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NOW you want to get me going. Given the history of the Church re: forced conversion of Jews, I think it’s better if we left the Jews alone. Now when you speak of agitation against the Church by secular (and even some religious) Jews, that’s a different ball game. In Brooklyn there was the story of an Italian man who lives in a very Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. He put up a Nativity scene in his front yard and these Hasidic guys harrassed him and demanded he take it down. He refused, and they continued their abuse. I am not sure of the outcome. As far as the police are concerned in that neighborhood, the Hasidics are untouchable and treated with kid gloves. Now this kind of assault should be challeneged all the way. The same with those secular atheistic Jews who are so offended by the sight of a cross. I don’t mind if a menorah is put up for Hanukah, so give equal time to others. But even though this “assault” as you say occurs-—and quite regularly, nonetheless, Jews aren’t trying to convert Christians. Assault must be met with assault—I am not talking physical violence—but legal, through the media and those kinds of means—shame is a very good weapon.

The Spanish government (in the 1400s as a wrap up to the Reconquista that'd been going on for over 500 years) directed that all Moslems, Jews and others adhere to the Catholic faith or "get out".

It was a choice. To stay in Spain you had to join up.

About 60,000 Jews left Spain. (This is out of a population of less than a quarter million).

When it came to Moslems there were already laws in place that'd built up over centuries to accommodate shifting political situations involving Moslem princes with Christian subjects, and vice versa.

Rather than "force" conversion, which had been the prior standard, with some folks having been Catholic or Moslem several times over their livespan, the Spanish government offered the Moslems the opportunity to leave as well.

Sure, it was pretty authoritarian, but at the end it was less brutal than it had been in earlier centuries. For the Jews it was a new thing ~ no one wanted to convert the Jews until 1492 ~ they were, as it turned out, the entirity of the industrial capacity of Spain and dominated the intellectual classes.

No one ever accused Ferdinand nor Isabella of being very smart though.

This discussion reminds me of the occasion when Donny Deutsch ambushed Ann Coulter and inveigled her into telling him whether Jews should be converted to Christianity. When she replied in the affirmative-even adding the Jews should be "perfected" Deutsch became indignant.

It seems to me that Coulter had the theology of her own Christianity about right. As a Christian she is charged to go into the world to proselytize. A Christian does so because he believes that he has the truth to offer. He does so out of good motive and he does so, at least in this modern age, by persuasion and not by violence. In this he is to be distinguished from the modern Mohammedan.

When a Jew rejects the proselytization, he does so out of conviction that the Christian does not have the truth, to the contrary, he has yet all wrong and false and the Jew believes that he alone has the truth.

When a Deutsch, who claims in his interview do be a practicing Jew, rejects her proselytization he is saying 1) you do not have the truth, and 2) I do.

I am at a loss to understand why it is all wrong for and Coulter to offer her faith (especially when the offer was solicited and the solicitation was bogus) thinking it is superior but it is perfectly proper for Deutsch to reject the offer because he thinks his faith is superior and hers is false.

I do not think that centuries-old pograms by people neither Coulter nor Deutsch ever knew against people they never knew, justifies Deutsch and undermines Coulter anymore than I think that slavery justifies reparations.