So a rabbi and a bishop are riding along a road one day…

Quoting Katherine Aron‐Beller’s Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators: The History of an Allegation, 400–1700, chapter 4:

A longer polemical folktale seems even more relevant for our purposes. Referring again to the thorn/burning bush, which here “radiated God’s presence,” Joseph describes his father, Rabbi Nathan, actually committing image desecration. He openly urinates on a cross in front of a Christian bishop, denying its sanctity and arguing that it should be considered putrid because it was the instrument that had caused the torture and death of Jesus:

Once my lord and father, Rabbi Nathan, may he rest in Paradise, was riding alongside the bishop of Sens.¹²⁰ The bishop got off his horse opposite a bush in order to urinate. My lord and father saw this, and he got off his horse opposite an abomination [a cross] and urinated on it. The bishop saw this and was angry. He said to him, it is not proper to do that, to make the cross smell bad. My father replied, “On the contrary, it was a foolish thing for you to do [Gen. 31:28]. You urinated on a bush, on which the Holy One, blessed be He, radiated His presence in order to bring salvation [that is, at the burning bush, Exod. 3:1–3]. But this [cross], on which you [Christians] say that [the god] you fear was defeated, stank, and rotted, it is right that you should expose yourself and urinate all over it!”¹²¹

The Jew holds the trump cards. It would, Rabbi Nathan argues, make more sense for the Christian to desecrate the cross himself rather than venerate it. He first criticizes the bishop for urinating on a bush when, according to the Christian argument, Christ revealed himself in one. Second, he contends that it makes no sense for the bishop to venerate an object that caused the death of his savior. If the bishop saw the bush as a place of Christian divinity, the Jew argues, then he (the Jew) has shown more respect for Christ by not urinating on the bush than the bishop who did! It might well be argued then, that Joseph the Official was responding to the spreading allegations of Jews violating Christian images and offered in this polemic an allegorical retort.¹²²

(Emphasis added.)

Preliminary Rules

Rule 0: Follow the Chapo.Chat Code of Conduct.

Rule 1: No dehumanizing ANYONE, especially Palestinians.

Rule 2: No Israeli apologia.

Rule 3: Anti-Zionism is allowed. Anti-semitism is not.

Rule 4: Leftist ideologies are secular, not atheist. This is not a place to “dunk” on Judaism, but a place to help liberate it.

Rule 5: BDS is good and based.

“Love labor, hate mastery over others, and avoid a close relationship with the government” (Avot, 1:10)

"Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews. In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the working people, capital. Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened.

It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers.

Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.

Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital." - V. I. Lenin, Anti-Jewish Pogroms