The greatest injustice in history happened to the Jews.
Jews found God and the ways to pray. They used music and singing to praise God.
They designated a place, then a building, then buildings for worship.
Christians and Muslims pray to the same God that the Jews found.
They also built places for worship. There is music and singing in churches.
So Jews should have been appreciated, since the other two religions originated from Judaism. Instead Jews got hate.
Part of this is from ignorance. Christians and Muslims love their religions, but many of them do not know that they pray to the same God as the Jews. A classmate of mine in Hungary, for example, made fun of the God of the Jews, not knowing that he prays to him as well.
I think many people do not know that Jesus, his mother, Mary, all of his disciples, such as Peter and Paul, his friends, and many of his followers were Jews.
They probably do not know that in the time of Jesus, Jews lived under Roman rule. And Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor who had absolute power and ordered Roman soldiers to kill Jesus. Jesus was crucified and a roman soldier pierced his body with a lance to be sure he was dead.
During the centuries when Christians and Muslims fought and killed one another, they called each other infidels because they had no understanding of each other’s faiths.
Once, when I was in Jerusalem, we were walking and got close to the Temple Mount. We heard the Jews praying at the western wall, the muezzin calling Muslims to pray, and the church bells ringing. It was a magical moment. Instead of discord, I heard harmony. I thought: This place is the middle of the world.
If people would learn more and think about what these three religions have in common, there would be more understanding and harmony—and less hatred and fighting. There would be more interfaith dialog and cooperation.
It took 2,000 years until someone talked about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Pope John Paul II visited the Rome synagogue on April 13, 1986. In his discourse he stated that “with Judaism … we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.”
He also stated that he and the Church “[deplore] the hatred, persecutions, and displays of antisemitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone.”
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