Book Burning

Some time ago, we were vacationing in Fort Meyers Beach and there was a news report that there had occurred some rioting outside a film theater in Boca Raton. Within the previous year, I seem to remember there had been similar rioting outside a theater showing "New Jack City". We supposed it was black youths in the crowd in Florida. It wasn't. The film playing was "Schindler's List" and the people "rioting" were elderly Jews who arrived at the theater to find that it was sold out and no more seats were available for the early discount showings. This was a good story, and there was good comic effect in the sudden overturning of one's expectations, not to mention one's ingrained racial stereotypes. The Jews were introduced into a new situation in my Reality with good comic effect. Not so comic is today's book burning story, which appears in Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/985362.html Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Or Yehuda By The Associated Press "Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land. "The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue," he said. "The newspaper Maariv reported Tuesday that hundreds of yeshiva students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. "Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were," he said. He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a commandment to burn materials that urge Jews to convert..." Not good.