A Tennessee middle school teacher has been criticized for allegedly teaching her students “how to torture a Jew” during a public school Bible class.
Juniper Russo, mother of a Jewish eighth-grader in East Hamilton Middle School, accused the unidentified teacher of misusing the class meant for teaching the Bible as literature for “blatant Christian proselytizing,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
The teacher reportedly wrote an English translation of the Hebrew name for god on the whiteboard and told the students that “If you want to know how to torture a Jew, make them say this out loud,” Russo wrote in a Facebook post that is no longer public.
Jews traditionally do not speak out the name of god and write it only in the Torah.
Russo said she withdrew her eighth-grader from the class after her daughter felt unsafe hearing her teacher talk about torturing the Jews. “My daughter felt extremely uncomfortable hearing a teacher instruct her peers on ‘how to torture a Jew’ and told me when she came home from school that she didn’t feel safe in the class,” the mother said.
The class was part of an initiative of “Bible in the Schools,” a nonprofit organization that teaches the Bible in 29 schools in Hamilton County.
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