When I was in seventh grade I took a Jewish assertiveness class that, among other wonderful things, gave a list of ignorant, offensive, and dangerous comments that some people would make about Jews and taught us how to respond to them.

I didn't have that response sheet in front of me when a friend told me a co-worker, whom he was in a disagreement with, said, "Right, we can't all be perfect. There was only one perfect person and the Jews killed him."

My friend immediately knew this was an extremely offensive comment, and, as he said, you don't have to be Jewish to be offended, but he couldn't articulate to his boss what was wrong with it, beside being erroneous, of course.

Thinking of the Crusades and the pogroms, I said it has been traditionally been used as an excuse to kill Jews. It's code for the Jews are cruel, horrible, sacrilegious, an attack on us and our values. We have the right to kill them back in revenge.

But I felt my explanation was kind of shaky. Then, I was reading at article in this month's Atlantic Monthly. The author was talking about his time living in a Taliban madras, a religious seminary. The head of the organization said, "The problem is not between us Muslims and Christians. The only enemy Islam and Christianity have is the Jews. It was the Jews who crucified Christ."

Oh, so the only part I had gotten wrong was it wasn't just used as an excuse to slaughter Jews back then; it was being used today.