Following House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s shocking defeat in the Republican primary in Virginia the question has arisen as to whether Cantor’s Jewishness had anything to do with his loss. After political analyst David Wasserman suggested that “part of this plays into his religion. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room” Commentary’s John Podhoretz retorted sharply that “Judaism had nothing to do with his loss and the only reason for suggesting otherwise is to tar David Brat and the voters of the Seventh Congressional District in Virginia with the taint of anti-Semitism. Shameful.”
For his part the Forward’s J.J. Goldberg tried to take both sides of the argument writing of the Virginia voters who rejected Cantor that it’s
not that they don’t like Jews. I’d bet that 90 percent of the 36 000 zealots who turned out to vote for David Brat on Tuesday… don’t have an anti-Semitic bone in their body. It’s just that they love [the founder of Christianity]. They want more religious values guiding and governing our public life. And by religious values they mean Christian values.
Putting aside the intimation that a full 36 000 Republican voters in Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District have some unspecified level of anti-Semitic sentiment Goldberg is at least partially correct that those voters want “more religious values guiding and governing our public life” and that for them “religious values” means “Christian values.” But it would have been more accurate to say that what they really want is for moral values and not necessarily overtly religious ones to take center stage in American life.
These are the sort of values that were a given for the vast majority of Americans across a spectrum of religiosity just a few short decades ago. These ideals included the importance of the traditional family structure; respect for authority and tradition; the inviolable value of every stage of human life; the existence of an immutable nonrelative moral code and America’s role as a beacon of that code for the world. If Goldberg is correct in asserting that these values are now identified in the minds of average Americans as religious rather than basic moral ones that’s not their fault. It is largely the fault instead of the secular elites in academia the courts the media and entertainment worlds and the political realm who have helped strip society of these values one by one.
As for the perception that religious — read: traditional moral — values are exclusively Christian ones much of the responsibility for that lies at the doorstep of the secular Jewish community for which Goldberg speaks. When they see a religion called “Judaism” that has been turned into — as the old saw has it — the Democratic left-wing but with holidays non-Jewish Americans who know nothing about authentic Judaism have no choice but to think that only Christianity subscribes to the moral values they hold dear.
The process is a circular one: Secularists — with Jews sadly at the forefront — promote a moral coarsening of society and abandonment of traditional values; in response Americans revolted by the resulting immorality and amorality look to religious faith as the last redoubt of once-universally held ethical values — and identify these values as Christian because to them Judaism is synonymous with “social justice.” So these citizens pining for a morally sane America then seek to integrate those values into American public life; and at that the secularists cry foul over the supposed attempt to create a theocracy and obliterate the First Amendment. And around the cycle goes.
The recent Supreme Court case of Town of Greece is instructive about what liberals really seek for American society. From the liberal justices’ opinions it would appear that they accept the propriety of prayer in public even governmental settings. Their objection seemed to be only to the overtly sectarian nature of the prayers offered and the fact that clergy of other faiths were not sought out making non-Christians feel alienated in a local governmental venue in which all citizens should feel at home.
After the ruling came down the ADL’s Abraham Foxman said he was “profoundly disappointed” by the court’s decision which “opens the door wide to overtly sectarian prayers before public meetings of government bodies.” Fair enough although reasonable minds can disagree on the merits of that case.
But why then have the ADL and other Jewish groups that submitted briefs against the Town of Greece been battling the proposed “World War II Memorial Prayer Act” that has been working its way through Congress? Ohio Senator Rob Portman’s idea is to add to the existing World War II memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. the nonsectarian almost anodyne prayer that President Franklin D. Roosevelt read on the radio to millions of Americans as the US Army stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-day 70 years ago.
As Mark Tooley writes in the American Spectator of what he calls the “most widely heard prayer in history”:
There’s little to nothing in FDR’s prayer that would theologically offend almost any monotheist except possibly for its very lack of theological specificity. And why would even polytheists or atheists be overly distressed by such a prayer if in fact they too hoped for encouragement solace and victory for those forces mostly very young men attempting to liberate Europe from Nazi control and “to set free a suffering humanity”?
Tooley also notes that FDR’s “prayer is considerably less provocative than Abraham Lincoln’s Calvinist suggestion inscribed on his nearby monument that the Civil War was divine punishment for slavery.” But that’s different; that’s a prayer that has the liberal seal of approval. The E-Z Amazingly Retractable Wall of Church-State Separation featured here last week strikes again.
This is a prayer so religiously bland that it’s worthy of a Unitarian minister. And whether its opponents like it or not it’s a part of American history uttered before all of America by an icon of liberal Democrats without so much as a peep of protest to give its citizens inspiration and succor as their boys moved to save Western civilization not to mention the Jews of Europe by defeating the evil incarnate that was Nazism. Indeed in his prayer FDR stated that
Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day and again when each day is spent let words of prayer be on our lips….
All this sparked no outrage back then so why the outrage now?
I believe the question itself may be the answer. Its opponents want to prevent the creation of a reminder for all to see on the National Mall literally “carved in stone ” that belief and faith in G-d were held by almost all Americans just decades ago that public expression of those beliefs by a sitting president was thoroughly unremarkable and that it is liberals who have sought to remake America in their own faithless image.
Regardless of what Justice Kagan writes or Abe Foxman says it’s not religiously diverse or neutral public prayer that they seek but no prayer period.
FEAR OF FRIDAY At some point this past Erev Shabbos I realized it was June 13 on the Gregorian calendar which got me thinking about paraskavedekatriaphobia. “Say what ” you say?
A bit of etymological research makes it easy. Begin with “paraskevi ” Greek for Friday; add “deka ” meaning ten; and “tria ” meaning three; and end off with “phobia ” meaning irrational fear; and – voil?! (which may be Greek to you but is French to everyone else) – you’ve got paraskavedekatriaphobia a handy roll-off-your-tongue term for the phenomenon in non-Jewish society of fear of a Friday that falls on the 13th day of a month.
As for us Chazal teach that ein mazel l’Yisrael. We not only ignore silly superstitions like this one but are privileged to be governed by Hashem’s direct providence not that of some intermediary mazel. Our special bond with the Borei Olam is nurtured by His mitzvos; the seforim tell us that “mitzvah” is related to “tzeves ” meaning connection. Perhaps this is one layer of meaning in Rashi’s comment (Bereishis 15:5) that Hashem told Avraham to “go out from your stargazing ” because “Avram will not have a child but Avraham will.” The numerical value of Avraham after all is 248 — the total number of positive commandments.
Or to put it differently others have their Friday June 13. We’ve got 6/13.