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ancient rift over who killed Jesus has lately smitten the peace.
In his easily overlooked Easter message, Paul
Weyrich, noted
crank and fundraiser, opined that the Jews killed Jesus; a couple
of New York basketball players said much the same thing in a later
airing of views. The ballplayers' cracks inspired a column in the
Los Angeles Times by Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history
at New York University's School of Education. His piece was entitled
"Anti-Semitism:
an All-American Attribute" — which indicates that Jew-hating
is a fulltime passion in this country.
One hates to
side even slightly with a raver, and Zimmerman seems to fit that
description. Yet it is reasonable to assume that many Gentile American
Princes (and Princesses) - GAPs — may harbor at least something
of a grudge toward Jews — for a more prosaic reason: The Jews they
most often encounter have made their way onto TV or into the newspapers.
Many are activists, and as we all know, activists tend to be loud,
hysterical, monomaniacal, and arrogant no matter what their cause.
Some are clearly crazy.
A few weeks
ago, for example, a couple of PETA activists went over to Africa
to protest meat-eating. They were reported to have gotten inside
cages in the hope of establishing widespread solidarity with chickens.
As it happens, they were protesting in a nation full of very hungry
people who would not only eat the first chicken that happened by,
but its tracks and shadow as well. To the untrained mind, these
guys represent the face of vegetarianism. Yet I know vegetarians,
both active and recovering. They have very little in common with
those guys.
Christians
get plenty of cringe time when the more antic members of their tribe
pop up on television to pray away a hurricane or to suggest that
God unleashed a hurricane in retaliation for a bad public-policy
decision. Gay activists embarrass their tribe, as do environmental
activists, and so on down the line.
The same is
true for Jews. For many GAPs, their exposure is largely limited
to activists they encounter in the media. Around Christmas time,
for instance, GAPs turn on the television and see a guy from the
Anti-Defamation League moaning about senior citizens singing Christmas
carols at the town recreation hall or a Christmas tree in a Colorado
classroom.
Similarly,
cartoonist Johnny Hart drew fire for an Easter cartoon expressing
the fact that Christianity evolved from Judaism. His critics interpreted
the cartoon differently, which is certainly their right. Yet they
also insisted that their interpretation was the only legitimate
one, and mounted an all-out campaign to kill the strip prior to
publication. This strikes reasonable people as thuggish behavior.
Similar stories
crop up on a fairly regular basis. A religious enthusiast opens
up a biblical theme park and is accused by the Jewish Defense League
of engaging in cultural genocide. Baptists announce they're going
to pray for the conversion of Jews and the charge is the same. These
stories can lead to the conclusion that most Jews believe Christianity
is a bad and dangerous presence that should be marginalized at all
costs. Because the vast majority of Americans subscribe to some
form of Christianity, the potential for widespread ill will is obviously
great.
While this
is merely a suspicion, though one based on personal experience,
I doubt many Jews sit around worrying about people singing Christmas
carols in the town rec hall, or about the prayers of Baptists, nor
do they fear that most of their Christian neighbors harbor an Inner
Nazi. The masterful Binyamin L. Jolkovsky, for example (I name him
because he posts some of my columns on his excellent website: www.JewishWorldReview.com)
unleashed a veritable hydrogen bomb against Johnny Hart's attackers.
As Bin put it, many of these activists are primarily interested
in advancing secularism. They are quite the evangelists in that
regard.
The moral of this story is found in a slight reworking of a well-known
verse: "By their flakes shall ye know them." The moral,
of course, is that it is our duty as Americans to ignore this verse,
jot and title.
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