Posted on 03/18/2004 10:17:16 AM PST by truthandlife
I have a longstanding personal policy: Never eat in a restaurant where the kosher certificate in the window is bigger than the menu. I broke that rule on Monday in a dairy restaurant on the upper West Side. Yechiel Eckstein was in town, and talking to him over lunch is worth a little postprandial indigestion. Especially when the subject is Bible Belt politics.
Eckstein is an unorthodox Orthodox rabbi from Chicago who recently moved to Israel. He wears a baseball hat for a skull cap, and he looks more like an ex-jock than a practicing clergyman. His congregation isn't what you'd expect, either. He is the founder and leader of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a group linked to 20,000 Evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
Eckstein raises money from Christians and gives it to Jews. Last year alone, he took in around $40 million. Most of it was disbursed in the Holy Land. That's enough to make the Fellowship of Christians and Jews Israel's biggest philanthropic foundation - and Eckstein a very influential figure in his new country.
The rabbi's real power base, though, is still the United States. A close associate of Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer and Tom DeLay, Eckstein is at the epicenter of the rapidly developing Jewish-Evangelical political connection.
The fellowship is officially nonpartisan, but there is no question that the partnership Eckstein is building will help the Republicans this year and beyond. For that reason, it is highly controversial in the Jewish establishment. Historically, American Jews have distrusted and disliked Evangelical Christians. Since FDR, they have voted overwhelmingly Democratic in every national election except 1980, when upward of a third cast ballots for Ronald Reagan over the born-again Jimmy Carter.
George W. Bush is born-again, too, but he also is the most pro-Israel President in history. Eckstein believes President Bush will get a significant Jewish vote, perhaps enough to make a difference in electoral battleground states like Illinois, Pennsylvania and, especially, Florida.
Eckstein also believes Bush's support for Israel will energize Christian Zionists. Last year, he led a contingent of America's major Evangelical ministers to the White House for an unpublicized meeting with Condoleezza Rice. They made it clear that support for Israel is, from now on, at the very top of their political agenda. Evangelicals have supported the Jewish state for at least a generation, but this meeting marked an unprecedented upgrade in their level of engagement.
Such unconditional Christian Zionism is a major embarrassment to the mostly liberal, mostly Democratic American Jewish establishment. That, in turn, helps explain the storm of vitriolic Jewish criticism of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." Many of the critics labeled the film anti-Semitic as a way of driving a wedge between Evangelical Christians and the Jewish grass roots.
It hasn't worked, at least not among Eckstein's folks. In a poll he recently conducted, only about 2% of Evangelicals blamed Jews for the death of Jesus. More than 80% believe Jesus was crucified by - and for - all humanity.
Eckstein believes the Jewish-Evangelical relationship is still in its early stages. Lately, he has been expanding his outreach to Latin America, which has a fast-growing Evangelical movement, and Europe. More significantly, he is thinking about opening a lobbying operation in Washington.
If his 23,000 Christian churches help swing the coming presidential election, he will need one. A lot of people are suddenly going to want to talk to Yechiel Eckstein. My advice: Meet him after lunch.
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