Lenny Bruce Quotes
Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from that tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is - One Who Killed Our Lord. And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.
Bruce, Lenny. The Essential Lenny Bruce. Edited by John Cohen, Ballantine Books, 1967, p. 38.
Poland was one of the Nazi occupied nations which cooperated in the mass murder of Jews and facilitated the Holocaust. Even after the war, much of the Polish Catholic clergy maintained virulent anti-Semitic views and in 1946 Polish thugs with the encouragement of some priests engaged in a pogrom in Kielce of returning Polish Jewish refugees. Catholic Primate of Poland, Augustus Hlond, made numerous anti-Semitic statements further exacerbating the problem. Many cast blame on Pope Pius XII who was not very vocal during the Nazi era regarding the ill treatment and murder of Jews, Gypsies, and handicapped, giving a “green light” to the Polish Prelate and those lower anti-Semitic priests. Papal apologists note that Hitler could have turned on the Catholic Church; the Pope had to walk a fine line between condemning evil and risking the welfare of the Church. Nonetheless, many Catholic priests risked and some lost their lives speaking out against the Nazi evil and protecting Nazi targets.
The term “gentile” was used in the Old Testament to indicate someone who was not of God’s Chosen People—one who was not a Jew. But the Mormon’s used the Biblical term to refer to people who were outside the Mormon faith. When Bamburger ran for the Governorship, there had been only one other Jewish governor in America. At a campaign rally a Mormon anti-Semite called him a “Damned Gentile.” This reply was typical of his humor, and the majority of the state voters and the Mormons voted for him making Bamburger the second Jewish Governor in America.
Leonard Alfred Schneider, better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was renowned for his open, freestyle and critical form of comedy which contained satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in the history of New York State, by Governor George Pataki in 2003.
