danger in expressing those views, supposedly privately but nevertheless in public, in a forum in which they at least could get caught. Their actions tell us one sad truth: they truly believed that not only was anti-Semitism justified, but that it was widely shared, at least to some extent, at Columbia.

To what extent might that be? At least thus far, nothing has been revealed telling us that any of the three suspended administrators want to see Israel destroyed and the Jews sent to camps to be gassed and burned, but there was an attitude of dismissal toward Jews on campus, dismissal because they are Jews. They would, I assume, never have expressed such an attitude toward the concerns of Muslims, blacks, ‘Palestinians,’ homosexuals, the ‘transgendered,’ or members of any other Accredited Victim Group™.

Anti-Semitism has simply become commonplace in the United States. No, most Americans don’t want Jews killed, but I worry that there is a subtle dislike of Jews, for stupid reasons, or even no reason at all, at least no reason that anti-Semites could put into words.