Friday, October 26, 2007
The inimitable Jon Haber has his own response to the Reverend whose church is hosting Sabeel's meeting (also see Rabbi Ron Friedman's own letter below if you missed it):
Rev. Nancy Taylor made an interesting choice in defending Old South Church’s decision to host Sabeel’s Israel = Apartheid gathering by invoking St. Paul’s Letter to Philemon, Paul’s call for reconciliation between an escaped slave, Onesimus, and his master Philemon.
In Taylor’s reading, Paul’s decision to reconcile these feuding parties provides precedence for a modern-day church trying to find a proper path to tread "between two friends – both of whom felt aggrieved, both of whom were sure they were in the right." In this case, these two "friends" are Sabeel (who have had the church’s doors open to them) and the Jewish community angry that supposed interfaith partners would sanctify an event subtly entitled "The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel."
In choosing Paul’s Letter to Philemon as precedent for her church’s current predicament, Taylor sees the action of a church founder choosing to publically navigate a path between two feuding parties. But we should not forget that the parties in this conflict were a slaveholder and a runaway slave, with Paul negotiating agreeable and humane terms under which Onesimus would return to his rightful place as a slave in Philemon’s household. While Paul’s era was hugely different than our own, the injustice of slavery rings out to us from the times of Ancient Rome to the plantations of the American South to the slave markets of the present day Sudan. So in this particular case, finding a middle path was not a way to split the difference between two friends both in the right, but an attempt to reconcile with one of history’s most wicked institutions. In treading a path between Onesimus and Philemon, Paul’s mediation was not a virtue but an acquiescence with monstrous evil.
Is there a correct balancing act between one group, Sabeel, trying to brand Israel a racist, apartheid country worthy of the boycott and punishment they advocate in churches around the world, and a Jewish community who finds such hateful words and deeds revolting and humiliating? I suppose Rev. Taylor could open her church to the "Islamofascist Awareness Week" program currently traveling around several college campuses, although I suspect the church might be less inclined to throw open its doors to such a program as hastily as they’ve made their pews available to Sabeel. More to the point, we in the Jewish community have never asked her's or any other church to lend their name and reputation to events designed to denigrate and insult those with whom we simply hold political differences.
Paul lived in a time where slavery was not thought of in the terms it is today. Sabeel and their hosts at Old South Church cannot make the same claim about the deicide and other imagery Sabeel routinely uses in their discourse about Jews and the Middle East. Perhaps it is the presence of the Rev. Desmond Tutu which blinds Rev. Taylor to the reality of what will be taking place under her sacred roof this weekend. Or perhaps her hope for reconciliation reflects the same thinking as the British officer in Mandatory Palestine who wondered aloud "Why can’t the Jews and Arabs learn to behave like good Christians."
I am deeply disturbed by the spiraling religious bigotry that seems to be arising from all corners of the political spectrum.
I don't like seeing Islam per se associated with fascism, although it's obvious there are radical groups who happen to be Muslim, who espouse a totalitarian and violent agenda and who apparently lack tolerance and compassion. But pointing at them isn't the right way to counter Sabeel and other manifestations of antisemitism.
It's certainly shocking to see a group like Sabeel accorded respectability in the 21st century, especially given the historic victimization of Jews at the hands of the Judaism's two powerful children - especially Christianity.
Rather than proposing Sabeel be countered with the "islamofascism awareness", which is beside the point and has the potential to create even more hostility, Christians themselves need to confront the antiJewish tendency within their own house. This means both in the West and in the Orient.
And we Jews must have the self-respect and courage to request this. Too many of us fear, perhaps, that we will lose Christian support and "tolerance" if we ask Christians to please examine not only their past but their present-day attitudes toward the Jewish people.
Muslims have nothing to do with that and historically the Christian characterization and persecution of Jews has been by far the more dangerous.
In fact, I think that the Arab/Israeli conflict is driven at least in part by equivocation about the very existence of Israel in the West.
I'll go a step further. There is equivocation in the west about the very existence of the Jewish people and that's got to addressed.
If the West were truly, 100% determined that Israel should survive and prosper, about the fact that it is RIGHT and MORAL that Jews should survive, enjoy self-determination as a nation - one of the world's oldest and historically most victimized - and that the Arab world should likewise survive and prosper but also that the rights and history of the Jews should be respected, this conflict would have been over years ago.
In fact, however, this isn't the case and I can't help but feel there are lingering, pernicious elements of ambiguity (at the very least) toward the Jewish community per se and this in and of itself has helped foster conflict between Arabs and Jews. In fact there have been times in recent history when this has manifestly been deliberately created.
I think this has to be honestly addressed. Historians have clearly illustrated the links between Western antisemitism and violence in the East, during the Mandate era and since.
The fact that a respectable Boston church would host Sabeel, which is antisemitic on its face, shocks me. It means that the lessons of the past bloody century haven't been learned at all.