Proving that, contrary to all stereotypes (and some statistics), there are stupid Jews

Please, please, please tell me the Rabbi was writing with tongue fixed firmly in cheek:

I’ve got a Tim Tebow problem.

I want to root for the guy, but I’m afraid of what will happen if the hulky Denver Bronco quarterback continues to pull off what is fast becoming the Greatest Gridiron Story Ever Told.

[snip]

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants.  While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.

That has to be a satire, doesn’t it?  It’s all a big joke, right?  If not, I’m deeply embarrassed that an MOT (member of the tribe) would be such a prejudiced idiot.  He worries me.  I don’t read the Bible often, but I do seem to recall that God does not take it well when his MOTs turn stupid.

I’m tired, and struggling to get beyond calling this guy, as I did, a prejudiced idiot.  Fortunately, others are not tired.  Duane Lester sums up the Rabbi’s foolishness thusly:

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman somehow believes the moral equivalency nonsense regarding Christians and Muslims. You see, if the Muslims will riot over a cartoon of Mohammed, then surely those football fueled fundies will go into a frenzy over one of their own beating all the odds and winning the Lombardi Trophy.

Rabbi Hammerman is a fool. If, God forbid, the Denver Broncos win the Super Bowl, there might be riots in Denver, but it will be Budweiser Coors fueling the action, not Christian fundamentalism.

Ace takes on the Rabbi with equal fervor:

Certainly there is a history of pogroms in Europe, and, in America, discrimination. Such fears are not entirely unfounded.

But the idea of a new age of pogrom based upon the Tim Tebow throwing a football seems to be a reactionary one, conceived in hatred, executed in bitterness.

It just seems to be dressing up a tribalistic hatred in some socially-acceptable clothing. Oh it’s not that I hate Christians and their false god or anything. It’s just that I fear they are monsters who will go insane in religious ecstasy if a football hero wins a big game.

Look, I really do believe in tolerance and acceptance and… well, amity, especially among Jews and Christians, who seem to be getting along pretty well.

But tolerance is a two-way street. Those who desire tolerance of the practice of their own religion are hypocrites if they do not permit others to practice their own.

And dreaming up fantastical Protocols of the Elders of Bethlehem murder scenarios doesn’t sound very tolerant to me. It seems to suggest it is inherently evil to proclaim the Christian faith.

Having read Ace, I’ll add one thing:  the Rabbi is not a Rabbi as Hillel or Rambam, or any of the great Jewish thinkers would have understood.  This Rabbi’s temple is the Synagogue known as Beth Liberal, a house of worship dedicated to secularism.

(Just a little reminder that I think very highly of Tim Tebow, not just as a football player, but as a human being.  I hope this doesn’t mean I have to renounce my Jewishness.)