Grab the Hand of Unity
If you can annihilate the State of Israel or kill all the Jews, you can make God a liar. Through the millennia of captivity, exile, dispersion, pogroms, Inquisitions, the Shoah, and October 7th, a spiritual agenda is at work. Yet the agents who act out this cruelty remain the same, though with different flesh covering the body. The goal is put into doubt the words of our Torah and prophets, to make a lie of the promises and the prophecies of old, as well as those that are unfolding before our very eyes. It’s the same question the serpent asked Eve in the garden, “Now the serpent was cunning, more than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God had made, and it said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat of any of the trees of the garden?’ (Gen. 3:1)
Did God really say? This formulation, by way of doubt, brings into question what God declares. Did God really say He would bring us back? Did God really say He would revive the language? Did God really say we would be a light unto the nations? Did God really say He would fight for us? Did God really say that His servant David would reign in the age to come? Did God really say?
Why are we so different? Because we have to be, we are the living proof of God. The very presence of the Jew shouts the truth of God. Before the state was re-established, the Church would say that God was done with the Jews; He rejected them, and now the “New Israel” is the Christians. However, this had to be reevaluated when the hyper-spiritualized version of Israel became a literal reality, fulfilling prophecy. Over the decades since then, the Christian Church has sought to examine introspectively what this meant for the doctrine of supersessionism. The idea that because of the rejection of Jesus as a divine messiah, the Jews have now been rejected by God and are no longer the true Israel or faithful Jews. The Nostra Aetate document, penned in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council, and the conversations between Jewish-Christian dialogue that followed it are the rejections of such an ideal.
Bad ideas die slowly, and what we are witnessing today, among a split Church, is the issue of the Jews and Israel. The Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson types have coughed up not only old tropes and blood libel accusations, but also a more nuanced form of supersessionism. Although they still agree with the formally rejected form, they find that by “just asking questions,” all in the name of “God,” they can call into doubt the millions of followers they have. If a literal return to the Land of the literal Jewish people has happened, through the lens of scripture, how do they reconcile their supersessionist/replacement theology beliefs? Israel exists as prophesied, so they are forced to concede that there is an actual Israel. We see this line of questioning as Tucker Carlson mockingly asks Ted Cruz during his questioning on the issue of Iran, “Is the nation that God is referring to in Genesis, is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu now?” Echoes from the garden reverberate through the ages, the tone of doubt: Is Biblical Israel really Israel today?
When enough Christian scholars, pastors, and laymen responded to this interview, showing from their own denominational beliefs, contrasting Tucker’s belief, answering yes, Israel is really Israel. The new line of “just asking questions” becomes a twisted linguistic knot: “Well, are they really the chosen people, are they really Jews?” Why? Because the spiritually driven entity that has existed to kill all the Jews is still asking, “Did God really say?”
If annihilation physically has not and cannot happen, then the annihilation of our identity becomes the armament. The masked agenda that began in the garden is to undermine the word of God, rendering it untrue. If His word is not true, then He is not true, and the very notion of worshipping or serving an idea or a phantom makes no distinction between any of the other false gods throughout the history of man. They have become blind tools, and unfortunately, these instruments of hate don’t realize that the very “God” they are promoting has become their own image in disguise. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, another puppet to curse the Jews, erected a statue of Zeus for worship. Interestingly, ancient sources state that this idol was in the image of the King himself. His twisted version of “God” was his representation, just as they are twisting scripture for their representation.
We stand in a pivotal moment as the increase of antisemitism has starkly risen across the world, in our neighborhoods, our universities, and simply existing as a Jew requires some chutzpah. Some Jews have taken off their Magen David necklaces, taken down their Israel flags, and even taken the mezuzah off their doorpost. But as a people, we have already done all of that, and it didn’t save; it appeased. Appeasement aided to marching our people into the death camps.
Lessons have been learned in the crucible of history, so many like us put up a bigger mezuzah, buy more chanukkiah to display in our window, become diligent in our mitzvot and observance, fly our flag proudly, and wear our Magen David every day. While hate screams in our faces through bullhorns as we walk from shul, “f**kin baby-killers,” we set our face like flint, echoing the cry of the prophet, “But my Sovereign GOD will help me—Therefore I feel no disgrace; Therefore I have set my face like flint, And I know I shall not be shamed. My Vindicator is at hand—Who dares contend with me? Let us stand up together! Who would be my opponent? Let them approach me!” (Is. 50:7-8) And do you know who is standing with us, shoulder to shoulder? The Christian who has not fallen into the seismic crack that fractures within its own house. The Charlie Kirks and Ted Cruzes of this generation. The righteous among the nations who understand that God indeed holds Israel and His chosen people. The Christians who haven’t bowed to the deception of erasing Israel, erasing Jews.
It is now time for Jews to take the hand of their Christian brother and sisters who are offering solidarity and support, adding the countless numbers that are not constrained by socioeconomic status, demographics, geographic location, age, or gender. As we oppose the common enemy of radical Islam, it puts us into the same category, and our worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob unites us in a moral and spiritual obligation and in spilled blood to stand together, despite our theological differences.
It is now time to realize we cannot win the war of false propaganda, lies, and PR warfare; we have to recognize that the world is sick of hearing our Holocaust story, it’s been weaponized against us, they’ve become numb, and now take the very depths of our collective pain and mock us, crying out that we are the “New Nazis” and do nothing but “feel sorry for ourselves.” It is time to get off the ropes in the defense position and instead enter the fight. Not the fight to make people believe we are a persecuted people, not the fight to make them sit through more Holocaust education, but instead the fight that we are proud Jews who are not going anywhere because our God cannot lie. Our fight is to use our money, our mitzvot, our skills, our positions and influence, and our efforts for bridge-building with those who are also being mocked, ridiculed, and ostracized because they support us. The Christians worldwide who are also mourning the savage butchery of their people by radical Islam. It’s time to lower our guard toward those who want to stand and fight together. It’s time to shift.
In Parashat Vayechi, we see the shift. Dr. Erica Brown, Vice Provost for Values and Leadership, Director, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership, says it this way: “This coming week, we will transition from one book of Torah to another, from Beresheet to Shemot, from Genesis to Exodus. The transition involves more than the turning of the page or the twist of a scroll. We go from being a large-ish family to becoming a nation so numerous we become a perceived threat to Pharaoh. The leadership changes and with it, our status in Egypt shifts dramatically. We go from being free people protected by a wise and famous brother to a labor force with no protector. As slaves, we had to turn straw into bricks. Our expectations of the future narrowed until gradually and incrementally, we welcomed Moses as savior and leader.”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, “This is the destination of the Jewish journey – the Promised Land, the holy city, a society of justice, generosity and peace. And in the transition from Exodus to Sinai, from am to edah, Jewish identity itself is transformed from passive to active, from fate to faith, from a people defined by what happens to it to a people defined by the social order they are called on to create.”
We stand in a place of history that is not fully written; it is a place where we have the choice to transition, not acquiesce, not assimilate, not hide. We can set our faces like flint (Is. 50:7), not looking to the left or to the right (Prov. 4:27), and instead knowing that the challenges God has given us have been for our good, to create an adaptive people that yet hold to being Jewish through faith and obedience, who, because of the God we serve, we have the power to shift.
It is time we grab that extended hand of those in this present opportunity who in turn will be the ones holding onto us in the future that Zechariah prophesied about, “Thus said GOD of Hosts: In those days, ten people from nations of every tongue will take hold—they will take hold of every Jew by a corner of their cloak and say, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” (Zech. 8:23)
Why? Because God has really said.
