I’ve been getting a ton of amazing fanmail—I mean that both sincerely and sarcastically—regarding my op-ed in Friday’s Christian Science Monitor. If you missed it, the piece was titled “An Ugly Bias is Back: blaming Jews for financial woes.”
Some were filled with kudos and other with exactly the sort of anti-Semitism my op-ed addressed.
Most disappointing was a series of e-mails from an apparently Christian reader in israel:
Brad,
In a strong retort, I condemn your anti-Christian ugly bias.
Do you have anything to say for your Jewish hatred against Christianity? Like, an apology?
That’s funny. I remember Martin Leaf starting a blog to expose my Jew hatred. Now the pendulum has swung again. My response was brief:
David,
I am a Christian.
Grace and peace.
But David didn’t find this a suitable answer: “If you are Christian, why do you attack Christianity? Why do you support Jesus-deniers? Why do you have a Jewish last name?”
I wasn’t going to dignify such insincere and hostile questions with a response. And David didn’t like that. Today he e-mailed me:
You never replied. And you have not been honest with me. You are a Christian you say. Fine, but you failed to tell me that you are three quarters ethnically Jewish, as you go about helping a religion you say you do not believe in.
I digged and found this article here.
Now you have forced me to revise my article, replacing all references to you as Jewish, with the new reference as Herodian. Except, I had to create a new category for you. I called you a Jewish-Herodian. That is, Jewish-ethnically, Christian in faith, and confused about your believes enough and/or bribed to support Jews both ethnically as well as religiously. (You do argue in favor of Judaism as well. Not just in favor of Jews ethnically)
Yes, David discovered my secret. I thought no one would every find out. But I guess I only have myself to blame for sharing it with The Forward and in my blog bio and with the readers of Christianity Today and at Jewlicious over the weekend (more on that later). Fortunately, I don’t think the charge that I’ve been bribed to say nice things about Jews will stick.
I only hope that non-Christians realize that viewpoints like David’s are aberrations. While anti-Semitism is real and has been frighteningly apparent lately, most Christians do not think of Jews as snakes in the grass waiting to deceive them or steal from them. In fact, some Christians have a bit of a love affair with Jews.
