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October 28, 2015

I was on vacation last week. It was a lovely vacation – very relaxing, which is exactly what I needed. A few days into it, my husband and I were sitting at the airport, awaiting our flight from one vacation spot to another, when I overheard a woman speaking from a chair across from us.

“I don’t understand,” she was saying, “how people can all read the same Bible and come up with different interpretations.” She went on to say there are people who believe there was a person named Jesus but don’t believe in him as the savior even though the prophecies about the Messiah were made a “couple hundred years” before he was born, and, “he fulfilled every one of them.” She went on to say that people who don’t believe in him “just gave up.”

I never heard her use the words, “Jew” or “Jewish,” but I felt like she was talking about us. The first thing that popped into my mind was that Jesus did not, in fact, fulfill the prophecies. The second thing was, “Ani mah amin,” the statement, turned to song, which says, “I believe with complete faith” in the coming of Moshiach. We have not given up.

I weighed in my mind whether I should say something to her. She was, after all, spreading misinformation about a topic I know something about.

These are the things I think about in these situations: If I speak up, what is the chance the person to whom I am responding will listen to me and reconsider their position? Even if I suspect there is no chance of that, what is the chance the person to whom this person is speaking will consider my point of view? Even if there is no chance of that, who else may be listening who may consider what I have to say?

I didn’t have any illusion that I would sway the speaker, but I didn’t know anything about her audience, so it seemed like I might have a chance to clarify things for them. I did have some concern that I may not be able to make a convincing argument about Jesus not fulfilling the prophecies, since I wouldn’t be able to quote chapter and verse off the top of my head (although in hindsight, I could have whipped out my phone and looked it up on the Internet of All Things).

I certainly could quote Maimonides’ statement of faith and refute the giving up part, I thought, with some authority. Based on the audience and what I thought was my ability to make a decent case for an opposing viewpoint, I felt like I should say something.

But I was on vacation, trying to relax, not get into an argument. And there was my husband sitting next to me, who I was fairly certain would prefer that I not get into a theological discussion with a stranger at the airport. So I bit my tongue, and she, I am happy to say, quickly moved on to talk about an entirely different subject.

When I told my husband about it afterward, he was glad I kept my mouth shut. If he hadn’t been with me, though, I hope I would have said something, and I hope it would have made a difference. I must say, though, that sometimes discretion does not feel like the better part of valor.

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