This is not about Governor Romney, and it is not about the faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS).  Via Meadia takes no view at this early stage about the merits or demerits of the various candidates, and our inveterate Anglicanism gets in the way of embracing the Mormon faith.  But bigotry is something that needs to be fought in all its forms; unreasonable fears and prejudices based on religion will always be with us, but such fears belong in the gutter among the wackos, the haters and the tin-foil hat brigades on both the right and the left.  When they rise from the sewers and the swamps into mainstream publications and can be casually uttered in polite company by distinguished professors, something is going very wrong, and people who believe in the American way need to speak up.

Few religions have received as much public attention as Mormonism has—in the form of religious polemics, award-winning Broadway musicals, and general political punditry—yet remained so poorly understood. Alas, the NYT editorial page has decided to exacerbate this ignorance rather than combat it. Thus, a piece entitled “Will This Election be the Mormon Breakthrough?” by esteemed Yale professor Harold Bloom insinuates that Romney’s rise may be more than Americans have bargained for, and closes with a dark premonition: “[W]e are condemned to remain a plutocracy and oligarchy. I can be forgiven for dreading a further strengthening of theocracy in that powerful brew.”

As far as I can make out, Professor Bloom is more elitist misanthrope than bigot; his hatred and loathing for Mormonism is part of a broader and deeper disgust with almost everything that the common people think or do in the contemporary United States.  The essay drips with condescension and disdain; he hates and fears the Mormons not because they are different from most of their fellow citizens but because they are like them.  American Religion, as the professor calls the faiths that ordinary, non-elite Americans profess, is a toxic brew of death denial and mammon worship, and partly as a result American society is a grotesque oligarchical plutocracy.  As the professor concludes:

Mormonism’s best inheritance from Joseph Smith was his passion for education, hardly evident in the anti-intellectual and semi-literate Southern Baptist Convention. I wonder though which is more dangerous, a knowledge-hungry religious zealotry or a proudly stupid one? Either way we are condemned to remain a plutocracy and oligarchy. I can be forgiven for dreading a further strengthening of theocracy in that powerful brew.

Believing as I do that God is infinitely willing and able to forgive, I cannot disagree with this last assertion, but Mark Paredes, a Mormon and the LDS-Jewish relations blogger at the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles was not in a forgiving mood after reading Bloom’s piece. In the course of a hard-hitting critique, Paredes demonstrates the difference between rational political argument and bigotry in action:

If he [Bloom] doesn’t like Romney’s policies or positions, he’s free to enunciate his reasons for opposing him without slamming the candidate’s faith. Raising the specter of a “strengthening of theocracy” in this “plutocracy” and “oligarchy” is both irresponsible and unworthy of a writer and thinker of his caliber. After all, many Mormons have served as governors, senators, and cabinet members. Surely the good professor can cite an example of a Mormon in high office who has attempted to use it as a platform to promote his religion.

Let us not, as that great Anglican heroine Queen Elizabeth I put it, make windows in men’s souls to see what is within.  I say nothing about the motives of Professor Bloom or the New York Times.  But so far as I know, neither has ever expressed any concern over the stout Mormon faith of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  If creeping Mormonism is a threat to our secular way of life, shouldn’t we be critical of those in both parties who are members of this allegedly terrifying church?

There are scores of other Mormon congressmen and elected officials from both parties who escape the censure of Professor Bloom and the Times.  The only one who seems to worry them is the one who might end up getting the Republican nomination for president.  In some circles, this would look like a cheap shot: stirring up religious bigotry to slime a candidate you feared.  It would look like the kind of thing that any Yale professor would be ashamed to do, and the kind of piece that a great newspaper would refuse to run.

There is no doubt that Professor Bloom’s feline essay includes passages that promote bigotry.  As he writes:

There are other secrets also, not tellable by the Mormon Church to those it calls “Gentiles,” oddly including Jews. That aspects of the religion of a devout president of the United States should be concealed from all but 2 percent of us may be a legitimate question that merits pondering.

“May be a legitimate question?”  Professor: it is or it isn’t.  If it is, you should have the guts to say so and stop hiding behind the qualifier.  If it isn’t, you have no business mentioning it at all.  Sly demagoguery demeans Professor Bloom and the New York Times.  The innuendo continues a little farther down the page:

The 19th-century Mormon theologian Orson Pratt, who was close both to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, stated a principle the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has never repudiated: “Any people attempting to govern themselves by laws of their own making, and by officers of their own appointment, are in direct rebellion against the kingdom of God.”

Secret doctrines, disloyal to democracy, theocratic plots?  Interestingly, Bloom does not bother to introduce a single piece of evidence to show that Governor Romney is more dangerous than Senator Reid.  He slimes the one and ignores the other for reasons that no doubt seem good and just to him and his conscience is untroubled and serene.  He offers no evidence whatever to link Governor Romney to any theocratic conspiracy, or even to show that Romney agrees with Orson Pratt.  (It would, by the way, be easy to find statements from Protestant, Catholic and Jewish theologians saying much the same thing as Mr. Pratt.)  This is very, very low and it is more than surprising that the Times has permitted itself to sink this far.

Mitt Romney may or may not have what it takes to get the Republican nomination and be elected President of the United States.  His religious faith is, in my judgment, wrong on key points.  But the suggestion that he will turn the United States into anything like a theocracy is ludicrous.  Last I looked, you still needed majorities in both Houses of Congress to pass laws, and super majorities in Congress and of the states to amend the Constitution.  There are six million or so Mormons in the United States, and they don’t all agree about politics.  Calm down, Professor Bloom; Mitt Romney isn’t going to make you wear special underwear or undergo secret temple ceremonies.

If anything, the fact that a Mormon is a leading candidate for the nomination of a party which captures most of the evangelical vote shows just how far from theocracy this country remains.  America is full of strongly religious people, but the religions they profess are so different in so many key respects that theocracy simply isn’t a realistic option here.  Evangelicals don’t want a liberal theocracy; Catholics don’t want a Protestant theocracy; African Americans don’t want a white theocracy and so it goes.

Mr. Bloom need not worry; the republic will survive Mitt Romney should an inscrutable Providence decide to place him in the White House.  He will neither legalize polygamy nor ban coffee.  And he will keep his secret doctrines and his temple ceremonies where they belong: in the sphere of private faith.  Whether he or the party he hopes to lead deserve the White House is another matter, but like most Americans I have never voted for or against a political candidate for sectarian reasons and in 2012 I propose to continue doing exactly that.

This is a book that any serious Christian student of the New Testament will want to consult; anytime a familiar text is read from an unfamiliar angle, new insights are likely to come.  More to the point, rabbinical Judaism and Christianity are the two great religious legacies of first century Palestine.  Learning to see Jesus through Jewish eyes is a way for Christians to encounter another side of the man we recognize as son of God and savior.  A copy has been ordered from Amazon and will hopefully arrive at the stately Mead manor in time for Advent and Christmas reading. By then I hope to have finished another reading project: currently I am working through The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis by Nahum Sarna.

For more than a thousand years after the missionary journeys of Paul, Christians and Jews were bitterly estranged.  Theological hostility, social and political discrimination, violence and anti-Semitism characterized the relationship.  Efforts by Christian prelates and princes to build a total world order that fused church and state led inevitably to the marginalization or worse of the Jews.

This began to change with the Reformation — although Martin Luther’s anti-Semitism helped embed some deeply destructive memes in German culture.  First and foremost, the translation of the whole Bible into the vernacular languages coupled with the invention of printing put the Jewish scriptures into the hands of ordinary Christians for the first time.  In Medieval Christian preaching and liturgy, the New Testament got more attention than the Old, the gospels got more than the epistles of Paul, and the Passion narratives got more attention than the rest of the gospel story.

The consequence was that most Christians spent most of their time with the parts of their Bible in which Jesus was engaged in theological controversy with Jewish religious leaders, or being handed over to the Romans for execution by a faction of the Jewish religious leadership of the day.  Every Sunday the liturgy of the Mass retold the story of the crucifixion; every year reached its religious climax with the intense focus on the sufferings of Christ in the last week of his life — arguing with Jews, and ultimately dying at the instigation of his (Jewish) enemies.

But as Christians encountered more of the Bible, this picture began to change.  Calvinists and others who believed in the literal and eternal truth of the Word of God came to believe that the promises God made to Abraham were still valid today: that the Jews still had a place in God’s plan, that the gift of the Holy Land to the physical descendants of Abraham remained valid, that Jews would return to that land before the end of history, and that God commanded the rest of mankind to bless and help Israel, rather than to curse and attack it.

More, acquaintance with the Old Testament exposed Christians to Jewish heroes of faith: to kings and prophets and warriors who walked with the God of Abraham and from whose teachings and experiences Christians had much to learn.  Where Calvinist, Anabaptist and Quaker influence was strong, Christian parents began to give their children names from the Jewish scriptures: Hannah, Caleb, Esther, Josiah, Ruth, Joshua, Ezekiel, Rebecca, Ezra, Nathaniel, Naomi, Seth and Sarah entered the English speaking world.

From the earliest settlements in New England, Americans began to think of their country as God’s “new Israel.”  Like the first Israel, America had been blessed with a rich and abundant land and a global mission.  It was America’s job to assist in the regeneration of the world: Biblical religion and political and economic freedom, seen as deeply connected, would reshape human life.

In the 19th and 20th century, some Christian scholars began to encounter rabbinical Judaism and slowly came to understand that while modern Judaism had some features in common with the idea of Jesus’ opponents and debating partners in the gospels, rabbinical Judaism today is a much more highly developed, flexible and theologically sophisticated faith than what we can see in the gospels.  Many of the criticisms that Jesus made of the Pharisees he encountered were shared by those who shaped the modern rabbinical faith: modern Judaism is much closer to Jesus’ ideas about a reformed and purified Judaism than Christians who know Judaism chiefly through the New Testament narratives understand.

This realization that in some respects the two religions have grown together rather than apart is driving efforts like the Jewish Annotated New Testament.  On the one hand, modern Judaism offers important insights for Christians seeking to develop a richer understanding of their own faith; on the other, it is increasingly possible for Jews to approach figures like Jesus and Paul as Jews operating within an evolving and developing tradition.

One does not know where this process of mutual rediscovery and reflection will take Christians and Jews during the next century.  One hopes at a minimum that the rich traditions of Jewish intellectual life in the middle ages can emerge into the general intellectual culture of the west; an encounter with the thought of people like Maimonides can enrich Christian and secular as well as Jewish writers and scholars.

But wherever this journey takes us, both Christians and Jews can welcome our growing capacity to enrich, respect and even admire one another.  Christians have much to learn from Jewish history, Biblical study and theological reflection.  Efforts like the Jewish Annotated New Testament are part of a process that will enrich both communities and the entire world.

Writes Jenkins:

Such an assumption itself is based on the crude fundamentalist formulation that everything in a given religion must somehow be authorized in scripture — or, conversely, that the mere existence of a scriptural text means that its doctrines must shape later history. When Christians or Jews point to violent parts of the Qur’an (or the Hadith) and suggest that those elements taint the whole religion, they open themselves to the obvious question: what about their own faiths? If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery. Of course, they are no such thing; nor is Islam.

Read the whole thing for a frank and serious take on one of the vital questions of our time.

(And thanks to Mustafa Akyol for the tip!)

Why does our sheikh – and we behind him – shower all these curses on the Jews, but then add the expression ‘peace be upon him’ when speaking of their prophet Moussa [Moses]? Are the Jews not people of the Book and among those whom the Koran orders us to treat kindly so long as they do not fight us? And how could Allah have created them so impure and damned if they are the disciples of a prophet?

He also points out that many inventors and scientists who have changed the world with their work were Jewish. Muslims have benefited from these scientific and medical advancements, he argues, yet Jews are attacked with violent rhetoric in mosques across the world.

The absurd thing is that after cursing the Jews, the preacher never forgets to urge the attendees to donate [money in order to establish] a dialysis unit in the village… which will treat thousands of patients… But it doesn’t occur to him, or to any of the attendees who say amen after the curses and curse the Jews themselves – many of whom suffer kidney failure – that the man who invented the treatment for this condition is the Jewish doctor and scientist Willem Klofkim [sic, apparently Kolff]!

O you, those who curse and besmirch the Jews, do you not know that the ‘impure and damned’ Jew Baruch Blumberg discovered the viral liver disease Hepatitis [B] and the treatment for it – a disease that afflicts 12% of Egyptians?

It’s always worth pointing out advancements in religious tolerance, especially of Muslims toward Jews in the Middle East. Via Meadia hopes that Al-Ghani’s common sense, intellectual honesty and tolerance prove contagious.

It seems to be a general law of modern life that those who hate and fear Jews are condemned to backwardness and irrelevance: not, as anti-Semitic loons pathetically imagine, because Jewish cabals manipulate capitalism to frustrate their enemies, but because without intellectual clarity and a sincerely tolerant worldview, it is very difficult to prosper in a world like ours.

In Libya, unfortunately, Al-Ghani’s message hasn’t been received.  According to Hadeel Al-Shalchi (@hadeelalsh), on hearing news that a Libyan of Jewish origin was trying to rebuild a synagogue, a mob of ignorant haters assembled outside the hotel in which he is staying, baying for blood in the traditionally chilling and evil (but also pathetic and contemptible) way that they have.

When I think of the potential of the Arab Spring, it is to courageous voices like Sharif ‘Abd Al-Ghani and Hadeel Al-Shalchi.  Political problems with Israel are one thing; unreasoning hate of a people is something else.

The Koran, which Many Muslims know by heart, affirms that had God wished all men to have one religion, one creed, one color, and one language, he would have [created them] so. But he did not want this. Instead, he wanted to create them with differing religions, creeds, colors and languages, and [willed] this variety to continue [forever,] until the universe ends…

A Muslim cannot imagine all of mankind sharing a single creed or turning to a single religion – even if this religion is Islam. As long as this remains the case, the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims [must be] one of mutual recognition.

It is great to see religious tolerance espoused by such an influential leader in the Muslim world, and also good to see that MEMRI, a site sometimes accused of selectively translating material that reflects poorly on the Muslim world, took the time and trouble to share the sheikh’s views with its readers. Via Meadia thanks Sheikh Al-Tayeb for his thoughtful exposition of an important religious concept, and continues to believe that people of all faiths must reflect the freedom of conscience that is one of God’s most precious gifts.

Well worth a few moments of your time — even as markets are crashing around us and the world’s hot spots continue to erupt.  Thought is good.

Traditional Jewish life has many rules that govern every aspect of human activity. Dress, eating, business practices, sexual relations, parenting practices, and much more are dealt with by the voluminous legal literature that has grown in the last couple of thousand years. One of the most interesting things about this legal history, though, is how diversity and flexibility have fared in various eras and in various legal works. In the earliest post-biblical phase, there was a tremendous amount of room for diversity and local custom.  So, for example, there is an account in the Talmud of several rabbis who were discussing how long each thought it was necessary to wait after eating a meat meal before eating dairy products. The answers vary from “the amount of time that normally elapses between one meal and the next” to “twenty four hours.” But there’s one rabbi in the discussion who is visiting from a distant community. Finally the locals ask him how long they wait in his community, and he says, “Wait? We dn’t wait. We simply cleanse the mouth and inspect the hands (to make sure there are no pieces of meat stuck in the teeth or on the hands).” The remarkable thing about the response is that it is not followed by a shocked outcry of protest and outrage from his colleagues! They accept his answer and move on. Apparently, the notion of widely different practices pertaining in different communities was well accepted. This tolerance for diversity began to erode in the Middle Ages. A major player in that erosion was Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), a great philosopher, rabbi, and legal scholar. He wrote a comprehensive law code and in its Introduction he explained that in “the old days” everyone was able to study the biblical and talmudic sources and work through his own legal decisions. But “in our day,” says Maimonides, between the general deterioration in scholarly ability, the growing Diaspora, and the pressures under which Jews live, no one has the ability any more to make his own decisions. So he, Moses Maimonides, will make The Decisions for everyone. No longer will Jews need to study the Talmud and other sources. All they will need is the Torah and his Law Code. And in fact, Maimonides’ code gives simple instructions, without going into any of the underlying complex principles or earlier sources. Within a few centuries (especially once the printing press was invented) Maimonides’ new approach gained traction throughout the Jewish world, and there was a commensurate decrease in tolerance for local diversity of religious practice. But initially, Maimonides’ work was greeted in the Jewish world with great anger. The point of the law, his opponents argued, is to study the sources, to immerse oneself in text, and to develop a reasonable practice. It is NOT to receive a “Reader’s Digest” version that skips all the intricate nuances and the thinking, and simply tells us what to do.

Sadly, the reliance on the pre-digested wisdom of experts is a feature of many cultures, not just of Jewish legal culture. Whether in forming our opinions of politics, art, food, philosophy, or almost anything else, we increasingly turn to an expert to find out what we should do or believe.  The effect of the invention of the printing press on Jewish law is paralleled by the invention of Google and Wikipedia on our culture. And though I suspect that these technologies are here to stay, I often think we would be better off if, every once in a while, we would take the time and put in the effort to figure something out, from scratch, on our own.

]]> http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/08/18/wise-words-from-a-rabbi/feed/ 5 http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/07/24/gangs-of-iraqi-jews-forcing-christians-to-convert/ http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/07/24/gangs-of-iraqi-jews-forcing-christians-to-convert/#comments Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:23:40 +0000 Walter Russell Mead http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/?p=10018 Continue reading →]]> At least that’s the story according to Al-Mustaqbal, a daily newspaper published in Iraq and translated by MEMRI.

According to this report, gangs of Jews operating under the wing of secretive forces perched high within Iraq’s government are forcing Christians to convert to Judaism at gunpoint. Those who refuse are forced to emigrate to Turkey where, the shock story reveals, the head of the relevant UN office is — a Jew.

In the past these mysteriously powerful and well connected Jews are said to have used American military vehicles for their nefarious activities; now they use cars with diplomatic plates.

Stories like this abound in the Middle Eastern press; even cynics and realists swallow anti-Semitic legends with childish gullibility.

Anti-Semitism remains a leading indicator for social and economic failure.  Anti-Semites blame the hidden power of the Jews for their marginalization and weakness.  The reality is that anti-Semitism is often if not always bound up with a basic inability to understand or respond to the forces of diversity and innovation that shape the modern world.

In reality, of course, the Christians of Iraq don’t have much time worrying about armed gangs of Jewish proselytizers.  Their troubles come from the followers of a different religion, and they are grave.

Researchers found that the percentage expressing “favorable views” about Jews was uniformly low: Egypt, 2 percent; Jordan, 2 percent; Pakistan, 2 percent; Lebanon, 3 percent; Palestine, 4 percent; Turkey, 4 percent.

Repeat until your conscience goes to sleep: there is no anti-Semitism, and if there is, it is all the fault of the Jews.

These poll results are bad news for two reasons.  First, this is one more sign that peace between Israel and its neighbors is not at hand.  Israelis read these polls, and the argument that Israel should take large risks for peace while surrounded by neighbors who hate Jews is less convincing than many would wish.

Second, widespread popular anti-Semitism is almost always a leading indicator of economic failure and autocratic rule.  Anti-Semites think this is because “the Jews” use their hidden superpowers to block and frustrate the economic development of peoples brave enough to tell the truth about Jewish machinations and unwilling to prostrate themselves before the Elders of Zion.

More sober observers think it’s because anti-Semitism is usually associated with attitudes of bigotry, dogmatism and hostility to new ideas and different perspectives.  Tolerance, openness to different ideas and a willingness to work with people from different religions and backgrounds are essential qualities for long term successful and democratic development in a capitalist world, and people who hate and fear Jews usually lack them.

There is one good piece of news in the poll.  48 percent of Israeli Muslims had favorable opinions of Jews; despite all the difficulties of the Arab minority in Israel, the Arabs who know the Jews best like them best and hate them least.

- 53 percent of Muslims in the various countries polled think the lack of prosperity in their nation is due to Western policies, coming in ahead of government corruption, and lack of democracy and education. When in doubt, blame the West.  It doesn’t help, but it might make you feel better.

- Concerned about Islamic extremism? You aren’t alone. Surprisingly high numbers of Muslims polled in predominately Muslim countries are also afraid. Lebanon: 73 percent, Pakistan: 63 percent. Those are very high numbers. Does this indicate a trend away from Islamic terrorism, with increasing numbers of Muslims realizing terrorism is not the answer to their problems? Note that the highest percentage of Muslims fearing Islamic extremism can be found in Israel (77 percent) and Occupied Palestine (78 percent).  To know Hamas may not be to love it.

- Amazingly, 96 percent of Lebanese Muslims view Christians favorably. That is a huge leap forward for Lebanon, which only twenty years ago endured a very bloody civil war where Muslims and Christians fought each other and themselves in a continuously shifting landscape of alliances and hatreds. Note also that only 6 percent of Muslim Turks view Christians favorably. That tells you that many Turks still equate Christianity with Armenians, and that hatred for Armenians is still prevalent: bad news for Turkey’s quickly dwindling population of Christians.

- 9 percent of Israeli Jews view Muslims favorably. While low, that’s a higher figure than Muslim attitudes toward Jews in all the Muslim countries surveyed.

- Fully 75 percent of Muslims in Egypt, 73 percent in Turkey, and 68 percent in Palestine don’t believe Arabs are responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  There is, it appears, a river of denial in Egypt after all.

This is not about censorship; it reflects our concern that on the web as elsewhere bad discourse drives out good.   The internet is a wide and welcoming place and I am sure there are large and capacious Troll Reserves on the web where these points of view are celebrated and welcomed.  Via Meadia does not want to close the Troll Reserves down, but neither do we wish to become one.

All future comments on the joys and justifications of anti-Semitism or the alleged genetic inferiority of any race will go immediately to the trash.

Since the recent influx of racists and anti-Semitism apologists significantly lowered the tone of the comments site, we will be making extra efforts to enforce our longtime policies about courtesy in comments.  Comments deemed lacking in basic courtesy or decency will be amended or trashed at our discretion.