Guest Blogger - Avi Berkowitz

Israel, Jews, Catholics and Evangelicals: A Political Perspective

Last month was a remarkable month in the history of Jewish-Christian relations. Pope Benedict XVI visited the Park East Synagogue, a modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, during his trip to New York City. A few days later, Pastor John Hagee, founder and President of Christians United for Israel, convened a conference of American Evangelicals in Jerusalem in support of Israel’s exclusive right to its eternal capital. As reported in the Jerusalem Post (7/4/08) Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the Chief Rabbi of Efrat, who attended the Jerusalem conference, declared that the rapprochement between Christians and Jews “is one of the miracles of the 20th century.” The Rabbi went on to explain that “the Christianity of Pastor Hagee and most evangelists today, is not the Christianity of persecution, intolerance, and Jew hatred.”

The Rabbi could not be more right, and not just about the Christianity practiced by Pastor Hagee and most of his fellow American evangelicals. After all, Evangelical Christians are part of the broader Protestant movement, indeed, its most recent wave, and Protestantism, at least in its post-Lutheran phase, never really indulged in “persecution, intolerance and Jew hatred.” Instead, wherever Protestantism took root, Jews were generally welcome, and more often than not, permitted to build strong and prosperous communities. Such was the case during Protestantism early days, when there was a flourishing Jewish community in the Netherlands, and when Oliver Cromwell invited the Jews back to England. And such, of course, is the case in the United States of America, whose Protestant ethos has made it possible for the Jews to flourish as never before.

To be sure, when it comes to anti-Semitism Protestantism is not a panacea, and its record is far from perfect. One only needs to remember that Germany was also a Protestant country, although rooted, of course, in Lutheranism. And yet, the remarkable affinity between Protestantism and Judaism, or at least between Protestants and Jews, needs to be understood, especially in light of the incontrovertible fact that Christian Zionists in the United States are, in the words of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “Israel’s best friends in the world.” Baldly stated, should we be concerned that our new best friends come from a tradition that is not only philo-Semitic but also dedicated to proselytizing? Is Christian Zionism a gigantic ruse, calculated to lower our guard in order to ensnare us in yet one more conversion scheme?

The answer to these questions is a resounding no, and here is why. Protestantism is animated by a spirit of sectarianism. At the level of theology, the spirit of sectarianism stimulates endless splits and rifts among the believers, who soon part company from each other, dividing into their own denomination. Between and among the various denominations, there is a healthy spirit of competition but also the capacity for cooperation. In many ways, it is this capacity for cooperation which distinguishes Protestantism from Catholicism. Because Catholicism possesses a universal theology, it has great difficulty managing relationships with members of other faiths.

Now, let us apply Protestantism’s sectarian ethos to the political level. In politics, or at least in modern international politics, the rule of territorial boundaries captures the Protestant spirit of denomination. In the first place, territorial boundaries separate the nations into sovereign states even as they integrate the nations into a single international political system. In other words, not only do territorial boundaries stimulate competition and sometimes even conflict between and among the nations of the world, they also facilitate international cooperation. More to the point, the political history of the United States of America testifies with great eloquence to the connection between the sectarian ethos and the rule of boundaries. After all, during the great Western expansion, driven, of course, by the Protestant ideal of manifest destiny, the American Protestants drew boundary lines around each particular territory that they conquered and pacified, creating, ultimately, 48 separate – and at least until the Civil War – semi-sovereign juridical domains. In this way, the American Protestants aligned their political and territorial accomplishments with their religious ideals.

Israel, of course, is a sovereign state, albeit one whose boundaries have not yet achieved international recognition. As such, from the Protestant perspective, our community, the Jews of Israel, is different from any other Jewish community with whom Protestants, or indeed, Protestantism, has previously interacted. In some respects, we have the political status of being a legitimate “denomination.” And beyond that, we are the genuine inheritors of a legitimate religious alternative to the faith which they uphold. Either way, from their point of view, our community is safely ensconced within its proper territorial boundaries and must be respected for its belief code. And who knows. Maybe, with their help, those proper territorial boundaries will be extended all the way to the Biblical borderlines.

Rabbi Dr. Avi Berkowitz teaches at Young Judaea Year Course in Jerusalem and is the Rabbi of Bet Knesset Ma'ayan in Efrat.

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