Knowing Who Your Friends Are
More wisdom from George Meredith.
~ ~ ~
Dear Friends:
Which is it? A one-question test. A question remains, however: is the Rabbi grading on a curve?
Free RepublicJewish Survival: My Way Or Foxman`s Way?
Jewish Press ^ 11/9/2005 Rabbi Daniel Lapin
Posted on 11/14/2005 5:24:51 AM PST by SJackson
-Haaretz, November 6.
We Jews aren’t chic any longer. Europe, including England, makes little secret of how it feels about Jews. If possible, they care even less for Israel. Muslim countries - more than a billion angry people frequently at one another’s necks - are magically unified over hatred for Jews and resentment over that little patch of sand in the Middle East which Jews turned into a country. Much of Africa and most of Russia feels the same way.
There is, however, one group of people who unconditionally love Jews and the Land of Israel. These people are called Christian conservatives. They are made up of Catholics, and Protestants, Baptists and Lutherans and many others. Although theologies differ, they all share a deep conviction that God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. They all fervently believe that in so doing, God presented humanity with a blueprint for life. (Needless to say, these views should be shared by every Jew committed to his faith.)
This common understanding of the Bible, its promises and its directions, lies at the foundation of the special friendship the Christian Right has for Jews. It is a remarkable thing, this friendship. Very different theologies, very different histories and backgrounds, and even different visions of the future, yet a shared recollection of our biblical past assures the present in an atmosphere of trust and amity.
Into this delicate relationship strides an extremist demagogue whose intemperate denunciations last weekend threaten to destroy friendships between Jews and Christians.
The director of the ADL attacked Christianity as an intolerable threat to religious tolerance. He denounced several famous Evangelical organizations by name, accusing them of wishing to implement their Christian worldview. He demonized Christians and assured his audience that "they intend to Christianize all aspects of American life…their vision of America is far different from ours." (Just imagine what would happen to a Christian leader talking thus about Jews.)
Leaving aside the fascinating analysis of the pathology that makes a Jew alienate our best and only friends, maybe the attack itself needs to be refuted. It just may be time for an Orthodox rabbi to expose the five slanderous lies surrounding America’s most misunderstood movement.
1) The Christian Right wishes to impose a theocracy on America.
A hint for those of you out there planning on imposing a theocracy: In order to succeed, you would first need to subvert the entire United States Constitution. A word to the rest of you worried about a theocracy - if the Constitution goes, you have far bigger problems than a theocracy.
Who really does have a record of forcing their values down the throats of everyone else? Over the past forty years life in America has been made indescribably more squalid, expensive, and dangerous. The mocking of moral standards and the vulgarizing of the culture have brought to any teenager’s ears the throbbing rhythms and hideously violent lyrics that would have brought a blush to the face of a convict in 1960.
Back then, a family lived an enviable middle-class lifestyle on one salary. Today, high taxes, regulatory costs, and feminist propaganda have pushed mothers into the workplace. With the abolishment of the biblical idea of people being capable of evil, crime is now understood in terms of social problems. The result is a sharply diminished sense of safety and security. So who has more successfully forced whose values down our throats? I think the record speaks for itself.
2) Christian conservatives believe all who disagree with them are going to hell.
Even if some believe this, so what? Does our Constitution guarantee freedom of belief only to secularists? In my experience, those who are most indignant that some Christians have this belief are secularists who firmly announce their disbelief in heaven or hell in the first place.
For me personally, it bothers me not at all that many of my Christian friends believe I am headed to hell. Frankly, I am deeply grateful to be living among such wonderful Christian neighbors who do absolutely nothing to accelerate my arrival there. For most Christians I know, it is not so much a belief as it is a genuine concern for my spiritual future. I appreciate that concern though I remain a firmly committed Orthodox Jew. It was not always so for Jews in other countries during the past two thousand years.
Israel’s safety belt is undoubtedly America’s Bible Belt and I am sure that America has provided history’s safest and longest lasting haven for Jews, not in spite of but precisely because of its deep Christian conviction.
3) Christian conservatives are anti-Semitic and racist.
I do believe it’s time already for Jewish leaders to abandon Sharpton-tactics and graciously shelve the term anti-Semitism. It has become nothing but a bludgeon to silence dissent and cause resentment. When Jewish leaders accuse good and decent Christians of anti-Semitism because those Christians oppose wholesale abortion and homosexual marriage, it is more of an indictment of the Jews hurling the epithet than it is of their targets.
The problem is that many Jews, having abandoned the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have embraced the alternative faith of secular liberalism. Believing that the values of Judaism have nothing to do with the clearly expressed wishes of God in the Torah, they mistakenly assume that the values of Judaism are congruent with those of secular liberalism. Thus, in their view, anyone who loathes the values of secular liberalism surely must hate the values of Judaism since they are the same. Therefore, any conservative is, by definition, an anti-Semite.
I can only tell you that I regularly deliver speeches to audiences, often of thousands, for the very organizations listed by the ADL in its latest anti-Christian diatribe. I do so as an Orthodox rabbi and on the dais I wear the same black yarmulke I wore during my Torah studies in yeshiva. I talk of the same biblical values I was taught in that yeshiva. After the speech I frequently enjoy a dinner brought by the organizers with considerable trouble and expense from a kosher restaurant, often from another city. I am received with enthusiasm and genuine warmth. If this be anti-Semitism, my grandfather in Europe would surely have welcomed it.
Oh, did I mention that many of the pastors of the Christian Right are black Americans? Of course, to many of the racial demagogues on the secular Left, any black conservative has renounced his very blackness. I estimate that at least ten percent of most every audience I address is African American. The charge that the Christian Right is racist can be made exclusively by people whose antagonism is exceeded only by their ignorance.
4) Christian conservatives are poor, uneducated, and easy to command.
This allegation was first made by a Washington Post reporter in a front-page story on February 1, 1993. In reality, average annual income for Christian conservatives is well above the national average. Furthermore, the average net worth of conservative Christian families rockets ahead of the national average especially when corrected for age and income. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, since the values of thrift and industry that build net worth are among the values encouraged by biblical faith. Finally, the bountiful generosity in the form of charitable donations made by America’s religious conservatives in any year exceeds the gross domestic product of many nation members of the United Nations.
Most of the nation’s hundreds of Christian colleges, with their rigorous academic standards, routinely outperform state universities. Christian home-schoolers win national spelling bees year after year. In a 2003 article titled "God on the Quad," the Boston Globe described how well Christian Evangelical students are doing on New England’s liberal elite university campuses.
As for being easy to command, well, Evangelical judicial nominee Harriet Miers was forced to withdraw her nomination precisely because America’s religious conservatives are not easy to command.
5) The Christian Right is anti-scientific.
This charge emerges from secular America’s docile homage to the doctrines of Darwin. Wise and educated people today realize that the borderline between cutting-edge science and religious belief is fuzzy. One need only examine the work of cosmologist Stephen Hawking, British scientific philosopher Antony Flew, or Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder to hear the language of theology. Only propagandists and ideologues think that Darwin ended the discussion.
The reality is that two incompatible beliefs account for mankind’s presence on the planet. The first is that God created us in His image and placed us here. The second is that through a lengthy process of unaided materialistic evolution, primitive protoplasm became Bach, Beethoven, and the Beatles.
Many scientists, including the 40 percent who are religious (according to a University of Georgia study cited by The New York Times in February of this year) accept the first view. Many scientists accept the second view and some scientists await further evidence. The issue is hardly cut and dried because a great deal of modern science flows as much from scientific philosophy as it does from laboratory experiment.
This leaves only one question: Which group is more dogmatic and closed of mind - secular liberals or Christian conservatives? To any fair person, the answer is startlingly simple. It would be tough to find a single Christian high school, college, or university in the nation that does not treat Darwinian evolution seriously. However, it would be even tougher to find a single public high school or secular university that grants a respectful hearing to intelligent design, let alone a religious view of creation.
It is also only on secular campuses that truth is frequently suppressed in the interests of political correctness.
If science means being open to all ideas, judging those ideas on the basis of evidence rather than belief, and withholding judgment in the absence of evidence, there can be no doubt at all. Christian conservatives are far less anti-scientific than others.
I am sure the ADL’s Mr. Foxman cares for the Jewish people as much as I do. It is just that he has a radically different way of expressing it. To me, his frequent anti-Christian outbursts are incomprehensible and I am sure they jeopardize the future of Jews in America and, ultimately, Jews everywhere. He, no doubt, thinks much the same about my views.
In a spirit of respect for both him and for the traditional Jewish commitment to truth and open discussion, I invite Mr. Foxman to a public debate on this topic: Does Jewish survival lie with a fervent secularism that ceaselessly snaps at the heels of Christian America, or with a political alliance with those people who stand firm for the values God imparted to the Jews at the foot of Mount Sinai just over three thousand years ago?
One way is right and the other is wrong. Which is it?
~ ~ ~
Dear Friends:
Which is it? A one-question test. A question remains, however: is the Rabbi grading on a curve?
Free RepublicJewish Survival: My Way Or Foxman`s Way?
Jewish Press ^ 11/9/2005 Rabbi Daniel Lapin
Posted on 11/14/2005 5:24:51 AM PST by SJackson
Institutionalized Christianity in the U.S. has grown so extremist that it poses a tangible danger to the principle of separation of church and state and threatens to undermine the religious tolerance that characterizes the country, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, warned in his address to the League`s national commission, meeting in New York City over the weekend.
-Haaretz, November 6.
We Jews aren’t chic any longer. Europe, including England, makes little secret of how it feels about Jews. If possible, they care even less for Israel. Muslim countries - more than a billion angry people frequently at one another’s necks - are magically unified over hatred for Jews and resentment over that little patch of sand in the Middle East which Jews turned into a country. Much of Africa and most of Russia feels the same way.
There is, however, one group of people who unconditionally love Jews and the Land of Israel. These people are called Christian conservatives. They are made up of Catholics, and Protestants, Baptists and Lutherans and many others. Although theologies differ, they all share a deep conviction that God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. They all fervently believe that in so doing, God presented humanity with a blueprint for life. (Needless to say, these views should be shared by every Jew committed to his faith.)
This common understanding of the Bible, its promises and its directions, lies at the foundation of the special friendship the Christian Right has for Jews. It is a remarkable thing, this friendship. Very different theologies, very different histories and backgrounds, and even different visions of the future, yet a shared recollection of our biblical past assures the present in an atmosphere of trust and amity.
Into this delicate relationship strides an extremist demagogue whose intemperate denunciations last weekend threaten to destroy friendships between Jews and Christians.
The director of the ADL attacked Christianity as an intolerable threat to religious tolerance. He denounced several famous Evangelical organizations by name, accusing them of wishing to implement their Christian worldview. He demonized Christians and assured his audience that "they intend to Christianize all aspects of American life…their vision of America is far different from ours." (Just imagine what would happen to a Christian leader talking thus about Jews.)
Leaving aside the fascinating analysis of the pathology that makes a Jew alienate our best and only friends, maybe the attack itself needs to be refuted. It just may be time for an Orthodox rabbi to expose the five slanderous lies surrounding America’s most misunderstood movement.
1) The Christian Right wishes to impose a theocracy on America.
A hint for those of you out there planning on imposing a theocracy: In order to succeed, you would first need to subvert the entire United States Constitution. A word to the rest of you worried about a theocracy - if the Constitution goes, you have far bigger problems than a theocracy.
Who really does have a record of forcing their values down the throats of everyone else? Over the past forty years life in America has been made indescribably more squalid, expensive, and dangerous. The mocking of moral standards and the vulgarizing of the culture have brought to any teenager’s ears the throbbing rhythms and hideously violent lyrics that would have brought a blush to the face of a convict in 1960.
Back then, a family lived an enviable middle-class lifestyle on one salary. Today, high taxes, regulatory costs, and feminist propaganda have pushed mothers into the workplace. With the abolishment of the biblical idea of people being capable of evil, crime is now understood in terms of social problems. The result is a sharply diminished sense of safety and security. So who has more successfully forced whose values down our throats? I think the record speaks for itself.
2) Christian conservatives believe all who disagree with them are going to hell.
Even if some believe this, so what? Does our Constitution guarantee freedom of belief only to secularists? In my experience, those who are most indignant that some Christians have this belief are secularists who firmly announce their disbelief in heaven or hell in the first place.
For me personally, it bothers me not at all that many of my Christian friends believe I am headed to hell. Frankly, I am deeply grateful to be living among such wonderful Christian neighbors who do absolutely nothing to accelerate my arrival there. For most Christians I know, it is not so much a belief as it is a genuine concern for my spiritual future. I appreciate that concern though I remain a firmly committed Orthodox Jew. It was not always so for Jews in other countries during the past two thousand years.
Israel’s safety belt is undoubtedly America’s Bible Belt and I am sure that America has provided history’s safest and longest lasting haven for Jews, not in spite of but precisely because of its deep Christian conviction.
3) Christian conservatives are anti-Semitic and racist.
I do believe it’s time already for Jewish leaders to abandon Sharpton-tactics and graciously shelve the term anti-Semitism. It has become nothing but a bludgeon to silence dissent and cause resentment. When Jewish leaders accuse good and decent Christians of anti-Semitism because those Christians oppose wholesale abortion and homosexual marriage, it is more of an indictment of the Jews hurling the epithet than it is of their targets.
The problem is that many Jews, having abandoned the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have embraced the alternative faith of secular liberalism. Believing that the values of Judaism have nothing to do with the clearly expressed wishes of God in the Torah, they mistakenly assume that the values of Judaism are congruent with those of secular liberalism. Thus, in their view, anyone who loathes the values of secular liberalism surely must hate the values of Judaism since they are the same. Therefore, any conservative is, by definition, an anti-Semite.
I can only tell you that I regularly deliver speeches to audiences, often of thousands, for the very organizations listed by the ADL in its latest anti-Christian diatribe. I do so as an Orthodox rabbi and on the dais I wear the same black yarmulke I wore during my Torah studies in yeshiva. I talk of the same biblical values I was taught in that yeshiva. After the speech I frequently enjoy a dinner brought by the organizers with considerable trouble and expense from a kosher restaurant, often from another city. I am received with enthusiasm and genuine warmth. If this be anti-Semitism, my grandfather in Europe would surely have welcomed it.
Oh, did I mention that many of the pastors of the Christian Right are black Americans? Of course, to many of the racial demagogues on the secular Left, any black conservative has renounced his very blackness. I estimate that at least ten percent of most every audience I address is African American. The charge that the Christian Right is racist can be made exclusively by people whose antagonism is exceeded only by their ignorance.
4) Christian conservatives are poor, uneducated, and easy to command.
This allegation was first made by a Washington Post reporter in a front-page story on February 1, 1993. In reality, average annual income for Christian conservatives is well above the national average. Furthermore, the average net worth of conservative Christian families rockets ahead of the national average especially when corrected for age and income. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, since the values of thrift and industry that build net worth are among the values encouraged by biblical faith. Finally, the bountiful generosity in the form of charitable donations made by America’s religious conservatives in any year exceeds the gross domestic product of many nation members of the United Nations.
Most of the nation’s hundreds of Christian colleges, with their rigorous academic standards, routinely outperform state universities. Christian home-schoolers win national spelling bees year after year. In a 2003 article titled "God on the Quad," the Boston Globe described how well Christian Evangelical students are doing on New England’s liberal elite university campuses.
As for being easy to command, well, Evangelical judicial nominee Harriet Miers was forced to withdraw her nomination precisely because America’s religious conservatives are not easy to command.
5) The Christian Right is anti-scientific.
This charge emerges from secular America’s docile homage to the doctrines of Darwin. Wise and educated people today realize that the borderline between cutting-edge science and religious belief is fuzzy. One need only examine the work of cosmologist Stephen Hawking, British scientific philosopher Antony Flew, or Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder to hear the language of theology. Only propagandists and ideologues think that Darwin ended the discussion.
The reality is that two incompatible beliefs account for mankind’s presence on the planet. The first is that God created us in His image and placed us here. The second is that through a lengthy process of unaided materialistic evolution, primitive protoplasm became Bach, Beethoven, and the Beatles.
Many scientists, including the 40 percent who are religious (according to a University of Georgia study cited by The New York Times in February of this year) accept the first view. Many scientists accept the second view and some scientists await further evidence. The issue is hardly cut and dried because a great deal of modern science flows as much from scientific philosophy as it does from laboratory experiment.
This leaves only one question: Which group is more dogmatic and closed of mind - secular liberals or Christian conservatives? To any fair person, the answer is startlingly simple. It would be tough to find a single Christian high school, college, or university in the nation that does not treat Darwinian evolution seriously. However, it would be even tougher to find a single public high school or secular university that grants a respectful hearing to intelligent design, let alone a religious view of creation.
It is also only on secular campuses that truth is frequently suppressed in the interests of political correctness.
If science means being open to all ideas, judging those ideas on the basis of evidence rather than belief, and withholding judgment in the absence of evidence, there can be no doubt at all. Christian conservatives are far less anti-scientific than others.
I am sure the ADL’s Mr. Foxman cares for the Jewish people as much as I do. It is just that he has a radically different way of expressing it. To me, his frequent anti-Christian outbursts are incomprehensible and I am sure they jeopardize the future of Jews in America and, ultimately, Jews everywhere. He, no doubt, thinks much the same about my views.
In a spirit of respect for both him and for the traditional Jewish commitment to truth and open discussion, I invite Mr. Foxman to a public debate on this topic: Does Jewish survival lie with a fervent secularism that ceaselessly snaps at the heels of Christian America, or with a political alliance with those people who stand firm for the values God imparted to the Jews at the foot of Mount Sinai just over three thousand years ago?
One way is right and the other is wrong. Which is it?
posted by JASmius at 11:06 PM
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