A Christian friend asked me to put out a call to religious scholars. He writes:
Did you see this statement from Abe Foxman of the ADL responding to the Catholic bishops gathering that called for an end to the occupation?
We write to protest the shocking and outrageous anti-Jewish comments made by Greek Melkite Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros in connection with the final communique of the Bishops Synod on the Middle East. By stating that God’s Covenantal promise of land to the Jewish people, “was nullified by Christ” and that “there is no longer a chosen people,” Archbishop Bustros is effectively stating that Judaism should no longer exist. This represents the worst kind of anti-Judaism, bordering on anti-Semitism.
It seems to me that Christians ought to be able to say that they’re the equals of Jews and everybody else without being called anti-Jewish, and without being told that they’re saying Judaism should no longer exist. One can believe that Judaism should exist and can even believe that Jews regard themselves as God’s chosen people while believing that all people are equal. Bustros:
The advent of Jesus, he said, meant that Jews “are no longer the preferred people, the chosen people. All men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.” Bustros added that “sacred Scripture should not be used to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestine.”
If a non-Jew says that he or she is the equal of a Jew, surely that is not borderline anti-Semitism. And if one professes that he or she is chosen by God, surely that is not borderline anti-Semitism.
Foxman is simply putting words in his mouth when he indicates that Bustros said, “Judaism should no longer exist.” In his angry letter to a cardinal protesting the statement, Foxman calls into question the equality of everyone else. Other religions can’t believe that everybody is chosen? “Archbishop Bustros contradicts decades of official Vatican and papal teachings which affirm God’s ongoing Covenant with the Jewish people at Sinai, and calls on Christians to appreciate the Jewish people’s religious self-understanding, including its spiritual attachment to the land of Israel.”
I wish some thoughtful religious scholars would weigh in on this to help unpack the remarks on both sides (while reminding all of the history of the enormous tension so clearly seen here). I simply fail to understand why a multiplicity of groups can’t believe they’re chosen by God and why there can’t be a real level of equality for everybody who chooses to worship (and for those who don’t as well). Well, perhaps I do understand it, but don’t grasp why people can’t simultaneously recognize that one’s own viewpoint may not be the same as a neighbor’s and that that’s okay.
Yes, perhaps I’m hopelessly naive, but Foxman seems to be pushing a dangerous line that implicitly exalts his religious group over others. Sure, I wish Bustros had said that Jews have every right to regard themselves as chosen, but that he believed something else. But what he did say doesn’t seem nearly as hard-hitting (and supremacist) as the response from Foxman which I read as saying Jews are God’s chosen people and that’s he’s not prepared to acknowledge that others may think that they too are chosen and equal in God’s eyes. If Foxman does believe that, I sure wish he had said it. I regard this Bustros-Foxman argument as important and suspect that most are terrified to address it and aware that they lack the words and historical grounding to weigh in with a full range of the facts and understanding of the relevant beliefs.
