Author Jennifer Anne Moses was Shmuel Rosner’s guest at Ha’aretz earlier this week. She is a religious Jew living in Louisiana and points out, very sensibly, that when someone says "Jesus loves you" at the grocery store, you don’t have to open a federal case. I’m down with that. The person just means well. Moses, who moved to La. from the Washington area, then goes on to defend secularism in language I also endorse:
all Americans, religious or not, ought to be raising
hell around the clock in order to get God, in any way, shape, or form,
out of the public square. In the South in particular there is a real
blurring of the lines between the idea that Christians make up the
majority of the American populace and the idea, often spoken, that
"it’s a Christian country." Thus the giant Christmas wreath that, as of
this writing, hangs over the tax-supported public LSU law school in
Baton Rouge; the Christian prayers before football games at public
schools high schools; and the loathsome and largely hypocritical
practice of pushing a strictly Christian agenda through the bullshit
subterfuge of "intelligent design." This kind of non-Christian
Christianity – the Christianity of might makes right – works people up
and gets votes. But if Jews were half as smart as we think we are, we’d
recognize that what motivates most of this anti-democratic religious
fervor isn’t hatred, but fear, and the cure for fear isn’t
high-handedness, but empathy.
I agree with these sentiments entirely. Ours is a mostly-Christian country but we have to afford equal space and rights for minorities, and keep religion out of government. Fear is a powerful and destructive force in tribal interactions. But when it comes to Israel, Moses won’t drink the potion she prescribes for America. She would seem to be an unreconstructed Zionist. She calls Israel "the Promised Land" several times and describes her joy speaking Hebrew there: "I was a Jew speaking a Jewish language in the Jewish land of Israel…"
When will Jews wake up to the fact that the rights we demand, and obtain, in this country are denied to Muslims and Arabs, and Christians, too, in Israel and occupied Palestine? "It’s a Christian country" here is "It’s a Jewish country" there, in a land that is also diverse. Just try visiting the birthplace of Jesus some time, thru any number of checkpoints. And "anti-democratic"? Take a look at the wall, or the fact that Arabs are not allowed to serve in the Israeli armed forces. How would Moses and I feel if blacks were not permitted to serve in the U.S. army? And if that policy were rationalized by the idea that we were at war with Ghana and Nigeria?
My headline calls this "hypocrisy." A better phrase is selfishness….
