You shall mark my word by ALbert Russo (books for 8th graders .txt) 📖

YOU SHALL MARK MY WORDS
by Albert Russo


I, Yeshua ben Yosef, son of our beloved Myriam,
turn to you who have forsaken and betrayed me,
you who claim to be such good Christians,
all the while you have tried to erase the Jew in me,
you have done that on all six continents,
and many of you are still doing it, unashamedly,
either out of habit or out of sheer ignorance,
for let it be known, now and forever:
the enemy of my People is my enemy

2000 years have passed before a pope
has asked for forgiveness
It is never too late, you will say
it may not be too late for your children
or for the generations to come,
but it is far too late for the countless
brothers and sisters
who were chased, tortured and murdered
by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitors
it is far too late for the tens of thousands
of brothers and sisters
who were persecuted and killed
during the Russian and the Polish pogroms
it is far too late for all those millions
of brothers and sisters
who were treated like animals, tormented then gassed
by the nazis, who thus perpetrated
history’s most diabolic crime
as it is much too late for the numerous refugees
whom the Allies
turned away during WWII, as they desperately
sought a haven on their shores
Was then Jewish life, as a French neo-fascist
still insists today,
just a mere detail, too negligible to consider?
It appeared so

I have always maintained that I was the son of man,
as is every Jew who is made in the image of his Creator
yet, you have declared that I was the Son of God
in reality, I was a simple man who loved his neighbor
as much as he despised the profiteers and the hypocrites,
and like a rabbi, I would praise the Lord every Shabbat
at the synagogue, the synagogue which you converted
into a church,
though it had never been my intention to transform
the House of God,
a man who celebrated the holy days
of Pessah, of Rosh Ashana and of Kippur,
the definitions of which you should go and relearn

So few of you remember what the Christian New Year means:
the date of my circumcision, which like all Jewish baby boys
is performed eight days after birth - Christmas, in my case

Had I, as your messiah, returned to earth
between 1940 and 1945,
I would have been sent directly to a nazi concentration camp,
after the humiliating stripping of my clothes
and the exhibition of my manhood;
would you or the pope have recognized me then,
amid the horrors of war?

It was the Romans who crucified me
yet you persisted in accusing my People
as if humans could actually kill God!

Call me by my name, which, I repeat, is Yeshua,
a name you have translated into Jesus,
like the Torah, which is at the root and heart of
Christian civilization,
if that is an old testament, then what are the Gospels
supposed to be? A confabulation, a plagiary?
Traduttore, traditore, as the Italian saying goes,
like all the words you have put in my mouth,
distorting some of them from their original meaning

I shall forgive you, poor sinners, yes, I shall forgive you,
the day you will love me in all sincerity,
the day you will love my People as much as yourselves
Remember the Just, who, throughout the centuries -
they were the best of Christians, of Muslims,
of Hindus and of Buddhists,
the best of animists, of agnostics and of atheists,
indeed they were my blood brothers and my blood sisters -,
so often risked their own lives to save their Jewish neighbors
from the claws of their torturers, they acted out of love,
out of compassion, for every human being is made
in the image of his and her Creator,
with the free will to become good or evil,
just like Abel and Cain

Publication Date: 11-21-2009

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