Not much to do with Christians and Jews - at least not directly - but a voice of freedom in the Middle East has just been stifled. Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey has fallen silent.

Today is going to be the day that I've been dreading for quite sometime now. Today is the day I walk away from this blog. Done. Finished.

There are many reasons, each would take a post to list, and I just do not have the energy to list them. As anyone who has been reading this blog for the past month, I think it is apparent that things are not the same with me. There are reasons for that:
One of the chief reasons is the fact that there has been too much heat around me lately. I no longer believe that my anonymity is kept, especially with State Secuirty agents lurking around my street and asking questions about me since that day. I ignore that, the same way I ignored all the clicking noises that my phones started to exhibit all of a sudden, or the law suit filed by Judge Mourad on my friends, and instead grew bolder and more reckless at a time where everybody else started being more cautious. It took me a while to take note of the fear that has been gripping our little blogsphere and comprehend what it really means.

I always enjoyed reading his blog, and it was easy to forget the courage it took for him to write it.

Not much time for posting these days, but here are a couple of items.

First, have you heard of the Greek Orthodox custom of Burning Judas? No, neither had I. This came courtesy of Abravanel

Easter in the christian orthodox tradition has always a far greater weight than Christmas and it’s celebrations are always solemn in churches and joyous in the countryside.

One of the characteristic celebrations is the “Burning of Judas” which is also presented as the “Burning of the Jew” and at least in one place as the “Burning of the Nigger”. In the last days of Easter a stuffed doll in humanlike dimensions is being prepared, stuffed with inflammable material and often with fireworks. It is hanged, in some places shot upon and ultimately burned. All this is accompanied by insults, curses but also great joy from the children. In the past it was also a chance for an occasional outburst of the population as various ethnographic and literary sources tell us; the mob set fire to a house or two in the local jewish neighbourhood but usually it was reduced to stone throwing - almost never human casualties were noted but an occasional beating of a jew found nearby, wasn’t completely rare. Of course all these happened where jewish communities were present; lacking jews the “Burning of the Jew/Judas” took a more folkloristic turn with absolutely no physical violence involved and this is the form we find it today.

More on the topic of Orthodox Loving God and Hating Jews.

I know little of the Greek Orthodox Church, so am relying on zorkmidden of Discarded Lies, who points to this small note of hope: Priests: Remove anti-Semitic liturgy

A group of 12 Orthodox priests have called on their Church to review its longstanding theological positions toward Jews and the State of Israel, and to excise anti-Semitic passages from its liturgy.

Sadly, only twelve just men. I hope they succeed.

Sadly, there are some Orthodox Christians who propagate disgusting anti-Semitism under the banner of Orthodoxy, which is incompatible with Christianity," said Rev. Innokenty Pavlov, professor of theology at Moscow's Biblical Theological Institute.

"We have to raise our voices and call on Orthodox laity and the Church leadership to formulate an official position of the Orthodox Church toward our relations with Judaism, as it was formulated a few decades ago by the Catholic Church," he added, referring to the Second Vatican Council of 1962 to 1965.