“The Jews broke my arm”

Aug 4, 2008 by Jared Smith

After church on Sunday, Abbie announced out of the blue that, “The Jews beat me and broke my arm.” Thinking we had misheard what she said, we asked her what she meant. She replied, “The Jews, you know those mean people, they broke my arm.” We inquired a bit more and she confirmed she meant the people that lived when Jesus was alive and she was thoroughly convinced they had broken her arm. When we pushed to get more info, she locked up, started crying, and wouldn’t talk about it any more. The fact we were laughing hysterically probably didn’t help any.

In an attempt to figure out what she had learned in her primary class, we called the mother of Gracie, one of Abbie’s classmates. Gracie was with Abbie when she broke her arm, so we were certain she would know what happened. When Gracie’s mother asked her what they had talked about on Sunday, she replied, “We talked about those bad guys the Jews. They broke Abbie’s arm!”

Nice. Either they are teaching some crazy form of antisemitism at church or these girls really misinterpreted something.

Determined all the more to get to the bottom of it (and partially because it would be a bit awkward for our daughter to announce to strangers that Jews have abused her), we called her primary teacher. During class they were discussing the story of the good Samaritan and the teacher discussed how the Jews and the Samaritans didn’t get along. They then role-played the story and Abbie naturally played the part of the man robbed and abused – who else but the girl with the purple cast to play the one that gets beaten. Somehow they interpreted it all to mean that the Jews had REALLY broken Abbie’s arm. Mystery solved!

Don’t you love it when kids take the craziest things so literally? Now, we need to somehow convince our daughter that Jews aren’t mean child abusers.