Closing the Christian Gap

Reviewed by Adam Pruzan

Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America
by Elliott Abrams
New York: Free Press, 1997. 237 pages.

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Jewish charity and its accompanying liberal activism have similarly proven insufficient as a source of Jewish identity. The past thirty years of American history have called into question the idea that pursuing “social justice” by means of liberal politics actually “repairs the world.” An honest “before” and “after” comparison of the typical inner-city black neighborhood would show that the welfare-state programs of the Great Society achieved quite the opposite of “repair.” Equally important, to the extent that one’s vision of tikun olam derives from political liberalism, rather than the sources of Judaism, why should a liberal American of Jewish ancestry implement this vision through specifically Jewish channels? With many Jewish leaders insisting on the universalism of their vision, does not a gift to the Federation, rather than the United Way, smack of the very parochialism a good liberal should avoid? The Jew senses the incoherence of his own position; small wonder that should he ever have to choose between his liberal universalism “which he has been taught to work for all his life” and a seemingly dogmatic allegiance to the Jewish people, he will in all likelihood choose the former.

What emerges is a shockingly self-defeating form of “Jewish identity”: Having gutted the content of traditional Jewish life, Jews today have come to see as holy precisely those things which work against the perpetuation of their people. In sanctifying the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, Jewish leaders have for decades preached a brand of Judaism that brings to mind unspeakable suffering rather than a truly positive vision; in sanctifying liberal politics, they have embraced a belief system which rejects particularism and therefore any notion of Jewish “continuity.” Rather than offering a Judaism that looks to Jewish tradition itself as the source of identity, Jewish leaders have spent years crafting the mechanism of “defense,” basing Jewish identity on the never-ending search for anti-Semitic or anti-liberal demons. And the greatest demon of all, one which appeared so readily anti-Semitic and anti-liberal, they found in conservative Christianity.

It is Abrams’ critique of Jewish attitudes toward American Christendom which makes up the most important part of the book. The mandate Abrams sets for himself in Faith or Fear is to consider Jewish survival not in the abstract, but specifically in the context of a Christian America. No better enemy for the Jewish community organizations has appeared on the scene than conservative Christians in general, and Evangelicals in particular. Here, in fact, American Jews have truly put their secularism and liberalism ahead of any parochial interests. As Abrams shows, the Jewish establishment has essentially institutionalized fear and contempt of Christian conservatives—despite the fact that none have been as consistently influential in protecting the interests of the Jewish state, and therefore bear some of the markings of a natural ally for American Jews. Indeed, most Jewish liberals prefer to conduct “interfaith dialogue” with the old-line Protestant denominations, even though that their own move to the political left has made them more or less implacable enemies of the Jewish state.

Nonetheless, Abrams’ two chapters on Christians (the first devoted to traditional Protestants and Catholics, the second to Evangelicals), while powerfully argued and hard-hitting, miss a crucial aspect of the nexus between politics, religious traditionalism and support of Israel—an aspect that applies equally to Jews and Christians. In these chapters, Abrams focuses on the development of Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. He assesses this evolution primarily by analysis of stated Church doctrine, and how that doctrine has filtered down into Sunday-school textbooks. What he neglects to mention is that the recent warming of main-line Protestant teachings on Judaism is but one consequence of the overall liberalization of those denominations. Over the past generation, the traditional Protestant churches have changed beyond all recognition, and in precisely the same ways that Reform Judaism broke with Orthodoxy. These churches have watered down and universalized their theologies, removed anything ׂhard׃ from their ethical codes (such as, for example, disapproval of homosexuality) and wholeheartedly embraced liberal politics as central to their religious mission. Of course such a group will be more likely to say the right ׂhappy-talk׃ words about another religion—any religion, for that matter, but especially Judaism, whose history of persecution and powerlessness in Christian lands allows for an unequalled outpouring of liberal guilt.

What a universalized Christian denomination won’t do is respect Jewish particularism by supporting Israel. In fact, since Israel is the one place on earth where Jews can use state power to the disadvantage of a local minority group, the liberal Christian denominations, even as they apologize for the Holocaust, frequently cast Israel as the villain in the Middle East conflict. Evangelicals, on the other hand, who infuriate Jewish liberals by calling America a “Christian nation,” are naturally comfortable with Israel as the embodiment of the Jewish nation. Indeed, this is the only explanation that can truly make sense of the otherwise contradictory aspects of Evangelical behavior toward Jews. For example, Abrams is sharply critical of the fact that Evangelicals have maintained a hard line both on teaching the Jewish role in Jesus’ crucifixion, and on proselytizing to Jews. At the same time, he notes that these two factors have been shown not to have caused any negative effect on Evagelical attitudes toward Jews. Christians, it turns out, are not as simple-minded as ADL training courses on “tolerance” presuppose. For a devout Christian, it is possible simultaneously to believe that Jews are tainted by their failure to accept Jesus, and that they remain irrefutable witnesses to God and His covenants. The survival of Israel is, in the eyes of many Christians, seen as an earthly sign of a divine relationship which Christians themselves may feel compelled to support.

But conservative Christians have done something far more important for the American Jewish community than support one of its favorite causes. They have shown religious Jews an alternative to liberal politics: Namely, conservative politics. Political conservatism is not just an alternative in the sense that it opposes the specific initiatives and programs of liberalism. It is a very different style of politics altogether, and it therefore plays a very different role than does liberalism in the lives of its practitioners. For both Jews and Christians, liberalism offers a replacement for religion, while conservatism mounts a defense of religion. Liberalism seeks to transform traditional society with abstract, universalist principles. Conservatism seeks to restore a more traditional society by rebuilding the numerous particularist and local attachments which the Enlightenment stripped away; accordingly its institutions tend to be similarly local (e.g., the schoolboard) and particularist (the church). Thus, if America’s Jewish leadership today genuinely seeks, as they did a century ago, a set of public beliefs which offers the successful integration into American society while not only allowing but encouraging the respect for Jewish tradition sorely lacking in liberalism, they might just find it in political conservatism.

The bottom line on Faith or Fear is that Elliott Abrams has written a powerful prolegomena to any future discussion of the American Jewish community. By essentially closing the argument about the efficacy of “Jewishness,” Abrams has prepared the ground for a reconsideration of Judaism. Unfortunately, the book is only a prolegomena. As an alternative to liberal secularism, Abrams offers the Orthodox community as evidence that it is possible, at least in today’s America, for Jews to survive and even thrive without giving up an iota of their heritage. Abrams’ answer for American Jewry is the return to a more traditional Judaism, a return whose key elements include increased synagogue participation and more Jewish education, especially in day schools.

The suggestions are welcome, if not exactly original. But the tragic flaw of Faith or Fear is its refusal to address a fundamental problem: Even if American Jews are largely ignorant of Tora, they are not so ignorant of Orthodoxy. Many non-observant Jews have made at least a token effort to examine this radically different “alternative lifestyle”—and they don’t like what they see. Fairly or not, Orthodoxy has earned a reputation for closed-mindedness, snobbism, archaism and preoccupation with minutiae at the expense of values. (In Israel, the religious establishment has gone much further, convincing much of the country that Orthodoxy is also synonymous with the subversion of democracy, sleazy politics and the use of government to foist halacha on an unwilling populace.) While Abrams does emphasize that his call to “observance” need not be equated with a call to Orthodoxy, he makes little effort to say what he exactly is proposing in its stead. The result is that Faith or Fear offers precious little to those Jewish parents who have come to see their children’s acceptance of halacha as a fate almost as ignominious as intermarriage, and less still to an Orthodoxy that has not yet come to terms with its proposed role as the leader in American Jewry’s struggle against assimilation.

For Abrams’ noble vision of a new Jewish traditionalism to come to bear, more will be required than the reevaluation of observance on the part of the heterodox public. The Orthodox, too, will have to take great pains to step into the shoes of leadership which Abrams has cobbled for them: They will have to recast their image as a communal force that is not only successful, but eminently respectable.

Adam Pruzan is Managing Director of Research at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

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