What sort of mental gymnastics did the Nazis have to do to ignore Jesus being Jewish?
Hello!
I’m Jewish and have studied quite a bit of Jewish history in university, mostly in the Levant and Mediterranean. What I’ve never gotten was this: Jesus was a Jew from Judea. He was born to a Jewish mother, so under Halacha, he’s a Jew. It’s my understanding that Christians also accept that he was born Jewish. How did the Nazis reckon with Jesus being a Jew while also trying to eliminate Jews? It seems like it would’ve taken a lot of mental gymnastics. I know that propaganda is a hell of a drug, but a lot of their propaganda was through pseudoscience separating Jews from Aryans through the idea of “Semitic race” based on language groups resulting in ethnic Jews of other religions being killed for being ethnically Jewish. Jesus would’ve undoubtedly been part of this “Semitic race” and met the Nazi requirements of being a Jew (at least one Jewish grandparent).