Jewish outreach to Muslims in Nashville

Rebecca Bynum at New English Review has a very long article on a Reform Jewish congregation in Nashville that is “reaching out” to Muslims. It may not be Bynum’s intention, but the article reminds us that among all the sickly-deluded, suicidal liberal Westerners of today’s world, Jews are the worst. (Paul Gottfried always disagrees with that; he says the Protestants from his area of Pennsylvania are the worst.)

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Paul Gottfried writes:

I think that it’s a tie between the two groups, although it must be said in defense of American Protestants generally that they’re the least inclined toward the multicultural Left of any of the major American religious groups. What renders the deterioration of the moral fiber of WASPdom so pernicious, however, is that it affects what had been the leaders of American society for about 200 years. The Pennsylvania Dutch, who have not modernized well, may be among the craziest Protestants I’ve encountered.

LA replies:

If Protestants are the least inclined toward the multicultural left of any of the major American religious groups, then how can they be as bad as the Jews?

Bruce B. writes:

Paul fails to distinguish between the different Protestant groups. The Mainline Protestants (ECUSA, PCUSA, ELCA, etc. where the WASP leadership used to come from) are among the most limp-wristed people on the planet. At least the Jews, leftist or not, still have some spirit left in them. When Paul writes “American Protestants” presumably he means revivalist Evangelicals or the so-called Christian right. Two VERY different groups.

The German Anabaptists of Pennsylvania (Amish, Mennonites, Brethren, etc.) are an all together different group from Mainlines and the Evangelical Right and I’d guess their “craziness” is from having one foot in the pre-(early?) modern world and one foot in the post-modern world.

David B. writes:

In this thread, when Paul Gottfried says that some American Protestants are as prone to suicidal liberalism as the Jews, I think he means people like the Bushes and the Clintons. Southern Protestants (I am one) are indeed less inclined to the multicultural left than anybody. Protestants from the plains and mountain states would also be less liberal to some degree.

Paul Gottfried replies to LA:

Not all Protestants are. The group I was describing were members of peace churches who are demographically significant in Lancaster County and who accounted for an Obama vote at least as heavy as the one obtained in heavily black urban areas of the state. [LA replies: I don’t follow Mr. Gottfried’s statement. Not all Protestants are what? ]

March 13

A. Zarkov writes:

What you see in Nashville is nothing compared to Berkeley. A friend of mine once had his arm broken in the Berkeley Jewish Community Center for making pro-Israel remarks—nothing happened to his attacker. To sit through almost any sermon in a Berkeley reform temple is to experience the surreal.

Then we have Susanne DeWitt, a former Dachau inmate who brought the remains of the bombed out Jerusalem Bus 19 to Berkeley for an anti-terrorism rally. As one would expect, Berkeley Muslims tried to stop her. The City of Berkeley tried to stop her, by throwing one roadblock after another in her way. Berkeley leftists tried to stop her. But in Berkeley one must also expect the unexpected—the Berkeley Jewish community tried to stop her. DeWitt’s own rabbi opposed her demonstration. Abraham Miller covers this sordid story in his FrontPage magazine article.

I know people who know Susanne and they assure me that the FrontPage article is absolutely accurate. Just as Christians helped Susanne survive the Nazis, they came to her aid in Berkeley. Today Susanne is still active and publishes a newsletter, which got attacked by the Obama campaign.

Sometimes I feel that your description of American Jews as the worst of “sickly-deluded, suicidal liberal Westerners” is accurate, but my experiences with liberal Christians tells me that the problem lies more with liberalism than with the Jews. Most of the orthodox Jews I know are not like that, and they usually stand apart from the secular and Reform Jews. The older WWII Jews are also different as they appreciate what can happen to Jews when they let their guard down.

Young Jews are a another matter; let’s hope they eventually find their way out of the darkness that is liberalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 12, 2009 01:24 PM | Send