Some ask if prayer problems are limited to Catholics

c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Next Friday (March 21) marks a special moment for both Jews and Christians. Because of the lunar calendar, the Jewish festival of Purim occurs on the same day as the Christian Good Friday. Purim celebrates the Persian Jews’ deliverance 2,600 years ago from Haman, the evil prime minister who […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Next Friday (March 21) marks a special moment for both Jews and Christians. Because of the lunar calendar, the Jewish festival of Purim occurs on the same day as the Christian Good Friday.

Purim celebrates the Persian Jews’ deliverance 2,600 years ago from Haman, the evil prime minister who nearly succeeded in his campaign of total annihilation of the Jews. With the weak Persian King’s permission, Haman cynically cast “purim,” or “lots,” to determine the date for the mass slaughter.


The story is recounted in the biblical book of Esther bearing the name of the courageous Jewish woman who saved her people from destruction by using her position as the Persian queen to block Haman’s murderous scheme.

The story concludes with Haman hanged on the same gallows he had constructed for his victims, and Jews are commanded to annually celebrate their escape from death with “gladness and feasting … with sorrow turned to joy.”

Purim is celebrated with a keen awareness that Haman represents every ruthless anti-Semite throughout history, from Adolf Hitler and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “So many Hamans and only one Purim,” goes the old saying.

While Jews escaped Haman’s death sentence, they were not so fortunate 500 years later, when they were were chafing under harsh Roman occupation. To crush uprisings against its authority, Rome routinely crucified between 50,000 and 100,000 Jewish rebels and disturbers of the political and social order. Crucifixion itself was forbidden by Jewish religious law, but the Romans had no such prohibition.

One Jewish troublemaker was the 33-year-old Jesus of Nazareth. Led by the ruthless sociopath Pontius Pilate, Roman authorities saw Jesus as a threat to the occupation, someone with the ability to incite the restive Jewish masses. Crucifixion was Jesus’ punishment, along with two other Jews who were also executed in Jerusalem on what became known as Good Friday.

The Jews of that time desperately wanted an end to the Roman occupation of their biblical homeland. Indeed, during the first and second Christian centuries, the outnumbered and outarmed Jews fought four unsuccessful wars against the world’s most powerful empire.

Good Friday commemorates the Roman execution of Jesus. But because many European Christians were frequently inflamed by anti-Jewish sermons preached on Good Friday, the day was a dangerous, often bloody time for Jews.


With that history in mind, I attended nearly 20 Good Friday services during my tenure as interreligious director for the American Jewish Committee to see for myself how Jews and Judaism were portrayed.

I wondered how pastors presented the Gospel of John, with its anti-Jewish language (written decades after Jesus’ death) that is a focus of Good Friday services.

Sadly, some pastors used John to convey the false message the “Jews killed our Lord.” When I pointed this out to them after services, they were often embarrassed or unaware of their venomous teachings.

But at other services, thanks to recent progress in Christian-Jewish relations, pastors using the same Gospel transmitted messages about Jesus’ death that were free of toxic anti-Jewish images and stereotypes.

This year, I will attend both Purim and Good Friday services. Both deal with two ancient Empires’ destructive relations with Jews. I know what to expect on Purim, but I wonder whether Christian clergy will present Jews as hated “Christ-killers,” or as a beloved “people of God” who are partners with Christians in the joint quest for justice and peace in today’s turbulent world.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)


KRE END RUDIN650 words

A photo of Rabbi Rudin is available via https://religionnews.com

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