Wednesday, March 4, 2020

European floats depict vermin, chimneys, poison gas, bags of money …


Thane Rosenbaum via JNS:
The Jewish holiday of Purim, to be celebrated next week, came early in both Belgium and Spain this year—not for Jews, but for those who hate them no matter the millennium. It’s apparently impossible to resist turning an entire people into crude stereotypes and satirical objects of loathing at certain annual carnivals in Western Europe. These popular gatherings of merry-making at the expense of Jews—along with politicians, religious leaders and famous faces—date back to the Middle Ages, and occur before Ash Wednesday and Lent.

The anticipated civility of the enlightenment did nothing to draw some Europeans out from the anti-Semitic cesspool of the dark ages. […]

Imagine a Purim spiel where Jews dressed up like the KKK carrying nooses, or painted their faces yellow and carried bags of rice or clutched calculators, or showed up wearing traditional Muslim garb adorned with one added accessory—a fake, but highly visible, suicide vest? 
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