Encore Archive

Welcome to Encore, the place where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on topics of the moment. Each week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here!

To access the CLAL Encore Archive, click here.

To join the conversation at CLAL Encore Talk, click here.

Silent Hate is Also A Sin

Balfour Brickner (Sh'ma 9/175, May 25, 1979)

It is unquestionably true that a strong, frequently not too thinly veiled disdain for Christians and Christianity survives in the psyche of American Jewry. Solomon Mowshowitz's impressionistic piece revealed all too clearly the pathos of that sickness. One can only hope that his description is accurate when he says that "the feelings we're talking about I don't believe in at all." However, he does describe the sentiments of many Jews, not only those of the older community with personal negative memories. Anti-Christian bigotry infects every one of our age groupings. Paradoxically, it stems from their conviction that "goyim are nothing but anti-Semites."

Response in kind has always been a predictable defensive posture. This enmity is, I believe, based on a two thousand year old memory of Christian persecution of Jews, a thirty year old conviction that Christians have not been sufficiently supportive of Israel and a contemporary perception that particularly Protestant fringe types have Jewish conversion as one of their goal ends. Witness the "Jews for Jesus," "Hineni" "Beth Saar Shalom," etc.

These perceptions of the Christian world engender a highly negative attitude toward interreligious contacts. "What do we need them for?" I hear that sotto voce question constantly asked. It makes very little difference to many Jews that increasingly the enlightened element of American Christian scholarship seems to feel that they need to understand Judaism more deeply in order to understand their own faith, or that they see the continuation of the Jewish people as part of God's plan. As one Catholic scholar put it to me recently, "The Jewish people witnesses to me that God, our gracious father, calls His people as a people and never reneges on that calling."

Do we Love only Those who do what we Want?

Jews feel that Christianity is not necessary to their being Jewish. Most Jews seem to agree that we would have survived better without Christianity. Perhaps that is so, but the supposition fails to acknowledge some very real and powerful changes now going on in American Christendom. Clearly the Roman Catholic Church of 1979 is not the same in its attitude toward Jews as was its predecessor from earlier ages. Jesuit scholar Father Raymond E. Brown, author of the remarkable book The Birth of the Messiah, is as different from John Chrysostum (344-407 C.E.) as I am from a Sadducean priest. Yet, Jews seem either unable or unwilling to recognize the changes. One might even think we enjoy the luxury of our prejudices. "Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up."

When we do approach Christians, the contact is frequently asymmetrical. We have a tendency to treat the non-Jewish world as if its existence ought to be to promote issues and causes of concern to Jews. When it doesn't respond in ways which we think it should, we use that "failure" to justify our pre-existing dislike. It strengthens our unwillingness to be responsive to issues and problems that are high on their agenda, though not on ours. The concern highest on our agenda is, of course, Israel. Christianity, particularly mainstream American Protestantism, has not responded to what we consider the moral right of Israel to survive as strongly as we have wanted it to. Yet, while increasingly many Christians are coming to understand the central role Israel plays in Jewish self identity, the result, to be sure, of some intensive Christian-Jewish consultations -- the very kinds of contacts so many of those who are contemptuous of Christians tend to discredit -- we still remain unsatisfied. We measure the positive or negative dimensions of our relationship to them in terms of support for that state. Israel is the litmus paper of our affection or rejection of Christians.

Not every Ally is a true Friend

This explains our uncritical and, I believe, misguided embrace of the Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestant community. But in truth, their love of Zion is not predicated on our understanding of Zionism -- the fulfilled continuation of the Jewish people as a distinct people in Israel. Their desire to see all Jews return to Israel derives from their own eschatological hope in the ultimate triumph of Christianity. Their theology ultimately suggests that the Jewish religion is incomplete. They envision the end of the Jewish people. I see no reason to embrace those whose ultimate hopes are for my demise. Moreover, in all other areas, they are ecumenically stand-offish and socially conservative. They do not share many of our views regarding America's domestic social program.

There is, to be sure, an element within the Christian Evangelical community that is not so conservative. The New or Young Evangelicals, as they are sometimes called, represent a small, highly literate elite, most of whom were active in civil rights struggles. They see their role as restoring Christ to this world and have all but abandoned the other-worldly posture of salvation. Unfortunately, they are also somewhat more critical of present Israeli politics than their mainstream contemporaries, sometimes taking a pro-Palestinian line. Perhaps it is for this reason that so far the Jewish community has not sought them out, avoiding the creation of coalitions with this element of the Evangelical world. It is time we did so.

Old Prejudices do not fit New Times

It is time too that we learned to recognize some important differences within Christianity. Just as not all Christians are Evangelicals or Fundamentalists, so too not all Christians believe in converting Jews to Christianity. As Father Lawrence McCoombe, member of the Long Island Episcopal Church's Commission on Christian-Jewish Relations put it: Christians are realizing that Judaism has its own integrity and needs no Christian corrective. Together we are beginning to see that we can behave as equals, that we do not need to make each other's belief systems "wrong." We are siblings, each possessing his own validity, vitality and wholeness. Christians no longer pray for the conversion of Jews. The current rise of Jewish-Christian" missionary activity is distressing to both Jews and Christians. It is upsetting to Jews because it impugns the integrity of Jewish belief. It is alarming to Christians because it misrepresents Christianity.

Given the above, and this is only the thinnest smattering of evidence of the new positive situation that obtains between Judaism and Christianity, one wonders on what basis we continue to retain our historic prejudices? How long can we shape our future relationships on the basis of past experiences that came from a pre-modern, pre-enlightened world? To be sure there are still anti-Semites, but anti-Semitism is not increasing in this country.

Shall we continue to ignore each other, subtly teach hatred about one another to our offspring? Is that in our best interests? I think not. Instead, I am convinced that we need one another if the voice and power of organized religion is to be brought to bear on the social ills of our society. These ills will destroy us if we do not act together