Just Let Them Think You are Jewish

With the track record of humanities collective treatment of Jewish people one would never think it is a good idea to feign being of the Jewish faith. The Jewish faith is one that is much misunderstood to those who are not of it. At times in history being of the Jewish faith could actually get you killed. What then would make anyone want others to think they are Jewish?

Image by Bert K via Flickr

The answer is: When a person lives in an area that is primarily made up of fundamentalist Christians, and is not a Christian themselves. This is my dilemma. If I actually manage to explain my religious beliefs to those of a fundamentalist Christian bent they can get pretty nasty and if I act like I do not have religious beliefs at all, then these Christians try to give me a religious belief; theirs. If I just let them think I am Jewish they just smile, nod, and say “Well that’s okay then at least you believe in God” and leave me alone.

Image by Ed Yourdon via Flickr

If I were to say that I was a Muslim it would not be okay because these Fundamentalist Christian think that adherents of Islam do not believe in God. They think Muslims believe in Allah. I guess that those Christians who speak Arabic are all doomed since they too believe in Allah.

Image by jurvetson via Flickr

I typically feel like I have to hide the fact that a great deal of my spiritual beliefs come from the Sufi mystic, Rumi, from these folks. Rumi was a Muslim and most likely used the word Allah to describe God, or perhaps even the Turkish word. Rumi was from Turkey after all. Too bad for Rumi that he didn’t speak the King’s English. That King being King James, or if only Rumi at least spoke Hebrew, or Greek, he would have been okay. I would include Latin in this mix, however I am dealing with Fundamentalist Christians and Latin would mark me a Catholic at the suggestion Being marked a Catholic would not be such a good thing around these people either. The Pope has one too many VI symbols on that zany hat of his to even allow feigning being a Catholic as an option.

As such a person like myself may find themselves in the situation of being a person with what I believe is a certain degree of spiritual maturity, around those who lack the same. Although don’t dare say that aloud! My understanding of being spiritually mature has to do with being able to accept the good parts of many spiritual traditions, and understanding that all religions have good, and bad, parts.

Since my own beliefs are composed of Sufism from Islam, Shamanic practices from around the world, a dose of Paganism, New Age thinking of the 1960s and 1970s, and a bit of Kaballah from Jewish traditions, and I go with that latter when around certain people as it is just easier for me to let the Fundamentalist Christians that I have to deal with in life think that I am Jewish. They then just leave me alone and think to themselves “Well, at least he still believes in God” and they never seem to notice that I eat prosciutto ham from time to time.

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