Judaism and Christianity, Research Proposal Example

While reading James McBride’s story, I could hardly help but to think about current events. It has always been confusing to me that racism in America has been so profound, but it seems that many people sort of assume that somehow our government should unequivocally support the Modern State of Israel. It seemed quite incongruous to me that there should be such a significant bias against Jews in some respects and still such blind support for the so-called Jewish state. How could it be that for so long Jews were marginalized and then at the advent of the Zionist enterprise our government not only jumped on the band wagon it lead the charge? As I read about James’s racial and cultural challenges, I had a hard time making sense of some of these anomalies. So what is this affinity between Judaism and Christendom despite so many historically harrowing confrontations? Is it simply that they share a portion of the Bible as canon? If so, how does the Biblical message make room for the incongruities involved in the history between them, the violence, the strife, the hatred of one for another? How is it that Jews had come to side more closely with their Christian counterparts than to their Muslim ones? Many of the principles of both religions are the same, and there is a long history of cooperation between Jewish communities and the Islamic Empire, especially in Iraq and Iberia. It would just make more sense to me based on these contexts that the international Jew would have acted more even-handedly toward the Arab in the last 100 years, and that there would have been a deeper affinity between Jews and Muslims than any Christian, Black or otherwise. It is also surprising that so many Blacks choose to adhere to the Christian faith when history shows full well that it was gained at the end of a taskmaster’s whip. How can that be? Having spoken to a retired Strategic Air Command Colonel, I understood that one of the factors was simple guilt. People felt bad about having mistreated Jews even while they were being murdered in Nazi Germany. So, when many in the Jewish American community pushed for support of the Modern State of Israel, their wealth and influence was augmented by such sentiments. How long would it take for people to feel some compassion toward Blacks? In principle, Blacks are equal to Whites – or so the government says, but is they really? Do they have similar opportunities to pursue happiness as Whites from the cradle to the grave? To this day American Blacks are severely underprivileged in the United States. Many of the same people who implicitly support these contradictions also claim to be Christian. The confusion only deepens as we explore the implications of religion. It does not seem to make sense that Christendom has dealt so severely with Judaism from the Crusades to the Inquisition to the Holocaust, only to see Jews garner its support. As such, the historical and the social aspects of how Judaism and Christianity play a crucial role in the life of the main character in James McBride’s life is the primary focus of my research.