Jim Sibley, the Southern Baptists' coordinator for Jewish ministries, slammed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for declaring that campaigns targeting Jews for conversion "are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church." "It is never good for the Jews whenever the Roman Catholic Church fails with respect to the gospel," Sibley was quoted as saying in an August 19 report from the Baptist Press. "When they used coercion, the Jewish people suffered horribly and were hardened against the good news of their messiah. Now, in singling out the Jewish people for evangelistic exemption, they are withholding the hope of Israel. There can be no more extreme form of antisemitism."
War is Peace. Lies are Truth. Arbeit Mach Frei. Refusing to target Jews for conversion is . . . . anti-Semitism.
I am almost speechless. But not quite.
Reverend Sibley, thank you for explaining it all to me. Clearly 3500 years of Jewish civilization, surviving and adapting and growing through centuries of persecution, spawning scientists, statesmen, novelists, poets, musicians, philosophers, and social activists all out of proportion to its numbers, inspiring such intense loyalty that secular Jews have forged a cultural identity to maintain the identification with their people, that generations of conversos reverted back to Judaism as soon as they could escape from the reach of the Inquisition -- clearly, this ancient civilization (which incidentally spawned your religion's founder and provided most of your scripture) has no right to exist independent of your, um, affections.
To you, our history, customs, accomplishments, familial ties are not the result of real people developing a complex theology and ritual, but are some sort of abstraction ("the Jewish people"), a simple vehicle for your interpretations of divine intention. This cozy fantasy seems to be threatened when Catholic clergy break rank by actually treating us like people. Real people who have our own definition of ourselves. I can understand, given your paternal concern for "the Jewish people" you so fondly imagine leading to the light, how upsetting it must be to you when some of your fellow Christians come to the conclusion that treating a proud ancient civilization like confused unruly children who don't know what's best for them, well . . . just doesn't make sense.
I think, Reverend Sibley, the difference between you and the Catholic clergy is that they sat for years in interfaith conference after interfaith conference, with real Jews who are rabbis, teachers, leaders of the Jewish community, and they slowly realized that they were dealing with people who know who they are and what they value, and that they weren't going to make any significant inroads into our community without Inquisitions or Crusades or pogroms to back them up. Being modern people who enjoy the benefits of Western secular democracy, they realized such methods would create many more problems than they would solve. I dare say they may even have repudiated such methods on moral grounds, thereby making a significant break with their forebears. (Okay, I'm being snide here. I'm sorry. Somewhat sorry.)
Also, Reverend Sibley, many of these people know us. After all, the patterns of migration in the US have been such that Catholic (with the exception of Central and South American Catholics) and Jewish immigrants tended to settle in the same locales. In our parents' generation, they preached lies about us and their kids poured out of church on Sunday afternoon and beat up our kids for "killing Christ," but at least we all lived on the same block.
Out in Southern Baptistland (where I was born and lived for many years), Jews are more of an abstraction. There aren't as many of us, we tend to be more assimilated and have less cultural infrastructure. It's harder to "do Jewish." For example, the magnificent wedding I attended last week, whose celebrations are still going on with multiple rounds of Shabbat dinners and ufrufs and tisches and sheva brachot, with every denomination and several shuls participating (the couple, although observant, are pretty eclectic and have a wide circle of friends), simply could not have happened in the same way in parts of the country where Baptists predominate. You need generations of people living in one place in an environment rich with customs, ritual, cultural associations, shared history and family ties to create such a critical mass. (Which is why I recently moved to New York, but that's another story.)
So, Reverend Sibley, if you decide to visit the den of iniquity that is Manhattan, I'll take you to the Carlebach Shul and BJ, maybe introduce you to the only Romaniote congregation in the Western hemisphere or the Yemenite community of the Upper West Side. Maybe we'll do a little learning (you might recognize the source of Yehoshua's sayings), and if you are feeling particularly adventurous, we'll tour Queensistan.
If you come home from that trip still bound and determined to convert us all to Christianity, I'll eat my tallis.
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