As I’m starting to plan the annual birthday celebration of Jesus, who is my favorite Jew, I want to stop and reflect upon why the Jews are so often hated and what this says about us.

The Holocaust aside (and that’s a big aside), let’s just concentrate on a few recent examples: Israel was horrified when a European poll named them the country most detrimental to world peace, beating out countries like North Korea and Iran. In interviews about her new book, Madeline Albright talked about getting anti-Jewish hate mail even before she knew she was Jewish. We recently put up transcripts of Whitley’s talks about The Key, where he quoted the Master of the Key as saying we aren’t yet in space because the parents who would have had the child who would have put us there died in a concentration camp. This unleashed a flurry of anti-Semitic name calling and hate mail. Why do the Jews produce such intense reactions?

Jews seem to be the scapegoats of the world. If anything terrible happens, they must have done it. Even educated people in the Middle East, who should know better, have stated that Jews were behind the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Why do so many journalists treat the suicide bombings in Israel as if they were somehow the fault of the victims? Sure, Jews have made lots of mistakes with regard to the Palestinians, but they’re not likely to rectify them until their citizens are no longer being blown up in restaurants and on buses.

In most families, there’s a scapegoat–a black sheep everyone loves to hate. The Jews seem to play that role for the entire human race. Why do we need someone to blame? is it simply because it makes us feel better about our own failings?

I read somewhere that anti-Semitism is a sign of moral weakness on the part of a person or country. It’s like wearing a badge that says, "I’m inadequate and here’s what I’m doing about it: I’m hating Jews."

If you too are getting ready to celebrate the birthday of a certain famous Jew, but you’ve decided you hate every other Jew, please don’t write to us about it! Try to figure out how to feel better about yourself, instead.

NOTE: This Diary entry, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.