The OG Sabrina Spellman, Melissa Joan Hart has denied making anti-semitic comments after being slammed by fans for her appearance in a religious podcast.
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The 42-year-old discussed her faith with former The View co-host Paula Faris on her podcast, Journeys of Faith with Paula Faris. She addressed her decision to move her son from a Christian preschool to a traditional school.
“We don’t know if these people are good people,” the actress said she told her son. “We don’t know if they believe in Jesus.”
She adds that her son befriended a Jewish boy at school and asked his mom how his new pal would get to heaven.
“He really took the Jesus part to heart,” she said. “When a mum [of the child] called me with a problem in sixth grade I was like well, ‘Do I regret telling my son that we don’t know if people believe in Jesus, so we don’t know their character?’” Hart asked. “‘Is that a wrong thing to say? Did I set my son on the wrong path or was that the right thing to say and I should defend that?’”
Hart said she had some “heated” discussions with the Jewish boy’s mother after their children reached sixth grade: “Some problems came out of that,” she said.
The backlash to Hart’s comment was swift and heavy, with many of her fans accusing her of being anti-Semitic.
Dear Melissa Joan Hart, posing the antisemitism you are teaching your children as a question, does not make you any less of an anti-Semite. https://t.co/xG88Z5hmXg
— Wombat (@NewWombat) January 3, 2019
https://twitter.com/DanielleSATM/status/1081701890776285184
https://twitter.com/KelseyFGold/status/1081661240332640256
@MelissaJoanHart I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in Jesus. Though I don’t have nearly the $ you do, I donate money, clothing, food, and other things to people in need whenever I can.
— Angela Bray (@Nature_Muffin) January 5, 2019
Respectfully @MelissaJoanHart, as a Christian how is it ok for you to play a witch on TV but not feel comfortable with your children fraternizing with non Christians?
— . (@gschiller) January 5, 2019
@MelissaJoanHart Making comments like these to your children doesn’t only make you a bad person, but it also put’s you on a similar level of Donald Trump https://t.co/DQUy3tVpRK
— Michael Poole (@VampireMike2004) January 5, 2019
https://twitter.com/marissalevin/status/1080789507589488641
Following the heavy backlash, Hart defended herself on Instagram, writing in the comments section of a recent post, “I’ve been studying religion for the past 8 years and am learning more everyday. I try to never judge anyone… unless they put ice in their wine… but I was simply telling my son that we knew the people at his old school, even down to their faith beliefs. The new kids in school, we didn’t know a thing about so he was going to have to judge for himself.”
