Today was the first day back to school after Christmas break and I actually had a sub job!!! I was a bit nervous about it because usually the day before and after a break the kids are especially rowdy. Today they were ok. The teacher left me a worksheet to go over with the class each period. It was on the words Connotation and Denotation. The students had to complete a few exercises to show they understood what the connotation and denotation of a word was. While teaching the class what to do for the first exercise, where they were to write if a word had a negative or positive connotation, I asked them this question: "Using the word given, "penny pincher," do you think that has a negative or a positive connotation?" To my shock I had a student ask "do you mean like a Jew?" I could not believe he said that. This is the second time I have heard a student use a racial slur towards a Jewish person. The strange thing is that there are hardly any Jewish people in the area I live, so where are they getting these racial stereotypes from? Is it on TV? Do their parents say things like this? Do their friends? Teachers?
As I was reflecting on what happened during that lesson, I came across and article that said : "Hate crimes across New York state jumped 14 percent in 2009, led by an increase in attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions, state records released yesterday show...Anti-Semitic incidents, which made up 37 percent of the reported hate crimes, were up 15 percent in one year, from 219 in 2008 to 251 in 2009."I found this information
HERE. I also found some interesting information on the
FBI website. "In 2009, the Nation’s law enforcement agencies reported that there were 8,336 victims of hate crimes...
- 48.8 percent of the victims were targeted because of the offender’s bias against a race.
- 18.9 percent were victimized because of a bias against a religious belief.
Of the 1,575 victims of an anti-religious hate crime:
- 71.9 percent were victims because of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias.
Yikes, these statistics are startling. Please pray for the Jewish people. For courage, and most importantly
for their salvation.
~N
Sadly, there is nothing new under the sun. Hatred for the Jews has been around for thousands of years. Just like one of my students telling the joke about Jewish people. I don't know where the anti-Jewish sentiment comes from, but my guess would be that what comes out of their mouth is a revelation of what is going on inside their hearts.
ReplyDeleteLuke 6:45
"The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart."
Unfortunately, anti-semitism is growing everywhere, including in our country. It is so important that we as Christians love the Jewish people and share with them the love of Christ...especially the gospel. It is pretty sad that a Jewish person would be at all surprised when they meet a Christian who loves them, their people and their country. It's also unfortunate that some believers teach that they don't need to accept Jesus to go to heaven. The best way to lead a Jewish person to Christ is to lovingly share Christ with them...and love them unconditionally, even if they don't accept Yeshua as the Messiah right away.
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