Antisemitism From the Right During Holy Week

There is plenty of anti Semitism on the left that seems to be kind of sort of out of such sympathy for Islam and so much sympathy for Islam and so much anti colonialism, and you looking at the Israel Palestine conflict through the lens of anti colonialism, it gets to such a point that basically Israel is blamed for everything, and and it crosses over from disliking the colonialism or perceived colonialism of the Jewish State of Israel to just

disliking Jews in general, and certainly when you get over into Islam. Whatever fine line there may be between disliking the state of Israel and outright anti semitism, that line basically goes away. Hamas hates Jews, they don't. It's not just that they hate the state of Israel. They hate Jews,

They think Jews are bad and awful. And the American left has so much sympathy for the anti colonialist idea, the idea that any situation that involves a European power imposing on some kind of indigenous population its political structure

is evil and horrible and must be resistant. Even though like, if we're gonna this is my general opinion about the Israel Palestine conflict, if we're gonna get our panties in a twist over every people group that got rightly or wrongly displaced after World War II, then we're never gonna get over ourselves. There has to be some kind of statute of limitations. Jews have been living in the area of Palestine since time immemorial, A bunch of European Jews.

After this little thing that happened that maybe some of you remember that was pretty unjust that happened to the Jews during World War Two, this little thing called the Holocaust, A bunch of European Jews wound up settling in Palestine. There were some Palestinians or trans Jordanians, whatever you want to call them, who were living in that area who got displaced, and it's unfair, and it's unjust that some

of them got displaced. And I guess I just don't want to keep fighting that war over the injustice of people groups that got moved eighty years ago, when plenty of people groups got moved unjustly eighty years ago, and we're not fighting wars over We're not fighting wars over the injustice of the Volga River Germans who got moved. Plenty of people groups got moved and displaced unjustly after

World during and after World War Two. Anyway, that's the anti Semitism of the left, anti colonialism on the part of American and European academics who and who for some reason they perceived the Israelis as white and the Palestinians as a person of color. I don't know why that doesn't necessarily make all this. I'm from what I have heard. I have never been to Israel, I've never been to Palestine.

But I don't know that it's such a clean cut distinction between white Israelis and people of color of Palestinians. I think the ethnic situation is a bit more mixed up than that. Anyway, on the left, there's anti colonialism that can maybe lead to anti Semitism. There's sympathy for Islam. Many expressions of Islam are quite anti Semitic. But there's this little growing anti semitism on the right too. Now.

Some of it on the right is just tied to people being cranks on the internet and just wanting attention. Some of it on the right it seems like when people get really hardcore anti American intervention militarily in Israel's affairs, a position with which I very much sympathize. There's so many people who are like that, who sort of devolve into like these very unfair standards for judging the Jewish state, and it slips into anti Semitism. Sometimes not every single person,

but I think it often slips into anti Semitism. My own position is I dislike the fact that we're involved in that whole region of the world at all. I don't like it. I don't like being involved over there. Frankly, I wish we didn't have anything to do with the entire Middle East whatsoever. If Israel has enough big boy weapons to take care of itself, that's fine. We have gotten nothing that positive out of our intervention and involvement

in the Middle East. We've gotten a lot of negative We've got whole regions of the world that hate us because we keep funding Israel militarily. I guess I have sympathy for Israel as a you know, some sympathy for Israel as a democracy. Is one of the few places that has toleration for Christianity within the Middle East, total toleration for Christianity. But I just it's an ocean and a continent away. I don't want America to be involved in it. I am tired of America being involved in it.

If the Israelis have enough military might to defend themselves, let them defend themselves. I'm just tired of the whole region and of Americans involvement. I think Israel had the right to defend itself after October seventh, and after other kinds of terrorist attacks. I don't understand why we have to pay for it. Just tired of America getting involved in proxy wars, which is really what this is. A proxy war is a war that you fight through a proxy,

through some other actor acting on your behalf. And whatever excesses Israel may have done is on us because we gave them all the money and it's going to inflame anger against us for something that I don't feel like

is really in our national interest. The geopolitical makeup of the Levant is not something that impacts the national interest, I don't think, only in so far as it makes it easier or harder for us to engage in more silly, unwise adventures in the Middle East, to keep buying more oil from the Middle East, which we shouldn't be buying at all. We should just be producing our own oil.

We have more than they do anyway. However, on the right though, there are more and more of sort of people who are expressing anti Semitic views, and some of this came into Catholicism over the weekend with people chattering on Twitter. So any of you who are Catholics know that yesterday was Palm Sunday, and on Palm Sunday Catholics Roman Catholics have during the Mass every Sunday, during Mass, we read a passage from one of the Gospels, and on Palm Sunday we read the Passion narrative from one

of the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark or Luke. Traditionally it was just Matthew, but then in the modern right of mouse that we have currently, it'side of the Matthew Marker Luke, and it just rotates on a three year cycle. Yesterday we read the Passion narrative from Saint Luke, which is beautiful, and I've started doing this lately, but I'd recommend to all of you who may be christianly inclined, try to read through the passion narratives from all four

Gospels this week. I think it's a really beautiful practice. The older traditional Catholic practice was you'd read Matthew on Sunday, Mark I think on Tuesday, Luke on Wednesday, or those passion narratives would be read during Mass or chanted during Mass. So Matthew on Sunday, Mark On I believe Tuesday, Luke on Wednesday, and then John on Good Friday. I'd encourage

all of you to do it. I think it's a beautiful practice and it really helps you enter into the spirit of Holy Week and Good Friday and then prepare you for Easter Sunday. In the modern right of Mass, if the Passion narrative is read, there are certain portions of the Passion narrative that are that can be read out out loud by the whole congregation saying the words.

We have little booklets in the pews, with little books in the pews that have the whole reading, and people read along with the use of the priests and the

deacons who are reading the Passion narrative. And there are certain points in the narrative where there's a crowd of people speaking where the whole congregation can join in, including certain things read said by the Jewish crowd, the crowd of people in Jerusalem who ultimately wound up kind of swaying conscious pilot to okay, the execution of Jesus, Crucify him, crucify him. We want Barabbas, not Jesus. Okay, those passages

which are found in all four Gospels. So in the modern right of mouth, most of the time this narrative is read out loud, and the people read those parts out loud. Traditionally, the Passion narrative would be chanted. So remember that for about nineteen hundred years of Christianity. We made it through about nineteen hundred years of Christianity with

no microphones. So if you're at church and you wanted to have something read out loud for people to hear it, how would you do it well, you either needed to shout or you needed to sing. And so most of Roman Catholicism Eastern Christianity opted for the singing option, and

so they would chant the whole passion narrative. And the traditional way it was done, you'd have three deacons chant the passion narrative, and one deacon would be the narrator, one deacon would play the part of Jesus, and one deacon would play the part of everybody else, okay, including the crowd saying crucify him. Now, for those parts that involved a crowd, they're developed these beautiful musical traditions within Roman Catholicism, these beautiful polyphony or choral settings of some

of those parts. And I think it was particularly for Matthew's Gospel and John's Gospel, beautiful choral settings of some of those exclamations by the crowd send us Barabbas, not Jesus, crucify him, crucify him. Beautiful and elaborate musical settings by some of the greatest proposers composers in the Western tradition. So there's this long standing tradition of not just one of the deacons reading it, not just elector reading it, but of acchoir joining in, lots of people joining it.

We have this tradition now in the modern Catholicism where everyone's reading it, and all of a sudden you get these cranks on the right saying no, no, Catholics should be saying crucify him during church. That's horrible, and then going on to insert the Jews are the Jews even today are still responsible for the death of Jesus. It's you know, they carry the blood guilt of their ancestors. Blah blah blah. Now I'm not gonna, I guess I am going to dignify it, because I think it's nonsense.

The Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint John Chris Sistem, plenty of Catholic authors throughout the ages took the opinion that, no, the Jews of today are not still cursed by what the Jews? Why, why by what? That crowd of Jews in Jerusalem and that crowd of Jewish leadership at that time in Jerusalem, They're not still guilt carrying the blood

guilt of Christ. Chris Fixion, Saint John Christistom, who was the great Bishop of Constantinople and one of the great theologians in all of Christian history, certainly one of the great theologians of Eastern Christian history. He took the opinion which Saint Thomas Aquina is very favorably quoted Saint Thomas Aquinas, who's the greatest theologian of Western Latin Catholicism, that basically God refused to put that sentence on the Jewish crowds.

One of the expressions from the Gospels is may His blood be on our heads and on our children's And Saint John christ system says, no, there's still a role for the Jewish people. God refused to put that condemnation on them, and salvation is still you know, the universality of Christianity, its openness to all persons, is also open also to the Jewish people. Now there are some people who I there's this strain of liberal Catholicism that I think it was so urgently not wanting to be antisemitic

that they would say silly things. They would say, well, the Jews, the Jews didn't kill Jesus. The Romans did well. Again, not saying all Jewish people everywhere, through all times killed Jesus, but clearly Jesus's death was precipitated by some of the Pharisees and priestly class prominent in Jerusalem at that time, and by the crowds of people in Jerusalem, any of whom were Jews. Yes, they needed Ponscious Pilot as the

Roman representative to actually okay his actual execution. The Jewish people were not allowed just to ex acute people without permission from the Roman authorities. But if we're talking about who killed Jesus, the historical question, there are certainly yes,

certainly there were Jewish people who were responsible. But the overriding point that Catholicism has made, and I think all of us, of whatever Christian stripe we belong to, will probably agree with me on this The point I think the Catholic Church is making by allowing some of those words like crucify him, allowing all of the members of the church to say that, all the members of the of a choir to sing, that is to make the

point I christified Jesus, You christified Jesus. Jesus came to this earth to die for my sins and yours and yours and yours and yours and yours, And it shows the hypocrisy of me and every other Christian that you know. In the Palm Sunday Mass, we begin by processing, marching into the church in a procession, waving, holding palms in our hands, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

We imitate the people of Jerusalem who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem. As he wrote in on a Donkey, singing Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord might have been the same members of a crowd who were singing that on Palm Sunday and chanting crucify him on Good Friday. And isn't that the Christian struggle? We proclaim our love for God, we proclaim our following Jesus, and at the same time we betray Him with our own sinfulness and growing as

Christian means growing in repentance and growing in conversion. So this stupid anti Semitic thing that's kind of gaining more traction, it's probably just gaining more traction online, honestly, but it helped me sort of think through more of Holy Week than I had before. And I just thought i'd share it with all of you all right when we return Holy Week. Recommended reading from yours truly. Next on the John Girardi Show, Well, we just had Palm Sunday yesterday

and we are entering into Holy Week. Thought i'd give you guys some recommended reading for the week. So I'm basing this a lot of in sort of the traditional Catholic sort of cycle of stuff that is read or sung. I'd recommend throughout Holy Week. This is sort of the preparation stuff for Easter. First, go through all four Gospels and read their passion narratives sort of starting with the

Last Supper narrative through to just before the Resurrection. And you can do that through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As I said, the older form of the Catholic Roman Catholic Mass, you would read or chant Matthew's Gospel at Mass on Palm Sunday, Mark's Gospel on Tuesday, Luke's Gospel on Wednesday, and then John's Gospel on Good Friday. So I try to do that or something like that myself

during Holy Week. Let's go through the four Gospels. Passion narratives also a great thing to look at is the beginning of the Book of Lamentations, which is sung in a lot of Catholic churches. They do this office called Tenebrae, which is basically a nighttime service of prayer. Psalm's scripture readings that focus a lot on the passion. Psalm twenty two is definitely worth looking through, so you get started there.

I think it certainly has helped me over the course of many Holy weeks kind of enter more deeply into the spirit of the thing. So anyway, my recommendations to you, the Four Passion Narratives, Book of Lamentations, the Psalm twenty two. Check them out. All right, when we return, I'm going to dive into more Fresno Unified stuff. Enough of this theological nonsense. Let's talk about Fresno Unified and how oh there's this haggling over this designated extended hours schools. Guess

what it's about? Money? That's next On the John Drardy Show, I've talked a lot last week about Fresne Unified and the ongoing search for its new superintendent. It sounds like Misty her might be indeed the pick to be the next permanent superintendent. She's currently the interim superintendent. She was

the assistant superintendent. Basically, they had settled on hiring Misty Her to be the superintendent, and then several members of the Fresne Unified Board of Trustees sort of blew up over this and said, wait a minute, Like this, this is a massively underachieving district. We're only hiring internally for the supervisor position. This is the third largest school district in California. We really can't do a national search. We really can't do a broader than Fresne Unified search. Like

Presne Unified is failing. Why would we just promote people from within? Who are you, for good or for ill, fairly or unfairly part of this failing system? Why don't we bring someone from the outside. This basically has led to a year's worth of search and investigation and the board doing, the Board of trustees doing like a board retreat to help understand better the responsibilities as board trustee members, which I sort of have thought, well, what on earth

are we talking about? What? Why on earth is the president Unified Board of Trustees doing such a thing, given that, like you're it's an elected position. You ran for this job, presumably because you understood the purpose of the job. Why is the taxpayer paying, you know, one hundred thousand dollars for consultants to help you guys figure out your job anyway,

so they're going to be in the news. And Misty her possibly being the next permanent pick, I think is going to cause another local brew haha, given that, well she was going to be the pick, they did a national search and now they're still just sticking with her. I don't know, seems it seems weird to me. But one of the points I've made is one of the

challenges President Unified faces is from a unionized workforce. President Unified as a unionized workforce, and I think so much of President Unified's policy, the news that's driven about President Unified, the things that the Board of Trustees winds up having to care about, is driven by the union. It's the union on one side and the Board of Trustees on the other. And the thing I always try to emphasize to people the point of a union, the point of

a teacher's union is not actually to teach kids. An individual teacher might have as a goal teaching kids. That is the tellos of a teacher. That is the job the end goal towards which the teacher is ordered teaching a kid. But it's not the end goal the tellos towards which a union is ordered. Unions are ordered. A good union one that is appropriately ordered towards its end. It's Greek word tellos. Okay, A good union is one that gets as much of the pie for its members

as it can. It gets its members high pay, it creates more and more jobs for the workers within that that that union represents. So if there's more workers, it means more dues to the union, more power for the union, more jobs, higher pay, fewer hours, better benefits, better conditions. That's the job of a union. Okay, that's the end goal towards which it is ordered. If a kid happens to learn something, well, that might be a happy byproduct of the union doing its job, but its job is

fundamentally not educating kids. The union's job fundamentally is getting money for adults. And this is what causes us to lose sight and causes I think a lot of people in left wing politics to their because they're so pro union, they're so in favor of labor rights, ro workers' rights, labor, they get so focused on that that they forget all right, this is like a public service job. There's a public

good that public education is ordered towards it. We have a certain sort of, i'd say over idealistic vision in America of the role that a public school is supposed to play, the idea that no public schools are about. It's about more than simply preparing young people for the

job market or for college. It is forming the next generation of responsible citizenry, providing a generation of citizenry with enough intelligence and basic educational formation to be able to contribute to a democratic form of government, a form of government that has democratic elements to it. In California, we have a lot of direct democracy where the people are straight up voting up or down on laws. Everyone has

the right to vote. People have the right to vote for the people who will represent them in Congress, in the state Assembly, in the state Senate, vote for the

US senators, vote for the governors. And basically, if you have a populace who is completely unformed and uninformed and uneducated, that is a populace that is really not suited for democracy, because if they don't actually know cow excrement from shinola, then how can they meaningfully contribute to governance, How can they meaningfully play a part in a democratic society if

they're not well educated. So this is part of the great motivation for compulsory public funded K through twelve education is that we need an educated citizen rate if we're gonna do if we're going to have this sort of democratic experiment, we need an educated citizen. Right, It's an urgent must, so that there is an element of service

to this. And if so much of our conversations about teachers, so much of our conversation about in the specific context of President Unified, if so much of our conversation is dominated by the union and its debates with the board of trustees, and really our main focus, that the main focus of such discussions is money for adults. That's the main focus, money for adults. If that continues to be the main focus, then we run the risk of missing the forest for the trees, missing what is the whole

point of this enterprise. It's a public service. It's not a revenue generating business where you have management, capital ownership trying to get as much of the profit pie for itself as it can, and labor trying to get as much of the profit pie for itself as it can. That's the case in a private business. In a private business, therefore, I think labor unions make all the sense in the world.

Where there is risk, that there's serious risks of worker exploitation. Well, what is the risk of worker exploitation when you're talking about an enterprise that we know is losing money? That is about public service. We want to pay that. There is a there is a natural politically motivated instinct to want to pay teachers better. They're not fighting with anybody.

Politicians wo support from teachers, and thus the focus of these things, the focus of boards of trustees should be very squarely on improving educational outcomes rather than haggling over money. How much money adults are going to get? And I kind of don't believe in the walk and chew gum theory, the idea, well, they can have productive discussions about paying adults well and be focused on educating kids when so much of policy effort attention is focused on the CBA

negotiating things with the union. I think people only have a certain quantum of attention. I really do believe this. I think human beings have a certain quantum of attention, care, concern, and more and more as I've grown as an employer. You know, if people in their workplace are focused on one thing, say well I have time for this, Well, no,

I don't know that you do. I really think human beings only have a certain quantum, and certainly some human beings make that quantum much bigger and they have a bigger, broader capacity to do a lot a lot of things. But I think attention is time is effort, and I think President Unified has been great in its focus on paying adults. God knows that teachers in California make significantly

more on average then President Unified. Teachers make more on average than similarly situated, similarly educated adults in Fresno County. They do. Now, a lot of that is stacked towards the people with a lot of seniority, and new teachers aren't paid very much. But on average, teachers in President Unified are making quite a bit of money. And this is one of a million stories about President Unified. This is not a huge story. Here's the headline from GV

wire story written by Anya ellis money, not instruction. Time is at the heart of a designated school of the Designated Schools negotiations. Close to a year, Presney Unified and its teachers' union have been haggling over the district's proposed elimination of its Designated Schools program. Money is at the heart of the ongoing dispute about the program that provides extended day learning for students at forty schools. The district says it is critical to cut costs due to declining

enrollment and low average daily attendance. The Designated Schools program's thirty million dollar price tag is one money saving area. We need to save some to deal with the budget cuts we're facing, said Nicki Henry Fresney unfied's chief communications officer, in addition to the expense of paying teachers additional wages for their longer day ding ding ding, ding ding ding Ding. Fresne Unified says an analysis of the program indicated that

it hasn't produced sufficient academic gains. However, Fresno Teachers Association president Manuel Bania says that dropping Designated Schools amounts to a salary cut for teachers at a time when the district should prioritize investing in them. No, no teacher salaries is probably a massive part of the president Unified budget. So here you see, here you see in black and white, we have forty schools in President Unified that provide this

extended day learning. The district says, it's not actually helping improve outcomes. We're facing budget cuts, we want to cut these programs. If teachers were focused on the public service aspect, if teachers were ordered towards actually teaching kids, they would say, well, if it's not helping, then we don't need to do it. But that's not what's happening. The teachers are being represented by a union, and the role of the union is

what keeping teachers salaries high. If you have extended day learning, it means teachers get more hours, means teachers get more pay, and at the end of the day, that's what the teacher's union cares about. So this is just another of an infinite number of stories that demonstrate this dynamic. The interest of the union is not necessarily the same as the interest of teaching kids. If it were, they'd probably if they were solely focused on the kids, they would say, okay, yeah, well,

let's divert this money to something more useful. Let's, you know, let's work on this, but no, they want to sit around collecting pay for a program that isn't really helping. When we return, we'll talk more about this whole dynamic that, yeah, the Teachers' Union doesn't actually teach a kid, but they're the ones guiding the whole discussion sentence. Next on the John Girardi Show, let me give you another example of this whole phenomenon. The goal of the teachers Union is

not actually to teach. The goal of the teachers Union is money. And you can see that priority when it comes to certain kinds of academic things, things involving allowing teachers to teach better. All right, this was around November of twenty three. November of twenty three, we have the big contract that finally got signed between President Teachers and

Presney Unified. And it's a big collectively bargain agreement. And in a collectively bargain agreement between a labor union on one side and the business on the other side, or in this case, the Board of Trustees and the labor union. In this case, you can put all kinds of stuff in a CBA. I look at like the CBA that the NFL Players Union signs with the NFL with the owners, and they put in all kinds of stuff to eat. The players have put in all kinds of stuff for

player safety, limiting practices, limiting contact practices. There are all kinds of rules limiting stuff in the interest of player safety. Now that doesn't have to do with dollars and cents, but the union membership thought it was important, and so the union pushed for it, and that that became part of the negotiations, not just straight up compensation. We get X percentage of the profits. You get why percentage of the profits? You can put anything like that in a CBA.

Like two months after that was signed, a big story came out about how Fresno teachers feel like they don't have backing from the district to enforce a no cell phones in class policy. We learned that one president Unified hasn't updated their cell phone policy since two thousand and four, which seems like a lapse, but when you look at

the two thousand and four policy, it still works. It basically says, hey, students may not have out with them other than calculators, they may not have personal electronic devices. Now that was written pre iPhone in like two thousand and four, but I think it still holds. That's the

rule that's still on the books. And you had teachers complaining that they didn't feel like the district was backing them and trying to get rid of smartphones, and they interview the head of the President Teachers' Union saying it's terrible, district's not supporting us. You just signed a CBA. Why didn't you put that in the CBA adopting a clear cut policy with clear cut enforcement standards updated for twenty twenty four, saying students may not have smart cell phones

during class. Teachers may remove them. If we do X, Y and z, the district will back them. Blah blah blah blah blah. You could have put that in the CBA, but they didn't. Why Because the point of a teacher's union is not who teach. The key point the tell us. The end goal towards which a teacher's union is ordered is fundamentally getting money for adults. That's it, not teaching. That'll do it. John Dio already show see next time on Power Talk