The Relocation of Anti-Semitism
blogs.the-american-interest.com
The May 2012 issue of Commentary (the generally conservative monthly with a strong Jewish focus) carries an article by Michael Medved, entitled “What the Evangelicals Give to Jews”. Medved is a highly productive writer and television personality, very articulate and almost always interesting. Based in California, he is an observant Orthodox Jew, who has moved politically from left to right (he started out in politics as a speechwriter for Joseph Duffey, who ran in 1970 as a Democratic candidate for the Senate from Connecticut). His article discusses the “controversial relationship” between Jews and Evangelical Protestants, who contain more vocal supporters of Israel than any other non-Jewish group. In this Evangelicals differ considerably from mainline Protestants, whose organizations (though not necessarily their members) have been more inclined to be critical of Israel. The Jewish reaction to the Evangelical love offensive has been ambivalent. Some Jews have reacted like someone receiving an unexpected inheritance from a least favorable aunt. They are suspicious of the Evangelicals’ philo-Semitism because they attribute it to the openly admitted desire of converting Jews to Christianity (Jewish historical memory has good reasons for disliking this desire), also because in the Evangelical imagination the return of the Jews to the Holy Land is often seen as a prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus (which presumably will result in the demise of Judaism as a separate faith). Medved calls this group “Rejectionists”. They remind me of an old (Jewish) joke: A philo-Semite is an anti-Semite who likes Jews. The other group, whom Medved calls “Collaborationists” (a rather unfortunate choice of a term), welcomes and courts Evangelical support. Its attitude can be summed up in the adage that one should not look a gift horse in the mouth. Not surprisingly, the Israeli government has enthusiastically embraced the Christian Zionists (as they proudly call themselves). In addition to the obvious political reason for the enthusiasm, there is also an economic reason: Evangelicals are prone to be pilgrims to the Holy Land, and Israeli tourist promotion has made a special effort to encourage such pilgrimages.