The Anti-Defamation League, itself a Jewish organization, has perhaps become one of American Jews’ worst enemies.

Recently I ran across Don Feder’s report on an address by Anti-Defamation League (ADL) President Abraham Foxman concerning what he considers attempts at Christianizing America at the expense of Judaism.  Feder states that Foxman has declared war on conservative Christians.  Sadly, it seems that he is right, and the ADL, itself a Jewish organization, has perhaps become one of American Jews’ worst enemies. 

Many modern American Jews, who do not have a secure religious identity, are facing two important issues; one political and one faith-based.  The political issue became important during the civil rights movement when many Jews became involved in helping another group facing a history of discrimination.  Unfortunately, this laudable political action began to eclipse the faith that brought it about.  As a result, many Jews began to focus so heavily on social issues that they lost their traditional identity.  Eventually many actually became anti-American by virtue of a strange piece of logic.  Rabbi Daniel Lapin illustrates this logic, inter alia, in his response to Foxman:

[M]any Jews, having abandoned the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have embraced the alternative faith of secular liberalism.  In so doing, they adopt the misleading equation that Judaism = Liberalism. … Thus anyone who loathes the values of secular liberalism surely must hate the values of Judaism since they are the same.  Therefore, any conservative is, by definition, an anti-Semite.

This phenomenon occurred all around me during my youth in Berkeley, California.  It was significant in turning me away from my mother’s Jewish heritage during my teens.  As one who has since become a practicing Christian, the Judaism = Liberalism equation appears as a major impediment to identification with the true America, and a source of cognitive dissonance for people caught up in the inherent contradictions it creates.  I expect that I will forever remember an incident involving a family friend who criticized Representative Ron Dellums over his attitude toward Israel.  Next, they informed me that they had voted for Dellums because it would be anti-Jewish to vote for a pro-Israel Republican.  This type of attitude shows a blatant disregard for one’s own best interests.  It fails to distinguish between issues of faith and politics, ignores which should be more important, and where an American Jew’s loyalties should lie. 

On the issue of faith, history shows that people have generally gravitated toward beliefs, which expressed themselves through the dynamic actions of their adherents.  This is one major reason why the deaths of early Christian martyrs are credited with leading to more Christian converts.  The simple fact that people were willing to die, sometimes horribly, for their beliefs, gave credence to those beliefs.  As Rabbi Lapin states, many people of Jewish background in America have lost touch with their faith heritage.  Instead of living in a community that promotes its faith, they lose themselves in a society that emphasizes secularization.  As the religious community becomes overly secularized the role of faith becomes progressively less important until such identity disappears, and the role that faith-based values play in governing individual behavior vanishes along with it.  This is what irks the modern Liberal; they dislike the evangelical Christian because they hold fast to faith-based values, making them the foundation for their political behavior.  God is more important to them than the current party leadership. 

I have always been suspicious of organizations spouting inflammatory rhetoric, as Foxman seems intent on doing.  It is likely that he is looking for a new source of discrimination to provide him and the ADL greater validity, and likely more financial contributions.  If his interest in truly related to the protection of Jews in the USA his pronouncements are misdirected.  No one who is truly an evangelical Christian is likely to take an anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli position.  To understand why, the uninitiated would do well to read Hal Lindsey’s commentaries on the subject.  It’s all in the Bible, which leads to another point.  Christians have not divested themselves of the first or Old Testament.  They take it just as seriously as the second or New Testament.  Where they differ from Jews is in the role of Jesus, and how the individual relates to God.  Because more orthodox Jews adhere more closely to biblical doctrine, it is natural to expect what is in fact true; that orthodox Jews accept evangelical Christians more readily than reform Jews.   For more detail on why this is true, again see Rabbi Lapin’s critique of Foxman.   

Another example of where Christian mainstream America and Jews get together is with Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc. (JFPO), an advocacy group that has also taken a position against Foxman, and asserts therein that the ADL is primarily a statist, socialist organization.  What lends weight to this view is the fact that Foxman’s address contains the following statement: “We believe that we are a country that respects and envelopes people who have faith, a belief of a truth. Everyone is entitled to his or her own truth.”  I must then ask Foxman, if I am entitled to “my own truth” if it commands that I kill people who don’t agree with me?  As the JFPO document states, when the ADL takes on Christians they are likely to get no more response than a few press releases and angry letters.  However, if Foxman were to take on a more militant opponent, perhaps a true enemy of Judaism, other less desirable consequences would be the likely result. 

Foxman's attitude toward American Christians could not be more wrong.  Consider that he was the one who predicted anti-Jewish violence or other dire consequences in the aftermath of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.  What he fails to understand is that if we de-Christianize the USA, in the end it is likely that we will not have room for practicing Jews, either.  Foxman should not forget that essentially every nation that has worked to suppress religion has taken it all the way.  In Nazi Germany practicing Christians, and especially Catholics, were disliked almost as much as Jews.  Many were also imprisoned and killed for their beliefs.  Ditto for Stalin’s Russia.  What the ADL needs to understand is that by protecting Christians they would be also be protecting themselves, and the state of Israel.  Or perhaps they would prefer the alternative.