Victorian education officials will write to the publisher of a popular secondary school text book requesting it rewrite a section on religion, which blames Jews for the death of Jesus Christ.
Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich Text book’s lesson on ‘Jews as Christ killers’ (theaustralian.com.au) said it was outrageous that “the mother of all anti-Semitic blood-libels” appeared to be taught in some Victorian schools and called for the book to be dumped.
The book, Jacaranda Humanities Alive 7 (second edition), was brought to his attention by parents of students at Glen Eira College, a school in Melbourne’s east with a growing population of Jewish students.
The Victorian curriculum-aligned text appears on the booklists of many schools across the state.
Under a section on religions that developed in western Asia, the book includes a passage on Christianity and the teachings of Jesus, “a Jew, whose followers preached was the son of God”.
“Because they saw him as a threat to their power, Jewish religious leaders had Jesus arrested, condemned and crucified by the Romans,” it says.
Dr Abramovich said the “venomous charge” that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, which had resulted in more than 2000 years of persecution, had been disputed by the Vatican.
Read the article by Rebecca Urban in The Australian.