relda,
>> I find any idea of ... a covert conversion (e.g. Jews for Jesus) ... pretty unacceptable. <<
Could you explain why? There are Christians who do not recognize the authority of Rome, but they are very much “acceptable“ to Catholics as fellow Christians, and vice versa. This is regarded as a welcome change from the past animosities by all involved. And Jews and Muslims who believe in God are acceptable by many (I hope most) Christians as fellow believers. Why should Jews who recognize Jesus as the Messiah, but not the religion (and Church) that he - or Paul - founded be not acceptable to Christians more than those - Jews or not - who do not?

From what I know about “Jews for Jesus” they have not been “covertly converted” by anybody: it is their own way of interpreting Judaism.

Dear Relda,

I am at a loss. I agree with almost your entire post!

However, there are a couple of points. I regard the idea of the planet as an organism a bit of ecological mysticism.

Your statement, “Moreover, Jews had always been prohibited from owning or working the land in Christian Europe, the only way truly to make a living.” is not quite accurate.

My father’s family had a small farm in czarist Russia. Unfortunately the farm was in the path of the conflict, and the war raged back and forth across their land. Soldiers were expected to live partially off the land. That meant taking food where they could get it. My father’s mother was with small children and teenage girls. All the men were away fighting or out of the country.

The soldiers molested neither my grandmother nor the girls. However, they took chickens and other food. My grandmother managed to keep the children alive but died of the effects of starvation in 1915. She did not die because she was a Jew. She died because she was a civilian caught in a war zone.

My maternal grandmother’s family also farmed around Eishyshok in Lithuania. When the czar freed the serfs in the nineteenth century farms were taken from the Jewish farmers and given to the freed serfs.

Before the Polish state was broken up and absorbed into Prussia, Russia and Austria Polish Jews lived well. They were the middle class.

If we Jews had faced unremitting hostility we would have disappeared from the pages of history as did the pagan Gauls who were forced to embrace Christianity or suffer beheading.

“An Unacknowledged Harmony” by Alan Edelstein tells of friendliness to Jews from the surrounding Christian community from the medieval period to the present. Freeing Jews from the disabilities of discriminatory legislation was the work of Christians. Poles who hid Jews from the Nazis could pay with their lives for the act. I have a cousin who survived WW2 because a Polish farmer let my cousin become a farm hand on his farm.

You wrote: Eastern European Jews were inspired by Karl Marx, and the idea of the equality of all humanity.

Marx in 1843 wrote "On The Jewish Question.” It concludes:

"Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of
Judaism --
huckstering and its preconditions -- the Jew will have become impossible,
because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective
basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the
conflict between man's individual-sensuous existence and his
species-existence has been abolished.

The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from
Judaism."

His ancestry would have prevented Karl Marx from being a Nazi, but he shared their feeling toward Jews. Many eastern European Jews were aware of Marx’s Jew hatred.

Bigotry is not limited to religion. Antisemitism, antichinese and antiblack bigotry has been exhibited by the atheist left.

From Wistrich's "Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred"

"According to the Blanquist revolutionary, Gustave Tridon, in his "Du
Molochisme Juif" (1884) the 'Semites' represented the negative pole of
humanity; they were 'the evil genius of the world', the 'shadow in the
picture of civilization' the enemies of 'Aryan' humanity. Since intolerance
was 'the Semitic legacy to our world 'it was the aim of the Indo-Aryan race'
and a revolutionary duty 'to fight the Semitic spirit' in modern society.
Similar ideas were disseminated in the leading journal of the French Left,
"La Revue Socialiste", during the 1880s by respected socialists like Albert
Regnard and Benoit Malon. Hence it is not surprising that the high priest of
modern French antisemitism, Edouard Drumont should write in 1889: 'Of all
the revolutionaries, only the Blanquists have had the courage to refer to
the Aryan race and to proclaim that race's superiority.' He paid a similar
compliment to socialist forerunners like Charles Fourier, Alphonse Toussenal
and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose visceral antisemitism drew on diverse and often contradictory strands of anti-capitalism, Enlightenment
anticlericalism and Catholic anti-modernism."

Secular ideologues and religious believers can compete in the bigotry sweepstakes.

Hello Peter

Your piece sheds rich light on the core issue of modern day life and politics.

It shows the path ahead for true evangelising to re-gather the people of God.

It offers a two edge sword (of course there are those who cannot countenance such an anaology).

One edge to cut through the choking vines of intellectual vanity that have overgrown our splendid tree of revealed truth and knowledge bequeathed to us initially through a man and the people he gathered and their Judges, Kings and Prophets, then the god-man Jesus Christ, and since, his Spirit and Church with its people, institutions and traditions.

The other edge to cut through the hocus pocus of the multitude of "believing churches" and sects that have attached themselves to a book that is used as a life energiser for the "comfortable class" that seek truth in black and white script subject to their own control. Too often the book is used as a weapon to deny attachment to things of this world.

Indeed what is missing in both camps is the full colour of imagination Peter writes of, flowing from "our" Story enmeshed with the constant emergence of science based factual knowledge and gap filling accepted theory. Without the colour, it is simply barren and potentially life denying.

We need our ancient and alive story to enliven our appreciation of all the good that has flowed through "life", not without diversion and obstacle, to water the bed of our flourishing Western human history.

The Aboriginal mythical story of the Rainbow Serpent flows through their self understanding and destiny in their ancient ways. We rightly respect and indeed take sustenance in them sharing that story.

My story, bequeathed by the Church through her people over time and her institutions of caring, and which contains a personal response, gives me a personal and liberating sense of continuity - from Abraham in Chaldea to me sitting in my office in Liverpool Sydney writing this comment.

The Story frees me to engage in the future as part of my story.

See www.localforlife.com.au

Cheers

Michael

boxgum,
What a nice way to put it, except that I would not use the metaphor of a two edged sword but rather that of a bridge. A bridge bridging what is positive in both camps: the evolving picture of the physical universe that science offers, without the atheist non-sequiturs, and the spiritual dimension of human existence without the emotional excesses and irrationalitties.

George,
The slogan, “Jews for Jesus” has a connotation that easily strips the integrity from Judaism. If you are happy with the phrase “atheistic-Christian” then you understand subtle distinction –something Sell’s alludes to and in so doing, raises the ire of the more fundamentalist contributors.

I think it’s quite understandable that after nearly two millennia of unimaginable suffering at the hands of both the Catholic and Protestant faithful, it becomes clear to the Jewish people that the consistent pattern of unrelenting hatred emanating from the Christian is no coincidence. Although, as you correctly say, we shouldn’t bring back past prejudices, this is not the issue. It’s a matter of revealing the latent "supersessionism" declaring the Jewish faith inferior. The ‘good news’ belongs to the Jewish people and it is not perfidious to reject Christian theology.

History shows many examples of merciless hate, but ask the cognizant Jew which religion has shown such a continued and relentless pattern. Historically, Christian anti-Semitism has come, almost without exception, from the most devout segment of Christian society, the fundamentalist evangelical community – it is a history of relentless cruelty that makes the campaign “Jews for Jesus” not only a poor advertising or marketing campaign, but it also can be highly insulting. Perhaps they are well meaning, but so also was Martin Luther with his vitriolic, “The Jews and their Lies”. I do not speak out of turn, as I was born and raised the son of a Lutheran pastor.

Why has the fundamentalist Christian, almost without exception, been a source of bitter anti-Semitism and savage oppression for the past 19 centuries? Does one say they were actually not ‘real Christians’ with a ‘nicer’ brand of Christianity only evolving after Vatican II? Modern evangelicals repeatedly declare that true believing Christians love the Jewish people, the annals of history, however, clearly do not support this slogan. So, is it just a matter of the Church’s ‘bad manners’ – or, perhaps something a little deeper? Perhaps a contrived and therefore implausible message is being foisted on a people with sufficient ‘good faith’ who do not need ‘saving’