Thread by @Delafina777

Ok, I alluded to it before, but let me make it explicit:

There's a reason that there's an uptick in Christians claiming Yom Kippur is a Christian holiday, and it's not just "white people gonna white people," and it's not just "Christians make everything about them."

Yes, on one hand, every time a synagogue gets attacked, there are Christians who rush to somehow make it about them--"this was an attack on RELIGIOUS people!" etc. But that's not all that's going on here.

And yes, American evangelicalism is basically Whiteness: The Religion.

But it's not just evangelicals doing it, and it's not just white people.

So why, the day after a gunman attacked a synagogue on Yom Kippur, were Christians rushing to claim *Yom Kippur* specifically, and not just the Attack On Religious People, for themselves?

Because the continued existence of Judaism is a major theological problem for Christianity, and Yom Kippur sums it all up.

So, traditional Christianity needed Judaism to basically *stop* with the destruction of the Second Temple. If Christianity is the logical "completion" of Judaism, Jews should have taken it up en masse, and the destruction of the Temple should have convinced any stragglers.

Having as a central part of your theology that it's the Only Correct Way means that you have to be able to make a compelling case that anyone who doesn't follow your way is either ignorant, stupid, evil, or some combination of all three.

The idea that there's another way (or ways) to exist, and that way is coherent, logical, and non-malicious is a threat to that One True Way theology.

Other gentiles could safely be shunted to the "ignorant--we'll bring them to the light eventually" category.

But Jews couldn't be shunted to that Ignorant category so easily. Because we're familiar with the history Christianity claims--it's our history.

So, the only option there is malice, or sheer stubbornness.

What Christianity *needed* Judaism to be was Judaism frozen as it was practiced pre-Jesus, and for Jews to be poor stubborn or benighted souls, in exile, miserably clinging to a primitive set of superstitions made obsolete by Jesus.

A vital, adaptive, continually evolving Jewish civilization had no place in traditional Christian theology.

Because part of the Christian argument to Jews has always "You don't need your practices, because Christianity exists, and *you can't practice them anyway because you don't have a Temple.*"

They needed us to need a Temple, in other words.

Never mind that in Jesus's time, Jewish civilization was already moving to a decentralized synagogue model.

They needed us to need a Temple, which God destroyed, so it could be replaced with Christianity.

Christianity has largely been quiet about Yom Kippur, except as a historical relic, for good reason.

If we can all get together as a community and atone for sins we've committed, Jesus is sort of irrelevant.

But as a historical relic, tied to the Temple, Yom Kippur wasn't actually that much of a threat. Yes, you USED to be able to atone, but you don't have a Temple, so you can't do the sacrifice--so you have sins on you with no way to get them off!

...except Jesus.

So it hasn't historically been a focal point for Christianity because in their theology Jesus negates the need for Yom Kippur directly, in a way he doesn't for Passover, which is the other biggest Jewish holiday.

So they were comfy talking about Passover a lot.

But the idea that Yom Kippur can still be practiced, and not as some sort of hollow sad echo by a people in exile, still clinging to the echo of Temple practice, but as something whole and meaningful in itself, is a problem.

If Yom Kippur *works*, you don't need Jesus.

So Yom Kippur being in the news in a big way, people hearing about it and thinking about it and it figuring in non-Jewish collective consciousness, suddenly, in a way it usually doesn't, is a problem if you're a Christian with traditional supercessionist theology.

So Christians have to find a way to neutralize it. Hence the rush to claim it's a Christian observance.

Now, I'm not saying this is 100% of what's going on. Christians having to make everything about them, straight up routine appropriation, all that's still part of it.

But there's a reason it's suddenly so loud, and there are a lot of *pastors* doing it.

It is, also, incidentally, why if you're Christian you SHOULDN'T be claiming Yom Kippur as part of Christian practice. It's redundant, and actually counter to Jesus being the solution for sin.

Your theology doesn't need it.

(If it bothers you that we still exist, well, deal.)