Reply #109: Welcome to the conspiracy [View All]

We'll send you your complimentary set of retractable devil horns and Mossad-certified decoder ring later this week. The password is "Dreidel."

In all seriousness, I think different people just have different reactions to meeting their first Jewish person face-to-face. A friend of mine was dating a non-Jewish girl and her mother chased him out of the house with a broom the moment his religious affiliation became public. There were also stories from my high school sports team (Jewish private school in a sports league with mostly Catholic schools) of pennies being thrown at the players when they entered the school.

On the other hand, I and most other Jews I know have never experienced any first-hand discrimination. It might help that we live in multi-cultural Toronto, but that could be my city pride/ego talking. Heck, my roommate told me recently that I'm the first Jew she's ever met (at age 28) and nothing changed with us. Sorry to hear about your brother's situation, but if they really have issues, just let them know something like "love the sinner, hate the sin" or whatever other proverb is used to tell people to get other silly prejudice.

Ultimately, (and this is from experience in way too many message board wars) prejudice is best met with education 99% of the time.

Oh, and the race vs. religion vs. ethnicity vs. organism vs. tribe vs. nation vs. alien argument is older than time itself. Bottom line, it doesn't matter to anyone who isn't either a bigot or worried about being lactose intolerance (stupid Ashkenazi genetics not letting me eat ice cream...)