Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Question for Jews: does this Jewish character sound alright?

Machabeus-he lived in Italy during the late 14th century. He worked as a moneylender, a job all Jews were force to work in, most of the Christians thought of Machabeus as stingy and corrupted like any other Jew they meet. But they did not know Machabeus that well; he was caring and considerate, and despised working as a lender, pious as well as generous, and he had a loving fondness for children. But he had no children of own for he was a widower and barren. One evening, he found a dying nun carrying a 3 year-old boy, she explained to him that the child was hers and he was the son of a Monk who d her. She died of cold and hunger. Machabeus took the child in and raised Josepth as his own, praying that one day Joseph would grow to become a father and a nobleman. A few months later Machabeus took in a girl child he'd found weeping on the road side, abandoned. Her name was Dinah. Weeks later, Machabeus took in a young boy named Benjamin, who was neglected by his Stepfather. Some of Machabeus's Friends and Rabbis were worried about this affair and tried to convince him to give them up to Christian families for their safety, but Machabeus would not hear anymore of it. Years later, one of Machabeus's Christian Italian clients, who owned him money, plotted to seduce his pretty adopted daughter instead of repaying Machabeus. He succeeded. But once her heart belonged to him and she advised him that she carried his child, he decided he could do better than to marry the daughter of a poor Jew. Instead of marrying her he murdered her. Joseph grew into a handsome young man and a young Italian Christian girl fell in love with him. But, when the man who would become his father-in-law found out he had been raised by a Jew, he killed Joseph, and forced his own daughter to abandon the love child she'd given birth to, out of fear of what his neighbors would think of him if they found out his grandchild was from a Jew. Benjamin also met the same fate as his older siblings; Peasant Children bullied him for having a Jewish father and pushed him into the river where he drowned. Machabeus learned all of this and cried his heart out. His fellow Jews told him why should he mourn for children that were not his and not part of the Jewish religion; this infuriated him and made him ran away from the City. He broke away from his faith and helped some Mediterranean Pirates. He and his Pirates sacked the city that destroyed him. His motivations were done out of anger but mostly despair. He asked the Captain to spare the Jews in the Ghetto, and they were, but Machabeus never went back to people or his faith again, the memory of his children grieved him more than any loyalty of any kind.

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