Fans of Catholic high school basketball team in suburban Boston shout "You killed Jesus" at Jewish players of opposing team

Another magic moment for multiculturalism, as reported by Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post, March 12, 2016:

BOSTON — An ugly thing happened at a high school basketball game in a suburb of Boston Friday night.

It occurred at a division title game between the all-boys Catholic Memorial School and the public Newton North High School, which has a large Jewish community of students. The game was held at Newton South High School, where an estimated 100 young men sitting in the student section cheering for Catholic Memorial shouted, “You killed Jesus, you killed Jesus,” according to several witnesses who asked not to be identified. Most of those chanting fans wore red shirts as a display of support for their team. Some of the witnesses, who were Jewish, said they found the chant alarming.

Brendan C. Hall, high school sports editor for ESPNBoston, and some other people tweeted about what happened:

Dirty Dan
‎‎@Dtf617

Probably craziest high school chant ever

Newton North fans chant: "sausage fest, sausage fest"

CM fans response: "You killed Jesus"
7:03 PM - 11 Mar 2016

Brendan C. Hall ✔
‎‎@BHallESPN

I am serious. MIAA should consider fining schools whose fans use hate speech. I'm sick of dealing with these stories https://twitter.com/
mlmcclin/status/708486051522846720 …
8:00 PM - 11 Mar 2016

Brendan C. Hall ✔
‎‎@BHallESPN

Credit to the CM administration absolutely scolding its fans. Made every fan apologize to the Newton North principal just now.
6:58 PM - 11 Mar 2016

Matt McClintock
‎‎@mlmcclin

If you chant "You Killed Jesus" to a predominantly Jewish school you're gonna have a bad time. https://twitter.com/bhallespn/stat
us/708472155655290880 …
7:53 PM - 11 Mar 2016


“Sausage fest” — the phrase used in a chant by Newton fans — is a crude reference to the fact that the Catholic school is only for boys. Newton North, a public high school with more than 1,700 students, is in an affluent suburb just west of Boston; Catholic Memorial, the Christian Brothers School of Boston, is a college-preparatory school for boys in grades 7 through 12 about six miles away in West Roxbury, a neighborhood of Boston that borders Newton. The school’s website says that it “transforms boys’ lives and prepares them for college and the world.”

One spectator who was shaken by the events — and who asked not to be identified — is a native of Skokie, Ill., where in the mid-1970s, a controversy erupted when neo-Nazis wanted to march through the heavily Jewish town. Skokie officials tried to stop it but lost the case in court. This spectator, whose parents are survivors of World War II concentration camps, said, “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”

This week Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, the Catholic archbishop of Boston, gave a speech to representatives of the Jewish community to mark the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the 1965 document that revolutionized Catholic-Jewish relations and made clear for the first time that the Catholic Church rejects any form of anti-Semitism.

The two schools’ basketball teams were evenly matched going into the playoff game; Newton North was 22-3 and Catholic Memorial was 21-2.According to ESPNBoston.com, Catholic Memorial won Friday night’s game, 77-73, to advance to the EMass Final, scheduled for Monday at TD Garden, where the Boston Celtics play.