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Hey Blue.

There’s an old saw in Jewish circles that if you have three Jews discussing something you will get four opinions.

At any rate, sf would be right that the modern mainstream Jewish understanding of their faith doesn’t “care” about “different religions.” Whether it also instructs Jews not to care about particularized defamation is another ball of wax. I daresay that not just Abe Foxman but educated rabbis are bothered by some of the literally hateful memes about Jews to be found in Islam. Opinions are more mixed in that set about the allegedly defamatory import of various statements about Jews in the Christian New Testament, but virtually none of those fears are borne out by modern evangelical Christian explanations, at least.

The rift between Christianity and modern Judaism is based in a disagreement that dates to when Jesus of Nazareth was walking around, in the flesh, in the Holy Land. Putting it bluntly, Jesus the Jew told the standard bearers of the faith into which he was born, i.e. the Pharisees, that they were all religiously washed up. He kept on hinting in their faces that he was the Messiah but he couldn’t be pinned down. He acted and spoke like he thought he was God. The secular occupying authorities were baffled, but in the end were more concerned with whether they would see Rome’s wrath come down upon their heads than with whether Jesus had done anything illegal. Jesus was the center of unacceptable political waves, and so when a crowd said, against even all official Jewish principle, that they wanted him to die, the authorities listened, and the famous crucifixion followed. And I, as a Christian, would add, and the equally famous resurrection of Jesus followed too. They couldn’t keep him dead.

Well, it’s a long way to Tipperary, and it’s a long journey from that day to what we know as Christian churches. But the Christian story is a very Jewish story.