The real object of Jewish fears
First of all, as crazy as it may sound, there is something that many American Jews fear in their heart of hearts even more than they fear Moslem anti-Semitism, and that is white Christian anti-Semitism. Steinlight himself pointed to this phenomenon at a recent panel discussion hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies:
"Every high profile Jewish institution, whether it's a national organization or a major synagogue, is surrounded by concrete barriers to prevent car bombs exploding too close to the buildings. If you go through the lobbies into those buildings you have to pass metal detectors and double-doors of bulletproof glass. You are then frisked by security guards, mostly retired New York City police or Israeli agents, and then are scanned again with metal detectors.
"What is truly comic about this-were it not an instance in the theatre of the absurd, and were it not so appalling an indication of the kind of mass denial that is still governing major American Jewish organizations, including the one I used to work for that's currently meeting across the street-is that the staffs of these organizations pass the car bomb barriers, go through the double bulletproof glass lobbies, get frisked, then go upstairs into their offices and spend their days talking about the threats posed by evangelical Christians...."
What delicious sarcasm! It's about time that someone other than the evangelicals themselves mentioned this absurdity. But it doesn't go far enough.
First, when it comes to the distinction between the Jews and Goyei Ha'Aretz (the nations of the earth), ALL non-Jews are Goyim. This includes Arabs, moslems, Blacks, Hispanics, pygmies, Australian aborigines, etc. It is most strange and inappropriate that only certain non-Jews are considered "goyim" while so many others are apparently "honorary Jews."
Second, it is absolutely amazing that the term "chr*stian" has been narrowed to the point where it applies only to rural Anglo-American folk Protestants (and, on occasion, to the Western European and North American sections of the Catholic Church). The fact that so many Jews who "hate evangelical chr*stianity" are absolutely in love with American Blacks (whose non-classification as "fundamentalists," "evangelicals," and apparently even as "chr*stians" is apparently a matter of melanin). Of course, this ludicrous belief in a sophisticated liberal Black folk culture is not limited to Jewish liberals. His Bloatedness, Ted Kennedy, once famously declaimed that if the "chr*stian right" had its way evolution could not be taught in schools and Blacks could not sit at lunch counters (Nat Turner and Darwin--what a match!), and even "palaeoconservative" superhero H. L. Mencken (may his name be blotted out!), the famous defamer of Southern fundamentalists at Dayton, was a big fan of Southern fundamentalists with black skins. Evidently there is something profoundly disturbing about white people acting like "savages" by believing in the supernatural that turns the stomachs of liberal lovers of "people of color."
In a similar vain(sp?), how many liberal Jewishs horrified by Gibson's film would be seized by orgiastic ecstasy at the prospect of "quaint" Mexican peasants literally crucifying themselves in a frenzy of illiterate folk-Catholicism? The "anti-chr*stianity" of these Jews simply cannot be what it claims to be, else snake-handling Black Baptists and self-crucifying Mexican peasants (both of whom probably all believe that all Jews must either convert or be eternally damned) would not be looked on as common victims of the hideous redneck.
As a redneck Noachide who came to Torah not out of a rejection of my own heritage or an attraction to "cosmopolitanism" or "urbanity" but simply because it is the authentic Biblical revelation, I have my own idiosyncratic and otherwise unheard of reason for this selective "anti-chr*stianism" of American Jewish liberals.
The fact is that rural American folk Protestants are hated by liberal Jews because they more than any other people remind them of who their ancestors really were. Rural, heathen-killing farmers named Caleb and Jedidiah cannot help but make modern liberal Jews, and even some Jews who are not so liberal, uncomfortable.
Rightwing anti-Jewish chr*stians (the real ones, I mean) are not the only people who take comfort from the claim that Judaism is not the original Hebrew religion of the Bible and that Judaism began two thousand years ago as a new religion (based not on Sinai but on the rejection of the claims of the Nazarene, and maybe even the TaNa"KH itself) by a new people made up exclusively of sophisticated scholars (never mind that the Talmud probably has more to say about agriculture than any other religious work in history). Now liberal secular Jews, and even some overly sophisticated urban and professional Orthodox Jews, can safely write off all those unpleasant, intolerant, and "irrational" commandments such as wars of extermination against evil nations and the performance of animal sacrifices.
It is because the "rednecks" love them that so many Jews hate the "rednecks." The idea of some yokel looking at them with starry eyed admiration for a descendant of the Biblical Joshua sends them into paroxysms. "That wasn't us! We only appear like that on the surface! If understood correctly Joshua was actually a pasty-skinned harmless little scholar who would never even have eaten meat!" Or sometimes these uncomfortable things about Judaism, REAL Judaism, are dismissed by being simply attributed to chr*stianity altogether (like the six day creation, Theocracy, and the Ten Commandments). Is it any wonder that liberal Jews, and some not so liberal Jews, go to extreme lengths to distance themselves from anything so associated with the "naive" Charlton Heston-inspired view of Jewishness that Obadiah and his wife Jemimah have?
Jews have been too long away from the Land of Israel in more ways than one. It wasn't enough merely to move there and set up homes and offices that could have existed just as well and in more safety in Manhattan. Jews must return to the "unsophisticated" proto-redneck qualities of their decidedly non-cosmopolitan ancestors. There must be not only Jewish doctors and lawyers in Israel but Jewish farmers and shepherds--not the secular socialists of the early "pioneering" days but people dedicated to G-d and His Eternal Torah. Perhaps the restored Messianic Israel will be a pre-industrial, agrarian society; who knows? There are already groups and individuals who advocate the restoration of the Sanhedrion and the Temple. There is even an organization trying to restore the ancient Biblical clothing and dress of the ancient Jews. Why are so many even Orthodox Jews uncomfortable with these things? Is it because it punctures a centuries old false image of aloof scholarly sophistication??? Huh? Is it????
Finally, maybe Jews will even have to abandon the non-Jewish names that are so identified as "Jewish" which they have worn only since about the time of Napoleon and return to both Hebrew names and the authentic form of Jewish names (peloni ben 'almoni).
The goal of true Torah Zionism is not "progress" but reaction, the turning back of the clock eventually to the reentering of the Garden of Eden. To stop at merely moving there and fail to continue the return to the ancient authentic Jewish life is not Zionism at all.
Many Jews (even some Orthodox) are hostile to rural Bible-banging Theocratic heathen-killing "yahoos" because they are running away from their own past. And if "quintessential Jews" are named Irving and Shirley and are bankers or attorneys or business magnates in New York City (and by extension project this view of Yiddishkeit onto their ancient Biblical ancestors and the contemporary Yishuv) then who can blame so many non-Jews for assuming the same stereotypes?
In other words, maybe Irving and Shirley's problem with Obadiah and Jemimah and their farm is that they themselves are not named Obadiah and Jemimah and raising sacrificial animals and crops in the Holy Land.
I know my view will be dismissed by many as naive in the extreme and I will be told that the "swords and sandals" view of the ancient Jews so many Obadiahs and Jemimahs have is based on an unfamiliarity with the Oral Torah (though the Oral Torah is itself "retro" in the extreme). I will answer that this may be true, but Obadiah's and Jemimah's naive "chr*stian-viewed" Jews would have expelled the goyim, reinstituted the Sanhedrion, and rebuilt the Temple by now. Perhaps all the Irvings and Shirleys (the liberals and the not-so-liberals) hold the greatest antipathy for Obadiah and Jemimah because no other people so reminds them of their miserable failure to do their duty.
PS: As an afterthought, has anyone noticed that the current "religious fanatic" character (complete with a twisted sort of cross) in World Wrestling Entertainment is named MORDEKHAI?????
Zionist--Indeed, a very intriguing piece of writing. One of the few I'm downloading to a permanent file. Recent months have brought about a certain change in my own beliefs about what can and cannot be accomplished in the matter of saving Israel--and I've come to the conclusion that it cannot be saved without the leadership of Jews themselves. And I don't mean the handful of conservatives that come to FR.
In their interest in keeping Israel alive and breathing, conservatives (mostly Christian conservatives, here) cannot save Jews over the resistance and maddening resentment of the majority of Jewry--which is liberal. It's like trying to pull someone out of a burning building who insists upon clinging to the furniture and lecturing you on how much he dislikes Baptists.
Thoughtomator---In trying to deal with this resentment, it will be very easy for the Christian to get resentful himself. I, for one, am very sore over the insults that came the way of well-meaning Christians this past spring over the Passion flap. I have ceased to read Krauthammer, and will never take him seriously again. If you are tired of being evangelized (I suppose someone is inviting you to church, I don't happen to do this)--I am tired to death about hearing about how Great Uncle Issy was blackballed at some Connecticut country club in the fifties, and how that will forever prevent happiness in America. Understand that this complaint is generally made in front of the non-country club set and is rude on its face. And don't mention the "H" word for at least the first hour of conversation. Better yet, get through a whole evening without it. You have your demands, maybe others have their own.
Hostile--I pinged you because I was going to mention your assertion that liberal Jewry does not fear to support Kerry because, even though they know that Bush is very much pro-Israel, they also take for granted that Kerry won't throw the Jews to the Islamic wolves in Israel. Your POV stuck with me.
Hostile--Does liberal Jewry regard the pro-Israel, non-Jewish (who will have to be mostly Christian) American as a sort of ever-dependable shabbas goy? I do not believe taking support for granted is any kind of safe--not anymore. Not with how things are in Europe. Things are changing, and changing quickly. Rhetoric that worked once, is not working now.
And Kerry won't throw the Jews to the wolves. He's too dim and silly to do much of anything--not to mention lazy. He'll just let Israel fall apart slowly. There is nothing in his attitude, words, or history to indicate that he'd trouble himself over Israel's troubles.
Being Pro-Palestinian is so very fashionable among the Hollywood and Hamptons set that Kerry lazes in...reminds me of Norman Mailer and his pet murderer. What makes anyone thing that Kerry would play to the concerns of Christian conservatives? And he's not exactly courting Leiberman for veep.