‘You killed Jesus,’ Boston Catholic high school basketball fans chant at Jewish opponents
‘You killed Jesus,’ Boston Catholic high school basketball fans chant at Jewish opponents
By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, March 12, 2016
BOSTON – An ugly thing happened at a high school basketball game in a suburb of Boston on Friday night.
It occurred at a division title game between the all-boys Catholic Memorial School and the public Newton North High School, which has a large Jewish community of students. The game was held at Newton South High School, where an estimated 100 young men sitting in the student section cheering for Catholic Memorial shouted, “You killed Jesus, you killed Jesus,” according to several witnesses who asked not to be identified. Most of those chanting fans wore red shirts as a display of support for their team. Some of the witnesses, who were Jewish, said they found the chant alarming.
One spectator who was shaken by the events — and who asked not to be identified — is a native of Skokie, Illinois, where in the mid-1970s, a controversy erupted when neo-Nazis wanted to march through the heavily Jewish town. Skokie officials tried to stop it but lost the case in court. This spectator, whose parents are survivors of World War II concentration camps, said, “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”
This week Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, the Catholic archbishop of Boston, gave a speech to representatives of the Jewish community to mark the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the 1965 document that revolutionized Catholic-Jewish relations and made clear for the first time that the Catholic Church rejects any form of anti-Semitism.
Catholic Memorial, the Christian Brothers School of Boston, is a college-preparatory school for boys in grades 7-12. The school’s website says that it “transforms boys’ lives and prepares them for college and the world.”
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The school’s website says that it “transforms boys’ lives and prepares them for college and the world.”
Could that be why Jewish students are intimidated and fear for their safety these days on college campuses?
I could think of something to chant back at them that's fitting.
Stupid is as stupid does.
I went to Catholic school for 12 years and we were never taught that Jews killed Jesus, although it is obviously something that Catholics and other Christians have believed down through the course of centuries.
It is obviously horrendous bigotry for Catholic school boys to behave like this.
It was almost surely a joke, since the other teams supporters were chanting "sausage fest" at the all boys school.
id be amazed if anyone involved took it very seriously.
It is not a joke nor actual intentional bigotry. It was a taunt designed to throw the opponent off it's game. Thoughtlessness.
I say it is horrendous bigotry because the nature of the allegation is.
I have my doubts that these boys are largely anti-semitic, or any more than society in general.
Sean,
That chant has been the cause of Jewish misery for over 2,000 years. Gee what a great joke.
I hope these Catholic boys get in trouble. What they said was horrible!
Since when did a ball game become more important than the human beings that are playing it? I think they should be banned from playing the rest of the year for unsportsmanlike conduct.