August 28, 2006--Joe's Jewish Problem

Call me a self-hating Jew, but who else but a Jew can best see that Joe Lieberman has a Jewish problem?

By this I do not mean to suggest that he is somehow deficient in the ways in which he practices his religion or cooks his food. Far be it from me who likes my Shrimp with Lobster Sauce too much to have a right to do that. I mean that in his day job as a senator in the US Congress, sworn to protect a Constitution that calls for the separation of church and state, he sees the world too exclusively through a Jewish lens.

This, to me, is as much a problem as George Bush viewing the world through an Evangelical Christian lens. And as I will attempt to demonstrate, the two, the fundamentalist Jewish and Christian positions, are too comfortably conflatable. Dangerously so.

The NY Times reported recently (article linked below) that Senator Lieberman, in an interview, drew parallels between the war in Iraq and the early struggle against fascism in Nazi Germany. He said, in the current situation there are “very, very severe echoes of that. . . . As the Nazis began to move in Europe, we tried to convince ourselves we contained them—and we obviously didn’t, and then we paid the price.”

I suspect he heard his president a day or two before talk about the war in Iraq and the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon as part of the larger war against “Islamic fascists” and this motivated him to echo that. Or maybe, very much on his own, he sees everything mediated through the question—“Is it good for the Jews?" Or at least his version of what that question means.

I’m not sure this is the central question for Connecticut much less American citizens.

Lieberman’s applying that question to all international issues also helps explain his long time affiliation with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. He served on their board comfortably with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Pat Boone, and other Fundamentalists.

Among other things, through its On the Wings of Eagles Program, the IFCJ raises money to fund the emigration of Jews to Israel. They run Infomercials that show Jews shivering in unheated Siberian huts who want to go to Israel but do not have the money to buy a one-way airline ticket. But for only $450 each you can send a Jew to the Holy Land.

This must have been the reason Senator Lieberman was such an enthusiastic supporter of the International Fellowship. What he ignored were the reasons Falwell and Robertson were equally supportive.

According to most Christian Fundamentalists, before the Second Coming of Christ, there are a number of preconditions that must be in place. Among these are the rebuilding of Babylon (which is in Iraq—Saddam, ironically, was working on that) and the return of all Jews to Israel. As a consequence, many conservative politicians and leading Christian Fundamentalists offer unquestioning support for the state of Israel. Including the current George Bush.

Many orthodox Jews have embraced this support apparently without realizing that if it were to come to pass, when all Jews were regathered in Israel, we will be given one last chance to convert to Christianity or be doomed to death and eternal damnation.

Quite an unholy alliance and one that may go a long way to help explain Lieberman’s various genuflections.