Jewish concern about their people being converted or "tainted" by other faiths is nothing new. I don't know how it evolved...

(a) There's a huge emphasis in the Torah in being separate from other peoples, and not emulating their ways. I suspect that's part of the reason they've kept their identity.

(b) Among my Jewish friends, and their families, there is always this rememberance of the awful things done to Jews in the past. Mostly, this is focused on persecution at the persecutions in Christian Europe and under the Nazis. I can understand the paranoia but...

(c) What's so odd, from my point of view, is that the concern about loss of identity is so transparently selective.

If a Jewish friend of mine decides they're "Messianic" -- i.e. that they wish to retain every last scintilla of Jewish tradition and ethnicity, but also believe in Jesus -- their parents frequently treat them like they're dead. Yet if they marry a non-Jew, or adopt Buddhism or the New Age as their main practice and understanding, or (quite commonly) decide YHWH is effectively dead and embrace radical secularism...

well...

*yawn.*

... there would be no Jewish people today if not for the love and protection the Christian world has given to the Jewish people.

Sorry, but I disagree vehemently. In fact I wonder how you can even say such a thing.

First, just the facts: Jews also survived (subjugated and persecuted) in Muslim countries for centuries. Not to mention Africa.

And on your second point, about the alleged debt of 'gratitude' owed: again, I disagree. "Protection"? From who, ourselves?

It's true the Pope resecued many Jews from Hitler, and that a number of devout Christians (people Corrie Ten Boom, and the Danes, God bless 'em) hid Jews in their homes, but numerically, I ashamed to say, the alleged contribution from "Christians" seem to me to have been a very mixed bag.

How many Jews were killed in pogroms by "Christians" in Russia? How many were killed or forced to 'convert' in Europe? And how many German and Austrian "Christians" failed to fight the Nazi machine, or even actively aided it? Versus: how many Jews were actually saved from Hitler?

I think you can see my point here. It's absolutely nothing to be so proud of. Shame is a better term. I'm just glad I'm not blamed for the sins of those who came before me.

In America, it's a different situation. It's true that during WW2 FDR (and many others) acted terribly shamefully -- rejecting an entire ship full of Jewish refugees and sending them back to their deaths. (Some of the brightest minds in Europe on that boat -- imagine what the world, and the US, lost.)

But in other circles, there has been tremendous support for Jews by Christians, especially in the last half century or more. And some Jews are beginning to notice.

But that doesn't quite constitute the picture you're depicting there, Troy.

Feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong.

I do have to say, in Troy's defense, that in terms of the state of Israel existing, there is a large debt owed to American, British and some German Christians, almost entirely dispensationalists, in terms of the development of zionistic policies. Then again these same policies led to some of the current problems they're having. <cough> Balfor </cough> However, they lived under much the same conditions in both worlds (Muslim and Christian), suffering various persecutions in some sections, and reasonable tolerance in others. Chrisitans of many groups helped to persecute them and tried to chase them out.