No Martinis this Shabbat at the Kiddush in Atlantic Beach

Since my wife is in Argentina and my brother is in Jerusalem, I got to visit my dad in Atlantic Beach for Shabbat.

Rabbi Steven Riskin spoke at the ABJC and I only got to hear the end of his derasha. He used the word "tragic" about four or five times to describe the contemporary situation in Israel.

I cornered him at the kiddush and spoke to him about my take on his bringing a distorted and negative message to the good diaspora materialistic Jews of the ABJC.

Look, I said. The optimist say the glass is half-full and the pessimist says the glass is half-empty.

And yet here, even when the glass is 95% full, the Orthodox rabbi says that the situation in Israel is "tragic." What gives?

I told him, in fact the situation in Israel today is unbelievably not tragic! I told him, "I respect you and I like you and I think that YOU ARE WRONG."

His response was that he must report what he sees and what he believes.

I told him no, that he most certainly does not have to do that. And then I went back to eat lunch with my dad.

They have a full lunch at the ABJC every Shabbat. Now, okay, this is just lunch. There are no waiters serving martinis at the kiddush here. For those, I am told that you have to go shul in Westhampton Beach.

Poor Riskin. He has become an Orthodox Jewish apocalyptic fanatic.

One fanatic. No martinis. The food was good, and such large portions!

This Week's Winner of the Morton Smith Prize for Pseudo-Scholarship

A barely legible and hardly decipherable inscription with no provenance that challenges the foundations of Christianity. Maverick scholars vouch for it's importance. Somebody goes running to the Times to get near-sensationalist publicity.

Yep, this qualifies for this week's Morton Smith Prize for Pseudo-Scholarship in the Field of Early Christian Origins..

So many Even Ifs we don't know where to begin. Even if the inscription's origins were documented properly. Even if the lines were legible. Even if the meanings were intelligible. Even if all of the above, how this might impact on the Christian narrative and Christian faith all of this is beyond my comprehension.

Real scholarship is not based on so many Even Ifs and so much far-fetched speculation. This kind of "Will Guess for Publicity" shoddy work devalues all of the serious, substantive and hard earned results that real scholarship works at.

So our dubious MS prize goes to all those credentialed experts cited by the media in regard to this latest kerfuffle...

Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection
By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

...Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet’s contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning.

The scrolls, documents found in the Qumran caves of the West Bank, contain some of the only known surviving copies of biblical writings from before the first century A.D. In addition to quoting from key books of the Bible, the scrolls describe a variety of practices and beliefs of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus.

How representative the descriptions are and what they tell us about the era are still strongly debated. For example, a question that arises is whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact mainstream. A conference marking 60 years since the discovery of the scrolls will begin on Sunday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the stone, and the debate over whether it speaks of a resurrected messiah, as one iconoclastic scholar believes, also will be discussed.

Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.

“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.

Ms. Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.

A chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts, has been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication, but he said that he knew of no reason to doubt the stone’s authenticity.

It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” also the title of their article. Mr. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.

When he read “Gabriel’s Revelation,” he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion. [TZ: See the article by Israel Knohl here.]

Mr. Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus’ day as an important explanation of that era’s messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.

In Mr. Knohl’s interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone’s passages were probably Simon’s followers, Mr. Knohl contends.

The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” — and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.

To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words “L’shloshet yamin,” meaning “in three days.” The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is “hayeh,” or “live” in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.

Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Mr. Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was “hayeh,” or “live.” Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.

Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century B.C. His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.

Regarding Mr. Knohl’s thesis, Mr. Bar-Asher is also respectful but cautious. “There is one problem,” he said. “In crucial places of the text there is lack of text. I understand Knohl’s tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of text there are a lot of missing words.”

Moshe Idel, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University, said that given the way every tiny fragment from that era yielded scores of articles and books, “Gabriel’s Revelation” and Mr. Knohl’s analysis deserved serious attention. “Here we have a real stone with a real text,” he said. “This is truly significant.”

Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.

But there was, he said, and “Gabriel’s Revelation” shows it.

“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”

4th of July Weekend Reading at the Beach

Why not read some Judaic scholarship by your favorite blogger rabbi and 60's radical this weekend at the beach?

• Books
  • Studies in Jewish Prayer (HTML) (PDF)
  • The Traditions of Eleazar Ben Azariah
  • Yerushalmi Berakhot - Google Books
• Articles
  • Apocalyptic Orthodox Judaism (PDF)
  • Kavvanah in Jewish Prayer
  • Biblical Criticism
  • The Politics of Piety
  • Three Stages in the Development of Early Rabbinic Prayer
  • Talmud and Taboo: Animal Slaughter and Eating Meat
  • The Rhetoric of Rabbinic Ritual
  • It is Not in Heaven: Judaic Systems, Laws and Discordant Discourses
  • Judaisms and Memories: Systemic Representations of the Holocaust
  • Judaism in the Mishnaic Period
  • Macmillan Dictionary of Biblical Judaism (65 Entries)
  • Encyclopedia of Religion (Rabbinic Biographies)
  • Judaism and Islam

Malkin Lead Story: Our Supreme Court is Killing Americans

Be apocalyptically afraid. People will die, a new Supreme Court ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

Are we still singing the same scary tune, day in day out? How droll.

To review: I thought we went to war to bring our democracy to Iraq. Now you tell me that our democracy and its laws and way of life should not apply to the people we don't like.

You say that America is perfect and we should force our way of life on the world. But now you say, not our legal guarantees of fairness. Those apply only to our friends. You know, the people on Michelle's list, those are our friends.

Make up your mind Michelle et al. Cause you are sounding more confused every day.

Supreme Court opens up Gitmo lawsuit floodgates; Scalia: “The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.”

By Michelle Malkin

What’s that sound? The thunder of left-wing lawyers and Gitmo detainees jumping up and down for joy at the Supreme Court’s ruling this morning. Brace yourselves. Dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia warns that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed” and concludes “The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.”

Chief Justice John Roberts says the rule of law and the American people have lost out–and with this ruling, we “lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges...”

And one more thing. You are not scaring anyone anymore with your knee-jerk apocalypticism. 9/11 happened under George Bush, honey. Bush was listening to children reading about a pet goat at the time the planes hit the WTC. That's a fact and that is a scary story.

I'm Reciting Lamentations Over the Meshuggenah Rev. Jeremiah Wright

I'm for Barack Obama. So today I'm reciting lamentations over the flagrant antics of the meshuggenah Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

By every measure I can think of this man is a maniac, a crazy person, in Yiddish that is a meshuggenah.

The Washington Post article seethes with that premise.

Now there's much to say about our dedication in the US to separating religion from the political sphere of activity.

Religion is a wild world of the past, the present and the future, miracles, apocalyptic predictions and messianic beliefs and expectations, and sometimes morality, ethics and justice sneak into the mix.

None of that has any real relevance to the political needs of a democratic society. It's about power and policies, legislation, executive decision and constitutional adjudication.

We pretend that government does relate to religion. That is the great charade that makes our country work. And oh, we all believe in God.

But please don't make me list the meshuggenah rabbis and white ministers and priests and mullahs alive and kicking today all around the world. [Actually you can read a whole lot about them in many past posts on this blog.]

Barack - please dump this guy as fast as you can. Throw him under the next bus. Or perhaps start laughing at him, mock him, laugh him out of the room.

Washington Post: Still More Lamentations From Jeremiah
By Dana Milbank

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs yesterday: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Barack Obama's former pastor should have stuck with the wisdom of the prophets.

Instead, Wright has gone on a media tour, climaxing with his appearance yesterday morning at the National Press Club. There, he reignited a controversy about race that Obama had only recently extinguished -- and added lighter fuel.

From the moment he entered the room, Wright seemed to be looking to stir controversy; he was escorted by Jamil Muhammad, a leader of the Nation of Islam, which contributed to the minister's prominent security detail. Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, the New Black Panther Party's Malik Zulu Shabazz and Nation of Islam protocol director Claudette Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his belief that the government created AIDS to extinguish racial minorities, and stood by his suggestion that "God damn America."

Far from softening his provocative words, he held himself out as a spokesman for millions of churchgoing African Americans. "This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," he argued. "It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African American religious tradition." He added: "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition . . . you got another thing coming."

Most problematic for the Democratic presidential front-runner was Wright's suggestion that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his former pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American." Wright spoke of friends who told him that "we both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected," and he said of his past parishioner: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."

And that apparent decision by Obama to exclude Wright from his presidential kickoff announcement? Didn't happen. "I started it off downstairs with him, his wife and children, in prayer."

The pastor's performance puts new pressure on the candidate to say forcefully that Wright doesn't speak for him or the African American church. Though the candidate said on "Fox News Sunday" that Wright had been "simplified and caricatured" by the sound bites of his inflammatory words, Wright willingly embraced the sentiments of those sound bites yesterday.

In front of 30 television cameras, he mocked the media, leveled charges of racism at the government and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, who jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom his former parishioner. The pastor played right into the small band of anti-Wright protesters outside, who waved a sign: "Obama's chicken comes home to roost."

In his 30-minute prepared speech, Wright made a cogent call for a "spirit of reconciliation" and delivered a rebuke to those who questioned his patriotism. "Those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service," he said. He also protested that his infamous quotations were taken out of the full "context" of his sermons.

But the spirit of reconciliation dissipated during the question period, as Wright expanded on his fiery quotes. The crowd (all but a few tickets were bought by churches and organizations supporting Wright) cheered loudly and heckled the moderator, a USA Today reporter, when she tried to maintain order.

He explained his claim that the Sept. 11 attacks meant "America's chickens are coming home to roost." Said Wright: "You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you."

Wright defended Farrakhan's statement "20 years ago that Zionism -- not Judaism -- was a gutter religion." Of the Nation of Islam leader generally, Wright added: "He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery and he didn't make me this color." At this point he traded a high-five with Barbara Reynolds, a local pastor.

He repeated his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide ("Based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything"). He defended his earlier comparison of U.S. Marines to the Roman soldiers who killed Jesus, saying the "notion of imperialism" is the same.

The moderator asked the audience whether Wright should apologize for his "God damn America" remarks. Shouts of "No!" followed, and Wright used the occasion to demand an apology for slavery.

"Until that apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, 'Does this hurt?' Do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I'm still stepping on your foot? Understand that? Capisce?"

Capisciamo, Reverend. All too well.

Staff writer Hamil R. Harris contributed to this column.

Lecture of Note: Gitenstein on Anthony Hecht's poem "Rites and Ceremonies"

Here is a lecture we wish we had attended.

College president waxes poetic
By: Jessica Cortese

College President R. Barbara Gitenstein met with students and colleagues last Wednesday night to discuss and analyze Anthony Hecht's poem "Rites and Ceremonies" as part of the "Religion, Culture and Identity" program.

Gitenstein, who has a doctorate in English and is the author of the book "Apocalyptic Messianism and Contemporary Jewish-American Poetry," explained how the poem emphasizes the dark side of human beings and their capability to do evil to one another. Each of Hecht's "Rites and Ceremonies's" four sections alludes to a particular moment in Jewish history. Hecht plays games with language and pulls Jewish history and tradition together to illustrate what lessons should have been learned from each moment.

Gitenstein said Hecht, who died in 2004, wanted to make his audience aware that "Rites and Ceremonies" is a poem that spans across human history and makes it as present and vivid as current events.

She also discussed his idea that survival alone does not prove anything, and it is up to the survivors of the Holocaust to bring the world back together.

"('Rites and Ceremonies') is a great poem that responds to the Jewish experience of history and particularly the experience of the Holocaust," Michael Robertson, professor of English, said.

The president proceeded to analyze the four sections of Hecht's sprawling poem....continued

Robertson Predicts Apocalyptic Doom and Gloom -- Again

As he does each year, in the spirit of apocalyptic Christian preaching, Pat Robertson has come forth with his dire predictions of violence, chaos and destruction for the coming years.

Bad things will happen. I for one am so glad that he has warned us.

Pat Robertson Predicts Worldwide Violence, U.S. Recession in 2008

AP NORFOLK, Va. — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Wednesday that 2008 will be a year of violence worldwide and a recession in the United States, followed by a major stock-market crash by 2010.

Sharing what he believes God has told him about the year ahead is an annual tradition for Robertson.

On Wednesday's "700 Club" broadcast, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network predicted that evangelism will increase and more people will seek God as the chaos develops. Robertson said, "We will see the presence of angels and we will see an intensification of miracles around the world."

Last year, Robertson predicted that a terrorist act, possibly involving a nuclear weapon, would result in mass killing in the United States. Noting that it hadn't come to pass, Robertson said, "All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed and God in his mercy spared us."

Left Behind: The Apocalypse as video game!

Release: Tomorrow 11/7
Name: LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces
Description: Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions in LEFT BEHIND Eternal Forces - a real-time strategy game based upon the best-selling LEFT BEHIND book series created by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Join the ultimate fight of Good against Evil, commanding Tribulation Forces or the Global Community Peacekeepers, and uncover the truth about the worldwide disappearances!
Faithfulness to the books: Not as bloody and too nice to the infidels.
Features:
· Lead the Tribulation Force from the book series , including Rayford, Chloe, Buck and Bruce against Nicolae Carpathia – the AntiChrist.
· Conduct physical & spiritual warfare : using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world.
· Recover ancient scriptures and witness spectacular Angelic and Demonic activity as a direct consequence of your choices.
· Command your forces through intense battles across a breathtaking, authentic depiction of New York City.
· Control more than 30 units types - from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks!
· Enjoy a robust single player experience across dozens of New York City maps in Story Mode – fighting in China Town , SoHo , Uptown and more!
· Play multiplayer games as Tribulation Force or the AntiChrist's Global Community Peacekeepers with up to eight players via LAN or over the internet!

From the Review in Wired:

So the great surprise of Left Behind: Eternal Forces is that it actually kind of rocks. It's a classic real-time strategy game: Starting with a single "recruiter," your job is to proselytize followers, level them up into an army of soldiers, medics and "spirit warriors," then bring a hard rain down on the forces of the Antichrist. This all takes place in a sprawling version of Manhattan that is rendered with breathtaking accuracy -- down to the precise location of Duane Reade drugstores -- and superb camera work. Actual battles offer nail-biting action, forcing you to make split-second decisions as helicopters swarm through the air.

But what's particularly intriguing is how the developers incorporated prayer as a central game mechanic. Each of your team members has a "spirit" ranking. If you let them get too fatigued or hurt, their spirit drops into "neutral" territory and you lose them. You can sway enemies to your side by unleashing your "spirit warriors" or Christian-rock singers, whose joyful noises raise the spirit of anyone near them. (You can even convert evil forces if you're persuasive enough. Of course, the Antichrist has his own evil heavy-metal musicians who work precisely the opposite effect.) And if your forces accidentally kill neutral innocents, their spirit drops further: The act of murder actually has a moral dimension in this game.

The reviewer notes that the game does not get as gruesome as the books it is based upon. In particular, no unpleasant things happen to "Jews who refuse to convert" and their tongues are not "dissolved in screaming agony by a fired-eyed Jesus":

Indeed, I kept wondering when the game was going to throw it down and truly embrace the apocalyptic Christian vision. This story line isn't merely of armageddon, but Armageddon. Thus, the last Left Behind book -- Glorious Appearing -- concludes with the ultimate triumph of Jesus in a phantasmagorically gruesome holocaust. As predicted in Revelation, the savior returns to Earth, chides Satan for defiling the planet (and for inventing Darwinism), then proceeds to slaughter all unbelievers, dissolving their tongues and bursting their bodies like overstuffed sausages. As millions die in transports of agony, the ground becomes a swamp of blood and mud, and some extremely unpleasant things happen to the Jews who refuse to convert. As for the born-again? They stand around watching and cheering.

Critics and moderate Christians were, as you'd expect, totally appalled when that book came out. But what's truly fascinating is that, at least as far as I played the Left Behind game, nothing remotely this ghastly takes place. Indeed, it's quite sanitized: Those killed in battle fall to the ground without gore, and eventually fade away.

Why not go the extra mile? We've got all these cutting-edge computer graphics -- couldn't they easily render this bloodbath? Sure, but as the Left Behind game designers explained to me, they were worried about offending their audience by having too much gore.

Which is the ultimate, and gorgeous, irony of this game. Left Behind fans are apparently more worried about simulated violence in video games than about believing an actual prophecy of the future -- endorsed by their spiritual leaders -- in which their friendly Jewish, Islamic and atheist neighbors have their tongues dissolved in screaming agony by a fire-eyed Jesus.

Are End-Days Christian Apocalytics Good for the Jews?

If you have, like me, wondered whether those Bible-thumping, end-of-days-awaiting, Israel-loving Christians are after all really good for the Jews, then have I got a book for you! In fact, I haven't read the book yet. But have I got a review of a book for you!

In this review you'll find the thesis that mainline Protestants are bad for the Jews. "Moderate Christians are soon-to-be-ex-Christians, which is to say that they are proselyte neo-pagans. Like most pagans, they hate the Jews. The collapse of the mainline denominations and the corresponding growth of the evangelicals is the best thing that has happened to the Jews in a very long time."

I'm referring to tomorrow's BOOK REVIEW from the Asia Times by an anonymous intellectual -- You don't need to be apocalyptic, but it helps: Standing with Israel by David Brog, Reviewed by Spengler. It begins:

'You don't need to be crazy to be a Zionist, but it helps,' went the Israeli national joke of another era. By the same token, you don't need to be apocalyptic to manage US policy in the Middle East - but it also helps.

The importance of Christian eschatology in shaping US attitudes toward Israel disturbs enlightened world opinion, and David Brog's new book will inflame these concerns. At the heart of Christian support for Israel in particular and the Jews in general are Dispensationalists, who support Israel with more passion than do American Jews themselves. Their preoccupation with End Times has entered American popular culture through Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of bestsellers.

Standing with Israel has many virtues, but one big flaw, namely the author's failure to ask, let alone to answer, the obvious question: How is it possible that an idiosyncratic current in non-conforming Christianity, deeply concerned with End Times prophecy and until recently quite obscure, has taken on the decisive role in the great events of the day, as Brog reports?

Nonetheless, critics as well as supporters of US Middle East policy will find Brog's report of great use. A Jew and a partisan of Israel, Brog served as chief of staff to US Senator Arlen Specter and staff director of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, with the opportunity to observe the politics of foreign policy at first hand. He leaves no doubt that philo-Semitism is bred in the marrow of evangelical Christianity. America's alliance with Israel stems not from the machinations of powerful Jews, nor from America's imperial ambitions, but rather from an impassioned surge of religious feeling at the grassroots of US politics. Twenty-eight percent of Republicans may be characterized as "religious right", Brog observes, making them "the largest single voting bloc in the party".

This is all the more disturbing to enlightened world opinion because End Times prophecy, the Rapture of the faithful, and the Second Coming of Jesus figure prominently in Dispensationalist thinking. There is a bit of mad mysticism about the Christian Right, but the same could be said about the 17th century's master spy and diplomat, the "Gray Eminence" Father Joseph du Tremblay. No one but a mystic could have the stomach for a full-dress religious war, and that is precisely what we have gotten into.

Belief in the Rapture followed by seven years of tribulation does not quite qualify as strategic realism, but it might be a more practical guide to foreign policy than, say, belief in the Balance of Power or in the democratization of the Middle East. I do not believe in a coming Rapture, but I do not think it any less likely than the success of democracy in that region. In fact, Apocalyptic inclinations provide a better sort of mental preparation for Middle Eastern politics than the pap dished out by the political scientists. Sadly, there are no solutions to the problems that bedevil the region (Crisis of faith in the Muslim world, November 1, 2005).

What Spengler fails to develop is that our American Christians are only partially apocalyptic. (See my theoretical summary.) They buy into the story of the end-times. They relish the conflicts that will hasten its approach. But they do so out of a sense of destiny, not out of a feeling of marginality. That is what sets the Yankee apocalyptic apart from the more common garden varieties.

Is this good for the Jews? Publicity for the book asserts that Brog "makes persuasive appeals to Christians to embrace Israel and to Jews to overcome their fears of Christian Zionists." Spengler appears to agree, but adds some more nuance to the analysis of where this dynamic comes from:

Americans know that they are on their way, but do not know quite where they are going, or how they will know when they get there. The end of the American journey only can be conceived in apocalyptic terms...

The State of Israel exists, Brog recounts, because a Bible-believing provincial stumbled into the US presidency in 1945. As Brog quotes Harry Truman's adviser Clark Clifford, "He was a student and believer in the Bible since his youth. From his reading of the Old Testament he felt the Jews derived a legitimate historical right to Palestine." Truman overrode the unanimous opinion of his cabinet to cast America's vote behind the founding of the State of Israel in 1947.

Appreciative as he may be for the ministrations of Christian Zionists, Brog tries to apologize for their eschatological views. That not only condescends to American evangelicals but, even worse, it betrays a misunderstanding of what inspires Christian passion. Christians identify with Israel precisely because Israel's living history provides the beacons for their own journey to redemption, a journey whose end implies the change in the foundations of the Earth. Prophecy does not concern me, but I know something about shaky foundations. Not only chance, but also Providence favors the prepared mind.

I'm not quite sure of Brog's account of Truman's apocalyptic religious motives or of the unanimity of the opposition in his cabinet. But it's worth considering his thesis and Spengler's elucidation thereof.