Leftist Jews need to start appreciating Christians
Up until the Enlightenment, Christians, on the whole, did not treat Jews well. This left Jews suspicious and fearful of Christians. They need to get over it.
For almost two millennia, Jews in Christian domains did not fare well. This didn’t come from the Bible. It came from the European psyche. Understandably, this left Jews of European descent with a bad taste in their mouths about Christians.
When Karl Marx, a self-loathing Jewish convert, came up with his ignorant, delusional laws about societal organization and money, he took that Christian dislike for Jews and baked it into his new ideas. Socialism took traditional anti-Jewishness, which was dying away thanks to the Enlightenment, and put it on steroids with Marxist antisemitism. This fusion of the two hatreds led directly to the death camps of WWII.
The problem with American Jews is that, despite Marx’s malevolence toward them, they latched on to the part of his theory about a non-religious state. They believed that a socialist nation — that is, one free from Christianity — would be a safe haven. The theory was that, if you got rid of Christian monarchs, religious academies, and other such institutions, you’d get rid of the hatred for Jews that had seen them slaughtered and driven from pillar to post across Europe.
After WWII, American Jews might have figured out their error — that is, that in supporting socialism, they were backing the wrong horse — were it not for their strong commitment to college degrees. With each generation of college degrees piling up in Jewish homes and offices, they became more committed to socialism and more hostile to Christianity. There’s a tremendous irony about this: Just as Jew hatred wasn’t built into Christianity but was a product of European culture, anti-Christian sentiment isn’t built into Judaism but is, instead, a product of academia.
With the October 7 massacre and the American left’s now open antisemitism, America’s Jews are finally coming to the realization that they should have had after WWII. The socialism in which they put their faith as the promise of a safe future is, in fact, their greatest enemy in the West. Right now, this is the average leftist, American Jew:
Currently, American Jews are unwavering in their support for the Democrat party, and will point to Chuck Schumer’s sudden panic about left-wing antisemitism as proof that the Democrat party itself isn’t antisemitic. They are stuck in the denial stage of grief. It’s to be hoped that they get out of it, at least long enough to vote a Republican into the White House in the interest of their own long-term survival.
But the other thing American Jews need to do is to get over their reflexive fear and distrust of Christians. Yes, there are Christians who still subscribe to antisemitic notions, especially leftist Christians. But there are no greater friends to Israel and to Jews than conservative Christians. I give you Exhibit A:
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My mother, to the end of her days, remained deeply suspicious of Christians, right down to their supporting Israel. Their support, she maintained, was only because they believed the ingathering of Jews was a prerequisite for the Second Coming. It was too selfish to be trusted.
I was always baffled by this argument. Who cares what the conservative, Evangelical Christians’ motives are? They are behaving in an exceptionally moral and loving way.
Moreover, their hopes are tied to an ultimate conclusion beyond human control, so it’s not as if they’re gathering the Jews in Israel as a prelude to some intended mass human sacrifice. They’re doing a moral thing and hoping for an eternal benefit to themselves. I think that’s laudatory, not scary.
So American Jews: Get over your distrust and even fear of those Evangelical and other conservative Christians who support Israel. They aren’t your enemy. They are your greatest friends.
Image: Screen grab of the “Mission” page of Christians United for Israel. You can donate here, if you so desire. I just did.
