Attacks against Jews are attacks against Christians, too

National Post, 31 March 2024

On Easter, our holiest day, Christians read of the high points of Jewish history, because it is our history, too

Worshippers all over the world will read their sacred texts, the account of Abraham’s binding of Isaac, the Exodus from Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. Is it Passover? No, it’s Easter and the Hebrew scriptures are sacred for Christians, too. On our holiest day, we read of the high points of Jewish history, for it is our history, the history of the world read in its greatest depth, the history of a world so loved by God that he sent his only Son to save it (John 3:16).

“Salvation is from the Jews,” said Jesus to the woman at Jacob’s Well in Samaria (John 4:22).

The Christian story comes from the Jewish story. Christians believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob became man in Jesus Christ. God brought the Jewish people up out of slavery in Egypt by vanquishing Pharaoh at Passover; it is the same God who raised Jesus from the dead (Galatians 1:1). Christians worship the God of Israel. Which means that Christians care about Israel, the people God chose to be his own, whom he fashioned and formed, with whom he made the covenants.

Christians care about Jews not as an act of kindness or fellowship, but because God chose to reveal his plan of salvation through the election of Israel. That plan, Christians believe, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, son of Abraham, son of David. Jews do not share that faith in Jesus. Yet that does not negate their election and covenant.

On that point, no less an authority than St. Paul is emphatic: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 9:4-5)

My cherished mentor Father Richard John Neuhaus, born and raised in the Ottawa Valley before finding his vocation and mission in New York, spent a lifetime praying together, studying together, conversing together and arguing together with Jews. One of his mentors was the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

“The God of Israel is not separable from the people of Israel,” the late Fr. Richard wrote in 2001. “It follows that to be in relationship with the God of Israel is to be in relationship with the people of Israel. As is well known, in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, a favoured phrase for the Church is the People of God. There is no plural for the people of God. Certainly there are distinct traditions that must be cherished and respected, but one may suggest that they are traditions within the one tradition, the one story, of salvation.”

Thus it has been painful to see in recent months, at home in Canada and abroad, manifestations of antisemitism, with Jewish homes, synagogues, community centres, businesses and neighbourhoods targeted.

Biblical Israel is not the same as the modern state of Israel. The Knesset is not Sinai. Criticism of Israeli policy and its government is legitimate; Israel’s robust democracy means that Jews themselves are constantly engaged in it.

Continue reading at the National Post.