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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
There's still plenty of anxiety among parts of the Jewish community over what Foxman and Yoffie are doing. Rabbi Yechiel Z. Eckstein, founder and chairman of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews -- and a former staffer at the ADL -- predicts that Foxman's call for a united Jewish front is doomed to fail, since other Jewish leaders won't want to take on the religious right. Eckstein's entire career is devoted to being a liaison between evangelicals and Jews -- his organization raises money from Christians for Jews in Israel and in the diaspora, and he's an advisor to Ariel Sharon and a goodwill ambassador to the state of Israel. Conservative Christian support is crucial for Jews in both Israel and America, he says, and it's folly to attack them.
Eckstein says that it's the liberal Protestant churches that have turned on Israel by calling for divestment. Meanwhile, secular Europe treats Israel like a pariah. "And who are the only ones who are coming out and standing with Israel? The evangelical Christians," Eckstein says. Eckstein acknowledges Foxman's fear about the erosion of church-state separation, but thinks any danger posed by the American religious right pales beside the threats to Israel. "Jews need to always be on guard for their survival as Jews, and for their rights as Jews here in America, but I don't believe that those rights are threatened to the point that Jewish leaders like Abe Foxman should try to galvanize the Jewish community and start a battle with a constituency that includes the president of the United States, and that includes such a large part of the Republican Party and such a large part of America," he says. "I don't think it's reached that point that Jews should be alienating their greatest friends in the real battle of Jewish survival."
When I spoke to Eckstein, he had just gotten off the phone with someone from Focus on the Family. Christian leaders, he said, feel hurt and victimized by Foxman's speech. And he feared what might result: "Rhetoric can create an anti-Jewish feeling among good Bible-believing Christians," he says. "Certainly in the evangelical world they're very focused on their leadership. It's very different than the Jewish community -- most of the Jewish community doesn't care what Abe Foxman says. If their pastor says that black is white and white is black, well, the pastor said so. If leaders themselves start to say it's the Jews who are preventing us from having a moral society in America that's what we saw in history."
Goldberg dismisses Eckstein's argument as contradictory. "You can't on the one hand make a claim that we don't need to defend ourselves because we are essentially in a good place, and at the same time argue that we shouldn't defend ourselves because we are so vulnerable that we could lose everything in a minute," he says.
In fact, neither is true. Jews in America aren't endangered, but the power of the religious right has clearly reached a point where a great many feel exceedingly nervous. The fear is not of pogroms or outright discrimination; rather, it's of the disappearance of the secular civic culture that allowed Jews to feel like full citizens of America rather than a tolerated minority.
Throughout the last decade, the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups had reached a kind of accommodation with the religious right that was based in part on Christian leaders toning down their more theocratic rhetoric. In 1995, Ralph Reed, then the executive director of the Christian Coalition, addressed the ADL and apologetically acknowledged that much of his movement's language alarmed Jews. "This is true not only of the blatant wrongs of a few -- those who claimed that 'God does not hear the prayers of Jews,' those who said that this is a 'Christian nation,' suggesting that others may not be welcome, and those who say that the only prayers uttered in public school should be Christian prayers. It is also true because of the thoughtless lapses of many -- the use of religious-military metaphors, a false and patronizing philo-Semitism, and the belief that being pro-Israel somehow answers for all other insensitivity to Jewish concerns."
Such sensitivity has virtually vanished from today's religious right, replaced with a triumphalist religious nationalism. Foxman was especially alarmed by the situation at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., where, according to numerous reports, a climate of outright religious bigotry prevailed. Some faculty members introduced themselves to their classes as born-again Christians and encouraged their charges to convert. Upperclassmen exerted similar pressure on undergraduates; one Jewish cadet was slurred as a Christ killer. Several cadets have filed a lawsuit.
Even more disturbing to Foxman than the abuses themselves was the religious right's response when they came to light. Few were apologetic -- instead, they declared themselves the victims. When Democratic Rep. David Obey offered an amendment to a defense appropriations bill calling for an investigation into the situation at the academy, Republican John Hostettler stood up and said, "The long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives."
When the Air Force adopted guidelines intended to remedy the situation, the religious right reacted furiously. The guidelines didn't prevent senior officers from proselytizing to those under their authority, though they did urge them to be "sensitive." They also called for public prayers to be non-sectarian. Christian conservative leaders interpreted this as an assault, and 70 congressmen joined movement representatives in signing a letter to President Bush decrying the guidelines and asking him to issue an executive order protecting "the constitutional right of military chaplains to pray according to their faith."
"There is an arrogance in their efforts to pull every institution toward Christianity," says Foxman. "It's a concerted effort to use government to achieve that which religion should achieve in the open marketplace." The more theocratic elements of the religious right -- elements Reed tried to marginalize, at least in public -- have now taken center stage. A decade ago, Foxman says, the drive to Christianize America "wasn't in the open, it wasn't as blatant, it wasn't as aggressive."
As Foxman said in his speech, "Make no mistake: We are facing an emerging Christian right leadership that intends to 'Christianize' all aspects of American life, from the halls of government to the libraries, to the movies, to recording studios, to the playing fields and local rooms of professional collegiate and amateur sport, from the military to SpongeBob SquarePants."
Given this onslaught, Jews can't simply cede their place in America in exchange for support for Israel. Speaking of those who caution him not to disturb the Jewish-evangelical alliance, Foxman says, "If we cannot disagree, what kind of a friendship is it?"
