Father Abraham Foxman

Rabbi Abraham Foxman, current head of the Anti-Defamation League (www.adl.org), was hidden from the Nazis by his Catholic nanny, who had him baptized. Here's what he said about it:

"Had his parents not survived the Holocaust, wrote Foxman, "I might have even become a priest."

What if he had? How might this affect the Anti-Defamation League and recent events ("The Passion" for example).

Matt Quinn said:

What if he had? How might this affect the Anti-Defamation League and recent events ("The Passion" for example).

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I didn't really get that ? Was he really suggesting watching a film in Aramaic with one assumes English subtitles is going to make Western Christians anti-Jewish ? Seems rather nuts to me. Sharon's wall might do that, but not a work of art. The complaint that it would have this effect seems like the medieval reason for why Jews were persecuted. Its hardly like to be revived in that form

Grey Wolf

As a child,Foxman would hardly be blamed for apostasising. Although the vast majority of Jews remained loyal to their faith over a millenia of threats, torture, inquisition, auto da fe, pogroms, cultural censorship, economic repression, and material blandishments, there has indeed been a steady trickle of apostates to Christianity.

Notable apostates included Pablo Christiani, Petrus Alfonsi, Artephius, Nicholas Donin, Abner of Burgos, Petrus Schwarz, Joshua Lorki, Johann Pfefferkorn, the parents of Nostradamus, Abraham Benveniste, Pfaff Rapp, Jacob Frank, Domenico Gerosolimitano, Paul Levertoff, the daughters of Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn. Aloisius Wiener, Franz Wentzel, Moshe Schneerson (son of the first Lubavitcher Rebbe), Bonaventura Mayer, George Lazarus, Isaac D'Israeli (father of Benjamin D'Israeli), Michael Bernays, Heinrich Marx (father of Karl Marx), Hans Herzl (the son of Theodore Herzl), Franz Rosenzweig and the composer Gustav Mahler.

And in this century Heinrich Heine, Boris Pasternak (author of "Dr.Zhivago"), the parents of philosopher Karl Popper, the grandparents of 1964 US presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Bernard Berenson (art historian), Marcel Dassault (French industrialist), the nun Edith Stein, Chief Rabbi of Rome Anton Zolli, Moshe Rosen (director of "Jews for Jesus" in the USA), Clifford Goldstein (leading Seventh Day Adventist), Reverend Robert Weissman (of the London "Christian Jew Foundation"), musician Bob Dylan (on and off!), British MPs Nigel Lawson, Robert Adley and Edwina Currie, Bishop Hugh Montefiore, singer Helen Shapiro, Israeli atom-spy Mordechai Vannunu, Jean-Marie Lustiger (Cardinal of Paris and possibly the next Pope), the father of former US Defence Secretary William Cohen, and James Rubin (former US State Department spokesman).