FEBRUARY2007

JEWISH ANTI-CHRISTIANITY INTENSIFIES
AS CHRISTIANS IGNORE IT 

By Harmony Grant
 

            Attacks by Jewish activists on Christianity have never been bolder in the US than this past year. Some Jews themselves state this fact, such as Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who warns of his liberal brethren’s onslaught against Christianity. Zef Chafets, Jewish journalist and author of A Match Made in Heaven, recently offered a warning, too. He wrote a Christian-friendly rebuttal to Abe Foxman’s scathing critique of the church in Time online.

            “In early November 2005, the Prime Minister of Iran stated his intention to wipe Israel off the map,” writes Chafets. “At almost exactly the same time, leaders of the American Jewish community declared war on the Christian Right.”

            Chafets cites the hostility of Foxman, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, and Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee, who all shrilly attack Christians’ political efforts as a supremacist threat. “Never before in U.S. history had Jewish leaders shown such bold hostility toward Evangelical Christians, the largest Protestant community in America and, by most measures, the most philo-Semitic and pro-Israel,” writes Chafets.

            Thanks to evangelical support of Bush and the Iraq war, evangelicals have been at a political disadvantage. Jews like Foxman seized this disadvantage as an opportunity to attack—even though it was Zionist influence on our foreign policy that got Bush in this mess in the first place!

            A long string of books and national articles this past year decry Christian “supremacists.” One of the latest is The Baptizing of America by Rabbi James Rudin, who claims the most urgent threat facing America is the religious right. As noted in a previous article, (See, Open Season on Every Religion but One) Rudin’s book just adds to the list of at least 21 major books or national articles published in 2006 attacking the Christian right.

            Jewish leaders like Rudin can hardly even muster up thanks for the massive evangelical support of Israel. Last October, a rabbis’ listserv hosted debate about whether rabbis should attend John Hagee’s “Night to Honor Israel” or similar events across the nation. Rabbis say they wouldn’t deign to show up; evangelical motives are not to be trusted. Hagee promises not to witness to Jews (shame on him!) but other Christians might. Besides, the rabbis complain, Christian eschatology winds up with Jews having to convert to Christ, a prospect that horrifies religious Jews more than any other. 

            Is there any substance to the charge of Christian supremacism? Hardly. In his rebuttal of Foxman, Chafets correctly notes that the charge is both alarmist and incorrect. Christians don’t want a theocracy. “Evangelicals have an agenda,” says Chafets, “but it is largely the restoration of moral and ethical standards that have typified the U.S. since its inception but have been neglected in the last half century. You may disagree with this agenda, but it is not theocratic.”

Wake up, we’re having a fight!

            Even though Foxman and other Jews attack so boldly, most evangelicals won’t acknowledge Jewish attacks on them and their political freedom. The church at large continues to lavish Israel and American Zionists with material and spiritual support. The rabbis who criticize Hagee and refuse to show up for his “Night to Honor Israel” show more clarity than most Christian pastors; they are openly aware of the antagonism between true Christianity and their own humanist, globalist, Christ-rejecting agenda. They recognize the gulf that stretches in America between Christian morality and motives and the Jewish liberal social agenda.

            If you don’t think this gulf exists, browse www.jewsonfirst.org. This website openly displays Jewish hatred of Christianity and Christian expression. With the tagline, “Defending the First Amendment against the Christian Right,” the JewsOnFirst site showcases Jewish efforts to silence Christian expression in America.

            The site boasts, for instance, of Jewish activist Rabbi Cheryl Rosenstein’s attempts to force Kern High School District in Bakersfield to change the names of school breaks from “Christmas” and “Easter” back to “winter” and “spring.” The site approvingly reviews Rabbi Rudin’s previously mentioned book, The Baptizing of America, with its hand-wringing assessment of the looming “Christocracy” that will shred our freedoms if the “religious right” isn’t squelched. Rudin says Christians are taking over in the bedroom (censuring homosexuality), the schoolroom (questioning Darwin), the courtroom (“Christocratic takeover of the judiciary”) and “the newsroom, with its thousands of Christian broadcasts…”

            I wish America really was that Christian-dominated. It’s not, of course. The intelligent design movement, for instance, is finally getting a tiny toehold of reason in an avalanche of Darwinian mythology held up as unquestionable truth for the past century. Christocrats are running the classroom? Yeah, right. Even a small sticker on the front of a Darwinian textbook—a sticker that encouraged high schoolers to look critically at the theory—was stripped from the books. This is just one example. I’m not even going to get into that ridiculous claim about Christians dominating the “newsroom!”

            But JewsOnFirst demonstrates a ferocious allergy to any kind of Christian expression. This is the same hatred shown by the Anti-Defamation League whose “anti-hate” laws should really just be called “anti-Christ” laws. Such laws have been used in Canada to warn pastors against quoting from Scripture in public and to stifle Christian, conservative expression wherever they have been enacted. (See, Philadelphia pursues "Hate Crimes" Charges Against Christians)

This Dog Ain’t Sleeping

            For most evangelicals, Jewish rejection of Jesus Christ is the sleeping dog they want to leave alone. But this dog isn’t asleep at all. Modern Talmudic Judaism possesses a virulent hatred of Jesus Christ and Christianity that is both awake and rabid in Israel and in the United States.

            This antagonism to Christianity is ancient. Israel Yuval, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote the fascinating book, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (University of California Press, 2006). Only available in English since last year, this controversial book explodes the myth that modern Judaism is the mother religion of Christianity. Instead, Yuval reveals, post-Calvary Judaism has been largely defined by its interaction with Christianity.

            Not the Judaism of the Old Testament, modern Mishnaic Judaism developed alongside and in resistance to Christianity. Organized Jewry opposed Christianity from the moment the high priests laid eyes on Christ. The rabbis responsible for His death were not slow to persecute His followers. The Talmud is woven with anti-Christ and anti-Christian themes and stories.

            Christians, now under vicious attacks by liberal Jews, need to recognize that they only encourage their attackers by refusing to acknowledge the basic antagonism of the Talmud. Instead of blessing Jews with truth and godly rebuke, Christians have aligned themselves, through unconditional support and material blessing, with the Christ-denying state of Israel. Their tragically mistaken Zionism has led them away from Christian fundamentals like justice, mercy, and evangelism (See, To Pray or Not to Pray ... in Jesus' Name).

            Such Christians sincerely want to “bless” Israel as the Bible commands. But they falsely believe that blessing another person means giving them material goods and support for their actions. In reality, Christ blessed others by speaking the whole truth in love, calling for repentance and offering the riches of spiritual salvation through faith. As His servants, true Christian “fundamentalists” preach Christ and eternal life for all who repent from sin and trust wholly in Him as Lord. We recognize the spiritual battle between those who love Christ and those who hate Him and His will for this world.

            As the brilliant Israeli Christian Israel Shamir has pointed out in his book Pardes http://www.amazon.com/Pardes-Israel-Shamir/dp/1419606018, among others, the conflict between Christianity and Jews is not racial. The conflict is spiritual. Shamir believes you can choose to be a Jew, and you should choose not to be—as he has done. As he embraced Christ, Shamir became anti-Judaist, rejecting the globalist anti-Christ ambitions of organized Jewry. Shamir’s writing sings with tender love of Christ, Palestinians, and the Jewish brethren he prays will see the Light. The Light is Christ.